I don't like Red Nose Day

This Friday is Red Nose Day, the biannual fundraising event put on by Comic Relief.

It is huge. Massive. Utterly enormous. A juggernaut of a good cause.

The last Red Nose Day, in 2011, raised a staggering amount of money. £108,436,277. That is a big pile of cash. You know that bit at the start of 80s kids' TV favourite Duck Tales, where Scrooge McDuck goes swimming in his mountain of coins? Well, it's more money than that.

A. Lot. Of. Money.

Which is good, because you NEED a lot of money to have a stab at sorting out some of the world's problems. Lots of money can do lots of good, and I'm reasonably sure that Comic Relief is doing lots of good with the money it raises.

Still, here I am, writing a blog post about why I don't like Red Nose Day (and, by extension, Comic Relief). Erk.

Let me first clarify something: I am not anti-charity. I am not anti-fundraising. I work for a charity. As a fundraiser. I have nothing but admiration for the efforts of people like Team Honk, who are traipsing all over the place and doing all sorts of challenges to raise money for Red Nose Day. Good on them.

But Red Nose Day bothers me for several reasons. Here are a couple of them:

1. Enforced jollity. I know some people have a "fun" switch, which they can turn on and off at will, and even without the assistance of alcohol, but I don't. Get all up in my face dressed as a clown and shaking a bucket and I will be as likely to give you a quick kick in the shin as I am to donate money. The trouble with the concept of doing something funny for money, is that most people are deeply UNfunny. Putting a red plastic prosthetic on your proboscis will not alter that. In fact, it will probably just highlight it.

I love fun. I just like it to be spontaneous and genuine.

2. Celebrity. Predictable of me, I know, but I can't help it. Seeing the Bonos, Geldofs and Henrys of the world earnestly pleading for a donation makes my skin itch. If I could reach into the screen and gaffer tape their mouths closed I would.

If a celebrity wants to convince me to make a donation here's how they should do it: "If you want to donate £1 to Comic Relief, text DONATELENNY to 80077. For every £1 received that way, I will personally donate the same, because I realise that I am rich as fuck and you, most likely, are not."

I appreciate, of course, that many of the celebrities involved are also giving their own cash to the cause. I'd just like to have it confirmed.

But those are nothing really. Personal gripes. Frivolous, self indulgent moans. The main reason I dislike Red Nose Day is this: it promotes uninformed charitable donations.

When you send that text, donating £5, £10, £20, whatever, how much thought have you given to where that money will end up? What causes it will support? What good it will do?

Not much, I reckon. You donate a bit of money because it's Red Nose Day. Because that's what you do on Red Nose Day. Because the aesthetically pleasing person on the TV screen encouraged you. Because the film of someone suffering affected you.

Sure, the money you donate will more than likely have a positive impact on someone. But you're not choosing those beneficiaries, Comic Relief is.

Here's (roughly) how Comic Relief works:

1. You and thousands of others donate your money to them.
2. They set their priorities for spending the money you donate.
3. They pool all the donations (less cost of raising them) and invite other charities to apply for a Comic Relief grant. Only charities doing work within Comic Relief's stated priorities are eligible to apply.
4. They choose which of the thousands of applications are supported, and the charity which applied does the work.

There are so many charities in the UK doing amazing work. In my opinion, as a potential donor, it is your duty to be diligent in your charitable giving. To research charities as you would research anything else you intend to spend money on. To find the charities which are doing the work which you feel the strongest about, the causes you truly believe in.

Once you've worked out which charities you like, make a donation.

Comic Relief is a shouty charity. It comes onto your telly once each year (they do Sport Relief in the years they don't do Red Nose Day) and makes lots of noise. It is backed by masses of people in the entertainment industry, people who are good at making their voices heard. It has a huge budget available to encourage donations.

Small, local charities will never be able to do the sort of high profile fundraising that Comic Relief does. In fact, even some of the UK's biggest charities couldn't hope to spend what Comic Relief does on raising money.

I'm not saying you shouldn't give your money to Comic Relief. I'm saying I hope you can resist the glitz, the glamour and the ubiquity of Red Nose Day and donate because you truly believe in what they're doing. The information is there, on their website, in their published accounts on the Charity Commission's website.

I don't like Red Nose Day because it lets us take the easy option in our charitable giving. Charitable giving shouldn't just be about supporting the most visible cause.

What do you think? Have I got it all wrong? Do I underestimate how informed the Comic Relief donors really are? Please, let me know.

Silent Sunday

Well

In essence, my son is a healthy human baby. He was ejected from my wife with all the bits and pieces he was meant to have, and without any unnecessary extras. Everything appears to work as it should. I am truly, truly grateful for this.

But fucking hell, he is ill ALL THE TIME.

I reckon, during his short life so far, the baby has been completely free of malady or complaint for about three weeks.

Colds.
Coughs.
Constipation.
Cholera. No, not that.
Projectile vomiting.
Non-projectile vomiting.
Diarrhoea.
Colic.

So many things. Nothing serious. But a lot of non serious things.

This week, he's battling with conjunctivitis. Ever had it? Probably. But just in case you haven't, the main symptom is a copious discharge of gooey eye-crud. The gooey eye-crud then hardens into bright yellow eye-crust, matted into the sufferer's eyelashes like some kind of naturally occurring cement.

Conjunctivitis is a fucker. A stupid, crusty, pain in the arse which stops babies from being able to open their eyes properly.

It is highly contagious, which means you can't go to the party you are supposed to attend, in case your baby rubs his eyes and then pokes another baby in the face, passing on the condition.

It means you have to go and see the nice, but slightly odd, pharmacist who tells you the same thing OVER AND OVER AGAIN FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES.

But the worst thing is trying to administer the eye drops which the slightly odd pharmacist furnished you with.

Here is my step by step guide:

It's a two person job. Or a one person with six hands job. If you don't have a second person available to help you, I suggest calling in a favour. Or collapsing into a heap, sobbing.

Maintaining the element of surprise is key. The drops should be concealed in a pocket for as long as possible.

Sing. Whatever song may prevent the baby from sensing the imminent invasion of his personal space.

"Yakki yakki yoggi, goo goo gee, bah bah bah, beep beep noo see…"

Feel wracked with guilt as your baby looks up at you with eyes overflowing with love (and eye-crud, obviously).

Have your assistant pin the thing you love most in the world down, holding his head still. Wonder how his expression manages to convey disappointment, rage and betrayal all at the same time.

Prise open his eyelids, which seem to be clamped shut with similar strength to that of a crocodile snapping at an unfortunate swimmer. Make a mental note to wear earplugs next time you have to do this.

Swear at whatever hateful BASTARD made the eyedrop bottle from such thick plastic that squeezing the liquid out is nearly impossible.

Feel relief as a drop finally lands in the eye, followed by dismay as it is immediately washed away by the flood of tears your baby is producing.

Once you've repeated the last few steps for the other eye, perform all your best parental distraction techniques in order to calm your irate baby.

Spend the rest of the day considering whether babies are susceptible to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Have I missed a really easy alternative method? Could I have cured the conjunctivitis with liberal applications of witchcraft and fairy dust? Will my baby ever trust me again?

Season

When you finish reading this post, I'd like you to do something for me. Is that okay? You probably want to know what it is first, before you agree to it. What I want you to do is close your eyes.

Close your eyes, not tight, just enough to keep the real world outside for a minute.

Think a warm thought. Imagine the heat of a mid morning sun hitting your torso. You're wearing a dark top, so the warmth spreads out and envelopes you. Perhaps there's the slightest hint of your skin starting to react with a prickling of sweat. There's a slight breeze too, so the sweat is welcome, not unpleasant. It's not too hot, but the main thing is that it's definitely not cold.

There is a new light, and it is a deep, golden yellow. It suits the temperature perfectly. There isn't even a suggestion of blueness to it.

Everything you can hear is clear and sharp, as if the new light is a better conductor for the sound. It's all a few feet closer than it was, and it's no longer hidden behind a closed door or a pane of glass. Infused with the warmth and the light, all the sounds you hear seem good. A scrunch of gravel under a car tyre, the screech of a bird, the breeze through the leaves.

This is how I felt today.

This is how I felt sat in a nondescript office on a run down trading estate.

This is how I felt because spring is coming.

One

*Blows out candle* *Eats slab of cake*

Yes, hard to believe it, but this little blog of mine is one year old today.

Like most, I suspect, I started blogging on a bit of a whim. It was the last day of a week off work, the last week I'd have off work before becoming a father. It was raining. I was bored.

I wrote this post, hit the publish button and commenced my journey. I was quite surprised to find a few people actually read it. Whoever you were, thanks.

Those first few posts were awkward, stilted. They make me cringe when I look back on them now. A review of a TV programme? For funk's sake.

I don't know whether the posts got any better, but more people started reading them, which was nice. I even started to get some comments. I went out and met some other bloggers on a night out in Bristol.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised that the best thing to happen to this blog was the birth of Cam. I wrote about his arrival, I wrote about his first night at home. I had two months of writing posts for my baby blog without a baby. It was much easier once he turned up.

Babies do loads of stuff that's great for blogging about. Some of which is pretty staple stuff. For a long time, my most read post was this one about poo. I've also done dummies. Standard.

As much as I love talking about Cam, I'm also (increasingly, it seems) a grumpy lefty, so on occasion I blurt out a bit of a political post too. By blog's bestest ever day in terms of stats was the one where I posted about David Cameron's parenting classes.

Time has marched on, and Cam has become ever more mobile and demanding of attention (selfish, these babies). The prolific early days of posting something nearly every day seem a long time ago. I've considered stopping this blog completely at times. But I still enjoy it when I write a post, still enjoy the comments I get. Still love being part of the enormous community of bloggers.

I really didn't think, when I wrote that first post, that I'd still be doing this a year later. I'd like to thank everyone who has read a post, everyone who has ever retweeted something I've written, subscribed to the blog, left a comment or said something nice about it. This little corner of internet has been a big part of my life for the last twelve months, but it wouldn't have been if no-one had engaged with it.

Oh, and I suppose this is probably a good time to mention that I'd quite like some nominations in the MAD Blog Awards please. New Blog or Baby Blog seem to be the ones for me (although if you want to nominate me for best writer or just outright best blog I wouldn't complain...) The nomination form is here. Vote for me and earn my eternal love and gratitude. I'll also throw in your choice of a hug (I'm good at them) or an emphatic high five (I'm good at those too) should we ever meet.

*goes back to chasing a baby around the house*

Horse

Unless you've had your head buried firmly in a suitable medium for the burying of heads for the last little while, you'll probably have heard about the discovery of horse DNA in various products being sold in British supermarkets.

All the products (so far) where the erroneous equine ephemera have been detected were being sold as beef.

Some of the products had just a smattering of horse. Horse seasoning. Essence of horse. Beef burgers with a side order of Black Beauty's bollocks. Hold on, was Black Beauty a boy horse? I don't know.

Now, the fine people of the FSA (Food Standards Agency, not Financial Standards Authority) have discovered that a Findus Beef Lasagne on sale contained 100% horse meat. That's ALL THE MEAT, percentage fans! Blimey.

I have been massively enjoying the assorted reactions to this piece of news. Here are some of them:

1.Lots of Members of the Public - "OMFG! Horse! In our burgers? That is DISGUSTING! I don't eat horse. I eat cow."

Well. Yes. Because you live in the UK you are not accustomed to viewing horse meat as part of your diet. But, if you lived somewhere else you may well have eaten it. In my opinion, meat is meat. I'd eat a free range guinea pig if it was cooked nicely. If you're not going to be outraged about consuming one type of meat, it's a bit silly to be outraged about eating another. I bet horse tastes good.

2.(Some) Vegetarians and Vegans - "Hahahaha, that's what you get, stupid meat eaters! Bet you wish you were as clever and brilliant as us. We knew AGES AGO that you'd end up eating horse. Serves you right."

Fair enough. But I like meat. It's tasty, and I'm not sufficiently motivated by animal welfare to stop eating it on those grounds.

I would probably rather eat a vegetable lasagne than one of Findus' finest though, so perhaps you're onto something.

3.Tesco - "Oh fuck, we've just lost £300 million from the value of our corporation in a day."

Ha ha fucking ha, Tesco. I dislike you a lot, and hope that many more misfortunes befall you.

4.Lots of (Sensible) Members of the Public - "Erm, this is a bit worrying, do the people producing our food have no control over what's actually going into it? Is this all a monumental balls up? Or has someone, somewhere, decided it's okay to put something completely different in the box?"

This seems as good a time as any to mention Soylent Green.

Who knows why this has happened? Someone, somewhere does. Perhaps eventually the investigation will uncover how it happened. Perhaps not.

One possible reason is cost.

Food, you may have noticed, is getting kinda pricey.

We get leaflets through the door from the government's "Change for Life" campaign with tips on how to eat better for less money.

Eat more vegetables! Vegetables are cheap!

No, they're not.

Last time I went shopping I bought two leeks: £1.71. That's about 660g of leeks. Leeks have twenty-five calories per 100g. So that means the two leeks contained roughly 165 calories. For £1.71.

That is not cheap, when a Findus Beef Lasagne is £1.60 for 360g and 463 calories.

What IS cheap is shit food.

Shit food is cheap, and cheap food is shit.

Real, good food is expensive. It also doesn't contain the parts of the animal which you can sweep off the floor once you've fired a high pressure water hose at its carcass once all the real meat has been sliced off it using more conventional butchery.

Anyone who buys cheap, processed meat products and believes that they've never eaten an animal's arsehole is probably kidding themselves.

Here, in my opinion, is the real problem: there are a huge number of people in this country who do not have a choice about what they eat.

They need to buy the £1.60 Horse Bum Lasagne because they need the 463 calories. They don't have time or inclination to make the cheap, healthy food, because the cheap, shit food is rammed in their faces every time they go to the supermarket.

The supermarkets won't think twice about selling their customers eyeballs and arseholes as long as it makes them some profit.

So, what's the answer?

I don't know. Maybe you do and you'd like to pop it in my comment box?

Future

I am thirty years old. I have been for about six months now. It's fine, except I get more spots now than I did as a teenager. That hardly seems fair.

Anywoos. A lot of stuff changes in thirty years. When I was little most people's homes didn't have computers, and the ones you saw in films filled entire rooms. If Terry and Mavis from No.35 had wanted one of those computers they'd have had to build an extension on their house.

Plus, it would have been pointless, because what use is a computer the size of the average dining room when you can't even go online? Or play Sonic The Hedgehog. Or even Minesweeper.

Thank Crunchie the computer is one of the few things where humans (possibly Americans) haven't decided that bigger is better. We'd be living inside our PCs by now. Plus, PC World would need its own planet.

Computers are pretty awesome. They do lots of amazing things which would take our brains nearly an eternity to complete. They do those things in a few minutes. Computers have probably bought us more time than any other invention (maybe the wheel has done more, I'm not sure). They'll eventually get their payback by becoming self aware, rising up against us and using us as batteries (like in the Matrix) or as target practice (like in Terminator).

But, before they can do that, they need to make us feel all worthless and apathetic.

They've made a start. They're doing it right now, in a supermarket near you.

Before this weekend, the ASDA near my office had twelve self service tills. You know, the unstaffed things you see old people shouting at when you go shopping? When I went to ASDA today, they'd got some new ones. Installed recently, they weren't operational yet. They stood, silently displaying a "STOP" sign on their screens. Ranks of them, like an army, ready and waiting to incite violence (perhaps by telling me there is "an unexpected item in the bagging area". NO THERE ISN'T YOU BASTARD. IT'S A BAG!)

There are now forty of them.

Because they weren't working, the human operated tills were rather busy. I thought, perhaps, the people operating the tills would be pleased by this. Their slide into obsolescence momentarily paused while Tom the IT guy reconfigured the servers. Or something.

In fact, the one who served me seemed genuinely annoyed about being busy.

How will those same staff feel once their manager tells them they won't have a till to sit at anymore because they're all being replaced by automated ones?

How will the managers feel, when their managers tell them the automated tills don't really need someone to carry out their appraisals?

How will the rest of us feel when our own jobs start looking like they may be at risk from the advance of technology?

Pah! It could never happen, right?

Well, perhaps not. But I wouldn't bet against it.

Remember all those highly paid, impossible to replace traders at investment banks? You know, the ones we all got a bit shouty at a while back for getting massive bonuses?

Well, it turns out the computers have come for some of them too:

"UBS AG, Switzerland's biggest bank, fired its head of credit-default swaps index trading, David Gallers, last week, with no plan to fill the position, according to two people familiar with the matter. Instead, the bank replaced Gallers with computer algorithms that trade using mathematical models, said the people, who asked not to be identified because moves are private…
UBS's algorithm, which can trade as much as $250 million of the Markit CDX North America Investment Grade index and $50 million on the speculative-grade benchmark in one transaction, was introduced last month, the people said." - Bloomberg

Hmm.

Who knows where this is going? When Cam is my age will there be any jobs left for anyone? Should I be instructing him to train in some obscure skill which can't be performed by a computer? (suggestions on a handwritten postcard please)

Perhaps it's just time for us to take the initiative, rise up against the machines before they rise up against us? Go now, Comrade, do your duty, take a hammer to your Hoover, dismantle your dishwasher, incapacitate your iPad!

The revolution will not be televised, but it might be televisions.