Democrat vs Republican joke

A brilliant joke I stumbled upon on the web:

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

"She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be an Obama Democrat."

"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "You must be a Republican."

"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You've risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it's my fault."

Quote of the Day #2

“Having Sarah Palin in office would be like a four year long white water rafting trip: it might kill us but if it doesn’t we’ll end up with a lot of crazy-assed photos.”

From The Onion

Anthony Glees professes his own xenophobic paranoia

Watched a discussion with ‘terrorism expert’ Professor Anthony Glees from Buckingham University. Never have I seen a more ridiculous and revolting 'academic' on television. He condones anti-terror measures that contravene human rights and basic principles of freedom on the basis that “it’s only by holding people who want to destroy the values of this country that we can remain free... the people who are being imprisoned are the people that want the laws and rules of the Taliban to exist in this country”. Firstly, bullshit, many of them have stated their motivation to be vengeance for western interference in the middle east, ideological revolution being very much a secondary, far- off goal. Secondly, he completely fails to consider the fact that suicide bombing is a ridiculous and futile tactic that has absolutely no real military merit and stems only from the pipe-dreams of adolescent angst. He should look back at history and assess how many invasions have been carried out through the random and sporadic bombings of non-military targets, between which huge gaps are left in which everything is rebuilt fine. Blowing up stuff occasionally is not in any way a step towards the complete ideological overhaul of an entire nation. This ridiculous man was eventually shouted down by the rest of the panel, David Mitchell making the valid point that “if he’s trying to make a silly point it will only help you if you let him finish.”

Original interview on episode 2 of 10 'O'Clock Live: scroll through to 35:22 for the discussion in question.

Quote of the Day

“Rupert Murdoch’s not trying to buy the actual sky... although give him time. When he does, rainbows will be pay-per-view, the clouds will rain hate and tits and the sun will be full of shit” – Charlie Brooker on the BSkyB takeover attempt by News International.

Usher in The Age of Nuance

Society hasn't gone wrong exactly, it just needs space enough to branch off and go in every direction possible. This is why marijuana should be legalized in Camden, speed limits should be abolished in Milton Keynes, and the whole of East Anglia should be turned into a giant ball pond.

Tigers and Religion

I have decided that on balance I love religion. I had always been so blinded by my natural irritation at the deluded that I didn’t see things from a wider perspective. A good world is one rich in nuance, in variety, in differences, and just thinking what our society would be like if it lacked all the various religious customs and viewpoints, or what our skylines would look like without all the beautiful religious buildings and temples (fuck the Swiss and their minaret ban), or indeed all the history and theological trivia, it made me very depressed. Religion for me is like having a live tiger on your mantelpiece: it’s amazingly beautiful and deeply fascinating, yet extremely dangerous. Turn your back on that fucker for an instant and it will tear your head off. But on balance I feel it would be worth all the effort and danger just to have a tiger on my mantelpiece. A freakin tiger for chrissakes, wouldn’t you?

'Elf and Safety

Last night I dreamt that whilst I was sleeping some people from the council removed the locks on my door and painted my room pink for ‘health and safety reasons’. I was absolutely incensed, but relieved when I awoke to find my privacy intact. It ties in with a very general point I wish to make: just saying ‘health and safety reasons’ is not an adequate justification for stopping someone doing something, especially if it is in the name of my personal safety alone and not that of others. By all means warn me of the risk, but the final decision is mine to make, and you have no right to take it away from me.

I am aware that certain pundits of the right wing press go on about this subject rather a lot, and I concede that in the extreme cases they are right, but they do labour it a little too much, so this is all I have to say on the matter. When you look at it, this should be enough anyway.

David Cameron and the Biscuity Betrayal

David Cameron has said that his favorite biscuit is the oatcake. Now great leaders like Roosevelt and Churchill are recorded as being eccentric alcoholic manic depressive messes, whereas Hitler didn’t smoke, was teetotal and didn’t like dirty jokes. Mark my words, any man who chooses an oatcake over a chocolate digestive has secret plans for world domination.

The Metropolitan Mercenaries

A friend of mine was at the anti-BNP protests at the BBC in London recenty. The Metropolitan Police were there, up to their despicable tricks. Many did not have ID numbers, and one repeatedly rammed his knee into my friend’s chest without provocation. It has also been discovered that protestors are now treated as ‘domestic extremists’. Their attitude towards the upholders of democracy sickens me.

This....just.....urrgh

Dear god some people have so much money it’s sick. I saw an article on the internet today about a designer selling gold leafed skimming stones. Ordinary, flat rocks, handpicked by the designer himself from the beaches of Italy, coated in 24 carat gold, and each one sold in its own custom made leather pouch, to be skimmed across a body of water at the leisure of some rich complete and utter bastard whose mind-boggling extravagance in the face of so much poverty uniquely qualifies to my mind either him or her to be hacked to death with meat cleavers.

Empty Cameron

David Cameron has at the conservative party conference declared his intention to execute a Regan style shrinking of the state, as if too much state interference is the problem, when in actual fact it was not enough state interference that got us into this mess of a recession in the first place. I have ten years to stack up enough of a nest egg to cushion myself for when Cameron’s own economic collapse piles up around his substanceless ears. I can’t make Cameron out. Just why does he want to be prime minister?

Roll your eyes if you like, but the joke is still on you

The right wing media loves to think of itself as a sensible and realistic voice in the face of the wild dreams of the ‘loony left’. Conservative pundits roll their eyes in mock paternal exasperation at their left wing opponents, as if to say ‘when will they ever learn?. I will never forget a conservative cartoon I saw on the net which demonstrates how perfectly how the right often attempts to marginalise the left. It featured a liberal and a conservative sharing a flat. The conservative is portrayed as neatly dressed and fairly generic, whereas the liberal has a beard, long hair in a pony tail, a vacant look, a spliff clamped between his teeth and uses the word ‘man’ more than is necessary. Ie the conservative is the normal straight laced guy with his head screwed on, and the liberal is a drugged up fruitcake hippy. Left wing projects, like the welfare state are according to their assumption too big, too expensive, too outlandish, and can’t possibly work. We are, as far as they are concerned, a bunch of deluded wishy-washy bleeding heart liberals who can’t be taken seriously by right thinking people.

But a quick glance across the political spectrum shows that it is in fact within the ranks of the right wing that delusion is most rife. I would site climate change denial as a major part of this. James Delingpole, Richard Littlejohn, Melanie Phillips, they are all deeply conservative pundits, and all are vociferous climate change deniers. But the people with the degrees and PhD’s, the scientists, the people who actually know what they are talking about, all see what’s coming, but conservatives seem to think that having their heads in the sand constitutes an accurate world view. Although there is something in the fact that many deniers, Steve Milloy and Pat Michaels being good examples, have been proved to have links with oil corporations. Another example of inherent ignorance in the right wing press’s ideological repertoire is the typically conservative ‘virtue’ of patriotism. Britain had the largest empire the world has ever seen, something right wing pundits seem proud of. But as anyone with a basic knowledge of history knows, the bigger the empire, the more excessive the bloodshed. I’ll mention slavery, the opium wars, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and the fact that we are credited as the inventors of the concentration camp to demonstrate the extremely poor taste of lauding the British Empire days as a proud moment in our history.

The right wing press often makes a chief bugbear out of non-issues, such as immigration. Playing on the fears and prejudices of a trusting readership, newspapers like the Daily Mail create threats and outrages where there aren’t any. Would it surprise any of you to learn that only 2.5% of the British population consists of immigrants, and that most of this number is made up of Australians? This doesn’t seem to matter to conservative columnist Richard Littlejohn, who claimed that immigrants are ‘showered with’ a weekly benefit allowance of an incredible £170, when it is in fact just £33. So just who is it showing a detachment from reality here?

Much of the right wing press, The Times for example, take the free market ideas of that poisonous oligarch fellating anarchist Milton Freidman as gospel, along with the odious IMF and World Bank, despite the fact that experimentations with these ideas led to the economic decimation of South America, the installation of many dictatorships including that of General Pinochet, and more recently the current credit crunch. So who exactly is crazier: the left with its ‘unworkable’ free health service, or the right, with its climate change denial, immigration paranoia and laissez-faire economics which is directly responsible for the current recession. As a friend of mine put it, what kind of credible economic system collapses every ten years?

For many American and British conservative pundits, democratic socialism, socialism, Marxism, communism etc are one and the same thing, and any initiative in that vein, however reasonable, is definitely a leftist conspiracy to overthrow the government and make lentils compulsory. They play hard on remnant McCarthy era paranoia over anything that threatens commercial interests. You only need to look at the hysteria over Obama’s free healthcare package to see what I mean. Stalin, for them, proves once and for all that the left cannot be trusted. But the fact is that the right has had its dictatorships to. The peak achievements of the left are not the brutal regimes of Josef Stalin or Mao Zedong, but Roosevelt’s New Deal, the National Health Service, and other elements of the Welfare State. Every time in history the right has claimed something wasn’t possible, there was the left to say 'No, you are wrong, there is hope, people are good, and a better life is possible'. And what does the right have? Free market economics. Pah.

Labour Party Conference Protest in Brighton

Today I attended the protest outside the Labour Party Conference in Brighton. I merged into one central column of red banners and marched down the pavilion towards the conference centre, which then looped back down the beach. There was a large police presence, some of them mounted wearing riot gear. A sign said ‘exhibitionist marshalling point’, as if we were nothing more than show off nuisances. The march terminated at a stage where a number of people made speeches, some of which were quite good, including one by Green Party leader Caroline Lucas. As this was going on I thought about the reasons I was here, and the reasons why a Labour government would be attacking the public sector, when clamping down on unpaid corporate tax would raise an estimated £40bn. I thought it might be the idea that this method would lead to an exodus of the rich to sunny tax havens that would be putting ministers off. But then I thought, no, there are theories to suggest that the success of the rich may be more down to luck than anyone might have guessed. There is an elite band of people capable of industrial undertakings, but I am willing to bet it is by far and away surplus to the demand of such a limited number of posts. What this means is that if the rich do indeed bugger off to Bermuda or Monaco, we can cheerily say good riddance to bad rubbish, there are plenty more where you came from. Plus the chances are the new boys will be slightly less ruthless and amoral than the last lot.

Stagnation of Belief

I have read a collection of short stories by Ian McEwan titled ‘In Between the Sheets’. They are brilliant. For two of them his mastery of reader expectation is breathtaking. The last story however was the one that got me thinking the most. One of the characters talks about the Bible in what I personally deem to be the only sensible way: psychoanalysis of the original writers. Citing the fact that men are portrayed as in God’s image, and the laughable suggestion that women are more in control of a man’s sexual desires than a man is, she sums it up as “pretty suspicious...a real male fantasy.” The guy with whom she is arguing defends it on account of the fact that for most people the Bible serves as “a coherent set of values that are as good as any other.” But I think McEwan disagrees with this way of thinking. The whole story has themes of boredom and stagnation. Through what I would interpret as a musical metaphor: “I was weary of the music and of myself for playing it...am I still playing this?”, McEwan highlights that there are much better moral codes out there, and much better ways of collating these codes by avoiding the sense of dogmatic exclusivity to one particular text which is endemic in religious thought. There are thousands of novels like this one that teach good lessons, the quality of the prose and how well it rings true being a kind of proof of the author’s worth, and their sensitivity to the truth of life. In this way the study of English Literature is like a more enlightened branch of theology.

The Parable of the Catcher in the Rye

Today I finished ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ by JD Salinger. It is a allegory whose message is summed up in a line by psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel quoted in the book: ‘the mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one’. The book is a parable warning disaffected young men of the dangers of shutting oneself off from the world out of hatred and bitterness, and of the futility of martyrdom. The message exposes the extreme childishness of suicide bombing, and shows the Islamic imams and ayatollahs who condone such acts for what they are: twisted, angry fools who despite their advanced age are stuck permanently in a state of adolescent anger and confusion.

What I find extraordinary is that this book is historically most popular among students, especially as its allegorical message translated would sound like a stern lecture from a father or teacher to most of us. I suspect it’s because some of us feel we can identify with Holden Caulfield, yet the book sets him out as a warning and does not uphold his points of view. Apparently one of the Columbine killers had a copy, which strikes me as odd considering that the books message directly opposes their way of thinking. It seems that as with religious texts, the unhinged construe whatever meaning they like, even if it is in direct contradiction of the overall message of the text they prostrate themselves to.

The book has reinforced something I have for a long time suspected: there is little wisdom can be gained from isolation, only a warping of the mind. These people who live as hermits, proclaiming the spiritual benefits of isolation, are wrong to think their self-enforced ignorance of other people can possibly be of any benefit to them; quite the reverse, it rots their grip on reality.

The Non-Exclusivity of Religious Experience

Paul Theroux, in his book ‘The Great Railway Bazaar’, recounts a conversation he had with a Mr Peeraswamy in the dining car on a night train to Singapore in 1974. He told him of a Tamil festival he had participated in called Thaipusam, in which devotees of the faith parade down the streets with metal skewers through their cheeks and arms. He was there to give thanks to his god Murugam. He said “the god comes inside! We hurry, cannot wait. The padre take the tongue and pop! Pop with the knives, pop with the hooks ready – no blood from knives, not hurting – can even kill me! I not care! The song come and the god come and we don’t know anything. We want to go out, not want to stop. They put knives, hooks, what, and we just walk ready.” His experience, and the mental and physical phenomena that go with it, are not unique. Members of countless faiths, and even some of no specific leaning, have experienced similar ‘spiritual’ moments, in which they are overcome by strong emotion from no apparent source. These are invariably considered to be religious experiences, and accounts like this are proof that they are not exclusive to any one religion. The new brand Evangelist Christianity conducts worship in a way as to prompt such experiences in as many people as often as possible, and it is these experiences that many of their followers give as the power behind their faith. They know God exists, because as far as they are concerned, they have felt his presence. Yet the experience seems not to respect the boundaries of faith or denomination. Two separate conclusions can be drawn from this. Either God appears to anyone who has any faith of any kind, in which case religious boundaries are redundant human illusions, and squabbles between faiths over small differences in doctrine are pointless, or the experience is a kind of self induced drug trip triggered by an endorphin overload, in which case religious experiences of this type are nothing more that psychological illusions. Personally I lean towards the latter, but the other outcome could reasonably be drawn, particularly by someone calling for greater inter-faith tolerance.

Narcismissm disguised as 'Spirituality'

I’ve been reading Paul Theroux’s book ‘The Great Railway Bazaar’, which I find to be both fascinating and funny in parts. I like particularly the way Theroux subtly derides people with an over developed sense of self importance. For instance when he meets a Mr Ercumena Behzat Lav, then president of the Turkish Literary Union. Theroux, making conversation, asks what Mr Ercumena does, to which he replies ‘this is a completely meaningless question. One cannot say in a few words what one does or is. That takes months, sometimes years’. Theroux, sensing the sheer deluge of comic pomposity that would follow up this taster, cuts him off by telling him ‘you’re too much work’ and walks away. Mr Ercumena clearly believed his statement to be supremely profound, yet without modesty, or indeed substance, he is forgotten (this account was written in 1975) by history, aside from this one brief reference mocking him, and is bloated to the absurdist level of parody. Theroux also met a man in his mid thirties who said he had ‘the tone of a man who tells you, with a mixture of piety and arrogance, that he has a vocation’. The man was on his way to spend the rest of his life at an ashram in southern India, despite having ‘a wife and children in California’. This man, confusing his own narcissism and selfish desire to abandon responsibility with ‘spirituality’ and latching on to an obscure superstition to justify it, has left behind him what truly matters: love, both romantic and paternal. People like him just cannot grasp the deceptive simplicity of that which is truly spiritual, for no matter what your situation, you’ve reached a good place if the only thing you care about is another person.

US Healthcare Debate

There is strong opposition in the US to Barack Obama’s plan to provide free universal healthcare. Many fear that this is socialism by stealth, and that it will mean that medical care will be decided by an accountant and not a doctor. Firstly, the latter point is already true of private healthcare. Secondly, all this talk of socialism by stealth is nonsense. There are already many services run by the government, like schools, the police, and the mail service. They have national health services in Europe and the government doesn’t dictate where doctors live, in the same way that the US government doesn’t dictate where the mail man lives etc. In Europe medical care is seen as one of these government services: the government provides it for free, but if you have a problem with them you can always go private. The government should provide free medical care, so as to benefit the poor and to provide a safety net ensuring that financial ruin would no longer come with the risk of death.

Meaning in Chemicals

In answer to the question as to whether or not love is meaningless, I would say yes and no. It depends on your perspective. Yes love is purely chemical and of the mind, yet does this necessarily mean that it is devoid of meaning? As an atheist I believe that the universe is a random occurrence, and for me this leads to the additional belief that meaning as a concept is a purely human phenomenon: something can only have meaning if a human being gives it meaning. To say that love is meaningless just because it is chemical is missing the point. However I do think confusion comes when people assume that something random has meaning and purpose ordained by another consciousness. For example a religious person could persuade themselves that a random accident was ordained by God, and will therefore have a reason, and this is the dangerous part because from a random event a human imagination could construe just about any meaning. This can be seen in the reaction of the Christian Right in America to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. A perfectly random meteorological event, which one Reverend Peter Marshall attributed to God's punishment for sexual promiscuity and tolerance of homosexuals. I really do believe that the only purpose in existence is human purpose, and the only meaning is human meaning. World events are far to crude, brutal, not to mention random, to be ordained by any loving God, or at least any God with half decent aim.

An Old Man All His Life

Henry William Allingham, the world's oldest man and one of the last surviving first world war servicemen, has died at the age of 113. Incredibly he was 73, already old, when the first man walked upon the moon in 1969. He even got to meet his first great-great-great grandchild. I cannot imagine how it must feel, what it must do to a person, to live that long. He has shown us all, for if he could have seen, way back in the sixties, when he was already an old man, that he still had 40 more years left, his back may have straightened, his stride may have quickened and his horizons might have re-broadened, and he might have felt once again a sensation of still being very young, and of still having a long way to go.

The Immortal Infant

Today I went over what is perhaps my earliest memory, and probably my first philosophical musing. I must have been two or three, and I was looking out the sitting room window at the houses opposite, attention lingering for no apparent reason on a tree with bunches of tiny red flowers, trying to grapple with the concept of eternity. It was before I understood or knew about death, and I took it as read that my then present state, and the daily routine, would go on forever. My thinking brought the idea of change to mix in with this, struggling with my infantile inability to see how change could possibly occur. I wondered if the days of the same would blur into one long repeat, with no event demarcation to allow any sense of how much time had passed. That tree has long since fallen.

The Police Dogs

In a recent heat wave two police dogs were left in a police car and sadly died. A Chief Superintendent said that everyone in the force was "devastated" by the incident. "We will certainly take any lessons we can get from this process and make sure we put them in place so this sort of thing never happens again. It has caused immense sadness and immense shock." The police reported themselves to the IPCC and have launched their own investigation. Why they did not take similar action when police malpractice resulted in the death of two people at the recent G20 protests seems to be for them a less pressing question. They also seem unconcerned with the fact that they have been proven to have lied about crucial details surrounding the circumstances of the deaths; claiming that Ian Tomlinson, an innocent bystander, had collapsed when he was in fact pushed to the ground by an officer, as shown by video footage of the event. They lied, denied, delayed and obfuscated, in a similar way to their claim that innocent Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes had jumped a barrier, when they had in fact shot him without warning. They seem to take the deaths of dogs more seriously than that of people. It smacks to me of a smokescreen, distracting the public from their clandestine cover ups with apparent self flagellation over a matter of no real threat to any of them. I no longer trust the police. Their tactics, their attitude, and their outrageous use of ‘kettling’, their illegal removing of their identity numbers, shows to me that they are underhand, overly suspicious, unnecessarily pre-emptive to the point of being oppressive, and they treat protestors, the upholders of democracy, as criminals and terrorists. It is wrong, and it has got to stop.

A Smartie Popping Addiction...

I noticed today that the problem with eating Smarties, or Tic-Tacs for that matter, is that it is difficult to eat them without looking like you are popping pills. By filling your palm with a few taps to the upturned receptacle, and then cramming your palm into your mouth, you look like you are ingesting paracetamol or the like instead of the innocuous sweeties. This will make you look to the near observer as if you are being overly dramatic, and to the far observer as if you actually do have a problem with excessive self medication. The designs of both containers are just so that you cannot conventionally pluck the sweets between forefinger and thumb as you would with more conveniently rotund similar shaped confectionary such as the Fruit Pastille or the Rolo, as the mouths to the receptacles are too small, and even if you could, one Smartie alone, or Tic-Tac for that matter, is not enough to constitute a satisfying mouthful. This is an issue that I fear they have overlooked.

Group Polarisation

I read about a study conducted by Cass Sunstein, an advisor to Obama, which has come to the conclusion that the more the people you surrounded by are ‘like minded’ and agree with your opinions, the more extreme and immune to reason your opinions will grow. The concept is known as Group Polarisation, or GP. When in a group of what amounts to sycophants, flatterers and yes men, any rare voice of disagreement will be shouted down as counter productive to the ideological direction of the group, even if such points are perfectly valid. This is how dictatorships and terrorist organisations grow as ruthless as they do. Any moderates either leave because they are uncomfortable with the actions of the hard liners, or are killed off for their differing opinions, like with what Stalin did to Trotsky. This is why you should hang on to any friendships you have with people who you often disagree with. This dissent it emerges is very good for your mental health, rationality and general level of objectiveness.

Gravity Pin

I have come to the alarming conclusion that if the force of gravity suddenly went on hiatus the Earth would explode violently. My reasoning goes that the Earth is made up of tightly compacted rock under a high pressure maintained entirely by gravity. So you see under such circumstances falling off the face of the Earth would be the least of your worries, as the face of the Earth would soon follow in hot pursuit.

Ahmadinejad's Power from Prejudice

Elections in Iran this week, and that muppet Ahmadinejad has won by what he calls a ‘landslide’, despite results being too close to call yesterday. Unsurprisingly his opponent is claiming electoral fraud, citing irregularities in the process. Ahmadinejad’s popularity comes from his manipulation of the ignorance and prejudices of a poorly educated nation. He is a tyrant, yet avoids being seen as one by his own people by being vehemently opposed to the long dead ‘tyranny’ of western nations. Many conservative Muslims identify with him because he, like them, cannot let go of the past.

Labour's Lost Meaning

An extraordinary time in British politics. Cabinet ministers are resigning left right and centre, one of whom openly called for Brown to resign, Labour is being thrashed in the local elections, and the general fume from the aftermath of the expenses scandal has got everyone in a panic. Meanwhile in America, good times reign as Obama, being wonderful as ever, reaches out to the Middle East, doing with words what Bush never could with bombs. Britain needs its own Obama, but will be forced to wait as there is no one fitting yet on our horizon. I think Labour’s main problem, aside from a general lack of imagination, is that it no longer has a core message, thanks mainly to Tony Blair having eroded it, evidently considering that power was a more worthwhile goal than principles. James Purnell, now former minister for work and pensions having resigned, summed up what Labour should mean in a letter to Brown calling for his resignation. He said he believed Labour is “a government that measures itself by how it treats the poorest in society. Those are our values, not David Cameron’s.” If Brown had successfully communicated what Purnell has so eloquently stated, then his party might not have reached the mess it now finds itself in. The Labour Party is weak, and when the Conservatives inevitably win, thanks to Brown’s selfish thick skinned determination to hang on they will have a formidable majority, and will be able to do what they please and govern as selfishly as they like because there will be no credible opposition, and our democracy will be damaged. That will be Brown’s legacy.

Goodbye Smith and Blears

O happy day. The expenses scandal and general bad feeling towards Gordon Brown has forced out the two cabinet ministers I hate the most: Jacqui Smith and Hazel Blears. Smith lacks any kind of imagination, and has tried to advance the surveillance state without any thought to future consequences, and Blears is patronising and does not show the proper respect for freedom of speech. She once said that she thought writers had 'the responsibility not to offend the sensibilities of religious people'. Perhaps it is religious people who have the responsibility to respect people’s right to freedom of speech? Good riddance to the pair of them.

Stonehenge Memorial

The true purpose of Stonehenge, the famous prehistoric monument, has been discovered. Instead of being a site of worship, as the guidebooks say, it was in fact a giant memorial to their ancestors. This strikes me as a far more elegant truth than any other, and makes me look at the shape in a different way. What was a group of archways now seems to me to be a circle of abstract human figures, arms outstretched and interlocking, watching the sunrise at the Summer Solstice.

Burmese Days

I read Burmese Days by George Orwell a few days ago. It was brilliant, highly descriptive, and original. Based on Orwell’s early experiences as a policeman in imperial Burma, it shows how the British were little better than crackpot master race theory purporting Nazis. The British were no different to the Germans of the day in assuming that races other than white were inferior. My fury at such attitudes sprung into a strong love of the modern age as I walked down a road today. I saw an old man, proper looking, rich and middle class, giving directions to an old Indian fellow, short fat and bald yet dignified. Time was a hundred years ago that the rich white man’s equivalent would have snubbed any attempt at conversation from a man of colour as insolence. But not any more. The racists and the bigots have lost. It seems we European clots have finally got it into our heads that other races have the same broad varying spectrum of intelligence, character and disposition as we do, no matter what their aesthetic or cultural differences.

Waiting for the Worms to show

As much as I think that Labour needs a reset, and as much as I begrudgingly like (ish) David Cameron, the party he leads is just horrible. One of their MP’s, Anthony Steen, has caused uproar by publicly stating that he thinks people are just ‘jealous’ about expenses claims and that taxpayers ‘have no right’ to view MP expenses, despite the money being their own. Twisted arrogant elitist arsewipe like that is rife in the Conservative Party. There have been some really stupid things said by members of the Labour Party, most of them from either Jaqui Smith or Harriet Harman, but it has never drifted into outright bigotry, as it so often does with Conservative candidates. I must remember that for the most part if they were any kind of decent people they wouldn’t have joined the conservatives anyway.

MP's Expenses Scandal

Scandal! Numerous MPs across the board have been exposed for fiddling their expenses to outrageous degrees, billing the taxpayer for things varying from repairing a pipe under a tennis court, clearing a moat, to mortgages on second homes that they don’t even live in. The corruption goes all the way up to the cabinet and shadow cabinets, with big names resigning despite claiming that they had done ‘nothing wrong’. The public, used to fearing the prospect of fines or prison if even a slight discrepancy was discovered in their accounts, are outraged to find that these slimy bastards have been committing blatant fraud and have gotten away with it. Particularly as we are for once genuinely cash strapped and in the middle of a recession. Apparently it all goes back to Thatcher, who responded to MP’s demands for a pay rise which she considered would not go down well with the public by introducing these expenses rules. Public faith in politicians has been seriously shaken. People may turn to other smaller parties, which isn’t so bad if votes go to the Green party, but potentially catastrophic if power is given to that genocide waiting to happen, the BNP.

NB 100th Post

Chinese Censorship

I met a man who told me an interesting anecdote. On a recent trip to China he had been visiting Tiananmen Square. Their Chinese guide, ex-army, recognised about thirty people in the square as plain clothed policemen, due to their searching eyes and directionless wandering. Then suddenly a man threw up a bundle of leaflets into the air, scattering them to the wind. About twenty of the up until that point incognito policemen bundled on top of the man to restrain him, whilst the other ten hurriedly collected the leaflets. Their Chinese guide strongly advised him not to take any photographs of the scene. What did these leaflets say? Did they specifically talk about the Tiananmen Square massacre that Chinese authorities now deny ever happened, or just a general indictment of the dictatorial government regimes crimes against people and humanity? Altogether scary stuff, and a reminder that despite the diplomatic niceties of Western nations, China is still in the stranglehold of an authoritarian dictatorship.

Twittering Egos

Everyone is talking about an online service called ‘Twitter’ whereby a person writes short descriptions of what they are doing at any one time, enabling others online to see this and follow the individuals process across their everyday life. I consider ‘Twittering’ as it is called to be the profoundest act of narcissism and it repels me. I see it as a modern symptom of the new way society deals with the average and keeps them following the system: instead of oppressing them, go for the slightly less evil but more subtle act of convincing them all that they have a genuine chance of being a member of the elite they uphold, i.e. rich and famous, "look at me, follow me, obsess over my life, for I am a shelf stacker with aspirations of stardom”. By the time they realise that they are not going to be rock stars, or famous actors, or billionaires, it will be too late, they will be too old, and a few years sitting in a plastic wrapped chair between death.

I must ask the fair question of whether or not blogging is just as narcissistic. At least with blogging the articles have the potential to be interesting, and not entirely about oneself.

Love: the one true family value

Whilst ambling through the net I came across a right wing blog fronted by an article which started with the words ‘socialists hate the family unit’. Futile as it may be to challenge these nutcases in that they are both stubborn and numerous, I still protested that it was an entirely untrue statement. I made the point that socialists are opposed to an inflexible view of the family unit; they believe that any group of people bound by love to be a family and that the biology of the thing is irrelevant. In this way socialists are more in favour of the family unit because they do not presume to classify what does and doesn’t constitute as one, unlike some conservatives, who seem to passively hate families by arrogantly dismissing their legitimacy just because they do not conform to the archetype: they are either led by a single parent or a same sex couple or likewise. Conservatives damage the strength of the family by being too rigid in their criteria. The fact is that love is all that is needed to create a family; its true virtues have nothing to do with biology, and the sooner conservatives grasp this idea (I know it is difficult for their dreadfully narrow minds) the better.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

I read ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It is beautifully written. It was confusing to read at times, an example of this is the fact that there are no less than 22 characters with the name ‘Aureliano’. What it has bought out in me more than anything is an acute sense of just how old the world is. Macondo, a fictional Colombian town in which the novel is set, is described from its founding through its heyday, to its decline and its eventual destruction by tornado which concludes the book. It has a long history of decline and fall, good times and bad times. Yet in the beginning the founders travel from another town, which must in turn have been as old as Macondo at its destruction if not more so. Generations stretch back inconceivable distances through time, sewn into the patchwork of ancient communities which unfurl in glory before falling into dust. In Scotland the ruins of villages can be found, bare shells that would have been host to a myriad of deeply human events that are now lost to the mysteries of the past. In Ukraine there is a town called Pripyat, abandoned in the 1980’s to escape the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion. It would have had it founding, hundreds if not thousands of years ago by people whose sprawling descendants would not remember the founders branching ancestors. Generations and the histories of love and hardship they carry spiral backwards into eternity, like the reflection of a mirror in a mirror, and if you can encompass in your mind these countless branches of human ancestry you could see the very blueprint for man kind as it is today, shaped and perfected over the aeons, as ape turns to man. But I cannot help but wonder if, with climate change the way it is, I stand at the pinnacle of millions of years of chains of people at the very end, before destruction time comes. It would be a historical significance that I do not want. Also the book has taught me a new vision of the nature of time in terms of human progress. History repeats itself, yet each time advances a little bit, so it could be seen to move it a kind of linear spiral, each time cresting for a little bit longer before falling back into old habits with a stubborn elasticity. Currently we as a global civilisation are at the crest of a spiral, the largest yet, which means that we are about to be pulled back once more, and because of the distance we have travelled, the fall back will go further and harder than ever before.

Contradiction Rhetoric

British troops are to be withdrawn from Iraq. Gordon Brown marked the occasion by calling the war in Iraq a ‘success story’ which is a scandalous statement to make. Why do politicians do this? Mayor of London Boris Johnson said today that the metropolitan police did an ‘excellent job’ policing the G20 protests, when in fact they behaved appallingly; using underhand and inflammatory tactics, unnecessary violence and removing their id numbers illegally. What is it about politicians that makes them think that if they say the exact opposite of the truth, knowing that they are fooling nobody, they somehow come out better? Its absolutely disgusting behaviour to make such statements.

Voting for an MEP

When it comes to the issue of membership of the EU I fit into the lesser known third category. I am in favour of a European Union, just not this European Union. I am in favour of some kind of union that allows Europe to cooperate for the common good, but I am not in favour of the centralisation and complication of bureaucracy, or the removal of the powers of British people to govern themselves. So this leaves me with a conundrum. Do I vote for a good candidate (if I can work out which) that will strengthen an organisation which is vital in concept but devilish in the details, or do I choose a poor anti-EU candidate as an act of sabotage, hoping to destroy a form of organisation that is needed yet needs serious revising and simplification.

The Plight of the Slightly Less Filthy Rich

It was announced in the new budget that to deal with the gargantuan national debt from the recession, a 50% tax will be charged to those who earn over £150K a year, and The Times was rightly indignant. After all, the lowest high earners will surely go homeless and starve with a salary reduced from £150K to a measly £75K a year. They won’t be able to buy a Ferrari 599, and will instead be forced to settle for a Ferrari 430. I mean, what I expect most of the rich bastards, most of whom are the very bankers who caused this mess, to be asking right now is ‘why can’t the poor low earners take up the slack? It’s not like they do anything useful, apart from running sanitation and waste disposal, policing the streets, running the shops, growing food, building houses, connecting calls, running power stations etc. It would hardly matter to them if their salaries were halved from a whopping £12K to a sensible £6K a year.’

Labs over Mud Huts

When the question is put to me why I believe in science over religion and the rest of the superstition hierarchy, I have to admit that it does come down to faith. But I do maintain that mine is not a blind faith. You see, I’d rather trust the scientists, those clever people from across history who have actually gone and found out about things, who have studied and accumulated knowledge from a multitude of sources and evidence, rather than some silly bugger Hebrew kicking around in a mud hut thousands of years ago, scratching his head and guessing the origins of why everything is shit.

Creative Rebellion in Fiji

The Fijian media has got creative to protest against extensive censorship by the new military regime. The Fiji Times has run blank pages with the sentence: "the stories on this page could not be published due to Government restrictions" while the Fiji Daily Post ran a story about a man getting on a bus and another watching paint drying on Wednesday. The Daily Post story quotes a source named Max: "It just went on wet, but after about four hours, it started to dry". In another story, a headline reads: "Man gets on bus". The story goes on to quote an anonymous source: "It was easy." And: "I just lifted one leg up and then the other and I was on".

A Personal Response to the Entity of the Catholic Church

I have recently found my train of thought resting on the subject of the Catholic Church. Setting aside the innocent followers of the faith, who find in it one of many possible rocks in times of storm, I think of its bloody history, its superfluous ritual derived from the very pagan traditions that it demonises, its supreme spiritual arrogance summed up in the term ‘heresy’, its Inquisitions, its witch hunts, its bejewelled and corrupt priests who live in palaces amongst the poverty of the needy, its Hitler Youth leader, its discouragement of love and passion, its encouragement of cold and frigid chastity, and one word comes to mind to describe it: perverse. This conclusion is supported by a memorable scene I witnessed once whilst on holiday in Rome. Whilst walking the path skirting the fortress-like perimeter walls of The Vatican City, I happened upon an elderly lady, a beggar, lying on the pavement, face towards the ground, a cup outstretched in which there was some meagre change. Coming the other way were two catholic priests, one dressed elaborately in purple robes and jewels, talking to another in similar yet grey attire. I stood back to watch the impending encounter, keen to see the reaction. Did they give her money? Did they stop to help her, or at least attempt to console? No, they did not. The priest in grey gave her an indifferent passing glance before resuming a conversation, no doubt on Vatican politics, with his companion. Even if we are to suspect the most cynical motives of the beggar; that she was a con artist (doubtful as her begging licence was displayed on the cup), that still did not excuse supposedly eminent spiritual leaders walking past this symptom of social decay on the very doorstep of the Pope himself without so much as a word of concern. Catholics, no Christians in general, for hope of salvation from the contempt of the world, please do this. Tear down your churches, liquidise their grandeur, plant trees in their wake and use the money reclaimed to these monuments of lost priorities, and go forth to help the world. Adopt the world’s orphans, tend the world’s sick, feed the worlds hungry, do not mention your faith until the day comes when one of the lives you have saved asks you what inspired you to do as you have done, and the answer you will give will be Jesus.

Dark times for Fiji

Sad times: Fiji has become a military dictatorship. After a military coup the judiciary declared the new ruling party led by Commodore Frank Bainimarama illegal, which led to all the judges being dismissed. The media has also been censored, with subversive journalists being imprisoned and foreign journalists deported.

How, what, when, where but not why

A 32 year old woman made headlines recently when she jumped into the pool of a polar bear enclosure at a zoo in Berlin, and swum towards the bears. There are photos of her doing a calm breaststroke up to the animals, and then another of her screaming in pain as they inevitably mauled her. She was rescued and will need several operations to mend the wounds. But the key element missing from this news story is motive: was she mad? Stupid? Naive? Or was she suddenly gripped by the realisation that life is too short to see polar bears without touching them?

Medieval Minds

The Prime Minister of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai has proved himself to be a backward nutcase by trying to stealthily introduce a law forbidding women to refuse to have sex with their husbands and force them to get their spouses' permission before leaving the house, looking for a job, going to the doctor or receiving education. Naturally this has caused international uproar, as well it should, and I am pleased to say that Karzai has withdrawn the proposal under the pressure that came in from all sides, especially from Gordon Brown, who said "I made it absolutely clear to the president that we could not tolerate that situation. You cannot have British troops fighting, and in some cases dying, to save a democracy where that democracy is infringing human rights.” This is the first time in ages that I have been proud of him. Well said, Mr Brown, well said. Karzai has responded by saying that the law has been “misinterpreted by the West” and that the law in fact acts to “protect women”. This is a classic example of the clash between modern and medieval perspectives. This kind of thinking is not simply different from the West, but mirrors the West exactly as it was around 500 years ago. This time pocket which surrounds many thinkers like Karzai exists not only because Islam is 500 years younger than Christianity, but because in the Middle East conservative religious leaders held more influence than was perhaps sensible to allow, whereas the West had the good sense to tell their religious zealots where they could stick their backward dogmas and hateful interpretations.

Ideological evolution in literature

Studying English at university brings people into contact with a lot of people who think enjoyment of a book is secondary in importance. These people are wrong. I have always believed that there is a difference between dumbing down and making things accessible, and it would be purest literary arrogance for anyone to deliberately make their novel difficult to read just to impress some academics. It would also ensure that they would be unsuccessful and quickly forgotten. All literature that endures always displays the authors innate understanding of some eternal truths, for that is what makes them remarkable, to have stood up to the mainstream ignorance of their day when nobody else would and say confidently, albeit in allegorical form 'No, you are wrong, there is hope, people are good, and a better life is possible'.

The unwieldable power is wielded

Riots a few days ago as the member state leaders arrived at the G20 conference. The headquarters of RBS, the bank given the biggest government bailout, was trashed by rioters. The tabloid newspapers today, particularly the Daily Mail, have condemned all the rioting with the kind of vigour they normally reserve for controversial women. There is nothing, nothing the elite fear more than civil unrest. The only threat to them is the sheer power of numbers collating to act outside the boundaries of rules in which our leaders have power. It is times like these and the way in which the press react to them that show how they consider themselves our leaders, or else they would not feel threatened. They assume the power of the fourth estate, and more besides. I am glad there were riots, and I'm glad the RBS headquarters were put in a state more reflective of their impact. It will remind them who they serve. The elite exist to serve the people, not the other way round, and at times in history when the raw masses assert this fact it acts to quell the arrogance and swollen egos of kings and in this case bankers.

More than just 'alternative viewpoints'

The day we accept prejudice, bigotry and intolerance as simply ‘alternative viewpoints’ that deserve equal voice is the day that we cripple the intellectual process of debate and make it incapable of being decisive. On this day, when the best lack all conviction, those filled with a mad passionate intensity will seize their opportunity and people will die.

Meritocracy

I was thinking today of a dystopian situation in which world leaders were chosen through IQ testing, i.e. the citizen with the highest IQ is put in charge. But then I thought, why not? Give meritocracy a chance. The people in our country with the highest IQ’s are generally eccentric and not really in the public eye, apart from the occasional freak show TV documentary masquerading as medical interest. What would make an ideal leader is someone highly intelligent, logical, without personal ambition, a good knowledge of history and a healthy fascination with anthropology. I add the latter because it is vital that such a logical person has a respect for all our precious human eccentricities.

Healthy applications of Patriotism

Patriotism, that dismal ‘virtue’, is best applied to encourage people to take action when an aspect of their nation falls below the best achievable standard, as a pose to just giving up.

Birth of the Middle Classes

Quote: ‘in lands where the power is not in the hands of the majority, the masses invariably adopt the snobberies and prejudices of the rulers, as if to say, “Look, I am not one of the oppressed; I, too, am superior”’ – and thus the middle classes were born, their most significant achievement being the disunity of the masses and the inversion of snobbery.

The Egos have invaded

A sinister trend is developing, according to an article I read today, in which celebrities dabble in diplomacy. Apparently some actor called Richard Gere went on Palestinian television on the eve of the last elections and said "Hi, I'm Richard Gere and I'm speaking for the entire world ...". Who decided that? Was I asked?

Wilderness Reclaimed

I came across a hobo den on my local downs today. It consisted of bin liners stretched over balled up jackets and pieces of bedding. I didn’t touch it, for there may well have been someone in it, plus it might have bought down some kind of hobo curse on me. It would seem that the raggedy edge of man kind will inevitably revert to base nature, smash the glass case that preserves the wilderness and use it for its original purpose. Society has failed these people, so the consequence bailiffs have commandeered its ‘area of outstanding natural beauty’ to house the casualties.

Choosing to Generalise

It has occurred to me that the primary difference between pessimists and optimists can be seen in which experiences people choose to generalise and which they choose to marginalise.

Israel's Secret War

A much more sinister side to the Gaza conflict has emerged. Soldiers’ testimonials have confirmed accounts of soldiers shooting unarmed civilians, sometimes under orders. I was a fool to believe that conflict on that scale could ever be fully justified. Hamas was the problem, which should have excluded women and children from the firing line. It did not.

Ephebiphobia

An interesting article has appeared on the Guardian website by Tanya Byron: ‘”We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self-control." These words - expressing the all-too-familiar contemporary condemnation of young people - were actually inscribed on a 6,000-year-old Egyptian tomb. Later, in the fourth century BC, Plato was heard to remark: "What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?" And then, a few hundred years later, in AD1274, Peter the Hermit joined the chorus. "The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint ... As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behaviour and dress." Such quotes illustrate what I believe has become a historically nurtured and culturally damaging phenomenon: ephebiphobia - the fear of youth.” It should become socially unacceptable to make gross generalisations against the young in the same way it is with ethnic groups and other minorities, and the new term ‘ephebiphobia’ is the key word to start with. Why? Because crucially the young will always grow out of it.

Head in the clouds

We must learn to write off anybody’s explanation for the meaning of life if they at any point mention or talk about space. These people put to much emphasis on physical scale. Space is the edge; reason is strictly earthbound.

Echoes of the past from a narrow mind

Former vice president of the USA Dick Cheney has claimed that America is now more at risk because Obama has put a stop to the controversial interrogation methods used by the US intelligence services. What he fails to realise is that you don’t put out a fire by fanning the flames: those interrogation methods and the attitude they represent are the very reason that America was at risk in the first place. The West’s clumsy foreign policy throughout the years has provided the motives for attack. The terrorist nutcases would have been perfectly happy fighting amongst themselves had we not united them against us by interfering. By torturing suspects they are enraging young Muslims and driving them into the recruiting offices of Al Qaeda.

Dermot O’Leary is not of this earth

For no apparent reason I have been dwelling on something tv presenter Dermot O’Leary said once that struck me as key to his personality, although he never would have guessed the significance of the admission. He said that he finds people in general fascinating. This would explain his trademark laid back attitude. He is detached. He views the world and all its denizens as if he is at a zoo: with polite curiosity. His apparent unfazeability comes from the fact that he feels unthreatened by us; we are separated from him by the bars of a cage. The only reason he is on the outside is because his attitude is objective and impartial. Anyone would think he is from a different planet to be so unfazed by social decay which threatens any residents of our world. That is the answer: Dermot O'Leary is an alien. You heard it here first, folks.

A Frightening Epidemic

There is a currently an epidemic of people taking life too seriously. Symptoms include excessive greed, over competitiveness and a loss of humour. The disease is particularly rife in the corporate world, government departments, lobbyists and the middle classes. It is also sweeping through schools, starting with the most prestigious and working its way down. Sufferers advocate hard work to the detriment of its purpose (life), the banning of fun activities/substances and the castigation of anyone who makes risqué jokes (even when they are supposed to be ironic). Recent examples of outbreaks include the French governments’ attempt to force its citizens to work harder for less pay, a GP’s campaign to get higher taxes on chocolate the general prejudice and subsequent persecution against those harmless eccentrics who dabble with marijuana.

New Labour/Animal Farm

Today I read the book Animal Farm by George Orwell in a single sitting. It is a clever book which uses the microcosm of a farm to demonstrate how revolutions are corrupted. If it has one fault, it is that the analogy has no equivalent to the method our society used to achieve equality, i.e. through gradual non violent reform. Animals on a farm would not have been able to do this. The one fault in revolution highlighted is that all the things which we hold to be bad through common sense are easily reintroduced simply by changing the name of that thing. Thus it is demonstrated that our society would be better maintained if we do two things: the first, speed up the process wherein wisdom is broadly accepted and recognised as common sense; and the second is that we should not allow our leaders to keep spin doctors on staff. Alistair Campbell, for example, should not have been employed as his job when it comes down to it was to do nothing more than to confuse the public in a way that was advantageous to the government. In fact I think there are many parallels with New Labour to Napoleons' regime. They started out as left wing and 'of the people', and have gradually abandoned their policies to end up identical to the opposition.

In praise of today

On this date I think in praise of today. It has occurred to me that the world today is a far less cruel place then it once was. It may still be cruel, far crueller than in acceptable, but cruelty has suffered a decline in recent decades. I think this is because people are beginning to believe in the plausibility of good will and the subtle structuring of karma, although this belief is constantly under assault by those who would see cold market forces rule the day. I also think in praise of political correctness. It has had a very bad press, this being so because certain negative side effects of the idea have been overrepresented. I think that it is a brilliant thing that a mindset has been established that makes it socially unacceptable to be racist, prejudiced or bigoted. Thanks to political correctness gone are the days when racism was indulged as simply another viewpoint. It is no longer tolerated, neither are most forms of intolerance.

The Cloud Atlas

I have come to the end of reading a book called ‘Cloud Atlas’ by David Mitchell (author not comedian), which consists of a six interlocking stories set in dates spanning from the 19th century to a post apocalyptic future. For a while I have been trying to rationalise the key message behind the book, and I think I have cracked it. Mitchell uses the book to attack the ‘will to power’ argument many right wingers spout that states whoever wants power and has the means to achieve it has the right to power and should therefore get power. Mitchell highlights that this theory is greed and viciousness thinly disguised. Dominant races are dominant not because they are superior but because they were unscrupulous enough to take it. He uses his time travelling narrative to show how this twisted counter purpose evolutionary trait leads to nothing but destruction. It all fits in with previous knowledge I held that a person who wants to be a leader is the very person who would be worst at leading. I myself feel a yearning for power which had previously troubled me, yet I now understand that I want power not out of vainglory but to protect those who I love, those who I sympathise with and that which I hold dear. I have always been painfully aware of the fragile nature of all things, and wish desperately for the means to protect.The book ends by establishing that if we believe the world is a lost cause, we give up on it and through self fulfilling prophesy we make it worse. Mitchell ends with the words ‘what is an ocean but a multitude of drops?’. Wise words.

The Fake IRA

Trouble in Northern Ireland. Two soldiers have died by machine gun fire from a new paramilitary group. From their name ‘The Real IRA’ I can deduce that their primary motivating factor was their belief that the IRA was off message in their recent lack of murdering. Obviously the fact that the peace process is actually working has rattled the cages of these hard line nationalists who fear that their purpose of murder and hatred is threatened by the prospect of a resolution. But what really annoys me most is the fact that everyone is dignifying this bunch of childish lunatics by using the name ‘The Real IRA’. The name was splashed across the news headlines without irony. Apart from leading the ill-informed to assume that the story is that the original IRA was fake, it lends credibility to the idiotic notion that this bunch of arsed faced monkey brained thugs are the new faces of Northern Irish Republicanism. These sorts of people are always either presented as a minority from the lunatic fringe or a serious and credible threat. The middle ground in which this group exists, i.e. a minority from the lunatic fringe armed with machine guns, is often overlooked.

I am pleased to say that subsequently there have been mass rallies in Northern Ireland against the recent attacks. None of them want a return to the violence of the Troubles. Carrying placards reading "No Going Back", more than 2,000 people gathered in front of Belfast City Hall.

A confused metaphor in 'Hancock'

Today I saw the film 'Hancock', which is about a tramp with superpowers who everybody hates, until he saves the life of a friendly public relations agent who helps to improve his image. At first I thought this was a straight piece of US propaganda: the hated superhero is a metaphor for the US army which wants to help yet is misunderstood and demonised by ungrateful liberals. Yet the plot complicates when this superheroes’ forgotten (amnesia) lover is revealed, who also has superpowers. It is established that when they are together they loose their superpowers and become mortal. But disturbingly rather than the characters accepting that it is better to be weak but together in love than strong and lonely, the film concludes with him keeping his distance and maintaining cold contact over a mobile phone. What is this film trying to teach us exactly? That love makes us weak and vulnerable, so we should reject it? Maybe I’m over-analysing, but if I was script writer I would have rounded the whole thing off with a simple ditch-superpowers-and-live-together-happily-ever-after style conclusion. Such an ending may seem a little disneyish and clichéd, but at least it would be true to life and free of parallels with Nazi philosophy.

A dangerous kind of apathy

My faith in my age group has once again been shaken. Yesterday I asked a girl in my class who she was voting for now that she was eighteen, and she replied ‘I dunno, whoever my dad tells me to vote for.’ Raising my eyebrows I asked her which party that was. She replied ‘oh…erm, the Conservatives, I think.’ When I told her I was thinking of voting for the Liberal Democrats she said that her dad had told her that party was for weak people; fence sitters who don’t go either way. I replied that in that case her dad knows about as much about politics as I do about making shoes. I also told her that voting for someone you know nothing about is highly irresponsible. She looked at me as if I was weird.

Automation threat to Nations

As I approached the checkout at Sainsbury’s to pay for my lunch, I noticed with a sinking heart that most of the till points had been replaced by new self service machines. I wondered how many people had been made redundant in the wake of these automated job snatchers. I saw some of the old faces of the checkouts standing by to help instruct customers unfamiliar with the new system. No doubt their retraining and re-employment kept the unions happy. But these self service checkouts represent a growing trend, so what will happen to these people when the public grows accustomed to these machines? Either I have just found the cause of the next recession, or we can expect a future in which society is divided into two groups: billionaires and the servants of billionaires. How do we avert this problem? Make it illegal for a company to replace a person with a machine unless it can be proven that the machine would do the job at a significantly higher level of quality or efficiency. Why will this never happen? Because our leaders lack the imagination or the courage to avert these kind of problems.

Escapism through Impersonation

I’ve discovered a strange social phenomenon that nobody seems to have picked up on. It concerns people impersonating celebrities on social networking sites. Last year it emerged that someone was impersonating Ian Hislop on Facebook, and I read a recent article saying that someone was also impersonating David Mitchell on Twitter, much to the surprise and bewilderment of both when they discovered this. I’m sure if I investigated further I would find more examples. No doubt this is a side effect of celebrity culture. I can understand how someone could get addicted to it as a form of escapism and fantasy. Some people must have miserably boring lives, so for them the idea of escaping into someone else’s for a few hours a day must seem very appealing.

Never mix Science and Morality

Some people criticise science for not giving any moral guidance. That is because science doesn't presume to, showing humility when others assume arrogance. Never get your sources for how things work mixed up with the people who advise you how to act. That would be like mixing judiciary with legislature. Religion tries to establish authority by guessing how the universe works, and then uses this to tell us how to act. What religion must realise is that it cannot have it both ways. Religion without morality will turn to science; morality without religion is just philosophy. Follow both science and philosophy, make your own decisions and keep them separate in your head and you will have all the benefits of religion with none of the drawbacks.

The sticky business of Diplomacy

Hilary Clinton, new US secretary of state, has been criticised for not confronting China with its appalling record on human rights abuses. These critics just don’t understand the nature of diplomacy. Diplomacy means shaking hands with someone we perhaps don’t like very much for the greater good. If we only talked with nations who we 100% agreed with we would have no one to talk with. Yes, China may be run by assholes, but saying that to their faces is only going to alienate them, not remove them. Clinton knows that the priority for now is gaining cooperation on the environment and the global economy. Politicians have to make difficult decisions using the art of compromise. Issues like Tibet and human rights are not forgotten, but have to come either later or else never. Clinton is playing the long game.

Israel leans away from peace

Benjamin Netanyahu is to form Israel’s next government. He is right wing, which means that he is unlikely to be calm, understanding and reconciliatory, the exact qualities needed in any leader capable of ending the current bloodshed. He, like others of his leaning the world over, will bay for blood without thought of consequence. This is the last nail in the coffin of the Middle East peace process.

Government Complacency

One major problem with today’s government is complacency. They use fear of crime, fear of terrorism etc, and the false promise of a quiet life to justify their erosion of civil liberties and the democratic process to make their jobs easier. Tony Blair did it when he side stepped international law to go to war with Iraq. Jacqui Smith is doing it with her advancement of Big Brother style surveillance techniques. They have no problem with all this because they feel that it is all for the greater good and they trust themselves. They believe tyranny and oppression to be nightmares from the distant past and not relevant to the present day. It is this complacency which will do the long term damage. They are creating an infrastructure through which the unscrupulous could gain extraordinary power. When inevitably some of their number corrupt, when others succeed and misuse the powers given to their office by their complacent predecessors, then the shit will really hit the fan, and an Orwellian Britain won’t seem all that far fetched any more. In fact it will seem disturbingly familiar.

The Middle East must fix itself

I’ve been listening to the audio tapes of Tony Benn reading out his diary entries from the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has helped me to finally establish an opinion on the matter. Whilst war is unquestionably an unpleasant thing which must be avoided at all costs, both Saddam Hussein’s party and the Taliban were odious tyrannical regimes that committed terrible atrocities that can never be forgotten (Iran is guilty of such crimes too). It is for this reason that I have previously been unsure about condemning the wars. But I now realise that any liberation must be achieved by the Middle East themselves. The average Muslim citizen of Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan is uneducated, poor, oppressed and still suspicious of the old colonial nations. Many honestly believe that whenever anything bad happens it is a conspiracy orchestrated by the British or Americans. For example the Iranian writer Iraj Pezeshkzad wrote a highly successful novel called My Uncle Napoleon which is about a man who blames anything bad that happens on a conspiracy by the British. The author meant it to be ironic, an affectionate poke at the eccentricities of some Iranians, yet when it was adapted into a television series he kept being approached in the street by people who thanked him for ‘speaking out’ about the British ‘oppression’. You cannot conduct military action in a region with this attitude, because no matter what your motive is they will believe that you are lying, aim to conquer them and add them to your empire. That explains why the resistance to the British and American invasions is so fierce. The anger, the hatred is stoked and fuelled by what they perceive as a direct threat from the West to the Middle East. Remove the threat, withdraw from the region and you will stop terrorism in its tracks. Al Qaeda uses any and all Western military presence for all its recruitment. Any progression needs to be carried out by middle easterns, for middle easterns. The West cannot intervene. The West has intervened in the past and is still reaping the consequences. The natural process of liberation may take hundreds of years but it is the only way to secure freedom and civilisation in the region. The most the West should do is stop them from getting hold of weapons of any description, which is a task which is not only achievable but does not involve any Western soldiers setting foot in any Muslim nations.

Phelps at bay

Fred Phelps, infamous American preacher of the Westboro Baptist Church who believes only the seventy members of his own congregation will get into heaven and passionate advocator of death to homosexuals, has been denied entry to the UK. He was planning to arrive with his equally poisonous daughter to picket a play about a man killed for being gay. Whilst this proof of an infrastructure for the suppression of free speech makes me uneasy, I am glad that those nutcases will be stopped from setting foot in our comparatively calm, level headed nation.

The Unwinnable War

It would appear that thanks to the efforts of George Bush, Tony Blair and their various conspirators and associates, the terrorists have won. Anti-terror measures worldwide have seriously undermined international human rights law, a recent report by legal experts says. It also said that the UK and the US have "actively undermined" international law by their actions. It concluded that many measures introduced to fight terrorism were illegal and counter-productive. The panel of eminent lawyers and judges concluded that the framework of international law that existed before the 9/11 attacks on the US was robust and effective. In lashing out we have damaged the very thing we sought to protect. The terrorists set out to cause chaos and bring down western democracy. It would seem that they have succeeded.

State Housing

State housing in Britain is despised by all social classes. Ugly and characterless, these mass produced dwellings never last long and are resisted by locals whenever the government tries to build them. However, if a little bit of imagination was applied to get architects that ‘think outside the box’ to design interesting, aesthetically pleasing houses that age well (the crucial factor) using cheap materials then resistance to them might drop. Peasant houses from Tudor times were cheaply made from twigs and horse poo, yet they are loved, maintained, even mimicked today because their look gets better with age. With decently designed council housing there is a good chance that they will last longer as they will be better loved by the community and better maintained by proud owners. Good architecture has the power to change perspectives and lift people out of apathy. Give problem people a nice environment to live in and they might just start to help themselves. Given that they currently live in lifeless lightless boxes with no character or soul, is it any wonder that they aren’t more proactive?

The nature of modern conflict

In these modern times all out war is about as effective as removing a brain tumour by decapitation. What we need is the military equivalent of a razor sharp scalpel. It is self evident that diplomacy does not work when dealing with madmen, yet war should not be an option. Assassination perhaps? That would be the way to deal with Mugabe. But what do you do when a whole section of a populous is stark raving bonkers? Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, or the genocidal maniacs in Rwanda? War needs to become more intelligent, more selective, which certainly rules out any further manufacture of bombs.

In praise of the forgranted

I have decided that I moan too much on this blog, so I shall write for a while on something that is good about the world: pavements, otherwise known as sidewalks. It is absolutely right that there are raised, dedicated lanes for pedestrians so that people can walk without fear of being hit by inattentive drivers. People should be able to travel short distances without need of mechanics or procedure. Pavements liberate the people. Now, back to moaning.

The Weight Loss Bubble

Attitudes to the human body are changing. Weight loss treatment adverts used to show an obese girl as the before and a normal size girl as the after. Today I saw an internet advert above my inbox which showed a normal size girl as the before and an anorexic as the after. This trend is sickening, yet not permanent. I predict future mass obesity. Like all fashion bubbles this one will burst. One day these silly girls will finally be down to the last straw and dive for the pies en masse. It will suddenly be fashionable, nay necessary to be fat and bloated. Girls will shovel pies into their mouths like coals into a furnace. Meanwhile boyfriends will look on startled and bemused.

Dealing with the Improbable

One thing that we have got to learn is that there are so many different improbable things that could happen to a person that it is in fact quite probable that something highly improbable will happen to everyone at least once in their lifetime. The sheer improbability of our existence counts as the first of these events.

Mobility for those with disability

It’s been raining a lot today, which is driving me mad as I can’t go out for a walk. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost the use of my legs. Become an inventor, probably, because I’ve never really felt that enough is being done to improve disabled mobility. They are coming at the problem from the wrong angle. Campaigning for wheelchair ramps is pointless as you can’t put a ramp on everything. What they need to do is work to improve the actual transport. The real problem, practically and socially, is that they are sitting down and not upright. Someone should modify a Segway so that a disabled person can be propped up and strapped in. That way they can be at eye level. Imagine how attitudes would change if the disabled towered above the abled, looking down. You could also fit the wheels with some knobbly off-road tires and they’ll be off and away into the countryside that has for so long been denied to them.

The World according to the Unimaginative

I think I can understand why some people have trouble ‘thinking outside the box’. For these people, these orthodox thinkers, approaches and ways of thinking and acting are meaningless without mass acceptance. For these people with no imagination mainstream acceptance of certain actions and mental methodologies give meaning to and establish what they see as a tangled mass of randomness. I have an imagination, therefore I can extract meaning as and when I please without having to wait decades for approval from the masses. But that does not mean that I cannot sympathise with those who have no imagination. Sure they are mind bendingly boring and when in positions of power they destroy business enterprise, cripple governments and generally hold the progress of the human race back, but they do deserve compassion. That and a dead end job doing something repetitive, like screwing the caps onto tubes of toothpaste. They like that sort of thing.

The Exportation of Adulthood

Today I saw a little girl of about seven dressed in child size miniature adult clothes. Tights, shorts, boots and coat all looked like they came from the wardrobe of a 27 year old dwarf. It’s a growing trend. I think it’s sad that children are made to aspire to look like adults at such an early age. No doubt her parents will see where they went wrong when she takes up smoking and falls pregnant at the age of 12. On that subject I was talking to a woman today who works at a body piercing shop who had to pierce the ears of a five year old girl. She said the girl was traumatised, as was she in having to do it, and gave the little girl five lollipops. Apparently its legal if the parent’s consent, which they did. Now I’m normally liberal, but that is one of the few things I would ban outright. Parents should not be able to modify the body of their child for non medical reasons. That would be the case already I am sure if it were not for those who carve up their children for ‘religious reasons’ blocking it, like Jewish circumcision and who knows what else. We should not be afraid of upsetting religions. If the children truly share the religion as they say they do they will be able to get the relevant bits hacked off themselves when they are 18 and of sound mind.

The revolution will come wearing a suit

Whilst walking in the countryside where I live a man walking his dog, clearly having noticed I was a regular walker there, said “ere mate, we used to have the best sledding hill for miles around until them wankers fenced it off”. He was referring to the largely middle class group that had had some cows put in place (for complicated reasons to do with butterflies), along with a fence, halving the size of the steep hill that people use for sledding when it snows. He also talked about how children used to play up there until ‘them wankers’ had the council leave the grass to grow long to encourage butterflies. He had a good point. Children’s exercise is undoubtedly more important than butterflies. But he’ll never be heard if he carries on the way he does. For the working classes to get anything done in a world run by the middle classes they are going to have to change their approach. If I had to advise this working class man on how to get his views heard in this largely middle class area, I would say firstly no swearing, and no aggressive behaviour. The last thing you want is to give people an excuse to dismiss your views. Secondly, appearance. You are not going to be taken seriously in trainers and body piercings. If the revolution does come, it will come wearing a suit. And thirdly you should not speak in terms of ‘you lot’ and ‘us’. Do not acknowledge the class divide when arguing your point. You will only end up marginalising yourself and discouraging them from empathising with you. Do this, have patience, and if what you say makes sense then what you want will eventually happen. I can give this advice because I sit in a bizarre little niche in-between the two classes. I have connections with both sides of the divide. So I can see how badly the blinkered middle classes need a big injection of working class common sense.