This image (click here) serves as a pertinent reminder that even an umbrella, when in the wrong hands, can transform from being a tool to provide shelter to a symbol of oppression. It all goes to show that for societies with hierarchical elements to work effectively, strong leadership needs to be reigned in by robust checks to prevent the abuse of power. Except in representative membership bodies of course!
For further proof of what can happen if the wrong person ends up running the show, click here. And here. Not only did they cock it up mightily, they besmirched the fair name of umbrellas along the way.
Sunday, 7 June 2009
Friday, 5 June 2009
Emerging views
Those clever chaps at New Fillcanopy Capital have produced an excellent report on mergers and collaboration in the umbrella sector. They argue that more mergers are essential if the industry is to survive, and I quite agree.
Not that BUBB itself will be merging with any of the other umbrella umbrella bodies of course even if it was in everyone's best interests. Collaboration is bad enough. True, we have in the past paid lip service to sharing offices with the Canopy Finance Directors' Group and the Institute of Gampraising but we weren't serious. So for now we'll just stick to advocating something for our members that we wouldn't consider ourselves.
Not that BUBB itself will be merging with any of the other umbrella umbrella bodies of course even if it was in everyone's best interests. Collaboration is bad enough. True, we have in the past paid lip service to sharing offices with the Canopy Finance Directors' Group and the Institute of Gampraising but we weren't serious. So for now we'll just stick to advocating something for our members that we wouldn't consider ourselves.
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
Rain like Mother used to make
Back in the day, (before "back in the day" was such a widely used buzz phrase) I used to dabble in poetry. I rediscovered this the other day. It sums up both my love of rain and the relentless battle we all have with imagining things were somehow automatically better in the olden days, (which they were).
Rain
Old school rain
Old school yard rain
The rain of our childhoods
Rain like Mother used to make
Big satisfying drops crashing down on decent sized puddles
Circles ever increasing for a proper length of time
Rain like it used to be
Before they modernised it
Computerised
Digitalised it
Standardised it
Bastardised it
And put it onto the world wide webbing
As diluted, watered down, dumbed down rain
Proper rain
Rain you could scrub your roof with
Rain that could slake the thirst of a parched river
When a deluge was a proper deluge not a trickle
Not the cheap ten-a-penny lo-budget rain of nowadays
Bought with loose change in Poundworld
Rubbishy tinpot rain that has the cheek to call itself a weather feature
But proper chunky thick-cut freshly oven baked rain
Exact measures of H and O mixed in perfect proportion
Rain that could shatter the umbrella’s fragile defences
Whatever happened to the rain of the Sixties
Did it take too many drugs?
Is that why we now have acid rain?
I am sure it rained properly when I was a nipper
Before Thatcher privatised it
De-sensitised it
Scientists overanalysed it
Re-sanitised it
The church de-Satanised it
While the East de-Christianised it
It doesn’t pour like it used to
On the lush verdant fields that are always greener on the other side
We’re left with a piss poor piss down for the new Millennium
It doesn’t rain cats and dogs anymore
Since the animal rights people complained
It doesn’t crash down on England
Like it always used to
In the days before hosepipe bans
I want rain you can leave unlocked so your neighbours can stop by and use it
The rain of whimsical, wistful reminiscence
Rain that falls endlessly for days
Obscures the view held by windows
And cascades down these misted-up rose tinted glasses
Rain
Old school rain
Old school yard rain
The rain of our childhoods
Rain like Mother used to make
Big satisfying drops crashing down on decent sized puddles
Circles ever increasing for a proper length of time
Rain like it used to be
Before they modernised it
Computerised
Digitalised it
Standardised it
Bastardised it
And put it onto the world wide webbing
As diluted, watered down, dumbed down rain
Proper rain
Rain you could scrub your roof with
Rain that could slake the thirst of a parched river
When a deluge was a proper deluge not a trickle
Not the cheap ten-a-penny lo-budget rain of nowadays
Bought with loose change in Poundworld
Rubbishy tinpot rain that has the cheek to call itself a weather feature
But proper chunky thick-cut freshly oven baked rain
Exact measures of H and O mixed in perfect proportion
Rain that could shatter the umbrella’s fragile defences
Whatever happened to the rain of the Sixties
Did it take too many drugs?
Is that why we now have acid rain?
I am sure it rained properly when I was a nipper
Before Thatcher privatised it
De-sensitised it
Scientists overanalysed it
Re-sanitised it
The church de-Satanised it
While the East de-Christianised it
It doesn’t pour like it used to
On the lush verdant fields that are always greener on the other side
We’re left with a piss poor piss down for the new Millennium
It doesn’t rain cats and dogs anymore
Since the animal rights people complained
It doesn’t crash down on England
Like it always used to
In the days before hosepipe bans
I want rain you can leave unlocked so your neighbours can stop by and use it
The rain of whimsical, wistful reminiscence
Rain that falls endlessly for days
Obscures the view held by windows
And cascades down these misted-up rose tinted glasses
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
Bought to account
As mentioned yesterday, I am launching a second career as a politician. A number of eminently winnable seats will be up for grabs at the next election as MP after MP falls on their own sword (purchased no doubt with taxpayers money). The MP for South Blacburyshire, Sir Godfrey Fleece, is one who has said he will go after damaging revelations about his beach footwear appeared in the media. Apparently he designated one pair of loose fitting sandals as his main pair for tax purposes but a different pair for allowance claims. Then he switched the designations – flip-flopping the flip-flops. So I will be standing as an independent next time out, with a particular emphasis on umbrella issues.
This whole sorry episode shows an extreme abuse of power and is highly embarrassing for all those elected to serve. If they haven’t got the nous to use that power to keep these things quiet then they don’t deserve to have it as they are clearly incompetent. If the Chancellor himself can’t stick £700 of dodgy expenses “off balance sheet” what hope have we got of him massaging economic figures to give a positive spin? I have no issue with them milking the system, that is what it is there for after all, like a great big bureaucratic cow. But it is the fact they are witless enough to get found out that makes them unfit for office. And apart from anything else it all makes it less of an attractive gravy train for those that follow to board and slurp from.
I find the whole moral outrage about this a little hypocritical. Who among us hasn’t pinched a biro from work or bought a knocked off illegal soft porn DVD from a bloke in a pub car park sorry your honour I thought it was legit but I can’t find the receipt honest swear on my dog’s life guv.
.
There is absolutely no difference between knicking an envelope from the work stationery cupboard (value: 2 pence) and avoiding capital gains tax or claiming for a mortgage that has already been paid off (value: tens of thousands of pounds of public money) apart from the obvious difference that the latter is worth a great deal more money, taxpayer’s money at that, and has been perpetrated by those supposed to be making life better for everyone and not just themselves. I suppose congratulations should be in order for the fact that they kept it going for so long – good effort chaps – but ultimately they have paid the price for getting caught.
If I get elected I will back reforms to the system that allow continued exploitation of it with the cast iron certainty of no one ever finding out. But what I will need to get the nod from Joe Voter is a decent campaign slogan. A request I put out to my loyal fans on Twitter yesterday led to the team at Canopy Finance suggesting “Yes we canopy” and “Things can only get wetter”, which are both genius. I will do some mindBoggling myself later, but has anyone any other suggestions? Respond via the comments box or email me at robinbogg@hotmail.com.
This whole sorry episode shows an extreme abuse of power and is highly embarrassing for all those elected to serve. If they haven’t got the nous to use that power to keep these things quiet then they don’t deserve to have it as they are clearly incompetent. If the Chancellor himself can’t stick £700 of dodgy expenses “off balance sheet” what hope have we got of him massaging economic figures to give a positive spin? I have no issue with them milking the system, that is what it is there for after all, like a great big bureaucratic cow. But it is the fact they are witless enough to get found out that makes them unfit for office. And apart from anything else it all makes it less of an attractive gravy train for those that follow to board and slurp from.
I find the whole moral outrage about this a little hypocritical. Who among us hasn’t pinched a biro from work or bought a knocked off illegal soft porn DVD from a bloke in a pub car park sorry your honour I thought it was legit but I can’t find the receipt honest swear on my dog’s life guv.
.
There is absolutely no difference between knicking an envelope from the work stationery cupboard (value: 2 pence) and avoiding capital gains tax or claiming for a mortgage that has already been paid off (value: tens of thousands of pounds of public money) apart from the obvious difference that the latter is worth a great deal more money, taxpayer’s money at that, and has been perpetrated by those supposed to be making life better for everyone and not just themselves. I suppose congratulations should be in order for the fact that they kept it going for so long – good effort chaps – but ultimately they have paid the price for getting caught.
If I get elected I will back reforms to the system that allow continued exploitation of it with the cast iron certainty of no one ever finding out. But what I will need to get the nod from Joe Voter is a decent campaign slogan. A request I put out to my loyal fans on Twitter yesterday led to the team at Canopy Finance suggesting “Yes we canopy” and “Things can only get wetter”, which are both genius. I will do some mindBoggling myself later, but has anyone any other suggestions? Respond via the comments box or email me at robinbogg@hotmail.com.
Monday, 1 June 2009
Too cheap
I know I have already blogged today but felt I needed to share this. Click here to see an automatic umbrella - for when you just can't be arsed to open it yourself presumably. But the price at which they are being sold cheapens us all. How can one expect quality at that price? Thing will fall to bits in days and reflect badly on all umbrellas.
No doubt it is being produced in some sweat shop in the far East, and while I don't have a problem with the exploitation of cheap labour per se (after all, it's what we built an Empire on), if you are gonna use it, at least put a bigger mark-up on the price of the end product for the good of the industry.
No doubt it is being produced in some sweat shop in the far East, and while I don't have a problem with the exploitation of cheap labour per se (after all, it's what we built an Empire on), if you are gonna use it, at least put a bigger mark-up on the price of the end product for the good of the industry.
Banged up in Bog(g)nor
What should have been a relaxing weekend break ended up with me in jail. Again. This punitive approach to me is obviously not working and I am ripe for some top quality early intervention rehabilitation work if anyone is keen to take me on as a case study.
Anyway I headed to Bog(g)nor Regis on Friday cheered by the fact that the town's name is apparently derived from the olde English for King Robin of Bog. But it was all downhill from there. For a start the weather was dreadful. Blue skies and sunshine with not a cloud anywhere.
I took a trip to an open air museum, one of these olden days working places with vintage buses and artisans and the like. But their attitude to umbrellas was dreadful, bordering on apartheid. For a start, while most traditional trades and crafts were represented - printing, pottery, walking stick making, broom making - there was no evidence of anyone practicing the ancient art of gampwaining.
And then a sign on the door of the cafe had me spitting with rage. Click here to see an example of the sort of divisive prejudice that is still used against brollies in modern Britain.
On Saturday I decided to head to the pub for a few lunchtime drinks. A combination of the heat, candy floss and low rent pub wine meant that by early evening I was completely brollied. After a misadventure with some local scruffs who tied me to a train on the miniature railway in a park I decided to make a small alteration to all of the town's signs that had the word Bognor on them by adding an extra g. And apparently that is classified as illegal though I question how it can be vandalism if the place is already a shithole. I was released yesterday with a caution but it was all very embarrassing. And I missed the final of Britain's Got Talent.
One thing I have decided over the weekend is to embark on a political career. What with all of these MPs standing down there are a number of winnable seats up for grabs for outstanding leaders such as me at the next election. Watch this space as I will be launching my official bid to become MP for South Blacburyshire later this week.
Anyway I headed to Bog(g)nor Regis on Friday cheered by the fact that the town's name is apparently derived from the olde English for King Robin of Bog. But it was all downhill from there. For a start the weather was dreadful. Blue skies and sunshine with not a cloud anywhere.
I took a trip to an open air museum, one of these olden days working places with vintage buses and artisans and the like. But their attitude to umbrellas was dreadful, bordering on apartheid. For a start, while most traditional trades and crafts were represented - printing, pottery, walking stick making, broom making - there was no evidence of anyone practicing the ancient art of gampwaining.
And then a sign on the door of the cafe had me spitting with rage. Click here to see an example of the sort of divisive prejudice that is still used against brollies in modern Britain.
On Saturday I decided to head to the pub for a few lunchtime drinks. A combination of the heat, candy floss and low rent pub wine meant that by early evening I was completely brollied. After a misadventure with some local scruffs who tied me to a train on the miniature railway in a park I decided to make a small alteration to all of the town's signs that had the word Bognor on them by adding an extra g. And apparently that is classified as illegal though I question how it can be vandalism if the place is already a shithole. I was released yesterday with a caution but it was all very embarrassing. And I missed the final of Britain's Got Talent.
One thing I have decided over the weekend is to embark on a political career. What with all of these MPs standing down there are a number of winnable seats up for grabs for outstanding leaders such as me at the next election. Watch this space as I will be launching my official bid to become MP for South Blacburyshire later this week.
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