Britain's best Asbos

At least there's one area in which Britain leads the world: creative use of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders. I'm a big fan of these not-quite-criminal tickets, if only for their entertainment value.

Thoughts on String Theory

Surely I'm not alone in thinking recent developments in string theory validate it beyond reasonable doubt?

It's been some years since Polchinski's (sp) 2000 paper that suggested string theory has 10exp500 solutions (give or take a few powers of 10) and that all are valid solutions. Some scientists think this kills the theory somewhat, since only one of these would apply to 'our' universe.

But assuming (admittedly quite an assumption) David Deutsch's theory that the Multiverse contains an infinity of universes only visible to each other by the quantum shadows of electrons etc, surely this adds support to string theory BEING a theory of everything - it explains every possible universe, and also explains why our particular universe is the way it is.

Figures. Why should there be anything special about our universe? It just happens to fit the development of carbon-based life. Just as in past centuries it's been demonstrated that Earth's nothing special (we just happen to live here), and the sun's nothing special as stars go (we just happen to revolve around it). Nor is our solar system much to write home about (others have planets too), and the Milky Way's just a galaxy. (And a chocolate bar. Actually, Galaxy's a chocolate bar too, but confectionery doesn't need to be scientifically consistent.)

Alter that cosmological constant just a smidgeon, and you've got a bunch of weird universes, all of which will appear in that 10exp500.

In my view, the discovery that the cosmo constant is non-zero sews up the case for string theory: it suggests that the whole of physics doesn't need to be mathematically 'whole', that there's a bit left over at the edges. And it's equally interesting that the total number of solutions to string theory, while large, does not appear to be infinite.

And the weirdest thing of all - it seems some of those alternate universes actually exist in 'our' reality, not in parallel 'dimensions'. Albeit beyond anywhere we could actually get to. But it's a seriously kooky thought - there are regions to which we could theoretically travel that are governed by a different set of textbooks.

First time I read about string theory, something about it just 'felt right' although I couldn't get to grips with the maths at all. While I realise this makes me no better than god-botherers in that I'm going in on faith - I really, really think string theory will eventually explain all of physics.

But on the thought that got me started on this. Does anyone know if the symbol used for the cosmo constant is the same one Einstein used before he rejected it? It'd be nice to have some terminological continuity for the cosmological constant.

(And yes, this whole blog was leading up to that last sentence, because I don't think I can ever use it again.)

Bah, humbug

I fucking hate Christmas.

More specifically, I hate the enforced gestalt jollity of it all. Groupthink, hive mind, let's not think for ourselves or follow our own way: let's allow the calendar to do it for us. And I hate it even more this year, because after a busy few weeks I have TOTALLY BLANKED SHOPPING from my mind, so I've got to do it today, on the second-busiest shopping day of the year. I hate this.

I also hate the way I feel today. Throat raspy from a cold and heating left off on precisely the night the weather turned from wet to wintery, I wake up in a room resembling a tomb and shiver from the first moment. I hate this.

In accordance with prophecy, my PC rebels. 124 emails trying to get in and only 41 managing it. It turns out (much later) the encrypted volume that holds my .pst is chocka, and I have to find some way of bucketing a gig or two over the ramparts before I can read up. I hate this.

I go downstairs. Muesli isn't appetising at zero degrees, so I give up on my cholesterol reading and find some eggs and bacon. And instead of a Kirlian glow, I go out on a fatty cloud of salted toxicity, sluggish and spluttering in the SE8 subzero. Barely out of my door and I'm ready to punch someone. I hate this.

I reach Oxford St. Of course, it is filled with people: smiling, glowing, gag-happy people, each of whom has made it their individual mission to make me want to PUKE. I decide to hate every one of them, one by one. I hate you, little man blowing your filthy fag smoke in my eyes. I hate you, couple who wouldn't unlink hands so I had to break you apart as I followed my line. I hate you, foul family of four, for taking up the entire width of walkway despite Oxford St being closed to traffic. I really, really hate this.

Everything to buy on Oxford St is, of course, utter crap. Toilet bags, scarves, kitchen implements, salt and pepper and olive oil, cheap and nasty imitations of wonderful things all packaged and wrapped in tacky boxes eight times too big which successfully force the transition from crap to COMPLETE AND UTTER CRAP, clutter designed to fill the holes in people's empty lives, the right shape but the wrong substance. Shop windows everywhere yet there's nothing to buy. I hate this.

By the time I get to Bond St I'm ready to cry. There is no longer any possibility that I can enter any of these shops without actually killing someone. I've got a shopping list in my pocket, names against items, grudgingly put together in a haze of red the prior night. I pass a small jewellery shop I've bought from so many times, bright and beautiful as a cut vase, yet I dare not go in, because anything I bought there would be forever tainted with the memory of my hatred. I hate this.

I forge back up the milling swill of smiling simians towards Oxford St, cross, duck into the tiny entrance to St Peter's Place. Sanctuary of a sort. Space enough to see pavement, while scant metres away the global village idiots tumble and twirl to their lowest-common-denominator delights in an orgy of paper cups and shrinkwrap. I'm not free of this mad, mad world, but the red mist subsides. I walk further. To a place I haven't been to for a while, a pool of calming waters four floors under the streets. I enter the familiar chambers, descend into calm, and stroke forty brief lengths to drown my anger. It helps, but just because I had to do it I hate this, too.

And - after hating the barely-hot sauna and steamroom below streets, and emerging fresher and calmer - I find a kind of peace. Marylebone High St, the ideal shopping street. Things made rather than manufactured, sold rather than retailed, smaller emporia and friendlier people. Boxes not garish or fake, yet natural and deep where the colours go all the way through. I buy... not everything, but a few things. Perfumed consumable things that won't clutter anyone's life, that they might find useful and love for a few minutes. Four purchases that make the day... something less than a total waste.

But oh, the red mist descends once more as I hit Oxford St again. It's 'Santacon' day, and twice a hundred scarlet-clad WANKERS have chosen to follow me into the Tube SPECIFICALLY TO ANNOY ME. I'm sure I catch sight of a postcard with my name and description tucked into the hip pockets of some of them. Into M&S, down escalators, but they're following. Just as I think I've given them the slip, one follows me onto the Jubilee Line and starts making Grinch-gestures with a pair of fake antlers. Fake Santas, I ESPECIALLY hate you.

I hate this. Christmas, fuck you and the reindeer you rode in on. I'm fucking going to bed early.

Brown's blind spot: the NHS

Britain's public healthcare leads the world in one way, at least: its doctors are now the richest in Europe.

A couple of budgets ago, Gordon Brown decided the best way to improve the National Health Service was to borrow £70bn and throw a party. A 7.4% rise in funding every year until 2008, an extra £6bn year on year to 2005. The money's been allocated in entirely the wrong way: a 43% pay rise for doctors, half of it swallowed in pay and pensions, barely a quarter going on actual patient care. Yet productivity has gone down by nearly 1%. The workers are doing the same job, and in many cases, less of a job (you work fewer evenings if you're being paid more for days); they're just being paid more for it. The average income of a GP is now £63K, a specialist £81K, and the total bill has doubled in the past five years.

London's Harley St, full of clinics, has always been full of rich doctors - and there's nothing wrong with that. A doctor in private practice is running her own business, taking her own risks, and should be able to charge what the market can support. But GPs are public servants, exchanging the risks of the market for an assured income; along with the civil service under New Labour, they now enjoy salaries akin to a risk-taking businessman. Without any of the risk.

The NHS has always been Brown's blind spot: like so many Labour voters, he believes there's something special about healthcare, that the normal laws of economics don't apply. He's wrong. However noble its purpose, healthcare is just another product/service. And the sellers of those services are out to maximise their benefit; they'll take whatever they can.

Who else is to blame for this? Nobody. Not the doctors. Doctors are not fundamentally 'better people' the way some expect them to be; they're just people, earning money for doing a day's work same as anyone else. And like anyone else, doctors know a gravy train when it stops at the station.

So Britain's bloated public sector continues to grow, sucking parasitically at the bank accounts of those who actually create wealth, healing those without enough self-responsibility to take out a minimal £5-a-week health insurance and doing it inefficiently. Yet in a way, I'm heartened, because things like this are just another nail in the coffin of New Labour.

David Cameron: Britain's first black Prime Minister

A few days into Cameron's leadership of the Opposition, and his strategy's clear. He's using the Clinton strategy: be as black as yo' white ass can be.

His first official engagement this week was to visit a Plaistow youth centre, where his PR guy made very sure the quote 'He spoke like a good black man' got into the papers. His team includes a shaven-headed policy advisor of mixed ethnicity and his wife's got an ankle tattoo. Even better, he lives in North Kensington - although safely across the street from the notorious North Ken estate.

It's an ideal strategy for victory in 2008. Even winning one seat in an inner London by-election would reflect a huge swing to his party, and he can do it by cultivating the gritty urban coolness so many white people 'downspire' to (what's the opposite of aspire, anyway?) It's a brilliant move: black culture affects white under-40s far more than they realise. I wear a lot of Nike; my favourite designer is Oswald Boateng; I loathe rap and hip-hop but acknowledge the talent of those who create it. As in the USA, it's just not cool to be white, so white people unconsciously absorb influences from the black neighbourhoods and think we invented it.

In the next six weeks, Cameron will almost certainly attend a hip-hip concert 'in a private capacity', speak to a teenage mothers/disaffected youth/crack addiction conference, and make a minimum of 12 references using carefully-selected urban patois. Even saying 'Yo!' from the podium won't be off the agenda. And this season, we is mostly wearing sportswear.

In other words, he'll define himself by that strange cocktail of American and Carribbean influences that is Britain's black culture - yet he'll never mention it explicitly. His policy issues will revolve around those that disproportionately affect Britain's black underclass - yet because these issues affect white people too, he can do so legitimately. In doing so, he will be the first Tory to appeal to black people.

David ma' man, yo' be the right guy in the right place at the right time. Gordon Brown hasn't got a chance now. Go, ma bro'.

Tories get their Blair and Brown at last

Hmmm.... I'm cautiously optimistic about new Conservative leader David Cameron. With George Osbourne shadowing Gordon Brown as Chancellor, the Tories finally have an energetic young twosome to take on Labour in a couple of years' time - and have a reasonable chance of winning.

In fact, there's only one loser here: Gordon Brown. With Britain's public finances in disarray and the pent-up problems New Labour has created starting to trickle into the British consciousness, Brown's chances of becoming Prime Minister after Blair - long thought to be 100% - are fading. Since Blair is now likely to stay on for the full term, it leaves Brown fighting the next election as a new and inexperienced Prime Minister with an electorate pissed off by the high taxes he himself brought in as Chancellor, and a fresh-faced dream team in the blue corner reminding him of every misstep.

Delicious. The death of New Labour - now just a few years away. Life is sweet.

Gordon Brown: the luckiest Chancellor

I'm liking Gordon Brown just a little less each day.

Plenty of people think he's a great Chancellor - but let's face it, he inherited an economy poised for growth and public finances with a £50bn surplus. A trained monkey could have run the UK economy with that in its cheeks. Yet somehow - unbelievably - during the longest economic expansion in postwar history, he's somehow turned that into a £17bn hole. Raising taxes all the way.

He's retried his latest wheeze of redefining the economic cycle to make sure he appears to stay within his own golden rules. (Today he did it for the second time, moving the goalposts two and a bit years forward.) In addition, there's an extra £1bn or so from oil companies - which means they'll either book their future earnings offshore or not bother investing in the riskiest (and potentially most lucrative) oilfields, making our energy problems worse. (With the raid they won't be able to afford to invest anyway. Better start buying solar panels, everyone.)

All this in addition to his £5bn raid on pension funds a few years back, which precipitated today's pensions crisis. Then - since Brown hates the thought that other people's money might be lying around without him having rights to it - he's decided to use dormant savings accounts to fund another pet project.

Mean. Small-minded. And very, very sneaky. But it's all in tune with New Labour's basic desire to know everything about everyone. To raid those bank accounts, he'll have to know how much is in them and who they belong to. Just like his tax credits, and pension credits, and working families credits, and means testing for everything. All replacing one-size-fits-all (but simple) systems with something incredibly complicated - and impossible to implement. And driving out the incentive for most people to make themselves better off. (Unless you can climb FAR above the average in Blair's Britain, it's just not worth it.)

Brown a true Blairite? Yes he is. Talks like a Tory without the ability to execute like one.

Fifth Gear is really boring these days

Why is Five's 'Fifth Gear' such complete crap?

OK, so it's a straight knock-off of BBC's 'Top Gear'. Same open-plan studio environment, same silly stuff happening to cars they don't like, exact same shots and camera angles of fast cars tracking fast round a fast round track. Even most of the journalists started out on Top Gear itself. Yet the original show's still a riot after at least a decade, while Fifth Gear is just what you have on to demonstrate you're a member of the male species.

Yet somehow, Fifth Gear hasn't 'got it'. It's trying too hard, too self-consciously in awe of its progenitor while pretending it doesn't care. The writing is dull. The presenting is self-absorbed. They just don't look like they're having a good time, even when they're hurling £150K machines down a European road.

And saddest of all, Vicky isn't the babe she once was. 5-10 years ago she was a hyperbabe: a hot girl with chiselled features and a voice affecting a bit of roughness while boasting an incredible pedigree. But these days, approaching her mid-thirties - VBH is a lot rounder about the hips, no more miniskirts or tossing of hair as a window slides upwards, fewer innuendoes swished back at her audience. Oh Vicky, what happened to you?