For the makers, the doers and the savers.

Posted on March 21, 2014 by tashfriday

Good morning Tash Appreciators,

This week saw the UK’s Chancellor, George Osborne, deliver his budget for the coming year. In the main, the headlines in response to his speech were taken up by better-than-predicted economic growth; an increase in the amount of money that an individual can earn tax-free; and an increase – to £15,000 – of the amount an individual can put into an ISA (a savings account) tax free each year.

Mr Osborne said:

“We’re building a resilient economy. This is a Budget for the makers, the doers, and the savers.”

Before I throw my thruppence (soon to be known as the pound coin) into this conversation, I should be clear that I have a leaning towards egalitarianism and am therefore biased in this debate. That being said, I question whether this really is a budget for the makers, the doers and the savers.

In the UK, around 1.4 million people are employed in jobs that pay the minimum wage. If you’re over 21, the minimum wage means that you will earn at least £6.31 per hour, or a little over £11,000 (net of tax) per year.

That may sound acceptable but numerous employers disagree. They pay their staff a Living Wage, which is £7.45 per hour generally and £8.80 in London. The Living Wage is calculated by considering what a person must earn to have a minimum acceptable standard of living. On that basis, Mr Osborne is allowing 1.4 million people to be paid a wage which doesn’t even provide the most basic standard of living.

So why is this the case? Well, one answer to that question is that increasing the minimum wage by 39% in London and 18% everywhere else (i.e. to the level of the Living Wage) would be difficult for businesses to support. That’s all well and good, but I wonder whether, after a disastrous few years for our economy, our focus should be on things other than the concerns of businesses.

Last Friday, former Labour MP (he was an MP for 47 years), Tony Benn, died. Some will not have agreed with his politics but something he said has been on my mind this week:

“We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.”

I don’t have an issue with Osborne crafting a budget to support the makers, the doers and the savers, my issue is that he simply isn’t prepared to do it. He qualifies all his efforts by first testing them against their effect on business. If he really wanted to change society and help those who make, work and save, he’d pay them a wage which would give them a minimum acceptable standard of living, and then some.

In the end, this all comes down to justice, and whether the notion of justice is a pipe-dream that can ever come true. I say that it can, if we want it to.

This week’s Tash believed in justice, even when it was difficult and involved sacrifice and compromise. He may be a fictional character, but I still rate him higher than many of our real politicians. I give you Commissioner Gordon, of Gotham City and the Batman trilogy.

Have a great weekend folks!

What’s next?

How much?

Posted on March 14, 2014 by tashfriday

Good morning Tash Appreciators,

It appears that Spring is finally here! I was walking to work one morning this week and Pulp’s Sunrise started to play on my generic mp3 device. Although I didn’t do it outwardly, my insides were dancing much like Jarvis Cocker during his performances of this song:

For those not able to watch videos on YouTube, it goes a bit like this:

I was out with a couple of pals this week and we got to talking about whether, given the right amount of money, we would do any job. I have to admit, my attitude is that unless you’re doing a job about which you are passionate, or which is vocational, then earning the most you can should be your main objective. The contrary argument to that is, of course, that money can’t buy happiness and there are more important things in life than the cash in your pocket.

After strong arguments on both sides, I am just about ready to admit that my attitude was/is wrong. However, it took watching a TV programme and seeing a desperate man with a moustache to finally persuade me.

If I was to take my argument to it’s logical conclusion (and we all know that logic is the correct way to make an argument…), then I would do pretty much anything if the price was right. That begs the question, what would I be prepared to do for a pile of money like this:

Would I be prepared to work 7-days a week? Would I be prepared to sell drugs? Would I be prepared to kill my competitors? The answer to all of these questions is “no”. So where do I draw the line? That’s something I’ll have to work out.

I realised the error of my ways after sitting down to watch another episode of Breaking Bad. Fear not, I shall not spoil the plot, I merely point out that if I was purely motivated by cash, then I could end up behaving like one or more of the characters in that programme. I don’t want that, so one way or another, I’ll need to work out what my real motivations in life are. After all, I want to be able to look in the mirror and not see this man (however excellent his Tash may be) looking back at me – I don’t think he’s capable of dancing like Jarvis Cocker.

Have a great weekend folks!

As ever, the question on my mind is: what’s next?

Qubits and quiet moments

Posted on February 21, 2014 by tashfriday

Good morning Tash Appreciators,

I read two articles this week that blew my mind: one was about quantum computing and the other was about mindfulness.

The quantum computing article described a company called D-Wave that has produced a computer (known as the D-Wave 2) costing $10,000,000. The temperature of interstellar space is 80 times warmer than the temperature at which the D-Wave 2 operates and it looks like this:

The article describes how it works in detail but here’s the key part:

“Regular computers work with information in bits. Each bit can either be at 1 or 0 at any one time… Now imagine a computer that operates under quantum rules… Its bits could be 1, or 0, or 1 or 0 at the same time.”

This means that a computer using quantum bits can do far more calculations than one using regular bits. To be exact, the D-Wave 2, which has 512 quantum bits, could perform 2 to the power of 512 operations simultaneously. That’s more operations than there are atoms in the universe, by many orders of magnitude.

We’ve all seen how pervasive technology and computing have become in our lives. Many of us will have access to work emails at all times and it can sometimes feel like there is just too much information to process.

That’s where mindfulness comes in. It’s difficult to describe mindfulness but imagine training and developing your mind in the same way you train to develop your other muscles. Practicing mindfulness helps you to be “present” in a given moment and manage your thoughts.

To show how most of us struggle with that simple sounding task, take 20 seconds and try to clear your mind of all thoughts.

Didn’t work, did it? Thoughts about work or things you need to do will no doubt have popped into your head. You’ll also probably have found that the more you tried to clear your mind, the more those thoughts appeared. Mindfulness is aimed at helping you train your mind to acknowledge thoughts – but not dwell on them – and to allow you to focus on the task in hand.

My point this week is that many of us often feel like there are more operations going on in our head than there are atoms in the universe. That’s the price we pay for living in a connected society. All that being said, I’m comforted by the fact that, while some folk are striving to make technological advancements, others are striving to find methods which might help in alleviating the pressures on our minds.

This week’s Tash apparently – according to those in the know (i.e. not me!) – found quantum mechanics so counterintuitive that he thought the theories relating to it must either be wrong or incomplete. He also said this:

“The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.”

After trying to wrap my head around qubits and how to best find a quiet moment, I was glad to discover that even Albert Einstein struggled with comprehending the world around him.

Have a great weekend folks!

What’s next?

p.s. If you’re interested, there’s a free app called Headspace which is aimed at helping users become more mindful. Part of the app is a ten-day programme called “Take Ten” where users take ten minutes out of their day for ten days in an effort to get a basic understanding of mindfulness. I enjoyed it.

You better, you better, you bet!

Posted on February 14, 2014 by tashfriday

Good morning Tash Appreciators,

I was talking to a fellow Appreciator about how I couldn’t think of anything to write this week. Her one bit of advice was: “just don’t make it about Valentine’s Day.” The thing is, that is exactly what this week’s TF is going to be about.

I suspect that many of you will not be fans of Valentine’s Day. The usual complaint about that it’s a creation of the American greetings card industry. After a bit of reading, it’s clear that’s not the case. It apparently dates back to an early Christian festival celebration of Saint Valentinus. These days, it is far less “Americanised” than Halloween or Christmas.

I don’t mind there being a day set aside for people to show their affection for one another. My complaint is that, if you engage with Valentine’s Day, all you can do is meet expectations or be excruciatingly unoriginal.

If you’re in a relationship, you either have to make some kind of gesture (which, ordinarily, would be appreciated but on Valentine’s Day is seen as normal) or you do nothing and run the risk of inflicting upset upon your significant other.

The Who summed up this sorry state of affairs in “You Better You Bet” when Roger Daltrey sings:

“When I say I love you, you say ‘you better’

You better, you better, you bet!”

If you’re single, you might get texts from your single pals with dubious rallying cries lifted from Beyoncé songs (“all the single ladies” springs to mind). Worse still, you might receive condescending head tilts from those smug folk who offer consolation in the form of platitudes: “plenty of fish in the sea” etc.

At least all of us are in the same boat in a couple of respects: dating companies will be doing their utmost to buy our email addresses from any source – legitimate or otherwise – and will then endeavour to clog our inboxes with offers of free trials of their websites. Not only that, none of us will be able to go out for food as every restaurant will have bumped their prices up by a minimum of 50%.

There is, however, one group of people who won’t give Valentine’s Day a second thought: men with moustaches. Some of these men – the ones who really know how to rock their Tash – transcend the single v. relationship dynamic of Valentine’s Day because everyone appreciates them. Therefore, Valentine’s Day for them is just like any other. Here are some classic of examples of the sort of chaps I mean:

Clark Gable

Jean Dujardin

Errol Flynn

Have a great weekend folks!

What’s next?

Protest

Posted on February 7, 2014 by tashfriday

Good morning Tash Appreciators,

On Tuesday of this week, the Scottish Parliament passed a Bill which will allow same sex couples to marry. The passing of the Bill means that Scotland is catching up with England and Wales, where same sex couples will be able to marry by the end of March.

The rights of gay communities around the world are in sharp focus at the moment, particularly as the Winter Olympics formally open in Sochi today. The homophobic laws and attitudes of some in Russia (particularly President Putin) have attracted a great deal of criticism.

Some say that politics has no place in sport and there is merit in that point of view. After all, athletes cannot control the laws of the places where they are sent to compete. However, it’s also true that sport is a leveller and can be a real-life example of many of the qualities of human nature.

We’ve seen in the past that sport can be an ideal opportunity to challenge inequality. Think of Jesse Owens in 1936 (when Owens confounded Nazi propaganda by winning gold in three sprint events and also in the long jump) and in 1968 when Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised a fist in the air for Black Power (they said at the time that it was for human rights in general and that is reflected in the human rights badges which they and the Australian athlete, Peter Norman, wore on their jackets):

Given the iconic pictures which resulted from Smith and Carlos’ stance on the podium, it can be no surprise who this week’s Tash will be. This is Tommie Smith these days:

It’s not just people on the big stage that can be a catalyst for change. We all can be. Indeed, if change is ever to happen and take root, it has to happen at a local level as well in full view of the public. To conclude this week, I thought it might be useful to give an example of an individual who took a stand in a more personal way. This is a letter which Bertrand Russell sent to Oswald Mosley, the founder of the British Union of Fascists, in 1962:

I really appreciate the terms of this letter: it’s polite, concise, yet emphatic. I would urge everyone who discusses issues like gay marriage, or anything where people have strong feelings, to take the same approach. It’s not often that one person is always right or always wrong and the chances are that the person you’re talking too has something interesting to say, even if you disagree with most of their views.

Have a great weekend folks!

What’s next?

A wooden leg named Smith

Posted on January 24, 2014 by tashfriday

Good morning Tash Appreciators,

Many thanks for the texts and emails of complaint following last week’s re-post of an old TF. I was working on an Operation Zorro activity and that had to take priority. Hey, I’m not perfect.

Perfection is something that I have been reading and thinking about recently. Mainly this is because I’ve been reading the incredible book “Daring Greatly” by Brené Brown. The book covers a multitude of interesting topics but, for the purposes of this week’s TF, I’m just going to talk about perfection.

You often hear people saying that they are perfectionists. I assume they are trying to say that they pay attention to detail or that they are thorough. That’s all very laudable but it isn’t really being a perfectionist in the proper sense.

If I were a perfectionist, I’d never get out of the house in the morning. I would have to try over and over again to pour the milk perfectly onto my cereal; I’d spend until the end of time trying to iron a shirt perfectly; and I’d spend so long trying to make the perfect knot with my tie that the threads would eventually come apart in my hands. I may be wrong, but I don’t think human beings are capable of perfection. We can get close (for example, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or Jimmy Page’s solo in Stairway To Heaven) but nothing we create will ever be perfect.

That being said, I do think that we sometimes experience perfection. I’m thinking in particular of those moments when weather, company, music, time, speed, location (and every other factor you can imagine) conspire to create something which is perfect. I remember one moment in particular which I felt was perfection and thinking that I had to try and capture it somehow. It’s not great photography (although the sunburst sums up how I was feeling at the time) but this tht exact moment:

As we get older, we feel less free to enjoy ourselves and perhaps moments of perfection pass us by. We worry that things are going “too well” and that some disaster must befall us in order to balance the scales of life. Or we feel guilty that we’re happy when others are not. This weeks Tash lost the ability to enjoy life because he got wrapped up in his responsibilities and stresses. However, with a bit of help, he realised that life is best lived when you can laugh and enjoy the company of those around you. The man I’m referring to is Mr Banks from Mary Poppins:

I wonder if Mr Banks felt that the kite flying out of his hands was a perfect moment.

Have a great weekend folks – enjoy it! Maybe go and fly a kite or something?

What’s next?

Operation Zorro

Posted on January 10, 2014 by tashfriday

Good morning Tash Appreciators,

Happy New Year to you all.

We all know that January is traditionally the time to set targets for the year ahead. For my part, I have/am committed to making changes this year. Not because I think what I’m doing now isn’t worthwhile, or because I feel like I need to “improve” myself, but because I want to set a series of targets and I will be delighted when I hit them. It doesn’t matter what those targets are; all that matters is that I’ve set them and that I’m going to hit them.

To give myself a better chance of reaching my goals, I’ve been reading a bit about change. Although I risk incurring the wrath of Appreciators who are sick of hearing about cycling, I gained a good insight into the subject from Dave Brailsford, Team Principal of the wildly successful Team Sky. He describes his thinking as the “Triangle Of Change” and he says three elements are required:

1. You must be suffering enough, or the reward must be great enough, for you to engage with change.

2. You must believe that you are capable of change.

3. You must be committed to change.

What I take from this theory is that we won’t change simply because we feel that we should i.e. that feeling obliged to change isn’t enough. If we want to change, it has to be for ourselves. That seems healthy and sensible to me.

Although all three points of the triangle apply to me, I’ve decided to add another layer of carrot/stick. By sending out this TF, I’m also going out on a limb and saying that I’m committing to making these changes. This means that, if I fail, I’ll have to face you as well as myself. The added advantage to going out on a limb is that there’s a chance others will come out there with me. It’s always easier to attempt things with the help of others.

I have also decided to give this project a name: Operation Zorro. There are three reasons for this: it makes the whole thing “real” rather than just some jumbled ideas; Zorro has many qualities which I admire (the wiki page refers to him being a superb athlete, acrobat, tactician, horseman, swordsman, marksman, unarmed combatant, well-educated, wealthy, master of stealth with extensive scientific knowledge and advanced gadgets. No-one sees him coming); and, crucially, Zorro rocks a Tash:

Just one last point. I heard a quote (I don’t know where it originally came from) just before Christmas and it’s been buzzing around my head ever since:

“A year from now you’ll wish you’d started today.”

I’ve started already but you can start today, if you want.

Have a great weekend folks!

What’s next?

2014 and beyond – Part 1

Posted on December 13, 2013 by tashfriday

Good morning Tash Appreciators,

Welcome to the penultimate Tash Friday of 2013 – the first of a two-part Christmas Special. I’ll preface this week’s TF by saying that it may not seem all that festive but, fear not, it’ll all work out in the end.

I’ll start this week with a quote from Theodore Roosevelt, which was sent to me earlier this week:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

I know that many of our number have faced points in 2013 when they have felt very much like their faces are marred with dust and sweat and blood and when they can taste defeat. However, at the same time, the way in which those same people have conducted themselves after those points confirms the truth in what Roosevelt said.

Roosevelt was 42 when he took office: the youngest ever President. Becoming President also took him by surprise as he was sworn-in following the assassination of President McKinley. He must surely have felt at times that he was out of his depth.

However, just like all of those Appreciators who had to battle to get through 2013, Roosevelt did more than just survive – he thrived. His success was complete when he won a land-slide victory in the 1904 general election. Naturally, for a chap who was made of stronger stuff than the Average Joe, President Roosevelt wore an absolute stoater of a moustache:

The lesson which I will be taking into 2014, and beyond, is that our character is strengthened by adversity. This year may have been pretty rough, but as I will set out next week, there is plenty to be hopeful about as we head towards the New Year.

Just to finish this week, when I was reading up on Roosevelt, I found an interesting quote from Vice-President Thomas Marshall, who said after Roosevelt died in 1919:

“Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight.”

I thought that was great.

Have a great weekend folks!

#keepgoing

Black Friday

Posted on November 29, 2013 by tashfriday

Good morning Tash Appreciators,

Yesterday saw the United States come to a halt as people got together with family and friends for Thanksgiving. Today will see a fair few of those same people heading to malls and department stores to do their Christmas shopping. However, this isn’t any normal day of shopping, today will be the biggest shopping day of the year: Black Friday:

I had thought that Black Friday was just an American thing, but judging from the adverts on TV and the subject headings of the emails in my inbox, the hysteria has made its way over here. I saw it in person too – at a shopping centre earlier this week when, even at 9 pm, there were still thousands of people shopping for presents.

I don’t care what people spend their money on – it’s theirs, they earned it, they can spend it however they like. I’m not that interested in snooty arguments about consumerism, either. What struck me was that, in all probability, the people who are shopping on Black Friday or mid-week at shopping centres are not doing it for themselves, they’re surely buying Christmas presents for others.

That got me thinking about why we all go out and spend so much of our hard-earned cash on other people. I don’t think it’s because we’re all slaves to consumerism. I don’t necessarily think it’s because we expect to get something back in return, either. I think we all just like to see the look on the faces of our friends and family when they open a present, which we’ve given to them, and it’s immediately clear that the present was what they wanted. With that in mind, maybe we don’t all need to be shopping at 9pm on a Wednesday, maybe we just need to spend a bit more time thinking about what we should get and whether it’s actually going to be appreciated.

Speaking of appreciation, with this being the day after Thanksgiving, I feel it’s appropriate for TF to give thanks too. Surprisingly enough, TF gives thanks that Tom Selleck decided that this look didn’t suit him:

But that this one did:

Have a great weekend folks!

#keepgoing

Wait until the weekend…

Posted on November 15, 2013 by tashfriday

Morning Tash Appreciators,

TF isn’t always easy to write, you know. Some weeks the editorial staff have nothing interesting to say and other weeks – usually following a mediocre week – there just isn’t the motivation to get a solid edition done. Those weeks’ editions are generally prefaced with something like: “just a brief TF this week…”.

It seemed like this week’s edition was going to be a short one: I was sitting on a later train than I’d hoped (the one I wanted to get having been cancelled); I was tired; and I couldn’t think of anything interesting to say [*insert joke about never having anything interesting to say*]. Then this man came to my rescue:

James Murphy, LCD Soundsystem and their anthem “All My Friends” are TF regulars. However, tonight, as I stood on a crowded train in a day-dream, not really listening to what was blaring through my earphones, a blast of synthesisers came forth and I heard Mr Murphy sing, mid-way through the track “Dance Yrself Clean”: “wait until the weekend and we can make our dreams come true.”

And then I remembered – tomorrow is Friday! Things didn’t seem so bad after that. Now, when you’re reading this, it really is Friday, and everyone knows good things happen on Friday.

It is therefore with renewed enthusiasm that I turn to this weeks’ Tashes. I’m delighted to say that I have two superlative offerings from Appreciators.

The first is of a bouncer in a Boston, MA, bar. It was confirmed that, despite it looking too good to be true, this was an authentic Tash. It was also confirmed that, somewhat unusually for our friends across The Pond, Mr Bouncer was also wearing a poppy for Remembrance Day. I believe the correct description of this kind of display – using the “Baastaan” vernacular – is Boston Strong:

Go Sox.

The other Tash comes from Bristol, the cultural heart of South-West England. Now, I was under the impression that I had a fairly good grasp on TF’s demographic. However, the short message accompanying the photo suggests that TF may have reached non-English speaking countries:

“Here you, ya mad raj! Huv yae seen ma Tash? It’s v-dot-beeeaaauuuut an’ the burds go pure daft fae it!”

Make of that what you will, but my interpretation is that this chap is pretty delighted with his Tash; as he should be:

Keep the entries coming folks!

Have a great weekend!

#keepgoing

A Mo should be for life, not just Movember (telegraph.co.uk)

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