Pull Your Pants Up

Right another rant… this time against the almost ubiquitous male fashion trend of wearing your jeans/jogging pants so low that not only are the boxers on display but your arse is hanging out for all to see.

Guys – you don’t look cool and, unless I am corrected by female readers, it doesn't look hot either. There is a reason why we call them underpants – because they go under your pants!

In the words of the Denis Leary – “there’s 27 inches of underwear there, what the F**k is that all about, will someone please explain it to me”.

The ‘trend’ began in US gang culture but originated in the US prison system where belts are confiscated because they can be used to commit suicide or to strangle someone. Thus baggy jeans would fall down around the hips. Black and Hispanic gang culture mimicked this trend and eventually it became a global phenomenon. But I’m sorry when you are wandering around a shopping mall in conservative Malaysia as I was 2 weeks ago andyou spy scrawny Chinese kids with their jeans around their knees IT HAS GONE TO FAR!

So ‘Pull up Yur Pants’

And watch this… classic stand-up -- skip to 1 minute 14 when he starts his rant about coffee :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-fvEuu_90Q

Litter, Gum and Britain's Aesthetically Awful Streets

OK time for a rant I think.

Next time you take a walk on the streets of any sizeable UK town or city look down. Firstly you’ll see what an increasingly untidy place this once-sceptred isle has become. Seems people are quite happy to dump any and indeed all their miscellaneous crap in public. Since I started doing this I’ve noted not just the usual suspects: aluminium cans, plastic bottles and crisp packets but random pieces of clothing! A sock here, a T-shirt there! Extraordinarily inexplicable!

Once upon a time we had a very prominent anti-litter campaign – ‘Keep Britain Tidy’. If anyone knows what happened to this please shout. And its not just me. An American friend of mine who is studying for his doctorate here quipped that Bill Bryson’s famous travel book should be renamed ‘Notes from a Messy Country’. Personally I’d like to go around to the homes of the worst offenders and have the crap they’ve chucked dumped in their bedroom or garden – mind you they are probably a dump anyway. I’ve written repeatedly to my local councillors who basically do nothing except trumpet meaningless initiatives. I have specifically asked for details of how many fixed penalties have been issued in the last 12 months – surprisingly they never got back to me with that.

Anyway look again and look harder and you’ll see that almost every pavement is pock-marked by old chewing gum. Take a close look – its not the odd random piece but 1000s of pieces of the damned stuff. Again no excuse except bone-idleness and a f**k you attitude. First of all -- WAKE UP PEOPLE CHEWING GUM IS NOT BIODEGRADABLE YET.

Solution? Well we could go the way of Singapore and ban the stuff, although even I accept that this is somewhat excessive. Alternatively we can fine people heavily for just chucking the stuff/spitting it out (all those cameras have to be good for something) until research into biodegradable gum produces a viable alternative. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/pda/A172342?s_id=10

And finally – while you are looking at the pavement please note what a hotchpotch patchwork quilt of uneven concrete/tarmac it has now become. Since the privatisation and de-regulation of the utilities these companies have been free to dig up the roads whenever they choose to make repairs, change mains, lay new cable, lay broadband, phone lines etc etc. One road in Kent was dug up 37 times in 18 months – that’s every fortnight on average!! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2720345.stm

Sometimes councils spend £1000s putting in new surfaced pavements and roads only for the utility companies to dig them up straight away. In Huddersfield 2 weeks ago a water company dug up the newly surfaced road within 48 hours!

So no aesthetically pleasing pavements in the near future! Although I am told that councils have new powers now to regulate this, I don’t expect them to start enforcing it soon – but this is a democracy and since councillors do need to be elected (even if by fewer and fewer people) if it irritates you as much as me – e-mail them and give ‘em hell! http://www.writetothem.com/

900 months and plane cams

Decided to launch a 2nd blog to keep this one more frivolous and light-hearted.

So if you want to join me in some pondering on the meaning of life click on my blog link on the right.

Can't believe the kids are back for the new Semester tomorrow and I'm still jet-lagged from my 16 hour journey back from Kuala Lumpur via Dubai yesterday -- and I have a 9am lecture to give!

On a separate note -- very worried by the introduction of flight cams on planes. Do we really need or want to see the runway on the big screen as the plane approaches for landing? I know I don't? And why do people clap when the plane lands? I mean that's the pilot's job? Do these people clap when their taxi driver gets them to where they are going or if their train arrives on time or heaven forbid early? And when exactly would they boo?

Later...

Southeast Asia is revolting

Normal service will be resumed soon!

Currently in Malaysia on a research trip but clearly chose the wrong country to go to this summer as all the excitement is taking place to the north in Thailand where Thai students, unionists and the middle classes appear to have decided that they don't like democracy anymore because the poor keep voting for the 'wrong' party and electing politicians that they don't like.

How terribly inconvenient of them!

Guys think you need to go back to school and look up the meaning of democracy. I had to live through 18 years of a government I didn't like while most of the world has had to put up with 8 years of Geroge W Bush because a narrow majority of Americans preferred him to the democrats.

Anyway don't be surprised to see Thailand's 19th coup take place soon -- ostensibly to 'save' the country from chaos and to write another constitution which will again try to keep those pesky poor people out.