All the world's a stage

So said Shakespeare anyway. But, this was in a time before pub quizzes and microphones. He would have thought differently if he ever played a pub quiz that I ventured to last night.

While the quality of the quiz and the questions are generally fine (apart from "who is currently leading the F1 standings?" to which the pub responded "it's not started yet". (What did he have as the answer then?)), the man in charge is someone who clearly believes he is an orator, a comedian and a raconteur all rolled into one.

He spends the entire quiz booming loud, inane and asinine comments about nothing in particularly into the microphone. Or he sings snippets of songs and general other nonsense. But most annoyingly of all, this man is a councillor for a nearby London borough.

This means, every other thing he says, is something sanctimonious, OTT, in your face piece of political posturing, about the wonders of Labours, the horrors of the Tories, every date or location referenced to some heroic Labour cabinet member, or some vile Conservative MP; it's utterly tiring.

This isn't drug-based homicides in Harlem, it's raised bin lids in Whitehaven

The problem with laws is that as human beings we seem to find it hard to move beyond a black / white divide as how to implement them. There seems to be no way to go beyond this into a reasonable assessment of a situation. So the story that a man has been fined £110 for ‘overfilling’ his bin doesn't really seem fair but because the lid ‘was raised’ the council in question has said ‘Copeland Borough Council will continue to crack down on the problem of overflowing bins, which cause problems for local residents and in the battle to reduce waste.’

This is all ridiculous and the council is massively overstating its role to make them sound like noble crusaders campaigning for the last vestige of human decency. The man's bin lid ‘was raised’ it was not ‘overflowing’. You are not involved in a ‘battle to reduce waste’ and you are not ‘cracking down’ on overflowing bins – this isn't drug-based homicides in Harlem, it's 'raised bin lids’ in Whitehaven Cumbria. If there was rubbish piled high around the bin, that was attracting wildlife, even causing a health hazard, then the council might have a case. But the man's bin lid 'was raised.’ You know, like when you just squeeze in that last plastic bottle to clear the bin for the week's collection.

The issue here (aside from how sad I am about getting worked up about such closed-minded, blinkered actions regarding bins) is that we are creating a system where we never let people make a mistake, explain a mistake, or even, that we just accept it's actually not that big a deal. Because while the law may state people who do this are doing something ‘illegal’ in reality they aren't and certainly not in my eyes or many others.

It's things like this that turn me away from ‘politics’ in any serious manner as regardless of who I vote for, campaign for, believe in, argue for or against, I could never hope to stop such petty, moronic, childish and cold actions like those in this story.

Here's another slide...

So R&R renewed today. That's Reporters and the Reported for those who don't know. And we were graced with Ian Hargreaves.

I'm afraid to say it was a fairly ominous start to the latest series of lectures. It basically consisted of: "Here is another slide showing information which is irrelevant, not left up long enough for you to read and impossible to decypher. And here is another one..." - This was made doubly painful by the fact that the first half consisted of findings from a survey in 2002...

It's nothing personal. It is clear from his C.V. that he is a 'proper' journalist; The FT, The Independant, The New Statesman. And he was a former member of staff here at our beloved JOMEC. But as a talk it was, frankly, boring.

If the only worthwhile tangent I can take from it was that young people are fairly uninterested in politics you can appreciate the struggle....

I suppose the only thing I thought was this - we are well aware of the disengagment of today's youths and politics. But if, say, 65% are uninterested, then 35% must be interested. Maybe we should find out why they are interested and work on that. People will only come to politics if they deem it be to 'cool'.

You can't make people realise something is 'cool' by saying: "Honestly kids! Politics is so hip! Don't be a square...VoTe!"[Sic.] They will just roll their eyes and flick over to MTV.