Archive for April, 2016

As a hippie leftie, my newspaper of choice is usually The Guardian. With its engaging content and unofficial mission to counteract the hate spewed out by the Murdock empire, it, along with the BBC, makes an excellent choice for me to consume the little news I read.

There is one area however, where I read The Telegraph. That, is a Telegraph Men.

The problem with being on the left these days is that as a straight white cis male, I am basically the enemy. My boat automatically rises high on the sea of privilege that propels it up towards the heavens. I don’t dispute this. I think the evidence shows that being a white man actually does grant me privilege. Whether it compares to the privilege differences between classes remains to be seen, but there is definitely a benefit.

Given that this benefit does exist, the left, committed to empowering everyone, cannot tolerate any further benefit coming my way. Again, I am not even going to suggest this is a bad thing. When International Men’s Day rolls around, there is a backlash from the left, insisting that it is a stupid idea. The arguments are long. “What if it was men’s health day?” sympathetic advocates say. The idea that we should be able to talk about men being three times more likely to kill themselves is a touchy subject.

Once again, I want to state that, in this post, I am not complaining about this. Perhaps it is fair to take that point of view.

The end result of this seems to be that the idea of devoting column inches to men seems unpalatable to Guardian readers. They have a men’s health section. Of which, at time of writing, the second story on the page is:

My husband has turned into a fitness fanatic. What can I do?

I’m not interested in this. It does not appeal to me.

Telegraph Men on the other hand, has no such problems. They write engaging content that does appeal to me as a liberal progressive modern-man. They write about men taking shared parental leave, men who choose a career in midwifery and whether veganism is a good dietary choice. It is both interesting and relevant to me to read about a father writing about raising an autistic son.

Nor does it take itself too seriously. Amusing articles about photoshopping and a Twitter account description that reads…

Advice, opinions, expertise and experiences. For men. And women. But mostly men.

…shows an playful sense of humour. I am not sure you could do this in a left-leaning media outlet. The idea that as a straight white man I might have something to contribute to the gender equality debate is not a welcome opinion. The idea that you could do any of this without a completely serious look on your face is even more out there.

Therefore, ironically perhaps, it is the right-leaning media, without such gender-political baggage, that can write about being a stay-at-home dad or breaking down stereotypes in traditionally female careers.

Of course, I am fully aware that I am reading The Torygraph. The paper that was fined £30,000 for telling people to vote Conservative. My own charity work has been the victim of their right-wing attacks.

However, in Telegraph Men, I have found interesting, engaging and relevant content that the media of the left does not seem to be able to replicate. As a father-to-be who aspires to a more liberal, equal and open society, it is, surprisingly, The Telegraph, that is leading the way.

In 2013, BBC Magazine ran an article about the Finnish Baby Box: a box containing loads of useful stuff that every expectant parent is given. The idea became popular all over the world. When the royals popped their sprog out, the Finnish government even sent them a box.

In a new article by BBC Magazine, published earlier this month, they discuss various start-up companies that have attempted to replicate the concept as a business for the rest of the world.

Finnish Baby Box seems to do quite a good job of it. For £320 you get a range of 50 different items, similar to the actual box contents. Of course, there is a Moomin edition too, that clocks in at £480.

Elsewhere however, people seem to have done an excellent job of entirely missing the point. Both British Baby Box and the US-based Baby Box Co sell boxes with almost nothing in them.

From their marketing, you might be mislead into thinking that buying a cardboard box and having your baby sleep in it somehow reduced infant mortality. There is no evidence for this. It’s true that Finland does have one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world. Almost half that of the UK. However, the success of their system is down to three things:

1. When you have a baby in Finland, you go to special baby centres. Here you have all of our antenatal and postnatal care until the child starts school. It’s all in one place, making it easy to access care services.
2. You have to go to all the antenatal services to get the box. So everyone does, even if they only want the box.
3. The box is full of useful stuff like a mattress, baby clothes, blanket, toiletries and most other stuff you need to care for a new born.

The fact that it all comes in a cardboard box is almost irrelevant. That is not to say that some Finnish parents do not use it as the baby’s first bed. Some do. Many just use it to store baby’s things in however. Which makes total sense because, when you think about it, why would sleeping in a cardboard box be beneficial for your baby?

If people want to sell their own version of the baby box, they are free to do so. However, it is misleading to suggest that there is any evidence that the box is beneficial. Finland’s success comes from their wide adoption of their antenatal care system and high quality products given to new parents, not some kind of magical effect of sleeping in a cardboard box.

Chatting with Baby Box Co

Since publishing this article, I have spoken with Jennifer Clary, CEO of Baby Box Co. You can read more about the interview here.

BBC on baby box effectiveness

In March 2017, the BBC published another follow-up article entitled “Do baby boxes really save lives?”, raising the same questions that I discussed in this post. It includes Emily Oster, who is the author of a book I highly recommend, Expecting Better. You can read the BBC article here.

Last week, finding myself with a bonus day off, I set off up the canal to see if I could set a new distance record. The furthest I have been is just past the Hollybush Conservation Centre. Hollybush makes a nice 5km landmark, and I’ve been about half a kilometre past this.

Unfortunately, my new effort got off to a rocky start. The police had closed one of the junctions of the canal: the one by Kirkstall Viaduct. This was the only access point for quite a while, so I had to go all the way back to the Armley Gyratory, up Kirkstall Road, and then back down on to the towath at Armley Mills, just to progress 30 metres down the canal.

Eventually I did progress on. It turns out that there isn’t much to see. There is some flat countryside, the train line and river continue to intertwine, and there is a few more locks. That is pretty much it. Peaceful though.

Here is a photo of me looking gormless:

I turned round after that and went home. Then spent my hard-earned calories on Easter Eggs.

At the end of last month, I paid off my student loan. Sort of. I haven’t actually sent the money or anything practical like that, but the amount I have accrued in student loan tax is now enough to cover the remaining balance. So once I get my tax bill, it will be sorted. Just in time for me to start paying George Osborne’s increased tax on small business owners.

This gave me a moment for reflection. I am 29 years old. I graduated at 21, so eight years seems pretty good going. Most people, however, will not have the opportunity to repay their loan anywhere near as fast as me.

First, my loan was quite small. When I went to university, tuition fees were £1,000 a year. Most of my loan was made up of maintenance loan, the money they lend you to live on. This was about £3,500 in my day but is probably more now. The year after I started at university the fees went up to £3,000. More recently, they have risen to £9,000. Living costs are probably rising too, so let’s say you need £5,000 a year maintenance loan now.

In total that makes for £16,000 a year. Assuming you get your degree in three years (not everyone does), that means you will have built up £48,000 of debt by the time you leave university: almost four times the amount that I left with.

Second, I am a software consultant, which is a well-paid industry. Many people will never earn the amount of money I earn. If you are a teacher, for example, only senior management will have pay higher than a software engineer who is a senior but still very much in the trenches of everyday code writing.

According to the Official of National Statistics, as reported by the BBC, the average earnings for people with a degree are £29,900 per year. This compares with £17,800 for people without a degree.

Let’s say you are earning £29,900 as a graduate. £17,335 if that is below the threshold. That leaves you £12,565 that is taxable for student loan. This is taxed at 9%, so that means you would be paying back £1,130 per year. With a loan of £48,000, that means you will be paying back the loan for 42 years.

That figure is far lower than it would be in real life, however, because it does not factor in the interest on your loan. That will add a large amount on to your debt, especially as £29,900 is the average earning over your career, not what you will be earning at the start. Initially, you will be lucky just to pay the interest off.

This is irrelevant however as your loan is cancelled after 30 years.

What this means in practice is that if you go the university now, you can expect never to pay off your student loan. What you can expect to pay is an additional 3-4% tax for the 30 years after you start your first graduate job.

Is student loan a good idea?

I have written before about the difficultly of arguing against tuition fees, though there are some points that seem to hold up.

However, with the new system, the sheer nonsense of it all seems to work against the tuition fee system. We have a series of ‘loans’ that we never expect to be paid back. We’re not saving the entire cost of tuition because most people are never going pay it all back.

We are saving some money, of course, an additional 3-4% tax on graduates for most of their working lives is a considerable amount of money. However, given we could just tax everyone more, and then provide everyone with a free at the point of access education, without having to subject people to the choice of lumbering themselves voluntarily with the additional tax, you can make a good case for abolishing tuition fees.

Going to university is still worth it

Even with the current system in place, the best choice is still clear. As graduated out-earn non-graduates by an average of £12,100 per year, even with the additional tax of £1,130, you are still almost £11,000 better off with a degree.

I like Nordic cooking. The reason is quite long.

If Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Scandimania and The Hairy Biker’s Northern Exposure are to be believed, there is something very exciting about Nordic cooking. But there really isn’t. That in itself is novel.

You see, I’m from Britain. A country not known for its spicy food. As the timeless Good Gracious Me sketch ably demonstrates.

But it goes further. When Fearnley made his show TV Dinners he searched the country for people who really went all out for their dinner parties. However, when he floated his boat up as far as Yorkshire, he went ot see a man who did an amazing Sunday roast. The conversation went sometimes like this:

Hugh: “That is a beautiful piece of beef. What are you going to do with it?”

Yorkshireman: “Just roast it.”

Hugh: “Just roast it?”

Yorkshireman: “That’s right.”

Hugh: “Are you going to season it with anything?”

Yorkshireman: “No, I’m just going to roast it.”

In a country known for its bland food, I live in the county that thinks the rest of the country goes a bit too crazy with all that fancy seasoning nonsense.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because when I tell you that Nordic food is fucking bland, I want you to appreciate the true enormity of that statement. They are not messing about here. Traditional Nordic dishes have taken bland to a whole new level.

Check out this photo of me preparing a Nordic stew:

Normally, a stew would consist of some meat, with some vegetables, and seasoned with some salt and pepper, and a bay leaf or two. Not this recipe. You put a much of red meat in a pot, and you boil it for five hours.

Most dishes are served with boiled potatoes, but I like to go wild, so I whipped up some traditional root vegetable mash to go with it. It is like regular mash, except it comes with bits of swede and carrot in it that in no way make it look exactly like sick.

Or, if that doesn’t float your boat, why not fry up some potato cakes?

If you really want to go big, why not make a meatloaf? Simply get as much mincemeat as you can, shape it into a bread loaf, wrap it in bacon, and cook it for a few hours.

Every mouthful wiped about a week off my life expectancy. It was totally worth it. If you want to add some variety of your diet, you could add some fish. However, even in that case, the Nordic recipe turns it brown.

Unfortunately, even my sauté pan was not big enough to fit the breaded sea bass in.

Whether these Nordic classics will make it onto our regular rotation remains to be seen. I do like these recipes, however. They are simple. Most of them involve piling ingredients into a pot and leaving it for ages. There are odd parallels between having to build a fire pit to stay alive in a frozen forest and the stress of modern day life: both greatly benefit from recipes that can be slow-cooked with almost no interaction.

When I did the political compass test in 2013, I posted the result on my blog. The idea was that years later I could re-do the test and see how things had changed.

Three years have now passed, and here is my new result:

I’m slightly less libertarian than I used to be, but not by much. The big swing is from a very centre position to a mid-left position. I’m actually surprised that I haven’t lost more libertarian points since I embraced the nanny state, but apparently, it is possible to be a social libertarian.

Yeah, duck racing. It’s a thing.

We used Easter Sunday to visit my parents, who were holidaying in Pateley Bridge. The camp site was running a duck racing competition, so they had bought us a duck each. The concept is that they tip all the ducks in at the one end of the stream and the first to make it down to the next bridge is the winner.

It was so popular this year that they had to have six heats, with the top handful going through to the final. Sadly none of our ducks were fast enough to qualify. It’s a shame, as the grand prize was a respectable £50.

However, at least Elina can now say she has been to a real English duck race.

After I moaned about the onerous requirements of the Larousse Book of Bread my friend Jane was kind enough to bring me some fresh yeast to work with.

The first loaf I made was a standard white bloomer. I wanted to see if it felt any different to making it with dried yeast. The bread came out very well, though I don’t think I could actually taste any difference.

The second loaf I made was maple bread. I replaced the oil with some genuine Canadian maple syrup that my auntie Diane had brought me on her recent trip to England. It produced a slightly sweet bread. This worked well, not to sweet, but with a little something.

The temperature is getting warmer, the days are getting lighter and flowers are sprining up everywhere. Mostly importantly though, to mark the changing of the season I am putting away my wooly hat and bringing my cap out of the wardrobe. It’s time to enjoy some warmer rain.

She’s Having a Baby – and I’m Having a Breakdown is a 1998 book by James Douglas Barron. You can tell it has been around a while because you have to get a physical copy of it: no ebook or audiobook, just one of those old-fashioned tree-based things.

It was recommended to me by a friend and is designed to offer helpful advice to men.

It certainly has the format right. It is a bullet pointed list of 237 things. That is more than the amount of pages in the book. Each has a heading and a paragraph of text to read, making it very easy to consume. You can pick it up and read a little bit more in a minute, or you can find yourself spending an hour on it, telling yourself you will just read one more entry.

I found it was showing its age. Or perhaps its target demographic. It is clearly written by an involved dad, but feels like it was from a time when that was not the usual situation.

The advice contained in it is useful stuff to know, but I don’t feel like I learned much. Perhaps it helped reinforce what I had already guessed (be nice to your wife, buy a carseat, things will change, etc) and a few things I perhaps didn’t expect, but nothing I felt I would have missed if I had not read the book. It was quite a good laugh though.