Unfortunately my current bag (the male version of the one above) has broke.
I need a new bag.

I like this one from these guys Scaramanga
It is big enough for an iPad (not that I have one. but it will take a decent sized book or two and is the right size for how I use my bag. it may even be too Big!

The main complication to this straight forward purchasing strategy is my adoption of cycling as my go to activity.
Given the Scottish weather it is appropriate, perhaps necessary, to carry a change of clothes when you cycle places for a meeting, hence I would like to avail myself of this bag…

from the ever popular Howies

But you know me. It might take a while to decide!

fell free to leave a comment, telling me about your favourite or current bag, extolling its virtues and foibles.

In an essay and book of the same title, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995), Marc Augé coined the phrase “non-place” to refer to places of transience that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as “places”. Examples of a non-place would be a motorway, a hotel room, an airport or a supermarket.

Supermarkets are the vacuous supporters of the space known as the heart of the community. It used to be churches, then became the village pub, now its the supermarket. But I think the notion of a ‘heart of the community’ has been diluted by our attempts to support it.

Slavoj Žižek makes the point that art used to be about beauty. then came modern art which kicked out beauty and in that space put a toilet. (literally). then as thing change and develop the thing inside the space has become less and less relevant as the fight is not to keep something of beauty within that space called art. anything in the space will do. What become of worth is putting anything in the space, in order to maintain the existence of the space.

Community and the idea of a communal space being the heart of the community has changed and developed as has our understanding/ideas of community. I think that nowadays the supermarkets with their community noticeboards, consistent back packing days and free glass hire for the local community, are perhaps the incarnation what happens after the toilet has been removed from the space.

I was in a supermarket last week, as I walked in and picked up a basket i saw an old man, probably late 80′s sitting in a fold up chair at the door. As I walked past I heard a snippit of conversation between him and a lady who worked there.
‘has your taxi still not come yet? that’s terrible.’
‘no can you check for me’
the lady put back a basket and walked back past him.
‘I’ll go and phone and check they’re on their way you just wait there.’
the man sat beside the door, facing in the shop out of the cold air.

I went and did my shop. On the way out I noticed the old man was still sitting at the door. I walked out the door and saw a taxi. I went and asked who he was due to meet. The taxi driver told me the name and I said I thought it was an older gentleman inside. ‘Wait for me, I will be back.’
I went in and asked if the old gentlemans’ name was… he said yes. I said time to get your taxi then.

He asked for a hand to stand. I offered him my arm.
He said no he would need more than that
I tried to lift him under one arm.
He didn’t move.
I put down my shopping next to his and tried to lift him under both arms.
He did move but I was doing all the work.
I got him nearly straight and attempted to let him go.
‘No I can’t stand yet.”
I continued until he was straight.
‘I can stand now.’
He joked I should have brought my wheel chair.

I offered to take his arm for the walk to the taxi. other shoppers paused to offer assistance, to move his shopping for us. I accepted the help.
The man tried to turn round, but having sat so long, his hip had frozen, moving his right leg would be tough.
He hobbled slowly towards the door, rejecting my help, and complaining about his lack of movement.

He kept moving slowly. the taxi driver came and took his bags to the car.
I noticed a member of staff following us. Slowly. Waiting for us to move.
As we passed by the shopping trolleys he took one and wandered off.
The driver returned and took over escorting the man to the car.
I got my shopping bag back and headed for my car.

Its left me wondering why that stayed with me.
Its left me wondering how we care in communal spaces.
Its left me wondering how we engage with each other when so much of what we call community hubs, are non-places.

I am not sure I have any answers.
but I have some questions, and for now, that is enough.

buy something in the auction – it could be yours!

Solas Festival is an arts festival I volunteer with. We exist at the sharp of of the Arts, Justice and Faith. We are a small fledgling but beautiful festival full of music, poetry, stuff to make you think, things to do and amazing things to see.

We are a small independent charity which runs and makes the festival happen. We have no big sponsors, we fund ourselves primarily with generous sponsors such as Christian Aid, Iona Community and Greenbelt Festival, a small but wonderful group of people who see what we do, like what we are doing and give money generously, monthly or yearly. (for this we grant them sainthood and call them our Solas Saints.) Other than that it is mostly money from ticket sale which sustains us and pays for the best small festival in Scotland.

This year we have been able to get funding from Creative Scotland. no mean feat given their reduced budgets and the amount of people who apply, while this gives validation of our position as a quality event, and allows for some very nice things on the programme.

You can help us,
buy a ticket – it is a great weekend at the end of June
become a saint – give a monthly or annual amount of money
buy something in the auction – it could be yours!

SO Google has amalgamated 70 privacy policies for various free tools online into one policy.
that makes things much easier right? Been thinking about privacy, about how much info we want anywhere about us. As i was thinking about this, the UK government announced plans to be able to monitor the calls, emails, texts and website visits of everyone in the UK. Internet firms will be required to give intelligence agency GCHQ access to communications on demand, in real time.

I am very conscious of leaving a physical trail. I am aware my car is quite unnoticeable, but someone who had seen it a couple of times and knew where I liked to park could find me reasonably easily, if they thought about it.

I try and pay with cash when I can. It allows me to actually feel the money leaving my hands and makes real the amount being spend. It also means I spend less.

In physical life it’s kinda easy, yet on the Internet people actively try to find out all about you.
If you are reading my blog, My blog keeps a small record of some of your data. It then reports to me, things about
: your computer – your browser, your screen resolution, what operating system you use.
: your behaviour – how you came to my site, what you read, how long you spend here, what links you click.
: your location – where in the world you are when you read my blog, your ip address.
Thinking about it I dislike this level of information, I am uncomfortable with having it and as such I will disable that before I publish this post.

The point is if this is how much information I can have about you without trying to actively track you, how much do we give away to major companies for free? I have a reward card for several shops, at a basic level they give me “rewards” while I give them information which can be used to sell me more stuff, or perhaps be sold to other companies.

The recent story about the supermarket target in the US developing a system to observe the buying changes around when a lady was pregnant, and send appropriate vouchers, seems good work. When these arrived before the lady had told close family, well that’s a bit of an issue.

The data protection act protects us for records on computers under uk law. There is a big questions about how we engage with data being kept outwith UK law, I wonder about the amount of information that is available and how we control our own data in foreign countries. I think this new government seems at best misguided, at worst, a serious risk to the idea of security. Especially given the current process is (to my very basic understanding) similar to the process of getting a warrant to search your house.

I don’t think the Internet needs regulated. But companies do need regulated. Sharp business practice on wall street or the city of London is legislated against (or more accurately should be), it is monitored and where necessary compliance is necessitated.

I think companies virtual presences should be monitored and compliance thought where they are out of line. Facebook has 900 million users. By owning the data on Facebook, (Yes they own ‘your’ data), analyzing it, and then selling it to advertisers, Mark Zuckerberg is an 18 times billionaire.

Iain Bell in the Sunday Herld neatly sums up how i am feeling about all this in an excellently written piece.
“This begins to look like capitalism’s next phase, achieved with the willing co-operation – the uninhibited enthusiasm – of the masses while governments hitch a ride. Partly it’s conditioning: see how the queues form whenever Apple punts a new toy. Partly it’s technological drift: try to work without access to email. The largest part of it, though, is something new. It is the belief that nothing personal matters enough to be worth protecting.
…
Privacy is identity. In my (non-Face) book, the private person is the person you truly are. Give that away, daily and nightly – give it away to a corporation or a government, indeed – and you disappear into the collective, beloved of SF writers. We needn’t resort to fiction, though. The plain phrase “my business” sums it up. But I think I am being outvoted, and outvoted overwhelmingly.”

Don’t know, but is really sits uneasily with me.

The questions abide.

Music

1
npr – live concerts podcast
i couldn’t live without this podcast.
really. it is awesome.
2 hours of Radiohead on the In Rainbows tour live from California, no problem, here you go
The Decemberists premiering The Hazards of Live as a live song cycle, have it free
Andrew Bird live from SXSW last month, here is the whole set, and check the archives for one from 3 years ago.
it is eclectic and wide ranging cast of bands, it is an excellent source of bands who in three months time everyone will be talking about.
It has a two main forms. the long form full concert or the short form Tiny Desk Concert.
my top recommendation.

2
The Concert – classical music from the Isabella gardener museum
Quite a lovely and surprising pod from the museum.
generally works by a soloist or combination of players up to quartet. For someone like me with no knowledge of classical music this Pod has an easy way of allowing people into the music. a brief introduction from someone at the museum about the theme of the music and the composer, and intro to the players and we are away.
a lovely wee pod.

3
Canada Live – CBC radio 2
a new discovery – yet the last few updates have brought, Daniel Landois & Emmylou Harris, Cowboys Junkies and Bruce Cockburn.
A nearly very good pod. The only thing stopping it being excellent, is the guy who hosts it, (I think for contractual reasons), he has to speak after every second song, Unfortunately he chooses to impose upon us how important this artist is. but it is edited and divided into chapters well so you can skip over his chapters!

sports
1
the Guardian Football Weekly with James Richardson
Woooof! what a pod.
it has a light touch, it is funny, to the point, covers the continental game, and has James Richardson from Football Italia!
seriously though it does exactly what you want a football podcast to be, a reflection of the conversation a group of mates who watch a lot of football may have.
and as it is recorded twice a week it reflects whats happening currently which is nice.
very good pod.

2
Americarnage
The tagline of Sports, Culture & Nonsense, just about sums up this award winning podcast. A good mix of sports chat, analysis of each other and random Kevin Costner addiction the pod is a winner. It covers all four major American sports, (baseball, NBA, NFL & Ice Hockey) which will limit listener numbers and does include the occasional bad word and adult reference, but it does it in a light way.
Quality fun and you don’t even need to know who Curtis Painter is to join in.

3
Scottish Football Podcast, BBC Scotland
Half an hour or so of the best football news from BBC Scotland. quite listenable and just the right length i think
updated daily which is also nice.

What sports and music pods do you listen too?

So the boss of RBS has been awards a bonus of about £963000, in shares. And people are annoyed. Outraged actually. How can it possibly be right that these rich bankers get big bonuses?

I am not sure I share the outrage his bonus payment. In three points

1-
It’s in his contract. He has a good contract and is being rewarded in the way that the company said they would reward him if he hit certain targets.
Well done on exceeding at you job. You are worth this bonus (down £1m on last year)

2
£963000 worth of shares in RBS? Surely that’s part of the John Lewis style economy which the deputy prime minister was chatting about. (not the greatest idea nicks had.)

No seriously, the sum of £963000 is not that much money. (within the context of banking). Last year RBS paid in total around £1billion in bonuses to employees. In 2010 Lloyds Bank paid out £5-6billion in bonuses. The Guardian reported that, in 2010 RBS have spent $4.13million on US government lobbyists. Given these large figures the Chief Exec getting £963000 seems a small figure. I’d rather give the money to the Chief Exec than pay for US Lobbyists.

Within the general UK context of people getting pay freezes and rising unemployment this is an excessive figure. It seems outlandish that one human is worth so much money. Yet the question is why do we have this moral outrage against one banker when TV personalities, footballers and film stars all will earn more than this amount this year?

Wayne Rooney is reportedly paid £250000 per week. His bonus for running the bank is about 8.3% of Wayne Rooney’s income. Is that Fair?

3
Without some sort of root an branch reform of our reliance on the financial sector, you have congratulate the banks on playing the game well and winning that battle.

Politically the war cannot be won unless the UK can get itself reliant on something’s other than the financial and service sectors.
Without this we are over a barrel and even though we don’t like it. The banks will act with impunity. As they know the UK is reliant upon them, yet they can move as the ‘business case’ makes itself.

I don’t like it but given the things above…I am not sure I can join the moral outrage about it. Instead of outrage I took action, I moved banks to one I thought I would act in a more just way.

I spent most of today waiting

Waiting for buses to arrive
Waiting in rooms
Waiting for children to sleep

As I waited snow fell.
The known world was made new.
My book was talking about the difference between utopia then and utopia now.
How society had changed.

Where is the place of waiting.

I drove home in a large queue of slow moving traffic, as the snow forced us to patiently travel together, at a pace, slowly.

And now
I wait.

Hot local news.

“Cycle lanes boost safer traffic.

Cycle lanes are to be installed between Lanark and Hyndford Bridge.

New signs, road markings and coloured surfacing will highlight the route to both cyclists and drivers.

The work is the first phase of a project that will create a new route between Lanark and Biggar which will connect to the Tweed Cycleway.

A total of £50,000 will be spent on the new scheme following a successful funding bid by the council to Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT).

The road between Lanark and Biggar is already well used by cyclists so it is hoped that by providing dedicated lanes to make it safer for cyclists and drivers to share the road network, more people will cycle in the area and encourage more sustainable and active travel.

And even if people leave the car at home just one day a week – it can make a great difference to easing congestion and reducing harmful exhaust emissions.”

point 1 – The work started 3 weeks ago
point 2 – perhaps a better strategy to stop people driving the road, would be to install a pavement? all the way between Lanark and Hyndford Bridge. having walked the road numerous times the bit without the pavement and the lorries is slightly concerning.
point 3 – As I type this, looking at the road in question. the number of bike to have traveled the road today is 0. Perhaps a cycle lane is not the solution to the problem.
point 4 – safer traffic? I was unaware of any cyclist related traffic problems on the road, I doubt the gazzette would have missed such a story.

The problem for most cyclists (I assume) is the number of lorries on the route. one every 6 minutes or so. Its not as bad as main road Glasgow traffic, but it can get quite busy with large vehicles traveling at reasonable speeds.

the news release is here should you care to check i haven’t edited it for my own purposes.
Cycle lanes boost safer traffic

Was thinking about that in yesterday’s mind map.
How zeitgeist-y was I?