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Episodes
- ... a modern guide to Barack Obama
Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:48:00 +0000 Author: noreply@blogger.com (the modern guide)
Three days after the event and the world seems still to be on a high after - as someone put it - "the USA decided to be cool again".
I'm not American but I don't think it ever lost its cool - just let its mojo slip for a while.
When Barack Obama was making his acceptance speech I felt tears well up in my eyes , it was pride in being human , it was knowledge that the collective was working and it was an overwhelming sense of belief in one person that I haven't had since I was a kid.
And it's that simple promise he's making , the same one a parent makes to their child - I'll keep you safe and sound and build you a future.
It's post modern. Its after all the greed and bullshit and wars and jealousies and tantrums, lets see if we can make this work the other way. The way we've forgotten or abandoned or wrote off because it was too soft or not smart or too simple. From "Its about me not them" to "Its about Us."
People will snear at this naivety.
But you know what? - The hairs on your neck stand up for a reason.
It's the Morning Town Ride....
"Maybe it is raining where our train will ride,
But all the little travelers are snug and warm inside.
Somewhere there is sunshine, somewhere there is day,
Somewhere there is Morningtown, many miles away."
It's Barack Obama ....
...and it's the true beginning of the Twenty First Century. - ...to job hunting
Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:30:00 +0000 Author: noreply@blogger.com (the modern guide)
Looking for a job? The internet is awash with great jobs, crap jobs , high flying jobs and low slung jobs. You can sit in Iceland and look at a job in China. Look at a great role in New York from your home in Leeds.
You can spend all day at work looking for a job. Only to find your own advertised.
But its tiring and trying. Too many sites, too many jobs, too many recruiters, too many categories, too many bloody agents.
I'd like someone to create a world job page. A simple table listing every vacancy on the planet.
with ...job title....location....duties....benefits. Maybe Something like this:
Pontiff....... Vatican........Flock Tendering........Infallibility;
Chairman.......Wall Street........Decision Making.......Power;
Barman.......London Pub......Serving.......Stories;
Street Sweeper....Paris....Cleaning.....The wonderment of toddlers;
That's it. No wages mentioned. No "must be motivated self starter" or "appreciator thruster" or any of that other Myers Briggs type bollocks.
Just a link to the role.
Every job in the world indexed through how you benefit as a human being.
It' a rough idea but I think I'm on to something. - ... to the state we're in.
Sun, 25 May 2008 22:05:00 +0000 Author: noreply@blogger.com (the modern guide)
I was trying to put petrol in my car the other day and was reading the sign on the pump. It was letting me know that the fuel would start flowing as soon as the surveillance cameras had scanned my registration plate.
I thought for a moment....
the price of a barrel of oil, the price of a loaf of bread, the credit crunch, failing mortgages, wars waging all over the globe, cyclones, earthquakes, human trafficing , water shortages, food shortages, despotic regimes, 24 hour cctv and a dying planet
...then the pump started working and I filled up the car. - ...to the army on the street
Mon, 19 May 2008 17:17:00 +0000 Author: noreply@blogger.com (the modern guide)
Worrying times here in the U.K. . A modern guide worries about the increasing calls by politicians and the media to raise the profile of the armed forces in the streets and the schools and the minds of the people. An armed forces day with ticker tape parades is one government backed suggestion. 'Why aren't we more like the USA?' they ask. No offence to our American cousins - whom I love dearly - but this is not America and we're not Americans.
More frightening still is the call for servicemen to wear their uniforms in civy street and a push for cadets in every school. Is it to instill respect for the forces or for us is to get used to a daily uniformed presence ?
Just unnerves me this kind of talk, I can't quite put my finger on it...call it a gut feeling - the kind you have just before something really scary happens. - ...to direct action
Tue, 06 May 2008 13:15:00 +0000 Author: noreply@blogger.com (the modern guide)
I walked into a well known record store last week to find an old friend openly shoplifting. As a successful professional family man he's hardly the type. So we walked around the shop, while he peeled off the security tags and explained that an elderly relative had bought him a birthday gift of record vouchers for that store, not a huge amount - £20 - but a lot to her. Five months had passed since his birthday and he'd came into redeem the vouchers. In the meantime the store had been taken over by a larger chain .
They had retained the name, branding, carrier bags, staff and "vibe" of the previous outlet. Though it seems not their promises. My friend had written to the new proprietors and their accountants and had been told the debt was not theirs . in the end he felt he had no choice but a course of direct action; taking CDs to the exact value that his elderly Aunt had, in good faith, paid for the vouchers.
Finally we walked through the front door security unmolested and made our way down the street. We went for a coffee but not before he stopped to put the three discs in the back of his family BMW estate. As he closed the car door he turned and said;
"You know you just can't treat people like that."
Indeed.
