Ben Aston | benaston.com

Unsurprisingly, this bit of the site is all about me, Ben Aston. And if you’re here by accident, now is probably a good time to leave. This is this Wild West of the interwebsuperhighway.

Benaston.com is a bit like a pretentious art exhibition; there’s lots of things to look at, but there seems to be no real value to any of it. And that’s exactly the point. I can only recommend donning your best ‘cultured’ hat and and inquisitively rummaging through the site, as if you were in a giant jumble sale. Imagine you are examining something that has some intrinsic merit. It does.

Additionally, this site performs an important role keeping hoi polloi updated with all the latest ‘Ben Aston’ developments. Informative and amusing it may be, thought provoking – not really; serious definitely not. Please peruse this site with chips and a large pinch of salt.

So if you have managed to make it down this far, you must be genuinely interested in the man behind the silly and pretentious signature at the top of the page. So here it is…

I’m 25, and live in the wild west of London, with my lovely wife Rebecca. After just a year of marriage we’ve become proud parents of Winston, who is a fish. I work for Dare Digital, an interactive marketing agency, as a Producer. Following a brief stint on the Woolworths account, keeping an eye on Wooly and Worth, I’m now working on the Sony account working on a few projects that made it past concepting, including Reader, Rolly and the Walkman Project.

Life for me began in the Shire. I’m a Gloucester lad, born and bred; from a 6-man family which once resided in Tuffley, suburbanshire. My younger brothers were lucky enough to have me develop various training schools for them, including sword fighting and weapons training (obviously with cap guns). I also taught them a wide variety of martial arts including Karate and Judo from an assortment of teach yourself martial art books. Steve-fun has spent far too much time travelling around, but is now in Nigeria, ostensibly test soil and banana combo’s but it would come as no great surprise to find he’s probably also involved in some enormous banana laundering scam. Joe, the youngest also known as ‘Fogal Genius’ spends a lot of time on mmmputers and has finally found a good excuse for this, as he’s working for Logica, being clever and also as a part time soldier, being the best.. My older sister Abi, (who you’ll probably know from The Times), is a community physiotherapist working in London town. Abi has always given the impression of being well behaved which unfortunately meant that conversely, I gave the impression of being naughty. I probably was.

My education began at the much lauded Treetops Nursery, where I was quickly identified as being particularly mal-coordinated. My primary career started at Harewood but I soon found myself in an exciting experiment in home schooling by my parents, Jonathan and Sarah who later went on to launch, School of the Lion.

A little later, I landed at St Peters R.C. High School where I had a lot of fun and somehow managed to get a few A Levels. After taking a gap year working for Dstl in Strategic Analysis as a web developer, I realised that computer science was probably too ambitious, as I couldn’t do the maths.

In the summer of 2002 I became an undergraduate of Politics and International Relations at Sussex University in Brighton. Three years later, after writing a few contentious essays, I discovered I had graduated. Along the way, I’d also spent a semester in Hong Kong where I unintentionally had picked up a Canadian girlfriend.

One thing led to another and a year or so after Rebecca moved to England, I’d been married not just once (in Canada) but also in England (for good measure). As it happens, it was even to the same wife. We began our married life honeymooning in Mexico but returned to Blighty to Londinium where, after a lengthy search, we found a place of our own.

I love Jesus.

Of late, I’ve been a bit distracted. I’m going to have to blame it on being ill. My illness might be something to do with looking for a house, I’m not too sure.

So imagine my suprise (actually, now that I’ve prewarned you, it won’t be so much of a suprise) when I got a phone call from my dear friends at egg telling me that I’d lost my wallet.

I assured him I hadn’t lost my wallet at all. I knew it was safely tucked away in my coat. Then I realised he was right, I had lost my wallet. Kerfuffle. He kindly told me that my wallet had been found and I could find it at Eastern station. But where is Eastern station I asked? Eggy had no idea, he just knew it was there.

Any learned Londoner will tell you there is no such thing as Eastern Station. So being the intelligent person that I am, I deduced that it must be at Euston station, a station sounding a bit like Eastern, but clearly being very different.

And there it was, my beloved was at the lost property counter, waiting for me patiently, like a well trained pup. However, just as I was about to be terribly thankful, I discovered that it was a big trick. They wouldn’t give me back my wallet until I’d paid three pounds. How rude I thought – surely this is blackmail – you can have your wallet back, the wallet that is yours and we know is yours, if you give us three pounds.

Apparently it was ok though, it was written on a sign on the wall – three pounds. So there it was, I paid three pounds for the return of my wallet and the person who returned it didn’t even get a penny.

Until they get to heaven.

To add to the list of lost and found. I lost my wedding ring. But now, it is found. Amazing Grace!

R&B- (525), originally uploaded by nipto.

Some people have suggested that this photo was set up.

It wasn’t at all.

If I was really genuinely homeless, that would be a very sad situation indeed. I’m just one step away though, really homeless, but without the genuine bit.

Today we made a ‘best and final sealed bid’ for a property in Paradise Road. Paradise isn’t the place where we’ll be spending eternity, or at least the next few years because we were outbid and pipped to the post by a small matter of 5k. I’m not sure it was really worth the extra 5k but in a few months time, when we’re still looking, it may well be.

Quandry indeed. At least we’ve still got somewhere to live, even if it isn’t so much of a home. The future is of course bright, and very orange as we’ve got a few viewings lined up for the weekend with one of our favourite estate agents – Sonia from Movingspace. She’s what you might call ‘edgy’, and is certainly a refreshing change from Foxtons shmooze with her raw analysis of the properties we were surveying. Sonia’s the person to know.

In my juvenile arrogance I thought that perhaps the cinemas had spelt happiness incorrectly. They hadn’t and it was entirely deliberate. Was it really necessary though? Maybe.

I think this is a question worth posing due to a recent clown encounter I had while watching Cirque de Soleil’s Allegria on Saturday. As you might imagine, whilst the rest of the show was truly brilliant, and culminated spectacularly with some insane trapezing. But the clowns – they verged on irritating.

If perhaps I’d bought the programme I might have discovered that Alegría is a mood, a state of mind. The themes of the show, whose name means “jubilation” in Spanish, are many. Power and the handing down of power over time, the evolution from ancient monarchies to modern democracies, old age, youth—it is against this backdrop that the characters of Alegría play out their lives. Kings’ fools, minstrels, beggars, old aristocrats and children make up its universe, along with the clowns, who alone are able to resist the passing of time and the social transformations that accompany it.

Jeepers. So that was it. The clowns are cleverly resisting the passing of time and the social transformations. How did I not get that? OK, I think I’ve got it – because the clowns are boring, time seems to pass really slowly while they’re playing Laurel and Hardy and thus they’re resisting the passing of time. Genius.

I don’t get it though. I didn’t realise it was about power. Power and jubilation. Right.

And in many ways I’m thankful that it’s not my own.

Now that I’m a married man I suppose it’s just the sort of extraneous object that one finds oneself inadvertently in posession of – after all, you can now put me in the box ‘recently married, reasonably settled and responsible’.

Even I would question the last assumption but nevertheless, it was made, and so I found myself in posession of a seven month old baby whose name I didn’t even know (it was Dutch and unpronouncable).

After the mother rather tentatively made her exit, Rebecca and I found ourselves standing in a stunned silence, not quite sure what we’d let ourselves into with our less than limited experience of dealing with babies.

The great thing about small children is that they find the most boring things the most entertaining. And so it was, that after a generous half hours wimpering and griping, the small child (let’s call her Beatrice) became fascinated by a box. This suited me perfectly as I soon discovered, as any babysitter worth their salt would, that I could watch TV whilst cleverly propping her up with a well positioned knee, safe in the knowledge that I wasn’t neglecting babysitting duties.

I wasn’t quite sure about feeding ettiquette so after a bit of a discussion, Beatrice and I came to some kind of an agreement that she could play with the box and enjoy her lukewarm milk simultaneously. This was obviously after she’d rejected my suggestion that she should sit down to eat/drink.

Rebecca took over soon after, nurturing those mothering instincts with great trepidation but somehow getting Beatrice to sleep – with no small thanks going to the assortment of plush pieces she’d brought back from Disneyville.

In conclusion, small children are great for a short time but I have found them to be all too limiting on getting on with things. That’s about it really.

Truffles and Nuggets are, without a doubt, what make life taste so good. You can’t beat a good forage for a truffle or a nugget. So contained herein are a few titbits to inform, persuade and be.

Good work is always an exciting thing to find because it makes so much easier to do when you can can kind of copy from someone else. Seeing as I’ve done the work, I see no point in keeping it to myself when no else can make use of it. This work, although my own, does not necessarily reflect my current views or opinions. That said, if I have made an exceedingly good point, it was probably because I meant to. This work made up my BA Politics and International Relations (joint hons.) at Sussex University between 2002 – 2005. A delightful resource, a friend and a truffle.

Politics

What is the Impact of Corruption on Economic Development in South East Asia?

Book Review: Larry J. Sabato & Glenn R. Simpson – Dirty Little Secrets

Is Deafness a Culture or a Disability?

How Can We Explain the Emergence of an EU Citizenship?

What is Structure and Agency? How Does This Framework Help Us In Political Analysis?

Policy Models: Rational Decision Making Model: Case Study ? Soccer Betting in Hong Kong

Can We Apply the Concept of Citizenship to the EU?

How Can We Explain the Emergence of an EU Citizenship?

How Does Community Law Affect National Sovereignty?

How Useful are Theories of Integration to Understanding the Development of the EU?

Account for the shift towards democratic forms of government in much of the third world.

Are the political systems of developing countries intrinsically clientelist?

In which respects are we equal and in which respects should we be?

Is the Individual the best judge of what they should be free to do?

In what ways does the present Electoral Law in Britain affect Voting Behaviour?

What are the key differences between ?Old? and ?New? Labour?

What is the role of the Monarchy in modern Britain?

International Relations

To What Extent Can the Genocide in Rwanda Be Understood Within the Context of Globalization?

Critically assess Kaldor’s assertion that new wars have to be understood in the context of the process known as globalization

To what extent are China and ASEAN States partners and to what extent are they rivals?

?The best hope for developing countries to attain economic growth is through integration into the world economy. And their tool, if only they are willing to use it is?the multinational company’. Discuss.

Explain the emergence of International Political Economy as a field, and why, if at all, it is relevant today?

Discuss the claim that international order among states can be maintained through international organisations.

What does a gendered division of labour within the state have to do with international politics?

To what extent was the Gulf War provoked by external forces?

How Fundamental Change is Globalisation?

Why is the French Revolution regarded as such as important event in modern international history?