So i thought I would wade in with my few thoughts on the healthcare debate.
Before I start I will admit that while I don’t know the intricacies of the US system, I did live in the US for a couple of years, and was stung repeatedly by Doctors, Dentists and Nurses. I then spent a couple of years in Holland and experienced their form of universal healthcare. Also, of course, as a brit i know the NHS inside and out, it’s good points, and yes it’s bad.
The loud and vitriolic ranting against Obama-care can, I believe, be split into two distinct camps. There are those who don’t understand the plans, and those who get it, but don’t support it.
The first group, those that don’t get it, seem to be receiving the most coverage in the press. From “death panels” to the terrible state of the NHS, misinformation seems to reign supreme. Fuelled by right-wing media, these completely natural fears are being exacerbated and mutated into an almost unstoppable belief that the entire US will lost their quality healthcare and all end up with a sub-standard, state-run socialised medicine.
The answer to this is simple, it’s not for everyone, its’ for people who can’t afford healthcare. If you have great healthcare, you will keep great healthcare. If you don’t then you will now be covered in some way, regardless of your ability to pay.
The comparisons to the NHS are moot. There are many people in the UK who have private healthcare, many employers who offer this as a perk. They don’t have waiting lists and they have private wards. Also, because there is a safety net below them in the form of the NHS, costs are less than in the US, and they propensity to deny coverage seems to be less. A universal healthcare model will only really punish the pockets of the politicians and lobbyists with connections to the pharmaceutical industry.
This brings me to the second group, those that completely understand the proposals but are against it. I can count some personal friends in this group, yet I could never be in it. The argument against seems to be thus: “Why should I work hard, get insurance, then have to pay for other people to get covered?” The classic right vs left debate. It is with this that I take umbrage. Let us take me as an example. I work for a major corporation, in their online advertising space. I receive a good salary, and get healthcare. Why should I have to fund the healthcare of the poor, the uninsured and the skill-less?
Well, one of the reasons why I can earn the money I do, and have access to the things I need is because of the society I live in, and the infrastructure that supports it. The success (of whatever level) that I can attain is propped up by housing, transport, sustenance, policing, power, heating, light, clean streets amongst many, many other things. In all these industries there are lower paid workers. There are transient farm workers, street cleaners, clothing makers, bus drivers, food packers, steel workers, trash men to name a tiny, tiny few. Without these people I would not be able to get to work, have the strength to work, have the power and lighting to work, and therefore earn the money that I do. Is it then too much to ask me to give a tiny, tiny proportion of it to cover the health-costs of those who support me and enable me to live the life i lead?
This is the society we have in the UK, and the US. It is this infrastructure that gives us the chance to make the money we do. We should be grateful to this and when a reasonable ask is made of us, whether it is to feed, clothe or treat a member of our society, remember it is in the benefit of all of us that we should help out. If that means rolling out a universal healthcare plan to insure the forgotten members of a society, then so be it. We all benefit in the end.
So, if anybody has read 0891 Christmas, then you may have some questions. What the? on the phone? like sex and that? how could you do it? Was it cool? to name but a few.
Well it was a job, for over 2 years (on and off). It was immoral, easy, fun, evil, awful, really tiring, difficult, a bit freaky, depressing and numbing all in one.
I drifted into it when my friend Adam worked there. Seemed like easy money. A lot more than i was earning making pizza at the time. So i gave it a go. What followed was the two oddest years of my life, even now when i look back i don’t quite understand how it all happened, and no-one ever believes me.
I could regale you with many many tales, but for now i will just explain the whole thing.
For those not au fait with the pre-internet phenomena of telephone chatlines here is a brief 101. Originally people would call, at 50p per minute and be put through to an open “chat-room” where they could hear lots of people, including one chatline monitor (who was there to create fun etc). These lasted for a while, but after a while there were many complaints of extortionate phone bills, and the regulatory body OFFCOM banned them. So that was that.
Until, as always happens, someone finds a loophole. As the law forbade “live” chatlines, why not make them “semi-live”? So now it worked thus.
Someone sees an ad at 2 in the morning to “make friends on the phone” with “fun people in your area” and enticed by the flashing lights and disco music they call a number (as before at 50p a minute).
You call up, and an automated voice tells you to record your name, and a brief introduction “erm hullo, ….. it’s Darren, i look like Brad Pitt and like girls” then your intro slips to the end of everyone elses intos. You then navigate through all of the other intros on line, pressing 1 to repeat, 3 to skip or 2 to send a message. Like voice mail. But instant. Your messages will then queue up, from multiple people so that by the time you have gone through them all, you have a response from the person you started with. And it repeats. Though now, not being live, a single conversation back and forth can take hours, and the phone bills really mounted up, with some regular callers being on for 10 hours a night, every night , until the bills come.
Sounds fun? Of course it does. But, obviously there is more. Generally people are dull, especially people who call chatlines at 4 in the morning. So they hire people, mainly women, to be chatty, flirty, funny, talkative and so forth. These chatline monitors have one goal, “keep people on the phone for as long as possible”. They have to pretend to be genuine callers, who are constantly bombarding all the callers with messages, entertaining and enticing them into believing that the person sending them messages, really really wants to talk to them. And the men who worked there have to retain the smaller number of women so that the male callers hear even more female introductions, and stay on the phone longer. To spend more money.
At the same time, the chatline monitors would have to listen in on every voice message going back and forth, to make sure the callers were not exchanging phone numbers, as they would then hang up and call each other direct and not spend 50p per minute. So, that’s one headset listening and vetting calls, while the other headset is for talking to callers.
That’s the bones of it. Obviously there is more to it; The 12 hour shifts, the multiple characters (including , on occasion, affecting a female voice), the moral quandaries or the stalkers. There was the in depth history you build into the character you portray (mine was Jordan, an out of work actor living in central London). The moral issues that refused to go away, usually culminating in a flouncy storm out of the office only to be persuaded to return a few weeks later (yes, that was me, repeatedly).
These phone lines were not about sex (OFFCOM were very strict about that) but there was flirting. Anyway if there was open sex talk available, people would be “satisfied” a lot quicker and not stay on for hours. Then the internet created a plethora of online free chat rooms the bill came in for premium rate party lines. The sex lines stayed though, of course.
In short it was a headfuck, part acting, part moral cesspool that took 2 years of my life. At the moment I am trying to sketch together a script, for either a one-off TV drama, or a 6 part series. Whether it works will depend on people’s appetite for late 90’s voyeurism. And whether it’s any good.
Seminal Label 4AD have released a free sampler to download. Featuring The Breeders, Bon Iver and Deerhunter (To name but a few).
Fill your proverbial boots.
So there it was, Merry Christmas and probably many people did have fun. I did, for the most part, though it has left me shattered and empty. It was one of those 3-in-1 festives of her parents, our house and my parents, (with a night of drunken indie dancing thrown into the middle for shits and giggles) and as I have already pointed out (shame on you for forgetting already) I had fun.
So I started looking back on previous years to see if there were any truly awful Christmases in my past, and yes, yes there were. Like everyone I have had my good and bad Yules but one stands out head and shoulders above the rest. 1998. I shudder to recall, but recall I must, because I’ve mentioned it now and it would be rather twattish of me to not continue.
So I was living in Leeds in the North of England where I spent two random years of my life. I lived in a huge student area so all of my friends had gone back home to their parents for what seemed like an age, but was probably only 2 weeks. And it was cold, feck me that winter was cold.
Obviously this is bleak but in no way could be described as a miserable lowlight. What made things worse was my job. For most of the time I lived in Leeds I worked on telephone chatlines. Let me elaborate somewhat (for narrative clarity, though I will explore this particular employ in a subsequent post) before you scream out “sex-line worker” at me. These were not the “talk me off, get dirty sexy phone lines”, they were the “make friends on the phone, chat with real guys and girls , have fun, talk now, its like a party on the phone chatlines”. Though there was no fun,most of the “real guys and girls (well mainly the girls)” were employed by the phone line to be vaguely interesting, a tad flirty and well basically just keep callers on the line for as long as possible (at 50 pence a minute this can soon rack up). In short it was an office full of overweight, overwrought chain-smoking misfits pretending to be someone you really wanna stay on the phone and talk to. Anyway I will cover this job in far more detail later, but trust me it sucked. Big time.
To jog your memory…
So Christmas eve I turned up for work at 6, sat down and did my chatline thing until 9 the next morning. I shudder to think how bad your life must be to call these lines on Christmas Day morning, but call people did, and I had to keep them (well the girls) on the phone racking up that bill. After 15 hours of soul crushing misery I walked home, crawled into bed and slept until about 3. I rose, opened my present (the night before I had gone into the local off-license closed my eyes, reached into the fridge and pulled out a 4-pack of beer. I had kept it secret from myself until I wrapped it and now discovered I had bought myself 4 cans of Carling, bloody Carling. So I cracked one open, went into the kitchen and prepared my Christmas Dinner.
If you want to recreate my dinner here is the recipe.
Take 1 potato, peel it and slice it thinly.
Take 1 M&S chicken casserole for one, layer the potato on top and place it in the oven at 180 degrees.
Leave for 30 minutes
Enjoy
So, I sat down with my dinner and second can of beer and flicked on the Christmas film. It was Jurassic Park on the BBC. I got to watch about half of it, then it was back to work. Yes that’s right, back to spend another 12 hours of questioning morality to wrap up Christmas Day. This pattern carried through with one night off until New Years Day. Then I quit, for about a month.
So there you have it. My worst Christmas ever. I know that no-one died. I know that I wasn’t living on the streets performing hand-jobs for crack but for me that was pretty low. And weird. Very weird.
We recently went to Copenhagen, by we I mean my wife and I. It was a recce , a scouting operation to see if we could live there. And why not? It regularly tops polls for quality of life, there must be something about the place.
It was lovely, in parts. Really bleak in others. Then lovely again. Then you realised that while you were distracted by the lovely, you were pick pocketed by a drunk Hans Christian Anderson. Why everyone was drunk i don’t know. But they were. all day. Everyone.
In the end we decided that we couldn’t afford moving somewhere with 40% income tax and ludicrous prices. In fact the whole thing baffled us that people could afford to live there at all. Though if you had a big family, kids going to University, retirement coming up and needing medical treatment it could be all right. The huge taxes obviously mean that almost everything the state could pay for, they do pay for.
So it led me to think. What actually constitutes a good quality of life? Now i know that this is an extremely subjective thing but still..
Would you want to live by the sea? Surrounded by mountains and lakes? Would you need publicly funded healthcare for all or have lower taxes? Obviously this would depend on what stage you were in your life, your political beliefs or indeed whether a foreign language phases you.
When you start to weigh up options you realise that unexpected things suddenly become important. For instance annual leave. Being from the UK I am used to about 25 days per year. We were looking at Canada, the US or the aforementioned Denmark as options for the long term future. US – no minimum annual leave. Canada – 10 days annual leave. Denmark – 30 Days annual leave.
Now , not wanting to sound like a workshy fop, but if you move somewhere to improve your quality of life, surely time away from work is important? Is it more or less important than scenery? House size? Job prospects? weather?
Ah i don’t know. All I know is that Denmark is out of the long term picture, and we are moving to the coast for a few years to think about it…..and eat ice cream. Lot’s of ice cream.
After 2 1/2 years in London we have had enough. Time to move to the sea. Well Brighton to be exact. Because let’s be honest London sucks. A crowded rude place where your nearest friends live an hour away. Where you feel smug because you beat the crippled blind woman to the last remaining tube seat. Where after two years you realise that your circle of friends is exactly the same as it was back then. Oh I could go on but I wont.
Though this does make me think. After 2 1/2 years we (my wife and I) are moving on. we lived in Dublin for 2 1/4 years. Amsterdam for about 3 years. Before then i lived in Santa Barbara for 2 1/4 years and Leeds for 2 1/4 years.
Well when i started this little blog of mine, my intention was to only write stuff of note. To avoid the blog trap of feeling i need to fill space with the mundanity ofmy everyday life. I was only going to write interesting, funny, challenging stuff.
So that’s why I have written nothing in weeks. I feel the pressure may have been too much.
This seems to be the opportune time to write this post. If I leave it too long it sort of misses the point. Either people will be reading it, which sort of makes it worthless, or I won’t be writing it, either way the issue is a stickler.
Sorry, I’m not making much sense am I? Well let me elaborate.
This is about writing, or more specifically blogging, to no-one. Knowing that the piece you write, craft, stumble over will never be read by anyone. Even if it is, it may be months down the line when your opinions may have changed on the subject, or at least the immediacy is gone. Now, don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a bleating moan about how I have no-one reading this, far from it. This blog was only set up a few days ago, I’m a realist, I understand it takes time. No, this is about the opening few days of a blog, posting , finding your voice and placing your words out there (If you hadn’t already guessed I am new to this game, only posting twice on a friend’s blog a few years prior).
This is about the knowledge that whenever I Write the word “you”, that you are not going to read it (see I’ve done it again, and in fact even this aside is superfluous as who am I ‘asiding’ to?) It already makes my head teeter in slight confusion.
Obviously I would have to hand back my “overused metaphor society card” if I didn’t point out the old adage about “If a tree falls in the woods, and no-one …blah…blah…..makes a sound?”. The answer is yes, of course. Just like these words do exist. what doesn’t exist are the experiences of reading them for the first time. Comprehension. Disbelief. Tedium. Bemusement. Throw them all in the to bag.
It’s like making a ham and cheese sandwich that will never be eaten, or a badge that will never be worn. Actually it is like being on Big Brother with the world not watching. Constantly talking to a third party who isn’t there. Referring to an omnipotent viewership/readership that doesn’t exist. Or just shouting at a wall.
I think it is in that last one that you start to see the rationale behind this. Surely it is about venting, flailing your arms around when no-one is watching, talking to yourself while on the loo. Therapy? Internal expression manifesting itself into a Wordpress url and a bucket full of words and opinions? Or just an amateur blogger asking questions that countless other bloggers have asked before him.
Now as a man whose love affair with kissing tarmac (or rock, wood, brick or in fact just any old surface) has been more passionate than the Pope’s, it can be said that I have had quite a few falls in my time. Down hills, over walls, down stairs, off bikes, off ladders, into an open manhole (yes, really) or just basically arse over tit, I’ve done them all. However there are two which I still lay claim to being the most spectacular or just plain ridiculous of the bunch.
Leeds. 1996. I had finished work about 10 (making pizzas you know) and myself and the waitress (a rather attractive young woman who for the sake of decency we shall refer to as Miss P.) had decided to go out for a drink.
Drink..Dance..Flirt..Dance..Drink..Flirt..Taxi..
So we arrive back home, where we find my housemates to be up. I sit on the arm of the chair while Miss P sits in the chair, head on my lap.
Now, at this point someone passes round a joint. Now let’s be clear, I was never that good with the old hash,weed,wacky baccy, doobage, etc etc etc. It was generally a bad idea. When I was already drunk it was a terrible idea. When I was already drunk and things were looking promising, it was possible the worst idea since Ben Affleck.
Now I may be sick, I need to get upstairs to the toilet and fast. Obviously I can’t let her know I’m feeling ill, gotta keep the chance alive and keep the door ajar (although I’m probably bright green by this point). So I mumble the best excuse my newly stoned and drunk mind can manage, something so clever and devilish she’ll never know I’m going to be sick. Something so fiendish that…
“juss gonna go ‘n have a shit”
Yes I know, I know, hardly classy. Let’s face it my chances of a romantic entanglement ended there. But just in case there was any chance – any chance at all -I had better balls it up completely.
I stagger to the open doorway, and step-by-step slowly climb the stairs. I must add that I am being watched for this entire trip through the open doorway (see diagram, I have lovingly marked the positions of Miss P and myself for you). And I almost make it. Almost. I miss the top step, fly backwards, miss almost all of the steps on the way down and hit the polished wooden floor of the wall – hard. Then I proceed to slide the couple of metres required for my head to hit the front door.
This is where I remain, suffering a combination of pain, stonedness (funnily enough I didn’t feel sick anymore) and sheer embarrassment for about half an hour until her taxi arrives. I have to move my head slightly to let her open the door as she steps over me. Not the best ending to a night and the final icing on the cake came after I woke up, three hours later, in the same place with a sleeping bag thrown on me and my head in a small pool of cat pee. Special.
Let me introduce you to a nemesis of mine. T’is as vicious and evil a nemesis that anybody could hope to have; a nemesis that tests and challenges, throwing obstacle after obstacle in my way. It has been responsible for many a period of woe and strife.
This Nemesis has a name and its name is Tuesday.
Now before you think, hang on – “how can a day of the week be a Nemesis?” I will briefly mention that, for a while, the number 16 bus in Dublin ran it a close second. I can see some of you nodding so I will continue.
Tuesdays are evil incarnate. While some may hate Mondays (Obviously not Geldof, he made a fortune out of them) and Wednesdays are a bit pointless I’ll admit, it is Tuesdays’ insidiousness and stealth that makes them all so much worse.
Mondays you expect. You see them coming. They hang over the weekend like the knowledge that your dad/missus/other is still going to be up when you get home. It’s that bastard Tuesday that catches you out. It’s the proper start to the week, it’s no mans land. It’s the second step into a darkened room. Let me explain.
The weekend is the light, the room with the TV, the party, the drinks, the hot chick and a door. Sunday night you open the door and step through into Monday. Now Monday may be bad, but you still have the door open, the light of the weekend casts it in an eerie glow. You can remember Saturday night, you can talk about the football on
Sunday. Then you close the door.
It’s Tuesday. Its suddenly dark, the weekend behind is a distant memory. You can’t see anything. Even if you manage to get through this ordeal it’s only going to be Wednesday. You stub your toe in the void. You hear a noise. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? Confusion and despondency sets in. What’s the point? Why bother? You hate this fecking job anyway. It’s probably raining. You stepped in some dog shit. It’s Tuesday.
But wait. Your eyes become accustomed to the dark. You can make out shapes. Is it? Yes it’s Wednesday and by the end of Wednesday you can even see the light chinking out from under the door on the other side. Thank Jesus, Vishnu, Buddha, Mohammed and L. Ron Hubbard. That noise? Ah it’s probably the pipes, who cares? You start to make your way to the faint light. It’s Thursday now, you feel good. You may trip over a few chairs on the way, catch your toe on the edge of the bed but hey you can go out and get pissed tonight. After all it’s Friday tomorrow. And there it is. Friday. You’ve opened the door. The light of the weekend ahead bathes you with radiant glory. You just have to turn, check the newly lit room behind, finish off a few things and you are through, home and dry. It’s the weekend; there is beer in the room although to be honest you probably started drinking while you were opening the door. It’s bright and shiny. The music is cool and you don’t have to leave for 2 days. Just never forget about Tuesdays.
