#Zzubwords - Westminster

Everybody knows what political ‘buzzwords’ are.  Words which have become so ubiquitous simply to mean ‘a Good Thing™’ - empty words which convey a feeling, rather than a meaning.  Words like ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’; everyone means slightly different things when they say them, but that doesn’t matter - they don’t need qualifications or explanations, because they instantly connote a vague feeling of positivity, and ‘being on your side’.

I have noticed, however, an opposite group of words - words which are used interchangeably without context, to mean a vague, generic ‘Bad Thing™’.  I am calling these zzubwords, and I am hoping to compile a small dictionary of some of the more common ones, and to make this into a semi-regular feature on this Blog.

Westminster

Although not exactly first in our Dictionary Of Zzubwords alphabetically, in the wake of last month’s referendum on Scottish Independence, this seems an apposite starting point for my collection.  Westminster, of course, is actually just an area of Central London - but those who prey on the prevailing disaffection with mainstream politics to advance their own aims and agendas have realised that an association with politicians and traditional political processes can make almost anything seem sleazy and corrupt.

By perpetuating the idea of some great, expansive divide between ‘ordinary people’ and ‘professional politicians’ - two apparently separate species, who simply cannot understand each other - it is possible to make people suspicious and mistrustful of almost anything, just by associating it with ‘Westminster’, the by-word for self-interested, out-of-touch politics with nothing to offer.

Twitter for business

If you do it right, Twitter is the perfect customer support tool for your business.  It's instant, it's convenient, it's free, it's twenty-four hours.  If you own a business, train your staff to use social media well, and it will pay dividends - and the bigger your business, the more important it is to harness the power of Twitter to keep your customers happy!

Why do I bring this up?  Well, we (as a society) are always very keen to complain about poor service - I think it's good to recognise when service is done well, too.  With that in mind…  I Tweeted about an issue I was having with Barclays' online banking, and I received a very prompt, helpful response from Barclays' official Twitter.  Simple, painless - and fixed my problem straight away.

See?  Customer service is easy!

May I take your order?

Anyone who's watched Match Of The Day regularly has probably complained about Match Of The Day almost as often.  Almost all football fans seem to be convinced that the BBC's flagship football programme is biased against their team - and one of the most common complaints is about the order in which the matches are shown.  When Norwich City were in the Premier League, we always seemed to be the last game on Match Of The Day, and supporters felt this was being done deliberately.  Well, I know how to put this issue to bed, once-and-for-all…

Instead of leaving the running order up to a real person, whose judgement can be called into question, there should be a formula for deciding this, based on nothing but cold, hard facts.  The best way is to link the order to position in the league table at the time.  I have done a mock-up of this for last Saturday's Match Of The Day, so you can see how this would work.

There were six games played on Saturday:

• Manchester City vs. Aston Villa
• Hull vs. Crystal Palace
• Leicester vs. Burnley
• Liverpool vs. West Brom
• Sunderland vs. Stoke
• Swansea vs. Newcastle

And this was the Premier League table on Saturday, as Match Of The Day went on-air:

So, my formula would take an aggregate league position (ALP), by calculating the mean average of the two teams' standings in the table.  (For example, if the top two teams in the table were to play each other, their ALP would be 1.5 [1st place + 2nd place, divided by two] and so this would be the first game shown.)

Under this system, Saturday's Match Of The Day running order would therefore be as follows:

• ALP 4.5 - Manchester City vs. Aston Villa
• ALP 9.5 - Liverpool vs. West Brom
• ALP 11 - Swansea vs. Newcastle
• ALP 11 - Hull vs. Crystal Palace
• ALP 13 - Sunderland vs. Stoke
• ALP 14 - Leicester vs. Burnley

(As you can see, two games have identical ALPs - of the four teams involved in these two games, Swansea are the highest in the table, so their match with Newcastle gets shown first.)

Oh, but what if a game between two teams lower down the table is really exciting?!

…you might be saying.

Well, that doesn't matter!  When the formula is in control, the order is what it is - it isn't affected by subjectivity, and the teams whose matches are shown first have earnt that right through their previous good results, so there can be no complaints.  And besides, if the 'exciting' games aren't always right at the start, there's more chance of everyone watching all the way to the end.

The BBC need to implement my system of ordering matching matches now.  They will thank me.

#F1 - Keep fighting, Jules

This is about the time I would normally sit down and write my Formula 1 column about the weekend's race - that's quite difficult to do on the back of the news about Jules Bianchi's crash and surgery for head injuries, though.

There were plenty of talking points from yesterday's Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, and lots of off-track drama to discuss, too - including the news that four-time World Champion Sebastian Vettel will leave Red Bull, the which gave him such extraordinary success over the last few seasons, at the end of this year.  However, none of this is quite as important as the health and wellbeing of our drivers.  It was poignant to read reports that the other drivers - such fierce rivals on-track - were all at the hospital with Jules after the race.

Now is not the time to analyse, to evaluate, to speculate, or to blame.  Now is the time for the entire world of motorsport to send Jules Bianchi positive thoughts - and hope that we will see him race again sooner, rather than later.

Don't cry for Jeremy, Argentina

One doesn't haven to be a fan of Jeremy Clarkson to condemn mob violence.  Clarkson and the Top Gear team were recently chased out of Argentina by an angry mob hurling bricks and rocks, after locals took exception to a vehicle number plate which they thought was a jibe about the Falklands War.  (The BBC denies that this was the case, and insists the number plate was purely a coincidence.)

Clarkson is a controversial figure, and not without his critics.  However, to be seeing comments on Facebook and Twitter about this incident supporting the actions of the Argentinian rioters, or even offering to supply them with more rocks to hurl at the presenter, is pretty disgraceful.

Jeremy Clarkson feared deaths in Argentina number plate row ... Argentinians, please be more accurate next time (: http://t.co/xxuhqmKUFF
— Richard Boardman (@uxrick) October 4, 2014

Condoning and supporting this sort of 'lynch mob' rioting is never OK.  Not even if the target is somebody you don't like.

Freedom Of Bin-formation Act

This piece originally appeared in my FLiCK Magazine column in June 2014.

I was recently informed that I would have to be more careful when throwing things out.  This isn’t because I’ve been launching empty food packaging and used matchsticks across the room, and missing the bin.  Nor is it because I have been piloting my wheelie bin so violently up and down the drive that I have received a ticket for dangerous driving whilst at the helm.

No, I have to be careful because I have occasionally thrown food waste into the general rubbish bin, rather than the special food waste bin - out of, I admit, laziness - and that I have now been ‘caught’ by the bin men.  The bin men, it seems, have spotted food waste in the regular bin, and they are not happy about this; apparently, if you get ‘caught’ too many times, you may have to pay a fine.

Now, I would like to make it absolutely clear that I don’t have an issue with the concept of recycling, or of being careful with your rubbish for the sake of the environment.  If you’re the sort of person who believes passionately in this stuff, then good for you - I really mean that.  But I definitely do have an issue with the idea of being coerced into behaving in a certain way (in this case, an environmentally conscious way) either through threats or rewards.

The thought of agents of the state (the bin men are employed by the council) sifting through my rubbish to check up on whether I’m being a ‘good citizen’ is like something out of Stalinist Russia, and is frankly rather sinister.

Maybe you think I’m being melodramatic - that comparisons with totalitarian regimes are unnecessarily hyperbolic, bordering on preposterous.  Perhaps you’d be right.  But personally, I find the idea of anyone being legally allowed to invade my privacy, rifle through my things on my property and report to the state on how I am living (who can then levy ‘corrective’ punishments to encourage me to change my ‘behaviour’ if it is deemed not orthodoxy), like some kind of Securitate informer, deeply disturbing.

There will, I am sure, be those who argue that this self-important government interloping is ‘a price worth paying’ for a better, cleaner, more responsible society - but I’m afraid I cannot agree.  The state should exist to protect individuals’ freedoms, not to ride roughshod over them in the name of one ideology or another, and this sort of invasion of privacy is something of which we should be very wary indeed, even in the name of a ‘good cause’ - in fact, especially in the name of a good cause.  Once we accept one pretext for government making life choices for us, we are on very shaky ground indeed.

I don’t ever want to live in a world where the state is peering into our homes to makes sure we are living the ‘right way’.  It may start with our bins - but where will it end?

We are the dead.

Addendum

In the wake of new Tory proposals to repeal the Human Rights Act, and replace it with some bungling alternative, it becomes ever more important to make people aware of the growing reach of the oppressive arm of the state.  Far from repealing the Human Rights Act, we need to enshrine more individual freedoms in law - including the freedom to dispose of our own property without the state rummaging though our bins to check what we've been up to.  We could call this the Freedom Of Bin-formation Act.

#NCFC season comparisons

Norwich have now won four away games this season – twice as many as we won in the whole of last season. Which is great. But also completely meaningless.

Comparisons between last season and this season have very little worth because relegation to the Championship has made any cross-season analysis inherently uneven. Is it any surprise that a team will win more games in the lower division than in the top flight?

Of course, it’s brilliant to see Norwich doing well, scoring goals, winning games, and (at the time of writing) topping the Championship table. But holding up these facts as proof positive that the manager and/or the squad are an improvement on last year’s is to misrepresent the relative levels of the Championship and the Premier League; I’m not saying that Norwich haven’t improved from last year, but it is foolish to ignore that the opposition have got significantly easier also.