Cameron is asking for a slap. Fancy saying Umbrellabuilders is poorly run. On the same day that an independent report said it wasn't. So there.
Still, enough about pots and kettles as there was more rather exciting news from Cameron's big speech today. It looks like my brown-nosing with the Tories and quiet chats over the cheese counter in Lidl with Dave has paid dividends with the announcement of the Bogg Society, a series of initiatives aimed at empowering communities. Basically this is a highly patronising attempt to impose a top down approach to achieving bottom up activism. Or forcing people to volunteer.
Neighbourhood leaders will go around bullying people into baking cakes for local fetes and attendance will be compulsory even if it rains. These leaders will be entrusted to making sure people go out and have fun even if they're miserable. To counter bad weather, the aim is that every adult will have a brolly and thus have no excuse to not attend any tinpot gathering of old ladies flogging off jam on the village green to raise tuppence for the local cats ballet school.
The Tories have sensibly ignored the fact that there is already a healthy grassroots, community culture in this country and want to bureaucratically impose their own to avoid further bureaucracy. Or to put it another way, let people sort out problems for themselves as the State sure ain't going to pay for it. If Britain really is broken this is Dave basically passing over the gaffer tape (along with the buck) and asking people to apply it how they see fit.
Ironically, the last time communities organised themselves and got active under Tory rule the government sent the police in with batons. And this from a party whose leader once claimed that there was no such thing as society.
The other big announcement was the Big Brolly Bank, based on the model of the Brolly Investment Bank that we have been banging on about for ages. This will utilise the millions of unclaimed umbrellas left lying around for the good of society. Calling it Big is very much in keeping with current thinking that sticking Big in front of things automatically makes them better. Which is clearly a big pile of shite.
However, one thing that might be problematic is that the Tories aren't actually offering any new cash to fund this big bag of nonsense that puts the Tory into contradictory. Instead they are diverting cash away from an existing "poorly run" government pot. Umbrellabuilders. This election campaign has already degenerated into playground politics (my initiative with big prefixing it is bigger than yours). And this is the swings and roundabouts.
Though as long as I stay on as Umbrellabuilders chair I don't mind.
Wednesday, 31 March 2010
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
Lovely JUBBLIES
Something slightly odd to be eating dinner when my BUBB staff have not even had their lunch! Or indeed when some of the owners of the UK's poorest brollies haven't had any lunch at all, let alone posh nippon tucker. It's almost as if there's a time difference or something between the UK and Japan. But that's these clever, crazy rising sun dudes for you - always ahead of the game.
As I mentioned I am here in Japan on an absolutely vital visit with my vice chair Hillda Ogden-Newton&Ridley. I am talking at a conference on social enterprise and at an event on full cost recovery of expensive overseas jaunts organised by our Japanese sister body JUBBLIES (Japanese Umbrella Backing Body - Lunching In Endless Sushi). Hillda is here to keep an eye on me and is so social enterprise it actually hurts although to be fair the pain is for the greater good and any gain is reinvested for the benefit of society and isn't at all veneer behind which to legitimately makes pots of cash without feeling guilty about embracing capitalism as after all this decorating won't pay for itself, will it?
It is a good six months since I was last pricking around in Japan, trying to foist BUBB ways of working onto the Japanese and everywhere I go I am recognised as being famous. People point at me and laugh and call me åãŪčé (use http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt to translate it).
But I have been able to get stuck into the saki and lemonade (purely medicinal - I start to ache and shake if I don't drink) and eat some frankly disgusting sea food while wearing a bib, being winded and soiling myself. And I will be bigging up my idea for a Global Investment Brolly Bank, Obviously Needed (GIBBON).
No matter that we haven't managed to get one set up in the UK yet despite throwing more wobblies than a teenage jelly factory - I am thinking big. And I will chair it as well if required. Fuck it, I'd chair a sperm bank given half the chance (and a decent wedge).
We are talking to JACEVO about having the our full cost recovery template translated for them to use. Not into Japanese but into plain English. How cool is that! If we were any cooler we'd be riding a motorbike in the Great Escape. And as I speak there is an active twitterer at the back the room busy making facetious remarks. Very childish. Sarcasm is he lowest form of wit especially when contained to 140 characters.
And I am suspicious about the translator. I will say something short and pithy like "I am pleased to be here in the land of the rising gamp" and the sentence that is read back takes about
30 minutes. It's almost as if they are trying to keep me quiet while learning about something else altogether!
As I mentioned I am here in Japan on an absolutely vital visit with my vice chair Hillda Ogden-Newton&Ridley. I am talking at a conference on social enterprise and at an event on full cost recovery of expensive overseas jaunts organised by our Japanese sister body JUBBLIES (Japanese Umbrella Backing Body - Lunching In Endless Sushi). Hillda is here to keep an eye on me and is so social enterprise it actually hurts although to be fair the pain is for the greater good and any gain is reinvested for the benefit of society and isn't at all veneer behind which to legitimately makes pots of cash without feeling guilty about embracing capitalism as after all this decorating won't pay for itself, will it?
It is a good six months since I was last pricking around in Japan, trying to foist BUBB ways of working onto the Japanese and everywhere I go I am recognised as being famous. People point at me and laugh and call me åãŪčé (use http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt to translate it).
But I have been able to get stuck into the saki and lemonade (purely medicinal - I start to ache and shake if I don't drink) and eat some frankly disgusting sea food while wearing a bib, being winded and soiling myself. And I will be bigging up my idea for a Global Investment Brolly Bank, Obviously Needed (GIBBON).
No matter that we haven't managed to get one set up in the UK yet despite throwing more wobblies than a teenage jelly factory - I am thinking big. And I will chair it as well if required. Fuck it, I'd chair a sperm bank given half the chance (and a decent wedge).
We are talking to JACEVO about having the our full cost recovery template translated for them to use. Not into Japanese but into plain English. How cool is that! If we were any cooler we'd be riding a motorbike in the Great Escape. And as I speak there is an active twitterer at the back the room busy making facetious remarks. Very childish. Sarcasm is he lowest form of wit especially when contained to 140 characters.
And I am suspicious about the translator. I will say something short and pithy like "I am pleased to be here in the land of the rising gamp" and the sentence that is read back takes about
30 minutes. It's almost as if they are trying to keep me quiet while learning about something else altogether!
The appliance of science
It seems appropriate that while I am in Japan, home of technical boffins and gizmo gimps, I can announce a groundbreaking development in umbrella science or gampistry.
For years arguments have raged about when the first brolly was invented. Unverified fact checking website, Spokepedia, has its own theories but they are untrustworthy. Largely because I made them up. Therefore we have secretly been building a Gampron Collider. Inside this vast cavernous cellar underneath BUBB's offices, men in white coats will repeatedly hurl umbrellas at each other in a rainstorm to try and recreate the exact conditions when the brolly was discovered, and thus identify the elusive Boggs-Boggson particle. This is all very exciting.
And it isn't the only scientific experiment we are involved in. We are working on a project to clone umbrellas. In the woods near Blacbury one may observe "nesting brollies" such as pictured here. And as you can see one has successfully laid an egg. This could have significant implications for the manufacture of umbrellas.
Right, enough umbrellasics and brollogy. Back to seaweed and kimonos.
For years arguments have raged about when the first brolly was invented. Unverified fact checking website, Spokepedia, has its own theories but they are untrustworthy. Largely because I made them up. Therefore we have secretly been building a Gampron Collider. Inside this vast cavernous cellar underneath BUBB's offices, men in white coats will repeatedly hurl umbrellas at each other in a rainstorm to try and recreate the exact conditions when the brolly was discovered, and thus identify the elusive Boggs-Boggson particle. This is all very exciting.
And it isn't the only scientific experiment we are involved in. We are working on a project to clone umbrellas. In the woods near Blacbury one may observe "nesting brollies" such as pictured here. And as you can see one has successfully laid an egg. This could have significant implications for the manufacture of umbrellas.
Right, enough umbrellasics and brollogy. Back to seaweed and kimonos.
Monday, 29 March 2010
Life after Crikey
Finally they have replaced the irreplaceable. Steve Crikey, charismatic head of everyone's favourite brolly spoke counters umbrella body, Canopy Finance Directors' Group (CFDG), has had his hole filled.
Caryon Notasbadasbefaw from the ICAEW's (Institute of Canopy Accountants, Extremely Wet) Brolly Sector Interest Group has been appointed and I look forward to pretending to work together with her in the same way I do with all the other rival, I mean, complementary umbrella organisations.
Right, enough of the platitudes, back to Sumo, karaoke and career hari kiri.
Caryon Notasbadasbefaw from the ICAEW's (Institute of Canopy Accountants, Extremely Wet) Brolly Sector Interest Group has been appointed and I look forward to pretending to work together with her in the same way I do with all the other rival, I mean, complementary umbrella organisations.
Right, enough of the platitudes, back to Sumo, karaoke and career hari kiri.
Turning Japanese, I really think so
Here I am in Japan (again). Give me a few hours to think of a justification for this at a time when most of my members are grappling with serious problems closer to home and I will get back to you.
Until then, bring on the sushi.
Until then, bring on the sushi.
Friday, 26 March 2010
Successful campaigning
I don't know if anyone caught the documentary on BBC4 the other day about Beryl Bainbridge. Filmed a couple of years ago it focused on what the respected authoress was convinced would be the last year of her life as most of her family died at the age of 71. All very well but it contained one of the most shocking bits of footage I have ever seen when she callously kicked a discarded umbrella, no doubt as some sort of arty-farty metaphor for kicking the bucket.
It fair raised my hackles which as you know are always in a state of semi-arousal at the best of times. I have enough health problems at the minute without adding blood pressure to the mix, what with my Twitter health consultant @ephemeraldog warning that if I carry on my croissant heavy diet I will need umbrella stents to widen my arteries. Sounds quite fun actually.
Therefore I have decided to boycott Beryl Bainbridge's novels in one of those gestures that are as empty as the Catholic Church's childcare club waiting list as I have never intended to read any of them anyway.
And I shall be launching a campaign and commission and coalition (just to be on the safe side) to spread the bad word against this literary witch. The secret of any good campaign is a good acronym, at the same time memorable and unique. I have discounted Ban Outright Beryl Bainbridge's Indecent Novels Straightaway (BOBBINS) and am torn between the Ban Bainbridge Coalition and Beat Up Beryl Bainbridge.
Elsewhere on the campaigning front it is great to see the protesters against the third runway at Heathrow secure a victory in their attempts for proper consultation. This had nothing to do with BUBB but as their dogged lobbying mix of whinging and stamping their feet bears all the hallmarks of one of our classic campaigns I will take the credit for it anyway.
But I will also offer a word of warning. No doubt while everyone is distracted by arguing the toss about the third runway, the government will quietly bring forward its plans for the fourth runway and build that instead.
It fair raised my hackles which as you know are always in a state of semi-arousal at the best of times. I have enough health problems at the minute without adding blood pressure to the mix, what with my Twitter health consultant @ephemeraldog warning that if I carry on my croissant heavy diet I will need umbrella stents to widen my arteries. Sounds quite fun actually.
Therefore I have decided to boycott Beryl Bainbridge's novels in one of those gestures that are as empty as the Catholic Church's childcare club waiting list as I have never intended to read any of them anyway.
And I shall be launching a campaign and commission and coalition (just to be on the safe side) to spread the bad word against this literary witch. The secret of any good campaign is a good acronym, at the same time memorable and unique. I have discounted Ban Outright Beryl Bainbridge's Indecent Novels Straightaway (BOBBINS) and am torn between the Ban Bainbridge Coalition and Beat Up Beryl Bainbridge.
Elsewhere on the campaigning front it is great to see the protesters against the third runway at Heathrow secure a victory in their attempts for proper consultation. This had nothing to do with BUBB but as their dogged lobbying mix of whinging and stamping their feet bears all the hallmarks of one of our classic campaigns I will take the credit for it anyway.
But I will also offer a word of warning. No doubt while everyone is distracted by arguing the toss about the third runway, the government will quietly bring forward its plans for the fourth runway and build that instead.
Thursday, 25 March 2010
Neutered
Well, the Witchfinder-General Sandy Burnham-Drownham won't be shafting the umbrella sector again, or anyone else for that matter, as we have neutered him. The Chuckle Brothers, Hector Rule and Geof Sachell, have literally cut his knackers off. It's the only language these people understand. If you make your name talking bollocks then that is the area we will target. Ed Balls beware.
I have also had a letter from the PM saying "thank you for your 3,404,684,789,485 letters on various things. You are solely responsible for the Royal Mail under performing. I can assure you that we are committed to the role of the umbrella sector, at least until the election. I cannot vouch for the lot that follow but you'd probably know more about that than me. Now piss off and let me run the country and enjoy it while I can."
So once again I say "don't buss the DIBB, sorry don't dobb the BISS, no, don't dust the BIBB". Don't diss the BUBB or we will be all over you like a bad suit, or like Ronnie Corbett's golf umbrella.
No one else could have pulled this off, indeed could have pulled Burnham-Drownham's nads off. It has been a classic mix of brute force, bullshit, whinging and more brute force.
As my Great Aunt Maude said to me: "Feel compelled to throw another log on the fire if you get cold. Or just throw the flaming thing at the Witchfinder-General and see if he burns. If he does you know he's found himself out."
I have also had a letter from the PM saying "thank you for your 3,404,684,789,485 letters on various things. You are solely responsible for the Royal Mail under performing. I can assure you that we are committed to the role of the umbrella sector, at least until the election. I cannot vouch for the lot that follow but you'd probably know more about that than me. Now piss off and let me run the country and enjoy it while I can."
So once again I say "don't buss the DIBB, sorry don't dobb the BISS, no, don't dust the BIBB". Don't diss the BUBB or we will be all over you like a bad suit, or like Ronnie Corbett's golf umbrella.
No one else could have pulled this off, indeed could have pulled Burnham-Drownham's nads off. It has been a classic mix of brute force, bullshit, whinging and more brute force.
As my Great Aunt Maude said to me: "Feel compelled to throw another log on the fire if you get cold. Or just throw the flaming thing at the Witchfinder-General and see if he burns. If he does you know he's found himself out."
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