I keep worrying about my thesis: last friday I was fretting over whether I had made a valid point in equating cinephilia to Casetti’s notion of ‘filmic experience’ today I was suddenly struck by the thought that the structure might be entirely wrong and that it needs rewriting entirely. The problem is I’m in limbo until my examiners get back to me. The nights are drawing in, too, which doesn’t help my mood. I think that’s why I’ve been so agitated recently – I need something to focus on, without which I keep flitting from website to website, loosing my temper at the smallest thing. I still find many things interesting, yet I cant seem to settle down on just one of them. I have a pile of books to read, but the second I do so I tell myself I should be reading something about film, which sets me off fretting about my thesis again. I think I need some kind of job, or project to work on: hopefully I’ll soon have a film to work on, which will then lead to other things. But before then, and before I get the email from my examiners (an email which I’m also dreading) I’m left in limbo, feeling I should be doing something but wondering what.

Question: what is the best way to counter the argument that disabled people should work more and rely on benefits less, and not to do so is a betrayal of our hard-won freedoms? I have come across the notion, in various places and in various forms,, that by choosing to stay on benefits we are shirking the responsibilities we got when we began to earn equal rights in the sixties and seventies. After all, the argument goes, if we are citizens we must participate in society.

That is no doubt true, and many of us would love jobs, but the situation is rather more complicated: various barriers make having a job in it’s usual nine to five job impossible. In the case of someone with severe CP, for instance, many adaptations to the workplace would need to be made; tne employer would also need to employ two people: the person with cp, and a pa to assist them. On top of that there’s also the dilemma that, once we have earned over a certain amount we loose our right to benefit, meaning if the job falls through we are stuck. That, and a range of other barriers mean that this is a case of practicality rather than shirking responsibility. I do think this hurtful harmful misconception needs combatting before it is used as an excuse to cut benefits even further.

I know I’m being childish, and I know it’s all part of life online, but the fact s I’m angry beyond words. Two days ago I came across this tract of baseless hatred and bile directed towards me. I know I have been highly critical of stevens recently, but I have always tried to base my criticisms on evidence, holding back from the puerile name-calling he stoops to here. Tell me: did I bring such vitriol on myself?

I find myself asking, what would my heroes do? What would Mr. Attenborough or mr. palin do? what about Hemingway or tolkien, or other fine men of learning and lore? The answer, of course, is nothing: they wouldn’t waste there time on such nonsense, and nor should I. Stevens’ words speak for their selves, their baselessness sapping their authors credibility letter by letter. The guy is hoisted by his own petard. If anything I should pity him. Trying to debate with the man, as one would anyone else, is extremely frustrating: you put evidence to him, attempting to explain why the disability community object to his views, and he accuses you of abusing him and ‘hating disabled people”. I am not alone in this position: as one commenter on the DPAC facebook group put it, ”’But having tried getting him to answer my questions, he just accuses me of hate speech. It’s like playing chess with a pigeon; it knocks over the pieces, craps on the board, and flies off thinking it’s won.” The guy quite obviously has mental health or learning difficulties.

I feel so angry though, and so lost. I do not know what to do – an hour ago I was considering getting legal advice. In my mind the words of Ahab ”He tasks me, he tasks me, and I will have him!” compete with those of Gandhi: ”An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” Part of me refuses to let this lie, and to not rest until his reputation and career are utterly destroyed, but I can also hear Dad telling me to stop being stupid and to go do something useful.

At the end of the day, stevens isn’t worth it: I have written on here before about his lack of credibility, and there is a lengthy list of articles by others objecting to his tosh here; he has also now shown the would just how childish he is. The guy is a joke and everyone knows it. I refuse to be drawn into his tit-for-tat slagging match.

I though I would make this short video today, mainly as a result of certain events I’d rather not detail now, but partly as an experiment. I have always liked Kipling, although I daresay my computer’s electronic voice doesn’t quite do it justice.

Following on from what I was rabbiting on about yesterday, today I was pondering what it is about certain films and franchises that inspires so much creatively in fans. I must admit I didn’t reach the firm conclusions I wanted, having become distracted by side-issues, but I think certain narratives possess an epic quality: that is, they are so big, so detailed, so sprawling that some people feel the urge to enter into them. Star Trek is, of course, a prime example: here we have a series of stories, built up over almost half a century, with so much detail that it is almost tangible. People want to feel this world, to enter into it. They can’t do it physically, as the world of star trek does not exist in reality,so they create their own art work and narratives instead. Tolkiens Middle-earth is another good example: a created world so saturated with detail that people feel the urge to escape into it. It was this idea of world-ness that I began to ponder today: what is it? why do people get so enthusiastic about the tiniest of details concerning such fictions? Is it just harmless fun, or might it betray something darker – an urge to escape the real world and live in other, safer, ‘realities’? How tangible can such worlds get?

For several months I haven’t thought very deeply about film – not as deeply as I used to, anyway. Yet today, all of a sudden, something clicked back into place. I was casually browsing the internet when I thought I’d check for news about Star trek: I came across reference to Star trek Renegades, an online production directed by Tim Russ, staring some of the original cast. It occurred to me that there now exist three types of Trek the tv series, the filmic extensions, and now the semi-official online incarnations. Questions arose on my mind: what delineates all three? what precisely are their aesthetic differences? are they merging? Just as francesco cassetti points out that ‘filmic experience’ is expanding or changing to embrace new forms of film consumption, is film itself changing to embrace new media? Just as the viewer is becoming active and participatory, are we, in effect seeing narratives go beyond their traditional boarders? Look at the recent ‘marvel’ comic phenomena, where the production company is releasing multiple interwoven narratives on all three platforms. Might this be a response to the rise of the fan-filmmaker, taking existing narrative as the basis for their own work? Indeed, inasmuch as Renegades is not canonically accurate, it could be seen as a type of textual play, as Henry Jenkins describes. As I wrote here a few months ago, it seems like the line between fandom and the mainstream is blurring; this effect is deepened by the growth of semi-official, made for internet films, as well as websites like netflix which make their own programmes. The question is how might we account for this? Today I set about trying to establish the aesthetic difference between the three media: how, precisely, do they differ in terms if the image? There is the size, of course, and the quality; but what about the mise-en-scene and the type of shot used? Is there a difference in terms of shooting style? of course there is a big difference between cinematic and televisual aesthetics, but is there a third, concrete, online aesthetic emerging, mirroring – or perhaps even as a result of – the emergence of what I call the hybrid of the discourses fandom and cinephilia?

That is the question I set myself today. What I need to do now is get two similar shots, one from a star trek tv series and one from a star trek film, in order to compare the two. That way I can illustrate how they differ stylistically, before going on to examine how they both differ from the online incarnation. At first glance there is a vast difference: the online version was made on a far, far tighter budget, but could such aesthetic differences be a result of directorial choice as well as economics? Frankly I find it fascinating to examine how this new hybrid might manifest itself.

Tonight I just want to flag up this really quite astounding interview between jeremy Paxman and Russell Brand. Between the rambling and facetiousness, brand has a coherent, well-thought-out leftwing message. Beneath the comedian there is an obviously very intelligent man; a man who I find myself supporting. After watching this, I can’t help thinking, quite seriously, that Brand is the way forward.

One of my favourite Cat Empire songs is The wine song. As usual it is a song about having a good time, yet on sunday night I couldn’t help but reflect on the poignancy of some of it’s lyrics.

[quote=”The wine song”]In summer the bushfires rage and rage and rage on such beautiful days and we fight them with water that runs through the cracks water we’re desperately trying to save

[/quote]

I thought then, as I’m sure anyone else would, of the terrible reports of the fires currently burning in the Australian outback, of my trip to that amazing country almost seven years ago, and my friends there. I hope everyone is okay.

Two or three weeks ago lyn fell out of her chair after our PA had gone home. I tried to get her back upright but I couldn’t. Panicking, I pt out a cry for help on facebook, before giving in and pressing the emergency. The alarm women came, and to cut a long, stupid story short, got Lyn up. A short while later, though, we had another knock at the door: my Australian friend James, whom I know from the cricket club, had seen my message on Facebook and had come to see if we needed help. I felt embarrassed, humbled and grateful, so a few days later I invited him over for a beer to say thanks.

When he came round, of course we chatted about this and that, and the conversation eventually moved on to music. James mentioned he was from Melbourne, so I automatically chipped in that my favourite band was from there too, and asked him to guess who they were. James mentioned two or three groups i’d never heard of, before correctly naming the Cat Empire. I yelped with joy, and again after Jame adde that they were one of his favourites too. The cherry on the cake, however, came when James added that they would soon be playing in brixton, and offered to try to get tickets.

That is how, at about five last night, James came to be pushing me through the tube. The only problem was, I was feling tired: the truth is, the night before Lyn and I had gone to see Orb, an electric music group. Vodka got involved, and we had only come home at seven that morning. It had been an incredible night, but on route to the second gig of the weekend, I wasn’t feeling quite myself.

Fortunately, and to my astonishment, a beer and a burger put an end to that. We stopped in a whetherspoons on route to the show in order to wait for James’ girlfriend, and as soon as that beef, cheese, bacon and bun hit my stomach, I suddenly felt much better. And then it hit me: I was going to see the cat empire, the band Charlie introduced me to, the band of my university days, the band of a thousand amazing nights. This was going to fucking rule!

On the was in to the venue, I found myself wishing charlie could be there. Lyn had chosen to stay home – the cat empire not being quite her thing – but I wished both women were there. It felt slightly wrong to be there without C, popping my Cat Empire gig cherry without her, but then, there would be other gigs. There will be a next time, when lyn will be forced to come and Charlotte will be kidnapped from Liverpool, and we’ll all go together.

My melancholia was broken by the music. First there was the warm up act, who were ok but nothing special. Then, after a bit of a wait, the most awesome thing happened. As soon as they started to play, I felt overwhelmed with excitement and joy and emotions I cannot name. There was I, watching my favourite band on earth, with a guy who had taken me there out of pure kindness, who had fed me, pushed me, and paid for the whole lot. I never thought I would find a soul as kind as charlotte jones again, Lyn notwithstanding, but here was one: humanity, for all it’s barbarity, is redeemed.

What else can I say? It was one of the greatest nights of my life: they played some new songs which I didn’t recognise, but they also played their old stuff, the songs I first heard in Charlotte’s room as we got ready for the wednesday night disco. As soon as they started, I was on my feet dancing like a maniac! Highlights included ‘Hello’, ‘How to Explain’, and a version of ‘Sly’ which referenced Paradise city. I was in heaven when I heard that. I got home at about twelve (a relatively sensible time) tired, but thrilled, and feeling lucky to have so many good friends and such a great life. Without a doubt, it had been the greatest weekend ever.

I just caught the end of Salmond’s speech to the SNP conference. I’m no economic expert of course, but i seems to me that he is promising to build a land of milk and honey, telling scots what they want to hear, while knowing that he will not be able to deliver. I am concerned that he will woo the scottish people, riding the wave of dissatisfaction with the tories, leading to the fracturing of the country. I do not want that to happen: as I have written on here before, humanity needs to be uniting rather than dividing. For all his pretence of positivity, Salmond’s message is a negative one, a message of us and them, and a hatred of ‘other’. Indeed, salmond is no less short-sighted as that worm farage – they both talk the same fascist language. I do not want my country divided; humanity should be working closer together, not splitting up. Besides, could scotland really stand on its own in the current economic climate? hell even the united states almost went bankrupt this week, so perhaps this is not the best time for this debate. Frankly it is folly, however you look at it.

You might well ask why am I so worked up over Simon stevens. After all, if he annoys me that much, why not just ignore the jackass? Those are valid questions, and indeed he is largely ignored by the wider disability community. Yet the fact remains he has appointed himself a ‘disability consultant’, and thus presumes to speak for all of us, both on his blog and in the Huff. He also claims to be some big shot comedy actor after appearing in Channel four’s rather mediocre disability comedy show ‘I’m Spazticus’ last year. To my mind, to role he played might have bee better filled by someone with more significant cerebral palsy who could actually act, but I digress.

Here, then, we have a disabled man presuming a position of authority and then using it to spout all sorts of bullshit about his fellow disabled people and the disability community. I’m sorry, but that I cannot ignore: I will not let Stevens lie about the wonderful community to which I belong, or the tory-led persecution of disabled people which is becoming more and more apparent. I want everyone to see him for the irrelevant outsider he is, whose views hold absolutely no sway and have no foundation…

Indeed, if you read Steven’s’ articles, it is clear that something odd is going on. For example, at the end of this blog entry, after about five hundred words about how victims of ATOS cruelty do not exist, and how all the instances commonly cited have been misread, we find the following:

[quote=”simon stevens”]I call all this (atos ‘bashing”) a fad because it is very easy to attack this government. I strongly believe that the very minute we have a Labour government, the media will change their agenda instantly, focusing on why are these supposedly disabled people not working, as a new fashion, and I believe the current media spokespeople of disabled people, like Sue Marsh, will find themselves being yesterday’s news as the media seeks a fresh angle.[/quote]

Is it just me, or does that make no sense? It is pure nonsequeteur: why would the media make such a switch? Why would the coming of a labour government make he media change tack so abruptly? We attack atos and the government because they are literally killing us, something which stevens refuses to see in oder to set himself apart from those he calls ‘fake disabled people’. I can cite many instances in Stevens writing: I often get the impression that he is trying to write about things he does not understand yet thinks himself an authority on, like a child trying to use big words in order to sound like an adult, yet not having a clue what they mean. His words, when placed under even the slightest analysis, betray a man trying to punch far above his weight, who, despite calling himself a consultant and craving attention as the crip-icon he thinks he is, clearly does not understand the matters at hand. His writing should be seen in the light of that, and not given quite the weight one might accord to other pieces.

I am now, officially, a twit. Yesterday I gave in to temptation and joined twitter, after trying to put it off and avoid it. I see myself as a writer; while I admit my blog entries are usually quite short, I do not see the point of trying to condense ones thoughts into 140 characters. What can one do with such a limit? You can’t debate things as one might in an essay or blog entry. And yet it seems that is the way things are going: the novel and book are giving way to the short newspaper article or tweet, just as the 90 minute feature film is giving way to the Youtube clip. Of course, there are still exceptions to this (the ten hour epic Lord of the Rings being a good example) but short abrupt work seems to be the trend currently.

Thus I gave in and decided to see what the fuss was about. Besides, from what I hear a lot of stuff happens on twitter which as a writer I need to be privy to; all the big movers and shakers, both within the disability sphere and outside of it, have twitter accounts. My blog will still be my main output, of course, but I’m now looking forward to exploring this new shorter form of blogging. In a way it can be seen as a new evolution of prose, and that interests me. I can now be ‘followed’ @matthewgoodsel2

It has reached the point where I almost give myself a heart attack every wednesday. Prime ministers questions has almost become unwatchable for me: I am sick of the sight of CaMoron standing at the dispatch box, lying through is teeth,making out that everyone benefits if you cut taxes, spouting bullshit about Labour causing a mess they were fixing and generally being the unelected tory scumbag he is. Given these assholes even lie about what they say to the police, what the fuck are we doing letting them stay in government?

Interestingly, there was a question this week from Dennis Skinner about ATOS. He pointed out that yet one more life has been lost to this cruel system. The fact that camoron refused to intervene tells you all you need to know about the piece of shit: lower taxes mean less money for those on benefits, meaning systems like those run by atos need to be put in place, meaning people suffer and die. Hell, he might as well cut out the middle man and start building concentration camps. The fact that jackasses like simon stevens are still denying publicly that such tragedies are real fills me with disgust beyond any human language; he, like camoron, effectively has blood on his hands. Something must be done to get the tories out of power so someone actually capable of thought can take control of the economy, so that no more people have to die.

Let me say first an foremost that I am not in the business of trying to censor anyone, but, as I have touched upon once or twice of late, I am becoming very worried indeed about the writings of Simon Stevens. I discovered yesterday that he writes for the Huffington post – possibly the most prestigious online publication around. This gives Stevens’ ill-informed ramblings a weight they do not warrant, and that worries me.

I’m now convinced that a concerted effort needs to be made to counter simon stevens and his buffoonish articles in the huffington post. He may be a fool, but nevertheless he is a threat: for example, he has written of how the disabled people’s movement has been overrun by those with lesser impairments, who take benefit money which would otherwise go to him. How selfish, and how arrogant: he seems to have appointed himself arbiter of what others can and cannot do, how profound impairments are, and what defines disability. He claims his is a positive message aimed to encourage people to get off benefit and be more independent, but the problem is it plays straight into tory hands. As I recently wrote here the danger lies in the fact that others will think he speaks with some authority – he even has the audacity to call himself a disability consultant – when in fact he is an outsider whose views are born of mere selfishness. The government can use his utterances to support their victimisation of disabled people, through which they are forcing very vulnerable people back into work.

It is vital we defend each other as one community. I have cerebral palsy, which affects my dexterity, mobility and speech quite profoundly; but I would not for one second claim a person with, say, asbergers or OCD is any less disabled than I am, nor would it stop me defending their right to support. But that is precisely what Stevens is saying: ”The old movement has been all but dead for a number of years as its generation of activists have been institutionalised into the system they supposedly once fought against. But in 2010, the welfare reforms created a new ‘sick and disabled’ movement where we were now called to stand together to fight against ‘cuts’ that are yet to materialise in any meaningful way, and help sick people to, well, have the right not to work.” In other words, to stevens, the disability movement of old – the band of heroes which freed us in the seventies and eighties – has been overrun by people who are merely ‘sick’ and lazy. Needless to say, this analysis bears no resemblance to reality: quite frankly, I find it insulting, as a man who went to a special school and whose partner grew up in a scope home, to hear such words from on of the first beneficiaries of inclusive education. Moreover, what right does stevens have to cast doubt on other people’s conditions? How does he know they aren’t as severe as his? Such words divide us, and doom us.

The goal of the disabled people’s movement is as it always has been: equality. We may no longer be locked away in scope homes, but now we face other forms of persecution. And these forms of persecution now affect greater numbers of people, so that they too have every right to call themselves disabled ad fight alongside us. To argue we should stop fighting, and that the movement has been overrun by lazy malcontents, gives carte blanche to those who would oppress us to ignore our entire movement, to continue with the cuts and the back to work schemes. That’s why it is vital we try to have Stevens’ articles taken offline: they are damaging, devicive and hurtful, and, if seen by the wrong person, potentially very dangerous indeed.

Following on from the idiotics I wrote of here, I just wrote the following complaint concerning an article I came across this morning

Sir

I write to complain in the strongest terms about an article by simon stevens on your site, dated 6 august. I find it utterly preposterous and offensive, as do, I assure you, many in the disability community. In it, Stevens blithely attempts to justify his work with ATOS, an organisation which, no doubt I need hardly remind you, ha caused an incredible amount of suffering to many people. In writing this article, Stevens undermines the united front true disability activists need to show against ATOS and the government cuts. Thus, while I do not oppose freedom of speech, I must implore you to take it down from your website: Stevens speaks only for himself; he clearly does not fully understand the issues at hand or the implications of his words. In short, having his ill-advised article on your website does us all more harm than good.

Yours

Matt Goodsell.

Chilling in the evening, after a chippy tea

Listening to music, just you and me

The songs I suggest might be rather poor

But I know you have some brilliant tunes in your store

So you select the music, love, and I’ll just listen It’s enough to see your face light up, your eyes glisten,

And to hear you sing along to each new track.

So after this has been posted I’ll hurry back To sing with you to whatever you care to play

Anything you select always brightens my day.

I’m currently feeling quite positive about things: Lyn and I are both well, I have a couple of films to work on, and things seem quite cheerful in general. I think one contributing factor to this is that my absences seem to be behaving themselves – I’ve hardly had any in about two months. You know, I was reflecting recently on the benefit of knowing what they are: for much of my life I thought I was imagining these spells somehow. My parents say they told me, but I couldn’t remember; it wasn’t until the events of a couple of years ago, after Lyn noticed them and asked to check them out, that it was firmly established in my brain that they were a form of epilepsy. Mum and dad had always called them absences, so, looking back, if I had googled the term I’d have saved myself a lot of fretting. Anyway, once I knew what they are, my relationship with them changed: I wasn’t being silly I wasn’t imagining them, and I didn’t have to hide them.In a way it feels good to know I can ask people about them, and that others have them too. Hell, there were even facebook groups I could join. Once I looked it up, moreover, I recognised many of the things I felt in the descriptions; I was at last able to put a name to the odd, usually upsetting sensation of not being able to remember the layout of the area around me: Jamais vu. I found it reassuring, and that reassurance helped with the fear, as did knowing that I couldn’t help them. They still make me feel a bit down, of course, but that, at least I now know, is part of their inherent neurological effect, and cannot be helped.

It’s strange but in a way knowing I have a form of epilepsy makes me happy. Instead of fretting that I somehow imagine my absences, I now have something to google and explore. And I think that principle applies elsewhere too: if you can name something, if you know something is real, definite and can be explored, the fear of it goes away. That’s why I now think that I won’t hide any future problems or dilemmas I might have, but engage with them, and ask others about them, whatever the issue. I think I’ll advise others to do the same – the folly lies in allowing one’s ignorance to continue. I think that is a valuable, positive lesson.

Busy days, no time to blog shopping, script-writing, fixing the bog.

Watching mitch and rudi make new shelves for lyn

Sawing wood in the garden; we better stay in.

Soon I promise to write something longer than ten lines

I just seem to have entered some busy, exciting times

Sir,

I just came across your 15 july rant against the national health service. How it’s author, cal Thomas, has the cheek to call himself a journalist is staggering. I’m a brit and owe my life to the nhs – we are rightly proud of a healthcare system free at the point of use, accessible regardless of income. It is infinitely more civilised than the american system /mr. Thomas has used a few well-publicised yet isolated incidents to rubish the system; in doing so he insults the nhs, britain and journalism. Never have I come across a more unsubstantiated, biased and il-informed piece of writing. I demand an apology and retraction

I may sometimes seem awed by this city and what happened in it last year, but London can also be a very dark place too. I just came home from a walk: I needed to get a bit of cash out, and I’m currently trying to come up with some song lyrics, so I decided to go up to stratford for some inspiration. I had not been there in a while, and the place was very busy, so it took me a while to find my bank – so long, in fact, that there was no time to do any shopping afterwards. As I was going back to the station, though, I saw something which troubles me: at the side of the pavement there was a man in a wheel chair, begging, a red cap in his lap. It is a depressing but not uncommon sight, and I had noticed him before on my way to the bank. However, this time he was being told off by an able-bodied man who, when another passer-by asked, said he was the man’s carer. He was shouting, accusing the man in the chair of falling asleep and not raising enough money. Clearly something very, very wrong was going on: taken at face value, no carer or PA would ever act like that. I assume the guy in the chair was being used to raise money for drugs; he probably had mental as well as physical disabilities, and thus was being abused. I wanted to say something, to tell him to stop, but I would have either been ignored or punched. I tried to find a policeman or security officer, but there were none. I came home hating myself for not doing anything, for being a coward and letting some poor old man’s hell continue.

Part of me is ashamed to admit that I’m still fairly obsessed with the olympics, and in particular olympic ceremonies. A voice at the back of my mind keeps saying I’m being sad, and that I should start to focus on something else. Yet, when you think about it, I’m not straying too far from my background in film, tv and cultural studies: it occurs to me that such ceremonies are essentially works of art, but on a scale unlike any other. They can be read as presentations by a city/country to the world, and thus are highly revealing, highly political works. I also have a hunch that the olympics in general, from the selection of the city onward, can tell us a lot abut international politics. The ceremonies are therefore rather interesting to try to decode, compare and contrast. I have written on here before of my fascination with the London 2012 ceremonies: if we can indeed read them as we would a film or theatrical performance, surely the next logical step if I’m going to take this fascination seriously is to read them in relation to what preceded it, as well as other events of their kind (commonwealth games, world cups, song contests and so on). Ironically, the ceremonies of London 2012 were the first I had ever watched in full, but fortunately there seems to be a plethora on Youtube – I was just watching the opening of the Vancouver 2010 winter games. There also seems to be quite a big literature on the subject too. That, and the fact that each ceremony is so damn long, means I have plenty to keep me occupied.

I don’t have much to write about tonight, but I would just like to draw this appalling story to your attention. It is the frankly disconcerting tale of how a thousand pound watch was stolen from a severely disabled man in Gloucestershire – unable to call for help, the thieves walked in and just took it when his PA was distracted. The troubling thing is, they must have observed the guy and singled him out as ‘easy pickings’. If we can take this as a sign of how desperate and ruthless people have become, we live in troubling times indeed.

I daresay most people reading this will know me personally. For those of you who don’t, I have moderate to severe cerebral palsy: I can walk, after a fashion, and talk, after a fashion. Although I have had paid employment before such as the time I worked asa student ambassador for university, as has my fiancee Lyn, it is pretty obvious that it would be difficult if not impossible for either of us to do a regular job. Our claim to disability living allowance is, more or less, clear cut. In that respect we are lucky: I have long known that not all disabilities are as obvious as mine, and not all barriers to work can be classified as a disability.

I am appalled at the bile currently coming from the government and rightwing media labelling all those out of work as feckless or lazy. There are many complex reasons why someone would not have a job, and I can’t pretend I understand them all. They range from education to family circumstances, many of which can be as impairing as a physical disability. Thus to judge someone because they do not have a job, to dismiss them as lazy without even trying to understand their full circumstances and background, is utter folly. Marxist sociology, for instance, posits that one may be impaired due to socioeconomic class: the education system is innately geared to favour those middle class students who use certain kinds of language, and who get support with their work at home. Overtly or covertly, barriers are put up in order to perpetuate the class system, to make sure only certain types of student succeed.

I think it’s even more complex than that, though. Right wingers speak of people taking personal responsibility for their destiny, blinding theirselves to the fact that we all exist in a nexus of interrelated events, each having a bearing on the other. On the most reductive level, personal responsibility is a myth: all we can really do is react to external forces, many of which are oppressive. Of course, I do not completely negate free will or choice, yet nevertheless the nexus exists, and we are all in it. Moreover, it is impossible to map out all it’s ramifications, so to say unemployed people are just lazy may, in some instances, be akin to dismissing a person with a severe disability as just lazy. Again, there may be a thousand unseen factors why someone may not have a job.

This is why what papers like the daily mail are doing is so terrible: it is stigmatising huge swathes of people, encouraging crude stereotyping and discouraging efforts to understand why people behave as they do. Be it because of culture, education, lack of hope or vision, to dismiss an unemployed person as just lazy is, in itself, lazy thinking. There are reasons why people are as they are, but for some it feels much better to just absolve themselves of all responsibility and brand the unemployed idle.

A few lines of lyrics, if I may,

this being ‘national poetry day,’ A verse or two would seem timely on a day celebrating words used finely.

There’s nothing like poetry for play with words

To evoke the sunrise, the songs of birds

And everything that is beautiful about life on earth.

Poems are like a babe’s first laugh after it’s birth.

So here’s to Shakespeare, to Keats, To poor Wilfred Owen

Enriching the world with nothing but a poem.

To anyone who still believes the government is acting justly, to anyone who still believes the tories care about who they hurt, to anyone who still believes the cuts are not killing people, I beg you to go here.

From what I heard today, Ed Miliband’s dad was an academic critical of institutions like the monarchy and army. I too am critical of such institutions, or at least I am aware of the criticisms of them. That does not mean that I hate my country. To be critical of something surely implies one seeks to improve it: criticism is, or can be, a form of love, like a parent criticises a child. Thus I am beside myself with fury at the daily mail’s unthinking attack on Ralph miliband. he may have been a leftwing academic, but that does not mean he is a traitor, and it does not give any mindless tabloid hack any right to brand him as such. The mail’s article, despite it’s laughable classical allusions, is nothing more than the puerile ramblings of a gutter journalist, an ad hominen attack on a dead academic whose son happens to be the leader of the opposition. To seek to discredit the son by besmirching the father is frankly beyond the pale; It is an insult to journalism, and for the editor of the Mail to appear on Newsnight this evening to defend such an abomination fills me with disgust for the rag he calls a newspaper.