Then in the summer it was, ‘Well, actually there were four meltdowns, but that’s OK and there’s no fission.’

Now it’s ‘Yes, we have fission, but only a little bit.’

Which leaves us all wondering which is more toxic, the nuclear fuel or the people who manage it.

And for re-founding things in general, that’s a very tired idea altogether. See below.

We trained hard … but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.

— Charlton Ogburn (not Petronius, as it turns out, but may as well be.)

Well, I’d like to tell you a story about railways and rail fares and good service, and if you like it, you may want to pass it on … to your pals or to your MP or to Mr. Cameron or whoever because I think someone has a little explaining to do.

I’ll begin with an anecdote, because I like anecdotes. It’s a bright and sunny Sunday and I’m sitting in my favourite trendy café in Osaka having an excellent brunch of French toast with cheese and ham and salad and a cappuccino and thinking of having a beer for dessert. A pal, also in Osaka, calls me and suggests a falafel lunch in Kyoto, which as you know, is an entirely other city. It’s a bit like having brunch in Camden in London and being invited for lunch in Oxford. Not quite as far as Oxford, but comparing Reading to Kyoto in any anecdote is kind of offensive. But another city and a jaunt to get there, nonetheless.

In Britain I would have scoffed at the idea of travelling that far for lunch. But I said yes, and I didn’t have to think about it because it wasn’t a bother, and, anyway, you just don’t get falafel in Osaka.

I jumped on a subway train to get to my rail hub, a few stops away. That was ¥230, or £1.80 at the current rate. At the station I bought a ticket for Kyoto which cost me ¥390 — £3. Kyoto is another city, and I paid £3. Are you getting the direction I’m going in here? Lunch in Kyoto achieved, we jumped on train back to Osaka, then a subway across the city (¥270, £2.14) for a music festival thing, which was one of my favourite musical experiences ever. Back on the subway home (¥230), etc. etc.

The equivalent London-Reading round trip would have cost me, at current prices, £23 or £35.50 depending which arcane price definition I chose. That’s £3 compared to £23 or £35.50. How does that happen?

That was not a special price I paid to go to Kyoto that day. That’s a normal price. I batted form one city to another for falafel and music and didn’t bat an eye at the price of transport. And I had a fab day across two cities.

In Japan, all the railways have similar prices. To go to any given city I probably have a choice of rail lines and I’ll choose by how conveniently located their hubs are, not by price. Express trains between cities roughly every 20 minutes. Non-express trains will run every 10 or 15 or 20 minutes and will cost the same as the express trains. There are special interregional expresses whose fares are perhaps three times the normal rate, but you are talking a couple of thousand yen compared to several hundred.

The trains will almost never be late or delayed. If a train is late, it is because there was a suicide on the line or a lightning strike or a drunk wandering about. It will not be because of leaves, sunlight or rain or lack of staff or lack of wheels. Well, having said that, earthquakes and typhoons might interrupt the trains, but they interrupt everything.

The prices don’t vary according to the time you travel. You don’t have to discuss or negotiate with the rail staff your options. One price, whenever you travel. No variations, no ifs, no buts. Discounts or free travel for children, the disabled, students, retired people.

The trains are clean. On arriving at the terminals, the drivers and guards will go through the whole train, pick up rubbish and wake sleeping passengers. Cleaners go through the trains at every terminal too, and will stop and bow in the carriage doorways to apologise for cleaning up our mess. One morning my commuter train appeared to hit something just short of the station. I’m not sure what — maybe a branch of a tree blown there by a typhoon. The train stopped and the driver had a good look at the front of the train through his window. Then the train continued. When we arrived at Tennoji in south Osaka, engineers were waiting on the platform. While the passengers did their getting on/off thing, the engineers jumped down on the tracks, checked the train was OK and were back on the platform before the train needed to go on its way. Imagine that happening in Britain.

The prices I quoted above do not include the Shinkansen trains. The Shinkansen hurtle between cities at speeds of 200kmph or whatever. They are spacious and comfortable. And, yes, they cost a bit more than non-bullet trains. Osaka to Tokyo, one way is ¥25,810 for a distance of 481.2km (slightly more than London to Edinburgh) for a travelling time of, get this, 194 minutes. And Shinkansen run between Osaka and Tokyo every 10 or 20 minutes. A bit like the subway, in fact. On the Shinkansen, you pay, you get comfortable, you get where you’re going.

I sometimes have to go to Fukuoka for work, which is 534.6km. I’ll get online and plug in my desired arrival time etc, and the rail company site will tell me to the minute my departure time and arrival time, taking into account the time it takes to change trains. And the time estimates are correct. Every time. You can travel the equivalent of the length of Britain and know exactly when you will leave and arrive. Arriving at Manchester airport last December after three days stranded at Helskinki and completely unable to get into Heathrow because of snow storms, I bought a one-way ticket to Cheltenham (176km) for my daughter and I. It cost £67. And the train was cancelled. And the next was delayed, as was the next. It took about five hours to get where I was going. And the same month I bought a Cheltenham-London (143km) return ticket for about £45, which the clerk told me was cheap. I would have laughed his head off but for the bullet proof glass separating us. Once on the train, I reconsidered my return time the following day and at Paddington paid another £12 to put the return time back an hour or two. Twelve quid just to go home two hours later.

I have a lot of stories about public transport in the UK and I hope to find the energy to put them down here, though, if you are British, you have probably lived them yourself.

Japan has an extensive network of train lines run by several different companies. Until I had children I didn’t even think of buying a car. You really don’t need one without kids.

Imagine what this kind of public transport system does for the economy. You can zoom about for work or you can zoom about for fun, spending money on other things as you go. I have no idea how Japan achieves such a transport system, whether it is subsidised or what. I do know it works. And the people I know who work for the rail companies feel pride in their jobs.

Britain’s level of development and population density are equivalent to Japan’s.

(Perversely, London’s travel cards are great value for money. Again, so inconsistent. Why can they do that and yet appal everyone with everything else they do?)

So my screamingly obvious question is, if Japan can have cheap, efficient and ubiquitous public transport, why can’t Britain? Why are exorbitant UK rail fares going up a further 8 per cent? I suspect that UK rail travellers need a huge explanation, and I think people might like it to be a good one.

The jury has only now returned and sat down with a loud, unimpressed harrumph.

That fact that it took so long to decide what Mr. Miliband was about should have been a resounding alert but we sat through the non-happenings of his stewardship with the calm expectation that no one but Nick Clegg  could be so flaccid in the face of David ‘The Shaft’ Cameron’s  numptitude. Now we learn that the leader of the opposition is the de facto third partner in Cameron’s coalition of the inept. Cleggy has some kind of feeble excuse for playing along with Cameron: he gets to sit at the big table with the big boys. It is a measure of Ed’s confusion that he doesn’t even get that benefit.

Milibland has gone to great lengths to support the coalition in its conflict with public workers. June 30, four unions and thousands of students walk out in the biggest act of defiance of this government so far and all Ed Millicent can say is they shouldn’t have done it. He also brought an inquisition of spin doctors to a BBC interview to make sure his message of jellyness got across with maximum offence.

Now we are reminded of the other occasions when he failed to act against the idiocy of the ConDems; we are reminded of the utter lack of opposition by the leader of it.

When Cameron went on his recent Daily Mail-style rant about migrants and how ‘if they want to live here they should learn English’, did Miliband highlight the racism? No, he ignored that and blithered instead that the Tories and the LibDems couldn’t agree, that the coalition had cracks. As a response to Cameron’s racism, it was as useful as putting a chocolate teapot in an oven at 180C for 90mins.

Now: the strike by public workers and Miliband’s failure to engage.

Over the recent weeks, everyone seems to have been getting on Cameron’s case — the military twice, Cameron’s own guru, the Arch Bish, my cat — except Miliband, the leader of the opposition. Oh, and Mr. Clegg. I guess we forgot about him — odd that.

The strike on Thursday was Miliband’s opportunity to weigh in and set out a clear agenda of opposition and a clear alternative vision to Cameron’s. He could have whipped up the nation, already cynical and disaffected, into expressing their feelings. Fuck, he could have prised open the coalition and triggered another election. No: he sided with Cameron as if he were a closet Tory in the way that Blair was.

We are in an extraordinary position now in British politics. Not only is the government comprised of the biggest numpties in living memory, but so is the opposition.

Oh, here’s one now.

Theme of The Shaft

Who’s the privatizing dick

Who was no one’s policy pick?

The Shaft! Yah, gosh, right.

Who is the man who would risk your neck

For his old Etonian chums?

The Shaft! Can you dig a hole?

Who’s the chap who will cop out

and make u-turns all about?

The Shaft! Wrong again!

They say this numpty is a bad Thatcher.

You shut your public service!

But I’m talking ‘bout The Shaft!

Oh that’s OK, then, carry on.

He’s a simple man

But no one understands him, ’specially not Nick Clegg.

The Shaft

(with apologies to Isaac Hayes)

No longer.

It seems that Camping’s delusions have been responsible for real death and injury.

In Florida, one man drowned trying to swim a reservoir “trying to reach God”, even though he couldn’t swim. A mother in California tried to kill her two children by cutting their throats (they survived). A man in Taiwan jumped from a window (see same story as the two children). A man in Nairobi did away with himself in a church. A Russian teen, 14, also killed herself out of fear of the presumed torment of judgement.

For the record, the end of the world, scheduled for last Saturday was modified by God at the last minute so that it became the spiritual return of Christ. The physical end of the world (in fire, in case you wondered) is now set for October 21st.

In 1994, Camping made not one, not two, but three (3) very public predictions of the end of the world.

Back to May 2011, not quite the billions of deaths foretold, but more than enough to be going on with.

The BBC reports that “outraged” UK expatriates are planning “civil disobedience” in response.

Psipook can exclusively reveal after an exhaustive undercover cup of tea the form of these protests.

Activists will:

• stage a sit down protest on the shop shelves where the Marmite used to be
• chain themselves to the toaster at breakfast time
• armed with Marmalite rifles, storm parliament, slaughter the legislators and humiliate the civil servants by forcing them to parade through the streets smeared in Marmite and feathers.

My good friend Nagaijin posted on Facebook this quote from Plato: “The penalty for not participating in politics is to be governed by your inferiors,” to which he joined an exhortation to go out and vote. Which brings me to the point of this posting because I have some recommendations for voting reform and an alternative vote of my own.

You see, I responded to Nagaijin’s post that although I completely agree with the sentiment, voting for any of the big three parties in the UK is like voting for bacteria. I am no expert on Canadian politics, but I have a suspicion that I would feel the same if I lived there. I would like to vote Green but that party rarely fields a candidate in my constituency and I don’t want to vote for any of the others because I simply don’t have any respect for them or their policies. Once upon a time I would have voted Labour as a default alternative to Green but Tory Blair put an end to that and Mr. Miliband is well, Mr. Miliband. Clegg is a disaster and if I had voted Lib Dem in the last election I would have been spitting furious that he pissed all over liberalism by teaming up with Camoron.

It needs to be pointed out that the three big parties in the UK add up to a massive electoral fraud. The three of them are as useful as chocolate teapots — very dimwitted, cynical, self-serving and not terribly honest chocolate teapots. Better than no chocolate teapots at all, I have to say, thinking of Libya and Syria and Burma and North Korea and Iran and the USA and so on, but chocolate teapots nonetheless. And they are not getting my vote at all, not even a little bit, and not even out of a sense of civic responsibility.

So when there’s no Green candidate, and there usually isn’t, I am thoroughly stuck.

So here’s my proposal.

I suggest an extra tick box on the ballot. You’d have the usual list of names and the usual tick boxes and then the extra one which would be labelled ‘None of the above.’ And if you tick that option, that would be counted as a definite vote … but for no one. You could register your electoral disapproval (if you have electoral disapproval, and not everyone does) without having to spoil you ballot paper by childishly drawing genitalia all over it.

The ‘None of the above’ votes would be counted and if they outnumbered the votes for actual candidates there would a re-run of the election, It would be like a report card to the politicians saying ‘must try harder’.

A brilliant idea, don’t you think? It would be a sort of interactive voting. And I think there would be a lot of soiled underwear in the various campaign HQs of the main parties.

Of course, another solution, and one that might be simpler would be for THE BLASTED GREENS TO PLEASE FIELD A CANDIDATE IN MY FUCKING CONSTITUENCY SO I HAVE SOMEONE TO VOTE FOR, BLOODY HELL.

The UK PM stood up yesterday and announced that that immigrants ought to learn English if they come to this country to live, that not learning English caused a “kind of discomfort and disjointedness” that has disrupted communities across Britain. (Full text here)

Let me tell you some stories about racism to illustrate objectively my point about Cameron.

I was in the front garden of my home — the home I have bought and paid for myself in Japan after years of working in the country — when a kid cycled up to me in my driveway and demanded to know (in Japanese, naturally) what I was doing. I overlooked the attitude and the tone of the question on the grounds that this was a kid. However, I realized that I couldn’t give the kid a straight answer because I couldn’t recall the Japanese words for either grass seed or plant. I know I once encountered them in a language class, but that was years before and I had not had a reason to use either of them in the real world since. Knowing that it tickles some people to hear English, and since the neighborhood mums were often bugging me to use English on their kids, I answered in English. “I’m planting grass seeds.” The child responded in Japanese, “If they come here to live, they should learn to speak the language,” and immediately cycled off.

The kid was too young to have formulated this opinion himself. He must have got it from his parents or other adults. So, I thought, that’s how my neighbours see me: the immigrant who should learn ‘the language’.

Never mind that I have spent 20 years working, paying taxes, paying into a national pension scheme I shall probably never claim on and teaching language skills to Japanese people so that the country can compete in the international market place. I am the immigrant who must learn the language.

Next. I was on the commuter train home when a stranger who turned out to be Australian spotted me and decided to engage a fellow English speaker in conversation. While we were chatting, a Japanese gentleman adjacent to us said, in Japanese, naturally, “If you come here you should speak Japanese.” I wondered whether to say anything to the Japanese guy but decided that his mental problem was not my problem and ignored him.

One more. I was in an English-pub-themed bar in Osaka one evening chatting, in English, naturally, to my Canadian pal Nagaijin, when the Japanese people at an adjacent table started objecting to us, in Japanese, naturally, that we were speaking English in their vicinity. That was it. We were speaking English in their vicinity. The bar was themed on an English pub, the music was British with English lyrics, they were apparently drinking Bass and Guinness, but they didn’t like it that we were speaking English within earshot. We moved away without arguing on the grounds that their mental problem was not ours, etc. I later found out that these same two people had accosted our Japanese companions of the evening to complain that Nagaijin and I had had the affront to have spoken our native language, etc. etc. Yes, they bothered our pals about it too.

If I were to catalogue all the incidences of racism I have experienced in twenty years in Japan we’d be here for a week or two. I have chosen the above three because they relate directly to language as did Mr. Cameron’s speech.

I wonder if anyone finds the actions of the Japanese individuals in my stories to be on any level rational or reasonable. Really, I am to this day dumfounded by these people and if I am missing anything, please let me know. A

David Cameron in his speech was exhibiting the same kind of mentality as the complaining people in the stories I have related.

I would like to ask Mr. Cameron and anyone who agrees with him some simple questions. The government has imposed various tests on people wanting to live in the UK, so please consider this a test of clear thinking.

1. Who precisely is not learning English? I personally have not met these people.
2. How has someone speaking another language in your country degraded your quality of life? Give concrete examples.
3. How has someone not speaking English in your country inconvenienced you in any way? Give concrete examples.
4. What exactly do you mean ‘learn English’? What level of ability accords to speaking English? Elementary? Pre-intermediate? Intermediate? Advanced? As fluent as a native speaker? Just enough to do the practical things or good enough to discuss particle physics with a boffin?
5. Mr. Cameron, have you thought this through?
6. What about inarticulate or illiterate British people? I have met such people. Will there be remedial education classes or will they simply be deported?

You see, picking on language is on a par with complaining about ‘smelly cooking’ and ‘different ways’, the talk of twisted and bitter bigots in the pub over their Bass or Guinness.

Cameron tells us that people not speaking English creates a disjointed society. Again, I have to ask what exactly that means? How has the issue of language damaged the fabric of society? Give concrete examples, please.

The real disjointing comes from people seeing difference and seeing problems of race or culture where none actually exist. The disjointing comes from bigotry and arbitrary differences of ‘us and them’. The disjointing comes from people who get on the street and parade their prejudice in marches against Islam. The real disjointing comes from people who through word and deed marginalise communities.

It’s not just words, either. These words are allied to real policies that affect real people. See this Guardian article about how the policies of this government are having an impact on business (their beloved free enterprise): UK tells foreign students: ‘Speak English or stay out’ 

My friend C is British. He has been living in Japan married to a Japanese lady, with whom he has a son, for nearly twenty years. The family has decided to relocate to the UK. Once in the UK, she will, I believe, have to pass a language test and a citizenship test. In the meantime, the bureaucracy of obtaining permission to live in that land has literally reduced her to tears. C is a British citizen. He and his wife are a real couple in all the senses of the term. The obstacles to settling in the UK with a foreign wife are an affront to humanity. As a British citizen, C should be allowed to marry whomever he wishes and that partner should be given automatic clearance to settle there with the family. If I were to relocate to the UK, my family would have to go through the same humiliating rigmarole. After more than 20 years of marriage, how is that justified? Oh, and the citizenship test: I tried it. I failed. Take away my UK passport. You try it. Every UK citizen I know who has tried it has failed. Try it here.

The issues of immigration and racism are joined at the waist. The rhetoric of the politicians, the outrage of the press, the policies enacted by the government, the complaints of ‘uncomfortable’ citizens all stem from the same root: the irrational and tiny-minded belief that there is a problem with any ethnicity, language and culture other than your own.

If you want to discuss disjointing in society, how about discussing the disparity in wealth? Poverty amid plenty? How about discussing public bailouts of private banks, bloated bonuses for failed captains of industry and the destruction of public services to pay for them? Those are things that really strike at the heart of the national community.

Cameron is a low racist and so is every individual who nodded in grave agreement with his poisonous speech yesterday. And more shame on Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems for aligning themselves with this bigotry.

Immigration? Don’t get me started.

PS Since I posted this, Michael Moore tweeted this:

#6. Unrest forced France & others 2 close down their oil shipping from Libya. Khaddafy then offered China, 3rd World France’s oil. Oops.