The lost hope of romance.

Why is it that romantic tales are almost always set in a bygone age? Is it that we have lost hope for romance in our own age?

I believe that men are just as interested in romance as women- it is just that we express our self's in practical ways rather than symbolic ones. Women tend to prefer a flamboyant style or romance with champagne and twenty four red roses- even if she does not like champagne. With women it is always the thought that counts while with men it is the practical result.

Romance fiction relies upon a sense of mystery towards the opposite sex. The woman is generally a virgin and comes from a sheltered background. She knows little of men and the hero knows little of women. He is a little older and often has a dark history that makes him interesting. The hero generally comes from a all male world such as the navy or the world of business so that he can regard the heroine as a fragile and exotic flower. He becomes obsessed with her because he lacks the feminine in his life, does not understand it and yet craves it.

Where is this mystery now? How can a man and a woman see one another as mystery when we are told every day that men and women are essentially similar? Where is the mystery when we are told that a woman feels the same emotions and experiences the world as we do? What can possibly be discovered apart from sex?

This is the root cause of the over sexing of society- the idea that men and women have nothing to discover in one another but their bodies. Once we have accepted this simple lie then there is nothing else to the opposite sex that is remotely interesting.

Game or die.

My regular readers will know that I am currently unemployed but working hard to change it.

Today I visited a local shopping complex (the second largest in Europe in fact). I have become used to the seedy and the desperate of late and I suffered culture shock simply to find myself surrounded by beautiful things and people.

The entire mega complex is a actually a temple for the worship of female bodies. Wherever I looked there were shops devoted to making women feel desirable. Gigantic posters of girls in push up bras and silk nighties hung from every wall. Everywhere I looked women were being massaged, plucked groomed and soothed by other, even more beautiful women. There was even a woman getting her eyebrows massaged!

I was the only man I could see. Where were the men (and the ugly women)? Working, I expect.

Why is it that only women have money to spend on themselves? Why is it that men cannot take a Friday afternoon off and spend it shopping with friends? It is because men have to pay the bills.

As I walked through the mall I was approached by perfumed lovely after perfumed lovely. Each of them had a leaflet for me to take and I did so. Would I have taken the leaflet if had been a man? Possibly not.

Sex, proved more powerful than reason and loyalty to my own sex.

Then it hit me. These women with the platinum credit cards and the carrier bags were not simply indulging themselves- they were investing in their futures. In the modern economy sex is everything. It determines your income, your popularity and your social status. The reason men have lost all of these things is that we have not invested where it matters.

It does not matter how good you are at your job.

It does not matter how honest you are or how hard working.

It does not matter what your qualifications are.

What matters is game. Game is the skill that trumps all other skills. This is because women now hold power. Women have taken over personnel functions in most large companies and they make up the bulk of the customers. Women have the money and the time to spend it.

Quite simply.. if you cannot make these women wet, you are a dead man in this economy.

Mutualpoints.

Each of the schemes that I have mentioned so far have their own reason for being and their own client group.

Airmiles (in the UK) is an association of high cost 'old economy' travel companies that cannot compete with the newer Internet offerings. This gang is led by British Airways, which is a rapidly fading former flag carrier that is usually 40% more expensive than its rivals. Despite this fact it is also a big loss maker, largely due to union problems. Airmiles has also recruited a variety of brochure package tour operators that have found it impossible to compete with the likes of Expedia. These companies are drawn to Airmiles as a way to separate themselves from the competition but have discovered that Airmiles is itself a high cost and failing company.

Nectar is all about up selling and works in a much more sophisticated way. The company will offer bonus points whenever a customer chooses the more profitable option. Very often there is very little difference in manufacturing cost between a premium bolognase sauce and the economy version. Companies such as Sainsbury's use Nectar as a way to direct customers to the more expensive option.

Mutualpoints on the other hand caters for the 'something for nothing' crowd. The scheme even promises to reward you simply for joining and offers no less than eleven pages of get rich quick and free product offers the moment you do.

I had assumed that this scheme had died out with the end of the dot com boom but it is still here and still has the same advertisers.

The site itself looks awful but claims to have some very powerful capabilities such as the ability to take any of your bank cards and turn them into a Mutualpoints loyalty cards simply by registering them. You are also invited to receive vast quantities of spam in return for further points.

The company has already paid me 750 points simply for showing up. This appears to be worth more than £5 but I have no idea how to redeem them for cash.

As ever.. join if you can but do not get sucked into additional purchases or registering for loads of junk mail.

LATEST NEWS! In a bizarre twist I am now the administrator of the Mutualpoints blog! I sent a comment requesting information on how to redeem the points and was sent the site password instead.

I could delete the whole thing if I chose but have simply linked to this site instead.

Max your miles.

Airmiles and Nectar are two of the largest loyalty schemes in the world. You may earn points or miles in many different countries and in many different ways. They amount to international currencies that may be earned in one place and spent in another- just like 'real' money.

In order to come out with anything worthwhile (and most people do not) you will need to understand how both schemes work.

Airmiles has narrowed its focus in recent years and is now almost exclusively travel related while Nectar has largely withdrawn from travel.

The purpose of loyalty schemes is to boost the average spend per customer. Corporations do not care about 'loyalty'. This is a human emotion- they care about average spend.

Loyalty programmes can create a fuzzy sense of being appreciated and loved that is harmful to the wallet. Economists are wrong when they say the consumer is rational but we should try to be as rational as possible. I recognise that my attachment to loyalty schemes is out of all proportion to what they give me. I check my balance several times a month which is a fabulously unproductive use of my time. This does not worry me because I enjoy the illusion that I am getting something for nothing. My points balance always looks a great deal more impressive than my bank balance (at least you cannot go overdrawn in loyalty points) and I enjoy gaming the system.

It is interesting that the most successful of the two (Nectar) seems to target women more than men. I believe women are more susceptible to this sort of thing- at least the advertisers think so.

Both schemes have introduced programmes recently that seem genuinely to offer money for nothing. Nectar have a toolbar that gives points for searches while Airmiles have prepaid debit cards that may be used as travelers cheques. I cannot see why the Sterling version should not be used in the UK.

In short- take the money for nothing but do not be tempted to buy things you would not otherwise get.

Airmiles

Airmiles was the original UK multi retailer loyalty scheme. It is chiefly owned by British Airways but has a complicated structure and operates in many different countries often under different names. The US operation has failed but the Canadian one seems much better than the UK. Many Canadian products are sold in special Airmiles packs that in some way boost your balance. The idea seems to be to get you to buy your normal products in larger quantities because most offers only come on stream if you buy five packs at a time. Nevertheless some of them are very good value and you can be paid airmiles three times on the same transaction- once with your credit card, once with your supermarket card and once with the multi buy deal.

Many readers will recall that British Airways is the outfit that will not allow men to fly with children they are not related to and will hold this against the Airmiles scheme. This would be wrong- because a free flight is a free flight and does nothing to feed this particular PC monster.

The Airmiles scheme has suffered a great deal from the advent of cheap flight from Ryanair. Why should we save our airmiles for half a year simply to get a free flight that now costs only five pounds? One solution is to spend the airmiles on wine instead. A free airline ticket within Europe translates as a case of twelve very good wines. Everyone should try a case of fine wine once in their life. It is an education. Wonderful.

Airmiles has declined in popularity in the UK and has been replaced by the more nimble 'Nectar' programme. One reason is that there are fewer places to collect airmiles and fewer places to spend them.  Unlike Nectar it is impossible to enter a shop and spend your miles like cash. The scheme wants you to buy flights and holidays with them (they are run by an airline after all) but refuses to give an attractive exchange rate to encourage you to do so.

The economics of airmiles are extremely interesting. It costs an airline only a few pounds to sell you a seat in exchange for airmiles if this seat would otherwise fly empty. This means that airlines (and supermarkets, credit cards and so on) can offer something of value to the customer at almost no cost to itself. This is a sort of marketing alchemy by which value is created out of nothing. This should logically mean that airline flights should be far cheaper than wine if purchased with airmiles but the opposite is true.

Airmiles are also morally doubtful because some see them as a bribe to encourage executives to use the expensive BA in preference to cheaper carriers that do not issue miles.

Despite all this I would advise you to join if you can. One advantage of the recession is that there are more empty seats than there used to be and therefore you can actually spend your miles if you earn sufficient numbers. I would still go for the wine though.

Cautionary note- According to the normally reliable Martin Lewis of money saving expert, Airmiles expire if not used within two years. Furthermore there is a charge of £30 if you decide to use them when you have not added to your account in the last 12 months.

I cannot see this information on the Airmiles website but it may be hidden in the small print. Dam sneaky.

Sex, travel, and eternal life.

I have created a number of new sections on the website. The first of these is the Podcasts box. Each of these choices has proved hugely useful to me over a number of years although I suspect they will annoy some of my readers. First is the Indiy Travel Podcast put out by a wonderful couple of permanent travellers who really are living the dream. Each podcast is from a different country and there are well over a hundred of them so far. They started as English teachers and gradually built up an Internet income as well. I listen to their podcast to remind myself of what freedom really is.

Next comes the Pick-up Podcast. This is a free alternative to the David D 'dating guru' series and probably more useful overall. Each podcast has a dating guru explain the essence of his system. It is a very condensed form of learning. The same is true of Approach Anxiety. Approach Anxiety is about 90% of game and about 80% of life. If a man can talk to every person he comes across he will end up with a good girlfriend and a better job by default. This will happen even if he has no game.

Next we have two contrasting ideas of manhood, The Art of Manliness and the New Man Podcast. These describe the 'masculne' and 'feminine' aspects to being a man. The Art of Manliness is about mans search for his masculine essence and is about traditional gentlemanly behaviour. The New Man Podcast is more subjective and concerns itself with the world of emotions and the feminine. These are not in opposition to one another.

Political correctness seeks to fix a man to a single point on the masculine-feminine spectrum. Boys are prevented from developing their masculinity at school because the authorities fear it and associate it with violence. Political correctness also does the same thing for the feminine aspect to men. The authorities do not want to hear that men are in pain or that we are angry and humiliated. Emotion is reserved for the female and men must remain silent little soldiers ready to follow any order without complaint.

I see the healthy man not as a single point on the spectrum but a line. Men should develop both the masculine and feminine within themselves so that we have a choice of responses to every situation.

Please ignore the latest New Man episode which is a long winded, pointless and unfunny spoof.

Finally we have a science podcast, The Skeptics Guide to the Universe. This untangles real science from magical thinking, gobbledygook and conspiracy theory.

I have created new link sections for free money, free self development, and free green. This last section is interesting as it allows you to make charitable donations at zero cost to yourself.

Enjoy.

Immobilise (UK)

I have just joined immobilise.com. This is a free service to anyone in the UK and some other countries. It consists of a database upon which you may enter a record of your possessions, registration numbers and so on. If these are ever stolen you may then inform the second hand trade and the police of their loss with a single click of the mouse. You may also download certificates of ownership for insurance purposes.

First objection- privacy.

The list is as secure as any online data ever can be. I am also not particularly worried if some hypothetical criminal gang discover I have a five year old CD player. Will they make the journey to my home town simply to steal this? I doubt it, when their are richer pickings next door to them.

Second objection- this will do nothing to prevent your belongings being stolen.

This is entirely true. It will give you the satisfaction of making the goods harder to fence- and helping the police convict the guilty if they are caught.


The service is financed through the sale of optional home security kits. These generally consist of methods of marking your property visibly (through the use of stickers) and invisibly (through the use of ultra violet ink or electronic tagging). You will also be given window stickers that will hopefully prevent any their entering your home in the first place.

My own kit contains two key tags and a luggage tag. These are a useful way to get your keys returned to you without putting your address on them (a big security no, no). I felt that my own starting kit (costing £26) was rather understocked for the price but I have the satisfaction of funding a worthwhile service. This is acceptable for most single people but a family would probably require two kits.

Vote for policies. (UK)

I have discovered a great little site Vote for policies. Many people throw their votes away by voting for the image of the party leader rather than his policies. Politics becomes an empty shell where party leaders are swept to power on the strength of their smile and all meaningful talk is avoided because it may upset someone.

Vote for policies allows you to select favoured policies and then be informed of the party you should be voting for. It may surprise you.

Nectar revisited.

If you live in the UK and can join Nectar you should do so. It is free and fairly enjoyable even though it has the potential to waste a great deal of time- like Facebook I suppose. So what is it? In industry jargon it is a 'cross platform, multi retailer loyalty scheme'. In normal language this translates as a loyalty card that may be used in many different shops.

There are many such schemes in the UK but nectar grew to be by far the largest by inventing clever ways to sell more and more products to their existing client base. Once you have a card you will be bombarded with offers that seem tempting but are rarely the cheapest available. Like any incentive scheme it is possible to game the system provided one knows that it is a game.

I visited the site today and came away with £71 in points and cash- which is not bad for an hour of browsing.

I visited the site to find free ways to accumulate nectar points. These are unusually useful for loyalty points because it is actually possible to spend them. There are some retailers who will simply accept your loyalty card as if it were a credit card and give you the value of your points right then.

I found to my surprise that points were being offered simply for downloading a version of the yahoo toolbar. This flags up companies that offered nectar points but does not distort the results. You must use yahoo search but this is a pretty decent search engine.

Thompson local is offering nectar members 150 points simply for phoning certain merchants. I am sure their is a catch but this amounts to 75p a call.

I have also changed my electricity supplier- very easy to do- and this accounts for the £71.

I have also been given 100 points for joining 'team green Britain' which is a sort of corporate green crusade cum publicity campaign. This cannot do any harm and may even do some good. It is free and is an interesting alternative to the official green movement that favours greater regulation of private life and amounts to a kind of socialism.

I feel pretty pleased with myself.

NB. I never received the promised Nectar points for switching suppliers. This is because it is not possible to receive the £50 welcome credit to my bill as well as the points. Never mind. Cash is better.

Is Facebook running your life?

1. Remove the majority of your applications. Most of them are time wasters and some of them are security risks. They also use up bandwidth.

2. Never broadcast your true location. If you tell the world you are on holiday you are also telling them your home is available for burglary.

3. Realise that your employer may read your Facebook profile.

Fading from view.

There is a site you may use to find out information about almost anyone in the UK. You may like to do a search upon yourself. 192. com. All you need is two bits of information- the name and the town where they live. 192.com will do the rest.

I have already removed my land line and will shortly remove myself from the public version of the electoral roll (I can still vote). I will then be as near to invisible as I can be right now.

To make up for this I have joined skype (richard.ford88) and placed my Facebook box on this blog as well. This will make it easier for the people I want to contact me and harder for those I do not. NB, do not put your birthday on your Stalkerbook page. This gives access to your entire life.

Popcorn and Austrian Economics

Austrian Economists believe the recession will only end when consumers and governments have paid their debt. Only then will it be possible to begin spending again.

If this is the case (and it makes sense to me) we are looking toward a Japanese type recession which may continue for twenty years. We entered this recession in a much worse state than Japan because both governments and households were in debt while the Japanese are great savers. Japan also entered its own recession at a more favorable time- when much of the rest of the world was doing well and thus able to buy Japanese goods.

 In order to survive a long recession it is necessary to have a stock of very cheap treats. Not even survivalists can live without things to look forward to.

One solution is popping corn. This is cheap (65p per 500g) but makes a very large volume of popcorn. Simply lubricate the bottom of a saucepan with some oil to stop them sticking- but not too much or the corn will fry and not pop. Heat the corn under a moderate flame until you hear it pop. Do not take the lid off!!

You will end up with a saucepan of popcorn for about 5p. This is great fun for kids as well.

Popping corn stored in jars also give the kitchen a farmhouse feel.

Amazon arrives!

There is nothing like an amazon delivery to brighten the day.

The first one speaks for itself. It is a sort of pocket encyclopedia of edible plants with photographs and full colour illustrations to help you identify them. I realised that I have been walking past free salad most of my life. There is a section on mushrooms that I would be wary of but I intend to start eating for free immediately. The only way that I would improve the book would be to have the plants organized by season and not alphabetically. Best of all it only costs £2.49- the price of two bagged salads in a supermarket.





Ah, knots. Boy scouts are obsessed with them but why should the rest of us care? We must remember that Baden Powell (the founder of the Scouts) was originally a soldier and realised that you cannot build a shelter or control a horse without knowing them. I suspect the main use of this book may be amusing children but the book is going in my survival box anyway.

Beware Zimbra (maybe)

I downloaded Zimbra (an open source alternative to Outlook) and was quite happy with it despite not really understanding the point of this entire class of software. This was until I did a scan with AVG anti virus and was told that Zinbra contained malware. I deleted it immediately.

A moment of blinding clarity

I was sitting crossed legged on my bed and getting stressed with my new mobile phone. This was supposed to send and receive email- but did not. It was (according to the excellent customer support at 3) something to do with pop3, or phantom accounts, or unrecognized email accounts or... something. All morning this went on.

Then it hit me. This technology is supposed to make my life easier.


I called up and cancelled my contract immediately. It is the PAYG life for me from now on.

It will save me £13 a month too.