Chris Worfolk's Blog

Like many football fans, I have an incredibly complex system of national prejustices to work out what football team to support. Take Iran v Argentina for example. Which team am I supposed to support in this match? Iran has a terrible human rights record. However, Argentina was the last country to invade British soil, and worse cheated their way to a World Cup win in 1986.

How is one supposed to decide?

Ideally, someone would come up with a formula for working it all out. Geographic proximity, ancestry in a certain country, what you think of their politics, and how cool you think their flags and shirts are are all potentially important factors in deciding.

Once England are out, Germany are usually my B team (it is an unfortunate reality that being English you have to have a B team for when England get knocked out, but that is also true of all but a handful of countries) as having a Germanic name, it is the closest thing I can trace my ancestry to.

After that it is a question of geographic proximity. I hope France do well for example. Of course, I am supposed to hate the French, but it is very difficult to maintain such levels of casual racism against them in the 21st century. This then expands out in a circle in a “kilometres from me” fashion working out who to support.

It’s not quite that simple however. There are exclusions. I would not support Saudi Arabia for example, at least until they de-classify atheism as terrorism. Nor will I be supporting Qatar until they stop executing gay people.

Then you have to factor in the underdog level as well. We have been conditioned by decades of Hollywood films to support the underdog. In many ways it just glory supporting as if these films have taught me anything, it is that the underdogs always win. Plus it is just nicer when they do. Of course this runs in direct contradiction to the geographic rules as most of the best football teams are in Europe whereas the underdogs are on the “edge of the world” – Australia, Japan, South Korea, USA, Costa Rica, etc.

How do you balance it all? These first world problems just seem to go on and on…

Last month we went to a Finn Guild event at Roundhay Park to take part in a mölkky championship. Mölkky is a game that combines darts and skittles. You have a wooden block and have to use it to knok over other wooden blocks to reach a certain score. Our team, Thar She Blows, was named after the £1 team t-shirts one of our members kindly provided. We ended up winning bronze.

Happy Higgs Day!

For the June meeting of Leeds Skeptics, Georgina Binnie presented a talk “A Look at James Joyce and Photography”.

Last month I invited everyone to Wendy House, saying it was probably the last one ever. With a three month summer break and declining attendance it seemed like it would struggle to keep going. Those who did not take up the opportunity might be disappointed to know they have missed their chance. They have just posted this statement…

WENDY HOUSE HAS ENDED

We’re very sad to announce that June 2014 was our final Wendy House. It’s been a tough decision and I know a lot of people will be disappointed, but I’ve decided to retire as a promoter to spend more time with my young family, and Nik and I want to concentrate on other projects. Due to some financial loses and the venue making changes to which rooms we could run Wendy House in, we’ve decided to cancel future events.

We’ve been doing Wendy House for over 16 years now and we never thought we’d get this far. We’d like to take the opportunity to say a massive thanks to everyone involved and to those that have helped us over the years, there’s just too many to list. We’d also like to wish other clubs and promoters all the best of luck, especially in Leeds, which is a brilliant town for partying in.

And most of all, thank you to all our amazing punters that have dressed up, looked fantastic and been incredible fun at all our events, here’s to you guys!

Glenn (Promoter/DJ) and Nik (DJ)

The Wendy House

While not being unexpected, indeed I blogged about it here, it is very disappointing. For eight years it has proved a mainstay in our social circle. Others have been going twice that long. It was my one club night per month to go out and feel young. Now what I am supposed to do? Accept being an adult?!?

It is also a shame that they did not announce it in advance. I think that if they had, a lot of people might have made the effort to come over to Leeds and dress up. Perhaps they will end up doing a special event at some point.

Apparently I am now a Competent Communicator cos I can like talk good and stuff. Thankfully, spelling is not taken into account.

Today also marks me no longer being President of Leeds City Toastmasters, nor Vice President of Public Relations for White Rose Speakers. I am now officially Area Governor for Area 15 though.

Some people have claimed that the reason cults find it so difficult to get a grip in Britain is because we do not take anything seriously. Any topic, no matter how serious, is turned into a sarcastic joke. For example, here are some people mocking the deaths of tens of millions of people:

I am not suggesting this is in any way a bad thing. It is a very positive force that sheds light on serious issues, as well as being side-splittingly funny.

Similarly, any public house on a weekend will be full of people exchanging jokes about Madeleine McCann, Jimmy Savile and the Irish potato famine. The best ones get them all into the same joke. Americans may have to wait decades for a topic to become funny, but if you are British, I bet the first Michael Jackson joke arrived in your inbox before his body was even cold.

When I was a growing up, I used to read The Onion. You could even get the print version in my local Borders (remember Borders? Back in’t day…). Some of their stories were hit, others were miss. Their headline Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeroes still makes me chuckle.

It still is funny, and usually worth a read.

However, its power simply cannot match that of The Daily Mash. I started reading Mash while I was still working at Buzz, which must have been two or three ago now. That is a long time to be consistently funny. But they manage it. If anything, they are getting funnier.

Far from knocking out a few good headlines a week, The Daily Mash produces five brilliant headlines a day. I despair working out what I should retweet and what I should post on Facebook, because everything is worthy of it. Even its least amusing headline is generally far more worthy of such attention that the current bollocks being put out by BuzzFeed.

Of course satire has long been a British art form. Spitting Image, Private Eye, Monster Raving Loony Party, Mock The Week, Brass Eye and Boris Johnson represent just a tiny handful examples that I could pick out from an ocean of possibilities. John Oliver is currently turning into a US export. Nor is Mash the only people in the game: NewsThumb, NewsBiscuit and others produce excellent headlines as well.

But few have refined the art as well as The Daily Mash. For their contribution, I am grateful.

I had a lot of optimism when I started reading Lord of the Flies. I was hoping for a fascinating exploration of the dark side of human nature through the story of what would happen if a group of boys found themselves alone on an uninhabited island. A primitive, savage society arranged around its leader, the lord of the flies.

However, it turns turns out that the lord of the flies is just a pig’s head on a stick.

Still, at least I know never to reveal that my childhood nickname was “piggy”. So it was not a complete waste of ten hours of my life, even if the author, William Golding, somewhat missed the point.

Recently a new report by Shelter suggested that 80% of homes were unaffordable to most families. Government intervention on this issue has failed us. Perhaps it is time for a free market solution?

Firstly, the government’s “Help to Buy” scheme is not helpful. It allows people to take 95% mortgages by allowing the banks to make less risky mortgages and the government paying the rest. The problem with this is that it allows people to buy homes they can’t afford.

The example of the Help to Buy website shows the government adding in £20,000 to the £5,000 deposit the buyer has, thus allowing them to buy a £200,000 house. But they cannot afford a £200,000 house. Based on the deposit they are putting up they can afford a £40,000 house. However, state intervention then allows everyone to charge £200,000 and have buyers for them, thus house prices go up to way beyond what they should be.

Secondly, the banks are willing to take large risks on mortgages because they know the government will bail them out if they get into trouble. Thus they can take huge risks, get rich when times are good and make the tax payer pay when times are bad. Who wouldn’t do that?

The government should stop doing things to make this huge prices affordable and actually do the opposite – making them unaffordable! Thus the free market would then bring prices down.

This, not propping up unaffordable house prices, is where state intervention would be useful. In order for the free market to function effectively you need to ensure there is liquidity in the market. This can be achieved by making sitting on second homes unaffordable.

Leeds City Council has already taken steps to do this. They have revoked council tax discount on empty properties and after two years you even may a premium of an extra 50% (you pay 150% of the normal council bill) to encourage you to sell it. Similarly, as I wrote about in 2012, you could just ban people from buying second homes.

Ending the state-sponsored propping up of house prices and introducing further measures to add liquidity to the housing market could then allow the free market to bring house prices down to a reasonable level.

Obviously this is a topic that most people will have an opinion on, so I would love to hear why I am wrong (on which I expect there will be some good arguments).

Tuesday was not a good day. For a start, I have a mouth ulcer at the moment which means eating anything is painful.

Then, when I got home from work, I found that something had tripped all the electric plugs in my flat. Because of the way that the flat is wired up, this meant I lost my fridge and freezer too. As a result they had both risen in temperature and the food inside was ruined. It all had to be thrown away; cost of replacement, just over £100.

Worse, I then had to make a manic attempt to eat all the Ben & Jerry’s. This was both unsuccessful due to the quantity of Ben & Jerry’s that had been in my freezer and painful due to a combination of my ulcer and stomach pains, probably from eating too much Ben & Jerry’s.