eat to the beat

The big nipple, yes.

This is the last sentence in this week's AA Gill restaurant review but it's far from the best, so perhaps you might considering clicking through to read it. You'll get a long-ish essay on specific aspects of evolution and pick-up lines before you get to the restaurant review itself, which turns out to be quite perfunctory. But a worthwhile if not outstanding read this week.

Every couple of months I call an old mate to see how he's travelling. He's had a rough-ish life in some ways but has fought through. His desires are modest and at last he'd achieving them. Anyway it turns out he's on blood pressure pills and some fairly intensive moderation of his diet.

Which gives me pause for thought, as I scoff the second coldie for the evening, snork up half a (200gm) packet of chips (Woolies home brand, my favourite, no fancy-pants kettle or exotic brands for me) preparatory to several glasses of cheap red with dinner.

In Mr Rudd's world I am a binge drinker except of course I'm not - except for last Friday but as I pointed out in a recent post, I also drank water throughout the evening.

The point is I'm not out every Friday and Saturday tying one on like there's no tomorrow. But I probably drink a little more than the contemporary best practice commentary says I should.

That's not a problem, but the chips may well be. I used to be able to hoover an entire 200gm packet, I now find that a bit...excessive.

This is progress.

Meanwhile, the implications and unintended (hmm...maybe) consequences of a surveillance society elicit comment and comment upon comment in the UK. I object to profit being made from taxpayer funded 'safety' video surveillance - particularly when the footage gets treated in such a rubbishy way as is the case - and the point about cameras being a poor substitute for cops on the beat is pretty spot on in my view.

The predilection of bureaucracy to abuse any data it gets its hands on is well established - it's systemic in my view, no individual employee would consider such a policy but 'the system' as a whole does it easily. Of course in our market economy the most common abuse is to sell off the data. What happens after that is entirely predictable and quie tasteless.

But I see a clear line emerging through Chateau VVB opinion, and that is that I'm getting older and more conservative.

As the theory says I should.

But it's still disturbing, yes?