Nil Points

How to win Eurovision

We should pay James Blunt to walk on barefoot dressed in jeans and tee shirt, with dangly bits and a bushman’s hat. He should sit on a stool with his guitar with a backing group of London street style singers and sing a song entitled -

Nil Points.

This is a losing song. I am a former British tank commander and though I saved most of your from tyranny you are not going to vote for me so I don’t even have to sing in tune because this is a losing song. I am singing the losing song and I don’t care because I am a Brit and we win everything else. We invented Eurovision, and we pay a quarter of the running costs, we invented soccer and tennis but you will not vote for me because this is the losing song. If we won we would have to host next year’s do in London and frankly we have enough fabulous events in London already so I am singing the losing song. Give me nil points, please give me nil points! You might take this contest seriously but frankly, come on, it is a farce so I am singing the losing song. Lots of people make lots of money making up costumes and lighting and shoes but what’s the point because I am singing the losing song for you tonight. I could do a change in key right now, I can do that, and then sink back to the starter one but who cares what I sing, this is the losing song.

After 1.5 minutes of that he could end with, thank you and goodnight, take a quick bow and walk off.

It doesn’t need to have timing or rhythm or a tune, because it is the losing song. Nil Points.

A thief’s greatest threat is the victim.

A thief’s greatest threat is the victim.

Burglars, we are told, fear disturbance by their victims. They aim to do their illegal work when they know where the victim is, often asleep in bed. An identity thief has the same problem with the exception that the identity still lies with the victim so long as the victim lives, breathes and does what their identity drives them to do. If the identity theft is carried out for money, the theft of credit cards and bank details is enough to get them the money before the thief disappears into the firmament to become anonymous once more. But there are other reasons to steal an identity. Someone who feels so dissatisfied with what they have that they wish to abandon it and take on a new persona. To steal one from another living person.

Imagine a woman whose own life is deeply depressing. She feels small, meaningless and ignored. Imagine one such woman who then takes up the identity of someone she fantasises has everything anyone could ever crave, and talent to go with it. The choice of persona to take on must be made on some basis, maybe an infatuation with a man in the office and whose wife she wishes to be. In the twisted mind of such a hopeless case the target of obsession grows to be a super person, life and soul of every party, wit of the century with perfect mind, body and hair. Of course no such person exists. In real life even Kate Moss has blemishes like the rest of us do. The sad woman takes on the name of a woman she wishes to emulate, maybe encouraged to do so by a group of people to whom the supposed super star is seen as a threat to their aspirations. She proclaims that is her name and pursues a happier life with that name, achieving the acquisition of fame and fortune using that name but one that the original owner of that identity never applied for, having her own reasons for reticence.

The only fly in the ointment, gristle in the pie, is the cold hard fact that the original owner of the identity still exists. The characteristics that made the true person a target remain, she lets it be known that she remains in existence, as she always has in spite of having been diagnosed a serious illness that is mistakenly thought to be fatal. In the twisted mind of the thief the real person is a threat to be erased, deleted, destroyed. The thief could kill of have killed the original and persistent owner of the identity. Like in a plot from an Agatha Christie story therein lies the twist.

Social networking gives raised profiles but also makes it easier to delete an identity. Libel laws do exist. Just as police detectives do catch burglars social network managers do keep records and can prosecute customers who do not give true answers on demand. Extradition to the USA, home of social networks, is a lot easier than it used to be.

Sue Doughty
18/5/2011


Adendum.

The person who has taken on a different name may have decided to do so because her own name is a connected to a criminal record. As she is hit by a refusal of the original owner of that name to give it up to her, and is repeatedly blocked by modern technology and the information super highway, she grows even more desperate. Police would warn the original owner of the name that the pretender would now target those people perceived to be close to her.

Deprived of career prospects and something else to do the woman who wants to get rid of her real name would switch to seeking revenge. She might revert to old acquaintances and summon their assistance. To disguise association she might even undergo voice coaching to make it appear her origins and former acquaintances were remote from her in early years in the belief that would block any linkage with those who do as she asks. The rewards, incentives for doing this, are relevant and clear.

The advantage to the old partner in crime, let’s call her Mrs B, of attracting the attention of the real woman’s closest friend could be the hope of financial reward, say and inheritance but in the short term it could be a new avenue for money laundering. The advantage to the now former acquaintance of the woman who owns the name could also be clear, sex and income, attention, maybe a belief in a long lasting relationship. But when he announces his new association he loses the relationship with the original owner of the name and the “old flame”, Mrs B, drops him – the task having been fulfilled. The favour requested of her has been given.

The original owner of the name does not fade away; she persists, and now finds herself with more time and better focus to do what she earned accolades for, the very persona that the name thief wanted to destroy has grown stronger and more diligent.

And she has an indisputable story to write.

Sue Doughty
15/02/2013

Death by Milk Bottle The plastic top was stuck solid, refusing to move. Try as he might the middle aged man’s arms just could not make that plastic cap twist off because it was glued in place by the tab of the plasticised paper tamper-proof protection underneath, the next security layer. A wrenching sound from his arm told him of torn muscles and ligaments that would take almost as many weeks to sort out as his knew had when in his skiing accident. Thinking that top security prisons were less secure than a milk bottle he tried to force it, holding the flexible plastic bottle pressed onto the worktop with one hand and trying to grip the top with the palm of the other. This ripped the skin off his hand so he rooted through the kitchen knife drawer looking for the thing with black plastic handles he had been given for opening jars of pickles. His eye spied it and he reached through for the handles, catching the skin between the thumb and palm of his right hand on the carving knife and cutting it badly. That didn’t hurt immediately and he pulled out the black and silver opening aid. With that in hand and blood now dripping down the side of the bottle from the deep gash made by the carving knife he managed to grip the blue plastic top. It refused to move, the grooves in the metal squashing and sliding around the grooves in the plastic. He placed the bottle in the sink to get better traction and with huge effort managed to get it to twist, wrenching open the gash in the hand even further. A gust of wind through the window reminded him the tea was cooling fast. In a flood of urgency, his hand now hurting a great deal and beginning to throb, feeling weak from the loss of blood he set about trying to remove the loosened cap again. When it came free the tab was stuck in the underside of the blue cap and the white seal sat impartial to his efforts thus far, keeping his milk safe from intrusion. He tried to pick at its frilled edges to no avail, his finger nails having all been broken down when he had spent ten days repeatedly trying to get his new smart phone open on instruction from the service supplier’s helpline. The shiny new mobile phone now worked. He hoped one day someone might phone him on it so that he would learn how to answer it. The milk bottle remained securely closed. In desperation and refusing to be beaten by a ring of paper he reached once more into the knife drawer and pulled out a serrated knife used for slicing tomatoes. Holding the bottle firmly in the sink he made careful aim at it, pressing carefully at first just to make a starter hole. He knew it would have been safer to take the task to his workshop, grasp the bottle in a vice and make that starter hole with an electric drill but this was a milk bottle, how hard could it be? He tried again to push the sharp point into the shiny plasticised paper but it slid off to the right. School mechanics lessons sprang to mind, forces and vectors in diagrams with angles marked and numbered, followed by the mathematics of the rate of cooling of a liquid in a cup being dependent on the temperature difference between the liquid inside the cup and the temperature outside it, and the heightened cooling effect of moving air. He reached up and closed the double glazed plastic window, observing the way it cut out the noise from life outside. He breathed deeply and aimed anew, holding the knife as upright as he could with his thumb turning black and useless. He focussed on applying increasing force. When the knife slipped he cursed, then saw it had gone through the forearm above his left hand that was now spurting blood across the bowl of the sink, swirling down the drain. As the knifepoint skittered across the seal it had sliced a narrow line through which a few white drops were now exuding as his hand squeezed the bottle. Sensing success he grabbed the bottle, but now too weak to hold a four-pint load his hands dropped it again, the top was pushed off by the forces of confined liquid under pressure and milk gulped out into the sink mixing with the flowing blood to make a sticky pink mess. Using both hands he got the bottle to the tea and got some of the milk to fall into the cup before dropping the rest of the bottle onto his foot, from where it bounced and lay on its side. The first of the milk ran out leaving a vacuum within until air managed to sneak past the outflow and temporarily release the force of vacuum and allow gravity and fluid mechanics to have more leap out. It made a glupping noise as it poured out onto the rug and the ceramic tiled floor as if escaping from prolonged confinement. He stirred his much needed tea but was barely strong enough now to pick up the cup and sip from it. Deciding he ought to do something about the severe blood loss that was mixing with the milk on the floor he reached for the cupboard where sticking plasters were kept, slipped on the blood and milk soaked rug and fell, hitting his head on the sink as he went down. Dazed, he knew that he needed to call for help so pulled himself across to the table where his new mobile phone sat inert, its screen completely black. He tried to get it to light up by pressing the tiny slit shaped white inset switch on the top of the stylishly slim device but the blood slipped over it and his thumbnail was too short to do it. He grabbed for the screwdriver on the dresser and managed to get that to do the job. It lit up, demanding he slide his finger from the bottom to the top in order to have it work. The blood pooling on its shiny surface made him feel faint and he was soon on the floor wrestling with the device, finally hearing the ping sound of success. He jabbed at the telephone icon but his bloody finger slid off with every attempt. Finally he managed to get that up and working, demanding to know the number required and suggesting a few options. He dialled 999 and fainted. When the emergency service arrived at the source of the mobile phone signal they found the house doors securely locked and the bloodstained kitchen window immovable. By the time the man with the enforcement gadget let them in the man had died of blood loss and tea deficiency.

Following the money

Throughout most of Labour’s time in office the British government was the world’s largest advertising spender, bigger even than Reckitt and Coleman. Newspaper revenue comes mostly from advertising, the cover price hardly covering even the costs of printing and distribution. Newspaper executives knew they had to bid for and win the government’s advertising money to stay in business and the Labour party knew they could use the advertising budget to persuade the newspapers to help keep them in power, threatening to withhold ad placement from newspapers who were not “with the project”. They stroked their single best customer with gusto. Their hospitality departments would have delivered smiles, free meals and parties, tickets to prestigious events, time at health spas, luxury holidays, maybe even cash in hand and share tips. There were suggestions that the Labour party took a hand in selecting newspaper editors, placing individuals they thought would be supportive of their “project”.
In the light of this week’s news it could be inferred that newspapers wanted more than money in reciprocation for political support, they wanted unfettered access to information to generate headline-selling scoops. They wanted and apparently got access to government ministers and departmental in-trays, freedom to bribe police officers, and to hack phones and computers, without fear of investigation and prosecution. A symbiotic relationship became established between government and the press funded with taxpayers’ money in chunks big enough to recapitalise a minor High St bank.
In between the government advertising placement department and the newspapers looking to pick up the contracts were a set of PR agencies who creamed off huge amounts in commission for placing advertisements, one of which was owned and run by the woman who went on to marry the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Tales of 6 figure payments for deals to promote the existence of benefits office schemes to help the poor abounded, at taxpayers’ expense.
One has to ask if the government is still placing advertising expenditure with News International but the continued existence of the Times Educational Supplement tells us that it does.

Glottal stops

There are times when reading the gaps tell us more than reading between the lines.

The glottal stop in speech is used by people when they know what they are saying is a lie, as if believing it cannot be quoted or on record. Ed Balls is a prime user. He says, Suddenly found ou'. He was in government for years; he left the pensions time bomb as a land mine to those who come after him. The phrase was in common parlance. It was no surprise to anyone that public sector pensions are unaffordable and would have to be reformed but the highly educated and highly paid Mr Balls tries to offset all rebuke with a glottal stop.
Tony Blair used that trick on many occasions to offset a lie as if missing out the Ts was enough to make it a casual comment that could not stand up in court or public enquiry. When promising that a second tranche of best performing teachers should get more pay he hoped the teachers would not hold him to it because he used the glottal stop. They did. But his government only part funded the extra pay to the detriment of all state schools with higher performing teachers. He told us with a chuckle that Gordon Brown was the best Chancellor this country ever had, a sentence littered with glottal stops, dropped Ts and H’s littering the floor at his feet. And yet the sentence that included the 45 minutes claim was all pronounced correctly.
One wonders if these trained and experienced speakers actually practice the glottal stop in front of the mirror ready for when they feel the need to let a lie slip from their lips.

Of cucumbers

My neighbour decided to cut back the cluster of cherry laurels out side his house. What started out as a ring of cute bushes in now over twenty feet high. Through the window I glanced over at him sweeping it with an electric hedge trimmer. The sound stopped. He looked at the trimmer. He reached back and pulled the cable out of the bushes and examined the cut end. He went into the house and came out later to start again, cable fixed with yet another join.
I asked if was trying to do topiary, what shape was he looking to end up with? An elephant?
No. A cucumber.
Why a cucumber?
He said he had in mind the big green building in London, a cucumber.
You mean the Gherkin?
That is a gherkin, but this one will not look pickled. This one will be a cucumber.

The people have the final say

We are a democracy. We elect representatives to send to parliament to make laws on our behalf – in consenting to have them do that job and to pay them for doing it we are saying that the British parliament is sovereign. British law, done in the name of the British people, is subordinate to parliament because we pay them to be sovereign.
In 1215 the Magna Carta gave us all the right, in perpetuity, to be tried by our peers in open court.
Down the ages exceptions have been put in law - national security is one and the needs for children to be protected is another. Children about whom there is talk of law breaking or victimisation might suffer in social circles, mainly the playground. Protecting their privacy was required but withholding publishing court cases no longer works, simply because it should never happen. Closed courts are bad justice. The law must be seen to be made and justice must be carried out and be seen to be carried out.
Now we are seeing injunctions taken out, usually to prevent talk of a misdemeanour, by those who can afford to do it. And we are seeing family courts held behind closed doors with all concerned bound to secrecy about every detail, and no right of appeal. Gradually our inherited right to be heard in open court is being taken away. We need to have sovereign parliament rule that the freedoms we won at Runnymead remain in perpetuity here in England at least – right of free speech, right to be given a fair trial in open court and right to justice. Privacy of the individual must be secondary to these universal rights because we are one world, one society and the law should apply equally to all without prejudice.