Goodbye lovely Cars and Croisants... why i won't stop loving the continent

It is very easy to be anti European Union at the moment.

The commission is an overly powerful un-elected mass of technocrats spewing incomprehensible diktats from on high. What portions of it are elected are just stuffed to the gills with second class politicians who should never get a crack in a national government as evidenced by young Nicholas.

Even if that weren't true the Euro seems to evidence the impossibility of the kind of union we have to date. Staying close to Europe right now would cost larger more fiscally sound states a lot of cash.

But at the same time we sit here bemoaning our position as it is. The British have been telling ourselves that we are a deflating power on the world stage for 60 years now. We love saying it for some reason.

The UK are sometimes like a strange boy who stands up at the party to loudly announce that he isn't cool enough to be there anymore. He then spends the next 60 years stood in the doorway switching between telling other people what music to play and saying that he'll leave in a minute.

However, deflating we probably are, (the oil, coal and fracked gas won't last forever)... Over the next decade staying away from Europe might save us a great deal of pain. But I can't help but wonder what happens after that.

The BRIC economies rise up and start playing some awful Drum & Bass and the UK is still stood in the doorway asking them to please play just one Smiths track.

They won't anymore.

But weirdly the Belgians have managed to slip on a (frankly worse) 20 minute jazz bassoon solo.... Because the EU got through a very rough 10 years and came out of it a much closer federal block which actually wields a fair bit of power. In a global market that power counts for a lot.

I'm not saying it will definitely happen. Perhaps the EU will disintegrate in bickering or worse hang together in an unreformed bickering mess. But I am saying that if it does happen we'll be sending some poor bugger of a prime minister to Brussels to beg to be let back in and I expect the initial (and possibly permanent) response will be the same as last time.

Saving us from Facebook

Forcing us to be on facebook to use spotify is bullshit.

Facebook being a monopoly is a problem for us all. One organisation with all of that information showing a clear intent to move into every area of our lives is problematic.

Google achieve the same but they do it by being better than their competition. Facebook achieve it by being better at one stage and achieving a critical mass. It was a land grab and they now have gathered up, for free, a very valuable commodity and can do pretty much what they want with it.

The other week David Mitchell suggested nationalising it.

Obviously that can't really work, though it would be nice.

What I want is for the WC3 to develop the tools to break up Facebook's unfair advantage in human capital and open them up to competition.

Your details and their ability to advertise to you is the price of the service. You should be able to take those details anywhere you like and still have access. So we need to develop technology such that, for instance, your facebook profile can interact easily with somebody else's google+ profile or bebo profile. These guys compete to offer a service in terms of the organisation of your details and interactions with friends. essentially they can all have different front ends but the data is essentially the same.

This is what the web and the WC3 has always been about. Setting data standards so that different networks can understand each other easily.

So if the WC3 sets standards for saving your, personal details AND for interactions with Flickr, facebook and the rest... It should be possible for you to have one profile which you can take and leave anywhere you like. If you prefer to use google+ but your friends won't move from facebook it should be possible for you to interact with their facebook profile from your google+ profile.

If you create an event on google+ it is stored there but then you can invite friends who are storing their profile on facebook.

Are you with me? This should not be beyond the whit of the sexy web-geeks. Though facebook might not be willing to sign up I would bet others would. AND if their free'er service proved to be better it would present a much more attractive draw to people than google+ is currently. I would even expect google to put money behind organising the community in the way some do for Linux fixes.

The internet wants and needs to be free. Don't let the robber barrons win.

Right I'm off to post this on Facebook.

national identity

National identity is a particularly boring subject that gets too much air-time. But I'll say this much. My national identity is primarily British Islands writ large and I think if people really thought about it most other people's is too . The major cultural drivers which make me who I am are I believe shared across Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English areas.

That isn't to say that there aren't significant differences but all countries have those and in some cases they are as stark between the north and south of any of the home nations as between them.

Irish, scottish, english folk musics are nuanced but certainly from the same root. A large chunk and possibly most of my friends at primary school came from Irish and Scottish families. The islanders watch the same TV, listen to the same music, speak the same language (if only as a second language for a few), eat pretty similarly and fortify ourselves with tea & beer in similar amounts, have similar judicial systems and most of our families and friends stretch between different bits of our little damp islands.

I write this post in part, not just because of the similarities, but because the breaking up of attributes seems to snatch at shared identities meaning for instance that Yorkshiremen can't be dour, nope the Scots took that...

And because its usually the English working and lower middle classes left with the crumbs or worse identified by the gentry, pimms, rowing and village greens, which whilst lovely, make up a very small portion of the population or our past-times.

If my cultural identity were an ice cream European would be the cone, the ice cream would be british isles and the sprinkles would be English, Lancastrian, Blackpudlian.

The sprinkles are great. I love sprinkles and the Welsh for instance get a whole new kind of flake because they have their own language. But it's the ice cream and the cone that make up the most of it and spending too much time wondering exactly how my sprinkles differ from yours seems daft.

I don't want to give you the impression that I'm not aware of or that I don't enjoy the great diversity across the islands. But neither do I think that diversity is particularly special as compared to other similar sized countries. Such that I increasingly feel that telling a foreigner that I'm English, as opposed to British, is a little similar to the way a Londoner, when asked will tell you that they are from e.g. Ealing. Which always makes them sound like twats on the radio.

The Republic of Ireland is a separate country clearly so saying you're Irish is not the same. But I would say that my personal identity is such that if they decided they wanted to unite Eire with the rest of the islands and have a federal British isles with devolved governments in each state. AND we subsequently moved the main Federal government to Dublin... I would be pretty surprised but I would have no problem with that... and in fact... I quite like the idea.... ooo and we could elect a non politician as Monarch on a bi-annual basis. I vote Stephen Fry.

Twitter makes things weird

Hello

Every time I post on here I feel a bit dum as I don't do this regularly and nobody reads it. But I think perhaps that it gets things off of my chest.

Last night I went to see Josie Long doing an Edinburgh warm up gig. Which was great. AND it's nearly Maddy's birthday (I don't think she'll see this) and one of her presents is Josie Long's DVD.

Her main present is a laser measuring tool which she already has for her Bat Phd.

Anyway, I thought it would be nice to get Ms. Long to wish her Happy Birthday on it.

So I meandered up and asked if she would. But then had amongst the most awkward conversations I have ever had. Now I should make it very clear that she was LOVELY and my awkwardness was caused entirely by me. I just wanted to mention it because I found my psychology kind of interesting.

Because on the one hand what I wanted to do is say hello, thank her and congratulate her on being great in the same way you might anybody whose work you appreciate. And get a DVD signed to make a present a bit more special. Slightly embarrassing but basically fine.

Only if she were a chef or something I wouldn't be following her on Twitter which weirdly added a subtext. A part of my brain was pinging the, "oh it's your mate Josie, go say hi to Josie she'll be happy to see you". On twitter you slowly learn about people and they talk in a more inclusive manner than on stage so it starts to feel a bit like you know them especially if you actually interact occasionally. Obviously other parts of my brain know the difference but I think something links into that part of your brain that you use for people you know.

So, for instance I happen to know that she went to LMH but can't remember exactly why. And when she asked what age maddie is and said that she's the same age(1) I saw the link that they were at Oxford at the same time. So I mention this and that is the awkward bit because the non-friend part of my brain is sat there saying, {how do you know where this stranger went to Uni that is weird}, and the other side is saying, {cos she's josie of course you know where she went to Uni}. So I became quiet and weird punctuated by attempts by the friendly part of my brain to wrestle control, "oooo but I went to LMH but for my doctorate" {shut up it's weird that you know that about her it just sounds like you're showing off that you got a dphil from oxford} {no it doesn't I'm just chatting with josie} and so i quieten up again. say thanks and walk off feeling like a dick.

Now I'm exaggerating the inner monologue, it wasn't so stark.. obvs... but that is essentially what was going on I think. It clearly isn't the most interesting interaction in the world and I'm sure few people would be interested in it. But I'm still a little embarrassed that I acted like a strange 'un and am also embarrassed that I'm embarrassed.

I am extraordinarily self conscious so it may just be my stupid brain that thinks like this. But I suspect that twitter might have this effect on other people when meeting people they're fans of.

(1) Incidentally I accidentally got Maddy's age wrong. I realised as soon as I said it out loud but it is such an awful thing to get your girlfriend's age wrong that I just left it. I have an excuse, Maddy recently said I'm 28..... in a month. .. So I looked into my head and it screamed I'm 28 so i added one for the birthday.

AV explained fully for once

Ok, I'll vote yes. But at least partly because the No camp is full of t**ts. AV won't make much difference to my vote unless I'm in a genuine 3 way marginal. Just means people can make a show of their first preference then vote tactically rather than do it blatantly. It is a little bit better... And if I'm honest I'm too obstinate to vote tactically so it is a blessing.

But to argue that voting no won't seriously damage Nick Clegg or the Liberal Democrats (as in the New Statesman) is ridiculous. And if that is what people want to do I won't judge them. I also don't believe there is a progressive majority in the UK but might be wrong.

The examples given for AV grate on me a little. Talking about picking the best pub to go to from a group of friends isn't the same. That makes it all sound lovely because in the end I basically still get to go to the pub.

Let's try another example.. which I think more closely resembles the process.

In the first round of voting: I want to go to the pub and so do 2 others, But I keep very strange friends and 5 of them want us all to go to a hip new place where they kick the rest of us in the balls for four hours whilst blasting trance in our ears. My other 4 friends are a mixed bunch who are (amongst my friends at least) hinting that if we support them they are basically in favour of a pub where you get kicked in the balls for 3 hours but there is no trance music.

The pub lobby have little choice but to join these 4 to avoid the trance hell and at least we get a pint.

HOWEVER- That isn't the end of it. We are just a single cell of friends amongst many. And for some reason we all have to go to the same place. We send a representative forward from the mixed bunch we arent' sure of but supported.

If we're lucky the majority of the other cells will choose the pub and we'll get our way anyway. Or the Psycho's will win and our balls and ears will be sore.

OR

(and I take the point that hung parliaments are only a bit more likely under AV but it is basically what I'm hoping for when I vote for the ball kicking in silence no?)

Neither of the straight choices win outright and I end up with perhaps:

Pub and ball kicking but only gently every third sunday,

or

Trance and Ball kicking plus A brand new idea (on nobody's manifesto but now strangely agreed on) to shove flaming dildo's up my arse of a morning, but I'm occasionally allowed a pint of mild and I can vote in a highly restricted referendum where I'm wondering loudly if there might be something I can do about the flaming dildo stuck up my arse.

P.S. I like a lot of Lib Dem MPs. I expect there are a lot of Lib Dems that basically have the same politics as me. But try as I might I can't work out what the party is for.