fennerpearson

A late summer’s evening in Düsseldorf in 1973 at the apartment of the modernist architect, Paul Schneider Esleben. The balcony doors are open, letting the gentle sounds of the party – the talk and laughter and clinking of glasses – out into the dusk to hang in the air before settling down onto the streetlights below. Paul’s wife, Evamaria, makes her way around the room, which includes furniture that Paul has designed, ensuring that everyone has a drink and someone to talk to.

For myself, I am trying to keep to the periphery. Paul wrote to me a few weeks ago at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg, from which he resigned as a professor only last year, inviting me to this soirée, which surprised me as I only knew him in passing at the university. The letter was charming, although at first it appeared to be nothing more than a note encouraging me to persist in my studies but it concluded with an invitation to travel for tonight’s gathering.

I was flattered, of course, although a little anxious, too. I am well used to the university scene and I attend faculty parties in the baggy suits for which I have become well-known but I am not so sure this look will be appropriate for an evening at the home of the home of the lauded architect of the Cologne Bonn Airport. I even thought about cutting my hair!

In the end, I board the train in Hamburg, wearing an older suit that is a more traditional fit and relatively unworn. I have eschewed a tie – although there is one in my small, leather suitcase – but I have taken care to iron a new shirt. My hair is clean, brushed and tied back. I look almost respectable as I take my seat for the afternoon’s journey to Düsseldorf.

Upon arriving, it is two hours until the party starts and I have decided to be punctual rather than late (and definitely not early). I find my little hotel, just near the station, where I pay for my room and deposit my suitcase before setting out to find something to eat. I end up in a small bar, half a kilometre from the Eslebens’ apartment, where I eat some cake and enjoy a coffee, before treating myself to a glass of beer.

At twenty past seven, I go to the restroom to check myself in the mirror and then I set off to the party. As I approach, I notice how the roads have widened and the buildings have detached from one another. The railings enclose well-tended gardens in front of large wooden doors and tall windows. Sometimes, within, I see smartly dressed men and elegant women, ready for an evening at the opera or, perhaps, a party at the home of a highly respected architect.

And here I am an hour later, nursing the beer that Evamaria provided to me, half-hoping, half-dreading that someone is going to speak to me. The room, it must be said, is full of people whom I would love to get to know; it is a crowd of which I would aspire to be a part. But, whilst invited, I feel like I don’t belong, like a child at a wedding.

I am not sure how Evamaria manages to materialise at my elbow but suddenly there she is, accompanied by a handsome young man who is grinning broadly at me. He wears neatly cut hair and is dressed in a suit and tie, and he looks every part the perfect product of his affluent family, with the exception of a large broach on his lapel in the form of a single musical note.

“Here, let me introduce you to my son, Florian”, she says.
“Hallo, Florian” I say, extending my hand. “How do you do?”
“Gut, danke. Und ihnen?” His eyes twinkle with merriment, yet there is a something a little reserved about him.
“Florian is in a musical group”, says his mother, “Along with his friend Ralf. Where is Ralf?”
“Ich schickte ihn, um sich die Haare schneiden zu lassen”, he replies whilst continuing to smile broadly at me. It’s impossible to take offence.
“You don’t approve of long hair”, I ask him, trying to match his friendly smile.
He shrugs. There is a moment’s pause.

Evamaria is not giving up. “Ralf and Florian have released some records, haven’t you, sweetheart?”
“Oh ja, drei oder vier.”
“You don’t know?” I try to joke but I feel that I am losing his attention. He looks at his watch, and then back up to me and gives me a nod and diffident smile. “Entschuldigang.”

He crosses the room to a small table, whose top swirls like a large comma. On it sits a large, black telephone, which Florian picks up. He carries it towards the door, looking back to ensure the lead doesn’t catch. He glances at his watch again and picks up the handpiece. The room is not so noisy but I didn’t hear it ring. The broad grin reappears on his face. I see his mouth move – “Ja, Ja” – before he replaces the handpiece onto the telephone.

He finds his mother and leans in to say something to her. I can see she is disappointed but he squeezes her arm and turns to make his way back to the door. Halfway across the room, he seems to remember me, and he turns and gives me the same shy smile and nod before he exits into the hallway. I take a step to my right, so I can still see him, and I watch as he puts on a large grey coat with black fur lapels. This is followed by a dark trilby and then a surprisingly red scarf. He moves towards the door and out of sight.

“Sekt?” Paul shares his wife’s ability to appear from thin air.
“Oh, yes, thank you.”
I put down my tired beer and accept the chilled glass from my host.
“I see you met Florian. I had hoped he would stay a little longer and perhaps introduce you to his friends.”
I’m not sure what to say to this – I feel I might have let my host down in some way – but it appears that he is not concerned about this after all.

He waves towards two free chairs, indicating that we should sit down. I ask if they are of his own design – although I already know that they are – but the great architect is not interested in talking about himself. We chat a little about the university in Hamburg and he inquires politely after a few mutual acquaintances.

Time passes and it dawns on me that the invitation here was not merely a whim but that he quite clearly wanted to see me again and to talk to me. He talks about being an artist and “the work”. I must apply myself he says. He tells me I am lucky – “Your instincts are so good, you can do eighty percent of the work in your first sitting” – but he has a serious message to deliver in person. “I never see the remaining twenty percent. Only five or maybe ten. To be good at what you do you must learn to finish.”

His words strike both my head and my heart for I know that he is right, that this is an absolute truth. I don’t know what to say but he looks into my eyes, half closing his own, and sees that I understand. “That’s good. Now, return to Hamburg and realise yourself.”

He doesn’t mean that I should leave immediately, of course, yet I promptly finish my drink and thank him. I stand to leave and Evamaria is there to tell me how pleased she is that I was able to come, and all the way from Hamburg, too. Paul shakes my hand and puts his hand on my shoulder. He looks pleased.

So it is not late when I emerge from their building, stepping out into the cooling but still warm night. I don’t hang around but walk away purposefully while I wonder what to do with what remains of my evening. Düsseldorf is new to me but there must be bars, a nightlife, perhaps some clubs in a downtown district, and, confident of that much at least, I retrace my footsteps from earlier in the evening.

It only takes three streets and as many corners for me to find the first of the bars and restaurants. Given the time, it is unsurprising that most of the restaurants are full but, following the noise and the lights, I eventually find a bar on the edge of a square. There are tables outside, full of people, with waiters gliding between them, but there is one small table with just two chairs at the edge, next to the rope bordering the dining area. Perfect.

I sit down and catch a waiter’s eye. Having had a couple of beers but also a glass of wine, I am unsure what to drink next but I end up ordering a small carafe of red wine as well as some bread and a plate of meats. I sip my wine as I wait for my food, enjoying what warmth is left in the day, and listening to the rise and fall of laugher and conversation around me. Düsseldorf, I must say, is more convivial than I expected.

My food has arrived and I am just topping up my wine when a large Mercedes comes around the edge of the square, then turns and parks without fuss on the opposite side of the road from me. I am surprised to see Florian emerge from the driver’s side. With him, climbing out of the passenger door, is another young man, bespectacled, with shoulder length hair and wearing a leather jacket. He is laughing at something Florian has said as they pulled up and I can see Florian smiling with the pleasure of amusing his friend.

As they start to walk away from the car, Florian glances across and sees me, sat at my table on the edge of the dining area. He raises his eyebrows and half opens his mouth, such that I can’t tell whether his surprise is completely genuine or exaggerated in part. He waves at me and his companion looks to see whom his friend knows. His face has become a study in cool reserve. I half raise the hand that is holding my wine glass in greeting and then worry that it looks as though I am making a mock toast but Florian has taken his companion by the arm and is already walking away.

They walk with insouciance into the road, cutting a corner off the square, to approach a door set between two shops. There is a small porch extending out over the doorway, partially obscuring a neon sign, and beneath it stands a man in a tuxedo. He smiles warmly at Florian and his friend as they approach, opening the door inwards and then stepping to one side. Florian appears to tip him as he enters.

I finish my food and the last of my wine, pay my bill, and step out onto the square. I walk along one side, looking at my reflection in the shop windows. It looks as though I am walking amongst the mannequins, which seem to move in the shifting headlights of the cars as they drive around the square. Suddenly, I wish I had worn my tie.

Turning at the corner, I am walking towards the doorway, and the doorman regards me levelly. “Good evening” he says in a manner whose polite lack of welcome encourages me to keep on walking and I do. A few paces past, I stop and half-turn, but the moment, if it was ever there at all, has certainly passed. And so I walk on.

As I pass the bars, first on the square and then on a street leading from it, the sound of music and voices spills through the doorways onto the pavement. None sounds like a place one would walk into alone but it is too soon to return to my hotel room and I carry on. The bars are less busy away from the square and I begin to wish I’d brought a book with me, so that I could find a table in the back corner of a room, and read whilst enjoying a drink. If I am honest, evenings such as that are the ones I enjoy the most back in Hamburg.

I carry on, though, and come to a smaller square in the centre of which is a modest statue of a woman in a long dress. In her right hand she is holding aloft a box with an orb at its centre. Intrigued, I cross the narrow road. I angle myself so that I can read the plaque by the light from a streetlamp but it is still too dark. Straightening up, I turn and find myself facing a café, which was behind me as I entered the square.

There is no one behind the bar, which runs along the wall on the left, but a young woman sits in the window to the right. There is a cup of coffee on the table next to her although she is busy sketching in a notebook. Her dark hair obscures her face but I watch mesmerised by the quick certain movements of her hand.

I don’t know how long I have been standing there when she sits back, her face framed beneath a heavy and dead straight fringe half an inch above her eyebrows. She looks out onto the square and I think that she is watching me. This goes on for just long enough that I am about to raise my hand in greeting, when she returns to her notebook and I realise that she was looking at her own reflection in the glass.

It is a perfect picture: the young woman alone in the café, the warm light from the lamps within extending barely into the darkness beyond the window. And then the bartender returns and I decide to go in, for this is not my history of meeting artists in Düsseldorf, but rather the story of how I met my wife.

Just to be clear then:

Do we get back the £350M? No, it never existed. We do lose a whole load of inward investment, though. Nasty surprise for Cornwall who are now a bit nervous that the government won’t replace the £60M they used to get from the EU. Also for the Brexit farmer who thought he’d still get his EU subsidy.

Still, at least some of the ‘saved’ money will go on the NHS, right? Vote Leave were quite clear about that. Well, no. Farage was quick to knock that on the head, yesterday morning. As far as I know, no Leave politician has rushed to correct him.

But what about immigration? At least that’ll get tackled at last. Um, no. Dan Hannah says Vote Leave never promised any significant reduction in immigration numbers. I guess that’ll surprise a few people who voted Leave. It’s good news for the French, though, who have stated that the border control will move from Calais to England. What a relief for them.

So, what did we get? More sovereignty, maybe? Possibly, at least until we need trade deals with the EU, at which point we’ll need to agree to the EU membership rules, like the other European, non-EU countries. Then we’ll go back to the same set of rules but with no say in them. That sounds like less sovereignty to me. Incidentally, Leavers did like to suggest that the EU would be falling over itself, inviting us to stay or at the very least enthusiastically negotiating new trade deals. As it turns out, though, they’re holding the door open and asking us to get a move on.

We do get a new Prime Minister, though. Probably the mendacious, narcissistic, self-serving Boris Johnson, a man who was – until this career opportunity – pro-EU. Having caused all this damage and mayhem he stated yesterday that he was in no great hurry for the exit to take place. Finally, Boris may have to take responsibility for the consequences of his actions.

We also get worse international credit ratings from S&P and Moody’s, which is dreadful news, and a far weaker pound, which is good news for anyone who exports abroad, although they will find they’ll have a little more paperwork and more obstacles to sale than they used to. Not great news for anyone planning to take a holiday abroad, though.

It’s good news that Morgan Stanley aren’t moving those 2,000 jobs to Frankfurt immediately although less good that they say they won’t wait for Article 50 before doing so. (Moving away from facts for a moment; I’d suggest they won’t be the only financial institution that moves. I suspect a lot of manufacturing by international firms – like cars – will move, too. But that’s just what I think.)

Finally, after we avoided the break up of the Union, if only by the skin of Cameron’s teeth, Nicola Sturgeon is moving, quite legitimately, for a second referendum. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how that will go this time. (I’d like know whether they’ll offer citizenship to English people because now I find myself thinking about becoming an immigrant.)

Did I miss anything? And is there any good news? Because I’d really like some.

In 1995, I took a contract at the Bradford and Bingley, working on a project that was to determine those people who qualified as members and who would, therefore, be invited to the annual general meeting.

This was at the height of the “carpet bagging” phenomenon, where people opened accounts with companies that were about to become PLCs, so that they’d benefit from an initial windfall, usually of a few hundred pounds. As a result, there was a lot more scrutiny on the mailing that year and the criteria for membership was being very closely observed.

As part of my work, I had to liaise with the legal team at the building society, and it was an older chap – whose name I’m afraid I can’t remember – who sat me down and explained the situation to me from first principles. He told me how all of the profits the Bradford and Bingley made went to benefit the members, thereby reducing mortgage rates, for example. If the members voted to privatise, he went on, then the profits would go to shareholders and, furthermore, future decisions about the company’s strategy would be made with a view to maximising short-term dividends and not long-term business growth, which would have benefitted the members.

And that makes a lot of sense when you think about it. One of the reasons given for the success of Lidl and Aldi is that they are family owned companies, that can make a decision that will benefit their business over the next three or four years, even if there’s a temporary dip in profits. The inability to plan like this is, I think, the fundamental flaw in PLCs.

Of course, private companies do need to make a profit on the work they do but that doesn’t necessarily translate into dividends. Sometimes the money is invested in growth, sometimes – especially for smaller companies – it’s to protect themselves against a rainy day or when business is quiet. I should imagine it’s difficult to run a business effectively when you have shareholders baying for profits and to find yourself at the mercy of the market’s opinion of you. (Northern Rock would agree with that, I expect.)

Non-Labour governments – and I’d include New Labour in that group – love private companies and businesses, though. They see them as some kind of universal panacea to the difficult job of being in government, even though tackling that job is the one they’ve been elected to do. Rather than knuckle down to do the hard work, though, they are keen to find away to move that responsibility away from themselves. After all, it’s much easier to be an MP in a “small state government”, where you don’t have so much to do.

The problem is that some sectors and industries don’t lend themselves to privatisation. If you want a list of them, just look at pretty much everything that has been moved from the public sector into the private sector since the BT sell off in the 1980s, because they’ve mostly been monopolies. And monopolies don’t work as private enterprises.

Private business works where there’s competition. Let’s say you need a plumber. You might ask your friends “Do you know a good plumber?”. Quite often you’ll hear that someone’s good but a bit pricey or that someone is good but always busy or maybe that someone is just reliable. (You might be dubious about a plumber who isn’t busy!) But you’ll make a decision based on your budget, the urgency of the situation, and what you need done.

But what if there was only one plumber allowed to operate in your area? He (or she) could charge what he wanted, turn up when he fancied and if he did a shoddy job, well what would that matter? (This is probably why Communism doesn’t work but I need to think that through.)

And also, what about the situation where the job that needs doing can’t realistically be costed? If you’re seriously ill, then it doesn’t matter whether your medication costs £100 or £100,000: you need it to live and, as a society, we’ve agreed to an NHS that will take care of us, giving us help that is free at the point of delivery. How can you privatise that? (Hint: you can’t.)

In brief, then, the companies you can’t privatise effectively are those that are monopolies or those that can’t be expected to make a profit, like health and education, for example.

Looking at something a bit more specific then, let’s examine water companies. They each cover different regions, some of which have plenty of water – like Cumbria, unfortunately – and some that don’t. Furthermore, the age and quality of the water infrastructure varies from place to place: some require far more maintenance than others.

Realistically, then, you can’t put a cost on getting water to every household yet access to fresh, clean water in our society is a right, no matter what the chief exec of Nestlé says. And it’s not a right because of some hippy ideal, it’s because we live in a nationwide society – back off, Thatcher! – and we all own the resources, and we all pay the taxes that ought to pay to deliver that water, appropriately cleansed, to our homes.

To privatise that industry, then, is just a bloody nonsense. A short term fiscal gain for the government, for sure, and then we’re saddled with businesses that are obliged to make a profit for their shareholders. Think about it: every time you pay a water bill, part of that money – TOTALLY UNNECESSARILY – goes to someone who does nothing to earn it except for owning some shares in that business. It’s insane.

The reason I’ve been prompted to write all this, incidentally, is that last week United Utilities warned people in parts of Lancashire to boil their water because low levels of cryptosporidium have been found in the water. Consequently, there was a rush on bottled water. (And I wonder whether those affected will get a refund on their water bills?) I also wonder if this problem would have occurred if the need to declare profits hadn’t constrained United Utilities’ activities.

I remember, before he was elected, how David Cameron criticised BT for its monopolistic situation and behaviour. That was a rational argument. Google David Cameron and BT now, and you’ll find him full of support for this dreadful monolith, which exemplifies everything that is wrong about privatising a company that so clearly belongs in the public sector.

So when to nationalise and why? Well, when the service is monopolistic, like water or rail travel, i.e. when you have no option but to use a service; or when a service shouldn’t be expected to make a profit, like water or other national resources; or where it’s simply implausible for that activity to be a profit making operation, like health or education.

I’m not saying that a big state is a good thing – God knows some of our public services need a proper overhaul – but I am saying that there are some services and operations that don’t belong in the private sector. We know unregulated capitalism doesn’t work – just look at the banks, those inept losers – and also that the state has a place in a society. And that place is to manage those resources that belong to all of us and those services for which we all pay our taxes.

It’s been thirty years since I first discovered Shriekback, somewhere amongst the music papers, Radio 1 evening shows and my handful of music loving friends. Standing askance to the new electronic sounds and shiny electro-pop that I favoured they provided a slightly grubbier, somewhat edgier proposition. Their early run of singles included the sinuous ‘Lined Up’, rattlingly funky ‘My Spine (Is The Bassline)’ and seductive ‘Hand On My Heart’: all different, all unorthodox, all brilliant pop.

Although I was oblivious to this at the time, in the heart of that creative unit there appears to have been some tension between keyboard player/vocalist Barry Andrews and vocalist/guitarist Carl Marsh. To me it was Marsh who appeared to provide the grit, while Andrews’ occasional lyrical outings were a little more fantastical. But whatever the truth of the situation, Marsh left during the making of their highly-acclaimed ‘Oil and Gold’, the album which spawned the very popular – all though chart-untroubling – ‘Nemesis’.

Marsh went on to make one of my favourite albums, ‘Here Comes The Crush’, which disappeared without trace, and Shriekback continued in his absence, starting with the ‘Big Night Music’ album. Featuring tracks such as ‘Black Light Trap’, ‘Gunning For The Buddha’, ‘Running On The Rocks’ and the tremendous ‘Sticky Jazz’, it was a corking, lively, brightly coloured album, better produced than any of the previous efforts but, I found, lacking the darkness that Marsh provided. The follow up, “Go Bang!”, was even more cartoon Shriekback, now lacking founder member and bassist, Dave Allen.

It was a big surprise, then, when, four years later, Shriekback reformed (still minus Marsh) to release my favourite album of theirs, ‘Sacred City’. Suddenly Andrews seemed to have dropped all the big colours and fantastical lyrics to provide an album that came from his own direct experience of squatting in London, wandering the city by night. It was at this point that I really began to enjoy his work both through Shriekback and solo. (Incidentally, if you were to ask me which Shriekback album to start with – and, really, none of them is representative of the whole canon – then I would buy ‘Sacred City’ and listen to ‘Beatles Zebra Crossing?’ (it is), ‘Exquisite Corpse’ and ‘(Open Up Your) Filthy Heart (To Me)’.)

Since then, there have been five further Shriekback albums, with Marsh popping up here and there,  all of which feature a mix of good tracks and others which are, to be frank, a bit Shriekback by numbers. And now they are joined by this, ‘Without Real String Or Fish’, Shriekback’s 13th studio album and the first since ‘Oil and Gold’ in which it feels like Marsh is properly back in the band, even if he only appears on five songs.

It gets off to a bit of a false start with ‘Now Those Days Are Gone’, whose brass attack is uncomfortably reminiscent of ‘Go Bang!’ and where Marsh seems to be trying a little too hard. From then on, though, it’s all gold, starting with ‘The King In The Tree’, where Martyn Barker’s ever-intricate and precise drumming picks up Andrews’ cyclical keyboard figure. This is followed by the gorgeous ‘Soft Estate’ and ‘Woke Up Wrong’, which are instantly recognisable as the the healthy offspring of Andrews’ song-writing DNA.

The firstly truly great moment, though, where for me this collection is lifted above recent Shriekback albums, arrives in the form of ‘Beyond Metropolis’, sung by Marsh in the style of his that I love the best. Quite apart from his semi-spoken word style,  he has a way of taking his stream of conscious lyrics and imbuing them with a sense of poetic purpose and internal logic. It was this song more than any other that hooked me into this record.

Indeed, of the remaining seven songs, it is the two that were written by Andrews, Barker and Marsh – ‘Recessive Jean’ and the lovely, gentle ‘Bernadette’ – that stand out, and I really hope the next album is completely written by the three of them. (And, to be honest, it feels like now there is proper reason for Dave Allen to return, one that doesn’t involve nostalgia at all.)

But I don’t want to over-emphasise Marsh’s contribution – wonderful though it is – since it’s certainly worth mentioning that Andrews seems to have completely revived his mojo with ‘Without Real String Or Fish’. The album has a sure-footedness that suggests he knows exactly what he’s doing with Shriekback now and I think this has somehow opened up the door to allow Barker to make a more integral contribution to the song-writing, too.

Now, if only they’d go out and play live!

It should never have come to this and I don’t think there’s any denying that David Cameron’s arrogance in thinking the Scots wouldn’t have the guts to vote yes was what kept ‘devo max’ off the table. But we are where we are.

I love Scotland – I’ve lived and worked there – and I’ll be very sad if they leave the UK. That said, if I was a Scot, I’d be *very* tempted to vote yes.

Based on what I’ve read over the last few weeks, what would stop me doing that is the Yes campaign’s focus on optimism rather than detail. Here are some things that might pause me in my tracks:

– It’s not just oil: banking generates a huge revenue for Scotland (I’ve read it’s actually more than oil) and the banks are poised to move. Which isn’t surprising because…
– Unbelievably, the currency hasn’t been sorted out. The banks need the Bank of England.
– EU membership is not a shoe-in, despite Salmond’s view that Scotland is irresistible. Spain has already said it will use its veto.
– The SNP have admitted that postal rates will go up and that there will be a huge shortfall in the NHS. Admitted? Yes, admitted when presented with the facts. Shouldn’t they have been upfront about this?
– It’s unclear what level of the UK’s debt would fall to Scotland. That’s a very significant issue! (Although Salmond, unbelievably, has said he’d default on this debt if he can’t share the pound. Which in itself means a fiscal union, which is not independence!)
– Defence also appears a little vague, which should worry everyone.

It was Cameron’s failing that led to where we are but even if everything will be ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT after a Yes vote, Salmond has failed to establish this. There is a dearth of facts in some key areas. In fact, it’s a mess.

Like I say, I can’t criticise anyone voting yes – and it’s not my place to – especially as I’d be tempted to myself (as an inveterate optimist!). However, I don’t believe the facts are as clear as they *need* to be.

Whatever happens, I hope it’s for the best, today. Sadly, though, I don’t think it can be best for all of us.

Foreword (posted 29th Jan)

Yesterday I had a lot of feedback about this post. Some was from people who appeared to understand my point and they were all positive about the post. Some related to @john_doe and resulted in me apologising to him and anonymising him. (More about this at the bottom of the post.) There were a couple of “conversations” that were entirely fruitless and I wish I hadn’t bothered with them; people simply haranguing you is pretty tiresome and tiring.

However, I did have one long conversation with another tweeter who asked me not to name them in this post. We talked about the term “troll” and how it is becoming used to casually, how it should be reserved for those people who display quite extreme behaviour and who are explicitly threatening and offensive. And I agree with this. @john_doe’s behaviour wasn’t “trolling” by that definition and I have made minor edits to the post below, removing the reference to him as a troll and a description of his activity as trolling.

I have left the (anonymised) tweets in place though because the behaviour still highlights what I was actually writing about, which is the lack of respect and manners on Twitter. The post was not about @john_doe or whether he was right to take issue with @QuintinForbes’ tweet (although it was about the manner in which he did it).

What follows is the original post with the two edits referred to above.

End of foreword.

Things are changing over at Facebook. Whether publicly stated or not, the company is concerned that young people are leaving in droves. Their playground come youth club has been invaded by their parents and grandparents, and, for them, it’s not the place it once was. Which may be no bad thing for Facebook and its shareholders: older people have more disposable income and perhaps now that advertising revenue will start to arrive in the desired quantities.

But this isn’t a post about Facebook; I’ve mentioned that purely to highlight the fact that social media sites do change in demonstrable ways and so perhaps when people have commented recently that Twitter is changing, then perhaps it’s not just nostalgia talking.

The way in which they say it’s changing is that it’s becoming a more hostile place. I’m not sure that’s entirely true but, equally, I’m not saying they’re wrong. Twitter’s always been a place with rough neighbourhoods: one doesn’t have to stray far from one’s timeline to find all sorts of unpleasantness. Furthermore, while the term ‘troll’ has slipped into common usage over the last year, the noun and those it identifies have been around since before I joined Twitter.

What has changed, of course, is the number of people using Twitter. And amongst those new users are more people who don’t see the need for etiquette and manners. They may form the same proportion of users but even then there are undoubtedly more of them. And some of those new tweeters, often those hiding behind anonymity, are particularly vile. (Although what’s notable is what cowardly specimens they turn out to be when ousted: see the cases of the trolls of Mary Beard and, more recently, Caroline Criado-Perez.)

However, for me personally, not much has changed. No one’s ever been really nasty to me, apart from some accidentally riled feminists, although from time to time someone will pick me up on something I’ve said but that’s always happened. The people for whom I think it has changed, those people who perhaps not coincidentally are the ones observing this shift, are those with a large number of followers.

In my experience, those with a lot of followers tend to fall into one of three categories: they are a celebrity or well-known through the media; an expert or authority in a given field; or they are funny. And for some reason, because these people are popular on Twitter, other people – “trolls” – seem to think they needn’t be polite or considerate when dealing with them.

What prompted me to write this today was an exchange between @QuintinForbes and another Twitter user. Now, I happen to think @QuintinForbes is the funniest man on Twitter. I try not to retweet him too often as the people who follow me must have got the message by now and are either following him or don’t want to.

Today, he posted the following tweet:

I found that funny, favourited it and moved on.

Later on, I became aware of this reply to some people complimenting @QuintinForbes’s tweet:

Now, I didn’t think the joke was homophobic. It’s not a joke I’d have made myself partly because I am terrified of causing unintentional offence but mainly because I’m not that funny. The challenge to @QuintinForbes was quite brusque and, I’d say, impolite. It’s evidence of the behaviour I’m talking about. @QuintinForbes responded as follows:

And here comes the response from let’s call him @john_doe. Note that he has put a full stop in front of @QuintinForbes’s username. This is the point for me at which this becomes more unpleasant; the full stop ensures that all of @john_doe’s followers can see the conversation, not just those following him and @QuintinForbes. To me, it looks like ganging up.

It’s also worth noting that @john_doe is under the impression that he represents all gay men. Not so.

To which @john_doe simply responds:

I assume Quintin had had enough by this point (I certainly would have) but he does go on to tweet:

Meanwhile, @john_doe tweets:

Thus, having been unpleasant and rude, @john_doe then blocks @QuintinForbes, as if to say to his followers that @QuintinForbes was the one who had been pestering him! He also uses the term ‘uncle tom’ – by which I assume he means to imply @QuintinForbes is a stereotyped gay man, which is unnecessary and unfounded – but which is a term in itself which I believe is far more offensive to black people. @john_doe is evidently happy to take offence but is less concerned about giving it.

I’ve provided this lengthy example to highlight what kind, decent people whose only intention is to make people laugh are having to put up with: people telling them their jokes aren’t funny or telling them what they meant by their joke. Whilst it might not be trolling as such, it strikes me that this is the thin edge of the wedge.

Last week, a chap just a nice as Quintin, @mrnickharvey, was driven off Twitter by trolling, another victim of one person’s need to address their own – apparently significant – failings by anonymously persecuting those who just want to bring a bit of happiness into other people’s lives.

I really wish I had a solution to all this but, of course, I don’t. What I will say to all those popular, funny, well-intentioned people, is please don’t let these trolls, ranging from the impolite and rude through to the vicious and threatening, drive you off Twitter. If you go, they will have won.

Post script Subsequent to publishing this post, @QuintinForbes has told me that he first tweeted his ‘Fruit toast’ joke in 2012 and none of his gay followers has ever taken offence before.

Update, 28th Jan (the next day), at 22:45

So, I learnt a few things today. Firstly, that people hear the word troll and think immediately of the extreme end of trolling. That being the case,  I shouldn’t have called @john_doe a troll. However, his exchange did illustrate what I was trying to point out: the lack of respect, politeness and consideration that I see more and more on Twitter. And, of course, I accepted that that I had not shown respect, politeness or consideration for @john_doe in using his tweets. I’ve apologised for that and changed the post to use @john_doe as the name.

Secondly, I’ve learnt that no matter how patient you are, some people will not enter a discussion but simply carry on having an argument. I wasted a lot of time on that, this afternoon. But, for the record, I was not saying that @john_doe was trolling in his initial tweet to @QuintinForbes (although I think that’s clear in the post).

And I’ve remembered that everyone has family and friends and partners, and when you upset one person, you upset a lot. (People around me have been similarly angered by the tweets to me and comments on this post.) So, be more considerate (see point 1).

There have been a few people willing to discuss this with me and I’m grateful for that. And at least I tried with those who wouldn’t talk to me, just at me.

There is one final huge irony to all this, especially since I’ve been called a hypocrite by more than one person today, and that relates to @john_doe’s reply to @QuintinForbes. Remember this:

Here are some tweets from @john_doe’s timeline two weeks earlier:

My approach to money was evident from a very early age: I saw it as a method of obtaining things I wanted and I had no interest in hoarding it. This attitude was evident and constant from the age when I was given pocket money through to when I earned it for myself. At the age of sixteen, for example, when I earned £10 a week working in the kitchens at BHS, I would go out at lunchtime and spend the lot on a combination of albums (£3.99), 12″ singles (£1.99) and singles (£0.99). (And how I enjoyed those journeys home on the bus looking at my spoils!)

Later, at university, I became acquainted with both overdrafts and credit cards, and consequently spent my holidays earning money to pay of the spending of the previous term. I’m not sure this was entirely reckless – I knew I’d pay the money back – but I found it easier to spend money that I would owe rather than money I’d earnt.

I wasn’t that long out of university before I was married and having children. Quite a lot of children. I don’t think my wife’s attitude to money was much worse than mine but the fact that she was now spending money that I would have to repay caused a terrible amount of friction in our marriage. And, in truth, she ran up some significant debts clothing and entertaining four small children and herself.

All through this time, certainly from shortly after our first daughter was born, I was working as an IT freelancer, earning more with each contract so that we were always able to service our debt, and the chickens only really came home to roost when we divorced and I was suddenly confronted with the full consolidated amount. And solely responsible for it.

But I’m a chap who has more than his fair share of luck and it was around this time that I pretty much doubled what I was earning and, for once in my life, I forgot about spending and concentrated on clearing the debt. And then, abruptly, after a couple of years, the debt was gone and suddenly all this money coming into my bank account was mine. Life was good. We did up the house, which was run down when I bought it, went on holiday and generally enjoyed having some cash.

Now, for years I’d dreamt of running my own business and I’d had a little hobby company  alongside my day job for a few years. In 2004 I suddenly had an amazing opportunity to make that hobby company my full time job and, without too much consideration, I took it. I employed some people and everything went well for a while before I began to realise that I was out of my depth. There’s a book called something like “The E-myth” which is all about people who start businesses because they are good at something and ignore the fact that they’ve no experience of running a company. Well, that was me.

I’ll spare you the details of the company’s fall from grace but suffice to say that I had to remortgage my house to pay the salaries whilst we struggled to deliver the work we had to the quality we wanted, but never making a profit. By this stage I had stopped paying myself. My second wife, who stuck with me all through this, bought the food, whilst I tried to keep the bailiffs from the door, the telephone connected, the electricity flowing and a roof over our head.

This was stressful enough in itself but at the same time I tried to keep up appearances. My daughters still had all their music lessons and, in our social life, I bought rounds of drinks I could barely afford. Couldn’t afford, in fact. I’ve always been a sound sleeper but now I found myself waking at two o’clock every morning to lie there worrying. And I’ve always enjoyed a drink but now, for the first and only time in my life, I found myself drinking to relax, downing a couple of glasses of wine within minutes of walking in through the door. My wife wanted me to go back to working freelance but I had all these people relying on me for their salaries.

And I learnt something else during this time, which is the appalling way in which our society permits businesses to behave towards their debtors. Credit card companies who didn’t ring me during the week would ring me six or seven times on my home and mobile ‘phones at the weekend to harass me about payments. The mortgage company, scenting a mortally wounded customer, were interested only in repossessing the house and not in talking to me about ways in which I could restructure my payments. It was hellish.

But I stuck with it. My company’s ethos and approach to business began to pay dividends. Our problem changed from “where’s the work coming from” to managing cash flow, in itself a huge problem for small businesses but trivial compared with the prospect of going bankrupt.

So, these days I can’t complain. I get paid regularly along with everyone else and those credit card bills are getting cleared. I can’t remember the last time the mortgage company had to call. That said, I recently had some confusion regarding my council tax that resulted in a debt collection company getting involved. In the end I went into South Lakeland District Council to sort it out, which we did to our mutual satisfaction. Oh, except there’s still the bill for the debt collection agency.

I spent a couple of minutes cogently explaining just why I shouldn’t have to pay this bill: I had been in communication with SLDC at the time, trying to sort the matter out. There was simply no reason for involving a debt collection agency and, therefore, no reason why I should pay for them being invoked by the council. We argued. I didn’t lose my temper, I rebutted and, eventually, the fine – for that’s what it amounted to – was waived. My issue here being that SLDC simply invoked the debt collection agency at the time because I wouldn’t submit to their (erroneous) arguments. An action they then expected me to pay for.

So, it’s been a weird few years. I went from being well off to experiencing the unsympathetic attitude and, at times, aggression that businesses will display to those who are in a parlous financial situation. I was certainly broke and yet do remember that I always had the safety net of returning to the freelance world if I needed it. That wasn’t much solace at the time, for a variety of reasons (including not wanting to admit I’d made a mistake) but I can’t imagine what it’s like not having that option, of having nothing to lighten a bleak future, no cause for optimism.

And now I see the wealthy in power, screwing the poor and the disadvantaged, whilst the middle classes do nothing, perhaps grateful that Osborne’s ideological cannons are not trained on them.

In conclusion then, I’ve been poor – although not in poverty – for several years this last decade. It seems now that I was always optimistic but a moment’s reflection recalls so many dark days and anxious, sleepless nights. And the worst thing was not the worry about looking after my family but the stress induced by the companies that will all rely on to make our lives work. Believe me, without fail, they are all bastards.

PS The Co-op, the ethical Co-op, was the worst of all.

[Read]
I had a very pleasant day, today. I had a coffee and some sausages for breakfast, made a quick call to the office and then cycled over to the house to spend the day with Dan and Abi.

Dan had a half-term tennis club at 10:30, so Abi and I walked down into Kirkby Lonsdale and had a J2O and a coffee in The Royal Hotel before heading back up to Booths to buy some lunch and also some mince and kidney beans for my dinner.

We’d hoped to go to the cinema but the bus times and screenings didn’t work out so we spent the first half of the afternoon at the house, first eating lunch – sausages and crisps! – and then drawing (them) and dozing (me). At three o’clock, we walked back down into town and Hannah gave us a lift back to the cottage, where we read and played chess in front of the fire, with a short break for a couple of Hobnobs.

Their mum picked us all up at about half-five and I had a short bout of dealing with three of my older daughters regarding insurance for the car they share before going for a swim and then cycling home.

As I write this, I’m eating the chilli I made myself when I got in, having had a handful of peanuts to stave off the hunger pangs when I arrived home.

All sounds pretty pleasant and innocuous, right.

[Rewind]

[Replay]
I had three sausages for breakfast. They come in packs of six at £2.85, so that’s around £1.40. Let’s call it £1.50 and pretend that would cover the coffee, too.

When Abi and I went into The Royal, that cost another £4.50.

The shopping at Booths came to £10.23, which was for lunch for the three of us and my dinner.

A pack of Hobnobs costs a pound and I think there’s probably around fifteen in a pack so, let’s say it was 25p for the four we ate.

I swam at the local heath club, at which I’m a member, but let’s say it would have cost £3 at a leisure centre (it would have been £3.60 in Kendal).

That’s £19.48 for the day.

[Rant]
I could have bought cheaper sausages, that’s for sure. Maybe we do want people eating cheap food and keeping that market buoyant with all the health scares, cattle destruction and horse meat that goes with that. Maybe we do want people eating those foods linked with obesity and diabetes.

Abi and needn’t have had coffee and a J2O at The Royal. That’s beginning to look like the real luxury of the day, although Dan’s tennis also qualifies.

And, of course, there’s no real need to go swimming and keep in good shape is there? The NHS can pick up the bill for that in the long run.

So I could have done the day on £11.98 even without resorting to cheaper food.

Of course, I didn’t feed the kids in the evening, or indeed, give them their breakfast this morning, so there’s that cost to be added.

It all makes IDS’s £53 a week look a bit bloody stupid, doesn’t it?

And I’ve not included the fact that my house was lit and heated (roughly £3 per day) or taken my broadband into account (about a pound a day) or the firewood that we burnt. Today we didn’t need to buy any clothes, so that was lucky.

We’d also talked about going to the cinema, which would have come to over £30 for our bus fares and tickets, never mind the cost of popcorn.

And having spent an hour talking about insurance and taking into account the cost of petrol, I’m damn sure you couldn’t run a car on £53 a week.

In conclusion then, if you’re one of those people who’s faced with living on £53 a week, I think you’ll need to give up your car and doing nice things with your family. You’ll have to stick with the clothes you have and get used to wearing a lot of them at once in the winter. If you are lucky enough to live in an area where there are jobs and there’s nothing preventing you from working, you’ll have to put some of your money aside for the bus and maybe borrow some smart clothes.

It’s all a bit pathetic, isn’t it? I see IDS is dismissing the petition for him to live on £53 a week as “a stunt”, claiming that he has been unemployed twice. Ah, beware anecdotes from this man who lied about his degree on his CV.

Here he is in today’s Guardian talking about finding himself unemployed:

“It was a shock – absolutely awful. I felt pathetic. I remember telling my wife. We looked at each other and she said: ‘God, what are we going to do for money?”

So how did our plucky little soldier with the “can do” attitude manage? Read on:

“Duncan Smith’s wife, Betsy, is the daughter of the 5th Baron Cottesloe who served as lord-lieutenant of Buckinghamshire in the 1980s and 1990s. Duncan Smith and his wife, who sent their children to Eton, moved into Lord Cottesloe’s 17th-century Old House in the village of Swanbourne in Buckinghamshire in 2002. His in-laws moved into smaller accommodation to make way for the Duncan Smiths and their four children.”

You couldn’t make it up, could you?

I understand why the LibDems went into the coalition: I’ve heard it first hand from MPs and senior people in the party. Maybe that decision was based on good faith and maybe it was – at a stretch – the right thing to do at the time. BUT IT WAS THE WRONG DECISION. It’s time to face up to that, dissolve the coalition and tackle these vile bastards head on.