The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘consumerism’ Category

The National Health Ser­vice (NHS) here in the UK has been in the fir­ing line this week as Amer­i­cans “debate” over­haul­ing their health­care sys­tem in an attempt to extend access to their 50 mil­lion res­i­dents who have absolutely no cover or access to care.

Amer­i­cans are being led to believe that the free health­care avail­able to all of us in the UK is no good. This is so far from the truth that it would be funny, except for the fact that people’s lives hang in the balance.

The UK has a much higher life expectancy than the USA. Check your sta­tis­tics and see that I’m not lying. The UK also spends less on health­care per per­son than they do in the states, yet they yield bet­ter results.

Go fig­ure!

The Amer­i­can health­care sys­tem is run like a for-profit busi­ness. Think about that, some­one prof­its from your ill­ness and the per­cent­ages of profit are obscenely high.

Insur­ance com­pa­nies, drug com­pa­nies pri­vate hos­pi­tals, pri­vate doc­tors are all in the game to make money from your mis­ery. That can’t be right, can it? Every test ordered that you don’t really need, every over-prescription is money in the bank for someone.

Just ask Michael Jack­son if pri­vate health­care on demand is a good thing. Oh wait, you can’t because it killed him.

In Amer­ica, health­care is seen as a priv­i­lege, not a basic human right. Should one only be enti­tled to health­care on the basis of qual­i­fy­ing for insur­ance, rather than qual­i­fy­ing for need? Shouldn’t every­one have access to healthcare?

Of course they should!

Some of the scenes I’ve caught on tele­vi­sion, of the so-called town-hall meet­ings have been very amus­ing, well amus­ing in as much as the igno­rance fuelled anger is sim­ply surreal.

It seems to me, that the loud­est voices at these town-hall meet­ings are com­ing out of the mouths of peo­ple with the least infor­ma­tion on the sub­ject. These sad, twisted, igno­rant peo­ple have an unjus­ti­fi­able hatred of Pres­i­dent Obama that is prob­a­bly rooted in their inher­ent racism rather than any actual dis­like of a new health­care system.

All you need to do is lis­ten to what they say, their buzz words, like “social­ism” and “this isn’t the Amer­ica I know” to under­stand just how mis­guided and ill-informed these folks are on the subject.

Ok, any subject.

At the heart of all of this is FOX News, the biased and unfair pseudo news net­work owned by Rupert Mur­doch. FOX News pro­vide the stilted talk­ing points and their legions of view­ers turn up at town-hall meet­ings, par­rot­ing the same lame shit.

I can’t say I’ve looked into it, but I am guess­ing a wealthy guy like Mur­doch must have busi­ness inter­ests out­side the media world, say per­haps insur­ance or drug com­pa­nies. In other words, he may have a vested finan­cial inter­est in how this debate plays out. And if not him, then some of his rich robber-baron mates have got invest­ments in the med­ical field. There’s a lot of profit to be protected.

Its funny how SKY News, the sis­ter sta­tion of FOX News, under the News­Corp cor­po­rate umbrella is tak­ing a dif­fer­ent tack here, right­eously defend­ing the NHS against the FOX News inspired attacks. Does one hand not know what the other is doing? Or is SKY sim­ply pan­der­ing to their UK-based subscribers?

I think we both know the answer to that one.

I’m in a fairly unique posi­tion, hav­ing lived con­sid­er­able lengths of time under both health­care sys­tems. Nei­ther the US or UK sys­tems are per­fect, both excel at some things and lack in oth­ers, but over­all, I know which sys­tem I would choose, if I had to…

The NHS all the way!

In the UK, I’ve never had any con­cerns about insur­ance, access to the med­ical sys­tem or being able to afford the costs. I’ve for the most part, had excel­lent care of a world class stan­dard cour­tesy of the NHS.

In Amer­ica I’ve been charged one hun­dred bucks for a wooden tongue depresser — you know what I’m talk­ing about, a wide wooden pop­si­cle stick.

Open your mouth and say “ahhh fuck, you just charged me a Ben­jamin to do that!”

In my world, life is usu­ally quite sim­ple and this unhealthy debate is no dif­fer­ent. What it boils down to is this: “I’ve already got mine, so screw you if you don’t have yours!” It all comes down to com­pas­sion and America’s appar­ent lack of it.

The Chris­t­ian right in Amer­ica preach some­thing known as “com­pas­sion­ate con­ser­vatism”, but sadly they don’t prac­tise it in any mean­ing­ful or tan­gi­ble way. Where’s the com­pas­sion? What would that guy Jesus do?

Jesus would move to the UK, sign on to the dole and get those holes in his hands and feet looked at for free, same for that nasty stab wound in his side.

Uni­ver­sal health­care is an unde­ni­able right, yet 50 mil­lion Amer­i­cans are being denied it. Any com­pas­sion­ate per­son would recog­nise the inequal­ity in the cur­rent sys­tem and want to do all they could to change it.

Where are all the com­pas­sion­ate folks in Amer­ica? Don’t they care about their fel­low man? Maybe if there are any, they could go to those silly town-hall meet­ings and shout down all the igno­rant idiots that are mak­ing Amer­ica look so stupid.

Oh and while I’m at it, lay off the NHS. Ill-informed opin­ion does not make a debate, it just makes you look even more like morons to the rest of the (bet­ter informed) world.

I’m angry.

I’m pissed off.

I’m hop­ping, fuck­ing mad.

Apple showed off the new iPhone 3GS a cou­ple of days ago and it is a desir­able piece of kit. While not a huge leap in tech­nol­ogy, the new hardware-based fea­tures of this new model make me want one.

You’d think, in the mid­dle of a deep reces­sion, that spend­ing my hard earned cash would be easy.

Think again.

O2, the mobile net­work here in the UK that has exclu­sive rights to sell iPhones are being quite fool­ish about upgrades to exist­ing cus­tomers like me. They seem to think its sen­si­ble for me to take out a 2nd mort­gage to upgrade to the new model.

Exist­ing sub­scribers are gold dust to com­pa­nies like O2 or at least they should be, but it seems this time that is not the case.

In the cell phone indus­try, net­works refer to it as “churn”, or the loss of cus­tomer to other networks.

There was a lot of “churn” here in the UK last sum­mer, when loads of peo­ple dumped their exist­ing net­works to move to O2, so they could have an iPhone 3G. I was amongst that large group of switch­ers myself.

I love my iPhone, its eas­ily the coolest device I’ve ever owned. I have no regrets about chang­ing net­works to get one.

Early adopters, like myself and many of my friends and work col­leagues, drive tech­nol­ogy sales in that we buy first, pay full whack, then show it off to our mates who end up buy­ing them too.

I can think of half a dozen peo­ple right off the top of my head, who bought an iPhone because I per­son­ally intro­duced them to mine. I’m sure the same is true for many other early adopters; we should all be on com­mis­sion really.

Instead, O2 don’t respect us and are actu­ally going out of their way to penalise peo­ple who bought their iPhone 3G’s last July. Do you think that makes me keen to per­suade oth­ers to get an iPhone from O2 now?

O2 want to sell me a 32gb iPhone for the same cost they’re sell­ing them to new sub­scribers, £269 I believe. I could just about wear that, if I had to, but they also want me to pay the remain­der of my con­tract as a penalty.

A penalty?

I want the lat­est hand­set from my cur­rent net­work provider and they want to charge me a penalty? Why not just smack me in the face and get it over with?

I have 6 months left on my cur­rent con­tract and I am on the £45 a month tariff.

£45 x 6 = £270 (it dou­bles the cost of the phone).

Its stu­pid beyond belief.

They want me to pay £539.00 to upgrade my hand­set, when some­one off the street just sign­ing up to O2 would get it for half that.

Its mad­ness!

I’m an exist­ing cus­tomer, I should be treated bet­ter than a new cus­tomer. Show me a lit­tle love and I’ll show you some back, but try to screw me over and I’ll cost you money.

How?

I’m still work­ing on that, but I have a cou­ple ideas.

Every­one who wants to upgrade their iPhone should each spend at least one hour on the tele­phone with O2 cus­tomer services.

You’re not going to get any joy, but you are going to waste their time and in busi­ness, time is money.

For every minute you keep one of their sales reps occu­pied, that’s another minute they are not sell­ing a brand new phone.

Be polite and just keep repeat­ing your­self, its what the O2 rep is going to do, so you might as well do the same.

Esca­late too, they hate that. Ask to speak to a super­vi­sor, then the supervisor’s super­vi­sor, then the depart­ment man­ager. The key is to keep them on the phone as long as you can. And call them from your iPhone, because the call is free to you, but it does cost O2 in net­work bandwidth.

Say any­thing, use some of my argu­ments, sing them a song, tell bad jokes, what­ever will keep them talking.

Then use the word “churn”, that will scare them.

Keep telling them exist­ing cus­tomers are get­ting a raw deal.

O2’s line is that the iPhone 3G was sub­sidised, which is why they want to force peo­ple to see out their con­tracts before get­ting a new hand­set. Its bull­shit, but that’s the tack their taking.

Like I give a shit about their profit!

If they did a bad deal with us last year, tough. Don’t try to fix it by screw­ing us over a year later. That’s not smart.

I don’t want the new iPhone in 6 months, because it will be a six month old phone then.

And I know 6 months after that, a bet­ter iPhone will be released. And here’s the thing, the dif­fer­ences between the iPhone 3G and the 3GS aren’t that huge, but that might not be true with next year’s model. Who knows? And who wants to gam­ble on it?

The really smart thing to do is buy the new iPhone 3GS pri­vately once an unlock is avail­able, then switch net­works. O2 are being so myopic about this, I am very tempted to fol­low this path and show oth­ers how to do it too!

O2 are going for short term profit, when suc­cess in cus­tomer rela­tions only comes by play­ing a long game.

Peo­ple are seething over this, check out mobile phone forums or Twit­ter. Every news­pa­per has had a story on this mas­sive O2 cock-up too.

I’m def­i­nitely not the only one who wants to push back hard at O2.

I can’t do this alone, we need every other iPhone owner look­ing to upgrade to take action.

“Brand man­age­ment” is a mar­ket­ing buzz­word these days and O2 have done some real dam­age to them­selves. They might be able to put a ridicu­lously high price on upgrad­ing, but hav­ing a well-respected brand is priceless.

Can you hear that, O2? Its the sound of your stock price drop­ping fast. I don’t see a net to catch it, do you?

O2 can either work out a bet­ter plan for us to upgrade, or they will start to haem­or­rhage sub­scribers. If O2 don’t make us all happy and soon, its going to cost them plenty.

( #O2fail — search for it on Twitter! )

Happy 420 everyone!

If you’re not famil­iar with 420 (four-twenty), click the above link. Its prac­ti­cally a national hol­i­day in Amer­ica and if we’re lucky, it could very well catch on here in the UK.

Amer­ica is usu­ally sev­eral steps ahead of the UK and the US’s atti­tude to cannabis is a great exam­ple of this fact. Its where the point­less “war on drugs” began and it just might be where it ends too.

Since Obama got hit with a “legalise cannabis ques­tion” from an over­whelm­ing num­ber of peo­ple online, all of Amer­ica is rolling with fren­zied momen­tum towards legal­is­ing this hippy’s favourite plant.

The O-man shouldn’t have been so dis­mis­sive of such a seri­ous and rel­e­vant ques­tion, but he’s a pop­u­lar politi­cian so he can’t be seen to be soft on drugs.

That hasn’t pre­vented Sen­a­tor Ron Paul, who is also a pop­u­lar politi­cian, from call­ing for an end to the war on drugs, but he is a hero and lib­er­tar­ian and not afraid to express an opinion.

Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive mag­a­zine can see the pace of change regard­ing cannabis laws in Amer­ica. And the con­ser­v­a­tive right seem down with it too.

Even the main­stream press is get­ting in on the act, with Time Mag­a­zine ask­ing and answer­ing, “Why Legal­is­ing Mar­i­juana Makes Sense”.

Not only that, Time Mag­a­zine also asks and answers, “Is Pot Good For You?” Of course it is!

Why the sud­den shift in America?

Two things right now are forc­ing peo­ple to rethink their stance on cannabis in the states, one of which already applies here in the UK.

Its the econ­omy, stupid.

With this whole recession/depression non­sense, can any­one dis­re­gard the effect a legalised cannabis mar­ket would have on a nation’s GDP?

Legal­is­ing weed, in an instant, would cre­ate legit­i­mate jobs that would be taxed, not to men­tion a tax on the actual prod­uct itself. It would raise a lot of money and fast.

Wait, let me revise that. It would bring an already estab­lished and thriv­ing black mar­ket econ­omy into the main­stream. Ka-ching!

Its been said that if weed were legal and 420 were a proper hol­i­day, it would have the same sort of effect on the econ­omy as xmas. Ka-double-ching.

Weed smok­ers would will­ingly be taxed in return for not being crim­i­nalised, so says Salon Mag­a­zine. I sure as hell would be ready to pay tax on my dope, if I didn’t have to worry about being arrested for toking!

The other prob­lem in Amer­ica is one that hasn’t reached Europe yet, but it could in the future and that is gang related violence.

The south­ern bor­der of Amer­ica is where the real drug war is tak­ing place, but not between law enforce­ment and crim­i­nals, but between rival drug gangs. Police on both sides of the bor­der have been inef­fec­tual and pos­si­bly cor­rupt, when they’re not get­ting caught in the cross­fire. The death toll is sadly, quite high and its bad for busi­ness on both sides of the border.

The trou­ble on America’s bor­der is forc­ing peo­ple to realise that the drug mar­ket should be under some sort of gov­ern­ment con­trol and reg­u­la­tion, for with­out that, it leaves crim­i­nal gangs run­ning the show.

Just as the pro­hi­bi­tion of alco­hol in the states in the early part of the last cen­tury cre­ated gang­sters like Al Capone, the pro­hi­bi­tion of drugs cre­ated Pablo Esco­bar and those like him who con­trol the indus­try today.

America’s finally grasp­ing that legal­is­ing cannabis would solve more prob­lems than it could ever cre­ate. By legit­imis­ing an exist­ing indus­try, Amer­ica will reap the rewards finan­cially and it would help cre­ate a new sta­bil­ity along the Rio Grande.

Check out this report from the very respected Cato Insti­tute, which looks at the pos­i­tive effects of the decrim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of all drugs in Por­tu­gal. Its very enlight­en­ing and worth a quick read.

You’ll notice in all of debate and dis­cus­sion in Amer­ica, there hasn’t been any talk of cannabis-induced psy­chosis or schiz­o­phre­nia, nor the demon­i­sa­tion of the stronger strains of cannabis known as “skunk”. That’s because its all spin and bull­shit cre­ated here in the UK to allow our politi­cians to use weed as a polit­i­cal foot­ball that scores easy own-goals with the ill-informed electorate.

In the states, stronger weed is prized and cel­e­brated for being par­tic­u­larly “med­i­c­i­nal” and is seen to be more ben­e­fi­cial, not less. There are no “cannabis hys­te­ria mums” and no men­tion of unproven links to men­tal ill­ness. Remem­ber, a for­mer Sur­geon Gen­eral in Amer­ica (C. Everett Coop if mem­ory serves), called mar­i­juana “the most ther­a­peu­ti­cally ben­e­fi­cial sub­stance known to man”.

Con­fu­sion con­tin­ues to reign where cannabis pol­icy is con­cerned here in the UK, with ran­dom, point­less changes in clas­si­fi­ca­tion and penal­ties every cou­ple of years whether we need them or not.

Even the government’s own drug coun­selling ser­vice, Ask Frank, is telling younger callers that “cannabis is safer than alco­hol.” Its com­pletely true and in line with what the experts say, but its incon­sis­tent with the government’s own stated pol­icy, which of course, ignores the advice of the afore­men­tioned experts they employ.

There are already whis­pers in White­hall, many politi­cians here can see the scrawl on the wall, but are won­der­ing how to right all of the wrongs of the last few years. The gov­ern­ment has used the media to paint a totally false pic­ture of the dan­gers of cannabis, so how do they turn it back around?

Sim­ple, just let the lies qui­etly fade away and replace them with the promise of cold hard cash.

Is it going to take open gang war­fare on the streets of Britain for our lead­ers to deal with cannabis respon­si­bly? I hope to god it doesn’t come to that, but I don’t see any other way for them wake up and start deal­ing with reality.

The Guardian pub­lished a great report last week, which states that end­ing the pro­hi­bi­tion on drugs would save the UK around £14 bil­lion pounds. That’s an amount that can’t be ignored, espe­cially in these dif­fi­cult eco­nomic times. Law enforce­ment, the penal sys­tem could all be over­hauled and the resources could be redi­rected to actual crimes with vic­tims and everything…!

They’re search­ing for the green shoots of recov­ery, per­haps cannabis is lit­er­ally the cash crop green­ery we’ve all been seeking.

And maybe one day, we’ll all be able to openly com­mem­o­rate 420 in the man­ner appro­pri­ate to the event. And that’s exactly what this hippy is going to do right now, as I spark up a juicy, skunky spliff.

Finally, a gov­ern­ment drug pol­icy I agree with completely…

Ille­gal factory-style cannabis farms should be closed down.

Check out THIS REPORT from the BBC.

Fac­tory cannabis-farms are often set-up in rented accom­mo­da­tion, with the land­lords none the wiser until they receive a phone call from the police telling them their income prop­erty has been trashed.

Ille­gal cannabis farm­ers steal elec­tric­ity from neigh­bours or from the an energy sup­plier; either way its theft and its wrong. Safety is ignored and fires are not uncom­mon. And sad­dest of all, they are fre­quently staffed by ille­gal aliens trapped in a type of hell­ish inden­tured servitude.

Where I split from the gov­ern­ment is their choice of solu­tion; police raids won’t make the prob­lem go away, it will only make it relo­cate to yet another unsus­pect­ing venue. The trade is far too lucra­tive for those involved to give it up. Raids are sim­ply a cal­cu­lated risk bal­anced against a very reward­ing return.

Its sup­ply and demand, the very cor­ner­stone of our cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem. To ignore or deny this very sim­ple truth, is to be blink­ered and ostrich like.

There’s a bet­ter way.

There’s always a bet­ter way, but it would involve our lead­ers shift­ing their cur­rent posi­tion, which is one of dis­in­for­ma­tion and lies, towards a more open and hon­est approach.

Its time to legalise the indus­try and take it out of the hands of crim­i­nals. Its time to reg­u­late and tax cannabis, bring the mar­ket under some sort of control.

To be against a legal cannabis indus­try is to be against the very heart and soul of capitalism.

Don’t let the con­di­tion­ing the media has been force-feeding you colour your view on this. They’ve been sys­tem­at­i­cally try­ing to dis­credit cannabis and per­vert your per­cep­tion of it for quite some time now.

Why?

Its easy to score points with the pub­lic by appear­ing tough on drugs. Also, it diverts your atten­tion from more impor­tant issues, like Iraq, cli­mate change or the economy.

The time is now for this unadul­ter­ated bull­shit to end.

Back when Blair and Blun­kett were in charge, cannabis was down­graded and they even toyed with a police pol­icy of mak­ing arrests for pos­ses­sion of cannabis the low­est pos­si­ble pri­or­ity. Things were finally mov­ing in the right direc­tion, the gov­ern­ment was lis­ten­ing to advi­sors and sci­en­tis­tis and using a bit of com­mon sense.

Mean­while in Amer­ica, the “war on drugs” was still going strong, along with fed­eral raids on med­ical mar­i­juana clubs and impris­on­ment for pos­ses­sion. This wasn’t that long ago.

Under Obama, things have already changed with an end to fed­eral raids and an offi­cial pol­icy that secedes power to indi­vid­ual states with regards to cannabis.

Cal­i­for­nia is now con­sid­er­ing legal­i­sa­tion and tax­a­tion, because the state is nearly bank­rupt. Des­per­ate times clearly call for cre­ative mea­sures, this one will bring Cali an esti­mated annual tidy sum of $1.3 bil­lion (with a B) dollars.

Many other states have decrim­i­nalised pos­ses­sion and have made it the low­est pos­si­ble polic­ing priority.

Our out-of-touch, out-of-step gov­ern­ment is about as un-Obama as possible.

If peo­ple won­der why Obama didn’t make more time for Gor­don Brown, they’re not really look­ing closely enough. They couldn’t be more polar oppo­sites when it comes to gen­uine lib­eral thought and policy.

Legal­is­ing weed would cre­ate legit­i­mate jobs, for legit­i­mate farm­ers and dis­trib­u­tors; jobs that already exist in the black econ­omy, fuelling a rather size­able black mar­ket that exists out­side the tax and social secu­rity system.

A legal and con­trolled indus­try would insure that safety stan­dards were met at the point of pro­duc­tion, for the facil­i­ties, the staff and the prod­uct. You would know the weed you were get­ting was pure and unadul­ter­ated. You would know the per­son who grew it was paid a rea­son­able, tax­able wage.

As much as I wish to see these dan­ger­ous and ille­gal cannabis farms closed down, I’m smart enough to realise that police raids alone are not the answer. If you really want to end the ille­gal cannabis trade, there is only one prac­ti­cal, work­able solu­tion: Legalise!

Even the UN may come to this con­clu­sion as they pre­pare to finalise an agree­ment this week in Vienna, but as this report in today’s Guardian sug­gests, there are still deep divi­sions with some EU and Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries favour­ing a more ratio­nal approach, with the US pre­fer­ring to con­tinue the point­less “war on drugs”.

Oh Pres­i­dent Sav­iour Obama, are you lis­ten­ing? The “war on drugs” has been an abysmal fail­ure and many knowl­edge­able and respectable peo­ple believe its been worse than the actual harm caused by the drugs them­selves. Could you please call your min­ions in Vienna and sort this sorry mess out?

If you want to know more, please check out my Cannabis Truth Series

Promises, promises. Politi­cians make them all the time when they are cam­paign­ing, only to con­ve­niently for­get about them once in office, but not Pres­i­dent Sav­iour Obama.

This week, US Attor­ney Gen­eral, Eric Holder con­firmed that fed­eral raids on Med­ical Mar­i­juana facil­i­ties would end and indi­vid­ual states could deter­mine their own poli­cies regard­ing my favourite plant. He said this is “now Amer­i­can policy”.

How cool is that?

This is a huge shift in the way the law deals with weed in Amer­ica. I wish the UK could be equally enlight­ened, but the gov­ern­ment here works very hard to be as un-Obama-like as possible.

And they don’t want to stop there either. Leg­is­la­tors in Cal­i­for­nia are now con­sid­er­ing tak­ing it one step fur­ther, with a pos­si­ble plan to fully legalise and tax cannabis to help bale out the finan­cially des­ti­tute state. They say it could bring in $1.3 bil­lion (with a B) in tax rev­enue to the state annually.

That’s a lot of green­backs for a lot of green­ery! Its com­mon fuck­ing sense! Pro­hi­bi­tion doesn’t work, never has, never will. If you can’t beat ‘em, tax ‘em.

Obama’s motto through­out his cam­paign was “Yes, we can.” Now that he’s in office, the new motto is: “Yes, we cannabis!”

Roseanne Barr, domes­tic god­dess, come­dian and now radio talk­show host is sell­ing some very cool tee-shirts in Amer­ica with that very slo­gan on them, Yes, we CANnabis.

We should all order our­selves one to show our sup­port for this long over­due change in pol­icy. Let’s hope that it spreads out from Amer­ica to the rest of the world.

I took deliv­ery today of my brand new Robo-Toaster — the Toaster of the Future!

Not only did I receive it today, I made this rockin’ video:

I shot it using my Kodak Zi6 HD Pocket Cam­corder in about 10 min­utes and edited it in a cou­ple of hours using iMovie ’09. I’m not expe­ri­enced at all with that ver­sion of iMovie, so it took a bit longer than it should have done. Plus I found it eas­ier to ren­der it out in Quick­time, rather than play­ing it back in the appli­ca­tion, which stut­tered and stalled a bit on my 2.8mhz dual core iMac as I added lay­ers of effects and titles.

Clearly I have too much free time on my hands. And if you just spent 2 min­utes watch­ing my video, clearly you do too.

A year ago, I spent far too much money on my cof­fee mak­ing set-up. I say that, sit­ting here a year later, sip­ping the finest cap­puc­cino I’ve ever had.

Since yes­ter­day.

Every day I drink the best cof­fee I’ve ever tasted and I have absolutely no regrets on how much money I spent.

I have an Izzo Vivi espresso maker and a Macap M4D grinder as well as var­i­ous acces­sories that help me pur­sue the per­fect coffee.

The Izzo Vivi is on the low-end of the pro-sumer cof­fee maker scale, but is an excel­lent piece of kit. Its been reli­able, depend­able and rel­a­tively easy to use and main­tain. Most impor­tantly, it cranks out shot after shot of deli­cious espresso and has plenty of steam power to turn your milk into light and pour-able mirco-foam.

The espresso maker, as I quickly learned, is not the most impor­tant machine com­po­nent in cof­fee mak­ing, its the grinder. To really make good espresso, you need a grinder that is up to the task and what­ever you think you should spend on one, its prob­a­bly not enough. Any cof­fee web­site or forum will tell you exactly the same thing.

My espresso maker has no real con­trols on it, except for the lever that oper­ates the pump. You fill the portafil­ter with freshly ground cof­fee, lock it into place and then lift the lever to the pump. When you’re done, flip the lever down and the pump stops. That’s really it.

All of your con­trol comes from adjust­ing the fine­ness of the grind and once you find your espresso range, requires min­i­mal tweak­ing depend­ing on the type and fresh­ness of your cof­fee beans.

Which leads me to what I think is the sin­gle most impor­tant com­po­nent in cof­fee mak­ing: freshly roasted beans.

I’ve read of some­thing called the “rule of twelve’s” when it comes to cof­fee which goes like this:

unroasted, green cof­fee beans stay fresh for 12 months
roasted cof­fee beans stay fresh for around 12 days
ground cof­fee stays fresh for 12 minutes

I buy my cof­fee online, about every fort­night, to insure I have the fresh­est, tasti­est beans pos­si­ble. I grind my beans directly in the portafil­ter, only sec­onds before I brew my espresso. You can’t get any fresher than that.

Cof­fee oxi­dises quickly and releases gasses which break it down and the flavour suf­fers for this. If you’re buy­ing your cof­fee pre-ground, or you are buy­ing roasted beans with­out know­ing the roast­ing date, you are cheat­ing your­self out of the best cof­fee you can drink.

And if you are using those pre-filled cof­fee pods, you are trad­ing con­ve­nience for taste.

You don’t have to spend as much as I have, but you really owe it to your­self to grind your own cof­fee and there are plenty of more afford­able options for grinders than mine.

And freshly roasted beans aren’t that expen­sive, a quar­ter kilo of a decent sin­gle estate or blend costs about the same as a tall cap­puc­cino from one of the high street chains and you’ll get at least 8 dou­ble espres­sos from it.

And it doesn’t have to be espresso, a decent Bodum press-pot with freshly ground cof­fee will make an out­stand­ing cup and if you are only grind­ing for fil­ter cof­fee, you can find some real bar­gains on grinders. I promise you, you will taste the difference.

My grinder is used every day, but the same can’t be said for the espresso maker. When I don’t have the time to heat it up, or clean it down after use, instead I use an Aeropress.

The main fea­ture of the Aero­press is that it will work with the same fine­ness of grind as the espresso maker, so no need to read­just the grinder. The Aero­press is made of plas­tic, very sim­ple to use and clean and pro­duces a very con­vinc­ing espresso-like cof­fee. I heat up some milk in the microwave and use one of those battery-operated hand whisks to froth it and in less than 5 min­utes, have some­thing which approx­i­mates a cappuccino.

But when I have the time, I always make the extra effort to use the Vivi. It takes longer and requires more clean-up, but its worth it.

My daily cof­fee rou­tine is some­thing like this:

Switch on the Vivi
Wait 30–45 min­utes for it to warm up
When ready, brew a dou­ble espresso
do a 2 sec­ond flush to clear loose grounds from the shower screen
back­flush for 10–15 sec­onds to clear oils from the brew path
froth my milk
flush the steam wand to get any milk residue out
build my drink
enjoy

Most days, I have a sec­ond cup as well, after that, I switch the machine off to let it cool. Then I clean out the drip tray, wipe it down and every other day, I refill the water reservoir.

I also back­flush with deter­gent occa­sion­ally, I soak the bas­kets and portafil­ters in the same deter­gent, I soak the tip of the steam wand in milk deposit remover and every few months I descale the boiler. None of this is dif­fi­cult or time consuming.

My acces­sory col­lec­tion includes 2x lined shot glasses to check I am get­ting the cor­rect vol­ume of espresso in the cor­rect amount of time (2 ounces in around 30 sec­onds), a cou­ple of shot pots, a stain­less steam jug for milk froth­ing, a 58mm Reg Bar­ber tam­per, a portafil­ter holder for tamp­ing, and a shot timer. The tamp­ing stand and the shot timer are use­ful, but not essen­tial, every­thing else I couldn’t do without.

I also have 4 portafil­ters; one with 2 spouts and a dou­ble bas­ket, another with one spout and a dou­ble bas­ket, a third with a blank­ing disk for back­flush­ing and a fourth that’s bot­tom­less with a triple bas­ket. The bot­tom­less portafil­ter was use­ful when I was learn­ing how to pack a portafil­ter prop­erly, as it showed me where to look for my mistakes.

I spent a good part of the year sam­pling dif­fer­ent beans and blends, but for many months now, I’ve been stick­ing one par­tic­u­lar bean, called Yemen Mokha Matrar which is the rich­est, tasti­est of all I tried. It works par­tic­u­larly well in milk-based drinks, like my amaz­ing cappuccinos.

You can get Yemen Mokha Matrar from a vari­ety of sup­pli­ers, though the roaster I use, roasts to order. I place an order on his web­site and he roasts the beans for me and ships them out the same day. Its a great ser­vice and they arrive the fol­low­ing day.

If any­one wants the name of the roaster I use, please feel free to email me. I’d like to include a link to his site, but would you want to be known as my offi­cial cof­fee roaster? I’m not cer­tain he would either.

Since I started mak­ing my own proper cof­fee at home, I haven’t had a cof­fee any place else that even comes close, not from the high street chains, not from the cof­fee ven­dor in my office, nowhere!

Life is far too short to be drink­ing sludge and you owe it to your­self to pro­vide your­self with the finest cof­fee pos­si­ble. Put it this way, if I had to pay high street prices for every cap­puc­cino I’ve had at home in the last year, I could have bought three sets of cof­fee mak­ing gear.

And if you are won­der­ing why an old trippy hippy like me digs cof­fee so much, its sim­ple. Cof­fee is a drug, like any­thing else that has an effect on your mood and per­cep­tion. Don’t believe me, read this and learn if you drink too much, you can have proper hallucinations.

Seven days into the brand spankin’ new year and I am already filled with opti­mism and hope. And by opti­mism and hope, I really mean depres­sion and despair.

All my tv wants to show me is that nasty shit going on in the mideast. Why do they keep mak­ing sequels to that movie? I’ve seen it all before. That said, there’s some­thing more upset­ting about it this time. Its whole­sale slaugh­ter at an indus­trial scale and it sick­ens me.

I just wish I could change the chan­nel but I really wanna see how it all turns out. Maybe some­one could tip me off just before Rambo arrives and illus­trates the point­less­ness rather than glory of war­fare. And by Rambo, of course I mean Gandhi.

I’m bored to the point of dis­gust at see­ing chil­dren mur­dered and maimed. I can’t be the only one who has seen more than enough of this shit. Why don’t they all just stop?

Closer to home, or rather right here at home, north Lon­don has been sub­merged in sub-zero tem­per­a­tures for what seems like a few weeks now, with each suc­ces­sive night pro­vid­ing another record-breaking low. Brrrrrrrrrrrr!

The ther­mome­ter in my car hit a rather chilly –2 yes­ter­day, which was an all time record low for me and it hasn’t gone above +1 in over a week.

We’re not used to this sort of cold here in Lon­don and its bring­ing every­one down, espe­cially with no respite in sight. All we need is some snow to com­plete this win­tery hell and trust me, I’m not wish­ing for it.

And the econ­omy is so far into the toi­let it can taste the salt in the ocean.

Weed is going be returned to Class B from its present posi­tion in the more appro­pri­ate and rec­om­mended by gov’t advi­sors, Class C. That really sucks.

Things are indeed look­ing dis­tinctly bleak as 2009 begins.

Even Apple let me down yes­ter­day, with a Mac­World keynote devoid of any new toys for me to pur­chase. My credit card was revved up and ready, but it had nowhere to go.

Remem­ber, if it weren’t for cool con­sumer elec­tron­ics and soft drugs, I would have no joy in my life.

And its my birth­day in a cou­ple weeks, I could really do with­out that.

Oh moan, moan, moan, moan, moan!

Hey fuck­ers!

Dig this shit! I now have the abil­ity to post to my blog directly from my iPhone.

At least I think I do. We will find out for sure when I attempt to post this bad boy on my site.

If you’re read­ing this shit, then it worked. And you can maybe expect more mobile blog­ging on the future.

Its only a few more days till xmas and you can feel things grad­u­ally wind­ing down. The schools are clos­ing, mil­lions of peo­ple are trav­el­ling and the shops are try­ing to shift their last bits of tat.

I’m wind­ing down too, though not quite in the same way. I’m work­ing all week, straight through until Box­ing Day morn­ing. Somebody’s got to!

There are loads of peo­ple who have to work over xmas, even in the west­ern, Chris­t­ian world. Spare a thought for us when your tuck­ing into your turkey and curs­ing your relatives.

No nos­tal­gic trips down mem­ory lane for me this year, I’m just going to grit my teeth and get through it as quickly and unevent­fully as pos­si­ble. I’m off for the New Year though, which is a good thing because I do like to party more than I like to eat turkey.

To say my hol­i­day will be low-key would be an under­state­ment. Aside from work­ing, I’m ready to hun­ker down. I’ve got all my sup­plies in or com­ing, thanks to an Ocado deliv­ery on Mon­day, my lim­ited amount of xmas shop­ping is com­plete and I am ready to draw the cur­tains, lock the door and not do any­thing for around a week.

I’m mak­ing it sound a lot bleaker than it really is. I chose to spend my hol­i­days this way.

I hope you’ve had the good for­tune to choose how you’re spend­ing your hol­i­days too. If you’re lucky, you will be sur­rounded by fam­ily that you don’t hate or maybe even like just a lit­tle bit.

Just because I’m not cel­e­brat­ing xmas, doesn’t mean I don’t remem­ber what they’re like!

Wher­ever you are and what­ever you find your­self doing, I want to bid you all the hap­pi­est of hol­i­days. I hope all your wishes and dreams come true!