The Innocence of Banking.

There's a billboard ad for the Royal Bank of Scotland that I pass every day, and every day it makes me more and more annoyed. You've probably seen them, they're the ones that portray RBS as being there 'for you'. They've come up with all these new measures, measures that they hope will somehow stem the tide of ill feeling the general public has towards a bank that they now own. Measures that seemed bleeding obvious in the first place but weren't implemented because they were too busy pissing away all of your money.

So they're going to be a friendly bank. Oh yes, everyone in your local branch is now going to smile, welcome you in, pour you a cup of tea, and if you're lucky, give your shoulders a little rub.

To be honest, it all makes me a bit uneasy. Why? Because they're a bank. I don't want my bank to be my friend, I want my bank to be my bank. I don't choose a bank based on how white their teeth are, or how fancy their signatures are, I choose a bank that is really good at being a bank. They could fling shit at me when I walk in the branch if they give me more money than the other banks. I do most of my banking online anyway.

It's not just RBS who do this. I think it all started with Innocent smoothies, this idea that companies are going to be all warm and fuzzy in their marketing, cosy up to us like a colleague with no concept of personal space. Companies trying to be my friend when I just want them to do what they do best. You know what? Innocent make really good smoothies. But I hate when I end up being patronised by a bloody juice carton.

"Don't turn me upside down" it warns me, "unless the cap's on!" Well, thanks for that sagely advice there. While you're at it, why not warn me not to consume the smoothie intravenously? Or remind me not to murder anyone today perhaps? Innocent smoothies are the annoying friend that everyone has, the shouty, loud, and oh-so un-funny mate who loves being the center of attention and tells everyone he "doesn't watch TV" before going on to talk about how he downloaded and watched all of 'Boardwalk Empire' in one day.

So please, stop trying to be my friend, just... be my bank. Quench my thirst. Shut the fuck up about Boardwalk Empire. I'll get round to watching it eventually.

Indulge me if you will

I'm seeing Eels in Glasgow tomorrow, they're my favourite band, and it'll be the first time I've seen them live since 2006 so I'm quite excited, and thought I'd share a memory or two from each time I've seen them.

21st July 2000, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

My first EELS show, a few days before my 17th birthday. Mike and I had quite poor seats but during the support band (the wonderful Webb Brothers) we noticed two empty seats, front row center. Needless to say we moved there during the changeover and ended up with probably the best seats in the house. A few of the songs from this show later surfaced on Oh What A Beautiful Morning, which was a nice souvenir of my first Eels live experience. I met (band member and solo artist in her own right) Lisa Germano outside afterwards, she was lovely, and signed a flyer, which I have since lost.

25th August 2001, Leeds Festival

Festival sets by your favourite bands can always be a bit hit or miss, and as Souljacker hadn't been released yet alot of the new material went over my head. I remember little about this apart from a cover of Get Ur Freak On by Missy Elliot, which left most of the crowd completely bemused.

22nd May 2005, Glasgow Academy

The 'With Strings' tour was incredible and I was lucky enough to see it three times. I went to this one with my friend Siobhan, and during the soundcheck I realised I was sitting a few seats away from (guitarist) The Chet, who was presumably listening to the sound from the audiences point of view. By the time I realised he was away though. Rangers won the Scottish League that day too, in rather dramatic fashion, so I was on quite a high, and had a sleepless night in Glasgow before heading to the airport the next morning to catch a flight to London...

23rd May 2005, Royal Festival Hall, London

This gig was notable for me because I met my future (and now ex) girlfriend Jen there and it begun an adventure that saw me move to London permanently, before travelling the world with her. The only thing I really recall about this gig though is getting annoyed that the people behind me were singing along, rather loudly, and completely out of key! My future girlfriend met E afterwards and had her ticket signed, while I was tucked up in my hotel room watching Star Trek. I kinda missed the boat on that one.

12th October 2005, Royal Albert Hall, London

This was an incredible gig, and I love the fact that E talks about it so extensively in his autobiography (Things The Grandchildren Should Know). Probably the best of the three 'With Strings' performances that I saw.

27th June 2006, Astoria, London

I was living in London by this point, and I don't remember a great deal about the gig, but luckily E was so kind as to have it filmed and recorded (Live And In Person, a live CD/DVD set) for my own personal benefit! These shows weren't highly rated by most people I've spoken to about them, but I'm a fan of noisy, atonal guitar music, so I was perfectly happy. Support act Smoosh were really good, and I saw the two girls (and their Mum!) outside afterwards, exploring Oxford Street, even though it must have been past their bedtime.

So Tomorrow Afternoon I'll head to Glasgow again from my home in Dundee, with Mike who I was with at the first two gigs, and I'm pretty excited about making some new memories.

Why we should be beating our film stars about the head

I saw about 30 minutes of Braveheart the other night. I've seen it before, once or twice, but I wasn't particularly fond of it. Great story, decent cinematography, fantastic battle scenes I admit, but oh god, THAT accent. Mel Gibson's accent is the sole reason I find it near impossible to watch Braveheart. The racist, misogynistic American-Australian-American could only have sounded less Scottish if he'd wandered into a bar and said "Tennents? Och, that's awfy cheap. Nothing around the five pound mark?"

Even more amazing than the fact that nobody at any point said "Hang on Mel, I didn't know that Braveheart was an Irish-American or maybe some kind of South African?" is the fact that the good people at Oscar HQ awarded the film with Best Picture and Best Director. I'd have thought that the leading man in a film, especially when he's also directing it, was required to inject a hint of believability into his character?

But he's not the only one. Sean Connery was also given a shiny statue for his lacklustre Irish accent in The Untouchables, and Dick Van Dyke's ridiculous attempt at cockney in Mary Poppins is now legendary.

Actors are paid fortunes for what they do, and they can't even do it right. Of course, all the Hollywood paymasters care about is profit for their investment, so they wouldn't be concerned if Braveheart spoke in a thick Russian accent or was a Jackie Gleason impersonator - "One of these days Longshanks, one of these days!" - as long as he put bums on seats.

But regardless of making money for the studios, they're not doing their job. If they can't do the voice, they shouldn't play the role. I can't fix a car engine (or even drive) so you wouldn't hire me as a mechanic, would you?

But thankfully there may be a solution. There is something called Foreign Accent Syndrome, believe it or not. Despite the boring name (syndromes are usually named after the person who diagnosed it, I can only assume this was discovered by a Dr. Julian Fuckshit) it is a very real, albeit rare, affliction. People have reported that upon recovering from serious brain injury of some sort that they have, unbeknownst to them, spoken with a different accent, due to damage to the brains linguistic centers.

So there we go, lets round up our film stars and beat them about the head. Heather Graham in From Hell, Kevin Costner in Prince of Thieves, and John Travolta in Battlefield Earth. I'm aware Travolta didn't have a bad accent in that film, but if anyone deserves to be beaten about the head...

The 'freedom' speech:

Although admittedly not quite as bad as this:

Abbreviate This!

The other day at work someone came up to me and said in a distinctive English accent “Excuse me, where do you keep the KFS?” I looked at him blankly for a second.
“The KFS?” I stuttered.
“Yeah, you know” he said. “Knives, Forks and Spoons”.
At first I thought he was joking, for I had never heard anyone refer to cutlery as ‘KFS’. I had an English girlfriend for over two years and never once had I heard this particular abbreviation so I was certain it couldn’t be a regional thing.

“Yeah, the CUTLERY is over there”, I said, beckoning towards the cookshop section of the store. I discussed it later with some colleagues and it turns out I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t heard of ‘KFS’. But it got me thinking.

Several years ago our company brought out an initiative called Jargonbusters’, aimed at eradicating jargon from the workplace and making life easier for everyone, especially new recruits. For example, ‘PI’ could stand for either ‘Price Integrity’ or ‘Productivity Index’, two things often referred to at work which might be confusing for some. SRP stands for Stock Reduction Programme and also Shelf Ready Packaging, leading to perfectly sensible sentences such as ‘The use of SRP will help us achieve our SRP’.

There are also things which have several names though, an OFD is pretty much the same as an FSU, for example (Off fixture display/free standing unit), and different stores can even have different names for things. I’d never heard of a wonzel bin until I started working in Dundee, to me they’d always been dump bins (display units that stock is ‘dumped’ in), and besides, a wonzel sounds like something that collects litter on Wimbledon Common.

Needless to say the Jargonbusters initiative was a complete waste of time, because nobody is going to say ‘hand held computer’ when ‘PDA’ will suffice. Point of sale will always be POS, and a shelf-edge label is usually better known as an SEL. Jargon is everywhere and always will be.

About a year ago the Local Government Association (LGA) published a list of 200 words that were considered to be jargon, and encouraged people to use their plain English equivalents. Lowlights, for example, were to be known as ‘worst bits’, ‘quick-hit’ and ‘quick-win’ were both to be referred to as ‘success’, and so on.

While this is all well and good to a point, one of the most majestic things about the English language is the sheer number of different ways of saying things. What some people see as jargon, others (poets and writers for example) see as simply having more than one way of saying something. Which for me, is all part of the fun. If we all spoke and wrote the same think of all the great literature we’d have missed out on, simply because 90% of it would probably be really dull.

There has to be a sensible limit on things though. While most people out there know what the NHS is, I doubt many of you would have immediately known who the LGA were if I hadn’t furnished you with their full title - I certainly wouldn’t have.

So use whatever words you want, just remember to know your audience. There’s no need for Jargonbusters or endless lists of words you shouldn’t use. Common sense will suffice.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a big day ahead of me. I have to make sure SRP goes well tomorrow so I can help the PI department with their POS and SEL’s, because there’s never any PDA’s when you need one.

Tea Time

Several years ago, when I was working in London, I had a member of staff known as Baah. I liked Baah alot, he was a tall, gangly Ghanaian chap and worked on the freezer department. Extremely laid back, I would occasionally ask him to do something to which he would shrug his shoulders, look me in the eye and state: “Cup of tea”, meaning he’d do it after his break.

To this day, whenever I go to make a cup of tea, I hear Baah’s voice, in that distinctive accent of his, say “cup of tea” in my head.

Funny how some people never really leave you, isn’t it?

Predictive text made me a racist.

My flatmate Cal reminded me of a little story the other day. A few years ago, predictive text turned me from a mild-mannered man who doesn't like nightclubs into a screaming racist. In Cupar, where I grew up, there's a nightclub called Jordans. It's not the nicest of places, and pretty much a last resort when the pubs close as it's the only club in town.

One day at work my friend Siobhan texted me to ask if I fancied going to Jordans that night. I replied, and her subsequent response was one of shock and confusion. I'd meant to say 'I fucking hate Jordans', but thanks to predictive text, what I'd actually sent to her was 'I fucking hate Koreans'.

Anyway, Cal had reminded me of this because the same thing happened to him. After getting mildly sunburnt one day he'd texted a friend to say he looked like a 'fucking crab'. At least that's what he meant to say. Imagine his friends' surprise when she got a text from him saying 'I look like a fucking arab'.

Inappropriate?

Today while I sat with my flatmates drinking Pepsi in the city square, we saw a kids pushchair with the name 'iCandy' on the side of it. There must be an endless list of names the company could have called it that didn't subtely imply paedophilia, but the marketing execs must have said "Yeah, let's go with the slightly pervy name". iCandy? iCan't believe it.