Well done 'England'!

Away from the soccer World Cup, 'England' played Australia at one-day cricket yesterday, and won.

I say 'England' because it's technically England and Wales, and because a large number of the players aren't actually English, Welsh or British. Taking a leaf out of the Irish soccer playbook of the 1980s-1990s, 'England's' team consists largely of Zimbabweans, South Africans and various others (Strauss, Pietersen, Kieswetter…). Amongst them is an Irishman, Eoin Morgan, who qualifies simply because he's played county cricket in England and wanted to join the élite (never mind that the Ireland team he abandoned is a rising star).

Morgan won the game for 'England' last night. There will not, I suspect, be street parties in Ireland in his honour.

Watching England v Slovenia this afternoon? 0-0 draw, I feel.

Keep saying it and maybe we'll all believe it

'We're all in this together' is the Chancellor's mantra. He, like most of his Cabinet colleagues, is a multimillionaire.

He delivered his first budget yesterday. Do his decisions reflect our collective sharing of the burden?

Er, no.

Losers - us
Pay freezes in the public sector, regardless of inflation = pay cuts.
VAT up to 20% - this will hit the poor hardest.
Housing benefit capped at £400 per week for 4 bedroom houses, £280 per week for 1-bed. This sounds like a lot, but if you live in London or one of the more expensive cities, this is way less than the going rate. Currently in London, a 1-bedroom flat will cost you a minimum of £650. So if you're made unemployed, or you're a low earner, you are going to be made homeless.

The government's promise to cap housing payments at £280 a week for a one-bedroom property and £400 a week for a four-bedroom family home could make many properties unaffordable, especially for people in areas such as inner London.

Shelter's chief executive, Campbell Robb, said nearly half of tenants already found their housing benefit payments did not cover the rent. Most benefit claimants were pensioners and low paid workers, and many would end up in debt in an attempt to remain in their property.

Robb said: "If this support is ripped out suddenly from under their feet it will push many households over the edge, triggering a spiral of debt, eviction and homelessness."

Government department funding cut by 25% - e.g. services massively cut. Except for nuclear weapons.
Child benefit frozen = effective cut
Pensions linked to CPI not RPI = effective cut
National Insurance contributions - increased. Just another tax, as it's not ringfenced for pensions.
Sure Start maternity grant for poor mothers - abolished
Pregnancy health grant - abolished

The Winners
Capital Gains Tax up from 18% to 28% - speculation is still taxed at far less than income, so if you become a rackrent landlord rather than working at a normal job, you'll be highly rewarded for your attack on the community. Oh, and the first £5m is exempt for 'entrepreneurs', which is totally disgraceful. Still, the hedge fund traders will be happy.
Corporation Tax reduced 1% for each of the next four years. This stunned me. This really is evil. While the poor (see above) pay more and more, big business gets tax cuts to 'encourage investment'. This is, obviously, utter bullshit. They operate offshore, they avoid tax anyway, and they won't invest in this country, they'll pocket the extra cash. I'm toweringly angry about this one.

So in the end, it was a classic 1980s Thatcherite budget: more cash to business and the rich, paid for by cutting the services we all want and need. Fuck the poor, Up the Toffs.

It's all just hot air

I'm off now, but I thought I'd settle an argument before I go.

I'm really bored with endless aggressive arguments between talking heads on TV about climate change. Proper scientists make the case for anthropogenic climate change (i.e. we did it). Then the presenter turns to some unqualified loon (e.g. Nigel Lawson, disastrous Tory Chancellor, degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, who has set up a skeptic thinktank) or a retired professor in a non-climate change subject) and treats them as though they know what they're talking about.

Usually, it's 'global warming is a huge leftwing conspiracy', though the purpose and practicalities are never spelled out. How do you get tens of thousands of socially-awkward nerds to agree to a massive plot?

Anyway, those days should now be over, thanks to the sterling work of Anderegg, Prall, Harold and Schneider of Stanford University, who have published a paper analysing the climate science debate.

Their findings:
1. There isn't a balanced debate to be had, which will be news to, well, news organisations. 97-98% of climate science researchers who actively publish peer-reviewed papers believe on scientific grounds that we've altered the climate through human activity.
2. These researchers have massively more academic credibility and experience than the tiny group who oppose the theory. They publish more, they publish more in peer-reviewed journals and they've been working in the field more.

So there we have it. There's no conspiracy, just a hugely overwhelming amount of data collected by serious scientists on one side, and some ideologically-motivated morons on the other: morons who don't have the courage to submit their ideas to scrutiny by their peers, but prefer to rush to the airwaves.

Let's just get on with mitigation and reduction. Perhaps while we wean ourselves off fossil fuels, the media can wean itself of pointless confrontational arguments and learn a little bit about science.

Unicorned meat

Some companies have no sense of humour at all. They do have huge legal departments though. Put those two things together and you get true stupidity.

It all started when ThinkGeek, on April Fool's Day, advertised tins of Unicorn meat for sale ('excellent source of sparkles'), produced in County Meath, Ireland, and rubbed down with Guinness, like the beery Kobe beef in Japan.

I thought it was quite funny and forgot about it.

Unfortunately, those purveyors of foul offcuts, The National Pork Board, didn't see the funny side. They didn't even see the fictional side. Keen to object to the slogan 'The New White Meat' because it's sort-of like their slogan 'The Other White Meat', they sent a 12-page legal cease and desist letter to ThinkGeek. It didn't seem to occur to them that a website called ThinkGeek is unlikely to be really selling meat, let alone that Unicorns don't exist and it was April 1st.

ThinkGeek's response? Enormous amusement:

We'd like to publicly apologize to the NPB for the confusion over unicorn and pork--and for their awkward extended pause on the phone after we had explained our unicorn meat doesn't actually exist.

"It was never our intention to cause a national crisis and misguide American citizens regarding the differences between the pig and the unicorn," said Scott Kauffman, President and CEO of Geeknet. "In fact, ThinkGeek's canned unicorn meat is sparkly, a bit red, and not approved by any government entity."

We'd also like to extend a special discount to everyone we offended with our portrayal of Unicorn Meat as "the new white meat." For a limited time, take $10 off any order of $40 or more by using the code PORKBOARD at checkout, good until 6/30/2010 at 11:59PM ET.

The world's gone bobbins

Farewell, Frank Sidebottom.

If you don't know who he is, how to explain?
A grown man wearing a papier-maché head and allowing us an insight into a weird and wonderful mentality, for comedy purposes. Chris Sievey was in various bands and music was the core of his act: faux-naive songs for children or about Altrincham FC and Timperley, where he lived. He died yesterday at 54, following surgery for a tumour.

People = gits

If you don't believe me, try the polling evidence:

59% of voters back cuts even if they lead to worse public services. Although 63% agree that the poor will suffer the most from the budget, only 22% think that people should be asked to pay more in tax.

I earn a good wage, probably the most I'll ever earn. If pain is to be inflicted by these Tory scum, I'd rather take it by paying more tax than cut public services, whether I use them or not.  I do object hugely to being taxed when speculators pay very little in capital gains, and to paying for the banking bailout, but I should pay more than the poor.

The prediction is that today's budget will increase VAT (sales tax, to you Americans) from 17.5% to 20%. This really is loading the misery onto the poor, because it's applied to most items, and so they will pay the same tax as the rich on things they really need. Income tax, on the other hand, is much more progressive: if you've got more, you pay more. 1% extra income tax on someone earning £75,000 won't hurt their lifestyle at all. A 2.5% VAT increase on virtually everything you buy will really hurt those on low incomes.

I'll be protected from the VAT rise to some extent: it's not (currently) levied on books or newspapers!

The drought continues

It's 5 days since I bought a book. That is the longest for many years.
Of course, I've bought other things - I purchased a sabre and a lamé mask bib at the weekend, at a combined cost of over £100, and books previously ordered are trickling in.

Delightful things have arrived today, definitely for pleasure rather than work: Infinite Crisis, and books by leading female musicians from the 90s, Lauren Laverne's CandyPop and Louise Wener's Different For Girls: My True-Life Adventures in Pop. I loved Laverne's Kenickie, and like her Radio 6 show. As for Sleeper - they were limited but fun, but Wener's interesting and engaging as an author and commentator.

Still, I think I can keep this going. Sponsor me?



That's all for today, folks.

News from Nowhere

The good news is…
The Hegemon is going to be in profit!

The bad news is:
staff will still suffer.
A pay rise of 0.5% and inflation of around 3% = significant pay cut.
Increased employee pension contribution = even more significant pay cut.

Apparently pay is what put us millions of pounds in deficit - never mind the £multimillion clawback for misleading the government about student numbers. Oh, and the university's investments have tanked.

VC says her salary is 95th in the VC league tables but VC's salaries are 'quite high'. Shame we're much lower than that on the educational league tables.

I also asked about our carbon management plan. They intend to reduce our emissions by 25% over five years. Our position at the moment is 'hugely disappointing'. Several of us want to contribute - there are experts in the academic body.

There's a university 'green league table'. Well done the University of Gloucester! Meanwhile, The Hegemon is in the 'Third Class - poor environmental performance' section, rated 'awful' for ethical investments, fair trade policy, waste recycling, 'poor' and 'getting worse' for energy use and water use, and 'could do better' on environmental policy and carbon emissions. We score 26 out of 60.

Still, there is a plan (put together by someone who doesn't know how to use apostrophes), and it involves a CHP plant, which is brilliant.

Good questions about Executive car/public transport use. Response includes a suggestion that we discourage car use in future, which is promising. Another colleague asks about the Cycle to Work scheme, which would be really good.

Revolution in the afternoon

It's all go round here, I tell you.

Management are absent - apparently they think better in posher surroundings, so they're having an 'away day' - kind of like the Wannsee Conference for education (too tasteless?). Shame teachers and students aren't afforded the same consideration.

In their absence, I sloped off for a very frustrating swim, then for a quick demonstration, supporting our City of Dark Place College colleagues as they fight huge cuts in Further Education, which is under severe attack.

Then in a few minutes, I'm off for another meeting with the Vice-Chancellor and the Executive. I plan to ask how many of them are earning more than the Prime Minister and how it makes them feel. The V-C was on £228,000 in 2008-09 - it will have increased since then - while the PM struggles along on £142,500. 4 more of my management 'colleagues' (obviously they don't mix with the likes of me) earned took home more than the PM too. Well, 'we're all in this together'.

Meanwhile, the Chancellor has announced plans to force local authorities to cap council tax at this year's level, and plans to provide mechanisms to force them to cancel raises in future if a small number protest.

This is a naked attack on working people. The focus on prohibiting rises makes this clear: some (Tory) councils stay in power by charging very low tax, and therefore providing very few services. What if a local population want to pay more, for better services? Sorry, that won't count. What if a council needs to charge more because of exceptional costs - a hard winter perhaps, or entire housing estates need renovating? Tough - Cameron hates government and detests public services, so he wants you to hate taxes and hate collective action. Lower taxes produces selfish individualism. He sees this as a good thing. I see it as socially damaging.

This bit's really pissed me off. The welfare system isn't 'out of control'. It might need tidying up a little, perhaps even tightening. What's out of control is that Britain's given the banks hundreds of billions because they screwed the global economy, and they're back to the bad old ways, without paying any of it back yet. Quite frankly, I'm far happier for someone on unemployment benefit (£51.85 for 18-24s, £65.45 per week if you're over 25) to fiddle things a bit than I am for free-marketeer bankers to demand state bailouts. That's real fraud.

All the political parties hysterically condemn benefit fraud for impoverishing the country. Let's see what the figures say:

Benefit fraud and error overpayments, 2008-09: estimated £3.1bn, or 2.1% of the benefits budget.
Benefit underpayment: £1.7bn, or 0.9%.
Total loss: £1.4bn.

So where's the campaign to get people to claim their full entitlement? How much is fraud, and how much is error?

Now, let's see. Benefits fraud and error loses us £1.4bn. Now, how much have we given or guaranteed the banks?

£1.5 trillion. £1, 500,000,000,000,000
Take away £1.4 billion for those benefit fraudsters and I reckon that George Osborne's being rather generous to the bankers and rather mean to the rest of us.

Also, I want to know this: which minister in the International Development department replaced African art with a massive Union flag and a portrait of Margaret Thatcher, as reported in yesterday's Observer?. Given that the department exists largely to repair the damage done by the kind of imperialism Thatcher was nostalgic for, neither decoration seems appropriate.

World Cup satire latest

You've probably seen this already, but it amused me when Neal sent it:

The England team visited a township orphanage today. 

"It's lovely to put a smile on the faces of people under huge pressure with little hope", said Joseph Mbolo, aged 6.

I'm enjoying this World Cup hugely. The perfidious French are experiencing cosmic justice, the big teams are all choking and New Zealand, whom I decided to follow ages ago, are doing really well.

Who'll win? Brazil, Germany or The Netherlands. Sorry.

Would you cheat?

The usual cautions apply to this: it's a survey, and it's in the Daily Telegraph (thanks to Adam for sending it to me).

However, this article claims that a Manchester University study shows that half of students are willing to cheat - primarily through plagiarism and buying essays from the internet. Supposedly the paid-for essay sector is worth £200 million.

I think I'm pretty good at catching cheats, because I'm good at spotting language that doesn't come naturally to, say, a first-year undergraduate. There's been a rash of plagiarism this year - one student's essay claimed that she was an expert at 'intersectional theory', which is a) not relevant to the subject and b) news to me. Then again, I obviously don't know what I've missed when marking.

The problem is that students are paying a lot of money to get a qualification. In a consumer capitalist situation, the educational values are forgotten in pursuit of a certificate. The goal isn't learning, it's winning, and too many students are willing to use any means necessary.

The Manchester study questioned 90 second and third year students at three universities. It found they would be prepared to pay more than £300 for essays gaining a first class mark, £217 for a 2:1 and £164 for a 2:2 piece of work. Longer dissertations can cost up to £2,500. Some offer a cash back guarantee if the student is not awarded a certain degree classification.

"What is quite striking is that it appears that students did not see this form of behaviour as unethical," said Mr Rigby. "There was very little stigma attached to it. One student told me how he was working in the library next to someone who openly got out his credit card and paid for an essay off the internet.

"One could argue that in the modern university, the student is treated as, and increasingly identifies as, a consumer demanding 'value for money'. Perhaps subcontracting some of the work is seen as just an other rational choice by many informed consumers on campus."

Let's be clear: university work isn't the Kobayashi Maru test - it's possible to succeed, but the grade isn't the important bit, it's the intellectual growth. If you cheat, you cheat yourself and your colleagues. Have I ever cheated? No - I felt bad enough when an unseen poetry criticism essay was on a poem I'd read before. Also, my undergraduate education was much more personalised. We hand-wrote essays and gave them to a tutor whom we saw in very small groups, and discussed the face-to-face. I guess the analogy is with shoplifting or tax evasion: you wouldn't con a little old lady but you might not feel so bad ripping off a massive multinational. I wouldn't have tried to deceive the teachers I knew well and respected, but The Hegemon can feel like an impersonal machine. (That's not an excuse, by the way, it's an institutional failure).

Still, when I get sacked, I can make a living writing essays for you.

En garde…

Hello everybody, happy St. Monday to those of you lounging around in your jim-jams in front of Jeremy Kyle.

I've loads of work to do today, but so many distractions too. I need to get back to swimming after having a break due to awful sunburn (I don't think the attendants would have appreciated  a thin film of my dermis on the surface). There's a rally to object to cuts in Further Education provision in this city - my comrades over there are in just as much of a mess as is The Hegemon. Finally, I'm just exhausted, and still decompressing from refereeing the English Youth Championships at the weekend.

It's a strange activity. We turn up on the Friday to do several hours of manual work setting the competition up. The group consists mostly of men, though not exclusively, who know each other only from doing this same thing in anonymous sports halls most weekends of the year. We don't know much about each other's lives outside this arena. We start to speak in a private language and acquire skills which have no application elsewhere: I'm now an expert at distinguishing which kind of tape will damage particular types of carpet piste, for example, and  a myriad other tiny but important details. A whole set of brand names  which mean nothing outside the sport dominate my vision for a weekend: Leon Paul, Allstar, Artos, Duellist and many more. I go from not knowing anything about the sport's internal politics - I stay away from the lively online forum though I might check this morning to see if anyone thinks I ruined their rise to the top - to being immersed in the minutiae of who's in, who's out, who's performing, who isn't, who's pulled a fast one in whichever committee, then immediately forget it when the competition's over.

The next day, suited and booted (officially - I forgot this time and turned up looking like a tramp), the refereeing takes over. It's stressful, naturally. The rules change all the time, and I'm slightly out of practice. I have to look out for safety issues, keep the fencers happy, interpret the action immediately and explain my decisions while keeping the fencers happy and blocking out the howling of friends, parents and coaches. My decisions led to one under-13 girl losing a semi-final on 2 rules infringements: I was right, but it's a shame the the fight ended on penalty points rather than fencing action, and facing a crying fencer and her terrifying coach isn't my idea of fun (video evidence convinced the coach I was right, but still…).

It's hard not to be caught up in the drama of it all. I know so many of the fencers through taking them on overseas or team trips, through their coaches and refereeing other events that I of course want certain ones to do well - but that has to stop when I'm judging their fights. It's sad when they don't perform as well as they should. It's awful watching anyone lose 15-0 (I've done that to someone once or twice, and I've lost almost that badly a few times), and it's brilliant watching someone step up to a higher level when it really matters.

After that, while parents, coaches and fencers natter and watch us, we're taking the hall down and picking up their litter, as though we're the hired help, and not volunteers at all.

It's a weird way to spend a weekend. Eating snack food, testing springs, never seeing daylight, trying to negotiate the convoluted politics and above all trying to do a good job under immense pressure.

I come back exhausted, aching, with a sore throat and happy. Also, hugely inspired by the quality and enthusiasm of the fencers. I'm a decent club level fencer who sometimes upsets much better competitors because I'm not as stupid as I look, but these kids are going places - some of the Under-11s have more style and grace than I'll ever have!

And yet: I love it.
Try fencing.

Shearer = genius

I'm waiting for my lift, and I'm slightly bored.

Neal and I watched France-Mexico last night, and were too lazy to change channel to avoid Alan Shearer's Tour Of The Townships.

It's always entertaining watching slightly dim multimillionaires cope with the lives of others. Watching his face while a young musician explained how her brother's murder inspired her was fun ('Er, that must have been bad'), but the best exchange was this (unfortunately I can't find it on the iPlayer and can't quote it exactly):

Alan, to shack-dwelling black South African: 'You lived under segregation. How did you feel about that?'
Bloke: '??????!!!!!. Er, it was bad'.

Charitably, you could see it as sweet, watching Shearer grope his way to taking a view on apartheid, but it was toe curling. What was they guy meant to say?

'Well Alan, it was a lot of fun. I'd chuck stones at the Boers, they'd kill my family, then we'd all go for a beer and watch the action replay'.
'Well Alan, it felt like being a Sunderland fan at St. James's Park'.
'Well Alan, it reminded me that life is black and white, which you'd know all about, eh?'

(Shearer played for Newcastle United, who play in black and white stripes. They don't get on with neighbours Sunderland, non-soccer readers). Shearer was a very good player. He's an awful commentator though.

Farewell, comrades

For the weekend, anyway. I'm off to sunny Hatfield in a few minutes, to referee the English Youth Fencing Championships. A whole weekend of being cursed and shouted at by fencers, coaches and parents - and it's voluntary!

Still, it gets me out of The Dark Place, and I can rely on the other referees and the armourers to keep up the banter and mockery.

Have a good weekend. Hope England's loss to Algeria doesn't upset you too much. I very much enjoyed la France perfide getting exactly what she deserved from men in green last night.

It's The Facts of Life

My meander through my music brings us now to one of the great misanthropes of English music, Luke Haines, in his Black Box Recorder guise. Formerly of The Auteurs, Haines (appropriately, la haine is French for 'hatred') and his colleagues John Moore (previously in The Jesus and Mary Chain) and Sarah Nixey used cool, modernist pop tunes, cold synthesizers and Nixey's unique pseudo-posh half-singing, half-talking love-it-or-hate-it tones to explore the degraded state of British culture - hence the name, I guess, as a Black Box Recorder tells you what's gone wrong after a catastrophe.

Over the course of England Made Me, The Facts of Life and Passionoia, Haines makes it pretty clear that he's disgusted by England, himself, and you. There aren't any light moments, though the tunes are often deceptively sugary - it's hard not to get 'life is unfair / kill yourself or get over it' from 'Child Psychology' out of your head (banned from radio play, oddly).

I thoroughly recommend The Auteurs, Baader-Meinhof, Luke Haines and Black Box Recorder. His book, Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part In Its Downfall is also a magnificent read. In it, he claims credit for what he sees as the few saving graces of Britpop, names names as the guilty parties, extends old enmities and makes some new enemies - while candidly admitting that he'd become a monster. It takes someone special to dedicate their lives and artistic talent to holding grudges - it's a quality I admire.

For such a misanthrope, Haines found at least one person to love - his colleague Sarah. Ahhh.

Here's 'Child Psychology', 'England Made Me', 'The Facts of Life' and my favourite, 'Andrew Ridgeley' (yes, about the one from Wham who wasn't George Michael).

Free schools?

The education secretary today set out the rules for his big new idea: 'free' schools.

By free, of course, he means that the taxpayer will fund them, but only the parents will get to decide on how the money's spent, what's taught, admissions policy and so on.

There are problems with this. Firstly, only a small group of parents has the time and ability to go about setting these schools up - the shouty, demanding, greedy bourgeoisie, which already dominates the public sphere.

Secondly, the point of schools being administered by the elected local authority is that decisions can be taken for the good of the community. If a school needs to be closed, opened, changed, whatever because the community has changed, an elected body needs to be responsible. They can take a strategic view on behalf of us all. If they're right, they get re-elected. If they're wrong, they get sacked. The community hopefully benefits.

Under the 'free' system, a bunch of parents can decide that their kids shouldn't mix with the poor, black or whoever, and demand that the rest of us pay for their kids. They can exclude the expensive and troublesome - the disabled, or those who need free school dinners, for example - and then pick a curriculum which might foster Creationism, rabid capitalism or any other sort of repulsive ideology. Their kids won't ever have to talk to, play with or learn from anyone from a different background. It's a way to raise the drawbridge on the proletariat.

Meanwhile of course, these schools will have to be paid for. There isn't any spare money for extra capacity in the school system, yet we'll be paying for new buildings, new staff, the whole lot. Who'll pay? The money will have to be taken away from existing schools, making them worse.

This is simply a plot to privatise schools - back to the 1820s. Parents will found schools, and appoint profit-making companies to run them - hiring teachers, planning curricula, cleaning the toilets. Each child will be a cherubic £ sign, or be seen as a leech to be economised on: worse food, fewer teachers, fewer resources, less cleaning - anything to increase the bottom line.

I hate this initiative because it destroys the sense that we are a community, that we all have an interest in the education of everybody's children. It's an individualist view of education as a private benefit rather than a public good.

'Free' schools makes education a nasty selfish race, one to be funded by the rest of us to the advantage of those who'd like to send their children to private schools and have now hit on a way to do it for free. I want all your children (I have none) to be cared for and well-educated. I don't want parents to be set against each other in a dog-eat-dog competition in which the children of the poor, tired, inarticulate or uneducated are left to sink while the minority reinforce their privilege.

One more thing - quite an important thing:

Per Thulberg, who runs Sweden's school system on which the Tories' plans are said to be based, have said the free schools will not improve standards.

Thulberg, the director general of the Swedish National Agency for Education, said in February that the schools had "not led to better results" in Sweden.

Thulberg told BBC's Newsnight programme that where these schools had improved their results, it was because the pupils they took had "better backgrounds" than those who attended the institutions the free schools had replaced.

He said: "This competition between schools that was one of the reasons for introducing the new schools has not led to better results. The lesson is that it's not easy to find a way to continue school improvement. The students in the new schools have, in general, better standards, but it has to do with their parents and backgrounds. They come from well-educated families." 

England is ranked higher than Sweden for pupils' maths and science knowledge. In the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (Timss), Sweden's ranking for science fell further than any other country's. The Swedes have carried out similar international comparative studies, as well as detailed national research, which confirmed a drop in standards. 

Well, that about wraps it up for the Republicans

I thought that the Republicans were rebounding in the US, on the back of racism, paranoia, greed and fear: the usual ingredients for rightwing success. Obama and the Democrats seemed to be struggling to make the political weather, despite their huge success in the last elections.

That's all changed, thanks to BP, and to Joe Barton, the Republican Congressman who apologised to the oil company for Obama's 'shakedown'. Never mind the legal status of the compensation fund Obama made BP hand over: Barton must be insane if he thinks that defending a British company which has poisoned the oceans is politically clever.

The surprise at Barton's remarks was heightened after it was revealed the Texas congressman – who once worked as an oilfield engineer – has has received nearly $150,000 in donations from an oil company, Anadarko Petroleum, which is a partner with BP in the Gulf oilfield.

His party isn't impressed either: they made him apologise for his apology - twice!

This clip will feature in every Democrat's election campaign for years:

Milk with your icecap?

OK, it's not as bad as driving an SUV or flying off for long weekends, but your coffee habit is killing polar bears:

The carbon footprint of a cup of tea or coffee:

21g CO2e: black tea or coffee, boiling only the water you need 

53g CO2e: white tea or coffee, boiling only the water you need 

71g CO2e: white tea or coffee, boiling double the water you need 

235g CO2e: a large cappuccino 

340g CO2e: a large latte

Some of my colleagues consumer loads of expensive lattes through the day. What damage do they cause over a year?

Three large lattes per day, by contrast, and you're looking at almost twenty times as much carbon, equivalent to flying half way across Europe.

It's mostly the milk - which I gave up a while back, though not for environmental reasons. Every pint you waste drinking it could have made cheese!

I also gave up coffee - several a day at work meant I was completely spaced out in the morning, then felt ill and exhausted in the afternoon - more than once I crawled under the desk for a little snooze. I really hurt my head on the underside of the desk, waking up in a hurry when someone walked in during last summer. 

Now I mostly drink mint tea. At the moment, it's as environmentally friendly as possible: I use mint leaves torn from my own plant. 

Sink or swim?

The answer, according to David Cameron, is sink:

Another cut worth noting is free swimming for those aged under 16 and over 60, which sits oddly with the public health agenda, and the efforts to encourage more people to get active in the run up to the Olympics.

Free swimming programmes will end this summer.

I don't know whether this scheme encouraged more people to swim, or simply paid for those who would already have swum. Cutting it seems a bit petty though - fit people cost the NHS less, which why you should all stop smoking.

I took up swimming because I was a fat bastard. It's cheap with my monthly payment of £12 for unlimited swimming, against £3.60 per visit at full price. Now I'm merely a portly bastard and once my sunburn goes, I'll once again be a portly-becoming-sylphlike bastard.

Of course, some Tory MPs charged the taxpayer to clean their private pools, so I'm surprised that they don't see why anyone else should benefit from Government subsidy.

Angry round-up

I have to go to meetings. My bosses are frogmarched to meetings involving 'break-out rooms', which have nothing to do with WW2 escape movies or the A-Team being locked in a fully-equipped workshop, and everything to do with trying to brainwash innocent people into complicity with an evil management which knows that Newspeak kills pesky ideas and independent thinking. It's soft fascism. Refuse to break out! Break free! Break down!

So here's Modern Toss's take.

Meanwhile, you may know that I'm a bit of a typeface nerd. My favourites are clear, modernist designs such as the wonderful Gill Sans, Johnston Sans, and Helvetica. I use Georgia on this blog because it's elegantly old-fashioned: Helvetica's a bit cold to use for everything and the other choices are limited.

This, of course, means that I am a typeface snob - according to Comic Sans, who you shouldn't use in essays.

We don't all have seventy-three weights of stick-up-my-ass Helvetica sitting on our seventeen-inch MacBook Pros. Sorry the entire world can't all be done in stark Eurotrash Swiss type. Sorry some people like to have fun. 

People love me. Why? Because I'm fun. I'm the life of the party. I bring levity to any situation. Need to soften the blow of a harsh message about restroom etiquette? SLAM. There I am. Need to spice up the directions to your graduation party? WHAM. There again. Need to convey your fun-loving, approachable nature on your business' website? SMACK. Like daffodils in motherfucking spring.

I am a sans serif Superman and my only kryptonite is pretentious buzzkills like you.

It doesn't even matter what you think. You know why, jagoff? Cause I'm famous. I am on every major operating system since Microsoft fucking Bob. I'm in your signs. I'm in your browsers. I'm in your instant messengers. I'm not just a font. I am a force of motherfucking nature and I will not rest until every uptight armchair typographer cock-hat like you is surrounded by my lovable, comic-book inspired, sans-serif badassery.

That guy's an asshole fun-loving party animal.