What's in a name?

I’ve blogged before (The Stupid Advertisement Awards) about offensive advertising. News of a forthcoming talk by Trevor Beattie reminds me of a related issue: offensive branding.

Sometimes things change their names for reasons which are unclear. I could imagine a “Marathon” bar might give me the energy to run a marathon. “Snickers” (combining Sneakers and Knickers) merely evokes the sweat that the said activity will generate.

Sometimes the reason is clear enough. A new name is chosen in the hope of escaping the opprobrium attached to the old name. Sellafield and DR Congo spring to mind.

Again, the Royal Mail briefly tried out the name Consignia – an anagram of Gain Coins, highlighting that its priority was no longer to deliver mail but to make money. The Lib Dems have been though various anagrams of LSD. And Beattie, joining in the anagram game, re-branded French Connection as FCUK.

French Connection was (I imagine) named after the film. The worst one can say is that it’s a bit incongruous. (Although better than Scarecrow, if we’re naming clothing chains after Gene Hackman films.) But FCUK is no less incongruous, and a deal nastier.

Taking a rude word and reversing the middle letters isn’t clever or funny. Nor is it original. 1000 years ago, Canute purposely showed his fawning courtiers that he couldn’t control the sea: and they responded by re-branding him as Silly Cnut. (Apologies to the Private Eye cartoonist whose joke I seem to have pinched.)

Anagrams can be fun. Crossword setters have long rejoiced that “schoolmaster” can be found in “the classroom”: although it took the genius of Araucaria to point out that “Manchester City” is an anagram of “synthetic cream”. But pasting anagrams of rude words on the wall is just as puerile as shouting the words themselves.

Trevor Beattie, lest we forget, was the brain (or groin) behind the infamous “Hello Boys” advert. This was the one displaying Eva Herzigova’s cleavage, and inviting us to join Mr Beattie in his schoolboy sniggering. No surprise then that his name is an anagram of “Eva titter bore”.

FCUK? It's a load of carp.

Honey Monster

“Bin Laden has won,” says Richard Dawkins.

Strange headline! If (as Dawkins confidently assures us) God, heaven and hell do not exist - if this life is all there is - then Osama has broken even. On this point, Dawkins stands with Job and Mr Frisbee: “You come from nothing, you’re going back to nothing. What have you lost? Nothing!”

All right: maybe Dawkins means that by his death, Bin Laden has somehow gained kudos. In the same way, on hearing Captain Scott’s death, Amundsen said: “He’s beaten me.” It’s still not the kind of victory I can see Dawkins counting worthwhile.

Or maybe he won because he orchestrated the 9/11 murders, and because others have joined his murderous cause and are still active. That is the victory Osama himself might celebrate.

No: Dawkins has in mind a far more important and tangible victory. Forget the loved ones lost: Richard Dawkins is weeping for his honey. Airport security has responded to Bin Laden as Bin Laden intended: by confiscating infidels’ honey.

Some have found his reaction disproportionate. But I find it entirely consistent with his declared beliefs. Religion is said to have its eyes on jam tomorrow, although the Bible bangs on annoyingly about our neighbour's welfare: but Dawkins is concerned only with honey today.

What Sir Alex Ferguson can teach us about leadership

The above is the title of a link on today’s BBC news website.

Until Ferguson’s new book came out, we thought we knew about his approach to leadership. Indeed, the BBC story carries his definition of leadership (paraphrased by Nick Robinson): “Leadership ... is a quality which allows your personality to transfer to everyone.”

His disdain for officialdom, his readiness to bully and even use violence, are well-known. Day after day he slagged off referees: and to no-one’s surprise, his players followed suit. Most notoriously, during a match in January 2000, Roy Keane led a lynch-mob of five players who pursued ref Andy D’Urso, shouting in his face and threatening to push him over.

Again, in 2003 Sir Alex famously threw or kicked a football boot into David Beckham’s face. Knowing this, we were less surprised about Roy Keane’s revenge “tackle” a year or two earlier which effectively ended Alf-Inge Haaland’s career. Or Eric Cantona's kung fu assault on a fan in 1995. (Ooh! Aah! Cantonese.)

Ferguson’s personality was also transferred to the behaviour of his players when on international duty. Beckham and Rooney famously lashed out at opponents, perhaps imagining that referees would quail from action as they did in the Premiership. Cristiano Ronaldo limited himself to some judicious play-acting, with more wisdom but with equal dishonour. And who can forget Roy Keane’s vicious mutiny against Mick McCarthy during the 2002 World Cup?

But Ferguson’s new book shows another aspect of his leadership. Bored or dissatisfied with having a go at referees, he is slagging off those who most loyally served him: such as Roy Keane (whom I thoroughly dislike for his role in events described above, but who does not deserve this from Fergie of all people) and David Beckham.

I’m reminded of Ray Illingworth, English cricket’s chicken supremo, who, during the 1995-96 tour of South Africa, laid into bowler Devon Malcolm. He carefully did this from a distance: sat in his armchair at home, like a WWI general, while his troops slogged it in a distant trench. Likewise Ferguson did not make his comments while in post, but carefully waited till he was no longer required to meet players or press face-to-face.

To say such things at all shows indifference to morale at Manchester United. But maybe he is acting with purpose: for if the club quickly fails without him, he has all the more cemented his personal legacy.

In short, the things Sir Alex Ferguson can teach me about leadership, I do not wish to know.

Second Money

Today I read that the FBI has closed down a site called Silk Road, with possible impact on Bitcoins.

I hadn’t heard of a Bitcoin. Apparently it’s a “virtual currency”. You buy bitcoins with real money, and use them online to buy stuff. When I heard about this, I was puzzled. I’ve heard of Second Life – a very useful resource for people who don’t have a first life. This sounded like a Second Income – for people who don’t have real money.

It turns out to be more like a Second Expenditure. Bitcoins are actually quite expensive. And then their value jumps up and down, like a real currency, even without the Feds taking an interest.

Which still leaves two questions. (1) Who determines that they are worth anything at all? And (2) Why not buy (online or otherwise) with pounds or dollars?

On the first point, the BBC explains that bitcoins “have value because enough people believe they do and there is a finite number of them”. Like Premiership footballers, or Royal Mail shares, or houses, or hostages, or snooker results. Or real money, come to that. Terry Pratchett wrote of “the fairy dream that the gold is there, at the end of the rainbow, and will continue to be there forever – provided, naturally, that you don’t go and look.” (Does anything have intrinsic value? Another topic, another day.)

On the second point, an important point is that you can use bitcoins anonymously. It’s about privacy. Some people prefer to buy stuff without divulging their identity. That’s why I wear a balaclava when I go to Tesco. That’s also why money-launderers like bitcoins: and that’s why the FBI are interested in their use.

And if the bottom falls out of the Bitcoin? I guess the bad guys will just have to go back to trading in snooker results.

Let the right one in

Like a good Tory, Theresa May is very upset when people can’t find jobs, and would like to take any measure possible to help, as long as it doesn’t involve spending any money.

One problem, of course, is that people are coming from overseas and taking jobs as road-sweepers and dentists. (Of course, trouble-makers have suggested that such jobs are either beneath or beyond home-grown candidates.)

So Ms May is asking GPs to check up on people’s immigration status. Foreigners out – problem solved.

Trouble is, the GPs haven’t got time. Nor have the teachers, library staff, etc. who will doubtless be asked to join in.

So who can perform this splendid and worthwhile duty?

The unemployed, of course. The government already wants them to work for their dole. They won’t get the dignity of a proper contract or proper pay, of course. What they can be given – at a relatively small outlay – is a nice uniform and a big stick. Then send them out looking for foreigners.

Two birds, one stone. I wonder why it hasn’t been tried before?

The end of an earache

(Headline borrowed from The Guardian, November 1990)

When George Best died, former team-mates such as Denis Law wept openly. It was hardly a shock: Best had clearly been drinking himself to death for a long time. But I suspect his friends were also weeping for the career that was wasted thirty years earlier. And somehow they couldn’t weep before. Because when Best left Manchester United, there was still a chance he might find his way back: and as it became clear he wouldn’t, somehow the moment for weeping had passed.

In a similar way, perhaps, it was difficult to rejoice greatly when Thatcher resigned, because her party remained in power. (For over six years. And New Labour, despite its name, did nothing to change or refresh our travails.) So the moment for rejoicing passed. And now, in a mirror image of Law’s tears for Best, we are catching up on the partying we did not do 20 years ago.

Thatcher’s death is not in itself noteworthy or newsworthy. (I am sorry, did you think she was immortal?) She was 87. She retired long ago: any damage she did, she ceased to do in 1990. Some things she may have left beyond repair, like George Best’s liver: but many others we have destroyed without her help.

The important thing, having partied (or wept, if you prefer), is to put her behind us. The world has changed. Her policies are no longer relevant. Her insistence that Nelson Mandela is a terrorist is no longer helpful. Nor is her policy of closing down factories and communities, now that we hardly have any. The good news is, we don’t have to feel we are under her shadow any more. She’s gone. Let’s move on.

Funny peculiar

As a comedian, Stephen Fry knows that timing is everything.

All the more surprising, then, that in a recent edition of QI he told a rude limerick about a churchman and a choirboy. I don't know whether he was trying to score points for being Anti-Clerical, or for being Gay-And-Able-To-Laugh-About-It. But I would have thought "jokes" about child abuse were better left until the fuss about Jimmy Savile has died down a bit.

Waiting for the man to jump

Remember that scene in Lethal Weapon, when the policeman approaches the man on the high ledge? He handcuffs himself to the man, and (to our shock and amusement) the policeman jumps them both off. And he gets off the landing mat and says: That was fun, let’s do it again.

Now imagine, instead of one psychotic policeman there are fifty. And imagine the man on the ledge is the chief of police. And imagine they roped themselves to him inside the building, and then dragged him onto the precipice. And now they jump.

That would be silly.

But essentially, that is what is about to happen in the USA. And there doesn’t seem to be a soft landing – except if the Republicans land on their heads. Amusing? If America jumps off a fiscal cliff, we may laugh – just until we realise that the rope attached to the last man is tangled round our legs.

Collateral damage

Hemingway, I think, said that first-time spectators at bullfights are shocked, not at the death of the bull (for that is the point of the exercise) but at the death of the horses.

It seems that before the matador appears, men on horses stick spikes in the bull’s shoulders to make him angry. This works. He responds by charging at the horses. Their death is shocking because it is incidental: they are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like the police officers mown down like Space Invaders in Leon. Or Ben Kinsella.

Or Jacintha Saldanha.

I’m sure it is very amusing having a joke at the expense of someone rich and famous. I expect it is fun throwing rocks at fire crews, or attacking linesmen. And if those people suffer, I suppose they (like the bull) must accept this as their purpose in life. And if someone else dies because the fire engine fails to arrive, we shake our heads in sorrow and say we didn’t mean any harm.

But even convicted prisoners are protected by national and international law from being publicly humiliated. Nurses, it seems, are not. 

I don’t pretend, of course, that the UK has a clean record in the humane treatment of prisoners (or nurses). We used, for example, to send convicts to Australia. But these days, we recognise that this is cruel and inhuman. After all, Australia contains radio stations like 2Day FM.

Lest we remember

Can a TV celebrity – who turns out to have been a child-molester – be “erased” from the records? His blue plaques can be melted down; charities can drop his name like a hot (and diseased) potato. The damage to his victims is not so easily removed. Nor can we, who used to like the man, retrospectively alter that fact.

But, however symbolically, we can – and must – refuse to recognise any honour (formal or informal) which he enjoyed.

We are told, for example, that the Vatican need not posthumously withdraw a papal knighthood: because it ceases on the holder’s death. Not good enough. Better to declare that he never was a papal knight.

Can’t be done? Sure it can. Lance Armstrong is not a former champion: he never won the Tour de France. Look it up.

(Go further. Unlike papal knighthood, sainthood is intrinsically retrospective: it can only be awarded after the person dies. Can’t it similarly be withdrawn? Some of the church’s mediaeval “saints”, re-examined, might turn out to have been murderous bigots – in the manner of the 9/11 killers. Should they keep their honour?)

By the way, I’m not pointing any fingers at the broadcaster, the hospitals, the charities for whom a child-molester may have worked. They are rather victims (albeit very much secondary victims) of his duplicity.

In the same way, the Hillsborough revelations – however disturbing – will not erase the heroism of PC Bill Barker, who died defending a flood-hit community three years ago this month. Nor that of WPC Fiona Bone and WPC Nicola Hughes, recently murdered.

Nor (as we approach Remembrance Day) should we doubt the heroism of Lt Edward Drummond-Baxter and L/Cpl Siddhanta Kunwar, the latest of our soldiers to die in Afghanistan. If the war itself is idiotic, so was the “Great War” of 1914-18. And that does not stop us honouring those who served and died.

Their names will live forever.

Some names I would sooner forget.

Three cheers for the Olympic spirit

We welcome the Paralympics to the (alleged) home of disabled sport. And The Mail and The Sun are looking beyond the wheelchairs and the missing limbs, and seeing the visiting athletes for what they are. A bunch of foreigners.

Sorry, I’m being cynical. In fact, from what I read, the attitudes shown towards other nations at the Olympics were surprisingly good. With three notable exceptions.

First up were the Americans. A teenage Korean swimmer beat her personal best by several seconds: so of course they cried drugs. Michael Phelps made similar progress at a similar age; and so did an American youngster later in the London games. But when Asians succeed at American expense, they must have cheated. (Underground tunnels, perhaps.) How else did Tezuka get his work out before Disney did?

Next up were the French. Early on, when their swimmers were beating ours, they jeered at our lack of medals. Like we care. We had the last laugh. Just like seven years ago, when Jack Shoerack told the IOC that Britain had the worst cuisine in the world “except Finland”. I’d like to think the Finnish vote was crucial in bringing the Olympics to London rather than Paris.

And finally, not to be left out, came the British. At the football (although, I think, only at the football) there was jeering of the national anthems. And let’s not pretend it’s just an English thing (although it happens all the more in England as 1966 recedes.) In Cardiff, the crowd booed God Save The Queen. I wonder how the Welsh players felt? Maybe they’re all republicans.

Admittedly the England football team needs to use a distinct English anthem:  just as the athletes do at the Commonwealth Games. And use the English flag, if it comes to that. But is that what sporting xenophobia comes down to? Is it about a flag and an anthem? Is it about ingrained culinary pride? Or is it simply about being bad losers?

The moving (middle) finger

See the Kings of Ibrox

Eat dust, or imbibe rocks.

The writing is on the wall, and Rangers FC finds itself shaken from its kingdom.

And I now think that I was in error in my earlier piece (Rangers: good riddance?). It’s not something I said: it’s something I didn’t say.

I asked whether Scottish professional football could survive without Rangers. This remains a taxing question, as it were. But to their great credit, the SPL and SFL are treating it as irrelevant. The question: “What will benefit us?” has been swept aside by the greater question: “What is right, and what is wrong?” Moral considerations have, for once, outweighed market considerations: and for that the clubs are to be applauded.

The new Rangers administration is to be equally admired. They declared in advance that they would accept entry into the Scottish Third Division. Did they have an alternative? Well, yes. They could quite easily have picked up their ball and walked away across the border. I am sure the English Premiership would welcome an Old Firm club with open arms. Who would stand in the way? Glazer? Abramovich? Mansour bin Zayed? Oh, please. What about the sponsors? That’d be Barclays Bank. Enough said.

But aren’t newco Rangers being punished for the sins of the oldco? On the contrary: the newco is benefiting from its association with the oldco. Most new clubs can’t just walk into the professional leagues. They start in the bottom division of a local league somewhere, and work their way up.

It’s still hard on the players and staff - at Rangers and elsewhere. But real and material questions (about mina and shekels, if you will) have been weighed and found wanting.

Simply Redtop

No connection with the item below (about reds and redtops). Simply an amusing resemblance.

There Is No Alternative

The other day, suspicious as I am of free-market Capitalism, I looked through a Communist newspaper. It was full of prefabricated screaming slogans. (A bit like the X-Factor build-ups, but with long words.) Nevertheless, from its pages I learned many things.

Firstly, I learned that the Syrian government is “magnanimous”, its agenda “peaceful” and its people “heroic and dignified”. (I will accept the last point.) And I learned that Colonel Gaddafi – who harboured Yvonne Fletcher’s killer and feted the Lockerbie bomber as a national hero – was “great” and that his works command “a feeling nothing short of awe”.

I’m aware that the West has an agenda. We routinely intervene in (say) Libya or Iraq, but not in Zimbabwe or Rwanda – which see equal atrocities but don’t have oil. Funny, that. But if we elect, or tolerate, people like Bush and Mugabe, that doesn’t suddenly make Saddam and Gaddafi good guys.

Secondly, I learned something about the Royal Jubilee. I don’t mean the revelation that the royal family (and all rich people) are a bunch of parasites. I wouldn’t expect a Communist newspaper to say anything else. I’ve blogged elsewhere (Sons and Daughters) about the useful role a ceremonial head of state plays in a democracy: but I don’t suppose democracy interests Communists any more than it does Capitalists.

No:  the surprising news about the Jubilee was quoted from an online commentator, who wrote: “The only sentiment allowed to be expressed in the media was pro-monarchial.”

Fair enough, it’s not everyone’s plate of cucumber sandwiches. But the only sentiment allowed? I’m sorry, but this is paranoid nonsense. The press includes reds as well as redtops. You may produce The Morning Star as freely as The Daily Star, and I may as freely buy it. There are countries where this would be impossible: where one cannot speak (much less write) against the establishment.

A more interesting question might be: why do we overwhelmingly buy newspapers with a pro- Establishment slant?

But maybe it’s a trick question. The attitude of the mainstream press (and its readers – chicken and egg) is more complex. In 1992, when Royal Divorce memorabilia was selling 3-for-2, the papers were largely anti-monarchial. The church, the Lords, the banks, politicians in general, are routinely pilloried. Fat-cat salaries and dodgy Middle East wars are fair game.

True, the mainstream press doesn’t really question Capitalist assumptions. The Guardian (for one) has a go, but it doesn’t hack at the roots. The redtops don’t even behave as though the questions exist. They would rather tell us about Wayne Rooney or … well, Kate and Wills.

And perhaps that is the problem with the coverage of the Jubilee. It has become another celebrity story with which the redtops fill their front pages. And they are free to do so.

The Communist press, by contrast, is quite happy to hack at the roots of the system. (Not with subtlety; nor with evidence of independent thought on the part of individuals. That’s OK.) Or they too can obsess about the royals. And they are free to do so.  

There are places where this precious freedom does not exist. Syria springs to mind.

There are other countries whose leaders oppose sanctions against the Syrian regime. (Perhaps because they look at its actions and they see nothing wrong: they see normality: they see themselves.) Which countries would those be? Ah, yes, of course.

Thatcher said “There is no alternative.” She was wrong. There is an alternative. There has to be an alternative. But this isn’t it.

Rangers: good riddance?

Many of us, sick of the obscene overpayment of footballers by the richest clubs, are secretly (or openly) pleased at the prospect of a top club going out of business.

If (as seems likely) Rangers are refused entry to the Scottish Premier League, that is surely where the road leads. For why should the Scottish League let them in? Surely the only ways into the League are by relegation from SPL or promotion from feeder leagues. Do they join at the bottom of the pyramid, or what?

But hold it. Barclays Bank has been accused of – well, I can't quite make out what. But it looks as if we have all been thoroughly swindled. A serious financial penalty is in order, for starters. But nobody speaks of punitively closing the bank down: because it would solve nothing, serve no-one, and punish the innocent along with the guilty. A major bank going out of business would destabilise the whole sector.

So it is with Rangers. The punishment should be severe, certainly: but (effective) extinction – even if we don't think it too harsh – would have difficult consequences for the rest of Scottish football.

Here are two possible alternatives:

(1) The other clubs could vote newco Rangers into the SPL: but then apply such a points penalty that the team is immediately relegated. (Presumably instead of one of the teams currently going down.) That would give the new club legitimate entry into the League, as a club relegated from the SPL.

This would limit the punishment suffered.  Of course, a year out of the SPL and a further year (presumably) out of European competition would represent a sizable hit, and rightly. Or:

(2) The approximate financial weight of that penalty could be calculated. Then the newco could be fined the equivalent amount, to be paid over those two seasons, but spared the actual relegation.

Then Rangers have to live within restricted means, as if they had been relegated.  But the SPL as a whole keeps Rangers in their portfolio when touting for TV and sponsorship deals – and receives a healthy bonus in the form of the fine levied. So the SPL does not take a financial hit, and newco Rangers do not gain financially from the sins of oldco. (But are not crushed out of existence.)

Or let Rangers die, and no doubt serve them right, and see what happens to all the other clubs when there are no Rangers matches in the calendar.

Morality and the free market

The other day David Cameron said Jimmy Carr's tax arrangements, though legal, were morally wrong. Then yesterday the courts said the same about HBOS's actions towards Farepak savers.

Let's leave aside for a moment the fact that, for money earned (and unpaid), Carr pales into insignificance alongside many sly businesspeople whom Cameron obviously doesn't want to upset.

The puzzling thing is to find a committed free-market capitalist suddenly discovering morality. Milton Friedman (Thatcher's monetarist guru) famously said that the only "social responsibility" of business is to make maximum profits for its shareholders. You do what is profitable for you, I do what is profitable for me. In this world-view, the only "immoral" thing is to go against the dictates of greed. The market knows best: the market is the only wisdom, the only morality.

It's not a new philosophy. Friedman just pushed an old one to a new extreme. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" means my happiness, not my neighbour's happiness. He should pursue his own happiness. That is why the talk is always of a Bill of Rights - not a Bill of Responsibilities. That is why there is no such thing as society: and I am certainly not my brother's keeper.

Ed Miliband said: "I'm not in favour of tax avoidance obviously, but I don't think it is for politicians to lecture people about morality." Nor for the courts, perhaps. But it is for politicians to legislate against wrongdoing, and it is for the courts to interpret legislation accordingly (by the spirit, not the letter, one might say).

To challenge Carr, or even HBOS, is to miss the point. We might rather question the whole ultra-captialist experiment and the (often unstated) assumptions on which it is founded. Perhaps, to reverse the flow of Ed Miliband's comment, it is for people to lecture politicians about morality

When I were a lad

A few days ago Geoff Boycott said on a BBC cricket blog:

“Harold Larwood had to walk eight miles just to go the cinema. And then eight miles back.”

Two things strike me about this comment. Firstly, it sounds like the Four Yorkshiremen, with their competitive tales of childhood deprivation.

“Cinema? You were lucky! We used to walk twenty miles to look at a hole in t’ground.”

“Oh, we used to DREAM of looking at a hole in t’ground. We walked a hundred miles before breakfast to look at a cardboard box.”

“Breakfast? Ha!”

(And so on.)

Secondly, I am struck by Boycott’s evident surprise that the distance was the same in both directions. Maybe that’s what went wrong with his running between the wickets.

Digger scrapes bottom (of barrel)

The England football team has a new manager, and all The Sun can do is snipe at his speech impediment. They then publish a similar jibe at “Wossy” (that’s Jonathan Ross – I’m helpless with laughter here) as if that makes it OK.

Let’s leave aside that Roy Hodgson’s rhotacism has not stopped him speaking five languages (while many Sun journalists struggle with one). It’s not about Hodgson and it’s not about Ross. They are successful enough, secure enough in their skill and vocation, not to care tuppence what jokes a semi-literate “newspaper” makes about them. It’s about the thousands of kids with lisps and stammers, who suffer endless piss-taking, and who now see this bullying (for that’s what it is) encouraged by a national red-top.

Mind you, are the broadsheets much better? In yesterday’s Independent, one page made comments similar to the ones I make above. On almost the next page, a story about the Russian president referred to “Mr Medvedev, a diminutive lawyer”.

Excuse me? What has his height got to do with anything? (And no, it was not in the context of describing his treatment by satirists. It was a throwaway word which added nothing to the thread of the article.) What about: The fat Mayor of London? The bald Foreign Secretary?

How about if a new teacher addresses kids as “Spotty” or “Big Nose”? It’s disrespectful, it’s damaging, it’s degrading. It’s bullying and encourages further bullying. It leads to depression, and in some cases suicide.

I expect this rubbish from the tabloids (sadly). But in my estimation, The Independent ranks higher. And you can pronounce that as you will.

Famous for 15 minutes

A man was arrested for swimming into the path of the University Boat Race. With almost equal stupidity, the media told us his name, thereby giving him the publicity he craved, and advertising this as a route to fame. (At least he kept his clothes on, unlike some others who disrupt sporting events.)

There are many ways to yell “Look at me,” if that is what you live for. Some people get a car number plate that declares their name. Like Postman Pat or Noddy. (Bless.) Some people try to catch the coat-tails of someone else’s fame – for example, by shooting them. One general (whose name is ironically only approximately remembered) had his shot at fame by destroying the Temple of Diana.

A very popular method these days is to sign up for a reality show on TV. Of course, you have to choose carefully. You need a grain of talent to gain a place on Masterchef. (Unless of course you are already famous for something else. In that case you are readily offered further fame regardless of talent, as a chef or dancer or ice-skater. To him who has, it will be given.)

But those lacking talent can still get their 2 minutes of fame (falling short of Andy Warhol’s utopian 15) on the freak-show of the X-Factor auditions.  Or simply Big Brother, which openly embraces the fact that its participants simply want to be famous.

I have a proposal for the next series of Big Brother. At the start of this piece, I objected to our being told the name of the boat race swimmer. Following the same logic, I would like to see the identity of the next lot of self-publicists carefully concealed. Let them preen into the Big Brother house in front of a crowd of carefully-chosen unbelievers, who will dutifully wave and cheer and then utterly forget the utterly forgettable. They will be there again, when the suckers emerge.

Let there be cameras all over the house, and let no film be made. (This seems to work quite well with CCTV. The bad guys see cameras and tailor their behaviour accordingly.)

And then (this is the clever bit) comes the “real” reality TV. Let secret cameras follow each emerging contestant into the outside world, and let us all watch their bemused response as they realise that nobody knows who they are.

But above all: we do not want to know their names.

(Or maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe Big Brother is a necessary conduit. Maybe without it, people would be reduced to shooting people, destroying religious buildings, wrecking sports events, or demonstrating their catastrophic inability to sing.)

How to save the planet

My wife remarked the other day how many baby-wipes we get through with our toddler. It's a small thing, but it reminded me of a question on QI a year or two ago, about environmental damage. And it seems that if you're looking for the biggest carbon culprit, you can forget about dogs or horses: and presumably the Porches and petrochemicals and fossil fuels and fighter planes which sustain our democracy. The greatest carbon damage, it turns out, is achieved by having children.

That is: to save the planet, stop having children. This will probably work: but taking the human race out of circulation seems a little drastic.

I expect there are some with an agenda who would approve. Our extinction would doubtless be well-deserved, might be pursued (by quicker methods) by certain religious sects seeking divine approval, and is also  the logical end of eco-terrorism. I don’t know whether there are militant nihilists out there, who reckon creation “ex nihilo” was a bad move, and would like to restore our bit of the universe to its pristine chaos.

I wonder, though, about the Buddhist take. The end of the world would free us all from that troublesome reincarnation business: but I don’t think Buddhists are actually meant to kill people. So would Buddhists approve the “QI agenda" of letting humanity die by simply not having children? It is probably the surest way of saving the planet.

But what does it mean for the path to Nirvana? If I’ve got this right, current reincarnation arrangements allow you to be - as it were - promoted (eventually to a life as a monk, and thence to Nirvana) or relegated. Someone relegated to (say) a flea can presumably work their way up through the leagues of newts and newspaper magnates.

But if all the human divisions are removed, will it be possible to gain Nirvana? Or will the spiritual Premiership forever be out of reach? It’s like removing the Championship and League One and Two, along with the various feeder leagues: so that qualification for the Premiership will depend on improbable performances in the pub leagues.

Meanwhile we are rapidly filling the air, sea and soil with stuff with unguessable side-effects. It’s quite likely that we will all soon be infertile, the QI agenda will be fulfilled, and the planet will be saved. (Without abandoning the consumerist agenda! Win-win.)