Archive for September, 2008

I’m not going to use the phrase economic crisis because we’re not in one. Everything is fine. The only reason we’re in a recession because we decided to call it a recession which then scares everyone and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. I would however like to throw a few ideas out there on the current economic climate.

Government’s all over the world are in the middle of nationalising banks. Like everywhere. Iceland’s Glitnir, which I’m told was a rather large bank, has recently been nationalised. Here in the UK, Bradford & Bingley have just gone. We’re still bailing out Northern Rock. Me, my tax money is bailing them out.

Point is, this isn’t how a free market capitalist economy is supposed to work. There shouldn’t be government bail outs, a free market only really works when the market is free. Companies go down, other companies take their place, circle of life and all that jazz.

Surely the way to encourage economic growth in such times is to increase the capitalist freedoms and reduce the socialist state rather than the current trend of increasing the socialist state with government bailouts and suprise taxes. Slash taxes, slash minimum wage, make it more profitable to actually generate profit than go cap in hand to the government.

We’re all moaning about these huge salaries the city big wigs are getting paid then coming to the tax payer for the bail out. Who can blaim them? That’s just common sense. They don’t lose it all when their company goes down to the toilet, most boards are remaining intact when the company is nationalised. Who wouldn’t take up that offer?

If we’re going to this whole capitalist economy (which we are, because it works, get over it) we should just get on with it. The world economy well go down the pan if government’s don’t intervene. But it will be back again. Bigger, better and even stronger than before.

As I said in the text message I sent, I feel Rich slightly oversold Human Nature.

It was a two part episode from the third series of the new Doctor Who and came highly recommended. Not that it wasn’t a good episode, it was very good indeed. I felt Blink was equally as good though. Still, perhaps it will take some time to see the real genius in it.

While I should probably be sleeping now, I am just polishing off the third series, ready to make a start on the forth series soon and then I will be all caught up and ready to discuss new episodes every Tuesday. Not that it is even on at the moment lol.

Speaking of freshers’ week events, Thursday was the pub crawl, a bit of a good old fashioned social to introduce the new members to the society.

Not that our new member turn out was particuarly impressive, it wasn’t, and it certainly wasn’t what we hoped for but they came none the less. More importantly in the end, plenty of existing members turned up and had a great night by all accounts. I’m glad someone did.

We made it through The Old Bar, The Fenton, Dry Dock, Bourbon, Courtyard and Weatherspoon’s before finally being stopped by a very closed Bar Censsa. I mean, who the hell is closed on freshers’ week? Apparently quite a few places. Town was dead for what you would think would be the busiest week of the year. Still, that just got us served faster 😀 .

Wednesday saw the arrival of the long awaited Make Your Own God event.

It went really well to be honest. We got a rather large collection of home made gods in the end and signed up a fair few members too. Not to mention the debate that was sparked surrounding the event.

I’m looking forward to running the event again in the future.

Several night’s sleep and a fair few drinks later and I think my head is starting to clear. It’s been a bit of a messy weekend but having spent quite a bit of time over at Colton I think I’m back on form for A-Soc’s intro meeting tomorrow. I have a lot of blogging to catch up on. Here goes…

And I need your soul because your always soulful.

And I need your heart, because your always in the right places.

Tuesday night saw the A-Soc members’ dinner party to welcome in the new acamedic year and say thanks to our existing members for sticking with us before the intake of fresh faces arrives.

No less than eighteen people turned up to sample the “delights” – a modest four courses by comparission to our last dinner party but never the less when you scale that up to that many people that is rather a lot of food to cook. Luckily Liz and Michelle very kindly contributed dishes, as did Tesco.

The real hero of the night was Fonze however who battled his way through the various dishes and a mountain of washing up alongside myself for the entire night.

I haven’t really had a debrief with most people as I didn’t get chance to get that much chatting done on Tuesday night though most people seemed to enjoy the food – I got no less than three adjectives in Paul’s thank you text message. I’m still fairly convinced the rice was awful and the soup was stone cold but for now everyone is at least pretending the food was edible.

And, as with last time, nobody died (that I know of), so perhaps we can chalk this one down as another success.

I have been up since 7am this morning!

It’s been a while sinve I’ve been up this early. Before 8 is fairly common if I want to grab myself some breakfast but an hour before I normally get up, that is just unpleasant. Luckily, still having feeling a bit rough and knowing I could really do to get up early, I successfully made it to bed at 11 last night so I got a good night’s sleep in none the less.

The problem is, it’s just a cascade effect. I wanted to get in the office a bit early today to get some work done and therefore I had to get up before 8. If I get up before 8 I’m up early enough to deserve a McBreakfast. Which pushes my alarm to an even earlier time. And I had preparations to make for tonight’s dinner party and I wanted to get my steak cooked for lunch and son on, pushed by alarm all the way back to 7am.

Still, far later than I used to get up when I was doing opens so things could be worse I guess. And I can sleep in when I have some time off – which is now only 3 months away 😀 .

While it is true that I didn’t make it to bed until gone 8 yesterday morning, I was on a relatively low amount of substances. While everyone else was consuming large amounts of alcohol and other drugs, I didn’t drink that much and kept my non-alcohol fluid intake at a sensible level.

I think I have a right to moan then when I felt absolutely dead yesterday. I woke up about 2 in the afternoon having had some sleep (not a great deal but I was half asleep for the last hour of Nicola’s anyway) and felt shocking. I figured I might need some food but one lunch later and I was still feeling awful so I ended up going back to bed.

I was feeling a bit better by the evening so I got up again at 8 as I really needed to get some urgent work done before Monday morning came round again and having drugged myself up I forced myself to go see everyone from work for an hour as I was determined the day wasn’t going to be a total write off and wasn’t feeling too bad by this point.

Never the less, I feel robbed of a day. While everyone else was off their face on alcohol and MDMA, I was taking it easy and yet I came away feeling worse. I could well have picked up a mild form of Nicola’s cold in which case I’ve certainly been robbed there is only fair way to pick up a cold off someone 😉 . Ah well, as long as I don’t slow down I’ll be fine. Right?

With September Wendy House having arrived and many people back in Leeds, last night offered quite a spectacular turn-out for people connected with the circle. Fairly ironic really given that Wendy House as a whole was not overly busy.

We started off in The Old Bar with guest appearances from Bo and Ben plus Nicola joined us along with Kate (who really does have an amazing hourglass body when put into a corset) and Colette, Nicola’s friend from 6th form, all of who were sporting amazing outfits.

Wendy was the traditional mix of 80s and alternative with the few token modifications to the playlist. There were some notable omissions from the modern classics section (no Paramore, no Fall Out Boy, no Green Day, the list goes on) though we did at least get a bit of Evanescene at the end.

Afterwards we headed back to Nicola’s for the afterparty. Only 5 of us ended up going back – Nicola, Colette, Sarann, Moz and myself but never the less we talked long into the night and ended up staying until gone half seven by which point the day light had well and truly arrived. I finally got to bed at just after 8. Guess I’m not quite past it just yet after all then 😉 .