Earth Hour

On Saturday night (27th March) all around the world at 8.30pm local time, it will be Earth Hour. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then the best thing to do is to click over to the link at the top of my 'Enjoying this week' link - yes, that's it, down there on the right - and find out a lot more. Just so you don't click-off mid-blog, I'll give you the heads up. For one hour every year, the whole planet is encouraged to turn off all of its lights as a reminder of the impact needless energy usage has on climate change. This has been going on for a few years, but since last year the bandwagon has been gathering pace and it's started to get the media attention it deserves. Schools are starting to work with kids to take the message home and that's all for the good.

I'm not gullible or starry-eyed; I don't think that just turning off a few lamps for an hour each year will solve our emissions or sustainability issues. But the idea really appeals to the culture-jammer in me. No amount of worthy reporting seems to be having any dramatic effect on the public perception of the link between energy use and climate change. What Earth Hour is attempting to do, is to jolt people out of their lethargy by offering a collective moment of thought that means something where it counts...at home. I really think that the success of the initiative will depend on how much fun we can make in our allotted hour. Here are a few suggestions to give you a start;

• Go to bed for an hour, but don't read, because you'll hurt your eyes
• Get in a hot bubbly bath with some candles and get wrinkly for an hour. Maybe take a friend
• Have a good old cockney sing-song, like we did in the blitz
• Play hide and seek. (Please note, I have no time for health and safety, so if you damage yourselves I'm accepting no responsibility)
• Tell ghost stories, but remember, if you scare yourself too much, you've got a long wait before you can put the lights back on
• Go outside and moonbathe
• Make some sandwiches and have a picnic in your lounge
• Light the candles and play shadow puppets. Yes, I know, it's always a rabbit
• Talk
• Get with the neighbours, then you'll halve the candle burning needs
• Look up at the sky and enjoy the stars for once

Let me know if you thought of something we need to share with the world for next year's Earth Hour (Plotter28@aol.com). Or maybe, we could all do it again next week? Where did I put those candles?

MP: Maximise Profit

You'd think they would have learned the lesson by now, wouldn't you? But no, not a bit of it. Not even the slightest sense of contrition or remorse. When you've had a few years of the cashmere suit, it's hard to go back to the hair shirt. Just a few short terms of celebrity sound-bite politics and we've been left with the most unwholesome of faded, jaded parliamentary detritus. Stephen Byers, Patricia Hewitt, Geoff Hoon, Lord 'non-dom' Ashcroft and his apologist William Hague, come on down, take a bow. Caught again, nose down and butt up in the greasy trough. In these austere and chastened times, we should all take comfort from the solace that our chosen representatives are doing the best they can...for themselves.

Stephen Byers is the new star of the circus. A no-mark so lacking in charisma, talent, principles or a grasp on the rudiments of his own party's founding polemic, that his claim to 5 Grand a day 'Loreal money' (because he's worth it) would be laughable if it weren't so sickening. Wow, Steve, I really think you've set a new benchmark; a new low-tide scum mark that the others will struggle to sink to. Want to know Steve's great talent? His 'core competence', as my friends at business school would have it? If you have a corporation and you want to side-step democracy and due process, just call Steve. For 5-K-a-day, he'll get your wrinkle ironed-out. No worries. And what's Steve's big trick as an enforcer? He's a cabinet minister. That's how you get your lobbying done nowadays. Just cut out the middle-man and bribe the governor. That's another thing they were always telling me at business school, 'the best and most lucrative ideas are always the simplest'. You can't get much simpler than Stephen Byers. Greed must be his creed, because it's certainly not socialism or democracy. Perhaps it was only to be expected. When we rumbled them for screwing the expenses, how did we expect the likes of Byers to get by on £140k a year?

On Friday, it's almost certain that Gordon Brown will call an election for May 6th. And so it will begin. Again. 6 weeks of unremitting platitudes, posturing and pontification. Once again they will try to convince you that they, like Hercules, will be the only ones with the pure strength of political will to sluice clean the shit from the stable floor of Westminster. Like a bunch of self-righteous dirty protesters, they've spent 5 years fouling the walls and now they want you to trust them with the re-decoration contract. I know it's hard, but try not to get fooled again.

The Tories will have you believe that they hold the moral high ground on this one. Our memories aren't that short. It was good old Mrs Thatch herself who turned greedy self interest from a guilty anti-social failing into high-minded philosophy; into a beacon of the age. The Tories have been on the take for so long that they have even managed to have one of their number caught and banged-up for it, which takes some doing when you're your own rule-makers and rule-keepers. Failing at silver-spoon Eton-advantaged thievery. How much longer will we have to suffer that level of grasping mediocrity?

If you're eligible to vote in the UK on May 6th, please have a care. Don't just back them out of a misplaced sense of democratic duty. The suffragettes and Chartists didn't intend to 'guilt' you into voting for this bunch. After all, they were activists. I'm damn sure that they would have been out on the streets demanding a new deal, a clean social contract. For myself, I'll be writing my demands on the ballot paper. They can't call that apathy. It's a quiet protest, but it won't harm democracy. Not like Stephen Byers, anyway.

Jordan's mighty river

Dear sweet baby Jesus H Christ and all his wing-ed angels, make it stop! Make Katie 'Jordan' so-shit-they-named-her-twice-Price stop. Find a box and fetch the box. Put her in the box and take it to the place buried deep on the ocean floor, where they secretly dispose of all the Magnox radioactive waste. Put Katie and the box in the neo-equivalent of Dante's 13th level of hell, cast her down for all eternity and cut out the trawler men's tongues lest they ever reveal where she is hidden. If you feel any misguided pang of sympathy for her, then we can send Cheryl Tweedy with her, to keep her company.

Before you call for the nurse to administer my usual sedative, just hear me out. This is no flippant and idle rant against the unpalatable but harmless excesses of modern trash-culture. This is a call to arms. A line in the sand. Ils ne passerant pas. I'm asking you to save all future generations from lives of wistful and wasted opportunity. For the sake of all you hold dear, stop Ms Price now, before it's too late.

She's everywhere. Every news stand and grocery store, headlining every cheap digital channel and starring in every no-brow watercooler and photocopier chat. She's inescapable. Death, taxes and Jordan. She may be the most famous woman in Britain. But for what exactly? At first, the whole 'famous for being famous' counter-iconographic phenomenon was diverting. It was kind of amusing in a non-challenging and ironic way to see Jade Goody take herself seriously. A bit cruel though, to be the only person too dumb to get the joke; but hey, she made a few quid while it (and she) lasted, so no real harm done. Or so we thought at the time. Because now it's not ironic anymore. Now the whole media genuinely think we care to know what Katie is doing now and what she's looking forward to doing next; (in case you want a clue to help you narrow it down, it won't be reading Proust).

Surely, I'm being over-judgemental about poor Katie? After all, nobody is really famous for nothing. We are told that Katie is a great business woman who has fought her way (veneer-tooth and false manicured claw) to the top of the dung-heap over all the other fake-tanned husks of lesser wannabes. She has a profession. She is a successful model. Despite the fact that without the entourage, the trappings and the pantomime make-up, you would walk past her in Tescos. As my son would have it, 'she's not all that'. Ultimately, she made it to the top of the pile, because her chest is bigger than average. Her silicon chest. Wow, famous for not growing your own tits, I bet Mrs Price senior is desperately proud. Jordan, the ultimate girl-next-door. Only if you live in a Buckinghamshire mansion. If she lived next door to me, I'd be looking for a Council Tax rebate.

So why am I bothered? The fundamental reason is that I work for a charity that tries to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to overcome huge odds and get what they need and deserve out of life. We spend a lot of time, encouraging kids to grasp nettles and to strive for their own way forward. We used to hold up examples and role models as stimuli for wavering self-confidence; especially for young women, who face the often multiple burden of sexist limitations on their expectations. But now there is a valid (and destructive) counter-argument. No-one needs to try, because you can have everything for nothing. Just look at Katie Price. QED. The only problem being that it isn't valid and the elevator door to stardom won't be opening for those kids. Katie will have to live with the weight of a million untried and unfulfilled lives on her conscience (sic). I don't suppose it will trouble her beauty sleep too much. Sisters, you're the ones buying 'Hello' and 'OK!' You're feeding the machine. These are indeed strange postmodern times, when a middle-aged man has to assume a feminist stance to make a point.

When I was a nipper, we were taught that the best thing to do when someone was showing off was to ignore them and to look the other way. I'm imploring you, look the other way. Better one unemployed model than a million unemployed young minds.

PS. If you want to comment and you don't have a Blogger account, you can always email me on Plotter28@aol.com