Watching confirmation of a remarkable victory with sleepless and excited kids. The world seems a nicer place this raining autmn day, and reminds me of chuckling at similar news in 1997 this side of the pond. Interestingly though this mesage of change is against a background of challenges, two wars and financial meltdown, not an incipient bubble of ‘cool brittania’: if we can all sustain the work and spirit for reform and progress the world could be a better place.

What better message to be able to discuss with three kids who attend an inner London school – hope, change, progress. The earth for once not going to hell in a handcart. The words ‘we can’ added to ‘we will’.

BBC NEWS | The Reporters | Robert Peston

interesting article and also intriguing how so many thought-provoking radical solutions play at the borders of capitalism and socialism or collectivism.

I’ve long been intrigued as to why the labour/socialist/union/cooperative movements haven’t been more active in appropriating the mechanisms of capitalsm to increase or spread wealth. Our pensions depend upon growth in share values, and pension funds acting in concert are a powerful shareholder force.

Working so much in retail and ecommerce I also see the inverse – where the collective rentrenchment of consumers can humble great retailers.

Peston’s point is that the already cash-rich can capitalise upon these short-term ‘bargains’. By ‘bargain’ I mean sensible assets, at risk due to confidence-driven speculation or short-term cashflow, rather than leverage speculation.

These assets (the homes in which people live, profitable businesses in need of mid-term cashflow, some banks) have value in a 10-100yr time-frame, but could fail entirely in the short term.

It’d be galling to have the state pick up the costs of the death spiral and have those cash-rich (also focused, brave and capable of action) folk yet again transfer national (small “n”) wealth to their pockets.

I’ve heard a couple of suggestions in the last week of mechanisms to treat government intervention as a preferred warrant holder, sharing in the eventual upside, and I hope to see these explored. This could increase voter/citizen/consumer confidence and mean that we have a period of austerity, lack of blingflation, and “sustainable recovery” rather than a self-perpetuating quagmire of despondency and gangrenous economics.

The optimist in me hopes we could forge a better foundation for public participation in the growth of the financial markets and the national asset base, without this debt-driven feel-good frenzy that’s been clearly unsustainable for a couple of years (I first called ‘recession’ on 19 January 2007 in a speech in Manchester).

It’ll be interesting to see the firming of confidence, allied to an adjustment of people’s expectations of growth, meeting movements like “enoughism”, sustainability and even the more jingoism-tinged aspects of energy-independence possibly coming together to create a qualitatively different feel o the ‘twenteens’: more than just a hangover from the Noughties.

I hope.

Following on the heels of the Quilter Street Olives last year, I received quite a bit of interest, advice and sympathy 🙂

Simon Robinson at House of Fraser not only passed on advice and enthusiasm, but also turned up in the office one day with a small chilli plant – a donation to the tiny ‘garden’. Dista, Helga’s mum, provided two tomato plants and so all I had to do was sit back and await the sunshine…

However, siince nothing much has ripened this year I decided to make the most of my adversity and knock off a green tomato and chilli chutney.

Chutneys are essentially ‘something edible’ boiled in a mix of sugary stuff and vinegary stuff. With some spice. I had a look on the web, at a recommended Jamie Oliver recipe, and the most excellent Forkd, but could find anything that matched my “needs” (aka limited supplies).

Picked, our tomatos yielded c250g and the chillies a wonderful 6g. I supplemented this harvest (ahem) with a pack of toms going mouldy in the fridge, some onions from the bottom of a bag from our hols, a fridge-burned stump of ginger root – and resorted to the shops for a couple of apples, some more vinegar and the sugar.

Rough ingredients were:

• ‘leg’ of ginger, grated to a pulp
• 4 tiny chillies
• 4 small onions – overgrown shallot size
• 2 apples, peeled, cored and chopped
• 250g green toms, 450g squashy red ones
• half pint malt vinegar
• quarter pint of balsamic vinegar
• 500g (ish) of brown sugar
• Few handsful of raisins or sultanas.

Recipe is easy. Blend, bash, grate or mouli everything till it looks the way you like. Toss it all in a pan. Boil until it’s about the consistency you like and then transfer to short-term accommodation or preserving jars.

Recipe amendments would be:

• swap the ratios of balsamic and malt vinegars
• caremelise the onions before adding to the tomato mix
• less sugar
• add in some lemon juice or use tarter apples
• one more chilli.

It was a good fun activity for a raining Saturday afternoon with the kids.

Next year it’s time to get a mulberry bush or a gooseberry bush (to be grown in a large pot). Thoughts/advice on either gratefully received, either in the comments or by email.

I’ve liked the idea of Schmaps for a while – the combination of user-generated images and reviews and useful mapping made them entirely compelling (until Dopplr came on the scene) and now it lives alongside Dopplr for planning at home, and alongside GoogleMaps on the iPhone while ‘on the road’.

Actually, while “in reach of wireless broadband” – not many roaming iPhone users make the mistake of leaving data access on while wandering the streets of Paris more than once! £200 of data in a day is a painful lesson. That, and the 3 hour battery life when 3G, wireless and GPS are all lit. Like a little, shortlived, expensive handwarmer…

Anyway, back to the point. I was mightily pleased to get a lovely email via Flickr from the Schmaps people saying that they’d seen one of my photos and wanted to shortlist it.

The email was well-put:

While we offer no payment for publication, many
photographers are pleased to submit their photos, as Schmap
Guides give their work recognition and wide exposure, and
are free of charge to readers. Photos are published at a
maximum width of 150 pixels, are clearly attributed, and
link to high-resolution originals at Flickr.

That rather sums it up. I was pleased to submit my work and entirely chuffed at the thought of anyone seeing it. In such way doth amateurism undercut professional photographers’ fees…

So – the jury has spoken, and my image of the pigeons over Les Deux Magots now has its 15 seconds of fame. Or rather, 15 seconds competing with another 11 images in a revolving display (see below), but at least it’s 15/11 or 1.36 seconds of fame.

What have a learned from this?

• asking nicely gets you things
• people like to be valued and will give you things free
• a good visual pun wins over a great image
• good titling of photos on flickr gets photos found
• writing about a moment of fame takes about 442 times as long as the fame itself
• “recognition and wide exposure” currently means 2 page views 😉