I have just watched a very, very interesting film indeed, although I must admit that, three hours ago, I’d never heard of it. After brunch today Dom suggested watching a film, which from the look of the sky struck me as a good idea. He went to my computer, loaded Disney+ and put on Free Guy. I was completely oblivious to it and didn’t have the foggiest idea what it was about.

Five or ten minutes into the film, I thought I was watching a very silly piece of crap indeed: it was set in a city, but it was exceedingly violent with people getting killed willy nilly. I just took it to be one of those puerile, gratuitous American action films I usually avoid. But then Dom pointed something out to me: this wasn’t supposed to be reality but a video game, and it suddenly became interesting.

The film is essentially an exploration of the relationship between the Real and Imaginary. What if a background character in a computer game could somehow become self-aware? What if something usually no more than a few pixels on a screen controlled by a few lines of code suddenly became aware of his own existence and the ultra-violent world around him? On one level, that notion is extremely silly, and the film does indeed have some very silly, contrived aspects; yet at the same time it raises some quite interesting philosophical questions, like how do we know we are real, and what is reality? If a character in a computer game became aware of their reality, what would they make of it? The film thus draws our attention to the unnecessary violence of modern video games as well as some of the bizarreness of video culture. It also makes two or three extra-textual references which I liked.

When the end credits rolled I was intrigued. It’s only a 2021 film made for a streaming service, but it had given me a lot to think about. I would recommend checking it out if and when you can. After all, aren’t we all just characters in one giant role-playing game?

We have probably all been there: when you wake up too early, start thinking about stuff, and something starts to bug you. Yesterday afternoon I was mucking around on Facebook when I came across a video tour of the International Space Station. It was pretty cool as it showed you all kinds of cool stuff, following an astronaut as she floated gracefully around the station. What caught my attention most, though, was how the film lacked any sense of up or down. In usual films, we know that the ground will be at the bottom of the screen and the ceiling or sky will tend to be at the top. In the ISS video, however, the camera was able to roll and turn and we didn’t loose any sense of up or down because up and down don’t really exist in space. That struck me as cool.

Thinking about it in bed, though, something started to bug me. I remember, from GCSE Science over twenty years ago, that our sense of balance is controlled by a part of the ear: that in some piece of our ears we have some kind of liquid which keeps us steady. We feel dizzy when this ear-goo is disturbed. What is currently puzzling me is that, presumably, the goo depends on gravity pulling it downwards and keeping it level. In space there is no gravity, so can someone please explain why astronauts aren’t permanently dizzy? I hope I’m not being stupid here, but this really struck me as odd: why wasn’t the lady in the video, her hair floating like seaweed in the ocean, not constantly disorientated?

While it’s obviously all about vote-grabbing, I must admit that the announcements detailed here caught my attention. “Sadiq Khan has said that he would aim to bring WrestleMania, Superbowl and NBA to London and put together another winning bid for the Olympics in 2040. The Mayor of London – who is seeking re-election on May 2 – also announced today a ‘new boost’ into grassroots sport and underrepresented communities via City Hall’s £20 million Go! London fund.” While I’m not that fussed about wrestlemania or the superbowl, you know how excited I get about the Olympic Games. I see it as the world’s biggest sporting and cultural event; to see it held in London for a fourth time (my second) would surely be awesome. Mind you, in 2040 I’ll be 57, and there’s a very long time before then. That aside, it’s great to see that Kahn is eager to put London forward to host such events and to get this great city the attention it deserves.

I know it’s very grim reading indeed, but I think I need to direct everyone to this Guardian report that the UK has been accused by Amnesty International of multiple human rights violations. “In its annual global report, released today, the organisation said Britain was weakening human rights protections nationally and globally, amid a near-breakdown of international law.” It goes on to detail how violations have also been made by both the US and Israel. “The damning Amnesty report also criticises Israel’s allies for the failure to stop the “indescribable civilian bloodshed” in Gaza. In a stark warning to world leaders, the organisation said the world was reaping a harvest of “terrifying consequences” from escalating conflict and the near-breakdown of international law.” The report paints a pretty bleak picture of human rights in general, as politics becomes more reactionary and right-wing. It is now becoming clearer and clearer that the world is becoming less and less stable; as much as I don’t want to sound too melodramatic, but it feels to me like we have reached, or at least are reaching, an impasse akin to the 1930s. I suppose we can only hope that things don’t get any worse.

Today I just have a quick question: when you saw yesterday’s amazing news that contact had been re-established with Voyager 1 after months of just receiving gibberish from it, who else instantly thought “V’Ger!” and felt like watching Star Trek The Motion Picture?

I think I better open this entry by stating the blindingly obvious: the UK needs immigrants. Not only do we need people to come here to work and keep our economy and society going, but people coming to live here have contributed to our country culturally for centuries. More to the point, if desperate people come to this country in need of help and safety, surely we have a duty as civilised human beings not to turn our backs upon them. I think that that’s quite boilerplate, and no intelligent, educated person would try to argue with it.

Yet, ultimately, I think it’s also true that we cannot allow people to continue to risk their lives trying to come here by crossing the channel in small, dangerous boats – it is simply inhumane. Now, there are arguments to be had over how many people really try to make such journeys as a proportion of the overall number of people trying to migrate to the UK; whether threatening to deport them to Rwanda will really act as a deterrent; or whether this is all just a tory plot to distract us from their catastrophic failures while playing to their xenophobic core voters. Yet if people really are risking their lives trying to cross one of the busiest strips of water in the world, surely we must do something to either stop – or even better help – them.

Thus I guess I find myself in a bit of a spot. Again, I’m the type of person who welcomes people coming here with open arms: My grandparents migrated here from Cyprus in the early 1950s, and all my PAs are from either Poland or Turkey. It is essential that the UK is an open, welcoming, tolerant society. Yet I find myself asking myself, would I have wanted my grandfather and grandmother to risk their lives getting onto a small, dangerous boat?* Of course not.

I must therefore agree that ‘stopping the boats’ – preventing people trying to come here by risking their lives crossing the channel – is indeed a problem. The trafficking gangs who send them here are a problem. The thing is, if we guarantee them all safe, secure homes once they get here, there is no denying that that would just encourage more people to take such dangerous journeys, so simply welcoming them is not a solution. But that plays into the right-wing narrative that we should turn everyone away and not help anyone coming here looking for a safe, happy life.

Perhaps one solution might be to make sure that everyone who wants to come here, for whatever reason, has a safe way to get here; but I don’t know how practical that would be given the numbers of people involved. It may not solve the problem anyway, as people would probably still feel the need to avoid official, above board routes. I therefore don’t know what to think about this: Deporting these people to Rwanda is brutal, inhumane, and ultimately a Tory stunt to distract us. Yet simply letting these channel crossings continue is too dangerous. Whether it is just a right-wing ploy to whip up support or not, we can’t allow these poor people to risk their lives.

*At this point I must stress they came here legally and safely.

I hope I’m not going too far with this, but I made it after listening to Sunak speak this morning. I find the Tory attitude towards immigration and ‘stopping the boats’ utterly sickening.

As you may know, I’m quite a fan of the BBC, so I think I should draw everyone’s attention to the fact that this weekend marked BBC Two’s sixtieth birthday. I think that’s quite awesome: if you ask me, alongside Channel Four and now BBC Four, the Beeb’s second channel brings us the most interesting and innovative things to watch on telly. Over the past sixty years, it has been a cultural powerhouse, although I’ll always personally remember it as the place where I first saw Star Trek. To be honest I’m slightly surprised that the BBC is not making more of this birthday. Mind you, with the rise of streaming, it’s debatable whether TV channels will be ‘a thing’ for much longer.

It hasn’t been all that interesting a day: I went to Blackheath cricket club and watched a few overs, but it was a bit chilly so I came home slightly earlier than usual. No interesting films, no nice trundles, no arguments with people in lifts. However, around an hour ago it could have turned out differently. I was just mucking about on Facebook when on one of the local Eltham groups I caught sight of photos of an anti-ULEZ protest, including placards attacking Sadiq Kahn. As I’ve said here recently, I support ULEZ and the de-pollution of London quite firmly, and it really winds me up to see these petrol headed idiots opposing it. The background of the photo looked familiar, and according to it’s caption the protest was being held at a place about ten minutes away from my flat.

Of course, when I saw that I was up and out like a shot, preparing to give these protesting idiots a piece of my mind. If they think they have a right to oppose something so vital for the future of London, I have a right to tell them to go home like the shortsighted, selfish arseholes they are. I just went there in order to tell these petrol-headed morons what I thought of them, but luckily for them their ”protest’ had already stopped. There was no sign that anything had happened. It had obviously only been a small, short, insignificant action held by people with no understanding of what they’re protesting against. Even so, it really gets to me just how selfish people can be.

To be honest, when I first turned on my computer this morning and saw the headlines, my initial reaction was “Oh shit.” Israel had struck back at Iran, and I assumed it was the news we had all been dreading: that a massive, catastrophic war had just kicked off in the Middle East. As many readers will know, politics and international politics is one of the things I like commenting on, so I’ve spent the day trying to think of something to say about it. Yet I’m just a cripple living in a flat in South-East London; I know as much about such issues as anyone else – probably even less. There isn’t much I could write on here which would cast light on the situation. It is just such a troubling turn of events though, that I feel compelled to say something, if just to convey my concern. Watching the evening news just now, the commentators are currently saying that things could go either way, and there’s a good chance that Iran could just ignore Israel’s strike given that it caused so little damage. Let’s hope they do. Ultimately, though, I fear we are standing on the brink of something utterly devastating this evening, so let me just wish everyone reading this luck, peace and hope.