Brexit get over yourself

Most of the “out” reasons are based on a deluded sense of hurt national pride, the notion that our greatness is being tarnished by outside meddling. The leave campaign, when it’s not just being racist or xenophobic, makes great positive claims of how our assumed greatness will ensure that we prosper even without the safety net of the European Union. No need to prove it, just make a claim to greatness and offer offence at the suggestion that we might need support, as that is the voice of the dissenters who are talking down Britain. Great Britain.

 

Some Tories believe this in all earnest; why should we be shackled and guided by our inferiors. At times it’s an extension of the selfish sentiment behind the cry “why should I pay for someone else’s benefits”, only this time “someone else” isn’t even a “lazy feckless British benefit scrounger”. Other Tories, all Tories, really, as there’s a big overlap with the previous more xenophobic group here, simply want to break free of socialism through the back door. Well, since it’s the only door it’s ever likely to come through, I’m happy to keep that portal open for the sake of employment rights and social justice.

 

The right-wing (for the most part, although, in truth, anti-EU feeling is a depressing cross-party prejudice) peddle the notion of Britain as the Sun attracting the moths from all the dark corners of Europe. Soft Touch Britain: our largess being taken advantage of by non-tax payers. No one in other European countries could love their country, or have as good a lifestyle at home. They all want in to our little island. This other Eden.

 

The fact is it’s not one way traffic, many who can rightly call this sceptred isle home, have successfully taken advantage of the freedom of movement within the union and moved off somewhere else.

 

The sad truth is that we never asked for this referendum, or, to be more precise, our political classes never campaigned for it on our behalf. It’s just that Cameron promised it to his party in a futile attempt to smooth over the massive EU fault line that runs through his party. Trouble is, he colluded with the anti-Europeans when he hid the results of the government’s report on immigration; as that report stated clearly that benefit tourism was a myth and that UK benefits greatly from immigration. This wasn’t what the Tories wanted the report to say, so they sat on it. They wanted to get the (exaggerated) UKip vote back and they wanted to appease their own euro-sceptics. Now, Cameron needs to tell the positive truth about Europe and has one hand tied behind his back, as he can’t make a convincing case on immigration without contradicting his party and himself.

 

Of course, there are problems with the EU. Is it democratic enough and is it overly wasteful, bureaucratic and corrupt. These are things that need reform and we should be making the case to be a huge actor in making those reforms. Instead, we piously shout about corruption because we like to imagine ourselves above it, and talk about how corrupt these individual democracies are, apparently, even within their own borders. Yet, when the nasty UKip people manage to get voted in as MEPs they don’t use it as a platform to raise awareness against corruption, instead they take full advantage of any gravy going around.

 

Personally, I believe that all countries within the union are equally concerned about their traditions and culture, their own sense of sovereignty. That they have much to be justly proud of and to be admired for, and all nations have their sceptics who agitate against the European project. So, can’t we accept that none of these nations would sign-up to a plan that required them to surrender their individuality or lose their cultural identities? Why instead do we think the union is set to work against our self-determination?

 

Our laws are our laws; the laws that govern the EU to do not precedence over our own rules. We also have a veto, as do all member states, over any changes in EU rules. So, the rules we have now are ones that all governments have signed-up to, otherwise they couldn’t have happened. We should stop complaining about the rules of the club that we campaigned to join, stop thinking of ourselves as outsiders being taken advantage of and recognise that we are equal partners: we are Europeans.

End of the Line

My heart broken. My soul destroyed. 

My self esteem baseless. My reputation trashed. 

I hear the train. It's coming. 

My feet are at the edge. Beyond the yellow line. 

I can't go back. I can't go on. 

Giving Up

I'm giving up on humour

I'm giving up on reason

I'm giving up on kindness

I'm giving up on fairness

I'm giving up on balance

I'm giving up on hope

I'm giving up on love

I'm giving up on people

I'm giving up on me

I'm giving up

Pressure

A: Can you help x and y financially; I can give them half of what we need - if you can manage the other half. Anyway, no pressure - I've not mentioned it to anyone, so no one's going to feel let down if you can't. 

B: No, sorry I can't. It's a great idea - I just can't help at this time. 

A: Oh, dam. Well, that's a shame. I'll let z know that it can't happen. 

A: Oh, I see you can give some money to Q and U but not x and y. Well that's typical. Shows how little you care. This was a chance for you to redeem yourself in x and y and z eyes. They're really upset about it. 

B: I'm not giving any money to Q and U. I'm sorry I couldn't help. I doubt I can ever redeem myself. 

What happened to no pressure?

Republican Religious Myth

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/28/the_rights_ayn_rand_hypocrisy_why_their_religious_posture_is_a_total_sham/

That salon article on the right's hypocrisy in espousing Randian views whilst proclaiming a Christian conscience was interesting and troubling. In exposing the fact that their personal economic needs outweigh any tenants of their chosen faith, it was well founded and well put. 

Of course the Christian Right is led by charlatans and half wits who follow received wisdom with little intellectual curiosity. Many of them believe that their's is the party of Christianity, being perhaps young enough, and ignorant enough of their own party's history, to be unaware of the decision to adopt an evangelical approach to politics in order to secure forever the suffrage of the faithful. Rove, and perhaps his forebears, use of the three Gs to grab the attention of those use to being led from a pulpit, was a cynical and successful move that not only bought much of the religious vote, but shielded the party from accusations of heartlessness with the assumption of goodness that comes with religiosity. 

They have pushed religion in the same way that Woodrow Wilson pushed Americanism as religion. No quicker way to bind people, and retain them without question, than to define their bond as something the requires faith, and that there is no greater loss than the loss of faith. The right, in the main, have been so successful in both of these things that it is now impossible to stand for election without professing religious belief and without asserting a belief in the nation. The right claim to be able to define both of these things: what is Christian and what is America, to the point where arguments can be swiftly silenced on the grounds that they are un-American. In a nation that rightly sanctifies free speech, it seems odd to let any one side define what it is to be an American. 

This is what troubled me about the salon piece. It didn't seem upset that atheists had, had their free speech denied. In fact the tone of the piece seemed to suggest that Rand and atheism are the same thing. That she might be an atheist doesn't mean that all atheists are Randian. Rand's issue with the crucifixion being unbelievable as an act of god because it's selflessness was obvious folly, and therefore proof that it had no divinity, is not a core atheist tenant. 

On the whole, atheists, I believe, seek to liberate people from oppression and self hatred. 

My personal feelings about the crucifixion are twofold: 1) it didn't happen because Jesus did not exist and there is no verifiable historical source to suggest otherwise; 2) even if you take the four different and conflicting accounts found in the gospels, I've never understood how it was an act of martyrdom: Jesus argued against the claims that he was supposedly on trial for - he did not: make claims, stand by them and face harsh injustice to make a point. Quite the reverse, we are asked to sympathise with Jesus as an innocent put unwillingly to death. The only sense of martyrdom comes from a belief that he is the son of god, and as such could have found a divine way to avoid this natural fate. To that end, the bible offers us its usual proofs that its word is divine, by serving up a miracle in the form of the resurrection. Surely, defeating the idea of his being a martyr. After all, his being the son of god as mere mortal is blown to bits as soon as he cheats death to say goodbye to his friends. So keen they are to offer proof of his divinity, that they put the lie to their original premise. Surely, faith alone is needed. Well, that and some conjuring tricks. 

For me Socrates is the greater martyr. He died for the right to think freely. To question. He really did too. He existed, verifiably. He stood by his convictions, even though falsely brought to trail on the lie that he had denied the gods - which he had not - he didn't attempt to wriggle off the hook on that technicality. Instead, he said he would continue to question all things; was ordered to put himself to death by taking poison and did so. A martyr for our right to think. Not an innocent, falsely accused by a political conspiracy, who repeatedly denies the claims aimed at him - standing for nothing in the process - only to be slain and for that death to be used as a proof of the inherent sin in man and the redemptive power of faith in god alone. In other words a martyr to the idea of obedience (although oddly depicted as a rebel). 

Christianity, of course, has some wonderful values. Ones that would be far more powerful if they were spoken as a philosophy and divorced from bogus religious authority and separated from the Hebrew text that stands before the gospels and stands in stark contrast to them. 

Without god to hide behind Christians would have to follow Christ because they believed the man and not because they subordinate themselves to a higher power. Act like a man who followed a philosophy and not just a man who joined a club. Then what would the religious right do?

Reasonably Stupid

Something happened to me just now. An interaction between me and a couple of strangers, two young girls. It was the sort of shit that most people pay no mind to, in fact they most likely just get pissed off and then let it go. In short: it was something and nothing. Except that it typified a lot of the interactions I have, even with people I know. 

I was driving my car down a road narrowed by a line of parked cars on one side. The road had a gradual curve to it, meaning you couldn't see oncoming cars that far ahead. I'd stopped before the line of cars, to let a car I could see have priority. Before I could restart, I saw another approaching car and gave way to that car too. Then I set off only to see two oncoming cars, I was now level with the obstacle and it was difficult for cars to pass. The first of the two cars saw that I'd moved closer to one side and there was a gap to pass and passed. The second car didn't advance. The driver and her friend both gestured to suggest I needed to resolve the issue. So, I crept forward and put as much of my car as I could into a small gap between two of the parked cars. The girls drove their car at mine, to pull close along side so they could wind down their window to talk to me. Even though I knew they would just bark angry nonsense at me, I too wound down my window - as I didn't want to ignore their obvious overture. The driver using heavy sarcasm pointed out that she couldn't pass me where I was originally and that she felt she had the right of way, and didn't want to mount the pavement to travel past. 

I listened to all of that. Then I said: I understood what she was saying but...whereupon she drove off. 

I felt horrible. I wanted to point out that I couldn't have seen her car or stopped earlier and that I had twice, in the end, moved to make way for her and another car had managed to pass by. What did she expect I could have done better? And what point is made by belittling anyone when the situation has been easily remedied. 

Why did I care? Why couldn't I just ignore her or brush it off as a silliness or arrogant person who needs to correct everyone else's behaviour?

In the first instance it's an inbuilt thing in me: I feel I must allow all questioning, to not to do so would be an arrogant act saying: you can teach me nothing. Allied to this is the fact that I want to be reasonable and been seen to be reasonable. To do that I must listen, and respond only when I feel my motives had some virtue to them that in part or whole justified my action. Accept wrong when no reply can be offered, accept wrong when motive is fair but doesn't cover the resulting action or receive acceptance when the reply satisfies the original query or complaint. 

The trouble is this invariably leads me into encounters where I'm unreasonably attacked, I respond giving the attack legitimacy of sort, only to be ignored or accused of not being able to accept when I'm in the wrong. Accused of the opposite of what's allowed me to accept the discussion moving towards what many might consider ad hominem attack and not proper discussion and just angrily reject it. 

These girls felt they could tell me off. In the end I allowed them to do just that. And was left feeling wrong and wronged. Hurt and embarrassed. Feeling guilty because i couldn't see if my motives were good because those I'd offended, hadn't accepted them - leaving me to implicitly accept that I was wrong. 

Other peoples perception is always more important than mine. If I think I'm reasonable that is meaningless if others don't. If I can't appeal to reason and find out what if any case I need to answer, I'm left feeling unreasonable but unable to fix it. 

Social Media is it worth it

Recently, Twitter’s share price fell 23% following announcements that the take-up of new accounts had slowed down, and engagement with the social network had dropped. The social network makes huge losses year on year which investors happily overlook while more users are caught in the network’s dragnet. The hope is that they will find a way to monetise the service but if use of the service is in decline, and the trend suggests it is (ever so slightly) the investors run scared.

Given the prevailing wisdom that all software should be free, I wonder how Twitter can make more money for its investors – if they can't hope to get its users to pay for its services. Of course saying that social media is free is a delusion and one that all users subconsciously are happy to subscribe too. After all, we know that these services aren't really free; they let us natter over peer to peer networks, while they mine our personal information for advertising revenue.

While users consciously decry their information being sold-on without their explicit permission, they are also happy to implicitly give their permission for it to be used by logging on for free, knowing as they click-in that their information will be exploited by the service; exploited in ever expanding ways if these companies are ever to make up their losses and provide a real return on their investment.

So what value do we place on social media services, and what value do we place on our personal information?

It would appear that we place a low value on our personal information because, it would seem, we don't value the social media services enough to want to pay for them – so the hidden cost of selling our personal information must mean less to us than whatever annual fee we fear might be levied.

Put another way: many people say they would stop using Facebook or Twitter if they required an upfront fee. So, they’re not worth actual money – so our personal information must mean less to us than money because we will tacitly exchange that for the service.

I suspect that a fee would turn off users less than it would the vendors, as a fee would probably generate less revenue than advertising solicits. Yet, it would be a more honest transaction – pay for the software that enables the services, as that’s the real commodity these companies offer you. It’s a different proposition viewed from the providers’ side, where the users are their commodity and corporations are their real customers.

If social media giants got paid only to provide users with peer-to-peer gossip sharing software they'd not be super-rich. They'd maybe have fewer users too, as a few would keep to their threat and cease to logon. I wouldn't overstate the user drop-off, though, as it’s like a crack addiction, I doubt the buzz wears off after the free sample runs out.

Would it not be better to pay for the service and keep your personal information private, doing away with the pretence that you were ever getting something for nothing?

Slipping Away

I hold views that nobody else shares. It does make me question them. Be arrogant not too. Trouble is some of them are central to who I am. Core beliefs, if you will. So, if you doubt your core beliefs then you doubt yourself. 

Most of what I feel about my past, myself in total, is only my perspective. That counts for nothing in the face of other peoples perspectives. Particularly of those closest to you. Further self doubt. 

The Queen: 60 Years on the Job

Years ago, when TV started to regularly feature debates on the subject, it seemed we might outgrow the need for our constitutional monarchy. Sadly, they seem more a fixture of our way of life than ever.

The Queen has been celebrating 60 years of uninterrupted employment. She's done well, hasn't she? Apparently, so well that she is loved and admired the world over. Mostly for her staying power, or what commentators are calling continuity. Just to think she could have packed it in, or maybe been replaced for under performing. Except, she can't be. It's pretty much her gig until she croaks it.

Why do we fawn over the “achievements” of royalty?

Is it that we truly believe being incumbent in a job, where the only qualification was your birth right, that requires little to no actual work, where your personal life is one spent in opulent and private luxury, really represents a magnificent and selfless achievement?

Oh, but they can’t have a normal life. You enjoy your normal life to the extent that you look up to them in awe, and count them unlucky to be so venerated? What is this normal life and what are they missing out on? Shopping with members of the public?

Ah, they can’t marry who they like. Yes they can, and we love it when they do, the romance of it all. In fact, we offer the same vacant eyed adulation to the newly grafted on members of this special club. The blue blood required to make you special, divine even, and link you to tradition and history, in the ways we’ve been told justify the monarchy, seems unnecessary, as it’s all the more exciting when the “ordinary” are married in, and instantly become super human as a result.

Ah, but they can’t get divorced. Yes they can and they can remarry and carry on.

They live in a goldfish bowl, really? I thought they lived in several huge palaces, which they own and yet are maintained by taxes. As for it being transparent, so that we can watch them swimming inside, I haven’t myself been able to witness any private royal moments. What you do see is all public engagements, and by and large the press are very deferential to the royals.

60 years of selfless dedication to a life of service. That's what they're saying. Selflessly, carrying on serving as queen. I hope that when a doctor, or nurse or fireman retires, we have a huge public outpouring of sympathy and celebration for their life of selfless dedication to service. Otherwise, it seems we really put much too higher price on waving from the back of a carriage.

Breaking Bad's Black Heart

There is a black heart at the core of Breaking Bad. Not because it deals with the ugly side of life. Not because its protagonist is shown to be deeply flawed, eventually bordering on evil (if such a term is ever relevant). No, it deals excellently with darkness and the forgotten choices of the desperate and the weak, and those who prey upon them, while they slip through the cracks. Ideas and actions can be evil, even if it's overly simplistic to tar people with that label. Evil things do happen in Breaking Bad. That's not the issue, for me. It's just that the writers clearly believe something that I personally don't. In fact they believe something that I believe to be evil. They believe in damnation, and they do not believe, it seems, in redemption.

What appealed to me at first about Breaking Bad, was that it seemed to be about how slim the line is between good and bad. That through circumstance, and increasingly poor decision making, anyone could fall from grace. It appeared to be a tragedy about a good man's fall. Placed in a world he didn't fully understand, Walter makes poor choices; at first to survive, and later to thrive, in that environment, having been almost complete taken over by his new life and surroundings. Fear and panic guide him, it seemed. Fear of losing everything he was trying to support, if the means by which he's trying support it are discovered. Panic in the moments when that fear seems to be realised. Could he turn around, or is the notion of his better self now only useful as a rationale for his increasingly evil actions?

What started out, for me, as a bold story of how good and evil are not useful terms because, given the wrong circumstances, anyone can flit between both. And, that understanding and empathy are always to be applied because nobody is evil and no one truly lost: context is everything. Has now shown itself to be about how people's true selves are not fully known, even unto themselves, until they are tested. That may be a simple truth: we don't know who we are without experience. Yet, here, it's used to explain why badness happens. In other words we are fated to be one thing and can expect no redemption. At first, Walter makes a seemingly naive choice to profit from a criminal undertaking, without fully grasping what he will lose in so doing. In later episodes, flash backs are increasingly used, to alter his motives and to reveal that: he was always this way, he always was arrogant and wanted to be a big shot. His apparent new self was, in fact, his true self.

This seems to have been the idea from the start. The creator of the show, Vince Gilligan, has this to say about what he wishes for people who do terrible things:

If religion is a reaction of man, and nothing more, it seems to me that it represents a human desire for wrongdoers to be punished. I hate the idea of Idi Amin living in Saudi Arabia for the last 25 years of his life. That galls me to no end. I feel some sort of need for Biblical atonement, or justice, or something. I like to believe there is some comeuppance, that karma kicks in at some point, even if it takes years or decades to happen. My girlfriend says this great thing that’s become my philosophy as well. 'I want to believe there's a heaven. But I can't not believe there's a hell.

Can't not believe there's a hell. Can't not believe in the most evil idea man has ever imagined. That in secret, and forever, some power that won't reveal itself until you've been judged, will punish you with endless torture.

This seems a popular notion and synchronises itself nicely with much of the shows audience. They have uniformly hated Walter and wait eagerly to see his eventual downfall and for biblical justice to be served. Definitive justice as a revenge or balance for all previous wrongdoing.

The appeal here seems to be in enjoying the horror at his actions and in believing that they represent a simple truth: there are bad people and they do bad things. Rather than feeling sadness at his downfall and believing the show operates on the complex truth: that bad things can happen to anyone and for no good reason but all of us deserve to be understood.

As I say, I've stopped believing that the show represents anything. I feel it has blackness at its core. It's pandering to the capital punishment crowd and offering them a gore story about how an evil man reveals himself. They could be anywhere you know and we won't be safe until we shoot them between the legs with huge volts of electricity, for they are a cancer and must be cut out. Well, I don't believe that and I'm not entertained by that notion. I can't just watch the story of a bad man doing bad things. There's just no point.

Anytime or Never

Who can I talk to about Breaking Bad?

It's arguably the best TV show ever, yet hardly anyone's watched it, or, more annoyingly, those who have are all at different points in the series, making it impossible to discuss without spoilers.

To me, this is just a fact of how entertainment is consumed in the age of multiple channels, on-demand access and Internet downloads. Seeing things at the same moment in time as friends, almost never happens. It's a pity as part of the fun of a series, beyond watching it, is experiencing it - anticipating it and taking time to discuss it with others, particularly for such a nuanced show as Breaking Bad.

Anyway, it has been suggested that this kind of dialogue over shows has not disappeared, it's just been relocated, moved from interpersonal space into cyberspace. Social interactions have evolved, removing the boundary of space and time, you can drop in and out whenever you want, contribute as much as like, from wherever you are - in much the same way as you can view shows, you can comment on them: on your own schedule. Failure to see this, it appears, is like old media's failure to coexist alongside new media.

Personally, I don't see it that way. Surely, just as time slipped viewings make the water-cooler debate awkward for fear of spoilers, so must open threads on the Internet make cyber discussion impossible without them, or even more limited, as at the time of writing you can't gauge how clued in your audience may be. Posting a comment with a plot point would reveal itself in everyone's timeline, whether they were ready to see that detail or not. It would be like somebody walking through the office freely shouting the endings to everyone's favourite shows.

So, in person or online, we are limited to oblique references, and vague statements of general encouragement to others, to: keep watching, it's very good. Or, am I wrong, is there some place we can get together and share our excitement or insights into our weekly viewings?

If you know let me know, I'm keen to get more out of my favourite shows by seeing in them, what everyone else has seen in them.

Flawed messengers reveal real hope

This Daisey story and KONY2012 make me sad. Sad because of the terrible issues they highlight, but also sad because, in contradiction to their intentions, they've given comfort to the neigh-sayers by being misguided/misleading.

We are often told (by cynical people) that we live in a cynical world, one where nobody could tear themselves away from their touch-screens long enough to care about anybody else - not even people they know, must less ones that they don't know. In fact, we're great at finding rationals to not care, to not help others: they brought it on themselves, I suspect the funds don't get fairly distributed, why help other nations out when we've got our own problems, why help our own people out they're just feckless.

Every once in a while, something comes into view, often via those same touch-screens we can't tear ourselves away from, that makes people aware of an issue. When this happens, it often disproves the cynical view, people respond openly with hope and a genuine desire to help: they do care. As with KONY2012, which went instantly viral and showed that thousands of people took it at face value, in an uncynical way, because when presented with a horrible situation, even one miles away and affecting people who practice a different culture, they cared. Maybe just enough to pass the word on, but they did.

The same was true of Mike Daisey. To Apple's legion of unquestioning fanboys, who see high-end electronics, beautifully made and marketed at the well-heeled, as virtuous, the company can do no wrong. Those of us who own their devices don't want to be made to feel bad about something that makes us feel ridiculously good. So, not much attention had been paid to the many, many news stories detailing the horrible conditions under which these shiny toys are made. Daisey's rhetorical one-man show caught the attention and contributed to a growing call for Apple to clean-up its act, so that it's as shiny as the buffed aluminium that makes their electronics so appealing.

Get the message out in an evocative way and people do respond, they do care. At the same moment the neigh-sayers, squirming awkwardly, look for reasons not to care. They pour scorn on the way the message was spread: over social media, or they question the credulity of the re-bloggers and re-tweeters. They may even sight a patronising cultural imperialism as a turn off. This all takes place before any real evidence appears to cause the original stories to be questioned.

Then the worst thing happens. The stories are shown to be questionable. The motives may still be real but the methods and practices are misguided at best, fraudulent at worst.

Daisey, it turns out, didn't visit as many places as he mentions in his entertaining rant, and, although nearly everything he mentions is real, he didn't witness much of it first hand and certainly not in the manner he describes. As for KONY2012, they're a real non-profit but they have a poor charitable rating (a mere 2 stars), owing to the fact that they keep closed accounts. Who knows for sure where all the money they receive goes, although it seems some of it ends up funding another ugandan rebel faction. One that it appears is as unsavoury as Kony's Lord's Resistance Army.

OK, this is all a salient reminder that we should be more informed before we take a stance. Some of the neigh-sayers were, in truth, only offering this caution. That in itself is no bad thing, a call to be properly informed. Yet sadly, the clay feet of the messengers has offered, for those who ridicule and rubbish every hopeful act, proof that they were right, that it's never worth caring: everything's a scam. Many who chose to care will feel duped, and foolish - the kind of foolish that the cynical seek to avoid at all costs. It may lead to some harding their attitudes in the future, for fear of being conned again. The whole thing ends up looking like it was fake, the stories and the caring; as the critics claim that its all just shallow click-revolution, and slacktivism.

It wasn't all fake. While the intentions of the authors may still be true, they may not be and, in any case, its hard to argue that now. But the intentions of those who were encouraged to hope and to care were real. The overwhelming evidence suggests that to be true. Given better information, via a less self-serving media, those people could make a real difference. I hope we don't lose sight of that and instead find that Invisible Children and Mike Daisey have just given us another couple of excuses not to care. We really don't need anymore of those.

Hacking up a Headline

Ever watched a cat free itself of a troublesome furball? It's a painful, ugly sight as it convulses itself, losing all its prior dignity, in the contortions and hacking needed to produce something that is equally as disgusting as the act of making it had been. Gross, perhaps but a blessed release for the wretched moggie.

I imagine it's like that for a News International employee. All that debasing ones self by lowering the standards of the profession you nearly pursue but certainly don't embody. Playing fast and loose with the truth and then, when imagination falls short of producing the dirt, breaking the law would seem a natural next step. After all, you've sold lies designed to ruin reputations and destroy careers and in the name of news. So, why not hack up a story. You might lose all grace and dignity in the process but in the end you'll have given some relief to that giant chip on your shoulder. Sick it up, just like the hacking cat.

Maybe making the news is like laws and hot dogs: we're better off not knowing how its done. Yeah, making the news. I know, their supposed to report the news but that means actual journalism. These guys make the news. They'd say that we don't want to know what that takes but we owe our freedom to them; for daring to ridicule the great and the, not so, good. Apparently, we'd be overrun by Nazis if we didn't have a press that was free.

Free to dish the dirt on important figures that might otherwise abuse their power. Like, the power to sell cheap frozen foods from Iceland. Somebody who wields that kind of influence must be brought to account, nothing short of a telephoto lens trained on their every bowl movement would better serve freedom. It's not dignified, and you don't want to admit it goes on, but your democracy relies upon these benighted souls.

Apparently, so they'd have us believe, you can't uphold freedoms without disregarding them and you can't honour the dead without exploiting them. At least not when you're chasing the scoops that safe guard democracy. Hold on, you might say, didn't the Telegraph bring MPs to account for their expenses abuses and wasn't it the Guardian that took on the press, police and politics to safe guard the truth in journalism and not the red top tabloid rags?

Ah, yes but, as the Independent courageously pointed out, in defence of balance, we need the red tops to satirise high profile people to "show they're only human." If you don't debase, judge and ridicule people going through personal problems then you'd end up thinking they walked on water. Then you'd fill your freezer with a load of cheap sausage rolls and arctic logs and party snacks that frankly you'd never eat. All the while feeling so inferior and imagining that celebrities' freezers are so much better organised.

Or maybe not, maybe you'd see people in difficult situations being laughed at and criticised and feel less human, less able to cope. Perhaps, the ridicule creates a false idea of what it is to be "only human." After all, wouldn't it be better to empathise with those who struggle and, in that way, suggest that sympathy can be offered, even to those who fall, because, after all, they're only human.

Who knows, if the Wapping crew had cultivated some empathy then maybe they too would be forgiven for their failings. Instead, they preached an unyielding moral standard, where someone's weaknesses or failings lost them all rights and comforts. More than this, they instilled moral outrage as a carapace for envy. Up to a point they got away with it - the lies and law breaking and the pretence of public interest all in the name of press freedom.

Their fatal mistake has been that, while teaching us to accept that public people are loathsome, cravers of attention who deserve only scorn, they also told us that victims and soldiers are off limits. They railed against laws that support fair trials, saying they ignore the victims rights and they castigated politicians who don't support the wars we prosecute by saying they dishonour the heroes who fight them.

A fatal mistake, when at the same time they were spying on the dead and door stopping the grieving. Hacking phones and Facebook accounts of "ordinary" people and heroes was something we couldn't justify even by the code the press had taught us. The moral outrage they normally stirred up to sell their rags or support their causes is now trained on them. And the hacks might find the public very unforgiving. They've slipped up, the curtain has been pulled back and behind it is a convulsing cat coughing up an indigestible furball.

For me, even if they'd never hacked a phone or bribed a policeman or cajoled an easily corrupted politician into subverting democracy, the gutter press would still deserve the ire they're now facing. They've lowered public discourse to the level of gossip, they've been prurient and partisan and destroyed tolerance. They've broken laws to name and shame pedophiles, even when the police and courts strongly advised against it. They've encouraged hatred of minorities and offer no welcome to those who seek refuge within our nation.

Personally, I hope they can't just shrug it off when the next horror story hits the headlines. Even now they've tried to associated the tragic killings in Norway with Islamic terrorism, only to quickly discover the nutcase behind it was white, Christian and right-wing. That maybe his motives were more in tune with the same uncaring press that feeds the EDL in this country.

The press like to claim video nasties and gory games directly affect the actions of sadists, sociopaths and serial killers. These, make believe, entertainments are often attacked for the disturbing influence, it is believed, they have on society. Maybe it's time the press looked within their own pages to find a disturbing influence on society - one harder to separate from reality because it pretends to be in service of the truth.

Now the cats out of the bag maybe the press can rediscover its purpose and reconnect with the truth.

New Expression

I must wear a default look of disgust. The other day when dropping off some dry cleaning I managed to anger the lady who ran the place - without saying a word. She was explaining that the item to be cleaned didn't have any care instructions sewn into it. None of the usual hieroglyphs that indicate what level of cleaning torture can be withstood before it all falls apart. Without these, she explained, the garment would have to be cleaned at my own risk. Then she took to rage as she angrily chided me for not believing her and saying that any dry cleaners would act the same. I still hadn't said a thing. I asked why she was so upset and she said that I looked at her with disgust. So I need a new face, or at the very least a new default expression. What I thought was: patiently listening, while showing interest; turned out to be an ugly visage of contempt. That's not good.

You see it's all about perception. We go about the world with knowledge of our true intentions, sometimes the outcomes are not those we expected nor intended, but we are often judged by others who see the effect of our actions as intention. We should never judge another on our perception but try to understand their intention.

That said you have to accept how you've affected others - even if unintentionally. So, like I say, I need a new expression.

Twitter it's ok, nobody can hear you

Twitter. It's like Eastenders. It looks tatty. The content is deplorable. It's reason for existing questionable. Yet in a gossipy kind of way its oddly addictive.

What's wrong: lists of micro-blogs which people try to use as conversations, largely to try to be in-touch with some celebrity. Yet you can't make sense of what statement triggered which reply.

What's it for: (a) self promotion; (b) confirmation that you've connected with an audience. It's also just a great way to see who likes you. Most famous users will find themselves followed by thousands. For others its kind of like buying a 60GB iPod and finding out you've only got 10GB of music. All those years building a music library, thinking it was impressive and only to find out its insignificant.

Who it works best for: media types with things to promote and egos to bolster. Or to put in another way creative people who need to get their output noticed.

Why it's so successful: it's used by people in the public eye which gets it noticed. Plus the followers feel in-touch with their heroes.

It's so odd watching successful people with interesting day jobs tweeting endlessly throughout the day. I mean I'm a boring bastard with nothing happening in my life but you'd think Graham Linehan would have something better to do, wouldn't you?

Odd too that these 'famous' people don't seem to hold with private messaging systems, like MSN, as they're much happier holding open conversations with each other over the interwebs. Such as this following conversation between two funny female comedians and frequent Radio 4 botherers:

@SusanCalman would you like to go out Friday?
@SarahMillican75 sure. fun will be our middle names.

It's this eavesdropping on conversations that makes it the digital equivalent of holding a glass up to the wall to hear the neighbours, only now your neighbours are much more interesting people.

You can even attempt to shout back at your online neighbours. Tweet a little reply. Well, they call it a reply but it's just another entry in your own personal timeline. It might appear in the person's timeline whose tweet you're replying to. But that all depends on their filters. Anyway they won't be able to make sense of it and since they'll get 60 tweets a second the chances are they won't notice it.

You see your glass is pressed up against the walls of so many neighbours that you can't tell whose talking to who and if you try to get a word in they can't hear you above their own noise.

But it is a great place for mutual agreement and that sort of positive reinforcement can be quite refreshing, I imagine, particularly for people who get a regular mauling in the public media. Consider the excitement of discovering that your every utterance is meeting with the instant approval of people happy to call themselves your followers.

"I love coco."
"You're so right, I love it too. I'm glad you exist. Please, please keep on existing."

Me too. I'm glad they all exist. I'm glad twitter exists. I'm loving it.

Parts I didn't know I had

I'm aware of the tendons behind my knees. For most of my life I was blissfully unaware of the apparatus that houses me. It just worked. Leaving me free to play. Running around and jumping and kicking balls was all possible without warm ups or cool downs. Nothing needed stretching. It just worked. Faithfully and without complaint or obvious need of maintenance or practical attention. But now I'm aware of the tendons behind my knees. The joints in my spine. The nerve signals that carry alarms from angry parts of my body to my brain. All of these functionaries are shouting out that they've had enough. No longer will they subordinate their needs to serve me. They now demand that I take an active role in keeping everything in good order. Keeping fit. That's running around with a purpose. Activity for function not for pleasure. Where's the pleasure in running against a conveyer belt heading nowhere? Riding a stationary bike to get your condition somewhere while you remain in the same place. Serving the machine. If I don't, they warn me, things will only get worse. Work to rule has already kicked in. If I sit for too long my knees cave under me when I attempt to stand. As I rise up to my full height my nerves attack my brain sending it dizzy, just standing up. The rebellion has begun. I am aware of the tendons behind my knees.

What is Art, you decide

Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Some art is obviously lovely and widely admired, yet can be dismissed as being low art. High art is something out of reach of us ordinary types. Hence its name. It's been produced by the art gods way up high.

To many a pile of bricks or a glass of water on a shelf are not art. To others these are installations from the art elite. They lack formal beauty or obvious craft. They confuse the observer and, we are told, raise questions. Which has become the highest or maybe sole purpose of art.

Once while visiting the Tate Modern, ostensibly to view the Picasso and Matisse exhibition but largely just to visit the building itself, there was a long queue for everything. Queues to see: A stairway leading up to a small wooden chair - baby bears presumably, unbroken and waiting for goldilocks to crush it under her selfish weight; A TV screen the size of a letter box looping a film of a largely unmoving group, presumably arranged for a wedding photo. Queues everywhere and for everything. Standing in the longest queue, for the gift shop, I joked with the lady in front of me that "I hope this exhibit is worth the wait". She replied without irony that "as long as it puts a question mark in your mind."

It's a fine line when discussing what is or isn't art between being too conservative and too pretentious. Fashions in art are always changing and dismissing a new style might one day be revealed as mere shortsightedness.

At some point even the most widely accepted artist, if their work was in any sense pioneering, have met with derision. Turner whose name is now more well known for the prize his estate awards to new artists was the subject of this joke: when is a cow not a cow? When it's painted by Turner. Of course the modern version of this joke would be: when is cow brain matter not cow brain matter? When it's a brick in a Turner prize exhibit.

Turner who is nowadays highly regarded was a contemporary of Constable who is not. During their working lives Turner was successful and Constable was not. Yet while Constable's picturesque figurative paintings have become widely popular his image suffers. In a modern context it is assumed that painting what you see is pandering to low brow imagination. Whereas Turner's more abstract work is assumed to be more adventurous. Yet in his own time Constable was considered a rebel for painting on location. Now that his work is used on tea towels and jigsaw puzzles he's regarded as somewhat commonplace.

Poor Constable. It seems he can never win. He proves that one test for art - that it challenges the viewer is flawed. What is daring now is mundane tomorrow. Take note Mr Hirst the shock value of putting a sliced-up cow in a tank doesn't last.

Art we are told must be for art sake. So we favour art that appears to be inspired to serve art rather than the artist's bank account. The all too obvious figurative paintings seem designed for a ready audience. Whereas a drizzle map of criss-cross lines of different colour paint seem intended to please only the artist. Of course to prevent this from being masterbation the artist must suffer. For the art, of course. It's not bollocks if it's Pollock's.

Art for art sake and the notion of the struggling artist is bogus. Poor constable found few benefactors. But throughout history art has mainly benefited from patrons who commissioned works and sponsored artists. And many of today's most avante garde artists are fairly well off. They have the ability to appeal only to the elite and therefore appear edgy, because the untutored masses don't get it.

The man in the street doesn't have room in his house for Tracy Emin's unmade bed. And Rachel Whiteread's Ghost needs to haunt a big space. These pieces need big money just to be displayed. There's nothing small scale about these works. Whiteread has won commissions from Austrian authorities, so there is a market and she isn't struggling.

Once art was as much about craft and technique as it was about meaning. The impressionist employed dazzling new painterly techniques to capture the fleeting moment or the feeling of light. Now artists like Whiteread, Hirst and Koons create projects rather than construct works. They are art architects. Although much of the impact of their work is derived from the spectacle of the finished product, they themselves are more the designers of the concept. The designers of the question. It's all about the spin. This most high concept and modern of arts while achieving acclaim for it's unconventionality is the most commercial of all.

Why is Koons large replica of a mickey mouse toy art? Why is Hirst's copy of a children's educational muscle man toy art? Because they tell us it is. The guy who sued Hirst for stealing his toy design wasn't an artist, so his toy wasn't art. He didn't have any spin. These artists they make you think don't they?

Some apply a very narrow definition of art that it must be figurative, painterly and pleasing. Others reject formal prettiness in favour of more difficult works. The definition is so broad that almost everything is art. But then what is it?

In the end as is often said, no truer words were ever spoken in jest: I don't know much about art but I know what I like.

What is art? You decide.

The Royals: they're just like us

Apparently, the Royal Family or at the very least the Royal Couple are just like us. That's good then. Apparently. Odd though. Odd that people who stand in their thousands to cheer at two strangers are doing so to celebrate them because they're just like us.

They are just like us, except they're better. William is not unlike anyone else who one day will become king. In fact, we are told, he willingly cleaned out toilets in Chile without a murmur of complaint. Not even a bloody hell these toilets stink like shit.

The point of this tale is two fold. Firstly to silence those who would wrongly accuse a lad of privilege of being stuck up. Secondly to show that he's just like us, only better. Come on, if you had to clean out a shit house you'd do it but you'd fucking grumble about it.

Throughout the wedding broadcast the stories of the Royal Couple being just like us flowed fast. The wedding cars and fairy tale carriages had been replaced at the couples behest by mini coaches. Which was charming fun because it's just like us, only bigger.

Unlike us they got wed at Westminster Abbey, had airforce fly overs and granny gave them gold to fashion into rings. And the whole thing was beamed live all over the world to 2 billion people, so we are told.

Why all the interest if they're just like us?

Because they're not. After all Prince William's new wife Kate, whose folks certainly aren't short of a few bob, is referred to as a "commoner". Starts to make those coaches sound a little like slumming it for kicks.

All the royal watchers and royal spin doctors seem to think that any republican stirring will be quelled by saying what downright ordinary folks these royal types really are. Because we all know that to be a republican you need to think the royals are all lizards from outer-space.

Not long ago the royals maintained their privileged place by claiming the divine right of kings. They couldn't help being better, they were just born that way. Chosen by god to rule. In fact even a modernising monarch like King Juan Carlos I of Spain claims to have been selected by god to guide his country. Franco before him of course, though not of royal descent, made a similar claim that god sent him to save Spain from poverty, presumably by offing a lot of his fellow citizens. Claiming your humble right to lord it over your fellow man by the authority of god was always a good way to keep the common herd from questioning the order of things.

So isn't their station in life based on the notion that they are not like us. Aren't they born to be kings by divine right?

Perhaps not since Victorian times, when Prince Albert recast the unpopular royals as a middle class family with great and lasting success. They were still our betters but now acting as a template of how to behave derived from their noble birthright and duty to serve as our rulers. It worked then and its working now.

The more flawed they are shown to be the more just like us they claim to be. If the future king's a Nazi then let him abdicate for a royal romance. If their marriages fail it shows how in touch with the common herd they are. Why shouldn't they be allowed to act just like us, we say as we pity them for the royal straight jackets they've been forced to wear since birth.

If they're just normal like many had suspected for a long time then do we need them at all?

One often given reason is that a constitutional monarchy saves us from electing a political head of state. Some scumbag who we couldn't trust. A slimy elected politico. The royals are not competing for our votes, they are instead prepared from birth to serve with grace and dignity. Whereas, the logic runs, an elected head of state might be ignorant of other cultures or hold objectionable views and make shady alliances with despots. What then explains the antics of Edward VIII friend of Hitler, or Prince Philip casual racist or his mother-in-law the well known supporter of Ian Smith. None of them were stupidly elected so sadly they can't be unelected either.

When non-royal normal types, like Posh and Becks or Peter and that other Katie called Jordan, throw their opulence at us by marrying on throwns they are derided as deluded and self important fools. Yet when a £50 million wedding has real royalty on board then it's exciting and acceptable because of how ordinary they are.

If they're not chosen by god, if they're not our betters, if they don't have to adhere to royal protocols, if we're saddened on their behalf by the burden they never asked to bear then why can't we set them free and do away with our monarchy?

After all they're just like us, give them a break.