Things don't get much sicker than this. I thought that, since it's the year 2009, and we're all civilised human beings and that, that the modern countries didn't do this sort of thing. I'm naive and I was wrong. Now, Britain is a sort of economic ally with China because they have money and we don't, and they put on a nice Olympic light show for us all. For these reasons - I can't see many others - we/our government puts up a blind eye to all the human rights abuses that go on there; ever heard of the Tiananmen Square masssacre? Oh, wait - we forgot about that, didn't we? Well, here's a quick recap. Peaceful protesters staged a massive demonstration in Bejing's famous plaza. After days of calling for freedom, accountability, democracy, the Chinese government brought in troops to the city. About 20,000 people were killed that day - shot, bayonetted or crushed by tanks. In China, the event officially never happened. This is also the same nation that maintains the annexation of Tibet, restricts internet access, birth, and religion. Basically, all the stuff Iran gets up to but, somehow it's okay because they trade with us, and they're not in the "axis of evil". Since they were the prime antogonists behind Copenhagen's failure, therefore condemning hundreds of thousands to death through the effects of climate change, there's no reason why the Chinese government should not be labelled war criminals.
Not much news gets out of the communist state, but I did a little bit of research. I say a little bit, because I only have my computer and the internet - a combination that usually would allow me to see anything in Britain (thankyou, Labour, for the Freedom of Information Act). However, WikiLeaks is overloaded and nearly all figures about capital punishment in China are state secrets. According to Amnesty International, China executed 6,000 people in 2006; estimates say upwards of 8,000. They also found out that at least 1,718 executions took place in 2008, though the figure is again thought to be much higher. To put this into perspective - since 1976, the US has executed 1,188 criminals, with 3,302 prisoners currently on "death row".
And Gordon Brown's response to this terrible crime against one of our own citizens - a mentally disabled man, opposed by a flawed case? "I condemn the execution of Akmal Shaikh in the strongest terms, and am appalled and disappointed that our persistent requests for clemency have not been granted. I am particularly concerned that no mental health assessment was undertaken." Then this, from Dave Milliband: "The UK is completely opposed to the use of the death penalty in all circumstances. However I also deeply regret the fact that our specific concerns about the individual in this case were not taken into consideration despite repeated calls by the Prime Minister, ministerial colleagues and me. These included mental health issues, and inadequate professional interpretation during the trial." Not a wink from anyone else, no comment from either of the opposition parties, except the EU (who ever listens to them?) and an ambiguously concerned message from the UN Human Rights Council. Oh, and let's not forget the BNP, whose dickhead Legal Director Lee Barnes displayed the darker side of his personality.
And China's response? "Nobody has the right to speak ill of China's judicial sovereignty" - in political terms, "fuck off". So this is what we boil down to? Britain, once the greatest empire the world has ever seen - reduced to issuing impotent, worried missives to superpowers who shoot our citizens at will. The worst of it is that nobody seems to give a damn.
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Sunday, 20 December 2009
Rage Against Simon Cowell's Machine
I'm listening to the Chart Show on Radio 1 - it's not something I usually do on a sunday afternoon but this time I have a vested interest. Hopefully - hopefully, Rage Against The Machine's Killing In The Name Of will come out as Christmas No.1, over the X Factor's winning track The Climb, a cover of a Miley Cyrus (the real version of Hannah Montana. I think they're both androids but it doesen't matter anymore) song that's actually still in the charts.
Firstly, for you idiots who haven't heard of Rage - there are no words to decribe how deep your ignorance runs. Joe McElderry, the X Factor winner who's so bland and uninteresting he was probably made from vanilla extract, admitted he hadn't heard of them anymore; but I really didn't expect him to - this is the guy who danced with his mother at one of the most exclusive London nightclubs on the night of his *cough* fixed *cough* victory. Anyway, the song is taken from RATM's debut, eponymous album from 1992. It is one of the best, and most influential albums of the last twenty years and it is just awesome. Seething with anger, hatred, and injustice, alongside spiralling, searing guitar, each of the ten tracks is a damning antitribute to the American Dream. Killing In The Name Of, as the premier single from that album, is one of the most powerful political rock songs ever penned; primarily about the Los Angeles riots of that year, but by itself, it's a damning, flaming, swear-fuelled octane tirade railing against any and every establishment that ever existed. Therefore, as the ultimate revolutionary's anthem, it is the perfect opponent to Simon Cowell and his popstar cloning factory.
The Climb is a different matter. In the beginning, it started out as a Miley Cyrus song. When you're covering tracks written by Disney, you need to start thinking about throwing in the towel. And the horrid reality of it all is that the original, country-western version is better. Sure, it's got mildly uplifting lyrics and builds up to a predictable crescdendo-finale - in a way it's reflective of the X Factor itself. But compared to the supercharged battlecry of Killing In The Name Of, it's a whimpering mouse. It's heart is in the right place - but then again, the same can be said of George W Bush. That's the most I can say about it, because it's boring, and medicated and... well, crap. The X Factor in general is fairly pants; it's like Cowell looked at all the cliches of modern television, multiplied by 100 and mixed them altogether. Seriously, it's ridiculous and logically it should not be popular. Overdressed morons with preselected opinions walk down the stage, to a desk (what do they need that for?! It's not like Cheryl Cole is literate, even if she wanted to take notes) - to the soundtrack of The Omen. Then that announcer from E4 - originally a ripoff of Tom Baker's narration on Little Britain - tells us their names, because we're not smart enough to remember them week-to-week, whilst sounding like your estranged horny uncle. Then Dermot O'Leary stands up in the same suit every week - the fashion rule that forces poor Cole and Minogue to fit into more spectacular dresses each episode apparently doesen't apply to men - he never takes that suit off. And then, for the rest of the programme, there's just this cheap kareoke thing , and each new bland individual is introduced with unflattering closeups in front of an industrial fan.
We actually pay Simon Cowell our own money (through the telephone voting) for him to spoonfeed us terrible music. He says that he started X Factor because the British music industry was in a bad shape; 2005 was a pretty good year in music. We had Franz Ferdinand's second album, Bloc Party's debut, Jack Johnson reached the mainstream and the first album from Editors. Is this what we've been reduced to? Is this our collective musical identity - Cheryl Cole wailing on about how she's going to fight for this love? It genuinely scares the core of my being to think that 18 million people have zero music taste.
I was reading a Mailonline (I was linked, I wouldn't willingly stray into that Tory/Celeb news warzone) article about the singles' battle reaching its climax tonight, and the comments below were just poor. The best was the claim that "we watch the X Factor and vote because we're genuinely interested in furthering the lives of some talented young people" - I'm very bemused that someone thinks ITV's premier cashcow is one huge educational excercise for just those 12 kids. If they really want to help out young people then give that £1.50 that went to the vote, to a charity like Frank or Shelter. Ultimately, the X Factor is democracy - the shit, mobocratic side of democracy. Democracy barely works as it is (Churchill said that "democracy is the worst form of government except when compared to all the other forms of government") - and stuff like I'm A Celebrity Get Me Outta Here might end up damaging real-life politics if people think that the point in casting their vote is to decide who's the best looking MP.
Music should never be a democracy. It is the only place, in our society, where true anarchy reigns. It is the ultimate meritocracy - creativity amplified. Don't like the Top 40? Make your own music. Put it on MySpace, busk in the streets. Go to the club nights at the Manchester Academy, trawl the record shops in the Northern Quarter and find a hidden gem, a rough diamond. Don't buy Susan Boyle's album (which was just announced to be Christmas No 1) because she's ugly and you feel sorry for her, buy it for her music. Music is individual, private - every song has a different meaning and a different sound for everyone. It can't work as a democracy. Therefore, we need a revolution. And Tom Morello and Zac de la Rocha are going to lead it.
Firstly, for you idiots who haven't heard of Rage - there are no words to decribe how deep your ignorance runs. Joe McElderry, the X Factor winner who's so bland and uninteresting he was probably made from vanilla extract, admitted he hadn't heard of them anymore; but I really didn't expect him to - this is the guy who danced with his mother at one of the most exclusive London nightclubs on the night of his *cough* fixed *cough* victory. Anyway, the song is taken from RATM's debut, eponymous album from 1992. It is one of the best, and most influential albums of the last twenty years and it is just awesome. Seething with anger, hatred, and injustice, alongside spiralling, searing guitar, each of the ten tracks is a damning antitribute to the American Dream. Killing In The Name Of, as the premier single from that album, is one of the most powerful political rock songs ever penned; primarily about the Los Angeles riots of that year, but by itself, it's a damning, flaming, swear-fuelled octane tirade railing against any and every establishment that ever existed. Therefore, as the ultimate revolutionary's anthem, it is the perfect opponent to Simon Cowell and his popstar cloning factory.
The Climb is a different matter. In the beginning, it started out as a Miley Cyrus song. When you're covering tracks written by Disney, you need to start thinking about throwing in the towel. And the horrid reality of it all is that the original, country-western version is better. Sure, it's got mildly uplifting lyrics and builds up to a predictable crescdendo-finale - in a way it's reflective of the X Factor itself. But compared to the supercharged battlecry of Killing In The Name Of, it's a whimpering mouse. It's heart is in the right place - but then again, the same can be said of George W Bush. That's the most I can say about it, because it's boring, and medicated and... well, crap. The X Factor in general is fairly pants; it's like Cowell looked at all the cliches of modern television, multiplied by 100 and mixed them altogether. Seriously, it's ridiculous and logically it should not be popular. Overdressed morons with preselected opinions walk down the stage, to a desk (what do they need that for?! It's not like Cheryl Cole is literate, even if she wanted to take notes) - to the soundtrack of The Omen. Then that announcer from E4 - originally a ripoff of Tom Baker's narration on Little Britain - tells us their names, because we're not smart enough to remember them week-to-week, whilst sounding like your estranged horny uncle. Then Dermot O'Leary stands up in the same suit every week - the fashion rule that forces poor Cole and Minogue to fit into more spectacular dresses each episode apparently doesen't apply to men - he never takes that suit off. And then, for the rest of the programme, there's just this cheap kareoke thing , and each new bland individual is introduced with unflattering closeups in front of an industrial fan.
We actually pay Simon Cowell our own money (through the telephone voting) for him to spoonfeed us terrible music. He says that he started X Factor because the British music industry was in a bad shape; 2005 was a pretty good year in music. We had Franz Ferdinand's second album, Bloc Party's debut, Jack Johnson reached the mainstream and the first album from Editors. Is this what we've been reduced to? Is this our collective musical identity - Cheryl Cole wailing on about how she's going to fight for this love? It genuinely scares the core of my being to think that 18 million people have zero music taste.
I was reading a Mailonline (I was linked, I wouldn't willingly stray into that Tory/Celeb news warzone) article about the singles' battle reaching its climax tonight, and the comments below were just poor. The best was the claim that "we watch the X Factor and vote because we're genuinely interested in furthering the lives of some talented young people" - I'm very bemused that someone thinks ITV's premier cashcow is one huge educational excercise for just those 12 kids. If they really want to help out young people then give that £1.50 that went to the vote, to a charity like Frank or Shelter. Ultimately, the X Factor is democracy - the shit, mobocratic side of democracy. Democracy barely works as it is (Churchill said that "democracy is the worst form of government except when compared to all the other forms of government") - and stuff like I'm A Celebrity Get Me Outta Here might end up damaging real-life politics if people think that the point in casting their vote is to decide who's the best looking MP.
Music should never be a democracy. It is the only place, in our society, where true anarchy reigns. It is the ultimate meritocracy - creativity amplified. Don't like the Top 40? Make your own music. Put it on MySpace, busk in the streets. Go to the club nights at the Manchester Academy, trawl the record shops in the Northern Quarter and find a hidden gem, a rough diamond. Don't buy Susan Boyle's album (which was just announced to be Christmas No 1) because she's ugly and you feel sorry for her, buy it for her music. Music is individual, private - every song has a different meaning and a different sound for everyone. It can't work as a democracy. Therefore, we need a revolution. And Tom Morello and Zac de la Rocha are going to lead it.
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Nelson's Glory
Do you remember being taught history in primary school? Well, it wasn’t “history” in the proper sense of looking back in time from a critical perspective. We just learnt about hot the Romans built bridges and why the Titanic sank and that sort of thing. But it undeniably imbues every British citizen with a sense of pride not unequal to the whole swearing-by-the-flag thing they have in wingnut America. Not least because Britain/England happened to win a hell of a lot of battles – throughout history we were either being heroically massacred to the last by foreign invaders or leading the charge against Napoleon's last stand at Waterloo.
But remember, we were led by some absolute headcases in the past. I mean, well done with Agincourt and all that, but it doesn’t hide the fact Henry V believed he was related to God. Nelson was a battlethirsty psychopath, who despite being hailed as a “military genius” decided, in the most crucial point in his career to ignore all naval tactics and sail his ship in between two other ones, on the grounds that “they won’t be expecting that!” Yeah, they didn’t expect it, but it didn’t stop them thumping broadsides into Victory. I mean, the British army only intergrated the idea of a "Forlorn Hope" - the first guys into the breach in the wall during a seige - once the other armies started doing it. These guys would charge through the gap efffectivly armed with just their bayonets to certain oblivion, on the premise that if they survived, they'd definately be promoted. Because it wouldn't be proper to be outdone in the Darwin Awards, of course.
Boudicca was essentially a crazy barbarian lady with a taste for blood, woad and hemlock; Robin Hood a sharpshooting, forest-dwelling (yeah, because living in the woods with a load of other blokes is normal…) kleptomaniac. Wellington, so ridiculously harsh that he got the nickname “the Iron Duke”, was confused by the idea of democracy when he became prime minister – on cabinet, he said “they did the most preposterous thing ever! They got their orders, but they wanted to discuss them!?” Maybe he thought that Parliament all just agreed simultaneously that him being the leader of the Empire was a “jolly good idea”.
When Henry VIII didn’t get his way, he formed his own religion – nowadays there’s an equivalent to his legacy, in Ron Hubbard’s Church of Scientology. And Elizabeth, ignored all sensible advice and sent her fleet to certain death for pride. She was just lucky they won. It’s no small wonder that when the BNP call middle england to arms, claiming they’re continuing Churchill’s legacy that it goes down a treat, because from the age of six onwards we’re basically brainwashed to admire these over-aggressive morons.
But remember, we were led by some absolute headcases in the past. I mean, well done with Agincourt and all that, but it doesn’t hide the fact Henry V believed he was related to God. Nelson was a battlethirsty psychopath, who despite being hailed as a “military genius” decided, in the most crucial point in his career to ignore all naval tactics and sail his ship in between two other ones, on the grounds that “they won’t be expecting that!” Yeah, they didn’t expect it, but it didn’t stop them thumping broadsides into Victory. I mean, the British army only intergrated the idea of a "Forlorn Hope" - the first guys into the breach in the wall during a seige - once the other armies started doing it. These guys would charge through the gap efffectivly armed with just their bayonets to certain oblivion, on the premise that if they survived, they'd definately be promoted. Because it wouldn't be proper to be outdone in the Darwin Awards, of course.
Boudicca was essentially a crazy barbarian lady with a taste for blood, woad and hemlock; Robin Hood a sharpshooting, forest-dwelling (yeah, because living in the woods with a load of other blokes is normal…) kleptomaniac. Wellington, so ridiculously harsh that he got the nickname “the Iron Duke”, was confused by the idea of democracy when he became prime minister – on cabinet, he said “they did the most preposterous thing ever! They got their orders, but they wanted to discuss them!?” Maybe he thought that Parliament all just agreed simultaneously that him being the leader of the Empire was a “jolly good idea”.
When Henry VIII didn’t get his way, he formed his own religion – nowadays there’s an equivalent to his legacy, in Ron Hubbard’s Church of Scientology. And Elizabeth, ignored all sensible advice and sent her fleet to certain death for pride. She was just lucky they won. It’s no small wonder that when the BNP call middle england to arms, claiming they’re continuing Churchill’s legacy that it goes down a treat, because from the age of six onwards we’re basically brainwashed to admire these over-aggressive morons.
Sunday, 13 December 2009
Why Alan Sugar Isn't Sweet
So, who screwed up our decade the most? Is it Blair, Bush, or Ben Elton? No - I don't really hate We Will Rock You that much, however smug it may be, with its horrid "ooh aren't we anti-mainstream" schtick, which is self-defeating, because the whole show is like a bad subversive fancy dress party where everyone's dressed up as an emo thinking they're really clever and making a profound metaphorical social comment through the medium of clothing.
No. I think it's Alan Sugar. The ultimate icon for all men. Straight-talking; he rose up from humble beginnings, made a fortune and starred in the only reality telly show it was ok for guys to watch. Conservative at heart and New Labour for the mercanary moment, with a sexist streak. Witness White Van Man reborn. And for all his ridiculous glory, wallowing in unseen political irony as Business Tsar, he seems beyond reproach. All he amounts to is a second-rate Bill Gates, except with added "dickhead". An estuary-english accent (that's fake cockney), sharp suits and Bentleys ('cos he's patriotic), the average bloke fell in love for the first time since he bought his first car. And how could they fail to; the target audience of The Apprentice was the type of geezah who was haggling at Floors-2-Go when the anti-war marches kicked off, who married primarily so he didn't have to wash the dishes himself, who reckons Richard Littlejohn's a guy with common sense, and who doesen't trust boys who wear skinny jeans because they might infect him with gay.
Sugar is everything that is purile and faux-decadent about Britain. London seems to have had a strange PR makeover as a colder Los Angeles, whilst bank executives play roulette with millions; Sugar is the champion of this leopard-print LDN. He paved the way for Piers Morgan, for Billy Conolly's documentaries, for Al Murray's once-satircal Pub Landlord being taken seriously, for Jim Broadbent being in every Britfilm ever, and for Andrew Sachs being forcefully deified as a National Treasure. Anything he ever did as a businessman was purely for money, and he's no different to Murdoch or Trump or Ambrovovich, those celebrated monopolists - except he's scummier and less solid. And the modern British man, having thrown away his metrosexuality in exchange for Nuts magazine and Jason Stratham movies, adores him. Because he's one of them; a cheap pub intellectual. Delboy, only richer. A man who'll always back the winnner - a guy without a cause or principles or courage and without any talent except one that lets him make millions from idiots only a few IQ points stupider than him. Thankfully (I think, anyway), David Cameron is too machavellian to put him - as so many lager savants would espouse - in the cabinet. Then again, stranger things have happened...
Oh, and two last gripes. I find Michael Mcintyre less funny as he gets more popular, and Timothy Spall got ruined by ITV - he ain't meant to be an action hero. There it is, I'm done.
No. I think it's Alan Sugar. The ultimate icon for all men. Straight-talking; he rose up from humble beginnings, made a fortune and starred in the only reality telly show it was ok for guys to watch. Conservative at heart and New Labour for the mercanary moment, with a sexist streak. Witness White Van Man reborn. And for all his ridiculous glory, wallowing in unseen political irony as Business Tsar, he seems beyond reproach. All he amounts to is a second-rate Bill Gates, except with added "dickhead". An estuary-english accent (that's fake cockney), sharp suits and Bentleys ('cos he's patriotic), the average bloke fell in love for the first time since he bought his first car. And how could they fail to; the target audience of The Apprentice was the type of geezah who was haggling at Floors-2-Go when the anti-war marches kicked off, who married primarily so he didn't have to wash the dishes himself, who reckons Richard Littlejohn's a guy with common sense, and who doesen't trust boys who wear skinny jeans because they might infect him with gay.
Sugar is everything that is purile and faux-decadent about Britain. London seems to have had a strange PR makeover as a colder Los Angeles, whilst bank executives play roulette with millions; Sugar is the champion of this leopard-print LDN. He paved the way for Piers Morgan, for Billy Conolly's documentaries, for Al Murray's once-satircal Pub Landlord being taken seriously, for Jim Broadbent being in every Britfilm ever, and for Andrew Sachs being forcefully deified as a National Treasure. Anything he ever did as a businessman was purely for money, and he's no different to Murdoch or Trump or Ambrovovich, those celebrated monopolists - except he's scummier and less solid. And the modern British man, having thrown away his metrosexuality in exchange for Nuts magazine and Jason Stratham movies, adores him. Because he's one of them; a cheap pub intellectual. Delboy, only richer. A man who'll always back the winnner - a guy without a cause or principles or courage and without any talent except one that lets him make millions from idiots only a few IQ points stupider than him. Thankfully (I think, anyway), David Cameron is too machavellian to put him - as so many lager savants would espouse - in the cabinet. Then again, stranger things have happened...
Oh, and two last gripes. I find Michael Mcintyre less funny as he gets more popular, and Timothy Spall got ruined by ITV - he ain't meant to be an action hero. There it is, I'm done.
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Foundation Studies
At our school, sex ed, drugs warnings and all those other classes that were designed from faddish government posturing - classes that should really be umbrella-termed as "miscallaneous" - were covered in Foundation Studies. "FS" as we called it, was the dud subject. Not least because they gave us condoms and plastic penises for starter activities, or we were challenged to walk in a straight line with beer goggles on (they were somewhat inevitably stolen), but because they were taught by the worst teachers from every subject. It seemed that either they were being toughened up or that it was some big sick joke being played on them by the rest of the faculty, but they were definately the most easily-wound up teachers available. They were cannon-fodder - the first out of the trenches. This ran to such an extent that my class (9G) was notorious for sending teachers on their way - I think the record was six.
Getting us to make a presentation on the dangers of cannabis (for year nines, there are no dangers) was the downfall of one chemistry teacher; group-discussing our career prospects was another's (he got so annoyed he told one boy that they needed a "good old fashioned spanking"). But the most memorable class was when they had a fireman in - presumeably just to scare the shit out of us. Anyway, his hour-long presentation was similar to that scene in Mean Girls. He simply showed us pictures - apparently the best of his personal collection - of chewed up cars and chewed up drivers. Even though we were too young to even be thinking about driving he wanted to terrify us so much we'd never even be able to look at tarmac again without weeping. He had such wonderful motivational phrases as "One in three people die from their airbags!", "Ever sawn a man's legs off? No!?! So stop fidgeting!!" and "Seatbelts can cut you in half" or even "This guy had to be identified by a combination of his dental and fingernail records".
Bascially each slide was just a fleshy collage of mashed red pulp splashed across bits of twisted cars. Havoc-strewn carriageways with ripped limbs and eyeball sockets littered about the scene. Horrific carnage, and sobering stuff. Not the sort of thing you show to a class of 13 year-olds on an afternoon. I'm pretty sure he wasn't actually a fireman, because he had a prison haircut and no firetruck; he was the sort of guy who would fault the Saw franchise for being conservative with the gore. He just had a powerpoint full of torture porn and a single message: "Don't get in a car. Don't even think about cars. Why? Because YOU'LL DIE. YOU'LL BE CUT INTO A THOUSAND PIECES AND BLENDED AT 70MPH, AND I'LL HAVE TO TAKE PICTURES OF YOUR SHATTERED BRAINS. Don't even look at a wheel BECAUSE YOU'LL DIE. Class dismissed, be careful not to DIE".
Getting us to make a presentation on the dangers of cannabis (for year nines, there are no dangers) was the downfall of one chemistry teacher; group-discussing our career prospects was another's (he got so annoyed he told one boy that they needed a "good old fashioned spanking"). But the most memorable class was when they had a fireman in - presumeably just to scare the shit out of us. Anyway, his hour-long presentation was similar to that scene in Mean Girls. He simply showed us pictures - apparently the best of his personal collection - of chewed up cars and chewed up drivers. Even though we were too young to even be thinking about driving he wanted to terrify us so much we'd never even be able to look at tarmac again without weeping. He had such wonderful motivational phrases as "One in three people die from their airbags!", "Ever sawn a man's legs off? No!?! So stop fidgeting!!" and "Seatbelts can cut you in half" or even "This guy had to be identified by a combination of his dental and fingernail records".
Bascially each slide was just a fleshy collage of mashed red pulp splashed across bits of twisted cars. Havoc-strewn carriageways with ripped limbs and eyeball sockets littered about the scene. Horrific carnage, and sobering stuff. Not the sort of thing you show to a class of 13 year-olds on an afternoon. I'm pretty sure he wasn't actually a fireman, because he had a prison haircut and no firetruck; he was the sort of guy who would fault the Saw franchise for being conservative with the gore. He just had a powerpoint full of torture porn and a single message: "Don't get in a car. Don't even think about cars. Why? Because YOU'LL DIE. YOU'LL BE CUT INTO A THOUSAND PIECES AND BLENDED AT 70MPH, AND I'LL HAVE TO TAKE PICTURES OF YOUR SHATTERED BRAINS. Don't even look at a wheel BECAUSE YOU'LL DIE. Class dismissed, be careful not to DIE".
Saturday, 5 December 2009
Evil Emperor
Google are a bunch of wimps. In the last week, Rupert Murdoch (the head of News Corporation, neé SPECTRE), bullied them into limiting the amount of free access to some of his news websites, after accusing them of "stealing" his content. If you're not familiar with the shadowy gamesmaster of the media, he owns several of the UK's major newspapers (The Sun, The Times) as well as the wingnut Fox News in the US, and David Cameron, not to mention everything else that falls within the Iron Curtain of 20th Century Fox's evil empire. And as their owner, he is famed for influencing editorial decisions (It was the Sun Wot Won It in '92 for Major) with his own special brand of right-wing narcissism. He looks like Kim Jong Il's puppet from Team America: World Police, and his speeches are the verbal equivalent of a catastrophic reactor leak.
Anyway, the new rules are going to let us internet wanderers use Murdoch's plethora of sites five times a day before being asked to pay for the privalidge of his company's famed taste for hard, truthful and above all, unbiased information. This policy genuinely seems to have spouted directly from Murdoch's hubristic jealousy of the internet and the free data available to everyone. I don't want to endorse dystopian conspiracies, but his influence in the politics through his media kingdom is a very real threat; the Tories and to a lesser extent, Labour, follow The Sun around like a puppy asking for a treat after performing a trick. This is media realpoliticking in its most sinister manifestation; I'm not suggesting that Brown or Cameron actually formulate how to run the country by looking at the red-top headlines every morning, but Murdoch's share of the media holds the largest readerships and therefore the largest section of potential votes. Politicians pay far too much attention to him in pre-emptive tributes - which wouldn't be so concerning if Murdoch didn't appear to be fuelled by pure, unfiltered avarice. He is the ultimate arch-capitalist; I wouldn't be suprised if some day, deep in an apocolyptic future, he instigates an interstellar civil war with his godlike mental powers, whilst ruling both spacefaring nations from his Saturn-orbiting asteroid fortress as part of some dark scheme to finally destroy socialism.
What this could all add up to is the death of the true spirit of the web - the demise of the Online Dream. If Murdoch is successful in securing yet more concessions and eventually creates exclusively paid-for media websites, what effect will that have on other news websites? Will The Mirror, or The Telegraph follow suit, or my beloved Guardian, in order to keep competetive? For now I cannot see a market audience stupid enough to pay money to read Jeremy Clarkson's ejaculatory misinformed opinions, or AA Gill's anecdotes about murdering baboons like in the good old days. I mean, people do not search on a specific newspaper website for trustworthy information; people google it. Everybody knows newspapers are biased, and nearly all of their content, excepting breaking news, is skewed or slanted. This is not about Google "stealing" news, (nobody can really believe the Murdoch press is the only source of news) this is nothing more than sheer global monopolisation and absolute capitalist excess.
I sincerely hope Google stands up for itself, because it is the greatest symbol of freedom of information. I want Comment Is Free to stay free - for people to enjoy the unbridled liberty that the internet grants us - for better or for worse. This man would threaten everything that gives us the truth: not just the internet, but the BBC and all the other wells from which we can draw knowledge. Murdoch trying to monetise his online territories is equivalent to the British raising taxes from the Thirteen Colonies: we need a George Washington, or else our virtual New World will become enslaved forever.
Anyway, the new rules are going to let us internet wanderers use Murdoch's plethora of sites five times a day before being asked to pay for the privalidge of his company's famed taste for hard, truthful and above all, unbiased information. This policy genuinely seems to have spouted directly from Murdoch's hubristic jealousy of the internet and the free data available to everyone. I don't want to endorse dystopian conspiracies, but his influence in the politics through his media kingdom is a very real threat; the Tories and to a lesser extent, Labour, follow The Sun around like a puppy asking for a treat after performing a trick. This is media realpoliticking in its most sinister manifestation; I'm not suggesting that Brown or Cameron actually formulate how to run the country by looking at the red-top headlines every morning, but Murdoch's share of the media holds the largest readerships and therefore the largest section of potential votes. Politicians pay far too much attention to him in pre-emptive tributes - which wouldn't be so concerning if Murdoch didn't appear to be fuelled by pure, unfiltered avarice. He is the ultimate arch-capitalist; I wouldn't be suprised if some day, deep in an apocolyptic future, he instigates an interstellar civil war with his godlike mental powers, whilst ruling both spacefaring nations from his Saturn-orbiting asteroid fortress as part of some dark scheme to finally destroy socialism.
What this could all add up to is the death of the true spirit of the web - the demise of the Online Dream. If Murdoch is successful in securing yet more concessions and eventually creates exclusively paid-for media websites, what effect will that have on other news websites? Will The Mirror, or The Telegraph follow suit, or my beloved Guardian, in order to keep competetive? For now I cannot see a market audience stupid enough to pay money to read Jeremy Clarkson's ejaculatory misinformed opinions, or AA Gill's anecdotes about murdering baboons like in the good old days. I mean, people do not search on a specific newspaper website for trustworthy information; people google it. Everybody knows newspapers are biased, and nearly all of their content, excepting breaking news, is skewed or slanted. This is not about Google "stealing" news, (nobody can really believe the Murdoch press is the only source of news) this is nothing more than sheer global monopolisation and absolute capitalist excess.
I sincerely hope Google stands up for itself, because it is the greatest symbol of freedom of information. I want Comment Is Free to stay free - for people to enjoy the unbridled liberty that the internet grants us - for better or for worse. This man would threaten everything that gives us the truth: not just the internet, but the BBC and all the other wells from which we can draw knowledge. Murdoch trying to monetise his online territories is equivalent to the British raising taxes from the Thirteen Colonies: we need a George Washington, or else our virtual New World will become enslaved forever.
Sunday, 29 November 2009
Don't Comment
Today has been probably, one of the least productive days in the history of my existence. I read a few chapters of my book, downloaded one song, engaged in a spot of light psychopathy on GTA: San Andreas (if you're unfamiliar, this is one of those games children should avoid) and now I'm blabbering useless drivel all over the internet like a chronically diarrheoa-stricken greyhound running down the street.
But I'm not the only person doing nothing. Ever been on a news website or the BBC homepage and scrolled the bottom to check out the comments? If not, you are truly blessed. I have no idea why online comment-debates attract nutjobs and people who, if saying these things in the street, would be sectioned under the Mental Health Act. Only certain websites leave these literary stinkbombs festering at the end of all their articles - most moderate the completely insane postings - taking out the word "c*nt", for example, or removing the posts that claim "the Jews are running the world and are hours away from turning their intergalactic crystal death rays on us all and that this country used to be GREAT Britain", as if the geographical names of places really signify a region's worth. We don't have to always have a king on the throne just because we're called the United Kingdom. Oh and none of these conspiracy theorists, despite knowing the Truth, can spell. I'd like to think that the would-be saviours of mankind can at least use the english language in a comprehensible manner.
The ones on the Guardian's website are the best - with their "Comment is Free" policy, they don't moderate unless it's reported.The commenters' register always sounds like they just walked into a gay bar and realised it's not for them; they walk up to the barman and order a pint of real ale without clicking that the only drinks on offer are appletinis. "What you lefties don't realise is that I eat meat BECAUSE it hurts the animals" might be a sample.
But let's stop and think here; this is the Guardian we're talking about. It's Britain's only quality leftwing newspaper - the website is always going to be full of "lefties" - so why do commentors sound so surprised? If you take any stock in these opinions - expressed by people who link the fact that they got unemployed on the same day that their wife left them and recieved full custody of the kids with a global conspiracy - then stop now. The people of Britain by large aren't clever enough to vote for the right party. I can't tell you which party is right because I don't know myself. It's likely we'll never know. Even if they do turn up at one stage they won't get voted in. Tough shit.
But I'm not the only person doing nothing. Ever been on a news website or the BBC homepage and scrolled the bottom to check out the comments? If not, you are truly blessed. I have no idea why online comment-debates attract nutjobs and people who, if saying these things in the street, would be sectioned under the Mental Health Act. Only certain websites leave these literary stinkbombs festering at the end of all their articles - most moderate the completely insane postings - taking out the word "c*nt", for example, or removing the posts that claim "the Jews are running the world and are hours away from turning their intergalactic crystal death rays on us all and that this country used to be GREAT Britain", as if the geographical names of places really signify a region's worth. We don't have to always have a king on the throne just because we're called the United Kingdom. Oh and none of these conspiracy theorists, despite knowing the Truth, can spell. I'd like to think that the would-be saviours of mankind can at least use the english language in a comprehensible manner.
The ones on the Guardian's website are the best - with their "Comment is Free" policy, they don't moderate unless it's reported.The commenters' register always sounds like they just walked into a gay bar and realised it's not for them; they walk up to the barman and order a pint of real ale without clicking that the only drinks on offer are appletinis. "What you lefties don't realise is that I eat meat BECAUSE it hurts the animals" might be a sample.
But let's stop and think here; this is the Guardian we're talking about. It's Britain's only quality leftwing newspaper - the website is always going to be full of "lefties" - so why do commentors sound so surprised? If you take any stock in these opinions - expressed by people who link the fact that they got unemployed on the same day that their wife left them and recieved full custody of the kids with a global conspiracy - then stop now. The people of Britain by large aren't clever enough to vote for the right party. I can't tell you which party is right because I don't know myself. It's likely we'll never know. Even if they do turn up at one stage they won't get voted in. Tough shit.
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
I Was Thinking This Morning
I feel nervous. This is not normal: I’m not claustrophobic or agoraphobic – there is nothing in my world to be worried about. That coursework will be done by the deadline despite my watching Valkyrie instead of writing those essay questions; the bus will let me off at the right stop. We career around the bend, I put away my book and gather my stuff. I don’t like being elevated on the bus because you can see things you shouldn’t be seeing; old people’s scalps, which bit of the Metro the other passengers are looking at, the cheap pulp fiction one of them is reading. Old people are always on buses. I think they must ride around all day and never get off, they just sit there and have conversations that consist of opening lines like “I haven’t seen you since the war!” or “there are an awful lot of pigeons about nowadays”.
I forget about the nerves because an agonising pain shoots up my right leg when I move it. Where did that come from? I didn’t bang it on a pole or a chair, but it feels like somone stamped on the inside of my kneecaps repeatedly. Christ that hurts! I’ve got to walk it off like a footballer. Or maybe not like a footballer, because when they get injured someone pays them ten grand. Maybe someone will just run up in the street and hand me a brown envelope filled with illicit cash? Could happen. Watch that car, it’s going to run me over if I don’t run out of its way. That driver looked determined to kill everyone who wanted to cross the road, maybe one of the guys on my flank egged his house or kidnapped his wife. Maybe he’s John McClane, and those two are East-European terrorists. Maybe he’s just a bad driver.
I want coffee, but I can’t go into the café. I’m still infected with cash-flow deficiency disease. That girl has coffee. I bet she’s rich. I bet she swims in a golden pool of molten pound coins every night, and then sells videos of it online to middle-aged sweaty men in Wolverhampton. I have too much to carry. Why does my english teacher want us to all bring A4 folders to every class? Is he a miniature dictator, and this is a premature totalitarian decree? This might be just the start of his coup – today, Stockport, tomorrow, the world! I bet he has those Warhammer models in his attic. I bet he plays with them every night to escape from the world, and makes explosion noises with his lips. Maybe I should write this all down and someone from a cool newspaper might read it and put it on their website and pays me £1000. I could do anything with £1000; first I’d buy some more shirts, then I’d buy some more socks. I always have holes in my socks nowadays.
Sunday, 22 November 2009
Blind Ferrets In Switzerland
In medieval times I would have been assigned the role of the village idiot. Forever falling into wells and tripping over the King's retainers, I might have been a lot like Happy Smurf. This is the general feeling I get when I step into the Cornerhouse in Manchester - an exclusive arthouse cinema/indie café/contemporary art gallery tucked in between Chinatown and the city centre. I have a generally anti-mainstream outlook when it comes to film, so the stuff they show is right up my street - today I saw A Serious Man, the new flick from the Coens. But as much as I'd love to be a member of the high-brow culture club, the liberal intelligensia - I'm not really cut out for it. 60% of my thoughts are along the lines of "What if a polar bear and a visually impaired ferret had a fight with David Gest...?", not, as required to be a true hipster; "The films of David Lynch really inspire me". That's not to say I don't like David Lynch - I recently watched Lost Highway - it just means I'm far too easily distracted to keep up.
Someone from the London School of Economics called Simon Hix (I'm imagining a francophobe version of the Nutty Professor) complained in a Guardian article that the EU would "it would rather be a super-sized Switzerland". There's one problem with this comment: Switzerland is awesome! Apart from its somewhat ridiculous-sounding name, it is the perfect model for just about any country. They never go to war, they don't get bullied by America, they get to speak whatever language they want, and they always have a white Christmas. On top of that, they have an excellent democratic system and famously efficient trains. Our trains are shit, and they smell like old people's urine. Does Mr Hix really want to trade the quaint utopia of the Alps and Lake Geneva for council flats and the Birmingham ring road?
This is why I should never enter professional politics - however much you love me for it, I'm an idiot.
**Update - Switzerland is no longer perfect, since they voted to ban minarets. You can look at this either way - I can't be bothered analysing why and what effect this will have on Europe, but needless to say it's taken the edge off the Alps for me.
Someone from the London School of Economics called Simon Hix (I'm imagining a francophobe version of the Nutty Professor) complained in a Guardian article that the EU would "it would rather be a super-sized Switzerland". There's one problem with this comment: Switzerland is awesome! Apart from its somewhat ridiculous-sounding name, it is the perfect model for just about any country. They never go to war, they don't get bullied by America, they get to speak whatever language they want, and they always have a white Christmas. On top of that, they have an excellent democratic system and famously efficient trains. Our trains are shit, and they smell like old people's urine. Does Mr Hix really want to trade the quaint utopia of the Alps and Lake Geneva for council flats and the Birmingham ring road?
This is why I should never enter professional politics - however much you love me for it, I'm an idiot.
**Update - Switzerland is no longer perfect, since they voted to ban minarets. You can look at this either way - I can't be bothered analysing why and what effect this will have on Europe, but needless to say it's taken the edge off the Alps for me.
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Monday, 16 November 2009
Predator vs ITV
"I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here" has returned to our screens, giving W-List former models and 70's popstars the chance to find a book deal and giving Ant and Dec the opportunity to annoy us even more. Have you seen those ridiculous Nintendo adverts? They seem to follow the Grange Hill alumni around Britain as they break into middle-class houses and, at gunpoint, ask the homeowners about their love for Supermario or Zelda, like a sick version of Home Alone.
Whenever I've been unfortunate to catch a glimpse of the jungle ventures of people I've never heard of, I have always wished that Predator would turn up and hijack the show, transforming it from an light entertainment programme into an Orwellian rainforest arena of death.
He's out there, biding his time until the really harsh Bushtucker Trials begin - and then - bang! The cameras will short out for a few seconds, and when transmission restarts, all we'll see on our screens will be the skinned carcasses of Ant and Dec, swinging above a swampy pool of shocked alligators. Imagine the end-credits of Apocolypse Now, only with Samantha Fox in the place of Marlon Brando's Kurtz. Basically, the entire premise of the show is what Malcolm Tucker, the swearbox Director of Communications played by Peter Capaldi on satirical comedy The Thick Of It, would call "arse plasma from the hideous mirrorworld of fuck". 'Nuff said.
Whenever I've been unfortunate to catch a glimpse of the jungle ventures of people I've never heard of, I have always wished that Predator would turn up and hijack the show, transforming it from an light entertainment programme into an Orwellian rainforest arena of death.
He's out there, biding his time until the really harsh Bushtucker Trials begin - and then - bang! The cameras will short out for a few seconds, and when transmission restarts, all we'll see on our screens will be the skinned carcasses of Ant and Dec, swinging above a swampy pool of shocked alligators. Imagine the end-credits of Apocolypse Now, only with Samantha Fox in the place of Marlon Brando's Kurtz. Basically, the entire premise of the show is what Malcolm Tucker, the swearbox Director of Communications played by Peter Capaldi on satirical comedy The Thick Of It, would call "arse plasma from the hideous mirrorworld of fuck". 'Nuff said.
Friday, 13 November 2009
Terrier Paté
I don't like dogs. Specifically, they don't like me. They'll always single me out for knocking over (I'm fairly light, so it's not hard), or mauling - so I don't like them. But I'm beginning to like technology even less. My computer took 30 minutes just to load this interview on the Guardian website, partly because Tweetdeck, the desktop app for Twitter, decided to update itself at that exact moment. That's the problem with software that does stuff automatically; it chooses the least opportune moments to annoy you with a bug fix or virus scan. McAfee is constantly stalking me, like a little yapping terrier begging for food, constantly. I won't feed it though. I'll lock it in a broken fridge, then leave it on abandoned wasteland somewhere, for a metal-detector enthusiast to find and uncover the reeking skeleton in about fifty year's time.
If it's not being slow and not telling you, it's being fast (not fast like the Millennium Falcon, fast like a hit-and-run driver) and telling you in a loud voice. Windows, for one, is constantly prompting you to do things. Do you want to save? Fancy switching me off? Do you want the toilet? And unlike the updates, you can't ignore the prompts. The only solution is the big red, lovely X button in the top-right hand corner of all the progams. In dog-violence terms, it's the equivalent of kicking the terrier repeatedly until it's a bloody mess, then smearing it like paté on your ex-girlfriend's car bonnet.
But the most annoying thing about computers? When they get in a tizzy with you, they just nod off - "not responding" is the Windows-term (sorry I'm not mentioning Macs or the other OS's, but I have trusty XP at home and Macs just behave like Nokia mobiles from circa-2007). And when that happens, I see red. Well actually, I see this:
Anyone would get pissed at that kind of disrespect. If this were Compton, I'd have shot the monitor by now. To use the canine reference a third and final time, "not responding" is the real-life manifestation of being slapped with a keyboard by the terrier, having been set free by the RSPCA and sent back through time to take revenge.
Coronation Street, like all other soap-opera dramas, plays on our basest stereotypes to make the characters appeal to a wider audience. The cast of EastEnders is packed with cockney villains, Hollyoaks is filled with cliquey teens and lazy students, and Neighbours has lots of blonde girls and surfer boys who constantly barbeque and never grow up, like 1950's Californian Peter Pans. But as I was watching "Corrie" (not my choice) today, I noticed that about 90% of Sally's (blonde, short haired wife of mechanic Kevin) lines were "Don't you speak to my Kevin like that!". Even when the shopkeeper handed back change, or a customer said "hello" in the garage, Sally would launch a thermonuclear verbal tirade against them, like a nightmarish, squawking jack-in-the-box. Poor old Kevin never actually gets the chance to stick up for himself because Sal's in there first - before scolding him for not beig a real man and fighting his corner. It's no wonder he's having an affair, really.
Saturday, 7 November 2009
Red Army
I support Manchester United and it's brilliant. We always win, and we get to wear the colour red. Everyone knows that the red car always finishes first. Most football supporters hate United, mainly because we beat their team and they'll always come up with a lot of sore-loser excuses to explain for this - up until last season it was "Ronaldo does all the work" which loosely translates into them being jealous because we've got better players. However - I'm not a very good football supporter. I genuinely love it when my team win and I've followed them since I can remember, and so has my dad; they play fantastic, entertaining football and the tickets, in context, are cheap. But I haven't been to a single game this season and I only watch football on the telly if it's United. I know people that will watch any team, any time, purely for the joy of the sport, yet for some reason I just can't find it interesting if I don't want any single team to win.
I don't want the English international team to win in the slightest either. Partly because I don't want Peter Crouch to smile but partly because I find it hard to turn off the part of my brain that generates hatred for the other team-players (i.e. Ashley Cole, Steven Gerrard), so I only want 1/3 of the team to win. Aren't I the little mercenary. When you add in the fact that they only ever seem to play versus Croatia or Ukraine - instead of say, France or Brazil or USA (those teams, I want to see beaten!), I don't even want to see it on the television. England are boring.
The final thing that makes me a rubbish supporter is that when I'm at Old Trafford for the live games, I can't ignore the fact that I'm standing in a crowd consisting mainly of middle-aged, slightly inebriated and badly dressed men shouting at 22 young, sweaty, part-time male models running about in silly clothes after an expensive golf ball. The atmosphere in the Stretford End, however electrifying when United score, is far too similar to the atmosphere in the Poll Tax riots, or a domestic abuse incident. Most of the guys come every week to escape their nagging wives and let off some steam - and in the olden days, this energy would have been expended by beating their children or brawling in the street, so obviously club football plays a fundamental peacekeeping role in modern British society. But I'm not locked into a stagnant marriage or up to my eyeballs in mortgage payments - I'm 17. And as an optimistic, bright, enlightened student, I just can't find it in me to shout at an athlete for running too slow, when I know very well that Nemanja Vidic might hunt me down and stamp on my face and I wouldn't be beautiful anymore. Those studs are lethal, I'll have you know.
Maybe I'm just not masculine enough. I should go and man-up. I could embark on an overambitious DIY project or pay too much for a corporate paintballing trip or even go for a nice, relaxing shopping-mall shooting spree. Those are definately blokey activities. Come to think about it, men are rubbish! We can't multitask, we injure, maim and kill, we care more about the movements of little green bits of paper more than the meaning of life, the universe and everything - and we're nowhere near as pretty as girls. And to top it all, they are much cleaner than us.
I don't want the English international team to win in the slightest either. Partly because I don't want Peter Crouch to smile but partly because I find it hard to turn off the part of my brain that generates hatred for the other team-players (i.e. Ashley Cole, Steven Gerrard), so I only want 1/3 of the team to win. Aren't I the little mercenary. When you add in the fact that they only ever seem to play versus Croatia or Ukraine - instead of say, France or Brazil or USA (those teams, I want to see beaten!), I don't even want to see it on the television. England are boring.
The final thing that makes me a rubbish supporter is that when I'm at Old Trafford for the live games, I can't ignore the fact that I'm standing in a crowd consisting mainly of middle-aged, slightly inebriated and badly dressed men shouting at 22 young, sweaty, part-time male models running about in silly clothes after an expensive golf ball. The atmosphere in the Stretford End, however electrifying when United score, is far too similar to the atmosphere in the Poll Tax riots, or a domestic abuse incident. Most of the guys come every week to escape their nagging wives and let off some steam - and in the olden days, this energy would have been expended by beating their children or brawling in the street, so obviously club football plays a fundamental peacekeeping role in modern British society. But I'm not locked into a stagnant marriage or up to my eyeballs in mortgage payments - I'm 17. And as an optimistic, bright, enlightened student, I just can't find it in me to shout at an athlete for running too slow, when I know very well that Nemanja Vidic might hunt me down and stamp on my face and I wouldn't be beautiful anymore. Those studs are lethal, I'll have you know.
Maybe I'm just not masculine enough. I should go and man-up. I could embark on an overambitious DIY project or pay too much for a corporate paintballing trip or even go for a nice, relaxing shopping-mall shooting spree. Those are definately blokey activities. Come to think about it, men are rubbish! We can't multitask, we injure, maim and kill, we care more about the movements of little green bits of paper more than the meaning of life, the universe and everything - and we're nowhere near as pretty as girls. And to top it all, they are much cleaner than us.
Tonight, We Dine In Hell!
So last night I finished christening my new TV with the HD premiere of 300. I think it's an awesome film, blending spectacular visuals with explosive action scenes, as well as the best soundbites since Anchorman. But, it occurred to me half-way through watching Leonidas battle the uber-Immortal (and yes, the character is actually called that), that he wouldn't be a very good peacetime leader. At the slightest provocation, he leads his men into certain oblivion, and kicks a guy into a bottomless pit. Sure, he's the greatest warrior-king in Greece, and he can give a good Henry V speech, but he'd be useless when it came to dealing with climate change or electoral reform. To any taunt from a protestor, he'd just shout "This is Sparta!" and slaughter everyone in sight.
You can hardly imagine him at the upcoming Copenhagen Summit on climate change, sitting amongst Gordon, Nicholas and Barrack in his loincloth and armour. "Carbon neutral!? This is madness?!". His reaction to the EU would surely be along the lines of "Give them nothing but take from them everything!".
Maybe our leaders need to be a bit more like King Leo - I for one would love to see Gordon Brown duke it out with Dimitry Medvedev or Kim Jong Il. I mean, he's got nothing to lose, right?
You can hardly imagine him at the upcoming Copenhagen Summit on climate change, sitting amongst Gordon, Nicholas and Barrack in his loincloth and armour. "Carbon neutral!? This is madness?!". His reaction to the EU would surely be along the lines of "Give them nothing but take from them everything!".
Maybe our leaders need to be a bit more like King Leo - I for one would love to see Gordon Brown duke it out with Dimitry Medvedev or Kim Jong Il. I mean, he's got nothing to lose, right?
Friday, 6 November 2009
Just Sayin'
I passed my theory test Tuesday - in probably the most innocuous looking-building in the history of architecture. Kingsway House is the default office-block model in Stockport; grey, uninviting and about as picturesque as a man urinating in the street. The test-centre was completely hidden away in the bowels of the building, and although their were signposts to other offices, I didn't anyone else going in my direction, so I very nearly got very lost. Anyway, I found my way into the waiting room, and after registering with the guy on the desk, I took a seat amongst an amusing little collection of characters.
Firstly, there was a intimidatingly-masculine girl directly across from me - you know the sort: sweatpants, a Gio-Goi hoodie and Nike 6.0's, hair in a PE-teacher ponytail. With a frown like that, she was more of a boy than me. There was a very blonde, sunburnt lad with his father - apparently from the countryside (ahem, yokel), wearing a plow-scarred gillet and checked shirt - not the Topman type, but the 1950's All-American posterboy type. I think he was going for his Combine Harvester Proficiency test. His dopey smile (and missing teeth) could have only been completed with the addition of a stalk of wheat protruding from his mouth. Next to him was a eastern-european lady who could speak English but not listen to it. When the man behind the desk said she had to turn her phone off and put it into a locker, I feared for his life (she wasn't the sort of lady you'd want to meet in a dark alleyway).
Finally - and the couple that got me laughing - an obviously married couple. The husband walked in first with a purposeful stride, whilst wifey dithered with the door. She was the one holding the identity/registration papers - and whilst it's entirely possible that it was genuinly her first try at driving, the look of barely-concealed contempt on hubbie's face and the matching shame playing out inside his significant other said it all. Specifically, it said that his darling had been on the phone to her girlfriend about something mind-sappingingly boring, and wrapped his Porsche, his baby, around a lampost at 60 miles-per-hour.
David Cameron was embarassed this week, after his "cast-iron" promise, made two years ago in a front page article for The Sun - was shattered. The inevitable ratification of the Lisbon Treaty by the Czech government means that the controversial legislation will be incorporated into EU law. This is just the latest treaty in a line of divisional propositions that continue the process of pooling sovereignty. That means that, with each treaty since the EEC was formed(changed to the EU in 1992), power has gone from individual national governments to the multinational one in Brussels. Personally, I like the EU. It makes for greater cohesion amongst Europe; and, forgoing the language barriers - we're all very similar, and intrinsically linked.
However, it does take a lot of powers away from the UK; the latest estimates said that 70% of our laws are made in the Strasbourg parliament. This therefore gets a lot of people red-necked and angry; as only one of 27 member-states in the Union, we don't get a massive say, and since we are one of the bigger nations, with an above-average GDP, we often bear the brunt of leglisation that benefits say, Norway or Poland. But in the long-term I think it's worth it; Europeans have to recognise that for better or worse, each country's fate is linked to the others; nobody can ignore that most of our trade comes from Europe and that the EU makes this a hell of a lot easier. And it's one more step to world-peace. Would a single, federalised European state be that bad a thing?
I've got a big suspicion that the man-on-the-street's opposition to membership comes from an in-built mistrust of those Frenchies across the channel (always surrendering, you know! And they eat frog's legs! Not like us sensible British. Black Pudding, anyone?). British people, for reasons only known to themselves, have always disliked Europe. We don't want to be friends with them. Most people would just be happy if our little island was completley isolated from the world and if we heard fake news reports about how the Glorious Empire had annexed Denmark or Indonesia, led by the Black Prince. The fact that for 200 years, we held an Empire upon which the sun never set doesen't help; since the Battle of Trafalgar we've had a massive amount of hubris and therefore our ideas about Britain's status in the 21st-century world are a little outdated.
However none of this detracts from the fact that our political masters (and I hate to use such a bandied-about term) have refused to give a referendum. Should we stay in the EU? Yes or no? It's pretty simple. The institition is unpopular, inefficient and not accountable enough. Maybe this is our own fault; we have turned the European elections from our chance to have our say, into an opportunity to vent our anger and vote for protest parties, which isn't right. I agree with the fact that a referendum on Lisbon itself would be equivalent to shooting ourselves in the foot (we'd piss off the rest of the continent, and for what?) - but we should have had a vote in the first place. Attitudes have changed since 1977 and the British electorate have the prerogative to make decisions for themselves, however sensible. That's democracy - it doesen't matter if we make the wrong decision, as long as it's our decision to make.
Firstly, there was a intimidatingly-masculine girl directly across from me - you know the sort: sweatpants, a Gio-Goi hoodie and Nike 6.0's, hair in a PE-teacher ponytail. With a frown like that, she was more of a boy than me. There was a very blonde, sunburnt lad with his father - apparently from the countryside (ahem, yokel), wearing a plow-scarred gillet and checked shirt - not the Topman type, but the 1950's All-American posterboy type. I think he was going for his Combine Harvester Proficiency test. His dopey smile (and missing teeth) could have only been completed with the addition of a stalk of wheat protruding from his mouth. Next to him was a eastern-european lady who could speak English but not listen to it. When the man behind the desk said she had to turn her phone off and put it into a locker, I feared for his life (she wasn't the sort of lady you'd want to meet in a dark alleyway).
Finally - and the couple that got me laughing - an obviously married couple. The husband walked in first with a purposeful stride, whilst wifey dithered with the door. She was the one holding the identity/registration papers - and whilst it's entirely possible that it was genuinly her first try at driving, the look of barely-concealed contempt on hubbie's face and the matching shame playing out inside his significant other said it all. Specifically, it said that his darling had been on the phone to her girlfriend about something mind-sappingingly boring, and wrapped his Porsche, his baby, around a lampost at 60 miles-per-hour.
David Cameron was embarassed this week, after his "cast-iron" promise, made two years ago in a front page article for The Sun - was shattered. The inevitable ratification of the Lisbon Treaty by the Czech government means that the controversial legislation will be incorporated into EU law. This is just the latest treaty in a line of divisional propositions that continue the process of pooling sovereignty. That means that, with each treaty since the EEC was formed(changed to the EU in 1992), power has gone from individual national governments to the multinational one in Brussels. Personally, I like the EU. It makes for greater cohesion amongst Europe; and, forgoing the language barriers - we're all very similar, and intrinsically linked.
However, it does take a lot of powers away from the UK; the latest estimates said that 70% of our laws are made in the Strasbourg parliament. This therefore gets a lot of people red-necked and angry; as only one of 27 member-states in the Union, we don't get a massive say, and since we are one of the bigger nations, with an above-average GDP, we often bear the brunt of leglisation that benefits say, Norway or Poland. But in the long-term I think it's worth it; Europeans have to recognise that for better or worse, each country's fate is linked to the others; nobody can ignore that most of our trade comes from Europe and that the EU makes this a hell of a lot easier. And it's one more step to world-peace. Would a single, federalised European state be that bad a thing?
I've got a big suspicion that the man-on-the-street's opposition to membership comes from an in-built mistrust of those Frenchies across the channel (always surrendering, you know! And they eat frog's legs! Not like us sensible British. Black Pudding, anyone?). British people, for reasons only known to themselves, have always disliked Europe. We don't want to be friends with them. Most people would just be happy if our little island was completley isolated from the world and if we heard fake news reports about how the Glorious Empire had annexed Denmark or Indonesia, led by the Black Prince. The fact that for 200 years, we held an Empire upon which the sun never set doesen't help; since the Battle of Trafalgar we've had a massive amount of hubris and therefore our ideas about Britain's status in the 21st-century world are a little outdated.
However none of this detracts from the fact that our political masters (and I hate to use such a bandied-about term) have refused to give a referendum. Should we stay in the EU? Yes or no? It's pretty simple. The institition is unpopular, inefficient and not accountable enough. Maybe this is our own fault; we have turned the European elections from our chance to have our say, into an opportunity to vent our anger and vote for protest parties, which isn't right. I agree with the fact that a referendum on Lisbon itself would be equivalent to shooting ourselves in the foot (we'd piss off the rest of the continent, and for what?) - but we should have had a vote in the first place. Attitudes have changed since 1977 and the British electorate have the prerogative to make decisions for themselves, however sensible. That's democracy - it doesen't matter if we make the wrong decision, as long as it's our decision to make.
Friday, 30 October 2009
Claptrap
This alerted me to the downright silliness that is homeopathy. "Natural medicine" is where you go to a non-licensed pharmacy (of sorts) and pay stupid amounts of money for pills that are made from flour or fecal matter or leftovers. Bascially, there is no medical or scientific backing to any of the methods used; it encompasses a lot of stuff, including acupuncture. The lecturer in the video began explaining the science behind homoepathy with the words "Hey guys! You've heard of Einstein right? Steven Hawkings? Ever done any chemistry?". I was hoping she'd tell all the graduates to get out there and then, but this was simply her entry into trying to explain the wonderful, undisputable science behind homeopathy.
Only the problem here is that she clearly doesen't understand the basic laws of physics. "We don't know yet how to create energy" implying that, sometime in the near future, a Hadron Collider-esque machine will just start zapping pencils or teapots into existence from nothing. Then she goes on to, albeit through a winding route, say that the universe is massless. And her evidence behind this? "E=MC2". Now I understand that E=MC2 is the underlying formula that brings the whole Theory of Relativity together - but that doesen't mean you can just apply it to anything you want and say you're right. I couldn't rob a bank and then justify it in court by quoting Einstein, life doesen't work that way. And it's Steven Hawking, not Steven Hawkings. Flitting onto a very basic explanation of transforming energy (technically correct, though it's clear she has something against her neighbour's dog), she then tried to say that homeopathy was just transforming energy - this isn't an explanation - every chemical reaction involves transforming energy, and since most medications involve a chemical reaction or two, this doesen't give any scientific backing to homeopathy.
To be honest, she didn't look like a professor or expert on anything - more like a housewife who'd been convinced by a commercial on the Homewares Auction channel and was determined to tell all her gal pals about the wonders she was privy to. My suspicions were confirmed when she told the audience that we're all vibrating, using our ears, with either (and there was specific categorisation) plants, machines, objects or animals. The final nail in any lecturer's coffin is evidently, when they start playing Twenty Questions with the audience; god knows what she meant when she said "vibrating with machines". Obviously her husband's not up to much in the bedroom.
Only the problem here is that she clearly doesen't understand the basic laws of physics. "We don't know yet how to create energy" implying that, sometime in the near future, a Hadron Collider-esque machine will just start zapping pencils or teapots into existence from nothing. Then she goes on to, albeit through a winding route, say that the universe is massless. And her evidence behind this? "E=MC2". Now I understand that E=MC2 is the underlying formula that brings the whole Theory of Relativity together - but that doesen't mean you can just apply it to anything you want and say you're right. I couldn't rob a bank and then justify it in court by quoting Einstein, life doesen't work that way. And it's Steven Hawking, not Steven Hawkings. Flitting onto a very basic explanation of transforming energy (technically correct, though it's clear she has something against her neighbour's dog), she then tried to say that homeopathy was just transforming energy - this isn't an explanation - every chemical reaction involves transforming energy, and since most medications involve a chemical reaction or two, this doesen't give any scientific backing to homeopathy.
To be honest, she didn't look like a professor or expert on anything - more like a housewife who'd been convinced by a commercial on the Homewares Auction channel and was determined to tell all her gal pals about the wonders she was privy to. My suspicions were confirmed when she told the audience that we're all vibrating, using our ears, with either (and there was specific categorisation) plants, machines, objects or animals. The final nail in any lecturer's coffin is evidently, when they start playing Twenty Questions with the audience; god knows what she meant when she said "vibrating with machines". Obviously her husband's not up to much in the bedroom.
Our government today decided to try meddling in medicine by sacking its independant advisor on drugs - because he said that alcahol and tobacco were more harmful than cannabis. Obviously this flies in the face of the recent reclassification of marijuana from C to B. My personal view is that most things should be straight up legalised - it's my own decision if I want to swamp my veins with alcahol or nicotine, and I'm sure many people would be willing to risk schizophrenia for the occaisonal joint (I myself don't touch drugs - I don't like the idea of injecting or snorting or smoking things).
Besides the medical side of the argument, there is the very real threat that, with drugs comes crime. But if the said products were sold through accepted channels - Tescos or Sainsburys or Bargain Booze - then this would be nullified, no? It's a person's own fault if they overdose, ultimately (and there could quite easily be ways of limiting someone's consumption/purchasing power). Everything in life needs to be taken in moderation - too much of any substance can damage your health - whether it's weed, beer, caffiene, Sunny D, chocolate, bubblebath, carrots - everything!
***
Cheerleaders can't be real - nobody would do that for fun. Universities cannot seriously be impressed with that, and there isn't any monetary gain, surely? They look ridiculous, jumping up and down shouting the alphabet out to the crowd like a group of trainee preschool teachers. And who the hell invented pom-poms? Was that some sort of private joke that got taken too far? No. The simple answer is that they don't exist. Hollywood invented them sometime in the mid-eighties and has just spent a massive amount of money placing them in every teen movie ever, to give us this weird, farcical impression of highschool America. What other explanation could there be?
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
Bird? Plane? Nah it's just Sam.
I've been thinking about superpowers. To start, I want at least one. But which one? Let's begin with flight. Flight isn't that great a power really. Depending on how fast you can go, the effect really is cancelled out by cheap airlines like Ryanair. Why manually fly to Benidorm when you can sit back and let someone else do it for you? Besides, this ability would probably make you an enemy of the state - they have a habit of sending fighter jets after things they don't like. You flying through the sky is gonna get the attention of a government agency that "doesen't exist" And there is always the threat of accidentally being sucked into the turbine of a Boeing 747 and getting blended.
Secondly; invisiblity. Maybe cool at first, but overall this would be pants on its own. People can't see you - unless you're looking for a career as an international assassin or MI6 agent, this isn't going to be much help. It doesen't make it any easier to fight a big evil boss or rescue children from burning schools, and eventually you'll get really bored of people not offering you a seat on the bus.
Invulnerabilty? Captain Scarlet never got any of the girls. Infinite strength? The Hulk can't even stand in a queue without his testosterone levels propelling him to feats of incredulous vandalism. Shooting lasers from your eyes? Pretty darn useless if you're short-sighted. X-Ray vision? Sure to get you on the sex-offenders register.
So, discarding all the previous possibilities, I want teleportation to be my power. Being able to appear anywhere in the universe, instantly, would be brilliant. You'd be able to rob banks and then blame it on the bad guy without a moment's thought. Not like in Jumper, more like in that temporary car insurance advert - Hayden Christenssen is always bumping into things when he teleports; bookcases, pillars, bad guys. I want to be suave and collected, not frantic and sweaty. Besides, I bruise easily. Also, you could eat at swanky restaurants and leave without paying, or make a career in marathon-running. Stopping time would probably come second, but seeing as the whole travelling-at-the-speed-of-light thing negates the need to make more time for yourself, and I want to be omnipresent, not a Bernard's Watch copycat.
Secondly; invisiblity. Maybe cool at first, but overall this would be pants on its own. People can't see you - unless you're looking for a career as an international assassin or MI6 agent, this isn't going to be much help. It doesen't make it any easier to fight a big evil boss or rescue children from burning schools, and eventually you'll get really bored of people not offering you a seat on the bus.
Invulnerabilty? Captain Scarlet never got any of the girls. Infinite strength? The Hulk can't even stand in a queue without his testosterone levels propelling him to feats of incredulous vandalism. Shooting lasers from your eyes? Pretty darn useless if you're short-sighted. X-Ray vision? Sure to get you on the sex-offenders register.
So, discarding all the previous possibilities, I want teleportation to be my power. Being able to appear anywhere in the universe, instantly, would be brilliant. You'd be able to rob banks and then blame it on the bad guy without a moment's thought. Not like in Jumper, more like in that temporary car insurance advert - Hayden Christenssen is always bumping into things when he teleports; bookcases, pillars, bad guys. I want to be suave and collected, not frantic and sweaty. Besides, I bruise easily. Also, you could eat at swanky restaurants and leave without paying, or make a career in marathon-running. Stopping time would probably come second, but seeing as the whole travelling-at-the-speed-of-light thing negates the need to make more time for yourself, and I want to be omnipresent, not a Bernard's Watch copycat.
Monday, 26 October 2009
Scooby Doo & Sons, Ltd
I wonder who actually dreamt up the idea of a bookcase that revolves into a hidden room, and if anyone actually had one installed. I'm also wondering if I could get a quote for such an installation and from which builder?
Bias, huh? I think people need to learn one day that just because something/someone says something you don't like, doesen't mean they're biased. Or to accept that fundamentally, they are biased. You're biased, I'm biased - If we didn't have our own opinions we'd be horrid pale clones with albino eyes and enthusiastic work ethics. Bias doesen't have to be a bad thing, and it doesen't have to be hidden either. Bias is only a bad thing when the author decides to cloak the information that might endanger the credibility of their product; i.e. information that is impossible to be twisted or warped or that exposes the bias. Bias is a bad thing when it is passed off as truth. This blog is biased; the BNP are biased. Labour are biased and so is Colonel Dannat, the ex-Army head who recently joined the Conservatives. The Guardian is biased and the Telegraph is likewise polarised. It's human nature to think in terms of one's best interests; the BBC manages to stay biased because it draws a fine line between news and opinion, comedy and tragedy; the reason that the tabloids are so often maligned is that they too often blur this line and present someone's (intrinsically biased) opinion as the cold, hard, irrefutable truth.
It's an easy path to go down. "Man crashes car" is an easy example - a man has crashed a car. But once you pad out the story, add in a few quotes, you invite bias into the mix. Take a quote from the RAC, the council and say, his wife. The RAC, a commercial organisation can be taken for granted as biased towards their insurance policies and marketing efforts. The council, depending on their party affiliation, might comment on there not being a need to worry about the safety of roads, etc. His wife has concerns about the fact that her hubby has managed to wrap the Volvo around a tree. However, present the council quote as the primary source of information- then juxtapose it against the wife's opinion - and you can now headline the story "WIFE RECALLS CAR CRASH HORROR, COUNCIL DOESEN'T CARE" or something like that. I'm not great at headlines. But this is what papers do all the time. Just a few words either side of a quote can discredit it or give it supreme authority. Put that quote at the front end of an article and the entire story is then hijacked by the presence of that person's credibility.
I know that was an entirely simplified (and not brilliant) version of how you could skew an article to your own personal or editorial slant, but my conclusion is: don't trust the media - however much it reflects our society. Most of what is written in the papers is thoughroughly against the Code, anyway.
Bias, huh? I think people need to learn one day that just because something/someone says something you don't like, doesen't mean they're biased. Or to accept that fundamentally, they are biased. You're biased, I'm biased - If we didn't have our own opinions we'd be horrid pale clones with albino eyes and enthusiastic work ethics. Bias doesen't have to be a bad thing, and it doesen't have to be hidden either. Bias is only a bad thing when the author decides to cloak the information that might endanger the credibility of their product; i.e. information that is impossible to be twisted or warped or that exposes the bias. Bias is a bad thing when it is passed off as truth. This blog is biased; the BNP are biased. Labour are biased and so is Colonel Dannat, the ex-Army head who recently joined the Conservatives. The Guardian is biased and the Telegraph is likewise polarised. It's human nature to think in terms of one's best interests; the BBC manages to stay biased because it draws a fine line between news and opinion, comedy and tragedy; the reason that the tabloids are so often maligned is that they too often blur this line and present someone's (intrinsically biased) opinion as the cold, hard, irrefutable truth.
It's an easy path to go down. "Man crashes car" is an easy example - a man has crashed a car. But once you pad out the story, add in a few quotes, you invite bias into the mix. Take a quote from the RAC, the council and say, his wife. The RAC, a commercial organisation can be taken for granted as biased towards their insurance policies and marketing efforts. The council, depending on their party affiliation, might comment on there not being a need to worry about the safety of roads, etc. His wife has concerns about the fact that her hubby has managed to wrap the Volvo around a tree. However, present the council quote as the primary source of information- then juxtapose it against the wife's opinion - and you can now headline the story "WIFE RECALLS CAR CRASH HORROR, COUNCIL DOESEN'T CARE" or something like that. I'm not great at headlines. But this is what papers do all the time. Just a few words either side of a quote can discredit it or give it supreme authority. Put that quote at the front end of an article and the entire story is then hijacked by the presence of that person's credibility.
I know that was an entirely simplified (and not brilliant) version of how you could skew an article to your own personal or editorial slant, but my conclusion is: don't trust the media - however much it reflects our society. Most of what is written in the papers is thoughroughly against the Code, anyway.
Friday, 23 October 2009
Question Time
So, in the aftermath of BBC One's Question Time last night, the BNP have announced that they had the biggest recruitment night in their history as 3000 new members signed up. Having watched the programme, I found it simply reinforced my view that Nick Griffin is a horrid, horrid man with repulsive views. But I can quite easily see how others could percieve otherwise; Question Time was quite clearly, geared towards giving him a kicking - rightly so - but it wasn't a fair match. Most of the questions were aimed towards exposing the BNP's racist core - rightly so - but they still ignored the "immigration question" that fuels the BNP's politics and is the downfall of every party manifesto in Britain. You either sound weak or you sound racist - not because there isn't a middle ground, and not because it's some PC-brigade conspiracy; there are no clear solutions.
Britain is an island. It's got a sea around it, and not too far away, there's all of Western Europe. Therefore anyone with a boat, kayak or pedalo can gain access to our nation; the only way of keeping all the immigrants out is to build a giant concrete wall around the entire country. So you either try and espouse tighter border checks; harsher criteria for asylum - which inevitably hurts innocent refugees, or you decide that you're going to deport anyone who isn't white.
I also think that the problem of immigration has been vastly misrepresented by the media as a whole; irresponsible scare stories about migrant baby-booms or complete lies about immigrants going to the top of the housing lists just exasperbate the fear. In fact, recent statistics show the annual migration to Britain overall has dropped; the recent study claiming that the population will rise to 70 million by 2029 shouldn't be that much of a shock - it's roughly 65m now. 5m over twenty years isn't a terrfiying rise, considering the advances that have - and will continue to happen, making our lives longer - and of course, remembering that white people have children too.
Griffin was deliberately ambushed on Question Time. However; his opponents were not political heavyweights. At times they dissolved into bickering amongst themselves and Baroness Warsi came across as as much as a homophobe than Little Hitler himself. A better politician could have fought back - and would have fought back. Griffin to an extent, played up to the victim status. The BBC were ultimately right to allow him on air; he has been elected, and has a right to express his views, however odious. It is not in the Director General's authority to deny him that. Some have called for the BNP to be banned from media exposure like Sinn Fein in the 80's - the difference then was that Sinn Fein were trying to pull a Guy Fawkes. Even so, freedom of speech does not guarantee a place on Question Time just because you want it. I'm sure the Greens or UKIP, or any of the independant MEP/MP's would have jumped at the chance to lay into Nick.
The BNP won't probably be featured on the programme for years to come; in the long-run, it will have dealt them a heavy blow. And to claims that the audience was overtly hostile; the whole point in the QT audience is that it represents a cross-section of society; and the society of the host city. The majority of British people do not support the BNP, in fact it is only a very small minority that do; proportionally they won't ever get the same level of support as the Conservatives so they can't exactly complain. London has more ethnic minorities than anywhere else because it's our capital. But it wasn't just Muslim or Black people twisting the knife; white people hate him too. Griffin would probably put that down to a liberal elitist conspiracy - quite clearly there is no such thing (liberalism is fundamentally the opposite of an elite; he attempts to demonise the left because the majority of the country is Right. "Intelligensia", really? Being intelligent is not a crime).
Overall, the programme exposed the BNP, and Griffin as idiotic, conspiracy theorist jackasses who don't believe in the Holocaust and use playground politics - "My dad went to war and yours didn't" - as solutions. Their leader is nothing less than a scheming, vicious, malignant boil on the face of British politics and the worst kind of elitist politician (the guy went to Cambridge so he is hardly "one of us"); quotes in the show exposed his intention to hide the fascist heart of his party with a patriotic facade. It is not racist to be nationalistic, but the thought processes that lead one to the conclusion that one person who belongs to one nation is better than a person who belongs to a different nation is a very dangerous path indeed.
Britain is an island. It's got a sea around it, and not too far away, there's all of Western Europe. Therefore anyone with a boat, kayak or pedalo can gain access to our nation; the only way of keeping all the immigrants out is to build a giant concrete wall around the entire country. So you either try and espouse tighter border checks; harsher criteria for asylum - which inevitably hurts innocent refugees, or you decide that you're going to deport anyone who isn't white.
I also think that the problem of immigration has been vastly misrepresented by the media as a whole; irresponsible scare stories about migrant baby-booms or complete lies about immigrants going to the top of the housing lists just exasperbate the fear. In fact, recent statistics show the annual migration to Britain overall has dropped; the recent study claiming that the population will rise to 70 million by 2029 shouldn't be that much of a shock - it's roughly 65m now. 5m over twenty years isn't a terrfiying rise, considering the advances that have - and will continue to happen, making our lives longer - and of course, remembering that white people have children too.
Griffin was deliberately ambushed on Question Time. However; his opponents were not political heavyweights. At times they dissolved into bickering amongst themselves and Baroness Warsi came across as as much as a homophobe than Little Hitler himself. A better politician could have fought back - and would have fought back. Griffin to an extent, played up to the victim status. The BBC were ultimately right to allow him on air; he has been elected, and has a right to express his views, however odious. It is not in the Director General's authority to deny him that. Some have called for the BNP to be banned from media exposure like Sinn Fein in the 80's - the difference then was that Sinn Fein were trying to pull a Guy Fawkes. Even so, freedom of speech does not guarantee a place on Question Time just because you want it. I'm sure the Greens or UKIP, or any of the independant MEP/MP's would have jumped at the chance to lay into Nick.
The BNP won't probably be featured on the programme for years to come; in the long-run, it will have dealt them a heavy blow. And to claims that the audience was overtly hostile; the whole point in the QT audience is that it represents a cross-section of society; and the society of the host city. The majority of British people do not support the BNP, in fact it is only a very small minority that do; proportionally they won't ever get the same level of support as the Conservatives so they can't exactly complain. London has more ethnic minorities than anywhere else because it's our capital. But it wasn't just Muslim or Black people twisting the knife; white people hate him too. Griffin would probably put that down to a liberal elitist conspiracy - quite clearly there is no such thing (liberalism is fundamentally the opposite of an elite; he attempts to demonise the left because the majority of the country is Right. "Intelligensia", really? Being intelligent is not a crime).
Overall, the programme exposed the BNP, and Griffin as idiotic, conspiracy theorist jackasses who don't believe in the Holocaust and use playground politics - "My dad went to war and yours didn't" - as solutions. Their leader is nothing less than a scheming, vicious, malignant boil on the face of British politics and the worst kind of elitist politician (the guy went to Cambridge so he is hardly "one of us"); quotes in the show exposed his intention to hide the fascist heart of his party with a patriotic facade. It is not racist to be nationalistic, but the thought processes that lead one to the conclusion that one person who belongs to one nation is better than a person who belongs to a different nation is a very dangerous path indeed.
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
Cod and Chips, Please
Autumn here in Cheshire is beautiful. The leaves rain from the trees like a golden, dizzying, decaying blizzard of reds, greens and bronzes; the horse chestnuts fill up the gutters and the sky is a cold, steely cerulean blue. It's got that wonderful balance of warmth and brisk chill that I love. It's by far the best season - until the rainclouds roll in. Since winters in England are generally fairly dry, rain is not actually that common a sight; but the gloomy combination of dark skies and lower temperatures means it feels like the world is just one continuous weather front. If I had my way then it would constantly be September 29th. However, if I had my way, the world would be a lot different.
Only about 15% of my brain is sensible. Thankfully it's that 15% that I use to cook, take exams, cross roads, join Greenpeace and drive cars with; the other 85% though, is a different story. The first segment tells me that climate change is akin to apocalyptic catastrophe, that until electoral reform is brought in universal suffrage will be defanged, that child labour standards in the third world are appalling, that the Daily Mail et al are a mockery to the freedom of speech, and that the BNP are a disgusting, putrid, vile stain on British democracy. I could go on. However, the majority of my mind tells me otherwise. Knowing the aforementioned facts, it tends to warp their significance slightly, in a savagely cynical yet undeniably amusing way. I mean, oil. We should probably start to cycle everywhere, plant a tree everyday and stop importing our apples from New Zealand or the Arctic or wherever they come from. However, I happen to like oil.
Oil is great! Without oil we wouldn't have any lights on, or be able to fly airplanes, and James Bond would have a really hard job blowing up Blofeldt's base with a single, well placed shot. It has so many uses, we'd be stuck without it - we went to war for it, for heaven's sake. And as a nation, we have a history of invading places for things we need; Clive of India subjugated an entire subcontinent just for tea. Oil deserves more respect than you ungrateful sods attach to it. You want to just leave it there?! It's expensive stuff! You wouldn't just leave your television in the middle of the Iraqi desert, would you?
I think, that there's no point in going cold turkey when (metaphorically speaking) there's lots of freshly slaughtered birds waiting to be eaten hot. What's the point? The Earth has already (probably) gone over the tipping-point with regards to the C02 balance in the atmosphere; the fact that our climate will begin to morph over the next century is now, almost certainly, unstoppable. And even if that watershed moment has not yet been reached, the United States and China and Russia and France and all those rednecks in Texas won't ever reach a meaningful agreement. We all love cars, holidays, carrots, bananas, cheap toys and tanks too much to give them up. So I propose we hold a massive party in the middle of say, Macclesfield Forest. Not just any party in a forest; an oil-party. Giant 40ft speakers will be powered by incredibly inefficiant oil-generators, the fireworks will have petroleum instead of gunpowder inside, diesel will run black in the rivers and giant faucets and taps will pour kerosene down the hill so that we can make a massive oily rainbow. Everyone coming must be made to leave all their incandescant lightbulbs on and their televisions running all week.
It'll be brilliant. And when the dawn breaks, we'll have no oil left. At a point in the midst of our bleary-eyed, petroleum-induced hangover, we'll realise it's all gone. No nitrogen oxide to make our eyes sting and our lungs hurt when exhaust fumes are spewed from an articulated lorry, no fish getting poisoned because some tosser was playing with petrol too close to the garden pond. No more boy-racers getting minced in their hatchbacks trying to emulate Vin Diesel and no more supertankers nicked by Somalian upstarts who reckon they're Blackbeard the Pirate. Sure, the climate might get fucked; who wants mediocre weather anyway? I'm all for a hurricane season in Blackpool if it means we get a nice summer once in a while. And once the oil is burnt up, we can start rebuilding civilisation with with windmills and solar panels and hydroelectrics and tidal power, and in general make a nice little utopia for ourselves.
*Having just watched End of the Line, I was shocked to learn that by 2048 - when I'll be 56 - there will be no fish left. None. We will have eaten them all. So gobble all the sushi you can while there's still time!
Only about 15% of my brain is sensible. Thankfully it's that 15% that I use to cook, take exams, cross roads, join Greenpeace and drive cars with; the other 85% though, is a different story. The first segment tells me that climate change is akin to apocalyptic catastrophe, that until electoral reform is brought in universal suffrage will be defanged, that child labour standards in the third world are appalling, that the Daily Mail et al are a mockery to the freedom of speech, and that the BNP are a disgusting, putrid, vile stain on British democracy. I could go on. However, the majority of my mind tells me otherwise. Knowing the aforementioned facts, it tends to warp their significance slightly, in a savagely cynical yet undeniably amusing way. I mean, oil. We should probably start to cycle everywhere, plant a tree everyday and stop importing our apples from New Zealand or the Arctic or wherever they come from. However, I happen to like oil.
Oil is great! Without oil we wouldn't have any lights on, or be able to fly airplanes, and James Bond would have a really hard job blowing up Blofeldt's base with a single, well placed shot. It has so many uses, we'd be stuck without it - we went to war for it, for heaven's sake. And as a nation, we have a history of invading places for things we need; Clive of India subjugated an entire subcontinent just for tea. Oil deserves more respect than you ungrateful sods attach to it. You want to just leave it there?! It's expensive stuff! You wouldn't just leave your television in the middle of the Iraqi desert, would you?
I think, that there's no point in going cold turkey when (metaphorically speaking) there's lots of freshly slaughtered birds waiting to be eaten hot. What's the point? The Earth has already (probably) gone over the tipping-point with regards to the C02 balance in the atmosphere; the fact that our climate will begin to morph over the next century is now, almost certainly, unstoppable. And even if that watershed moment has not yet been reached, the United States and China and Russia and France and all those rednecks in Texas won't ever reach a meaningful agreement. We all love cars, holidays, carrots, bananas, cheap toys and tanks too much to give them up. So I propose we hold a massive party in the middle of say, Macclesfield Forest. Not just any party in a forest; an oil-party. Giant 40ft speakers will be powered by incredibly inefficiant oil-generators, the fireworks will have petroleum instead of gunpowder inside, diesel will run black in the rivers and giant faucets and taps will pour kerosene down the hill so that we can make a massive oily rainbow. Everyone coming must be made to leave all their incandescant lightbulbs on and their televisions running all week.
It'll be brilliant. And when the dawn breaks, we'll have no oil left. At a point in the midst of our bleary-eyed, petroleum-induced hangover, we'll realise it's all gone. No nitrogen oxide to make our eyes sting and our lungs hurt when exhaust fumes are spewed from an articulated lorry, no fish getting poisoned because some tosser was playing with petrol too close to the garden pond. No more boy-racers getting minced in their hatchbacks trying to emulate Vin Diesel and no more supertankers nicked by Somalian upstarts who reckon they're Blackbeard the Pirate. Sure, the climate might get fucked; who wants mediocre weather anyway? I'm all for a hurricane season in Blackpool if it means we get a nice summer once in a while. And once the oil is burnt up, we can start rebuilding civilisation with with windmills and solar panels and hydroelectrics and tidal power, and in general make a nice little utopia for ourselves.
*Having just watched End of the Line, I was shocked to learn that by 2048 - when I'll be 56 - there will be no fish left. None. We will have eaten them all. So gobble all the sushi you can while there's still time!
Monday, 19 October 2009
It's Only A Model
Right, I got pointed to a silly video the other day from the EDL (that's the English Defence League/moron patrol) and one of the sentences in there, if you bother watching it, says something about a "shadowy cabal". I think they were referring to cabinet government. The whole point is that it's small and confidential. Y'know , so Guy Fawkes inpersinators don't know where our nukes are and stuff like that.
The whole gist of the video is that King Arthur has been reincarnated... as Prince William. Yes, the guy who arrives at stag dos in helicopters, is going to reunite the Knights of the Round Table and lead the descendants of Camelot to freedom (oh and by the way, King Arthur and his mates are thought, if they were at all real, to be Welsh. So you anglo-saxon hooligans are getting left behind). If you don't like the government that got voted in, don't have a hissy fit and start a revolution about it. That's the sort of reaction Alan Hansen gives when United beat Liverpool 4-0. These chaps have got their wires crossed; firstly they accuse every Muslim in Britain (note the medieval spelling "Moslem"; this is 2009, not 1095) of attempting to usurp the "indigeneous inhabitants" and then calling for a Royalist-led rebellion against the elected officials of the lands. And then they posted the devious plot on YouTube. Really subtle.
The whole gist of the video is that King Arthur has been reincarnated... as Prince William. Yes, the guy who arrives at stag dos in helicopters, is going to reunite the Knights of the Round Table and lead the descendants of Camelot to freedom (oh and by the way, King Arthur and his mates are thought, if they were at all real, to be Welsh. So you anglo-saxon hooligans are getting left behind). If you don't like the government that got voted in, don't have a hissy fit and start a revolution about it. That's the sort of reaction Alan Hansen gives when United beat Liverpool 4-0. These chaps have got their wires crossed; firstly they accuse every Muslim in Britain (note the medieval spelling "Moslem"; this is 2009, not 1095) of attempting to usurp the "indigeneous inhabitants" and then calling for a Royalist-led rebellion against the elected officials of the lands. And then they posted the devious plot on YouTube. Really subtle.
Sunday, 18 October 2009
Rebellion
One of the headlines on the Guardian's website today was "Royal Mail hires 30,000 workers to crush strike". Now I'm really on Peter "Beyond Anger" Mandelson on this one. Not getting mail is kind of annoying, and the fact that the RM is trying to make our mail harder, better, faster, stronger is not annoying. Ergo, the workers striking in a luddite show of defiance really grates with me. If I were the employer in this scenario, I too would not be able to help myself from wanting to crush the insolent proles with an army of mercanary landsknecht posties.
The fact that it's the Royal Mail accentuates the idea that the elite is massing its forces to smash the revolution; the Imperial Guard will begin delivering your milk next week. Now obviously I don't believe that Postman Pat and his chums are raising arms in a neo-Leninist plot to take over; after all the loyal postman is hardly the stereotypical repressed man. And it is a futile coup, since now the Queen has ordered her 30,000 stormtroopers into the sorting depos and post offices around the realm. The serfs have squandered their emancipation. "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a mail-bag stamping on a human face - forever."
The fact that it's the Royal Mail accentuates the idea that the elite is massing its forces to smash the revolution; the Imperial Guard will begin delivering your milk next week. Now obviously I don't believe that Postman Pat and his chums are raising arms in a neo-Leninist plot to take over; after all the loyal postman is hardly the stereotypical repressed man. And it is a futile coup, since now the Queen has ordered her 30,000 stormtroopers into the sorting depos and post offices around the realm. The serfs have squandered their emancipation. "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a mail-bag stamping on a human face - forever."
Saturday, 17 October 2009
Harry Potter and the Night of Zombie Lesbian Soccer Highlights 2009 Flaming Sword X
I was watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince before and it occurred to me; the whole "franchise" has turned into the cinematic equivalent of a parish production of Bugsy Malone. Indeed, the feeling that JK Rowling's books have been transformed from masterpieces into the All Saints' Amateur Thespian Society's next sell-out performance is accentuated by the ownership that the mainstream media now claims over it; its not a film anymore, it's a British film. That means we should all support it because it is produced by Pinewood studios or stars Colin Firth as Mr Darcy, and therefore has the moral high ground. Child actors, cheesy morals and a man with a beard who dies at the end (yeah, I'm comparing Dumbledore to Jesus, essentially making Jesus gay. You got a problem with that, Jan Moir?), it's got all the ingredients of a second-rate period drama. The sort of thing that gets shown on ITV4 on Boxing Day. Thing is, as a child I read and cherished the original books; I've still got the whole set on my bookcase, next to the Artemis Fowl trilogy and the first six Alex Rider books. But since most books that get turned into films end up losing all trace of the charm and wonder they once held (the exception being Lord of the Rings and Children of Men), I was always doomed to hate Daniel Radcliffe with a biblical vengeance. And when I say biblical, I mean I want an angelic horde to charge from the sky and deliver righteous, Old Testament-style justice on that pathetic excuse for an actor.
Supermarkets, eh? As much as I feel loyal to Tesco, it really is man-hell. I was there to help mum with the shopping on Friday and I basically saw first-hand the three castes in supermarket society.
Firstly, the mothers. They know where everything is, even when all the aisles just got rearranged; it's a female sixth sense - know how The Stig always faces magnetic north? Well women always face towards the checkout tills. I think they must have some batlike sonar system implanted from conception in their brains so that they can navigate in a shop. Of course, once they're outside they are useless. My mum couldn't find the car in the carpark (it was 100 metres away from the exit - straight forward!), but this is also backed up by the fact that they can't read maps whatsoever.
Then there's the grandmas. Often accompanied by their married-away daughters, they lurch around the aisles, face thrust forward to increase vision, repeating past conversations and forgetting to switch their hearing-aids on. They lick their teeth and ponder for hours at the rotissery counter, deciding precisely which slice of crumbed Wiltshire ham is the best and cheapest. Tesco ain't Liddl so you see a better class of nana there, but it's all the same. "78p for a loaf of bread? You young 'uns don't know anything today! My mother taught me to hunt, kill and tin my dinner - nowadays you can't buy anything that isn't frozen!!! Back in my day you had to dance for your food!" et cetera et cetera.
Finally, the men. A mixture of husbands and bachelors, they invariably walk around in a bewildered state of shock. I saw one poor soul standing dazed and confused in the frozen meat section with just a bottle of Abbot's Ale and a lipstick. The little tyke didn't even have a trolley - he didn't stand a chance. These unloved blokes are usually victims of neglect; their hearltess wives give them a list and a postcode for the Satnav and push them on their way, without a word of warning or a care in the world. What you ladies don't understand is that the multitude of foods, of packaging, of instructions - it's all foreign to a male mind, which is kept stimulated usually on a diet of beer, Dave and football punditry. But here, in the vast wasteland of Tesco, the brutal reality of Asda, or the unforgiving wilderness of Sainsbury's, we are lost. Cut off from the Matix and sent out alone into a world of buy-one-get-one-free deals and clubcard points, we can't survive for long. We haven't been taught the ancient art of packing bags so that the vegetables and the raw meat don't collide, or that bread should always go on top so that it remains unsquashed.
Some stores we can cope with - Blockbuster or BNQ, for example. But that's because those are man-friendly environments, nature-reserves to ease us into the terrifying reality of exchanging money in return for goods and/or services. They have entire sections devoted to paint, or screwdrivers - and aisles of films with names like "The Night of Zombie Lesbian Soccer Highlights 2009 Flaming Sword X" (I tried to sum up the gist of every man-orientated film ever. In this one, Silvester Stallone stars as an ex-marine dropped into Iraq, armed with only a rolled-up copy of The Sun, to rescue a beautiful Eastern European singer from dastardly Argentinian Neo-Nazicommunist guerillas who happen to be brilliant footballers). There are a few men - proper city-slickers who look great in suits - foodies - but they already know to go to Waitrose, where everything is simple, organic and expensive. There, you don't have to think about finding a bargain because there simply aren't any.
This lack of supermarket-awareness is what makes men flawed. If we had a head for multitasking, then the world would probably be perfect. Probably.
I feel weirdly loyal to certain brands. Tesco, Twinings, Orange, the BBC and Trident, as well as Masterfoods (the company that produces Milky Way, Mars, Galaxy, and Magic Stars) I won't betray. This has and will continue to lead me down the crazy-paved garden path to financial ruin but for some deep psychological reason locked in the core of my mind, they taste better. I think it's linked to that effect you get when you pay more for a fancy meal. It just tastes better. Your pounds are working to make your tastebuds feel upmarket, and they're doing a good job. So I will continue to munch on Penguins instead of Tesco Chocolate Sandwich biscuits, and carry on smothering Philadaelphia Spread on my sandwiches instead of using the own-brand Soft Cheese Spread. And why? Because I'm cool.
****
Supermarkets, eh? As much as I feel loyal to Tesco, it really is man-hell. I was there to help mum with the shopping on Friday and I basically saw first-hand the three castes in supermarket society.
Firstly, the mothers. They know where everything is, even when all the aisles just got rearranged; it's a female sixth sense - know how The Stig always faces magnetic north? Well women always face towards the checkout tills. I think they must have some batlike sonar system implanted from conception in their brains so that they can navigate in a shop. Of course, once they're outside they are useless. My mum couldn't find the car in the carpark (it was 100 metres away from the exit - straight forward!), but this is also backed up by the fact that they can't read maps whatsoever.
Then there's the grandmas. Often accompanied by their married-away daughters, they lurch around the aisles, face thrust forward to increase vision, repeating past conversations and forgetting to switch their hearing-aids on. They lick their teeth and ponder for hours at the rotissery counter, deciding precisely which slice of crumbed Wiltshire ham is the best and cheapest. Tesco ain't Liddl so you see a better class of nana there, but it's all the same. "78p for a loaf of bread? You young 'uns don't know anything today! My mother taught me to hunt, kill and tin my dinner - nowadays you can't buy anything that isn't frozen!!! Back in my day you had to dance for your food!" et cetera et cetera.
Finally, the men. A mixture of husbands and bachelors, they invariably walk around in a bewildered state of shock. I saw one poor soul standing dazed and confused in the frozen meat section with just a bottle of Abbot's Ale and a lipstick. The little tyke didn't even have a trolley - he didn't stand a chance. These unloved blokes are usually victims of neglect; their hearltess wives give them a list and a postcode for the Satnav and push them on their way, without a word of warning or a care in the world. What you ladies don't understand is that the multitude of foods, of packaging, of instructions - it's all foreign to a male mind, which is kept stimulated usually on a diet of beer, Dave and football punditry. But here, in the vast wasteland of Tesco, the brutal reality of Asda, or the unforgiving wilderness of Sainsbury's, we are lost. Cut off from the Matix and sent out alone into a world of buy-one-get-one-free deals and clubcard points, we can't survive for long. We haven't been taught the ancient art of packing bags so that the vegetables and the raw meat don't collide, or that bread should always go on top so that it remains unsquashed.
Some stores we can cope with - Blockbuster or BNQ, for example. But that's because those are man-friendly environments, nature-reserves to ease us into the terrifying reality of exchanging money in return for goods and/or services. They have entire sections devoted to paint, or screwdrivers - and aisles of films with names like "The Night of Zombie Lesbian Soccer Highlights 2009 Flaming Sword X" (I tried to sum up the gist of every man-orientated film ever. In this one, Silvester Stallone stars as an ex-marine dropped into Iraq, armed with only a rolled-up copy of The Sun, to rescue a beautiful Eastern European singer from dastardly Argentinian Neo-Nazicommunist guerillas who happen to be brilliant footballers). There are a few men - proper city-slickers who look great in suits - foodies - but they already know to go to Waitrose, where everything is simple, organic and expensive. There, you don't have to think about finding a bargain because there simply aren't any.
This lack of supermarket-awareness is what makes men flawed. If we had a head for multitasking, then the world would probably be perfect. Probably.
I feel weirdly loyal to certain brands. Tesco, Twinings, Orange, the BBC and Trident, as well as Masterfoods (the company that produces Milky Way, Mars, Galaxy, and Magic Stars) I won't betray. This has and will continue to lead me down the crazy-paved garden path to financial ruin but for some deep psychological reason locked in the core of my mind, they taste better. I think it's linked to that effect you get when you pay more for a fancy meal. It just tastes better. Your pounds are working to make your tastebuds feel upmarket, and they're doing a good job. So I will continue to munch on Penguins instead of Tesco Chocolate Sandwich biscuits, and carry on smothering Philadaelphia Spread on my sandwiches instead of using the own-brand Soft Cheese Spread. And why? Because I'm cool.
Monday, 5 October 2009
Engine Stall
Some people are effortlessly insufferable on television. That can be said for Jeremy Clarkson. I happen to quite like his articles in the newspapers because they bring a degree of humour and sophistication to what is basically saying "this car goes faster than that one but I like that one anyway because it's red and it has a Ferrari sign on the front". He's got an excellent flair for satire and biting humour, his vocabulary is inexhaustive and ultimately, he makes boring machines fun.
He is also part of the media - which has been campaiging steadfastedly ever since Henry T. Ford sold his first automobile - to make cars sexy. Let's face it; an engine is not cool. It's a complicated piece of machinery and understanding it, however a commendable achievement, is not going to get you laid. However, after a century of oil, deadly crashes and advertising, we now think - all of us - that driving a car over the allowed speed limit and therefore endangering children, senior citizens - everyone - is awesome. That's why Top Gear continues to linger on with its staple diet of drag races, recycled Stig-similes and short films consisting of Richard Hammond shouting exaggerations about a car that goes faster than last week's car.
The reason Clarkson is annoying on Top Gear is because he drops the clever jokes and the genuine expertise he demonstrates in his articles. He's a proper journalist and bantering with James Blunt about his ten Land Rovers should be beneath him. It is obnoxiously self-centered ("Let's discuss how many cars we have") and the oafs in the audience clearly worship him with the same kind of unswerving devotion that spurred the Church on to burn witches in the Middle Ages. And what's seriously foul-smelling is the impotent political rants he has. The odd joke in the Telegraph doesen't matter because the Telegraph is already on a right-wing slant and is steadily wading into Daily Mail territory. But the snide comments he makes while driving are just stupid and immature; yelling "HAHA I'm over thirty in a residential area" when the production team have obviously closed the road off. I bet Gordon was shaking his fists at that, you modern-day Robin Hood!
And when he blew up that speed camera in that advert of his - what a crusader against 'elf-n-safety he is! Exploding deactivated government property on a private racetrack! Rage Against The Machine eat your heart out, because with political firebrands like Jeremy, it's a mystery where all this apathy comes from.
Anyway, to conclude, I hope he goes for a country drive with Cameron in the back seat and crashes and dies and gets set on fire. And I hope David survives and sparks a speed camera-campaign in the Express and "Middle England" wherever the hell that may be (I assume it's some landlocked Saxon paradise where "indiginous" inhabitants can drink tea and scones and crush the proletariat with rolled-up copies of the BNP constitution) suffers a horrible famine.
He is also part of the media - which has been campaiging steadfastedly ever since Henry T. Ford sold his first automobile - to make cars sexy. Let's face it; an engine is not cool. It's a complicated piece of machinery and understanding it, however a commendable achievement, is not going to get you laid. However, after a century of oil, deadly crashes and advertising, we now think - all of us - that driving a car over the allowed speed limit and therefore endangering children, senior citizens - everyone - is awesome. That's why Top Gear continues to linger on with its staple diet of drag races, recycled Stig-similes and short films consisting of Richard Hammond shouting exaggerations about a car that goes faster than last week's car.
The reason Clarkson is annoying on Top Gear is because he drops the clever jokes and the genuine expertise he demonstrates in his articles. He's a proper journalist and bantering with James Blunt about his ten Land Rovers should be beneath him. It is obnoxiously self-centered ("Let's discuss how many cars we have") and the oafs in the audience clearly worship him with the same kind of unswerving devotion that spurred the Church on to burn witches in the Middle Ages. And what's seriously foul-smelling is the impotent political rants he has. The odd joke in the Telegraph doesen't matter because the Telegraph is already on a right-wing slant and is steadily wading into Daily Mail territory. But the snide comments he makes while driving are just stupid and immature; yelling "HAHA I'm over thirty in a residential area" when the production team have obviously closed the road off. I bet Gordon was shaking his fists at that, you modern-day Robin Hood!
And when he blew up that speed camera in that advert of his - what a crusader against 'elf-n-safety he is! Exploding deactivated government property on a private racetrack! Rage Against The Machine eat your heart out, because with political firebrands like Jeremy, it's a mystery where all this apathy comes from.
Anyway, to conclude, I hope he goes for a country drive with Cameron in the back seat and crashes and dies and gets set on fire. And I hope David survives and sparks a speed camera-campaign in the Express and "Middle England" wherever the hell that may be (I assume it's some landlocked Saxon paradise where "indiginous" inhabitants can drink tea and scones and crush the proletariat with rolled-up copies of the BNP constitution) suffers a horrible famine.
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
When Violence Is Permissable II
Piers Morgan. Two words that deserve to be erased from history, from time, from existence. The guy is the stereotypical celeb-phoney. And it's really see-through; the guy proves he's "in touch" (that strange status we all want our politicians to have... do we really want the prime minister to be a Special Brew-swilling pielord?) by writing a column in the Daily Mail, the most hatefilled sack o' crap of them all. Of course the Star and the Sport are complete bollocks too, but they don't lie about it - they advertise porn in the banner and soap-news in the headline.
Anyway, he is the worst excuse for a journalist I've ever seen. When it comes to the lying-papers like The Sun or The Mail, one can't become too furious because it takes a fair amount of skill to tell the truth selectively than tell the whole truth - it's not easy to make a falsity seem credible. But in his recent interview with Katie Price, and the adverts showing him on TV as the next Michael Parkinson - he showed us how useless he really is. In the former - he completely kowtowed to Queen Bitch, asking ridiculously tame questions and even at one point admiring her breasts. It was like some sick self-gratification excercise for both of them, showing his absolute lack of a spine and her lack of dignity. One of the questions vaguely attacked Jordan's shameless carousel-ride through the tabloid media, with divorcee Peter who has (not surprisingly) come out top on the PR war. In response, she just lifted up her top to show her bra, surprising Piers with this sort of fix-all solution to any problem - who then gave a sort of "common sense, I guess" shrug.
This is all part of ITV's constant, mind-draining self-promotion, and I'm bored of it. I shall now go and watch Newsnight (a current affairs programme with backbone!) on my new television, which makes my house look small.
Anyway, he is the worst excuse for a journalist I've ever seen. When it comes to the lying-papers like The Sun or The Mail, one can't become too furious because it takes a fair amount of skill to tell the truth selectively than tell the whole truth - it's not easy to make a falsity seem credible. But in his recent interview with Katie Price, and the adverts showing him on TV as the next Michael Parkinson - he showed us how useless he really is. In the former - he completely kowtowed to Queen Bitch, asking ridiculously tame questions and even at one point admiring her breasts. It was like some sick self-gratification excercise for both of them, showing his absolute lack of a spine and her lack of dignity. One of the questions vaguely attacked Jordan's shameless carousel-ride through the tabloid media, with divorcee Peter who has (not surprisingly) come out top on the PR war. In response, she just lifted up her top to show her bra, surprising Piers with this sort of fix-all solution to any problem - who then gave a sort of "common sense, I guess" shrug.
This is all part of ITV's constant, mind-draining self-promotion, and I'm bored of it. I shall now go and watch Newsnight (a current affairs programme with backbone!) on my new television, which makes my house look small.
Monday, 21 September 2009
Libellious
Right, this sounds unfathomably sad and nerdy, but I'm really looking forward to the return of Question Time this week. It has the biting political comment of Newsnight but with often more exciting debates, plus the fact that, since they aren't scared off by the presence of newshound bruiser Jeremy Paxman, it attracts better political heavyweights. The highlight will undoubtably be the episode in which Nick Griffin, diabolical leader of neo-fascist thuggery the British National Party, wets his pants on live television from pure excitement. If he doesen't encounter a case of incontinence on the tellybox, at the least, he'll shout some very entertaining lies that resemble the script from a certain Little Britain sketch.
On the subject of idiots, I noticed in the in the Manchester Derby on Sunday that Craig Bellamy seems to be aiming for the recently-paroled look with tattoos all the way up his arm. Classic style, there. Later, true to form, he punched a fan. What a lovely man! What a brilliant role model! Of course, this incident graced the front page of the red tops this morning - glancing through the headlines whilst looking for chocolate I was bemused to find Diana gracing the third Express cover since last week. Is there any wonder for the decline in Fleet Street? The woman's been gone for ten years, and they're still going on about conspiracy theories: "She was abducted by Icelandic accountants!". It's not like there isn't any other news, and I don't really believe that anyone is interested or even whipped into the puritanical righteous fury the tabloids adore to trigger.
My paper of choice, The Guardian, refuses to try much harder. It doesen't publish barside speculation about Why All The Foreigners Take Our Jobs (maybe it's because they're at work, and not in the pub?), but it still doesen't do enough proper news. Polly Toynbee does constistently excellent political analysis, partly because she's the only voice shouting on Labour's side - and everything is served with a side order of black humour. But you do get the impression that they're just sitting back, watching everything go to hell with a knowing glint in their eyes. Maybe they're right. Anyway, the Mail was flaunting some bilge about councils welcoming illegal immigrants who eat children's souls (but only WHITE children, mind). What's the point? Why bother, when they're only providing ammunition for ultra-nationalist idiots like the EDL or the BNP? I understand the reasoning behind there being an agenda, I just don't understand the point in continuing the agenda.
It's not even as though racial scaremongering is part of current Conservative ideology, which is something most of the right-wing presshounds have a vested interest in. I guess moaning about it won't do a jot of difference though. There comes a point when you accept that most of the people in Britain are essentially right-wing in the sense that they are scared of change and want traditionality. In thirty years I expect I'll be clinging to my own outdated dogmas and resisting the emancipation of llamas or whatever obscure dystopian leglisation they'll be pushing in 2039. Until then, fingers crossed that Andrew Brons' cousin firebombs The Sun's offices or mangles his legs in an ironic fashion, so that the two paradoxical institutions implode simultaneously.
As a parting shot; I'm getting increasingly envious of writers superior to myself. I understand the words they use, and store them in the mental vernacular bank - but I don't access the database in order to use it in my writing. David Mitchell can be funny with a different word every second whilst I still use "like" too many times in a sentence. Maybe one day I'll be the vocabulary warlock and he'll be drowning in senility, mumbling that I spelt "oroborous" wrong.
On the subject of idiots, I noticed in the in the Manchester Derby on Sunday that Craig Bellamy seems to be aiming for the recently-paroled look with tattoos all the way up his arm. Classic style, there. Later, true to form, he punched a fan. What a lovely man! What a brilliant role model! Of course, this incident graced the front page of the red tops this morning - glancing through the headlines whilst looking for chocolate I was bemused to find Diana gracing the third Express cover since last week. Is there any wonder for the decline in Fleet Street? The woman's been gone for ten years, and they're still going on about conspiracy theories: "She was abducted by Icelandic accountants!". It's not like there isn't any other news, and I don't really believe that anyone is interested or even whipped into the puritanical righteous fury the tabloids adore to trigger.
My paper of choice, The Guardian, refuses to try much harder. It doesen't publish barside speculation about Why All The Foreigners Take Our Jobs (maybe it's because they're at work, and not in the pub?), but it still doesen't do enough proper news. Polly Toynbee does constistently excellent political analysis, partly because she's the only voice shouting on Labour's side - and everything is served with a side order of black humour. But you do get the impression that they're just sitting back, watching everything go to hell with a knowing glint in their eyes. Maybe they're right. Anyway, the Mail was flaunting some bilge about councils welcoming illegal immigrants who eat children's souls (but only WHITE children, mind). What's the point? Why bother, when they're only providing ammunition for ultra-nationalist idiots like the EDL or the BNP? I understand the reasoning behind there being an agenda, I just don't understand the point in continuing the agenda.
It's not even as though racial scaremongering is part of current Conservative ideology, which is something most of the right-wing presshounds have a vested interest in. I guess moaning about it won't do a jot of difference though. There comes a point when you accept that most of the people in Britain are essentially right-wing in the sense that they are scared of change and want traditionality. In thirty years I expect I'll be clinging to my own outdated dogmas and resisting the emancipation of llamas or whatever obscure dystopian leglisation they'll be pushing in 2039. Until then, fingers crossed that Andrew Brons' cousin firebombs The Sun's offices or mangles his legs in an ironic fashion, so that the two paradoxical institutions implode simultaneously.
As a parting shot; I'm getting increasingly envious of writers superior to myself. I understand the words they use, and store them in the mental vernacular bank - but I don't access the database in order to use it in my writing. David Mitchell can be funny with a different word every second whilst I still use "like" too many times in a sentence. Maybe one day I'll be the vocabulary warlock and he'll be drowning in senility, mumbling that I spelt "oroborous" wrong.
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