the corner office

Having lived in the UK for a few years and seeing this PR dude pop up like a meerkat every time someone's in the news for dodginess, I have a simple opinion: if someone hires Max Clifford, they did it.

Two things are a given in a UK winter. One: if it snows, it'll will cause transport chaos and two: people will bitch like hell about it and what is the country coming to etc etc.

Thing is, the UK has a handful of snow-filled days each winter, and as far as I can tell, this kind of snow is somewhat uncharacteristic. I suspect if the UK had the kind of winter where snow fell in November and didn't stop falling until February, then the country would've sorted out the snow thing a long time ago. Rail companies wouldn't use third-conductor trains where the contacts run along the ground and can get covered in snow and frozen over all the time. There'd be plenty of infrastructure and equipment to keep roads cleared, and public services would have their snow procedures down pat.

It would also cost a lot of money. Sure, the snow costs the economy a billion a day, and people get upset, but that's only half the equation. If it cost the economy 2 billion a year to be as snow-ready as people would like, would it be worth it? Where do you break even? How much of an increase in rail fares or council tax would people be willing to pay for the snow problem to just go away?

Of course, if I was one of the people stuck on the Orpington or Pett's Wood trains last night (these being the two stops up from ours), I might be singing a different tune.

Cold it may be, but all it takes is the thrill of the snow to make the cold-grumps go away. When I left for work this morning the snow was an inch or two deep, by the time I got home and after a full day's snowing it looked like it was getting closer to a foot deep in Bickley. It snowed the whole day in the City but nothing settled.

Amazingly, my train arrived on time this morning. By this evening SouthEastern Fail was back to form and everything was fecked. It's not so much that trains are delayed or that trips are cancelled, it's that everything just falls apart. Trains are announced as being on time until 15 minutes after they should've arrived, after which they get marked as cancelled. Or phantom journeys that appear and disappear.

I made my way from Cannon Street, which was just borked but at least orderly, to London Bridge which was outright mayhem. The platforms were packed, the concourses were crammed, it was a mission just to get from one platform to another. A fight nearly broke out in the concourse, people were aggro, a total mess. Even when a train did arrive, it was already bursting at the seams from the earlier stops before anyone from London Bridge could squeeze on. And on top of all of that, the stupid-ass "this is an important safety announcement..." looping endlessly. I eventually gave up and made my way back to Charing Cross where at least I got onto a train, got a seat, and was finally home an hour and a half late.

But as I say, the thrill of trudging home from the station through the snow made it all worthwhile. First snow of the year. Yay!

I don't know if it's because I've lost weight with all the cycling, or whether it's because I'm getting older, or because I've got short hair now. Whatever it is, I'm finding the cold a lot more biting this year.

I'm going for the hair, personally. My ears, my neck, my whole head, more exposed. It's hard to feel warm when it feels like your brain is being deep frozen.

I don't know what I think about the Wikileaks saga. Anyone who's read a spy novel or thriller or two knows our uneventful lives plod along thanks to lots of stuff that happens out of sight and out of mind. I think the world would be a better place with some dirty laundry aired, but is it true for everything in the laundry bag?

This, however, does put it in perspective:

Nor is the material classified top secret, being at a level that more than 3 million US government employees are cleared to see, and available on the defence department's internal Siprnet.

So anyone who's read a spy novel or thriller or two knows that any country with a halfway competent intelligence service knows all about what the USA thinks about them, already. The publicity might be embarassing, and the public glare may yield some interesting outcomes in future, but unless the mobs start upping pitchforks, calling it a 'global diplomatic crisis' is probably pushing things a bit. Lots of people doing the dance and protesting on cue, and then business as (sort-of) usual.

There are two things I wonder about. The first is how soon it will be (if not already) before governments start 'leaking' what they want people to see? Second, this is 250,000 documents, these sorts of leaks are just the start of what it means to live in the Information Age. There's already too much data for us to digest, where to from here?

The weather forecast says "light snow" at 6 tomorrow morning. So even though I know it's just going to be some drizzle with attitude, I'm all excited.

(Update: pfffft. Let's see what the weekend brings.)

Oh boy, how much more fun would UK politics be if someone like Sarkozy was kicking around:

Mr Sarkozy is then reported to have launched into a tirade about press ethics and the use of unnamed sources. "You say ridiculous things. You check nothing," he said to the journalist who asked the question.

"I have nothing against you but it seems that you are a paedophile. I am personally convinced of that fact. I have spoken to the security services but I won't tell you which ones. I have seen someone but it was just a verbal exchange. But now I am personally convinced that you are a paedophile."

After a stunned silence, the briefing moved on to other subjects. Before he left, President Sarkozy is reported to have said to the journalists: "So long paedophiles, see you tomorrow."

(I think I understand the point he was trying to make but it's far more entertaining to picture him just insulting someone).

I stepped out the office at lunchtime and thought to myself 'this weather is not benign.' Yet I could not say 'this weather is malign.' Why is that? And if some things can be malignant, why can't other things be benignant?

So aaaanyway, I started a new job a few weeks ago. My previous gig was awesome, and I hope the new one will be even more awesome. So far so good.

The big deal I guess is that it's in The City, which in London/UK-speak means I'm now working 'in finance', and more particularly, in the centre of London. My friends are now teasing me about being a banker. Given how well bankers are supposedly paid and how they get to feast on the tenderest flesh of newborn kittens and stuff, all I can say is 'I wish'.

Still, my blogging policy has been to avoid talking about my job or my 'industry.' Easy to avoid talking about my job, but now my 'industry' is something I've had great fun writing about in the past and I'm not sure I want to give it up. I think, should the occasion to express an opinion arise, I'll choose my words and tone carefully.

The City itself, physically and sociologically, is quite something. More on that another time.

Coming from a country where marrying out of community of property has been a simple matter of ticking the right box on a marriage certificate since the 60s (iirc), it's a bit hard to get one's head around the big news in the UK this week that an Appeal Court has finally recognised pre-nups.

Much navel-gazing and harrumphing has ensued. A sad day for marriage, oh the humanity, lawyers are evul, yadda yadda.

I have two thoughts: nearly half of all marriages don't last, but people want the law to pretend this isn't the case. Second, getting married is one of the most significant life choices one makes, but the thinking seems to be that people can't be trusted to negotiate and agree the terms of these unions themselves.

Crazy.