Join This Queue For Consumer Rip-Offs, Customer Exploitation And The Death Of Rock & Roll

WORLD OF CRAP pin-up Geoff Ellis is up to his old tricks again. Geoff, you may recall, runs DF Concerts, the promotions company that has a veritable monopoly on the live music scene up here in Scotland. Ever true to the spirit of rock and roll, Geoff never misses a chance to make a fast buck at the expense of hard-up music fans. In the past, he has done it via the loophole of “extra charges”, a strange British custom which the UK’s toothless consumer watchdogs and inadequate consumer legislation have failed to outlaw. These extra charges carry quaint names such as: booking fee, convenience charge, handling charge, order processing fee, etc. Under our antediluvian consumer protection laws, they are perfectly legal, and can add more than 50 per cent onto the price of a ticket. Geoff, in collaboration with international agency Ticketmaster, has got these “extras” down to a fine art.

HEFTY

For example, if you want to see a gig at King Tuts in Glasgow – owned and operated by DF Concerts – but live hundreds of miles away, then you will have to order your tickets on-line and pay a hefty booking fee. (Usually higher than that charged by ticket agencies and promoters for the same artists at comparable venues in England. See Greed, Hypocrisy and Rock & Roll here) So far, so normal. But should you then decide that instead of having the tickets posted out to you, you would rather collect them from the box office on the night, you will have to pay something called an “order processing fee” of around £2.25. Yes, that’s right. Even though you are travelling to the venue at your own expense and have already paid a booking fee, you will have to stump up even more money to be allowed to collect the tickets which are technically already your property anyway, DF Concerts and Ticketmaster having already speedily and efficiently debited your bank account or credit card. (Regular readers will already be familiar with Geoff’s odious pricing practice from previous columns, but for new readers see Greed, Hypocrisy and Rock & Roll here.)

WHEEZE

But Geoff’s latest wheeze would surely have Joe Strummer spinning in his grave. DF Concerts runs T in the Park, which has garnered various awards and accolades over its 10 year history, largely on account of it being the only festival of its kind in Scotland. (Its amazing how easy it is to collect awards when there’s no competition). To those who don’t know, a typical music festival in the UK goes something like this: you spend ten hours in a traffic jam before arriving at a muddy field under grey skies and joining tens of thousands of other people trying to find space to put up their tents. Then you will spend hours in queues for overpriced, dodgy burgers, overpriced, gassy beer or toilets that, to put it politely, simply cannot cope with the demand of all those bowel and bladder evacuations(usually caused by the dodgy burgers and gassy beer). You will also be invited to spend your money on fairground rides, fortune tellers and other 18th century attractions. Eventually, you might get around to seeing some live music, though this will usually be limited to standing at the back of a very large field and peering over the heads of tens of thousands of people at a large video screen relaying what is happening on the stage which is so far away you might as well have stayed at home and waited for your mate to send you some footage from their mobile phone.
So I think it’s fair to say that the average UK music festival is overcrowded.
But this hasn’t stopped good old Geoff from expanding the capacity of this year’s T in the Park. Not satisfied with 75,000 punters paying an average of £55 each per day plus another £10-plus in booking, order processing and convenience charges last year, Geoff has upped the capacity this year to 80,000 per day. He’s also upped the ticket price to £62.50 a day(not including booking, order processing, convenience charges, etc. etc.) That means an extra £600,000 in revenue for DF Concerts. But will any of that extra half a million quid-plus go towards making the festival experience any more enjoyable for music-lovers? Hmmm, let’s see…

SOAP

Well, you’ll still have to buy an official programme if you want to know what time your favourite band will be on(either that or fight your way through the crowds to the “welfare tent” for a look at the blackboard). There still won’t be many cashpoints or payphones. And DF Concerts still can’t guarantee the security of your belongings – “don’t bring any valuables”, the official website warns. (It also advises bringing “a small bottle of hand sanitizer”, which suggests soap and water facilities might be limited too). And unless an agreement is reached with local landowners, there will be no extra stages nor more space for crowds. But the good news is that if you have spent £140(plus booking, order processing and convenience fees) on a weekend camping ticket, you will get an extra few hours of entertainment on the Friday night when, for the first time, bands will be playing.
So, just to clarify, Geoff and DF Concerts will be raking in an extra £600,000 by cramming an extra 5,000 bodies into an already overcrowded festival. (Shame on Perth and Kinross Council who agreed to the increased capacity - I wonder what their cut of it all is?) And he will also be creaming off his percentage of the hundreds of thousands of pounds in extra booking, order processing and convenience fees.

UGLY

Geoff Ellis is treated like a deity by the media up here, which isn’t bad for an ugly, bald Mancunian. By not asking him awkward questions about booking fees, convenience charges or how he justifies cramming an extra 5,000 bodies into a space likely to be no bigger than last year’s, the noble ladies and gentlemen of the Scottish press have done themselves proud, providing DF Concerts with extensive free advertising and guaranteeing themselves complimentary VIP passes for Scotland’s biggest music event of the year.

On the official T in the Park website, customers are warned about the dangers of obtaining tickets from unofficial sources, such as eBay and Scarlet Mist. Of the latter, it says: "It is not one of our official ticket agents. However, we do believe they are operating a genuine, face-value ticket exchange service." This is painfully ironic, as not even the official agency Ticketmaster provides tickets at "face-value" - they are all sold at prices inflated by those booking, order processing and convenience charges.
I wrote and emailed Geoff several times about booking charges last year. He replied, unsatisfactorily, once - including the memorably empty pledge, "My concern is to ensure that booking fees are kept to a reasonable level" - but then ignored all my subsequent emails(See Greed, Hypocrisy and Rock&Roll here).
I also contacted the sponsors of T in the Park, Tennents, to see what they thought of the dubious, if technically legal, practise of charging an assortment of extra fees on top of the ticket price. They sent me a crate of beer but have never bothered getting back in touch. So I don’t drink their shite beer any more, nor do I go to gigs promoted by DF Concerts. (If there’s a band I really want to see, I’d rather travel down to England than give Geoff Ellis or Ticketmaster any of my cash).

ESPRESSO

I also contacted Trading Standards officers and the Office of Fair Trading. The OFT is currently investigating bank charges, so I thought it might want to take a look at the charging of booking fees too. In the past, all it has recommended is a “voluntary code” for promoters and agencies. Which is a bit like asking Robbie Williams to impose a voluntary moratorium on his daily espresso intake. But no, they haven’t been back in touch either.

The fact is, big promoters like DF Concerts don't need to use ticket agencies and so don't need to charge booking fees. They have the money and resources to be able to sell the tickets through their own website or telephone line if they wanted. But that would upset the cosy cartel that exists between them, ticket agencies and venues, who all take a slice of the millions of pounds worth of booking fees that music fans are forced to pay each year.
And the saddest part of this whole farrago? Tickets for this year’s T in the Park sold out in less than 40 minutes. Geoff Ellis might be a greedy, ugly, bald hypocrite, but thanks to all the stupid fuckers out there who’ve willingly and unquestioningly stumped up all those booking and convenience fees - instead of boycotting rip-off festivals and listening to their Snow Patrol CDs at home - he’s a rich, greedy, ugly, bald hypocrite.
© Jack Havana 2007. Reproduction in part or whole prohibited without Jack’s say-so.
This week, Jack Havana recommends:
MUSIC: Boring, by The Pierces. A cross between The Corrs and Black Box Recorder. Or an X-rated Sugababes. Listen and watch here.

BOOK: 24 Hour Party People, by Tony Wilson. The life and times of another ugly Mancunian, but this time one of the good guys from the music industry. Get well soon, Tony, the business needs more characters like you.

FILM: United 93(15, DVD). Criminally overlooked by the senile, incontinent old farts of the Academy of Motion Pictures, this is the finest film of the 21st century so far. More here.
CIGAR: Partagas Serie D. No. 4. A fat, tasty monster, perfect for blowing huge swathes of smoke into the faces of greedy music promoters. Dimensions here.

Moving North: A Misery Memoir

A PUBLISHER HAS just paid a £70,000 advance to a middle-aged mother of three who writes a blog about giving up her career and – brace yourself – moving from London to the north of England!!!!(The Sunday Times, 18 February 2007). Yes, giving up a metropolitan lifestyle of dolcelatte-on-demand from your corner delicatessen for the hell of life without Waitrose has become the new “misery memoir”. Writers no longer have to circumnavigate the Amazon basin by pedal car to earn a book deal. Nor do they have to confront the suffering of dying parents or diseased children. They simply have to be brave and selfless enough to sack the nanny, stock up their two family cars with as much focaccia and chardonnay as they can hold, and drive to the mysterious hinterland of funny accents and cobbled streets beyond Watford.
The author of Wife In The North – geddit?! – is 42-year-old Judith O’Reilly, a former education correspondent for The Sunday Times. Not a feature writer, arts reviewer or celebrity interviewer. An education correspondent. Here are some exclusive extracts from her blog so far:
3rd January: The people up here are so warm and friendly. And they have the same TV programmes up here as we had in London. And I had no idea the M1 went on for so many miles after the Flitwick turn off. The children love it, though I am not letting them play out in the fields until they have had all their typhoid, rabies and encephalitis vaccinations.
11th January: Marie Claire and Grazia have turned down my idea for a weekly column. I’d proposed writing about the challenge of coming up with something to write about week after week faced by a middle-class, comfortably-off, mother-of-three whose husband earns a fortune in the City. They said that’s what all their columnists wrote about already.
19th January: Drove the Volvo to the local supermarket today in search of some organic tofu and bean sprouts. All they had was local produce, nothing from France or Spain at all.
23rd January: Our nearest neighbours are the Arkwrights, who run the sheep farm on the other side of the hill. They have a severely disabled daughter who needs constant attention. It really puts your own problems in perspective. They can use the disabled parking bays at Tesco, but I have to put up with the parent and toddler bays which are much further away.
28th January: We’ve had to make lots of sacrifices for this move. Michael had to give up his gym membership, and I miss the restaurant reviews in Time Out. Also, the plan had always been to buy a row of terraced cottages and knock them into one home, but in the end we could find only two vacant cottages next to each other. However, the stables at the back will make a handy double garage for our Volvos.
3rd February; I miss Michael while he’s away working in London. It was his idea for us to move up here, but ironically he’s spending more time down there on business. Still, it’s for the best. He always remembers to bring some Harvey Nicks triple chocolate cookies home with him for the kids. Plus he’s earning a fortune down there.
10th February: We had a full scale emergency last night. We had gale force winds that rattled the windows and doors all night long. At about midnight, the front door was suddenly blown off its hinges. Then I heard the smashing of glass and raced up stairs to see one of the windows in Tarquin’s room had been blown in. Fortunately, I’m used to dealing with situations like this. I simply bundled the kids into the car and we spent the next few days at the five-star Marriot Spa hotel just outside York while the builders got on with fixing the damage. But it was a close call. If Michael hadn’t left his Platinum American Express card behind, I dread to think what might have happened……
13th February: I’m pleased about my book deal, but sometimes I wonder if there isn’t already enough, badly-written, lazily-edited, middle-aged chick lit clogging up the shelves of Borders and Waterstones. But then I remember the huge amount of money I will be paid – I’ll be able to afford shopping trips to London every week! – and think: Fuck it!
16th February: Just had a call from my agent. He’s confident he can sell the film rights………

THE DIGESTED READ: Aren't I so wonderful to brave a year living outside the M25 when I don't even know if they have nannies up there and I'm getting paid an advance of only £70,000 which might have been better spent by the publisher on something a bit more original and innovative than this mind-mumbing shite?

Anatomy Of A Job Interview

THIS WEEK I HAD a job interview. I received a two-page letter giving me detailed instructions. I had to take with me my driving licence, P45 plus “another document providing evidence of your eligibility to work legally in the United Kingdom, such as a full Birth Certificate.” I would also be expected to bring along the originals – plus “a copy for retention by the panel” – of any “degrees or diplomas etc” declared in my application. I also had to fill in a Criminal Conviction form and return it in the stamped addressed envelope provided. I was asked to telephone before the interview to confirm that my referees could now be approached. Finally, I was asked to telephone a different number to confirm that I would be attending the interview.

NOISY

At the interview, I was seated before a panel of three – two senior members of the department I was applying for a position with, and an “Administration Assistant.” All three took it in turns to ask me questions from the printed sheets they had in front of them. The interview went like this:
What qualities do you think you can add to our department?
Well, I’m a good team player and people person. I can get on with just about anyone, and in my previous jobs have had to work with people of all ages and backgrounds.
The office can get quite busy at times. Are you used to working in a noisy environment full of distractions?
Yes, I’ve worked in newsrooms with tight deadlines. I’m good at closing myself off and just getting on with it.
Do you have any experience of working with budgets?
I didn’t realise this post involved work with budgets, but yes, I have managed budgets before. In other jobs, I’ve been responsible for accounting for even the smallest sums, and have had to ensure the paperwork and receipts all add up.
Do you have any experience of dealing with aggressive people?
Yes. I once worked as a nightclub doorman and attended a course on conflict resolution.
Do you have any experience of dealing with people who may be very emotional?
As a journalist, I have dealt with bereaved families. As a tour guide, I have dealt with distressed holidaymakers. As an amateur football referee, I meet 22 extremely emotional people on a weekly basis.

ODD

Up until this point, I thought I had done reasonably well with my answers(even though I thought the questions a bit odd for the position I was applying for). But then, after a quick glance at her printed sheet, one of the senior members of staff asked me this:
Have you brought the original of your English Language GCSE certificate?
My answer was no. I had passed my English O-level nearly 30 years ago, and, in the dozens of changes of address since, had somehow managed to lose the certificate. But I was confident that by the end of the interview they would be satisfied with the quality of my written and spoken English. I said this last bit with a smile. No-one smiled back. Instead, brows were furrowed and heads bowed. The Administration Assistant began sifting through the pieces of paper in front of her. My answer had caused a system malfunction, and she couldn’t find the approved response anywhere. She found herself with a round peg which wouldn’t fit in to the square hole. Finally, she looked up from her papers and said to her colleagues: “It says here a copy of the certificate is essential.”
The job I was being interviewed for was that of part-time typist in the Social Work and Health Department of my local council. Eighteen hours a week for slightly more than the minimum wage.

But it was clear that by not bringing proof of my English O-level success 30 years previously, I had seriously undermined my chances of getting the job and the £130 a week that came with it. My previous experience and qualification as a Teacher of English as a Foreign Language, plus my two years editing the features pages of a daily national newspaper, apparently counted for nothing. Perhaps the interviewers hadn’t bothered to read my application form. Or perhaps they were merely following council procedures.

DECENT

Eventually, the Admin Assistant asked if I had any questions for them. I said I was surprised that none of them had wanted to know my reasons for leaving behind a well-paid career in journalism to become a part-time typist. Even after I said this, none of them asked me. So I told them anyway. I thought it was relevant that they should know I was a good and decent man at heart who needed part-time work to bolster his girlfriend’s income and help support his novel-writing aspirations. But as I said this, something strange appeared to happen. I began speaking in a long-forgotten Mayan dialect. At least, this appears to be the only explanation for the row of glazed expressions opposite me, and the awkward silence after I’d finished speaking. It was only broken by the sound of papers being frantically leafed through as the Admin Assistant looked through her checklist to see if she could find a section called How To Deal With A Job Candidate Who Has A Personality. I don’t think she ever found it. I felt like a Dead Man Walking as I was led to an upstairs office to complete my typing test. She left me in the company of a stopwatch-wielding colleague and told me I didn’t have to return to the interview room once I’d finished. As rejections go, it was pretty crushing.

GRAPES

Now this isn’t the sour grapes of a middle-aged man whose 50 wpm typing skill wasn’t enough to get him a part-time job with the local council. It’s simply a tiny snapshot of life in the World of Crap.
The area I live in has more than its fair share of social problems. Yet someone, somewhere had decided that it required two senior social workers plus an admin assistant to spend a whole day interviewing a succession of applicants for a minor clerical post while the problems of the mentally-ill, drug-addicted, HIV-positive, chronically-delinquent, domestically-abused and recently-orphaned were neglected.
Well, you know what? I hope that person ends up down a dark alley and bumping into the homeless, hypodermic-wielding smackhead who couldn’t get an appointment with council staff on the day I was being rejected for the job of part-time typist because I’d forgotten to bring in my English Language GCSE certificate.
And that’s not sour grapes, honest.
© Jack Havana 2007. Reproduction of whole or part prohibited without Jack’s say-so.

Real Life Valentine's True Love Photo Romance Thingy!

KATIE WAS VERY SAD. Valentine’s Day was almost here, and she didn’t have a boyfriend. “Just my luck,” she thought. “The most romantic day of the year, and I’ve got no-one to send a heart-shaped red and silver balloon to or buy a heart-patterned pair of boxer shorts for. I suppose there’ll be no chance of a shag either.”
It had been so different last year. Then, she’d been going out with Kevin, and VD had meant something very special to her. He’d bought her a single, red rose in a clear, plastic tube with a piece of fraying, gold ribbon around it. It had been such an unexpected, spontaneous, thoughtful and original gesture of affection that Katie hadn’t noticed every other girl in the bus queue was carrying exactly the same thing home with them. And she’d felt tears of happiness welling up inside as she read the pre-printed message on the card Kevin had bought her: To my very special Valentine/Make me happy and always be mine. He’d got one of his friends to write “From a Secret Admirer” underneath. The mystery and intrigue of who it could possibly be from would have been a nice, tingly feeling to have carried around for the rest of the day. Instead Kevin had handed it to her with his dirty football kit and whispered into her ear: “Wash the coloureds separately please love”.

Despite not having a man this year, Katie couldn’t help but feel a warm glow of anticipation as she leafed through all the overpriced magazines with Victoria Beckham or Kate Moss on the cover at her local WH Smiths. They were full of ideas for romantically-themed meals, cocktails, films, holidays, underwear, curtains and sofa cushions. So many wonderful ideas, she thought. She particularly liked the idea of sprinkling rose petals(Interflora £10) over a jasmine-scented bubble bath(Boots £2.79) before opening a bottle of chilled champagne(Sainsburys £7.99) and box of Belgian Chocolates(Thorntons £11.99) and serving them to your partner wearing just a pair of high heels(Russell & Bromley £44.99). “That’s incredible,” she thought. “Who thinks up these amazing, original ideas? They deserve every penny of their enormous salaries.” She was equally admiring when she turned to the section entitled: The Valentine’s Guide To His Erogenous Zones: “I had no idea it was called a freenum,” she sighed.

It wasn’t that she felt under any pressure to suddenly become romantic and loving on February 14th, before reverting to her usual, pre-menstrual self at the stroke of midnight. Things hadn’t quite got to the stage here as they had in other countries, notably the US, where total strangers spent the whole day wishing each other “Happy Valentine’s Day” and bought Valentine presents for their mothers and sisters. No, the commercial and business exploitation of an obscure 14th century legend was, in Britain at least, still confined to couples. She wasn’t required to wish the bus driver or postman Happy Valentine’s just yet. So she didn’t feel any pressure to become romantic – it’s just that she increasingly found herself with an overwhelming urge to buy a chocolate-coated marzipan penis from Thorntons.
Katie stared at her computer screen. There was no shortage of Valentine messages for her. It was just a pity they were all from Easyjet, Agent Provocateur, Virgin Holidays, Tesco, Tiscali Broadband, and that person with the strange name who kept offering her Rolex watches. Ping! Another message arrived. Her local independent cinema was inviting her to a Valentine's Night screening of Casablanca. Meanwhile, the newspapers were full of adverts for Valentine-themed “offers”. Even Barclaycard – Get Ten Per Cent More Romantic This Valentine’s Day – and upmarket hi-fi specialist Bose – This Valentine’s Day, Say It With Music – hadn’t been able to resist their marketing departments’ tackiest urges.
She sighed. It would be another lonely night in front of the TV for her. Still, at least that spared her finding every restaurant or Beefeater full of couples trying to kid each other that having a pre-set menu including half a bottle of fizzy wine was the most original and spontaneous romantic gesture since Anita Ekberg took off her shoes and went paddling in the Trevi Fountain. Though personally, she thought the scene in The Big Blue when Rosanna Arquette returned to her city apartment from the remote Andean research station with an ECG print-out of the heartbeat of the handsome scientist she had met and fallen in love with was much more original and romantic.

On the morning of Valentine’s Day, Katie braced herself for opening the newspapers. Sure enough, there were pages and pages of classified Valentine’s messages, including such lines as "SNUGGLEBUNNY Luvs BIGBUM 4Ever" and "MANDY MELONS U R MY TRU LUV XX". And that was just The Times. Apparently the recipients of these messages received a letter, accompanied by a heart-shaped balloon or chocolate, telling them to look out for a few lines of love from their Valentine. They would then spend the next few hours combing through thousands of lines of small print in a bid to find out whether their Valentine’s couplet was any less predictable than all the others. The amount of thought and planning that was put into such a gesture made Katie go all gooey inside. Then she turned to The Guardian and read How To Make Valentine's Day Wonderful For Your Children Too.
At work throughout the day, a succession of Interflora bouquets was delivered to several of Katie’s colleagues. Most were received with a shrug of the shoulders and air of indifference. After all, how could you feel special when even that miserable, malevolent old cow from accounts got a bouquet the size of a house? Katie imagined millions of pounds worth of roses, irises and carnations were being delivered to homes and offices all over the world today. She thought of all the other, flowerless days of the year. How empty did those days feel for all the people being showered with romantic gestures today? Did they feel loved the rest of the year, Katie wondered. Were these contrived, pre-ordered gestures, from the classifieds to the chocolates, really romance? Was Valentine’s Day, ironically, the one day of the year that had all the love and romance wrung out of it like a filthy old dishcloth?
She considered this during her bus-ride home as she looked at all the bouquets and single red roses which were already starting to wilt under the weight of such profligate commercial exploitation and lascivious expectation.
As she put her key in her front door and stepped over the pile of brown envelopes on the floor, she finally succumbed to the significance of this very special day.

“Fuck it,” she thought. “I’ll watch Desperate Housewives, have a bottle of wine, then get out the Rampant Rabbit.”
TEXT AND PHOTOS © Jack Havana 2007. Reproduction in whole or part prohibited without Jack’s say-so.
This week, Jack Havana recommends getting all romantic with:
MUSIC: Powder Burns by The Twilight Singers. Ex Afghan Wigs frontman sings like a lovesick troubadour who has just had his heart broken AND been told he didn’t get the fish van driver’s job he’d applied for. A heart-melting antidote to VD. Listen here.
FILMS: The Big Blue(1988, DVD). A dolphin, the world free-diving championships, a sexy Frenchman and Rosanna Arquette. If that doesn’t float your boat, try Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind(2004, DVD) or Solaris(2002, DVD) and prepare to have your heart broken in style.
BOOK: The White Hotel, by DM Thomas(1981). A love story that encompasses Freud, sex in tunnels and the Nazis. A heady hybrid of hard-ons and Holocaust. Unforgettable. If they ever manage to make a film out of this – and Brittany Murphy is rumoured to be the female lead in filming this year – it will be a cross between Schindler’s List and Last Tango In Paris.

"Be Advised Kylie Minogue's Hot Pants Are Intact, Over."

DUE TO A TECHNICAL HITCH during broadcast, the transcript of the “friendly fire” cockpit tape got mixed up with the breaking news headlines running across the bottom of the screen. This was how the transcript appeared to Sky News viewers today:

POPOV35: Hey dude.
POPOV36: I got KYLIE MINOGUE’s hot pants evenly spaced along a road going north.
POPOV35: Evenly spaced? Where we strafed?
POPOV36: OK. Right underneath you. Right now, there's a canal that runs north/south. There's a small village, and there they are, at ten o’clock now.
POPOV36: They look like they have orange panels on though.
POPOV35: He told me, he told me they were silver.
POPOV36: They've got something orange on top of them.
POPOV35: MANILA HOTEL, is KYLIE MINOGUE in this area?
MANILA HOTEL: Say again?
POPOV35: MANILA HOTEL, is KYLIE MINOGUE in this area?
MANILA HOTEL: Negative. Understand she is well clear of OLIVER MARTINEZ now.
POPOV35: OK, copy. He’s a cheese-eating surrender monkey anyway.
POPOV36: OK, now we have multiple objects. They look like SHILPA SHETTY. Are those your targets?
MANILA HOTEL: That's affirm.
POPOV35: OK.
POPOV36: Let me ask you one question.
POPOV35: What's that?
POPO36: KYLIE MINOGUE or SHILPA SHETTY? If you had to have one of them?.
POPOV35: Whoa dude! Are you talking like a blue on blue situation?
MANILA HOTEL: . . . (garbled) You were stepped on, say again.
POPOV35: MANILA HOTEL, fire your arty up BERNARD MATTHEWS, and see how we do.
MANILA HOTEL: Roger, standby for shot. They are getting adjustments to the turkeys now.
POPOV35: Copy.
POPOV36: Roll up your right wing and look right underneath you.
POPOV35: (angry) I know what you're talking about.
POPOV36: OK, well they got orange rockets on them.
POPOV35: Orange rockets?
POPOV36: Yeah, I think so. And pink spaceships. And I think I can make out some cute blue bunny rabbits.
POPOV35: Let me look. Dude, you’re right. They are not KYLIE MINOGUE’s hot pants.
POPOV36: HELEN MIRREN! HELEN MIRREN!.
POPOV35: Where? Repeat POPOV 36. Where?.
POPOV36: At the Oscars. Do you think she’ll win one?
POPOV 35: Sorry POPOV 36, you were stepped on. What did you say? Would I give her one?
POPOV 36: Negative. Do you think she will win one?
POPOV35: No way man. It will be that Spanish chick with the heavy artillery.
POPOV36: OK, do you see the orange things on top of them?
POPOV35: I thought we just said it was a negative to KYLIE MINOGUE’s hot pants?.
MANILA HOTEL: Tell you what guys, give me SHILPA SHETTY any day.
POPOV35: Copy that MANILA HOTEL. I'm coming off west just thinking about it.

POPOV36: You roll in. It looks like they are exactly what we're talking about.
POPOV35: We got visual.
POPOV36: OK. I want to get that first one before he gets into town then.
POPOV35: Get him - get him. Think TONY BLAIR. That’s twice he’s been questioned, man. He’s gotta go.
POPOV36: What about JOHN REID?
POPOV35: No way dude. SHILPA SHETTY. I ain’t no faggot.
- GUNFIRE -
POPOV35: Good hits.
POPOV36: Nice ass too.
POPOV35: I got a visual. You're at your high 10.
POPOV36: Gotcha.
POPOV36: That's what you think they are, right?
POPOV35: It looks like it to me, and I got my goggles on them now.
POPOV36: Beer goggles?
POPOV35: Negative. (Pause) But if they were, how many pints would it take to make JADE GOODY attractive?
POPOV36: Is she a friendly?
POPOV35: Negative. She’s a racist and a bully.
POPOV36: Good hits?
POPOV35: Affirmative. But surgically-enhanced.
POPOV36: Then I’d say six pints dude.
MANILA HOTEL: POPOV36 do you copy? Be advised GARY GLITTER has just had his sentence cut by three months.
POPOV36: It looks like he is hauling ass. Ha ha. Is that what you think they are?
POPOV35: What do you think I think they are?
POPOV36: It doesn't look friendly.
POPOV35: They could be FRIENDS OF THE EARTH. Did we buy any carbon offsets for this mission?
POPOV36: Negative POPOV35.
POPOV35: Fuck. Think of the polar bears, dude.
- GUNFIRE -
LIGHTNING 34: POPOV 34, LIGHTNING 34.
POPOV35: POPOV 35, LIGHTNING 34 go ahead.
LIGHTNING 34: Roger, POPOV. Be advised that H5N1 cannot be transmitted to humans through BERNARD MATTHEWS' TURKEY TWIZZLERS.
POPOV35: Ahh shit. What about JOHN REID?
LIGHTNING 34: That’s a negative, POPOV35. JOHN REID is not human, repeat NOT human. And two of the Birmingham terror suspects have been released without charge.
P0POV35: TONY BLAIR’s fucked, man.
POPOV36: What about that GORDON BROWN dude? Doesn’t he have the hots for SHILPA SHETTY?
POPOV35: Yeah, he stuck up for her during a meeting of the UN Security Council or something.
LIGHTNING 34: Hey, POPOV35, abort your mission. You gotta RTB(return to base), looks we might have a blue on blue situation.
POPOV35: Fuck. God bless it. We’ll never make it back in time to see it. Is someone taping it?
POPOV 36: KYLIE MINOGUE and SHILPA SHETTY at the base? Fuck, I hope someone’s taping it.
POPOV35: Fuck, fuck, fuck.
MANILA 34: POPOV34, this is MANILA 34. Did you copy my last, over?
POPOV35: I did. And I’ve just come off east.
POPOV36: Dude! Control yourself!.
POPOV35: They don’t call this a cock-pit for nothing.
MANILA 34: Standby POPOV.
POPOV36: God dammit.
MANILA HOTEL: Hey POPOV 36, from MANILA HOTEL.
POPOV35: All right, POPOV 35 has smoke. Let me know how those friendlies are right now, please.
MANILA 34: Roger, standby.
POPOV35: Gotta go home dude.
POPOV36: Yeah, I know. We're fucked.
POPOV35: Shit.
MANILA 34: POPOV 35, MANILA 34 over.
POPOV35: Go.
MANILA 34: We are getting an initial brief that KYLIE MINOGUE’s hot pants are intact and on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum until June 10th, over.
POPOV35: Copy. RTB (return to base).
MANILA 34: Also be advised that JOHN REID has no brain.
POPOV35: I'm going to be sick.
MANILA 34: And that the rough-looking blonde out of S Club 7 considered killing herself after Celebrity Big Brother.
POPOV36: Ah fuck.
POPOV35: Did you hear?
POPOV36: Yeah, this sucks.
POPOV35: We're in jail, dude.
POPOV36: Fuck. God fucking shit.
POPOV35: Dammit. Fucking damn it.
MANILA 34: Be advised that all your cuss words will be bleeped out on the TV news because swearing is considered much more distasteful than an innocent Brit being killed by friendly fire.
POPOV36: Roger that. Fucking shit bollocks cunt anyway.
POPOV35: Yeah, I know that thing with the orange panels is going to screw us. They look like orange rockets on top.
POPOV36: Fuck it. Damn KYLIE MINOGUE’S hot pants!
POPOV35: Your tape still on?
POPOV36: Yeah.
POPOV35: Mine is end of tape. If we hit the gas, we might make it back in time to catch some of that blue-on-blue action……
TAPE ENDS.
© Jack Havana 2007. Reproduction in whole or part prohibited without Jack’s say-so.

Why Shagging A Drunk Girl Isn't Always Rape

LESS THAN SIX PER CENT of rape cases resulted in convictions in 2005, compared with more than 30 per cent in 1980. (The number of convictions, though, showed an overall increase). So Government ministers have drawn up a raft of proposals designed to make prosecutions more successful. They are not satisfied that all those men being acquitted might actually be innocent, the victims of “flimsy” or “malicious” allegations. Men such as Frank Chisholm(spent 10 weeks in jail before being cleared over false claim of rape), Warren Blackwood(spent three years in jail before being cleared over false claim of sexual assault) and Levi Multilal(suffered nine months of “considerable stress and strain” before a judge cleared him over a false claim of rape).
Of course, the possibility of any rape accusation being false remains unpalatable to certain sections of society. They will never be dissuaded from the notion that all men are potential rapists, their evil fantasies fuelled by the deluge of pornography available everywhere from the local newsagents to the darker recesses of the internet. As a dedicated and prolific user of this material myself, I’ve never really understood how it is supposedly responsible for the quantum leap from sad, lonely, trousers-round-the-ankles tosser like me to fully-fledged rapist. I would argue that there is so much porn out there that any potential rapist just wouldn’t be able to find the time…….
But that’s another argument. For now, let’s consider the Government’s proposed measures for increasing the number of rape convictions.

PISSED

The most contentious is the introduction of a statutory definition of the “capacity to consent”. In other words, a legal definition of the fine line between being sober enough to welcome or decline sexual advances, and being too pissed to care.
Rape, remember, is NEVER the victim’s fault. Getting so pissed that she removes her knickers in the taxi queue, waves them above her head and demands a bite of the kebab of the bloke standing in front of her, however, probably is.
But under the Government’s plans, any woman who wakes up full of shame for having shagged the fat, baldy bloke from stationary supplies will be able to claim rape on the grounds of having “diminished capacity to consent”. She’ll be able to defer responsibility for her actions on the grounds that she was pissed as the proverbial newt. Being unable to remember whether she said “yes” or “no” will be enough to have the accused banged away in prison for at least the next 10 years.
But if the prosecution argues that a woman was too drunk to have been able to consent, then couldn’t the other side argue that she was too drunk to remember that she actually had?
Imagine if this legal doctrine catches on. Assuming there were no witnesses(as in most rape cases), I could get pissed, go for a drive, mow down a couple of pedestrians before stopping off at my local post office, stabbing the elderly post mistress to death and making off with all her takings. When the police called round, I could simply claim I had been too drunk to remember any of my actions.

SHAGGING

So how will “the capacity to consent” actually be defined? By the amount of Bacardi Breezers/controlled substances the alleged victim had consumed? Surely that can’t work, as everyone’s metabolism is different and some people get pissed/out-of-their-heads a lot quicker than others. Maybe the Government will set a drink-shagging limit, like the drink-driving limit, with recommendations for the number of units of alcohol allowed before your ability to have sex responsibly becomes seriously impaired? But that will only work if the alleged victim is breathalysed or produces a urine sample within 12 hours of the alleged offence. What if she’s in no mood to or doesn’t report the rape for several days?
No wonder this idea is being resisted by the Council of Circuit Judges, who believe it should be left to a jury to decide whether an alleged victim was in a fit state to agree to intercourse or not.
Another of the proposals being considered by the Home Office is the use of expert witnesses to advise a jury how a rape victim might be expected to behave. Which carries the odious implication that rape is such an everyday feature of normal life that it brings with it its own standard set of reactions. How can there be a “right” way to behave after something as horrible and dehumanising as rape? Who is more believable, the victim who calls the police immediately, or Ulrika Johnssen who writes about it years later in her autobiography? The fact is, just like with a bereavement, no two people will react the same way to rape. Some will feel better after a nice cup of tea. Others will be scarred for life. Neither reaction is conclusive proof or otherwise that a rape actually took place.

REVENGE

The fact is, false allegations of rape are nothing new. There are many respected academic studies out there showing high incidences of women falsely screaming “rape” for reasons ranging from shame to revenge. (Though not in the UK, where the suggestion that a woman might falsely allege rape is considered only marginally less un-PC than sending orphans out seal-clubbing.) Here are two, oft-quoted examples from the US:

• A report by Dr. Charles P. McDowell in the Forensic Science Digest(publication of the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations) in December 1985 examined 556 accusations of rape. 27 per cent of the accusers, either just before taking a polygraph test or after failing one, admitted that they had lied.
• In his paper “False Rape Allegations”, published in volume 23 of the Archives of Sexual Behaviour in 1994, Dr. Eugene J. Kanin reports the findings of two detailed studies. The first involved all resolved rape cases in a Midwestern US city of 70,000 during a nine-year period, and found that 41 per cent of “victims” recanted their claims. The second was a survey of all rape complaints during a three-year period at two large Midwestern state universities. This found that 50 per cent of all allegations were false, and had been motivated by either a need for an alibi(53 per cent) or revenge(44 per cent).

Dare I suggest that a correlation between this trend and the more recent phenomenon of female binge-drinking is responsible, at least partly, for the low percentage of rape cases ending in convictions?
Women are drinking like never before. It’s a fact of modern life. But some of them refuse to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. A few years ago, there was a spate of alleged “date rape drug” attacks. I thought that was a load of bollocks. Why would anyone go to the trouble of sourcing and purchasing a few tablets of Rohypnol, when with most girls a couple of large vodkas and tonic will have the same effect? And bollocks is what it turned out to be. The Association of Chief Police Officers studied 120 “date rape drug” cases during the 12 months before October 2005 and found that, instead of being drugged, most complainants had been – to borrow a phrase from Paul Whitehouse’s old soak in The Fast Show – “very, very drunk.”(In 22 cases, the blood-alcohol level was almost three times the drink-driving limit.)
"In most cases, the alleged victims had consumed alcohol voluntarily and, in some cases, to dangerous levels," an Association of Chief Police Officers spokesman told BBC News.

Campaign group Women Against Rape described the study as “unhelpful”. But they would say that, wouldn’t they? The idea of women making false allegations of rape is anathema to, um, women. It goes against everything their ideology stands for. As US author Catharine MacKinnon – “a founding mother of gender feminism” – states in her must-read book Feminism Unmodified: “Feminism is built on believing women’s accounts of sexual use and abuse by men.”
As fellow fem Wendy McElroy points out: “If this methodology is debunked, if women are viewed as no more or less likely to lie than men, then the foundation of gender politics collapses."

No wonder it’s hormonally-imbalanced newspapers such as the Guardian and Observer who have been most vociferous about the perceived failure of the courts to convict more rapists. We live in a woman’s world, and the idea that not as many men are rapists as we think is just too awful to contemplate for certain, self-interested sectors of society, including Tony Blair’s female vote-hungry party. It’s no coincidence that you have to look a long way down the Government’s list of proposals before you find any mention of removing the right to anonymity of women who make false rape claims.
Remember, the cornerstone of British justice is that there has to be “proof beyond reasonable doubt”. As if there aren’t already acres of doubt about an offence involving two people who usually know each other and where there are no witnesses, the addition of alcohol into the equation doesn’t help matters. But to introduce a statutory “capacity to consent” will be giving a license for binge-drinkers and drug-abusers everywhere to abdicate their responsibilities as decent, moral beings – as many of the “victims” in that date rape drug study did - and consign hundreds of innocent men to prison.
© Jack Havana 2007. Reproduction of whole or part prohibited without Jack’s say-so.
This week, Jack Havana recommends.....

MUSIC: Wincing The Night Away, by The Shins. Unfussy, lightweight, infectious, etc, etc.Listen here.

FILM: Red Eye(12), currently showing on Sky Movies. Slick, adult suspense from Wes Craven. More here.

BOOK: Head On, by Julian Cope. Warts and all memoirs of the ex-Teardrop Explodes frontman. Get the dirt on Wyle, McCulloch, Love et al. Review here.

In Praise Of The Spur Of The Moment

BEFORE YOU CAN EVEN attempt to buy tickets for this year’s Glastonbury Festival, you have to pre-register and upload a passport-sized photograph of yourself at the official website. “We’ve had very positive feedback from people who are fed up with eBay touts,” said Rob Richards, who is in charge of sponsorship and marketing for the event. “And the organisers feel it will discourage people from trying to get a ticket on impulse, which makes it much harder for people to get a ticket in the first place.”(The Guardian, 1 Feb 2006)
There, in a handful of words, you have a sad indictment of the world in which we live, a world in which nothing must be left to chance, spontaneity, serendipity or impulse, and in which everything must conform to corporate regulation and fit a standard template.

SNUFF

The organisers feel it will discourage people from trying to get a ticket on impulse. There you have it in print, the organisers of Glastonbury trying to snuff out spontaneity. How rock and roll is that? So God forbid I should wake up one day next June and feel suitably inspired by a song on the radio or the sun in the sky to want to travel down to Somerset and see my favourite band perform. It will be too late. Profit margins dictate that I must decide now, five months in advance, in the depths of winter, before the full line-up of bands has even been officially confirmed, whether I want to commit myself to the 1,000-mile round trip from my home in Scotland to a muddy field with dubious toilet facilities. Corporate greed – and I don’t care if Glastonbury does support Oxfam and Greenpeace, it’s still charging £150 a ticket – compels me to make a decision now about a weekend five months in the future, by which time I might be working for a boss who won’t give me time off, penniless and destitute or gun-running in the foothills of Afghanistan. (OK, so it’s not really a commitment, as pre-registering doesn’t actually guarantee me a ticket. But if I don’t go through the rigmarole of pre-registering before the end of this month, then I’m not even allowed to attempt to buy a ticket when the phone lines open on 1st April.)

IMPULSE

Glastonbury’s attitude is echoed around the world. We are being discouraged from doing things on impulse, whether it be going out for a meal or visiting an art gallery. Soon, we will need to make an appointment to go to the shops. You will have to make a reservation seven days in advance for a particular time slot to be allowed to use your local High Street. You will need to “pre-register” your interest in dining at a particular restaurant, watching a film or visiting a museum.
The age of pre-booking has turned our lives into rigid timetables, where we need to pre-order activities to fill the various time slots. Restaurants, theatres, cinemas, galleries, car parks – they all need to be reserved in advance.
Weekend city breaks – at home or abroad - are now fraught with the danger of not being able to find a whiff of spontaneity. Unless you resort to hours of military-style pre-planning by phone or internet months before departure, your romantic break in Paris could be reduced to traipsing between “ticket only” art galleries or from one “sold-out” show to another “fully-booked” restaurant.

If you travel to southern Spain and fancy visiting one of the most beautiful buildings in the world – the Alhambra – forget it. You need to pre-book on the internet, and choose the exact hour and date you wish to visit. (Here’s a tip though, based on painful experience: never book for the 10 pm slot. Half the complex will be closed and the other half so dimly lit that you might as well be in a multi-storey car park rather than in a stunning, 800-year-old Arab palace).
If you want to see an art exhibition in London, Edinburgh, Madrid or Paris, there’s a good chance you’ll have to buy your pre-timed ticket in advance. You can’t just visit London and say: “Ooh, while we’re here, why don’t we have a look at Goya’s etchings?”
If you’re flying to any of these places, the easyJet website encourages you to pre-book your place in the queue with Speedy Boarding for between £2.50 and £7.50(even though the small print warns you they can’t guarantee you’ll be first on the plane if it involves a bus shuttle from gate to aircraft!). The Jet2 website lets you pre-book champagne. God forbid you should spontaneously desire a bottle of cheap fizzy plonk 39,000 feet above Slovenia.

KEBAB

It’s rubbish not being able to do things on the spur of the moment. Imagine if Cary Grant had had to pre-book his impromptu dinner date with Audrey Hepburn in Charade, or George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez had needed to book their table at that swanky bar in Out Of Sight. Two great films would have been ruined by shots of Hollywood icons filling in on-line pre-registration forms. It wasn’t that long ago that you could see a West End show, have a meal in Soho and round off the night at the Café de Paris without having to book any stage of the evening in advance. I know because I did it(and still had change from a tenner for the night bus home). Nowadays, I’d be lucky to find a kebab shop that didn’t need advance reservations.
Even in the remote village I live in now – miles off the tourist trail – there’s no room for impulse. We have one, modest restaurant. Despite having lived here for the last three years, I have never once been able to suggest to my girlfriend on a Friday or Saturday night that we nip to the But’n’Ben for a meal without finding it rammed to the rafters with people who have booked weeks or months in advance.
Who are these people whose lives are so organised and predictable that they are able to book a meal in a restaurant or tickets for the cinema so far in advance? And what came first? The demand that necessitated the booking system? Or the booking system that created a “buzz” and stirred the demand? Is, for example, advance booking of airport car parking really a money-saver, or just a gimmick to create the impression you are saving money? (By experimenting with dates – tomorrow and four months in the future – I found no difference in prices at Jet2’s car parking website) .

HOPE

There is some hope. Some, newer restaurants now operate a no-bookings policy. You might have to queue up for a bit, but some of the best meals I’ve had have come after an hour of standing around staring enviously at someone else’s patas bravas. And some theatres now keep back a selection of cheap seats for release on the night.
A much-maligned feature of modern life also offers a glimmer of hope – ticket touts. The reason for Glastonbury’s pre-registration system is an attempt to stop tickets being resold on eBay. But I would argue that touts offer a valuable service. The most specious argument against them is that they sell tickets at inflated prices. Well, excuse me, but when was the last time you bought a ticket for an event that wasn’t inflated, thanks to booking fees, transaction charges, postage, etc?(See Greed, Hypocrisy and Rock & Roll here) If I did wake up next June with a burning desire to go to Glastonbury, the touts on eBay would be my only hope of fulfilling that impulse. Likewise just about any other concert. There are even third parties who sell on tables at fancy restaurants. Without touts – both of the “booking agency” and dodgy-Scouser-in-a-baseball-cap-variety – I wouldn’t have seen Zidane, Figo and co play in front of a sold-out Bernabeau. I’d never have seen a barnstorming performance – including a rare rendition of Creep – by Radiohead at the Manchester Apollo. If you can afford them, touts serve a valuable public service. They are the last link to an age of whim and spontaneity in a world being suffocated by automated booking services and pre-registration websites.
It’s not just meals out and Glastonbury though. If we lose the ability to be able to act on impulse, what are the implications for our creative spirit? Art – whether it be literature, paintings or music – is already having the life strangled out of it by marketing men, target demographics and trend forecasts. That’s why you have to wade through all the Alan Titchmarsh and Jade Goody autobiographies and the I Traversed the Andes by Unicorn memoirs to find anything remotely decent in your local Waterstones. That’s why the CD racks are full of gurning faces from X-Factor. Nothing’s the result of spontaneity or impulse. Everything’s made to order.
We live in a world where nothing’s left to chance. And that makes it a very dull place indeed.
© Jack Havana 2007. Reproduction in whole or part prohibited without Jack’s say-so.