For various reasons — among them the fact that they are so shiny — I recently gave in to temptation and bought some Apple products: a Macbook and an iPhone.

I think I’ve always maintained that Apple gadgets were extremely pretty and admittedly functional, but my main objection was the cynical way that the items were priced — namely, very expensively.

Now I have to admit that I am in love (a bit) with Apple products and have succumbed to the middle-class ethic that as soon as Steve Jobs releases something, I want it.

I hereby confess that I have joined the ranks of reasonably well-off white folks who are prepapred (almost) to fall to their backs and let the aforsesaid California pretty hardware corporation  anally rape them by charging their plastic with ludicrous amounts of dosh every time they bring out a new incarnation of their iEquipment (probably because they prematurely ejaculated and  released the iEqipment before it was ready in the first place).

I readily admit I have fallen in love with the latest app — even if it does cost £210 — and will download music from iTunes, even though it would probably be cheaper to go buy the whole album on CD.

Other things I have recently realised — and that I am prepared to admit out loud — include (but are not limited too) the fact that …

• I am immensely irritated by people who do not share my exact cultural values (that includes people from Maidenhead and Riga, wasted yoof and the BNP)
• I think all people on social benefits are scrounging and should therefore suffer the Spanish Inquistion (no-one expected that), or at least that’s what the Daily Mail says
• Brown bread does taste better than white bread but you can’t beat a good fry-up for breakfast
• Celebrities views on everything are more intersting than the meaning of life
• Speed cameras are irritating because they make me slow down
• Tony Blair was a this thoroughly nice chap, don’t you know?
• Bears may do other things in the woods than steal pick-a-nic baskets

But most of all, that I am a middle class, middle-aged white bloke who just wants a quiet life and lots of shiny things that work in the way you’d expect.

Sadly that rules out the MacBook which won’t connect to my WiFi network.

Bugger!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Why Ping will succeed as a social network. (colinwalker.me.uk)
• Apple predicts the death of the CD (thoughtgadgets.com)
• Tony Blair’s Fantasy Land (bigthink.com)
• So Tony Blair turned to alcohol – it’s a rare PM that doesn’t (guardian.co.uk)
• Did Tony Blair really have a drink problem? (guardian.co.uk)

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Yesterday, I was convinced my slurred speech was down to stress or depression. Heaven knows I’m entitled: the past month has been a rollercoaster of raised hopes, dashed promises, insolvency, form-filling, pitching and waiting. Most of all waiting.

There have been many long days as I try to launch my new Search Engine Marketing (SEM) company, MediaPositive. and finally go self-employed.

Some of the most wearing experiences have been the embarrassment of people praising the stuff I do (supposedly, that’s a sign of low assertiveness).

But my current insomnia is not a result of any of this. It’s not even a result of the noisy police dogs at the bottom of my garden, or the next-door neighbours who are  marking Ramadan by breaking their fast at 2am and getting rat-arsed in the wee small hours till they throw up.

No, my sleeping problems — I realised this morning in a flash of inspiration — are most likely down to the buckets of coffee I have been drinking each day with a good friend who is doing some handyman work to make our new abode even more delightful.

As a Search Engine expert I should have known to be wary of Caffeine (no more SEO in-jokes, Ed.).

Excuses, excuses

Perhaps the resulting lethargy is the underlying reason for my lack of blogging and Twittering in recent weeks.

My last post “In Praise of Breasts” was perhaps not the best parting shot, especially when I was asked at one speculative interview if they could read my blog to gauge my writing style.

Anyhow, I’m taking notice of Cicero’s advice, which I highlighted in a previous post:

“Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so.”

But it’s not that I have nothing to write about (there’s loads), it’s just that at present it all feels like a blur.

Next week I start a long-term contract with the biggest client of dgmSearchLab, the SEO department I used to run until the company went belly-up in July (the rise and fall of dgm is perhaps a topic for another day) and there are other opportunities in the pipeline.

The reason for this post is really to put down a marker for a new era of career, success and achievement, especially in blog posting.

No, first let me get the caffeine (not the Google kind) out of my bloodstream and then, I promise, I’ll fill you in. If you’re at all interested.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Beyond Conventional Search Engine Marketing Part 2 (convonix.com)
• Ramadan starts and babies suffer? (mojoey.blogspot.com)
• Council confirms 3,000 jobs to go (bbc.co.uk)
• The State of Search Marketing & Connecting The Dots (networksolutions.com)
• Google Caffeine – The SEO Experts Speak (searchengineoptimizationportland.com)

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

It has been said that no other age has put them quite so much on public display. There are available for viewing in national newspapers and magazines, everywhere on the internet and certainly across every Tube carriage, park bench, high street and public house.

Every woman seems to want to show them off and, according to the posters and advertisements in magazines, the bigger the better. There are whole shops devoted to foundationwear to make them look bigger, or define them better or display more of them. There are clinics with waiting lists of women wanting to have them enlarged or reshaped or enhanced.

So why do I get such frowns when I look at them?

I heard a story recently about Britt Eklund, the Swedish actress of the 1970s, who had notorious flings with Peter Sellers and George Best. She was appearing in a play with a British actor (whose name escapes me right now) who was, er , captivated by her breasts so prominently on display. Anyway, one day he was embarrassed to look up and see Miss Ekland smiling at him. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve been staring at your boobs, haven’t I?” She laughed and said: “Darling, that’s what they’re for!”

This is my point. If breasts were simply there to feed an infant for up to seven years (yes, children can be breastfed until they’ve been at school two years!) then, like most other mammals, they would only develop to their full voluptuous best during pregnancy and then shrink to almost nothing a few weeks or months after the last feed.

Don’t knock Mother Nature

In contrast, breasts are developing much, much earlier (possibly due to the large concentration of estrogen delivered into the water supply by women taking the birth control pill) and they stay around long after the menopause when child nutrition means sneaking the grandkids a bad of sweets which you know will make them hyperactive and sickly on the way home with Mum and Dad.

I’m posting this blog on “Boobie Wednesday” (or #Boobiewed), a Twitter campaign day designed to get women to inspect their breasts regularly for any signs of disease or abnormal growth.  I think this is another pointer towards the dual purpose of breasts: evolution tends towards phasing out “flawed systems”. The fact that evolution figures breasts are important enough to “hang around” even when not being used for their so-called primary purpose, means that the secondary purpose must be pretty important too. Okay, that’s probably bullhickey but so what?

Breasts are there for men — and women — to look at and to admire. They are primary sexual characteristics: all women have them and in general the women that have smaller ones wish they were bigger.

Even when it’s cold and chilly, some wonderful women still insist on low-cut tops which demonstrate ample cleavage. And even when they do cover up, it’s not hard to see that they’re still there. They stick out, after all.

However, if I look at them openly I’m meant to be some sort of sexual predator. A lecher who is on a par with a kiddie fiddler or donkey fondler. What could be further from the truth? I’m just a straight guy who likes looking at breasts — not boobies or titties or knockers or any of the coy, evasive terms of embarrassment usually used on these occasions — because they make him feel better.

My primitive monkey brain

I’m not obsessive. I do realise there’s more to you than 8lbs of fat with two nipples attached. I can and will talk to your face without my eyes drifting southwards. I can even work with people who have breasts without salivating.

But if you’re walking down the street and we’re not having a conversation, don’t be surprised if I let my limbic system get the better of me and I stare at your assets (see, you’re getting me all coy now).

As the French say: “Vive la difference!” and you can’t name a bigger demonstration of that difference than breasts.

So, chests out girls. Stand proud and take mens’ attention on your breasts for what it is, a heartfelt compliment.

Related articles

• Ad watchdog rules: Objectification of women is okay, but not the lack of a seatbelt (mumbrella.com.au)
• i just thought i was being old (ihatethismess.tumblr.com)
• Punched in the Implant (thegloss.com)
• Why I won’t be joining the “Boobquake” (salon.com)
• Empowerment: Women Now Choose Objectification Over ‘Creepy’ Breastfeeding (redstate.com)

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I write this blog as an almost unemployed person. The final nail in the coffin should come round about midday on Monday when we are finally told that no buyer has been found for the company.

While I work in search, the company I work for is an affiliate network and the affiliates are voting with their feet.

An affiliate network without affiliates is not even a network.

And so, while the bit of the company I was responsible for was profitable and improving daily, its support network will virtually disappear. I will most likely be joining the ranks of the unemployed again on Monday.

Furthermore, because of the way it has all come to pass, there is a decreasing likelihood that anyone will get paid this month. The £1,600 underpayment I was expecting to swell my salary looks to be history too.

Never say it can’t get worse.

Watch this space.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Commission Junction Chosen Twice as Often as Other Affiliate Networks (marketingpilgrim.com)
• Affiliate Tools to start your own Network (web-workathome.com)
• What to do with the unemployed? (economist.com)
• The Jobless Effect: Is the Real Unemployment Rate 16.5%, 22%, or. . .? (dailyfinance.com)

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

That sort of news tends to make you feel your age. I know I do … or don’t (just how old do I feel?). The new watchword is: “Advance”.

Now we’re all on the lookout for new business, of which there does seem to be plenty around.

Yesterday, for instance, we spoke to a potential client who is facing somewhat of a meltdown in their fortunes with Google: They’ve dropped from multiple Position 4s and 5s to somewhere around 40 and 50 on several keywords.

I won’t bore you with the details of Search Engine Optimisation or Increased Conversion (however, if you’d like me to bore you on those subjects feel free to drop me a line), that’s not why I’m taking you down this path. What the point is actually is that this company had fought shy of doing business with a search agency because the last one they tangled with saddled them with a child for an account manager.

Benefits of Experience

Well, that’s maybe a little harsh. Perhaps not a child; however, they did say that an having an account manager who’d only just got the vote made them feel less valued by the agency in question.

This helped with the sales pitch because I was able to say to them, truthfully, that I had once applied to work for this agency and had failed, but not before being told by a third party that they thought I was the “best technical SEO they’d never hire”.

Why? Basically, I was too old.

UK employment law explicitly states that employers are not allowed to discriminate on the grounds of age but it’s quite plain to see that they do: anyone over 30 is said to be inflexible or hard to manage.

It’s also likely that older workers are deemed to be more expensive: you can hire young’uns, without families and mortgages and commitments for much less than it costs to employ an old codger.

The counter argument to this is that young bloods are less experienced (not just in business methods but also in life skills), poisoned by youthful ambition (they think they know it all) and, quite often, here one minute and gone the next (a function of their lack of commitments).

The upshot here is that our would-be client actually felt reassured by the fact that their possible account manager (i.e. me) had a wealth of previous experience — quite a bit of it in their own sector — and a few grey hairs (well, quite a lot actually; I started going grey at the age of 14).

Nevertheless, like many people these days, my age worries me a lot. Not because I think I’m going senile or that I can’t cut it with the young Turks, but because potential employers might think that.

This isn’t a new fear: I’ve had it for five or six years. The Cult of Yoof is strong in my chosen field, and especially in London.

Yet the news is that we may all be working for much longer before we can afford to retire, if we ever can. So there will be more older people fearing that the next round of job cuts may mean that they’re on a direct line to the scrap heap. This represents a real loss to the potential prosperity of the world: a loss of experience.

George Santayana said:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it“.

But what of those who have no history to remember, yet are convinced of their own youthful infallibility?

By favouring cheap youth, companies could be condemning themselves to a whole new round of making the mistakes they made 20 years ago.

Stacking the Equation

In my own field I notice that the “rules” touted around as the latest thinking on website design and usability closely mirror the “rules” I learned as a sub-editor on local newspapers, and they were old when I got to hear about them.

What goes around, comes around.

I personally manage a “graduate level” team and I’m always amazed at the novelty they bring to the work in hand, but every day I regularly get the chance to say (even to myself) “been there, done that, bought the T-Shirt”.

Another old saying has it that: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. I’m living proof that that ain’t so.

I’ve always said that you can’t make sweeping generalisations, but I’ll make an exception here.

The value for money equation is not quite so simple as saying: newer is better. Give us old codgers a try!

We know how to vote and everything.

Related articles

• Loyalty is a two way street (piaw.blogspot.com)
• The internet sector is maturing, two more signs (theequitykicker.com)
• Communicating bad news (slideshare.net)
• My Friend Was Just Laid Off! Dealing with Layoff Survivor Syndrome (brighthub.com)
• New layoff notification law takes effect (gazetteonline.com)

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

For those of you who have been living on the Moon or the depths of the Pacific Ocean — you know who you are — here’s the skinny:

• I’ve had the sudden prospect of moving lock, stock and barrel at short notice,
• Endured the hunt for the last best house in South East London and,
• Survived the trauma of moving the contents of a five-bedroom house from one three-bedroom house to another three-bedroom house.

So, after a traumatic eight days of being without an internet connection (hence the no blog updates) and living a life out of (randomly packed) boxes, I made my way into work on Tuesday expecting to ease into a crowded work schedule by day, and a crowded home life by night.

But that proved to be just the least of my worries. By Tuesday afternoon I’d been landed with the news that the “Troubleshooters” were at work. As a result of the current financial upheaval, drastic measures are planned to set the company back on the right road. Two people have already left, and up to a dozen more face losing their jobs in the next month.

I’m not one of them (for a change).

I’m certain this pattern is being followed in offices around the world as businesses take steps to shore themselves up against the coming storm as best they can.

To be sure, if all goes to plan, the future for my company looks bright: it has an excellent workforce and the products are as good as anyone else in the market, if not better (my bit certainly is). But after having lost my fair share of jobs in the past three years, watching others lose theirs doesn’t make me feel any better, particularly when these people have become friends.

All I can comfort myself with is that, from personal experience, each job loss has, in the event, proved to be a positive thing with the new role being more challenging — and more lucrative — than the last. That’s not to say I would ever welcome redundancy with open arms.

Anyone leaving can ask for my reference at any time, for what it’s worth. I’m sure they won’t need it anyway.

And as they say, things can only get better.

The counter to that is: things usually get worse before they get better.

In this instance — despite the title of this blog —  I really hope the worst is over.

Related articles

• Unemployment Worse than 1982 (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Unemployment Rate (Age-Adjusted) Has Been Above 10 Percent For Past Year (huffingtonpost.com)
• Double-dip recession: Q&A (telegraph.co.uk)
• Stop Being Such a Worrywart (lifescript.com)

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Shelter is itself reluctant to use the word “cuts” although more vocal supporters on the left wing of British politics — perhaps with a Labour leadership race in mind — are less sensitive.

Generally, Brits are rightly outraged that the “poor” may be hit harder than anyone else in the battle to repay the massive debts run up by the greedily stupid and the stupidly greedy.

And the further one goes to the left, the louder the outrage becomes.

To attract the hard core support of rank-and-file  Labour Party members necessary to become the next leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, it would not be surprising to find extreme rhetoric and hyperbole being spouted.

But getting back to the facts as I understand them — and if anyone wants to challenge me I’m more than happy because much of this post is written from memory and not patient research — the “cuts” in Housing Benefits are actually a cap, limiting payouts to landlords to £400 per week (or around £1,600 a month).

As some of you are well aware, I’m in the final stages of a move prompted by my current landlords’ fears over another much-forecast Budget measure, raising Capital Gains Tax to 40% (ironically, this didn’t happen). I think this gives me some knowledge of the rents being paid in South East London right now. As such I know that there are plenty of large 3-bed houses available in this area for less than £1,600 a month.

Where you won’t find houses in that price range are in what used to be called good Tory areas: Dulwich, Blackheath and the like.

In itself, this may be one reason for the cap.

There have been many stories in recent years of people on benefits living in large expensive homes in good Tory areas, at rents of many thousands of pounds a week, simply because their local councils said it was “the going rate”. With a cap of £400 per week, expect to see less of those.

I’ve also come across evidence that many landlords use the Housing Benefit ceiling as an instruction, not a limit. Some of the properties we considered were being offered at two prices: one for “professional families, NS, no pets” and one for “DSS”. Guess which price is higher?

Okay, the argument goes, the self-funding tenant has more to lose from a bad attitude and deserves a premium for their expected good behaviour but that paints everyone on benefits as a slack, lazy ne’re-do-well, which is patent nonsense.

And who pays for this windfall for landlords, many of whom been enjoying huge profits from the buy-to-let market? The ordinary struggling taxpayer.

There seems almost to be a Parkinson’s Law for DSS rents:

Rent expectations expand to fill the Housing benefit cap available

In this case, reducing the maximum rent available may do much to moderate the costs of renting, especially in South East England where the cap most closely fits.

So, are Shelter telling porkies when they say the “budget announcements on housing benefit could push households over the edge”?

It has to be remembered that Shelter is a pressure group which sincerely wants to get a better deal for homeless people and those in poor-standard housing. But, as with all pressure groups, the ultimate weapon in the armoury of  opinion-forming is hyperbole.

I learned this from a former editor of mine, who was always sceptical of the claims made in PR handouts from people or organisations with an axe to grind. since then I’ve never found his scepticism to be misplaced.

It was summed up by general Claude Auchinleck who said (something like) …

It’s never as bad as they say it is

Hyperbole is often the art of accentuating the negative and minimizing the positive or, as Alan Clark put it while being cross-examined during the 1992 Matrix Churchill enquiry …

being economical with the actualité

For any pressure group, even if your case is watertight, it never hurts to pile it on a bit thick.

When I were a proper journalist, I was always “uncovering” stories of gross “unfairness” and “inequality”: most never got past even routine scrutiny. We’re all keen to make a case for ourselves; only the best can make it past the absence of hard facts, and most of those go on to become politicians, or lawyers.

So what is Shelter’s hyperbole? For a start, they load their post from the first paragraph:

Today’s budget announcements on housing benefit could push households over the edge

It’s very emotive stuff: “push households over the edge” — good propaganda language — but all qualified with “could”, a weasel world which almost always goes unnoticed, as in: “England could have won the World Cup (had they not been so crap)”.

The article then says …

this debate must not be muddied by the use of an extreme example from one area

… but one of the footnotes goes on to do exactly this …

£104,000 is the current rate for a 5 bedroom property in Central London BRM

The Shelter piece is not inaccurate, it just choses its facts selectively to make the best case. Central London is an extreme example of an extreme example.

Fact is, there aren’t many 5-bed houses in London anyway: most have been divided up into 1- and 2-bed flats or bedsits — or apartments and studios — to meet the demand caused by illegal immigrants and lesbian unmarried mums, or at least that’s what Daily Mail readers like to think. No wonder a 5-bed house attracts a premium.

“Anyway,” say the middle classes who are footing the bill at the end of the day, “We can’t afford to have kids, so we only need 1 bedroom.”

If I were in Shelter’s place, I would do exactly what they’ve done, but I couldn’t pretend it was a balanced view. As they used to say on the Sun newsdesk: Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

I’m no stranger to the effects of benefits’ reform myself. Most recently, during a period when I couldn’t seem to keep a job down, I missed out on a month’s Housing Benefit after my application “disappeared” in official channels and “missed the deadline”. Despite many appeals to the local council housing office — during which I too piled on the hyperbole — I was firmly informed that “rules was rules”.

More pathetically, in a much earlier spell of joblessness, I had a 60 pence washing allowance stripped from my benefits after a visiting dole inspector decided that the stinking, greasy kitchen sink I shared with six unemployed layabout flatmates was adequate to do a week’s laundry.

I’m sure it cost the DHSS many times more than 60p to send out the benefits inspector. To this day it simply seems mean spirited.

No, the dilemma to be faced by Housing Benefit claimants shortly is: Do I need to live in Nunhead/East Dulwich or can I make do in New Cross?

As any sane person knows the answer is: neither …

Related articles

• Housing benefit cap was needed | Philippa Roe (guardian.co.uk)
• Budget 2010: thousands could be evicted because of 80 per cent cut to housing benefit (telegraph.co.uk)
• The quiet demise of the council home for life (guardian.co.uk)
• Budget 2010: Afghan family receives £150,000 per year in housing benefits (telegraph.co.uk)
• New government housing policy: make people homeless (liberalconspiracy.org)

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

And then, when you needed another hour to get that report finished, or 15 minutes more for a crafty lie in, you could withdraw the time you needed and live your life guilt-free.

It’s not as if you’d mind paying a little “interest”, 15 seconds in every hour to pay for it all: that could be donated to Manchester United to add to the end of every cruicial match so that they could score that late winner, perhaps.

The current complaint in our house is that there isn’t enough time to arrange a move: we’ve six days to go, and counting.

Of course the counter argument to this is: crap expands to fill the time available. Actually, Cyril Northcote Parkinson described it as …

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion

If  Parkinson’s Law is true, then it wouldn’t matter if we have sixty days, there still wouldn’t be enough time to move.

I’m fast becoming a fan of the “fast and dirty approach”; not a rushed grope behind the bike sheds — though that does have its appeal — but more the idea that with sufficient determination and a bit of planning, you tackle the problem head on and face the problems when you come to them, not before.

Parkinson’s Law can be applied to almost anything as far as our house in concerned. A three-bedroomed house should be big enough to hold four people and all their stuff, but in recent years it’s been a damned close-run thing. Truly, in our case  …

Crap expands to fill the space available

One of the plus-sides of this move is that the new address has at least 50% more usable space. Nevertheless, expect me to write a similar post to this in the next 10 years, when we’ve filled up the next house.

Related articles by Zemanta

• “Work Expands to the Time Allowed” [Quotables] (lifehacker.com)
• C. Northcote Parkinson on Democracy (wfmu.org)
• Simple Ways to Make Moving Home Less Stressful (home-organization.suite101.com)

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

So, England have trounced the Slovenians one goal to nil.

Fact is, our glorious team are — allegedy — drawn from players who compete in the toughest league in the world. Yet, when it comes to inetrnatonial comptitions, they behave like Vauxhall Conference footballers, not the Premiership.

The 1-0 scoreline, consequently, betrays what it is to be English. Do just enough. Winning the last match means we scrape through into the next round. That is England personified. As a nation, we scrape through.

Whenever England — or Britain — is faced with a life or death challenge, we scrape through.

Isn’t that enough? The history of mankind is replete with stories of people who went above and beyond, including at times the English — or indeed the British — (Dunkirk, The Battle of Britain, Eurovision).

Contrast that with France: Joan of Arc, Napoleon, the Eiffel Tower … Okay, we’ll give them the Eifell Tower. Fact is, France are flying home from South Africa 2010 — apparently economy class!

No, England are good at scraping through and, in the grand scheme of things, while everyeone remembers the winners and losers, no-one remembers the also-rans.

Ultimately, however, it is the also-rans who are left to write the history of how all this came to pass.

I think this comes to explain, partly, how a small country on the fringes of Europe came to dominate almost a third of the world’s population, and why the United Kingdom — let’s be honest, England — is still among the most powerful nations on the planet (we’re just a SIXTH the size of Madagascar, for fox’s sake).

Er, that’s it

Aside from the fact that, at this moment in time, it feels damn good to be English.

POSCTSCRIPT: I couldn’t get this to launch from my Blackberry — damn beta software — and so I arrved home to discover a tennis match (Mahut vs Isner) at Wimbledon which, as I write, is into its ninth hour and is currently 56 games each in the fifth set.

The players are one Frenchman and one American. Perhaps they are clinging on to the hope of “scraping through”, for it is inevitable that whosoever triumphs will depart quickly in the next round  to be played tomorrow)

At least they will have the dubious honour of completing the longest match in Wimbledon — even tennis — history. Surely one for pub-quizters everywhere

All we really need is a few vuvuzelas.

Related articles

• Wimbledon 2010: British tennis players are ‘spoiled’ claims Kim Clijsters (guardian.co.uk)
• Isner, Mahut playing longest match in history (nbcsports.msnbc.com)
• What would an England World Cup triumph mean for Scotland? (snptacticalvoting.com)

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Fathers Day has never really been a big deal for me. My own dad was never around (we can talk about that later) so I never had to buy the card. In fact, I never really experienced the child end of Fathers Day until I got into serious relationships, whence I was then co-opted into the occasion by my other half.

Fathers Day is a real day, unlike Grandparents’ Day or Secretary’s Day or Step-parent’s Day.

It was created by Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington. After listening to a church sermon in 1909 about Mother’s Day, Dodd felt strongly that fatherhood needed recognition too. She wanted a day to honour dads like her own, William Smart, a Civil War veteran who was left to raise his family alone when his wife died giving birth to their sixth child when Sonora was 16 years old.

But my earliest memories of Fathers Day are of horrible child-produced cards and of kind deeds.

The mantra in the run up to today however has been of “the perfect gift for Fathers Day!”, “the album every Dad wants on Fathers Day” or even: “the perfect fragrance for Dad!” — FRAGRANCE!? Only poofs use fragrance! Real men use aftershave, especially when it hurts to do so!

My kids know I would disown them if they were dumb enough to fall into the trap of buying me something for Fathers Day. The same goes for Mothers Day (and I have the permission of the mother of my children to say that).

The sad fact is that big corporations from Pizza Hut to Hugo Boss now see previously innocuous festivals such as Mothers and Fathers Day or even Valentines Day as useful money spinners. They have convinced an increasingly-secular consumerist society that the only way to show someone that you value them is to spend large amounts of hard cash buying something they probably don’t want or need anyway.

Bizarrely, in the case of Mothers and Fathers Day — now that there are laws against child labour — the recipient necessarily must fund the gift they receive.

And besides, my kids never really buy me anything I want.

To all other dads out there, I wish you a happy Fathers Day, and I implore you to teach your offspring that the best things in life are free (or their cost is measured in foregoing a favourite TV programme to spend the making stuff from old wallpaper and sticky tape).

Related articles

• Father’s Day marks 100th anniversary (cbc.ca)
• Open Thread: The History of Father’s Day (newsbusters.org)
• Happy Father’s Day (seattlepi.com)
• Dads Rock (timesunion.com)

Tweet This Post

Bookmark It

Hide Sites