Roddinghead (Road) Revisted

It was one of those lovely May days in Glasgow where it swiftly gyrates between warm rain and sunshine and the clouds move fast like you see in some of these arthouse movies when its a dream sequence.

So i decided to test how fit i still am and took a long run up through my old haunts in the suburbs near my parents house.

What was interesting (at least for me) was the story that some streets tell - I was thinking this as i ran along Roddinghead Road. Roddinghead Road is one of those new money streets peopled by an assortment of families who are rich as hell but immensely vulgar (usually indians, greeks, italians, arabs, the less classy Jews, and of course proletariat who've done well - basically the type of people who don't get into the Golf Club up here)

 The typical 'thing to do' if you make a lot of money quickly and are ill-bred, is to buy an old pile on this street, demolish it (or if you feel particularly rich and vulgar you buy the house next door too and demolish that to make an even bigger plot) then you build an extremely ugly but enormous house, with the aim of showing off to the people next door how stupidly rich you are. Sadly the formerly lovely avenue of Roddinghead Road is full of these nasty 'Pondarosa' style carbunkles.

You can really read the story of the current times here -  On a road of say 40 houses, while of course most are still solid looking and deuce despite the numerous interlopers, there were McMansions for sale (foreclosed?), empty McMansions with long grass (abandoned?), and at the end a large empty space where some chancer had demolished the house, with the intention I suppose of showing off his timeshare/drugs/real estate/football player money by building some monster sized monument to his working class roots. But since the grass was already grown long there, perhaps after knocking the house down, he lost his money as quick as you could say 'negative equity'.

 Fortunately, for Roddinghead Road, the times of fast easy money are gone, and who knows, in time these streets will recover from is rash of vulgar palaces built in the last 20 years. But for now, despite there being no apparent recession in the rest of Glasgow, this tells me what i already suspected - the easy buck has gone now, and won't be back for a long time.

But with easy loans gone, where will the new businesses be? where will that brace of chancers and barrow boys who always seem to manage to make it ? Guys like Alan Sugar or Richard Branson? I'm sure the younger generation of confident and energetic are a lot better than on the 'apprentice' show in real life. However - we're only now just at the beginning of the great unwinding of the credit bubble so with no money available, only the real deals will pull through, and these guys (I hope) wont be building crappy but enormous homes on Roddinghead Road. Maybe they'll even demolish a couple and build decent homes.

I'll drop up there in 5 years time and report...

Poor People Round the World !

I was thinking today about the idea that a country could be judged on the behaviour of their poor - with how much dignity they act and how they are treated reflects that country. It does ring true - heres the Alan rating system!

Estonia - poor people are generally dignified. Ok they maybe smell a bit but try to dress normally, and look in bins furtively for bottles etc to recycle. The drunk poor die pretty quickly and quietly so you dont see much of them. 8/10 (minus 2 for the smell)

Great Britain (female pictured)- boorish oafs who blame others for their situation, join the BNP while liveing on kebabs, curry, chinese, chips with curry sauce, cigarettes, and beer, drop litter, intimidate normal people, say 'yeah?' a lot, take drugs, and go to Spain/Majorca/Ibiza for thier hoidays, have no taste, and milk the benefits system more than the worst 'asylum seeker'. Give me hard working Iraqis anyday and lets neuter the 'chavs' They do however keep the population up by having 8 children by 9 different fathers by the age of 13. My rating - (2/10) the 2 only because of the entrepeuneurship shown by their benefits scams.

Africa - African poor seem to me to be the most happy and good natured people on earth. i suspect its 1. they resigned themselves to the fact they are powerless about changing the situation a long time ago because they arent related to the ruling junta 2. they have IQ of 12 and 3. its sunny and warm most of the time. (7/10) they miss a few points because of their general smiling acceptance of their lot (which usually means being exploited down gold mines by chinese gangmasters for 2p a year)

Australia - Basically the same as in uk except 1. they have marginally worse taste if thats possible and 2. they beat their wives. - they do eat better though so even steven at (2/10)

Japanese - Japanese poor are the poor of choice. I once spent a jetlagged morning in ueno park, Tokyo with an old homeless philospher who was im sure in that film the karate kid (he may also have been the inspiration for yoda of star wars) he was a great old dude, spoke perfect english and had pefect manners, in fact it was a few hours before i realised he was a homeless guy. They make perfect origami cardboard boxes, and even leave their shoes at the door, which is pretty funny if it wasnt sad.

But all you horny solvent but slightly dodgy men out there (you know who you are...) there is the new national trend of love hotel refugees, where girls hang outside and offer free sex just for a bed....well sounds like the Tallinn nightclub scene...

http://www.tokyomango.com/tokyo_mango/2009/02/homeless-japanese-women-dubbed-love-hotel-refugees-.html

marks (9/10 - inventiveness and good business sense in the face of adversity, coupled with good manners and retention of dignity(except the love hotel refugees but well nobodys perfect...)


Americans - I think American poor typify all thats wrong with the country. They can be of course amusing because they are so ignorantly tragic - cliches abound of trailer park rednecks, boys in da hood, latino gangbangers, you name it. My experience of poor americans (outside of Hollywood) is that they are a pretty meek and victimised bunch, with a few nasty buggers like 50 cent bullyng and terrorising the population, and earning the general contempt of the generally contemptous population. The general crapness of americanss as people, is reflected in their not surprising exploitation of their fellow countrymen - http://www.bumfightsdump.com/search/bum_fights !! They do lose a lot of points by their awful eating habits - the fattest poor people on the planet bar none!!

My rating -a sad, and not very glamourous (3/10) becuase i feel sorry for them.