Song of the Week

This is frigging great href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D2o8F2MOuI&feature=player_embedded">

I came across the Milbank protest after work, which is just across the river from where I work. I could hear them, and we all watched them ripping bits out of the Tory party lobby.

This is one slogan I saw.

The question that comes to mind with all this talk of 'fight back': against what?

Against 'Nasty Nick' Clegg? 'Ideological' cuts? Neoliberalisation of education?

Or could it be the guy that sets the low Chinese exchange rate? The aging population? The baby-boomer generation? Too many people going to Uni? Or existential angst?

Personally I go with the latter group of answers. I understand why the first group is an easier target, they at least fit on a sign.

Gareth Bale

I have really not got in to football this season. It seems inevitable that Chelsea will win the title, and they'll win it by no more or less than a moderately tantalising 5-7 point margin. I felt the same last year, but thought Man Utd were only slightly less good and went through the motions of anticipation. Now I feel they've slipped. Part of my apathy so far is the fact that The Blues are no longer my Bete Noir, an honour now held by Man City, and also I generally think that Essien, Malouda and Hiddink make quite a cool cosmopolitan set up.

There's another reason for my lack of interest, one held my many fans. Wayne Rooney. The machinations orchestrated by his agent leading up to his contract renewal are possibly a good case study in game theory, but they're also incredibly slimy, disloyal and greedy. With all his other problems, you can't help feeling that we'll look on his case as an example of the impossibility of extreme wealth providing contentment. Man Utd have got him though, but I think he's a a mistake. Rooney's a bad apple and I can't believe he'll help the team and unless things are really much nicer than we think, Fergie has totally lost grip of his own adage that no player's bigger than the team. Things are bright in his absence: the new Mexican guys looking good and Berbatov's been on form and they've won in his 'injury' absence.

But not everything's gloomy in British football. The new golden boy superstar is of course Gareth Bale, who has emerged for Spurs in juxtaposition to Rooney, Terry et al. He seems like a normal modest guy. Then also, at eighteen is another star in the making, Jack Wilshire. When he was about 8, and I was 14, the young Wilshire ran humiliating rings round me during a football encounter in Hitchin. For the sake of football in this country, I hope they survive the media and they live up to expectations of them.

Rally to Restore Sanity

There were two things that struck me from yesterday's march on DC.

The awards for fear were pretty well deserved. I've just seen The Social Network, and in one way or another, as a child of generation Facebook, I appreciate how Mark Zuckerberg has done his bit to preserve fear. We hear how much the guys in Palo Alto are trying to preserve our privacy and now for instance, as I noticed this week, one can now observe another pair of fbk friend's 'friendship'.

And then there's Anderson Cooper the purported face of reasonableness in the US news media. Of course he's the epitome of bland. Not only that, after all dumbing down is no crime, I once saw the man in the flesh when I was in DC. He seemed a little douchey, as Americans would say, turning away from some respectful, albeit somewhat hysterical fans who saw him in the crowd.

Second and more important though is the impression that Jon Stewart is just a nice guy. Despite the lampooning and mockery, you generally feel he is sincere and good in spirit. Very different to the British cynicism we have in the UK, evinced by the likes of Ian Hislop. And isn't the niceness the key to understanding Stewart's world view? The man's a liberal, and liberals are generally the nice people in the world; those people who have faith in people to live their lives for good or ill. Those liberals who are not gripped by existential fear- fear of the poor, or of investment bankers.

Falling Backwards

TS Elliot was forgetting something when he described April as the cruelest month. Over the last few weeks, daylight hours seem to have shrunk quickly in ten-minute chunks, day after day, since October began.
Oh well. I think we tend to underestimate the importance of sunshine in our lives. It's not only important for Vitamin D, and the superficial glow of a tan, but for a whole range of hormonal reactions. Sunshine in the eye is very important for energy, for morale and optimism. In its absence, so many of us Northern Europeans get Seasonal Affective Disorder, once the clocks go back and the sun clocks off at 4.30pm, over the winter months. It's a big part of the reason for the miserable attitude that we have in this country.
But there's no reason to be gloomy. I've just picked up an interesting book on coping with the phenomenon. There are lots of obvious tips, including sun beds, savouring August (will remember for next year), a daily hour outdoors (rain or shine), exercise, good food, and tropical January holidays. I'll see what other genius insights they might provide, but in the meantime i'll maintain my membership of the "Movement to move Britain to the Caribbean" facebook group.

Canada

At the weekend, I took a 10-hour bus ride across the Canadian border to Toronto, my third trip to the USA's northern neighbour. The world's 216th most-densely populated country is sometimes overlooked as a possible source of excitement by the non-ski enthusiast tourist, but after my experiences, I beg now to differ.

It is not the scenery that I find particularly exciting (though I probably would): I've not battled bears in the Yukon, or Canoed up the St Lawrence River, or made a pilgrimage to the Field of Abraham. Though I love scenic Montreal and realise how difficult it is not to fall in love with the many beautiful Quebecan women, it is the character of the people that I find most interesting about Canada. Or to be more specific, quite how UNLIKE Americans, Canadians are.
Until relatively recently, I could not tell them apart. Of course, wishing to avoid offence, I would try and remember to ask people with North-American accents, if they were from the USA OR Canada (Americans being unoffended by this) But basically, to the European ear there's little difference between an Ohioan or Ontarian accent.

There are two key tricks to picking up a Canadian accent, that I have now picked up upon. First, the way they say words like about, house and out with an uh sound, rather than auh, as Americans do. The second key difference is their tendency to liberally sprinkle their sentences with the exclamation "eh"'. This is important. To generalise, Canadians (like we Brits) are less keen on being seen to show off excessive personal confidence. This national expression, illustrating a sense of diffidence, is indicative of it. Americans (generally) are positive, expressive and confident. This isn't necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, but it is a big cultural difference from Britain and Canada. Like Brits, Canadians have a more sober attitude, they are a bit cynical, drier in wit and not constantly peppy with enthusiasm.
The funny thing with Canada is that it is just up the road from America and these differences are more stark.

Canada has the large advantage over the United States of having had a good century's worth of extra fostering by the British Empire, before it became independent. This means that British attitudes are shown more obviously in things like Government policy (a more European style role of the state( eg health care for poor people). Other characteristics it shares are Imperial sized pint glasses (25% bigger than those in the US), pronouncing the letter 'Z' like 'zed', rather than the US way, zee. It still has the Queen as a Head of State (I can't understand why Britain still seems to want a monarchy, let alone why another country 3-6,000 miles away would want to retain it, but anyway) and it still has Elizabeth on all its currency.

An important aspect of the Canadian psyche is quite how anti-American they are - and unlike most of the rest of the world which has a more existential phobia to the US - it probably has a more legitimate motivation. Americans basically don't really care that much about Canada and often look down on it as irrelevant. They tend not to regard it as having much of a reason for being, other than being an American backyard. People in the US are extremely ignorant of what's going on north of its border. It was interesting in October (just before the US Presidential election) that there was virtually no reference in the US News media - at all - that Canada was in the middle of a tightly fought national election.

Talk to Canadians about the US, and you often get a sense of animosity. "Americans basically treat us like ***t", a drunken homeless man at Toronto bus station tossed my spare change back across the street at me when I said that I had no more money as I was heading back to New York. When I first arrived in a Gas Station in Quebec a few weeks ago, my toilet cubicle had the words "F**k of USA" drawn across it.

In the lead up to the Iraq war, when anti-Americanism was far more de rigeur, there was an interesting analysis of the Candian attitude in the Guardian and examples of it. Also, for obvious reasons, Candians abroad often have the misfortune of being mistaken for Americans. They must have had a few problems travelling abroad in the last few years: I remember riding on the Picadilly Line a few years ago with a school group from Canada. All the kids seemed to have very large Maple leafs stitched on to their luggage, presumably by their anxious teachers and school teachers, apparently keen - like the Red Cross painting their building rooftops during a bombing raid - to be clearly seen as neutral parties.

Well, things aren't so bad between the two countries, they obviously have a lot in common and need to get along, considering all the trade they do but this little neurosis is interesting (and quite amusing).

Any way, I have now been to Canada's three biggest cities. Torontarians describe their city as being "New York on dial up" which is still a massive exagerration of how exciting the city is. It's built up in the middle, (to me) surprisingly cosmopolitan with a big Chinese population and the city has a decent music and artistic scene (lots of good grafitti around the city). It's a much cheaper and far cleaner version of New York. It lacks the buzz of New York, the sense of urgency and energy you get on every Manhattan street corner, but in Toronto's defence, nowhere does. All in all, it strikes me as a pretty decent place to live.

Though I like Toronto, I greatly prefer Montreal in Quebec for a weekend visit. Scenic and pretty, a lot more spread out and laid-back than NY, but with a good variety of cultural activities and business life to make life more than interesting. I knew that it was the world's biggest French speaking city after Paris and Kinshasa but I was still a little surprised by quite how Francophone it was. Though there are English speaking nightlife enclaves and though McGill University is in the city and Anglophone, most people seem to speak French. The Quebecois version of the language has apparently got a few vernacular differences from that of France, and though they lack the Gallic flair and effusive facial expressions of French-French speakers, it is a surprising contrast from the rest of the country. Quebec has a very different sense of identity to the rest of the country, and only voted against independence by a percentage point during the 1995 referendum, Cosmopolitan Montreal was in fact decisive in voting against independence.

You can tell a lot about country by its politics. Canadian politics is often characterised as being more European and socialised. That said, A lot of American fiscal conservatives talk about Canada as a good model, considering the relative state of its own deficit. Canada worked hard during the mid-90s to pay a large deficit off by cutting government spending in certain areas. I can't help thinking that it was something to do with a more level-headed approach to spending. In the US, people there is a more optimistic attitude that you can carry on spending and having everything and as such, less aversion to debt than in the rest of the world. In the Bush years, the government started an expensive war whilst cutting taxes; in a different manner, but with the same mindset the Obama administration has pretended it can spend lots of money and cut tax unsustainably.

So, Canadians realistic and grounded in reality? A crude stereotype like all stereotypes are. But they generally are much more European and a trip to Canada felt like a weekend at home, after all this time in the US. Good cultural acclimitisation, for returning to GB at the end of Sep!

Difference number x - Shoulders toes and knees, I'm 36 degrees

On first arriving in the United States, one thing I simply failed to understand about the US is its clinging to incomprehensible forms of imperial measurement. Fluid ounces, Pounds etc caused me befuddlement; but evoking the most confusion, was the exclusive use of Fahrenheit during The Weather forecast. 40 degrees a COLD day, talk about a culture shock!

Granted, we Britons stick to a complicated mix of feet and metres, litres and our school teaching moved in to the logical world of Metric about three decades ago. Surely the country of modernity the New World could have moved on from something so anachronistic, by now?

Well, my opinion has kind of evolved a little - if only in regards to American dedication to Farenheit. The big difference between oC and oF is that Farenheit is it is a whole lot more precise - there are more Farenheit degrees for every degree of celsius (twice as many degrees F between boiling and freezing). I have found this really helpful in a city like New York where the weather changes like crazy - rapidly alternating, not just been seasonal extremes, but also between days and indeed, after hours.

This might seem obvious of course - the idiot-proof beauty of Centigrade is knowing that a hundred is boiling and freezing is zero. However, with familiarity Farenheit is just as easy to understand. Once you have a few meteographical yardsticks that you can contemplate, it is easy to comprehend. Freezing is 32oF, in the Spring you need to know 50oF = 10oC , you know it's hot when it's in the 80s (87oF=30oC), 212oF degrees in water and it should be bubbling (that's boiling point) if you live in Canada in January, you know things are really bad when the two converge (at negative 40oC).

However, Farenheit is not so useful when your in the Kitchen: precision is not so necessary when you want to decide how much heat you need to bake a Potato, or more likely, work on your Pumpkin Pie. In that case, I recommend Celsius.