Panic at the polling station

I am in turmoil. Which way do I vote? I know who I want to win, but I also know who I don’t want to win. This funny old election system means that my heart felt cross could well be wasted in my marginal constituency. I haven’t waited five years to waste my cross.

Listening to my head

I wrote essays at school about tactical voting, but never thought it really existed. Now, if I can square it with my conscience, I might actually vote tactically. The trouble is I don’t know who to trust.

The Daily Mirror has told me today that my constituency is a three-way marginal. A 1.08% swing will see it go to the Tories whilst a 1.37% swing for the Lib Dems will see them take it. I should therefore, according to their advice, vote Labour to withstand the onslaught.

But this is based on figures that are five years old. The Guardian on Saturday told me to vote tactically to stop the Tories and to do this I should vote Lib Dem to keep them out. Based on the polls, there has been a 10% decrease in the support for Labour nationally since 2005 which indicates not such a pretty picture for their 2010 chances in my constituency.

What is more the Lib Dem candidate in my area has put a note through the door (seemingly hand written but identical to the other five that came through the door) telling me it is between them and the Tories. In it he cites the recent council elections which saw Labour poll 10% of the popular vote. In case people like me are a bit slow on the uptake, he has written ‘they can’t win here’ next to the figure.

Following my heart

Voting tactically will mean going against my heart but at least I will be contributing to the outcome I want. But if I do vote tactically, say I have got it wrong and the difference between my preferred candidate winning and not winning is me? I’m not sure I could live with that. Maybe I should just follow Tony’s advice and vote for who I support. Turmoil.

Newspapers at weekends, newspapers are my weekend

I have been reading the Sunday paper for 1:40 minutes now. I am still not past the main section and all I can think about is getting my moneys worth.

It’s the same predicament I find myself in every Saturday and Sunday. There aren’t many things that make me happier than the newspaper. But at £2 it is a commitment that takes time and effort to deliver on, and if I don’t deliver on that commitment I am overtaken by guilt.

The truth is I rarely get to the magazines. For weeks on end they are chucked in the recycling bin still with their plastic films on and still carrying their special offers. I know there is great stuff in there, but I just can’t take it all in. I'm sorry.

I have come to the conclusion that it is irresponsible to buy the Sunday paper just for yourself. It is something that needs to be shared, much like a KFC bargain bucket.

Otherwise you are in an impossible situation. There are things I need to do now, I have given two hours of my time to the newspaper today and two hours yesterday, but I still feel it hasn’t had enough of my attention.

And I know it is not just me who gets a little overwhelmed. The other day on the tube, I saw someone reading a weekend supplement on a Wednesday. A Wednesday!

What I am saying, with no thought on the sustainability of the newspaper industry is, do the Sunday papers need to be so big and expensive?

Just for a week, let me try a £1 newspaper with £1’s worth of content. Then maybe I can get some sleep at night.

Where to dump a broken TV?

When you’ve had a bad week, and rest assured that mine has been bad, what you really need is a genius to come out of an unexpected place to show you the brighter side of life – humour.

And that’s exactly what happened last night when Emad and I were contemplating on what to do with our broken 31 inch TV.

We found a forum posing the question: “Where do I dump my broken TV? Garbage bin? I don't want to harm environment.”

It summed up our predicament accurately and succinctly we thought.

Scrolling down we found the advice we were looking for:

"we've got a canal near us.

i dump stuff in there.

it's already full of things, so i figure it can't hurt any if i dump my rubbish in it - i have to get rid of it!

they have recycling in my area now and it sucks i have to sort out all my rubbish. i don't like that - it's messy.

so i get in my car and take my rubbish to the canal. what's good about that is that the canal washes it downstream so i don need to worry about it when its gone

the enviroment will do fine i think. it has been going for a million years or something like that so i figure it can go on a bit longer

so yeah i would take the tv down to your river near your house and just chuck it in - maybe someone will find it and use spare parts to fix their tv, so its a win win thing

you can always burn it with some petrol and melt it down till its small enuff to fit in your bin. that way you could recycle it really which is good i think"

bb_Matt

Brilliant – I believe they call it holding a mirror up to the world!

P.S To clarify, our TV won't be going in the river.

My relationship with Tiger Woods - uncovered

I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my chest when I heard that Tiger Woods was taking an ‘indefinite break from professional golf’ last night.

Until then I had found the story compelling. The perfect role model and the world’s most dominant sportsman was uncovered as a womanising cheat chased out of his own home by his wife brandishing a golf club. The best fiction writers in the world couldn’t come up with stories that good.

But yesterday when I heard the news of his break, I felt like I had been part of a joke that had gone too far. The real victim (apart from his wife and children of course) is golf and all of the young people that play it.

Our relationship begins

From the age of 13 to 17 I played golf religiously. Over the summer holidays I would spend five days a week at the golf course and travel the country playing in tournaments. I started in 1997, the year Tiger won his first major by 10 shots, and for a while it was something I tried to keep under my hat.

Golf and the people who played it weren’t cool. Being a talented golfer gave me no street cred at school. It was all about etiquette, dress code and bank managers. But as I played more as a teenager, Tiger Woods won more as a professional and the whole feeling and image of the game went through a revolution.

Golf became raw, dynamic and exciting when Tiger played and everyone I played with wanted to be Tiger Woods, including myself. Golf would look extremely different now and be played at a lower standard if it wasn’t for the emergence of Tiger. Even his name was cool!



As soon as this commercial came out, people on golf courses all over the world practiced this as they waited on the tee.

The tide turns against Tiger

But people have become frustrated with Tiger in recent years, especially the media, for keeping himself so private and not using his platform to take a greater stance against issues like racial inequality. But for me, just by playing golf with so much flair, aggression and skill Tiger Woods was making the best contribution to the world he possibly could.

So the whole thing leaves me questioning, if there wasn’t such a media frenzy around him, would he have taken this decision? Now I feel he has been hounded into a corner by the showbiz press with extremely sad consequences.

My hope is that this is a public relations strategy that makes people like me feel sorry for him as opposed to disgusted at his behaviour and he will be back on the golf course within the next few months. If Tiger is away for any longer and doesn’t manage to recapture what has made him so unique for the last 12 years then golf will have lost its biggest asset.

Golf will have lost this:

Nothing better to do...

Procrastination is a weird thing when you think it, which you tend to do when you procrastinate. I spend most of my life running around, taking on more than I can handle and generally fitting a lot in. In these times of busyness I continually try to find more to do and generally succeed.

But when a time comes where there isn’t much structured work to be done I fall into this endless spiral of doing absolutely nothing with my time. I know I have my dissertation to do, I know I have some freelance work to do, but nothing, I mean NOTHING will motivate me to get on with it. You can see how people get into that benefit claimant culture - I think I would be a sucker for that!

Logically this just doesn’t make sense. Why can’t I be disciplined and spread my work out evenly over the year? This isn't a rhetorical question, I actually want an answer.

It takes me back to the days of ‘study leave’ at school. Whose idea was that, because it wasn’t a good one? “I know how we will get them to work for their exams – we’ll send them home for a month.” That’s no way to get me working. That's the way to get me on the golf course, in the park or on the internet looking at things I definately shouldn't. If I was made to go into school every day in the lead up to my exams I’m sure I would have far more A’s next to my name as opposed to all of those ugly C’s.

Never has a truer word been said than: ‘Procrastination is like masturbation - it may feel good at first but ultimately you’re just screwing yourself.’

What a waste of time this was. What I need to do is stop screwing my self.

Fruit and veg challenge - a change of strategy

So less than a week down and I have already failed once. It in fact took two days. You see what I have come to realise is that my strategy is all wrong. Because I don’t have breakfast I don’t get any fruit and veg into me early doors.

What this has led to is fruit binging late at night. Realising I need to get a couple more pieces down me before the day is out I load up on fruit after dinner.

Originally I thought this would be fine. But lying in bed at 1am the other day, my stomach started churning and making some very suspect noises and the consequences….well you can guess the consequences.

Anyway the point is this - I need a more balanced approach to my fruit and veg strategy and this evolves around having breakfast.

This means a complete change in my ethos is needed. I am a man who often wakes, thinks about having breakfast but then thinks better of it and presses snooze instead. This is not the way forward. For me to suceed I need to change this whole approach and get my arse out of bed. As I am soon coming to learn, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

July's challenge - getting healthy

The Brown Book is back and this is the challenge:

Everyday in the month of July I, Andrew Benjamin Webster, will eat five pieces of fruit and veg. This is a very scientific experiment.

If I succeed I expect to feel infinitely better by the end of the month and if I don’t the conclusion will be that vegetables are over-rated.

Now I have had discussions about this over the last few months and there is some debate as to what constitutes ‘one piece of fruit and veg’. To avoid controversy therefore I I feel it is best to set out a few rules.

1. Beans count

2. Tinned spaghetti doesn’t

3. Potatoes do not count

4. Contrary to what I have said in the past tomato soup does not count as four pieces of fruit and veg. But where it says on the soup tin that it counts as one, it will count.

5. Smoothies count as two as per the instructions on the back of innocent smoothies. But more than one smoothie a day is cheating.

6. Things where salad is just window dressing do not count. i.e. burgers and kebabs.

7. A glass of orange juice does count, but tropical doesn’t (What is that anyway?)

8. My decision as judge is final.

9. I am allowed to not reach five on four separate occasions and still pass.


These are the rules....let the games begin.