Whine and Wonder

It is the second of December and I am sitting in my front room looking out of a somewhat dirty window onto the most glorious display of Winter Sun. The chair under the wisteria is smoking a vapour of cold mist, and the grass is glistening with moisture and sunlight. The sky is totally clear and there seems a little bit of hope in the world this morning.

So I will get the whining out of the way so that I can look out of the window some more and enjoy the rest of the day.

My last blog mentioned the nuisance that I have recently endured with BSkyB and Virgin. Having spent yesterday hearing my friend’s frustration with Virgin, I am beginning to worry that I may have jumped into another fire of devilish corporatism, but then I knew that I would. It was just the lesser of two evils. If you want to watch television, have a phone call and have fast internet access, then there are a few organizations that have got the entire market sewn up.

C’est la vie.

But it doesn’t stop with this form of media.

I am increasingly frustrated by the total monopoly in our lives that we simply accept without question because these careful bods have ensured that there really is no alternative.

Take Bill Gates. You have to admire his prophetic deliverance regarding the internet. He had the foresight to see that we were going be reliant on his products, and once we were all hooked, then the inflation could begin.

That is how capitalism works.

But Bill, I’ve been very loyal to you. Doesn’t that deserve some sort of gratitude?

I’ve never had a pirate copy of any Windows/Microsoft product. I’ve loyally typed in the codes for all systems so that I can run along and get on with writing, reading and creating.

Surely, there could be some thanks for that.

But no. I wanted to purchase Microsoft Publisher because, having tried alternatives to no avail, I needed a desktop publisher. I am fortunate in that I have more than one or two computers in the house. In fact, there are five.

Now I am setting myself up in business and I would really like to be able to design something on my laptop and then print it off on the computer. I have not connected my laptop to the printer. So the only way of getting my business cards printed is to transfer them to the computer that is connected to the printer. Only I cannot do that because that computer does not have the required software.

I bought the Microsoft product but it only has ONE license. One license for ONE machine. Not ONE license for a household or a business.

How fair is that? So in order for myself, my business partner and my desktop computer to have access to this all important piece of software, I have to pay £300.

It’s not fair.

The only consolation is that at least Bill Gates is altruistic and pumping considerable amounts of money back to where it is needed to educate and nurture the lives of those less fortunate through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Right, that is the whine out of the way.

Now to something more positive, honestly.

The last few weeks, I have been somewhat miserable. That is an understatement. I have been feeling incredibly bereft, lost, voiceless, paralysed.

It happens sometimes. It happens in a moment, and it lingers, and then it is gone only to return when you least expect it, sometimes to such an extent that it pierces dramatically into your mind and your heart, painfully.

It hurts. I hurt. Such a simple word; hurt.

It is so strange. I love music. My life without music really would be bereft. Music, like other essential things in life, gives me a lift that I cannot really explain. It hits a nerve, a feeling. It fills my soul with every intonation and every beat. Isn’t it a marvel that there are only a certain amount of musical notes, and yet you get this huge array of sounds – the magnitude and variety of which is almost inexplicable.

How can you get such different sounds from essentially twelve notes? I have music books stacked on my shelves inviting me to play all sorts of different music. I have more shelves filled with CDs that have their own mark, their own form of creativity with these twelve notes arranged in so many different ways.

But it is not just twelve notes. It is the combination of those twelve notes into chords (36), into melodies, all kinds of juxtapositions. And then there are all the different musical instruments putting different sounds into our ears, and then there is the combination of the instruments; the harmony of the sax and the guitar, with the emphasis of the drum beat that all combine with the strength of a leading voice.

Bloody marvellous.

It is mind- blowing when you really sit down and think of the simplicity and the ultimate, incredible complexity of composition.

With songs, there is the addition of lyrics to consider.

Language is similar to music composition. We have twenty six characters in our alphabet that make up millions and millions of words, in different languages across the globe.

Arranging these words to match music provides even more combinations.

Is it infinite?

A few weeks ago, I listened to a really interesting story about plagiarism

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00xw21s

It featured the case of George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” and its similarities with “He’s So Fine”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMrFht6ryTg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wynYMJwEPH8

Yes, it sometimes happens that there are similarities between songs, and often the artists may not even realize that they are plagiarizing because the music that they might have heard sometimes creeps into our being almost without trace. Such is the subliminal power of that combination.

But returning to music, and how it affects me.

There are times when the effect of music is so dramatic that I can not physically bear to listen to it. Is that a strange statement for someone who feels a desperate need for music in her life? It is the same with other joys. I cannot even begin to think about them when I am feeling so bereft, and yet it is precisely these essentials in life that would make me feel so much more complete.

Music affects me, hugely.

Last night, I sat in a bar and listened to live music and I felt more myself than I had done in months. It was an amalgamation of things, and it certainly did not mean that everything was perfectly wonderful in my life, but for that moment, I was lost in the music – the brilliance of a few men standing on a stage and creating the most excessively comforting sounds from their guitars, harps, drums and voice –not forgetting the wonderful clear sound from the female vocalist.

But music does sometimes make me want to roll up in a ball and weep, not always in a sad way. Sometimes, I am just completely overwhelmed by the whole magnificence of it all. It takes my breath away. I am speechless in admiration for these wonderful human beings who have given the rest of us so much without realizing precisely what they are giving.

So, for many months, music has been missing in my life, and I have missed it. I have avoided it. It is a shared love that has felt unshared recently. And I have resented that.

But music is also so uplifting and personally, I think it is vital to the wellbeing of everyone who has the physical capacity to listen.

I have seen my children respond to music in such an amazing way too. I love hearing my son waking up and within minutes of doing so, he has broken out into song. The rest of the family are not so delighted by this, but isn’t this how we should start every day – full of music, and today, full of sunshine too.

Right now, I want to scream from every corner of the room to anyone who is prepared to listen that I need music and other joys in my life. I am going to re-embrace them all given half the chance but for now, I am reveling in my new technology that allows me to add a Spotify account onto my television. I have been blasted with Lennie, George x3, Bruce, Eric and various others this morning; different sounds, different languages, different tunes, different instruments, different words –all combining to make my heart miss a beat and then retrieve it with a slow-down and meditation on the most perfect things in life.

British Capitalism and Monopolies in Reality

I’ve had enough of Rupert Murdoch. I had actually had enough of Rupert Murdoch before I signed up to his television package eight years ago, and it was only a ‘need’ to have sport programmes for the family that I signed up in the first place.

I regretted it almost instantaneously but at the time, there was no alternative.

And there still is very little alternative.

There is certainly not an excessive amount of choice out there.

Having spent some time considering the alternatives and my general unease about giving Murdoch and his organisation over £70 of my money monthly, I finally decided to take the plunge and move away from Sky to another television package.

As I said, the alternatives are not massive and they too are caught up in a whole vastness of monopolies and capitalism.

Virgin Media is not a co-operative. It is not a ‘not-for-profit’ organisation. It is out there to make as much money and become the alternative force in multimedia to the entire Sky product. But as far as I am aware, Richard Branson has not sunk to the levels of human degradation and total disregard for people in order to make a fast buck in the way that Murdoch and his lackeys have.

So I decided to switch my allegiance to Virgin once they had bombarded me with their adverts for their new TiVo box and multi-media packages.

Not only that, but they were also offering me a great deal on the telephone system and an internet speed that paled the existing service into insignificance.

The notion of being able to download films and get to pages with the blink of an eye, certainly seemed appealing.

I signed on the dotted line and was assured by Virgin that they would contact both BT and Sky to cancel my subscriptions and terminate the existing contracts.

Virgin kindly sent a proforma letter to me that I was to send to Sky, and they contacted BT to say that they were taking over the existing telephone number.

So far so good for a busy woman who does not want to be spending important time on the telephone to people who would be trying to persuade me to stay with their beloved product.

But of course, life is never that simple.

Having sent the letter and trusted Virgin to do the business, I waited to hear from Sky and BT.

Nothing happened.

So I contacted both companies to try and find what was happening.

I shall start with BT, and I managed to get in touch with a wonderful woman who was disappointed that I was leaving BT. She asked why and I explained that it was nothing to do with their product. It was just that the organisation could not offer me the multi-media package that Virgin was offering and I was rather desperate to leave Mr. Murdoch well alone.

She understood and then went on to explain that unfortunately BT did not have the ability to match either Virgin or Sky due to their technological programme being somewhat behind the times.

Perhaps BT should have been a little more forward thinking when these other two organisations got themselves sorted. Perhaps BT, as an established favourite amongst the great British Public and a one-time monopoly organisation should have made contact with another trusted favourite, the BBC, to sort out something that would appeal to the many who did not want to pay vast amounts of money each month to capitalists.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I explained to the woman at BT, that I did not think I was the only person in the country that wished to leave Sky and that I felt their organisation were being penalised a) for not being progressive enough to offer a viable alternative and b) for the inexcusable and loathsome way in which Murdoch’s empire operated that was leading people to move away from his organisations in droves, and thus leading them away from BT by default.

I suggested that my comments be passed on to management, and I am sure they are already tracking the loss of business due to this very situation.

Of course, there may not be that many people who are leaving Sky but there was reports in the newspapers, at the height of the phone-hacking scandal and the delightful demise of the News of the World, that people were beginning to vote with their feet and veer themselves away from the various products that News International and Murdoch were involved with.

I know of people who have chosen not to buy “The Sun” or “The Times” having spent years of giving allegiance to these newspapers.

Whether there be droves leaving Sky or a few principled people such as myself, there is certainly change and with the excessive pitching in certain newspaper outlets, such as WH Smith, of the free “Times” with every chocolate bar you buy, I am confident that News International are worried enough about the drip effect becoming a cascade of disaffected customers.

So my next phone call was to Sky.

Oh dear, oh dear.

I wasn’t surprised by the jolly Scottish man showing both amazement and capitalist sorrow at my suggestion that I would like to cease my subscription to the service. I fully anticipated the tirade of persuasion that was about to come my way. I had decided I was going to remain resolute and not get into a heated discussion about the whys and wherefores of remaining with Sky.

I had not, however, banked on the excessive persistence and the corporate doggedness in which this person perpetually tried to argue me out of my principled decision.

It was appalling and verging, no not verging – it was intimidating bullying of an aggressive nature, made even worse by the ‘oh so polite’ manner in which it was done.

I started the call by stating that I had written to the organisation to tell them of my plans to terminate my contract with them. The man informed me that they did not accept letters of cancellation and everything had to be done by phone contact; something that my friends at Virgin had not entirely explained to me.

I was then asked for the first time why I had made the decision to terminate my contract.

I explained that I did not wish Murdoch to receive my money.

“Oh is this because of the phone hacking thingy?” was the dismissive response.

I explained that this was part of my reason but my main problem with Murdoch was the monopolisation of the industry and the fact that for many years, there had been no alternative to his services. I now felt as though I had a viable alternative and I was going to use my democratic right to choose what suited me the most.

“You do realise” was the patronising response, “that Rupert Murdoch is no longer the primary share-holder in Sky”.

I explained that I realised this was the case but I did not want to be involved or give my money to any organisation that was influenced by this man and any of his companies.

To cut an extremely tedious story short, the conversation went on for a further twenty minutes with this man constantly trying to persuade me to change my mind, including a time when he offered me £250 discount on my phone line and broadband rental for a year. I explained once more that as I was leaving Sky for ethical reasons, I was not going to be responding to the sort of blackmail of financial incentives to persuade me to stay.

Some people just don’t get it, do they?

He even explained to me, as though I was a complete imbecile, that should I choose to buy a Sky package through Virgin, I was still going to end up paying Murdoch some money, even though he had already stated that he was no longer the primary shareholder, and that if Virgin had really wanted the Sports deal or film packages then they could easily have bought the packages during the bidding process where Sky won their rights.

At this point I laughed at the total lack of understanding that was taking place here. I explained that this was precisely the sort of monopoly that I found so disgusting, and that Virgin or BBC or ITV or any other television/media organisation could not possibly compete with the might of BSkyB, which is precisely why I did not want them to have any more of my money in the hope that with a mass exodus from their indoctrinating business, the bidding playing field might eventually be levelled to the point where other media companies had a fighting chance of competing with BSkyB.

After a prolonged battering, I politely yet assertively pleaded with the man to cease with his tactics and press the button on the computer which finally freed me from the stranglehold of BSkyB.

He did so and we said our goodbyes.

I can be, when the time is right, an assertive human being. I had made my decision and I was not going to be persuaded by any sort of bribe or incentive that this man was going to offer me. Others, however, may have felt that either the incentive was too good to turn down or that they had no fight left in them and would succumb to the bullying methodology of this organisation.

I do not hold the person on the telephone responsible, although he does have a mind of his own and should be a little more socially intelligent to empathise with people and realise when the time is right to persuade and when it most certainly is not.

And here lies another issue with capitalism. Where is the human face? How often does it get subsumed into the cogs and wheels of these grand organisations that respect neither the wishes of their customers nor the humanity of their employees?

This man was a faceless automaton. He was following company rules, but could he honestly have crawled into bed last night with a feeling of purpose and a comfort that he had perpetually battered an unknown woman with his company line on how her life would be a complete misery without his companies influence in her life?

This is an extremely unintelligent way of operating and is indicative of so many organisations the length and breadth of the country and beyond, who are so desperate for our custom to further their own desires without a single consideration of what people are saying and doing in order to say, enough is enough.

Enough is enough. These large organisations need to be told that we, the people, will not be dictated to. We will endeavour to find alternatives and we will not all be bribed with financial incentives to keep their vile companies on an untouchable pedestal.

We will no longer listen to their lies or their deceptive methodology and we will certainly not be bullied into doing things in order to comply with the norm.

If enough people chose to stop buying “The Sun”, if enough organisations stopped funding such rags by taking their advertising business elsewhere, then these large conglomerates would have to look at their ethical business practices.

Has News International learned anything from the recent disclosures? Are they not still desperately trying to protect those people at the top, providing them with enough money to keep their mouths closed?

Did they stop hacking phones and sneaking in peoples’ bins once the y had been caught out, fined and employees sent to prison?

I don’t think so.

It was only when there was such public outcry that actually started to effect the fiscal position of the company that they did anything.

If enough of us turned around and said, “Enough is enough” and walked away from the contracts that BSkyB have tethered around our necks through a distinct lack of alternative, then we could bring these organisations to their knees and prevent the despicable monopoly that enables them to go about their business in their inhumane manner.

I am not suggesting at this point that any of the “Big Boys” are any better than the other. If I find that Branson is doing something as distasteful and despicable as Murdoch, then I may well have to change my provider once more but hopefully, by then, the likes of BT and the BBC will have got their act together and worked out an alternative that might appeal to people such as myself who are even willing to pay a little bit more in order to get services, such as sport and quality reporting, back in the public sector domain where they should be.