How to be Happy: Part 1

I mentioned a few months back, when I first started writing this blog, that I’d be setting out a hard and fast technique for becoming happy in your own skin. Since then, I have comprehensively failed to do this, leaving hundreds of thousands of loyal readers teetering on the edge of their seats. I can only hope that my tardiness didn’t cause any deaths or serious injury. I apologise mildly and equivocally if it did.

But now I propose to crack on, ridding the world of misery and self loathing in one fell swoop. Well, two fell swoops actually, because this particular swoop is just the stretching off before the big work out. An hors d’oeuvre, if you will.

So, you should begin by asking yourself one question: What is the goal in my life?

Go on, ask yourself now. Maybe even write the answer down somewhere, so you can’t cheat by changing it later on.

I’ve asked this to loads of people over the years, and come across tons of different answers: To be a millionaire; to be the greatest golfer/fund manager/plumber/clown (delete as applicable) in the world, to have “made a difference”; to have raised a loving family… and so on and so forth.

But at the risk of sounding a touch judgemental, these answers are all WRONG. There, I’ve said it – they’re WRONG. Yep, if you thought this was one of those wishy washy questions where there are no wrong answers, you were WRONG. And whatever you answered was probably WRONG too.

I realise that this makes me sound like an arse of the highest order, so I’ll qualify it. The answers above are not wrong per se, and yours wasn’t too – it’s just that they’re only 30-40% right at best.

No. The only way of getting 100% on this particular test was with the following answer:

To be happy.

Bear with me on this, even if you’re vomitting into your own shoes at the cheesiness of that answer. Think of it logically:

Why do you want to be a millionaire? Because it might make you happy.

Why do you want to be the best at what you do? Because you think it would make you happy.

Why do you want to devote your life to rescuing defenceless animals from cruelty? Because it makes you happy.

Why do you want to achieve ultimate world power by creating an unassailable global media network? Because you think it may make you happy.

So whatever the answer you gave, it ultimately leads to the same destination: to be happy.

OK, true, you might say, but completely bloody useless to me. But there is a reason for being this pedantic. It’s because any of the wrong answers above probably won’t make you happy in isolation. You may become the best footballer in the world, but if you lose all your friends in the process, achieving that goal probably won’t have made you happy. And if you’re not happy in life…well, you’re not happy. And that’s why you’re not happy.

And that, if you glance back to the title of this entry, which must seem like a long time ago now, is the point. There’s nothing more important for you than being happy in your own life. So you need to work out what it is you can do to achieve that one simple goal. And that, my friends, is gratifyingly easy to do. I’ll tell you how in one of my next posts…

Off the Hook

I’ve just realised what the modern world is missing – an “Off the Hook” switch.

This will be news to anyone under 20, but in days of yore we used to be able to turn off all communications with the modern world simply by taking the phone’s handset off its base and leaving it there.

That was it.

In one swift action, you’d said “I’m busy – leave me alone”. You could then clean the house, eat a family meal, take a bath or just have forty winks safe in the knowledge you wouldn’t be disturbed by anyone (aside from your own family or the doorbell – and both of those will shut up if you hit them hard enough)(joke)(about the doorbell that is, who wants to cough up for an electrician?).

This is a luxury we’re denied nowadays. At some point in the mid nineties, phones began to wail if you left them off the hook for more than five minutes. So you had to unplug them at the wall. Then we got multiple phones in a house and unturnoffable wireless phones that run off a battery. Then came mobiles and emails. All of them need to be switched off, unplugged, muted etc, and then reversed when you want to emerge from your shell. It’s a job in itself.

Imagine being able to turn it all off at the flick of a switch: bliss.

Where’s a good electrical engineer when you need one?

Cameron to Order Air Strikes on Football

Breaking News: Cameron Considers Air Strikes on Football

David Cameron has been in talks with other European heads of state overnight, as the furore over the FIFA presidential election continues. The enforcement of a no-fly zone over Football now seems likely, while Cameron has refused to rule out the possibility of air strikes.

The possible move comes after FIFA’s embattled President, Sepp Blatter, issued a stark statement that warning foreign powers not to meddle in Football’s election process.

“Football is not in a crisis, only some difficulties,” said the Fifa president, as he brushed off suggestions from the British government that Wednesday’s presidential election – for which he is the only candidate – should be suspended.

“If governments try to intervene then something is wrong,” he said.

“I think Fifa is strong enough that we can deal with our problems inside Fifa.”

While Cameron has not denied or confirmed the possibility of air strikes on football, there have been reports of the RAF fuelling Tornado GR4s, which are capable of reaching Football’s headquarters in Zurich.

How wrong is wrong?

When I saw this article yesterday morning, I thought “great! – here comes another opportunity to demonstrate the dangerous folly of forecasting the future”. If you didn’t catch it, it was about how the good citizens of Rome had got themselves all of a fluster because some chap, several decades ago, predicted that there’d be an earthquake in their city on May 11th 2011.

Brave call that, making such a pinpoint forecast (although arguably not, seeing as he could only shown to be right or wrong after an extended period of pushing up the daisies). It had all the hallmarks of being another class A clanger to add to the Millennium Bug hall of shame.

And then, yesterday evening, Spain went and had its worst earthquake in 50 years. So he actually earns an A+ for timing, and a (stingy) B+ for location (with the whole world to choose from, saying Italy instead of Spain is pretty damned close). As it would be highly churlish to quibble over a few hundred miles, even for me, I have to concede that this turned out to be either a stunningly good, or stunningly lucky, prediction. I have absolutely no idea which it is, but I do know that, at the very least, Mr Bendandi cannot be discredited.

This is highly inconvenient for the point I was going to make, which is that forecasting is usually wrong, and ends up costing you more than it ever gains you.

But for a pedant like me, the point actually still stands. This forecast was 95% accurate – considerably more than most. But that 5% can often make all the difference, especially in the world of investing, where forecasting is rife.

I doubt, for example, that any Romans who had decided to escape the impending quake by, say, flying to Lorca in Spain, would be quite so ready to forgive Mr Bendandi his small inaccuracy.

Likewise, I hear predictions of the ilk of “the US Market will rise 20% in the next 6 months” all the time. The US Market then duly rises by 18% in the next four months – enough for the forecaster to proclaim himself basically right – before it crashes back by 30% in the next two. This leaves anyone expecting 100% accuracy from that forecaster nursing a nasty loss.

Wasn’t it obvious though? You should have got out when the Market hit 18%. Tut tut. Better luck next time…

Capitalism: It’s the Best!

To misquote Winston Churchill; capitalism is the very worst way of running an economy, except for all the others. This is about as good a definition as you’re ever likely to find, but that’s not going to stop me chucking in my own two penneth:

“Capitalism is the journey towards monopolistic power. For a society to benefit from capitalism, it must ensure that the travellers never reach their destination.”

Consider an individual’s journey from rags to riches. Let’s call him Alan. He begins by providing a good or service to someone who needs it (let’s use the completely randomly picked example of car aerials at a time when in-car radio was a new technology). He is then able to create enough profit from doing so to provide more car aerials to more people who need them. Eventually, if Alan is good at what he does, (i.e. his customers like what they’re getting in terms of price and quality) he employs other people to help him manufacture and deliver the aerials. And as his enterprise grows, he is able to employ more and more people by giving more and more people the product they want at a price they consider fair.

So, at this point, it’s easy to see the benefits of capitalism to society. Alan has become wealthy. The vast number of people who enjoy listening to the radio have been provided with the means to do so in their cars. And a large number of people have been able to earn a wage from this process, and thereby achieve a better standard of living. All good.

However, at some point Alan the entrepreneur will butt up against the limits of his enterprise. It may be that everyone has a car aerial now, so the only people who now want to buy his aerials are those who need to replace their old ones. So his enterprise will shrink, then level out. It is also likely that other entrepreneurs will see how much money Alan is making, and fancy a piece of that action for themselves. So his enterprise will shrink further as competition increases, and his profit margins will be cut. It may even come to pass that new technology, such as digital radio, means that people no longer need the aerials he produces. So his enterprise will shrink and ultimately disappear. So to maintain his dominance over his industry, and keep his wealth growing, he has to make some changes.

In an ideal world, Alan adapts his business positively to the new conditions. He spends some of his wealth creating new and better types of aerials that can pick up digital signals (in doing so providing employment for scientists and engineers). If he is quick enough in doing this, he once again becomes the leader in the car aerial market, and his business continues to grow (while still employing more and more people, and providing the means for people to listen to the better quality, wider choice of digital radio in their car).

He could also spend some of his earlier profits improving the efficiency of what he does. This could be new production technologies, cutting delivery costs or by training up his staff. This would allow him to provide his aerials to customers at a lower price, and therefore sell more of them. Thus the capitalistic journey continues, to the benefit of society as a whole.

This is, however, where the ever-pesky problem of reality gets in the way. The chances are that Alan’s entrepreneurial spirits have been dulled somewhat in the earlier, successful stage of his business. Good food, fast cars and fabulous foreign holidays can be quite distracting, so I’m told. So it’s more likely that a new, hungry entrepreneur has spotted the upcoming need for digital aerials first, or that there’s a cheaper way of making or delivering them. So while Alan is still wealthy, he is now behind the game. As it stands, someone else is likely to beat him at his own game, and in doing so become more wealthy and powerful than him.

This is where capitalism starts to go wrong. Alan wants to stay the biggest fish in the pond, but being behind the game, he now has to call on the “dark side” to meet that goal. There are a number of dubious actions he can take:

One is to buy out the new competitor, and other competitors too. Alan needs to buy enough of them so that he has control of the whole car aerial market. This done, he has not only eliminated the new threat, he can now start to charge an unfair price for car aerials, as his customers have no choice but to buy from him. He can also start to repress the wages of his staff, as hacked-off car-aerial experts can’t go and work for a higher-paying competitor, as there aren’t any.

Another path he can take is to try and tamper with the market itself. He might use his wealth and influence to make a politician outlaw digital radio, thus blowing his new competitor out of the water. Or he may be able to swing legislation in his favour, so that a licence is required to sell digital car aerials. These licences might be expensive enough to keep new competitors out of his market or, if he greases the right palm, he can ensure that he is granted a licence, while his biggest competitor is frozen out. If he is successful, Alan gains even more control over his market, giving him greater ability to overcharge for his product while underpaying his staff.

These outcomes are clearly good for Alan. But they are bad for customers, who have to spend more of their hard-earned money on car aerials than is strictly fair. They are also being denied better, cheaper car aerials that would have been provided by the sharper competitors. These conditions are also dire for the large number of individuals who are employed by Alan, as their wages and conditions can be repressed. It’s also bad news for the engineers, scientists and anyone else who would have been employed by the new-tech competitors. So, in short, one person does very well, while lots of people do worse. This clearly sucks for society as a whole.

Essentially Alan has reached the destination his alpha instincts have been steering him towards all along. He has achieved a position of monopolistic dominance over his industry. From this position, he will be very, very hard to dislodge. And all the time he stays top dog, he can use his monopoly to take much more than his fair share of the economic pie, leaving everyone else worse off. This is unequivocally bad for the society in which he lives, but what does he care – he’s rich! If society starts to deteriorate on account of his actions, and those of Alans in every other industry, he can simply build a bigger wall around his house to keep the growing number of unwashed urchins out.

So you can see that the early stage of the journey is when most of society benefits from capitalism. It’s a messy, creative, destructive, roller coaster of a ride. But this probably explains why it’s the most suitable method of managing human beings, who are messy, creative, destructive creatures that are pathologically incapable of not lurching between disaster and triumph.

It’s when an enterprise or an economy reaches the end of that journey that unchecked capitalism can become dangerous. As a society, therefore, we have to find as many ways as possible to encourage people to start out on that journey, and equally as many ways to stop them from ending it.

Let’s bring in old Winston C again:

“Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.”

I think it’s exactly that – a sturdy horse pulling the wagon. But those on the wagon need to make damned sure they keep that horse on the right track, lest they end up somewhere they really don’t want to be.

Postscript: contrary to appearances, I have no axe to grind with any entrepreneurs called Alan who may have started out on their road to fortune by selling car aerials. It just seemed a neat way of illustrating a point. No, if I was grinding axes, I’d have been much better off calling him Rupert and having him sell newspapers.

What America Need to Learn from, erm, America

America has got something right (woohoo! Stop the presses! Etc etc). No, it’s not the killing of Bin Laden, I think they cocked that up actually (if it happened, that is: “We secretly shot him in the face, twice, and then immediately buried him at sea, and no, we’re not showing the photos.” I mean, if you actually WANTED conspiracy theorists to froth at the mouth, would you do anything differently?). No, what they’ve got right is their football league.

The reason they’ve got this so spectacularly right, is that, unlike America itself, it still embodies the American Dream. And the American Dream, when you strip out the cheese, is a very admirable thing, being essentially the principle that any American from any background can rise to the top by virtue of good, old-fashioned, hard work. Each year, when the NFL season begins, supporters of every team know that there’s a chance, even if it’s a remote one, that they could win the Superbowl. This shows itself in the list of champions over the last 20 years, which contains no less than 13 different teams.

Compare this to the miserable state of affairs in the English Premier League. Since its inception in 1992, there have been only four winners out of the 44 different teams that have contested it. And since 1994 it has been won by only three teams, Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal. Let me tell you that, as a supporter of one of the other 41 teams, it is becoming a mightily tedious affair. It’s especially desperate that any realistic supporter of 17 of the 20 teams that start the league each year knows that his club will not win the league. (I never expect, or even dare to hope, that my team will win it any more, and I support the team that finished 4th last year).

How has American Football avoided slipping into this dull state of affairs? Well, in a surprisingly un-American way, as it happens. It has put in place the kind of field-levelling controls that would make some European governments wince at their meddlesomality (I suspect there’s a real word for that, I just can’t think what it is). Firstly, it has put in place a wage cap – a concept that owes more to Marxism than free-market thinking. This makes it much harder for the very richest clubs to swipe the most talented players by offering wages that other teams can’t match.

And secondly there’s the draft. This is where the teams that finish last in the league get first pick of the new crop of college players for the next season. Both of these concepts offer a stark contrast to the Premier League. Here, the richest clubs can pinch the best players by offering higher wages and the glamour of joining potential champions, while hoovering up the best young players too by openly raiding the academies of other clubs.

So the irony is that the Land of the Free has used decidedly un-American controls to keep the American Dream alive in its sport. Shame, then, that it can’t learn from that experience and do the same for its society as a whole. A society which now resembles much more closely the English Premier League (and English society itself, to be fair). A society where the very richest can use their money and power to twist the free-market and political systems to their benefit, thereby preserving their positions at the top of the pile.

The problems will come, for both America and the Premier League, when the losers start to realise they are destined to remain losers. A problem, I think, that is already swinging into effect. Because when most of the players in a game realise they can’t win it, they lose interest in playing (empty seats at the grounds of Premier League also-rans are becoming more and more common, a stark contrast to the League’s heyday in the nineties). So while the activities of the elite will preserve their spot on the top of the pile, they will reduce the size of the pile itself, which isn’t good for anyone. Especially when other piles, most notably the Chinese pile, are growing exponentially on the back of a renewed love of entrepreneurship.

For America, this will translate into an erosion of the impressive work ethic that thrived through most of the 20th Century, when the American Dream was thriving. So if the US wants to arrest, and even reverse, its decline, it needs to keep the dream alive. And while methods such as wage caps patently aren’t the way to do this, it needs to take a long look at the principle of what its Football league has done. In doing so, it may be able to find ways of keeping its own players interested in playing the game. If they don’t, they’re likely to find more and more Americans sitting it out.

Flatpacking with Toddlers

I’m a man. I’m given to show boating – it’s my birthright. So when my wife left me alone with the kids for a day, it was only natural for me to show off. Or try to, anyway. Why not prove that I was not only capable of looking after our kids, but of carrying out home improvements simultaneously?

So in this intrepid vein, I set about assembling the “VARDE” kitchen unit – a brut of a sideboard that, as everyone knows, is the biggest challenge IKEA, if not DIY itself, has to offer. It is no less than the Everest of flatpacks. It even stipulates in the instructions that it’s a two-person job – highly unusual on the amateur flatpacking circuit. But with no other consenting adult available, I enlisted my two boys, aged three and one, to help around the edges while bonding over manly constructions-style activities. So, upon my wife’s return, she would find not only two peaceful, content boys, but an armed and fully operational kitchen unit too. What could go wrong?

For anyone looking to attempt the same, I’ve set out some instructions below:

Extra Tools Required:
Drill
Flat-Head Screwdriver
Phillips-Head Screwdriver
Hammer
3-Year-Old Boy (“Child A”)
10-Month-Old Boy (“Child B”)
Tweezers

1. Gather your tools, including Child A and Child B, and the flatpacks in the kitchen. Open the flat packs. Set the pieces out in front of you. Tip the smaller pieces (screws, dowelling rods etc) into a small plastic tub for ease of access. Lay the tub on the floor beside the rest of the kit.

2. Pick all the screws up off the floor and put them back in the tub. Tell Child A to watch where he’s stepping. Playfully ruffle the top of his hair as you do so.

3. Take the washer (part no. 100823) out of Child B’s mouth. Put it back in the tub. Put the tub up high, out of reach.

4. Tell Child A that he can’t watch Fireman Sam until you’ve finished the flatpack.

5. Attach bar A and bar B to the drawer dividers. Use the dowelling rods to position them before screwing them firmly onto place. Note that bar A has subtly different holes than bar B – so pay special attention to getting them the right way round. Also note that this is a fiddly and delicate part of the process, do ask Child A to hold the bars in place.

6. Ask Child A to hold the bars in place again.

7. Ask Child A to hold the bars in place again. This time in a firmer tone.

8. Retrieve Child B from the lavatory. Remove the bits of toilet paper from his mouth.

9. Ask Child A to hold the bars in place again.

10. Attempt to screw the bars into place four times. Each time it falls apart, tell Child A in a slightly louder voice to hold it STILL.

11. Ask Child A to stop holding the bars in place.

12. Ask Child A to stop holding the bars in place again.

13. Give Child A the electric screwdriver by way of distraction.

14. Take electric screwdriver away from Child A. Make mental note to call French polishers.

15. Carefully balance bar A on the drawer dividers, support one end with your foot if necessary. Get ready to screw into place.

16. Tell Child A that you still haven’t finished the flatpack, so he can’t watch Fireman Sam yet.

17. Check Child B for poo. Change his nappy.

18. Re-balance bar A in place.

19. Put bar A back on the floor again. Stand up, get screw (103436) from the out-of-reach tub. Re-balance bar A, then secure in position using screw. Tighten with screwholder (113434).

20. Tell child A to stop driving Lightning McQueen along bar A.

21. Count to 10.

22. Secure the second drawer divider onto bar A.

23. Retrieve Child B from the garden. Use a flannel to wash the soil out of his mouth.

24. Balance bar B on the two drawer dividers above bar A. Get ready to screw into position.

25. Tell Child A to stop driving Lightning McQueen along bar B.

26. Re-balance bar B in position, using both hands and feet if necessary.

27. Tell Child A to stop driving Chick Hicks along bar B. Explain that this rule extends to any of the vehicles from the film “Cars”.

28. Screw bar B into position.

29. Take bar C, position it on the other side of the drawer dividers opposite bar A.

30. Tell Child A to stop punching Child B.

31. Tell Child A to stop punching Child B in firmer tone.

32. Screw bar C into position.

33. Tell Child A that if he punches Child B again he’s going on the naughty step.

34. Screw bar C into position.

35. Put Child A onto the naught step. Explain in a calm voice that you are putting him there because you asked him not to punch Child B, but he carried on doing it, which is very naughty.

36. Return to the kitchen. Take dowelling rod (101350) out of Child B’s mouth. Pick up all the screws etc, put them back in the tub, put the tub back up out of reach.

37. Count to ten.

38. Take hammer away from Child B.

39. Count to ten again. More slowly this time. Take a deep breath.

40. Return to the naughty step. Tell Child A that you put him there because he was punching Child B, which made both you and Child B very sad. Ask Child A to say sorry. If he does, tell him you love him, give him a hug, then return to the DIY.

41. Screw bar C into position. Ask Child A to press the ‘go’ button on electric screwdriver while you hold it in place. Set the finished construction to one side.

42. Break for lunch. Afterwards, leave cleaning the table off until after the flatpack is done. Ditto the floor, walls and curtains.

43. Return to the flatpack. Tell Child A that it isn’t finished, and you need his help, so he cannot watch Fireman Sam yet.

44. Lay unit side pieces on floor, holes facing upwards. Get screw-bolts (118331) from tub.

45. Pull Lego light out of hole using tweezers. Tell Child A not to put anything else in the holes. Give him the hammer as a distraction.

46. Begin screwing the screw-bolts (118331) into the designated holes.

47. Pull Lego light out of Child B’s left nostril using tweezers.

48. Count to ten.

49. Apply ice pack to Child A’s foot.

50. Screw the screw-bolts (118331) into the designated holes.

51. Pick up Child B, cuddle him, say “there, there, there”. Apply ice pack to his foot. Take hammer away from Child A.

52. Start to shout a swear word, then change to a word that starts with the same letter mid-stream. Count to ten, then tell Child A that he can’t watch Fireman Sam yet.

53. Take hammer away from Child B. Put it up out of reach.

54. Finish screwing the screw-bolts (118331) into the designated holes.

55. Set the two small panels on top of the unit side pieces. Begin screwing the panels on using four screws (109021) per panel.

56. Tell Child B to stop crying while you finish screwing the panels on.

57. Tell Child B to stop crying again.

58. Tell Child B to stop crying again in more frustrated tone. When the full futility of this action dawns upon you, take him up for his nap.

59. Tell Child A that he can’t watch Fireman Sam.

60. Set the first side panel on the floor, screws facing up.

61. Tell child A to stop slaloming Thomas the Tank Engine between the screws.

62. Pick up the multiple-bar construction you made earlier. This is one of the bits that really needs two people, as it’s heavy and precision is required. Balance the relevant holes in the construction above the relevant screws. Get ready to drop the construct gently onto the side panel.

63. Tell Child B to move That Bloody Train out of the way.

64. Tell Child B to move That Bloody Train out of the way again, this time in a shout.

65. Put the construct back on the floor. Tell Child A to put Thomas back in the toy box before you smash it to pieces with your hammer.

66. Tell Child A to go and watch Fireman Sam.

67. Pick the construct up again, and gently drop it onto the side panel. This is fiddly so may take you some time. Once you have done it, keep supporting the construct, as letting it go will destroy the ends of bars A, B and C.

68. Tell Child A to go back and watch Fireman Sam.

69. While supporting the construct, put the other side panel in place. Put the two heavy shelves in place too.

70. Ask Child A to get off your chest. Tell him to please go back and watch Fireman Sam.

71. This is the hardest bit. While supporting the construct and the shelves, slide the heavy side panel delicately onto the screws and dowelling rods.

72. Tell Child A to go back and watch f… f… flipping Fireman Sam, now, or he will never, ever be allowed to watch Fireman Sam again. Ever.

73. Ignore the cries coming from Child B’s bedroom.

74. Once completed, mop sweat from your brow, tighten the screw holders (113434) as tight as they go, then congratulate yourself on completing the hardest part of job. Well done! All downhill from here.

75. Slide the back panel into place. When it doesn’t quite fit, consult the instruction booklet with a slight, but growing, sense of impending doom. Continue to ignore the increasingly loud cries from Child B.

76. Examine the unit carefully. Pay special attention to whether you have put bars A and B the right way round. If you have done this incorrectly, you will need to deconstruct the unit and return to step 5.

77. If you have put bars A and B the wrong way around, shout “You f***ing, f***ing, mother f***ing f***er” as loud as you can. Repeat if necessary. Pound the kitchen unit with your bare fists, then slump into an irretrievable heap on the kitchen floor. Consider adopting the foetal position.

78. Upon hearing the front door open, spring to your feet and greet your wife with a cheery “hello!”. Ensure it’s loud enough to be heard over The Fireman Sam credits and the distant screams of Child B. Tell her that you’ve all had a great time, and that you thought you’d make a start on the kitchen unit while all was quiet.

79. Continue to pretend you are emotionally undamaged for the next two hours, then clear the carcass of the VARDE unit into the furniture graveyard that is your garage.

80. Make mental note not to attempt anything so monumentally stupid ever again.