Philly Mac/Señor Internacional

This might seem like a strange title, but it is just an observastion really. And it is an observation of when when judges or people in authority dish out a harsh punishment to for a crime or wrong doing, and they say they are doing it “to make an example” of the person.

This might seem logical. But I was thinking about it yesterday, and it only makes sense if the knowledge of person you are making an example of a reaches its entended target, i.e. other people that would do the same as the person in the wrong.

So my point is that unless they actually combine the “making example” with making sure that this info reaches as many people as possible. Then for me it is a bit of a wasted opportunity.

How they would go about doing that though,  is anyone’s guess.

I was originally going to write this post about the airline industry is heightist, meaning that for people like me that are tall, airlines, especially low budget airlines are a pain to use. Which was very evident when I went to Amsterdam last month and felt like a sardine in a can in my own seat as I was wedged with my knees against the seat in front of me.

But since this trip I have had another to London in which I bought speedy boarding, which meant that I was one of the first people on the plane. And let me tell you, this made all the difference in the world. And anybody out that who has the same leg room problem I have, I would seriously advise you to pay the extra £4 or how ever much it is and get the priority or speedy boarding. That way you can go and get one of the seats by the exit, or at the front of the plane that give you ample leg room.

Now if you are super tall, I am not sure that it will fix it for you, but if you are between 6′1″ and 6′5″ I think this will help you out a lot.

So while I still think that the airline industry is heightist and us tall people shouldn’t have to pay extra just so that we don’t feel constricted in our seats, there is a solution, it costs a few pounds more, but makes the world of difference.

but I wouldn’t want to live there.

I originally wrote this post about one and a half years ago. But I feel that I am in a better position to write this again. Seeing as 1. I no longer live in London, 2. I have had a long time to think about it, and 3. I deleted the original post by accident.

So what am I talking about? London of course. The irony of course being that I did live in London for the first 27 years of my life. But it is also the reason that I feel that I have the authority to talk about it.

Now when I left London in the October of 2007 I said that I would never live in that city again. And this still stands. But to clarify my position I will expand.

When I say that I will never live in London again, it is because of 5 thing that I see wrong with the place. And while these things could change I doubt they ever will in my lifetime and therefor unless less there is something big that happens in my life (and life has a way of doing that sometimes) I will never live in London again.

So what are these things that I think are so wrong with the city of London.

1. Almost everything is so expensive. And I mean everything. To live, to eat, to travel, to go out. And for me the only reason for this is because it is London, and it has some sort of coolness associated with it and its name. Nothing else. And after living in Berlin for a year I can see just how expensive London is, in contrast to Berlin, which is super cheap. Cheap but good. And I enjoyed living in Berlin many times more than I did in London.

Oh I should say that was a time that I did enjoy living in London, but that was more than ten years ago. Since then I have become a lot more wise to the ways of this city, and also many things have changed.

2. For the amount you have to pay for everything you would think that the public services would be the best in the world. Not so. Travel on the underground is now a experience that I could do the rest of my life without having again. The roads are congested. And to drive into or through the center of London during the day costs about £8 a day from what I last remember. People say the NSH is a great institution, but again from living in Germany for a year I would say that the system they have over there is far superior, and it cost about the same as I was making in NHS contributions each month.

3. For the size of the city, there are just way to much people in the city. The services and size of the city are just not built to handle the amount of people that reside in London. And the worst thing is that the government is always encouraging more and more people to move into London. I mean, the place is bursting at the seams and they want to pack more people in there. This has become more and more evident in the last ten years that I have gotten tired of London, and it one of the major contributing factors.

4. The government, over the last few years especially, has adopted a worrying trend of following the US government in whatever it does and seemingly without question. For me this means a reduction of human rights, liberties and privacy. And all predicated on lies, and misinformation through the media. I don’t want to live somewhere where the people in charge have scared the people they govern so much that they freely give their freedom away. Which in my opinion is what has happened in the US and what is slowly happening in the UK. And the thing is, by the time the people realise what has been taken away from them, it will be too late to get it back. The only way after that would be revolution, the last resort for any people with their backs to the wall and feeling their voices are not being herd.

5. The weather just does not inspire happiness. Now this is something that only God can control. But in combination with the rest of the factors just makes London not an attractive proposition. When I lived in London I used to say to everyone I knew that I wanted to live in a country that was hot all year round. I think this was just a knee jerk reaction to living in a city where the weather was terrible all year round. I have since discovered of myself that I do not need to live somewhere that has good (or sunny and hot) weather all year round. It is just as good to know that when it comes to summer I will have a summer and sunshine, and not just gray.

Anyway, there it is. My reasons why I won’t/don’t want to live in London anymore.

Very short post.

I have been living in Madrid now for almost 5 months and I have figured out the fashion culture here, or what it takes to be considered a Madrileño.

And that secret combination is a cigarette and sun glasses.

Not in all my travels on this small planet of ours have I witnessed a nation that smoke so intensely and with such passion as the people here do. And it is everywhere except the metro and work spaces.

So forget anything else. If you want to live in Madrid and be considered a Madrileño then get yourself a pair of Ray Bans and a box for Marlborough.

I got a pair of sun glasses, but wait, no cigarettes. I guess I will never be a Madrileño.

Don’t really want to say much about this, but just know that Ebay has finally pissed me off to the extreme. And because of this I having taken the step and deleted my account on there.

I now use www.ebid.net, they have been around about twice the amount of time that ebay has, and seem to be a much better looking and run site. I have also given up on paypal because of their insistence of one paypal account per country that you want to do business in.

I mean, common sense does not seem to be an asset that ebay and their subsidary companies have. Ciao ebay, hola ebid.

I just had to write this because it has annoyed me over the past week.

People that put work ahead of the mental/phsyical health think of this…

How much work are you going to be able to do when your health fails??

That’s all I wanted to say.

Philly Mac

An ideal that can never be achieved.

I have always been a fan of communism, the thought that no one man is better than another, and everyone is equal, should earn and have the same as everyone else, and everything is shared between everyone. A nice thought isn’t it?

The problem is that this is the ideal, in practice this is never the case, and can never be the case. And why? Because it is human nature to want to have more than others. This is not the case for everyone, but it is for enough people that it means that communism is, and can never be a reality. Those countries that claim to communist are actually practicing some sort of “one rule for the people and another rule for the people that rule them”.

Remember, the love of money is the root of all evil, and as long as money exists so will people that love it and will do evil to get it.

Communism, nice idea, poor execution!

Philly Mac

Back in 1997 I was living in London and I was 17, I was too young to vote in the General Elections in the UK. But the next time I got the chance I think it was 2001 and I was 21 and I voted for Labour as I thought at the time they were still the best party to run the country. By the time the General Elections came around again I didn’t bother vote. Why? Because by that time I felt both of the leading parties where a bunch of crap and it was a choice of one evil or the other. And I felt that deciding which was the best of the two evils was too close for me to make a proper choice.

What is my point? Well I was watching South Park the other day and they had an episode about Turds Vs Doches. And at the end of the Episode they made a very good point. In life you will always have to choose between some turd and some douche, so you better come to that realisation early. So it is always worth making your voice heard even if it is on the side of some Turd or some Douche, or in my case Labour or Conservatives, same difference.

Philly Mac

I am Philly(lip) Mac(Iver).

This blog is my forum, my Hydepark corner, my soapbox, my sounding board.

I tell it how it is and how I is.

Let me tell you what I aint. I am not the kind of person that will laugh at an unfunny joke just to brown nose. I am not the one that you come to to her lies about yourself just because it will make you feel good. If you want that go on Oprah Winfrey. Because I aint the one. I aint never going to tell you what you want to hear unless it is actually the truth and how it is.

I aint the person that tolerates bull! Period! My life is too short and I aint got time to entertain fools. So if you’re a fool then move on. And if you don’t know if you’re a fool then most likely you are. People who aint, know.

I despise weakness, not phsyical, but that of the mind. I don’t want those type of people round me infecting me with their weakness of mind.

I hate people who complain about stuff all the time with no intention of doing something about it. I have some rules in life, one of them is “Don’t talk about it, be about it”.

If you don’t like the situation you are in, then change it. I don’t want to hear from you if you are just going to complain and do nothing. Remember there is no shame in trying and failing, the shame comes in the not trying at all.

I am originally from London, and I have a love hate relationship with that city. I love my London people, but I hate the way the city is run and just about everything else about the city. Which is why I don’t live there anymore. Case and point, didn’t like the city of London (the situation), so I left (doing something about it). It is as simple as that.

Life is as simple or difficult as you choose to make it. I choose to make it as simple as possible.

Philly Mac - Soy de puta madre!