Artist, author
I was there a few years ago just around Christmas.
Oddly enough, some huge financial crim offered me a job there as my mother was dying. Exceptionally odd.
Thankfully, I realised what the job was and in any case was not going anywhere at that time.
Anyway, yeah I will prob return there at some point.
Ina
So it may or may not be Rishi.
Rishi does not read the blog, unfortunately, so I won’t bother too much talking about tories for the forseeable future.
Boris was a frequent visitor from 2016 to about 2020, then the visits tailed off a bit. I had never previously heard of Cliveden and was unaware of government dens of iniquity having their own servers.
I doubt they will select Rishi, but whatever.
Anyway, the aim was, as I said, lifetime access to Chequers, an extra 115k a year of taxpayers money and free security, so he doesn’t actually need to run again. I was surprised he even bothered cutting the holiday short.
Very bored at the moment, but making a millinery inspired coat.
Bawbag’s shop has been done out by the new tenant, they threw what was left of the oil can out this weekend, which was rather sad. Expensive tiles sitting out awaiting the bins.
Another sad end to a sad story. Poor Bawbag.
Ina
OK so I havent bothered writing the BJ story as it isn’t finished yet and I have been rather busy recovering from long term grief issues.
Plus, I did, behind the scenes, give him an opportunity to help himself and me and he failed to take it. This was via Dominic Cummings, and since he was rather a frenemy as it turned out, the message probably did not get through.
Anyway this post is about the current issues with the financial individuals and members of the Conservative Party currently trying valiantly to ruin your life.
In the course of my current employment, I am fortunate enough to get to talk to the brighter section of the population that actually understand what I’m saying, as opposed to people like my sisters who actively block whatever anyone more intelligent than them have to say. I cannot tell you how many of these people exist, and how much pleasure they seem to take in actually causing the death of other people. No idea why that would make you feel good, but hey ho. Disordered and generally stupid people are everywhere. It is a source of deep shame that I would be related to some of them.
Anyway, let us start with the crashing of the economy and flooring of the pound. This is something that the UK does periodically and in and of itself, is nothing to fear. It will delay your plans for retirement for a year or two if you are wise, but recovery is inevitable due to the prediliction of the very same individuals who caused it wanting to make even more money at your expense and sell various businesses to Americans, who are also benefitting from the low pound. Foresighted American companies such as not for profit hospitals have been building in England for quite a while now, so you can imagine what a low pound means.
Those who have been reading the blog since 2016 or so will know I was very keen to see the pound lowered in value. This is very simple economics, although economists who specialise in the brakes, headlights or exhaust of the car, so to speak, may not see it. The much neglected ‘cannon fodder’ proportion of the population that tories traditionally ignore will benefit from it in terms of increased work opportunities, now also available remotely as well as in manufacturing. It was high time for a fertilisation of the roots of the British economy, and it will be good to see some results when the neglected underclass finally secure an income as a result of an improvement in exports.
The problem is that there are no real thinkers in the Conservative party at the moment, so they are very bad at either reacting to or explaining what they are doing. Jeremy Hunt as chancellor is a slightly better option than a guy that would sit and laugh during the Queen’s funeral whilst shafting you between snorts, however this is not good news for the English NHS.
From the perspective of the history of Scottish Conservatism, my own grandmother was an ardent devotee of Conservatism, my previous warnings to Boris of being a bit of a Churchill fanboi still hold true. Scottish Conservatism historically differs from English Conservatism, whilst they cling to the union as if it is good for them, their current ideas seem to be as long as they cling to it, they are in the ‘might is right’ sector of society and they will hang on to the benefits they got whilst biting and scratching their way over everyone else to pay their boring mortgages. The sooner we see the death of the Conservative Protestant white golfers of society, the sooner we will see some actual equality and diversity. Not sure anyone is genuinely interested in actually doing that however, as probably over a hundred of the many companies I have scrutinised still favour the useless male over the committed but diverse worker.
So for the benefit of Boris, whom I must send a smooch for the ‘taking the oil from under drink sodden Scottish noses’ speech, here are the aspects of the history of Scottish Conservatism that you would benefit from, and here are the elements of this you can use to stick an ice pick into your poitical decline. You remain God’s Gift to the independence movement, although Truss is also proving to be extremely helpful via lack of intellectual rigour and sheer incompetence.
I realise, of course, that lifetime access to Chequers and a permanent income/security detail has now been secured, so Boris is effectively in retirement. That is what this was really all about in terms of personal benefit.
OK so to translate for the rest of my readers, the British economic machine is cyclical, every so often we floor it to encourage the roots and make the country more competitive. This is led by a few individuals with a great deal of money who secure vast fortunes by doing it. I used to joke that the entire unemployed population exist to benefit five hedge fund managers in London, and this is not at all far off the mark. Every few decades we floor it and restart the engine, a bit like rebooting a computer. This makes us highly desirable in terms of investment, and keeps a very small country very rich when the reboot is complete.
Do not panic about things like pension values, this is reflective of low unit prices in managed funds and just means you should use any available funds to snap up some more units and keep working if you can for the next couple of years. I laughed when I was told the Bank of England was buying up gilts to protect pension values, that is not the idea, they are buying up gilts because, if you track the historical performance of gilts, this will make them very very wealthy at a later date.
Bottom line – here is what your current thinking and potential barnstorming speech should contain:
In the meantime, we in Scotland would like to govern ourselves, and it is not the place of England to be milking the last country stupid enough to be paying to be in the union whilst insulting us.
And that is the end of my ‘How to be a better Tory, by a thinker that isn’t’ rant. Good luck, and stop listening to stupid people. They delight in causing suffering.
OK?
Much affection,
Thanks,
Ina
The first one was for another fake hedge fund research company. These seem to be springing up at quite a rate of knots at the moment.
I had previously obtained a position with a company who gave me a lovely looking contract, only for the one for signing to be entirely different.
5k a month sounds good doesn’t it? 3k basic plus bonus?
The reality was a hard head hunting job finding experts willing to talk for what to them would be the miniscule fee of 2k for an hour for the princely sum of commission for me of only £80. This would require two a day to be obtained to be a worthwhile endeavour, and since I have done a similar job, globally for 13 an hour in the past and know how difficult it was, I can tell you you would not get your 2 a day very often, so I declined. Let the poor/rich graduates of London put this on their CV. I cannot afford it. I get 30 an hour for research work, for good reason. I do four times the work for three and a half times the pay, which is at last somewhat reasonable. I am not, unfortunately full time doing this, open to offers if anyone needs someone with a spectacular success rate of engaging people on the phone.
Anyway, this one was offering about 30-50k, sounded promising, the interview went unusually well, although the company is new and wanted me to take it on part time. As I am currently full time and unusually happy I was wary unless this offered hours in the USA which I could do alongside it. In this line of work, this is perfectly reasonable but the dude would not commit. As I am well used to the fake interview process now, I was not inclined to rush into it.
Next thing I know, I am getting requests for me to review his company. So this is why the interview went well. He isn’t offering a job at all. He is getting reviews for his new equity research company. I have not reviewed it, instead I sent him an email requesting his proposed part time hours. He did not reply, and I got a reminder to review his company this morning
The next one was a company who sell drama based courses on the topic of diversity. Two gay men interviewed me for this one. I wrote an 8 minute speech for a ten minute presentation, unfortunately, and they were not the most flexible of people. They announced that they would be timing me before I delivered. As sales is not really my thing, I did not expect to get this interview in the first place, so I was not harbouring high hopes.
When the managerial one asked me about my experience of diversity his face formed this disapproving insincere mask. I explained that one major bank, whose exams i have been acing for several decades, had cocked up three interviews with me on different grounds each time, to the point that I eventually told them to ‘fuck off.’
“We’re all mothers here.” was the most insulting one, after asking me extensive questions about my writing and art.
I get this a lot from fintech companies, they are astonished that anyone has a life outside their dry, dry job. It makes you clam up, essentially, because you are regarded as too colourful.
Anyway, having explained this and the experience of walking in and seeing the people these companies hire instead – often spotty 15 year old golfers who resemble my dishonest, corrupt and lazy brother, I established that yes, I do have quite a bit experience of being discriminated against.
What I should probably have said was “well, at one point my ex was a Nazi Ukrainian, my best friend was a male, fascist criminal North African Muslim with ASPD and I was in love with a Hindu that hates me and cost me my job for sport, is that diverse enough?”
Which is perfectly true, but I imagine their little heads would pop off.
Now I have good reason to detest ‘woke’ people as much as I detest people who refer to them as ‘snowflakes.’ There is as much latent and overt racism on both sides, but do I particularly want to spend my time selling to them? Probably not.
He offered me some feedback after the interview. I declined.
Apart from that, nearly bought a dog this week, on the grounds that men are pointless and I would like to go out without worrying now and again, but the house and cats come first, so not quite at the peak of achievement that would be spending two hours a day walking yet. Not feeling very motivated generally as a result of timewasting pish like this.
That’s how things are going.
Ina
Hello to my apparent new fan in London.
Spent the last 24 hours moving Little Shiva to the next stage in preparation for the next few layers of the shell.
The big sticking point has been caused by the problem of turning the egg inside out, but I think I have managed to solve it, another few layers should indicate whether this has been a success. I suspect the planned window panes would actually make Little Shiva less comfortable so I am rethinking those.
It is amazing how often large scale structural issues can be solved by indcreasing the horizontal tension on the sewing. Sometimes your knowledge of stitch engineering can be as strong as adding inert weight.
Haven’t been doing much other than stitching and sculpting, hoping to see some real results soon. I am digging my heels in a bit about winding this up as a project. I don’t think trauma is particularly good for achievement as you spend a lot of time cringing and second guessing yourself.
Working on some new clothing ideas, Ina is getting a revamp as an avatar. I think it is now safe for me to be a bit more feminine than it used to be, so I am looking forward to messing around with my image a bit now there is nobody around to shame me out of it. It is most unfortunate that my ghastly family, Little Shiva and Bawbag chose shame as a weapon as it means I have to put some distance in.
It has been nearly five years since my mother died. I don’t need to listen to quite as much intense music now and value silence a bit more. It was not an easy thing to have happen to you and so many unforgiveable things were done that I was intensely upset for a very long time. Not good for your health.
Chewing over the film project that will follow this collection. I don’t particularly want to create a course or do ‘how to’ type videos, so I have spent a lot of time listening to youtubers whilst working to evaluate what will work for Ina.
I have a number of non art related ideas and some entertainment planned.
Still a ton of work to do. Little Shiva is very much key to this collection, so it has to be right.
Ina
Nice to hear from you, glad you’re OK.
Ina
So last night I was listening to someone very serious about combatting the menace of Andrew Tate.
I have seen thousands of Andrew Tates over the years, inevitably they eventually meet some woman that overpowers them, whether that is intellectually, physically or some other way and they STFU.
Misogynists are pretty easy to dominate. I know because it was so easy to get to the top of a career path that was full of them.
In the course of listening to her I found a lot of presumably not very serious Muslims who are actually taking him seriously.
Why they would take Andrew Tate seriously and not Roosh V, who is a watered down version of him, presumably relates to money, however as someone with a lot of male Muslim acquaintances I am forced to point out that this is illustrates a major issue with standards within Islam generally.
If the followers of Mohammed are so easily distracted that they choose to follow a man who openly admits to violence against women and human trafficking, they aren’t very good representatives of Islam.
This is down to Imams at local level. If theological education were improved, they would not find anything to resonate with with Andrew Tate. There is absolutely no excuse for this.
Any serious Muslim would tell you that Andrew Tate is an infidel of the worst kind, out to exploit and distract true believers. Any Muslim following Andrew Tate and listening to what he says, is therefore, not to be taken at all seriously. Clearly the subjugation of women and acquisition of money is more important to them than faith.
Why this is not being addressed within the faith or noticed by those choosing to discuss him I do not know. You would have to ask them.
It certainly makes an outsider think that the position of Islam against women is no longer ambiguous, for a start.
I don’t see the appeal, to be honest, in listening to an immature man rant about his limited knowledge of the world, but I am not an immature male so I am not in the market for his work. He is making a few million per month out of these guys, which makes his bragging more of a self fulfilling prophecy. Nice work for an aging kickboxer.
Anyway, if you are one of the people that are daft enough to get involved with or even feel the need to discuss Andrew Tate as anything other than a dilettante fleecing young men for money, think about what you are saying about your faith. I found numerous articles linking Andrew Tate to Islam last night, and it ain’t pretty. It certainly won’t encourage any women to revert.
So, I have encountered a lot of assumptions in the last decade or so, usually by people who would not be buying expensive carpets anyway, so I don’t pay too much attention.
The number one assumption is that in order to be an artist, you cannot also be anything else.
This is rubbish, for a variety of reasons. For one thing, my father was also an artist, and although he did it for a living, warned me off ever doing it for a living.
This was because he wasn’t actually all that happy working commercially, and felt that doing quite as much work for other people compromised his time to do anything self motivated. Hence he said to do anything but art, and let the compulsion dictate how much I did.
In my case the compulsion was largely repression led, hence the number of male peers and large scale themes. I don’t find your everyday codependence very interesting, so nobody that I have actually had a relationship with has ever featured heavily in my work. It is always a superficial flirtation, often with someone I don’t even feel a relationship would ever work out with.
In any case, I think he was right. I would be heavily diluted if I actually had to do it for money, so it is worth it to me to be free to say whatever I want.
The number two assumption is that you are a parasite and funded by some mysterious art god.
This is entirely untrue. I have always been self funded, and the reason I can afford to be self funded is because art is the only thing that actually matters. I work in order to pay to do more work, essentially. It devours any sense of style, love of entertainment or whatever because it is not only the thing, it is the only thing.
The number three assumption is that you are known therefore you are wealthy.
This one is quite funny. For one thing it takes staggering effort to be known, and staggering self belief, which if we want to be any good, we don’t actually have.
I have two friends on Facebook, Philmy Reyes and Sandeep Sinde. Both of them make more money than I do.
Philmy does rapid crude drawings of personal photographs and makes at least four thousand a week, and Sandeep makes philosophical statements in the form of drawing around his hand and turning it into a chicken.
They are also both far more well known than I am. I am more in the exclusive quirky market, and promotion consists of the free books. I don’t take the writing terribly seriously, it is mainly to get more pics of artwork out and balance the brain, however it is interesting sometimes.
The fourth assumption is that you are elitist
Whilst being elitist is a good idea from the perspective of price and claiming to do something unique and special, it is not at all necessary. The people most interested in my work are not the buyers, but people that pass me in the street. My perspective is that art is life itself, and because I put no pressure on myself to earn, this is more of a process of self development than assumption that I do something nobody else can do.
On the contrary, whilst my perspective turns out to be rather singular, my work is very childlike and simple, and there is no reason why people could not do it themselves.
The original purpose was to engage an entire village to up the volume at some point, and whilst life has not gone in that direction so far, the work is still possible without electricity. This is less relevant than it was when I started, hence the investment in automation.
I find artists who believe in finicky technicalities and exclusivity in terms of skill are often the most insecure, which isn’t great for their wallet.
Having said that, I have been perfecting what to some is a basic craft form for three decades, so I am sort of guilty of this too. Far better to put out work you aren’t in love with and make a living, I guess.
The fifth assumption is that art has to elevate your perception.
This is a dangerous one because it stops you working. Art is a visual representation of the intangible idea. That idea can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be.
The sixth assumption is you have to talk bullshit.
No you do not have to waffle in a pretentious and complex way to describe what you do. That is also up to you. You may sell more if people feel they are struggling to understand, I have no idea, but I really doubt it.
As Twisty used to say – art is untold misery and extreme emotion that happens to look nice in someone’s dining room.
Not necessarily, sometimes it just describes a feeling, but he wasn’t wrong.
The seventh assumption is that it has to be original.
I found an American artist who had completely ripped off this teapot, made it in cotton fabric and changed the name very slightly in an art magazine this week. I was very pissed off, but there is very little you can do.
Anyway, that is enough for today.
Ina
When i say nearing completion, it may be halfway by Christmas as I have added a rather time consuming addition to the project.
So the collection will either be
Joy is Power, United Colours of Finnieston
or
Joy is Power, Disunited Colours of Finnieston
I haven’t decided yet which is funnier, but there is a lot of new work which will be released and I will be redoing the car.
The car was only done because Bawbag would not stop pestering me and I wanted to make sure that his malicious gossip didn’t affect my work there, but of course it did, since the film was not possible.
At least he saved me 30k, I suppose. Not one person stepped forward to offer anything in the way of support, despite me working it as hard as was possible at the time. One store, the clothing shop at the top of the street (can’t remember the name) were very quick to naysay it before even thinking about it, so no plans to show any support for them ever again.
I have said it before, but out of all the people I have met since my mother and Twisty died there are only two that I still talk to, and that is in the very brief moment that I am passing through. I think it is difficult to make any kind of connection with people when they are so negative.
I have thought of a number of potential ways of reviving the project, not feeling very committed to any of them because there is no way of talking about it.
Bit fed up all things considered. Some of my best creative work is done when I am fed up, however.
Happy birthday to my beloved Wolfe, who is 52 today!
So, I am wondering where Bawbag is, as he has made himself scarce of late.
His shop is now let, which makes me wonder if he has in fact just negotiated himself right back in and is taking a privileged holiday in Libya prior to returning. I did notice his own crew whitewashing the windows a month or so back.
I actually quite miss him, which is strange. He didn’t make himself much of a source of happiness all things considered.
Little Shiva has been on this website more often than I have recently. Do not worry, Little, I am working on the rest of the collection. The chair is a big problem, but only because I was concerned about other things.
Went down the rabbit hole of Hedge Fund Research last week, and discovered a dying art. The business is being disrupted by web based offerings and is not a good career move, as it turns out, although had they been paying an even slightly realistic rate I would have given it a shot.
I am now investigating the world of freelance business consultancy. Were I to go into this, I could be clearing a couple of thousand a week, however I am wary. I was under the impression from the material on offer that English teaching, which I also do from time to time was a growth business, and as it turns out it is the most ageist field you could possibly pick. The Chinese like very young thin blonde, preferably American teachers according to many schools, so although I loved it, because Chinese children are incredibly good fun and wonderful characters, I was not going to make a full time income from it easily. I am considering an evening gig, but I may be considering it for longer than it takes to set up a dropshipping website.
The collection, which has now been underway for three years, is still an epic task and I am hoping to build up a decent budget for filming by the time it is complete. I am very disciplined now about how I work it, so that I do not experience illness or burnout, so by the time it is finished it will have been entirely funded by my day jobs. Thereafter I will be moving further into media, as this is a worthy cause for time investment.
Anyway, still on the hunt for an income that exceeds the time put into it by a more impressive degree, and am considering dabbling some more in the property world. This is because last week was my highest earning week ever, so I am feeling unusually positive.
But where is Bawbag?
Toodle pip,
Ina
