[u][/u]I think I have a problem with my temper. These days, whenever something even mildly upsets me, I fly into a screaming rage. It happens before I can control it; I flip out. I know I should be calm and rational, and put my arguments across like a sensible adult, but a rage inside me bubbles up and spills out. As soon as I realise, I feel ashamed of myself. It usually happens when I’m, say, watching the news, but I’ve done it with Lyn more than once now, so it has to stop.

David Icke should have stuck to keeping goal. Someone, who I won’t name here, recently introduced me to him. I thought I’d be respectful and see if there is anything in what he says, but the more I watch and read, the more appalled I am with this two-cent conman. It is clear that he merely rehashes widespread knowledge about stuff like september 11, and uses it as a segway into his own brand of baseless bulshit. That 9/11 was an inside job is almost common knowledge as demonstrated by people like Michael Moore, but Icke presents it as if for the first time, linking it then to his garbled ideas about some kind of new world order, using the former as evidence for the latter. What worries me more, however, is the way he claims his ideas as some kind of awareness or ‘being awake’, as if not to agree with him is somehow to remain unaware or one of the ‘sheeple’. I find that frankly insulting: I am very much aware. At university – which Icke baselessly claims just churn out unthinking drones conditioned to just give the ‘right’ answers – I was taught to think critically, to base arguments on evidence and to question everything. In academia there is no such thing as a right answer, just arguments for and against; yet Icke presents academics as repressing critical thought, as they are part of his ‘global elite’. I am perfectly aware, and awake enough to see through his trick. Not to agree with Icke does not make one a sheep, but precisely the opposite.

Somewhat rhzomically, when one starts to analyse what Icke is saying, he is as right-wing as the fascist new world order he claims to be railing against. He says he is for free speech and new ideas, yet I get the impression that he brands anyone who does not agree with him as ‘unaware of the truth’. He links things like the war in Iraq to the rise of political correctness on the grounds that it allowed government too become more powerful, thus using an unpopular war to promote his own rather right wing ideas. Like the very neocons he professes to oppose, he hates anything to do with the state, free trade, global warming and so on. Thus he is performing quite a devious con, tricking ordinarily liberal people into agreeing with his brand of conservatism. They might believe that he is encouraging free thought, but he represses it; then they brand anyone who dares to question him as part of the unenlightened masses. In a way he is not unlike an evangelical preacher, using their own distorted form of religion as a vehicle for their own intolerant ideas, claiming to speak in the name of tolerance and love yet branding anyone who speaks against them blasphemous or unenlightened. And all the while throughout his lectures, Icke constantly refers to his own books, as if selling them – what more proof that he is just a cheap little con-man can there be? He sets himself up as some kind of messianic man of the people, standing up against some huge global conspiracy, when in fact he’s a self-promoting con man out to spread his own brand of right-wing bull and make huge amounts of money in the process. He has given a tool of the religious right a secular makeover in order to gain control over people; many seem to have fallen for him, and I find that very worrying indeed.

Things cannot be allowed to continue as we are. We cannot be forced to endure five years of this. It has been a week when, despite calling back all their toffy-nosed friends to vote for them, tory economic plans were defeated in the lords. Even the peers couldn’t stomach the barbarity of what CaMoron and Osbourne were plotting: thousands would have been left struggling to feed themselves. Faced with such a defeat, the tories now plan revenge on the lords – rather than admit they were wrong, like a child having a tantrum they plan to hit back at the lords. At least for the time being the tax credit cuts have been halted, but it is becoming clearer and clearer that this group of privileged insults to humanity is unfit to rule. Something has to be done: there must be some mechanism whereby the people of this country can legally force an election. I know I keep saying this, but the tories have to go.

According to this Guardian article, a new documentary film out soon in the States is about disabled people’s under representation in the film industry. A matter of long concern in disability culture, we still only get 1% of screentime. ”At a time when people with disabilities continue to be woefully underrepresented or employed in film and TV, either in front of or behind the camera, Becoming Bulletproof compels its audiences to think differently about disability. But it also indirectly challenges those involved in the entertainment industry to reassess the contributions disabled people can make.” It’s about time such a documentary was made: while things are improving, the new era we were promised at the paralympics, with a crip on every tv show, didn’t seem to materialise. While I know a lot of good people myself included, in my own small way – are working hard to redress this unbalance, hopefully Becoming Bulletproof will give the issue the extra exposure it needs.

I had to go – the temptation was just too great. I couldn’t wait. Last night after dinner I went to the cinema and saw it. I have seen SPECTRE! And the first thing I have to say is, Daniel Craig has to do more bonds – HAS TO. He was excellent last night, in a truly excellent film. I don’t want to spoil anything so I won’t go into detail, but Spectre mixes elements of Craig’s contemporary Bond, with it’s concern with contemporary issues, with elements classic Bond from the Connerry and Moore eras. It fuses them seamlessly, and the result is a joy to watch. There are evocations of From Russia With Love with it’s train sequence, and Goldfinger, with it’s whit cat; these are fused perfectly with the things we’ve come to expect from the craig-era Bond. I was over the moon last night as I left the cinema – Sam Mendes has done it again. Spectre is a true treat, especially for bond fans. The only problem is, I really want to watch it again, to get more out of it, as I think it’s the type of film which is even better on the second viewing. With the cinema only a bus ride away, I think I just might.

I was just watching the Victoria Derbyshire program while waiting for my Monday morning shower, and heard something that made me furious. They just reported that germaine greer has followed up her recent comments with a string of abject, intolerant bile which makes your jaw drop. Crap like ”transwomen are just men who seek attention”. When I wrote about her joining ukip, I was kind of joking, but what I just heard goes way beyond the shit they spout into plain insult. Greer has made me furious, and I want the bitch stripped of any academic award she may have fooled people into giving her. To call her a professor mocks all real professors – she is just an egotistical bigot spouting shit to gain attention, and has nothing sensible to contribute to the discourse.

You realise time is passing when your old university friends post things like this on their blogs. It’s written by Nicky and is addressed to her infant son, containing warnings to him such as ” It is not exciting to pick random bits off the floor and eat them ‘just to see if you can’ and I don’t find it funny when you put an entire banana in your mouth and nearly choke on it.” I’m flagging it up because it made me go ‘aww’, and because it’ll probably strike a chord with both my mum, and my brother Mark and Kat – and for that matter any new parent reading this – who are probably having similar tribulations. To think: not long ago I was going to discos and parties with friends like Nicky, and now they’re writing things like this. What a profound and beautiful sign of the passing of time.

As the partner of a transwoman, I must say I’m appalled to have just found this: ”Australian-born academic and writer Germaine Greer has said that in her opinion, transgender women are ‘not women’. She also claims that ‘a great many women’ who are not transgender think transgender women – who she refers to as ‘male to female transgender people’ – do not ‘look like, sound like or behave like women’.” I am staggered to hear such bigotry from this so-called academic. Hiding behind

”free speech” (hmm, where have we heard that defence before?) she says that, in her opinion, male-to-female transpeople cannot be considered true women. Well, Germaine, my fiancee is every bit a woman as any other. What Greer says amounts to bigotry; it clings to the very gender binaries which entrap so many – to distinctions of black and white and nothing in between. Her tone is identical to the shit UKIP spout, making me wonder whether she intends to join their moronic ranks. Frankly I expected better from someone so well educated; you expect to hear such reductive, intolerant tosh from idiots like Farage, but not someone who claims to be so familiar with oppression.

I just came across this interesting article from the disability news service. Disability activists fear a ‘whitewash’ after Leonard Cheshire Disability was awarded £300,000 to set up a project on the history of disabled people. Activists say that, given Leonard cheshire’s own rather checkered past, it does not have the authority to write such a history. The question I’d ask in response is, ”well, who does?”

There’s no denying Leonard Cheshire’s past. Like Scope they ran homes which virtually incarcerated disabled people like prisoners; one still hears stories of the horrors that went on in such places. This award is like paying a guard to write the history of his own prison – of course he’ll want to cast himself as a hero when in fact he is one of the villains.

On the other hand, I have to ask, who has the authority to write such a history? I daresay there are as many disability histories as there are people with disabilities. We are all unique, we all have different stories to tell; we are not a fixed, easily defined group of people. My fear is, certain ‘activists’ – you know, the pushy types – will endeavour to see to it that this ‘history’ is written how they see it, while other voices get pushed aside. While I hope anyone writing this history will research it thoroughly, there are certain voices within our movement whom I fear won’t be satisfied until it is told their way, reflecting their personal experience of disability. I see our movement already becoming dominated by such people.

Any history of disabled people will always be fraught with such concerns. I don’t know if anyone is in an ideal position to write it. What is certain, though, is that it is not a non user-led charity like Leonard Cheshire.

For all my political bravado, for all my showing off, for all my anti-tory ranting on here, the moment I receive an invitation forwarded to me by my colleagues at GAD to attend a EHRC meeting up in Westminster on november the third, I get all shy. Precisely such an invitation came to my inbox last night: ”It gives me great pleasure to invite you to a participatory stakeholder meeting between the Equality & Human Rights Commissions’ Disability Committee and stakeholders working on Young People’s issues to be held at the EHRC London office”. This is big, serious, and I cannot dick about. I genuinely feel quite nervous.

Updates on this to come.

Great scot! I just raised the blinds in my office, and a guy on what looked like a skateboard whizzed past. The odd thing is, the skateboard had no wheels! Could this mean we are now officially in THE FUTURE?!

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Well, maybe we aren’t quite in the future foreseen in Back To The Future, but according to this interview with one of it’s writers, they got a surprising amount right.

I was about to launch into another tirade against the new star wars film, about how the narrative is complete, the story told, and how there’s no need for a seventh film. I just caught the new trailer for episode seven, and it seemed to confirm my fears about ‘The Force Awakens’ being a cliche-ridden kids film. But then, in a fleeting moment, I caught a glimpse of fur: ”There’s Han and Chewie!” I thought, and was instantly drawn in, feeling a wave of childish excitement. I can’t help it: for all that I’ve written about Star Wars being superseded in our culture by other narratives, about it’s time being passed, I can’t help but look forward to the new star Wars film – probably just like every other adult male around!

I watched a Richard Dawkins lecture on Youtube yesterday afternoon. I found it rather interesting, although I do have a few reservations about Dawkins. When it was over, I took a glance at facebook, only to see that Lyn, obviously having overheard what I was watching, had written ”Richard bloody Dawkins!” as her status. She didn’t approve, but asked to watch what I was watching. She, like me, is interested in the sort of things Dawkins talks about, although our views differ somewhat. I think I’ll flag up her response to it.

I love this city even more after yesterday. It’s so complex, so intricate and varied it fascinates me. My tram trip went well: in the end I only stayed on a few stops, as it didn’t take me long to realise that it was pretty much the same as a train. My initial plan had been to go as far as Wimbledon, never having seen that part f the city before, but I soon realised that would have taken ages, so got off at West Croydon. From there, not wanting to go all the way back the way I had come, I caught the overground to London Bridge, and from there the boat back to North Greenwich. It isn’t that I’m becoming a transport geek or anything – or, god forbid, a trainspotter – but the variety of ways to get around this vast, labyrinthine metropolis intrigues me. There is always more to explore; more areas, each one so different yet still within the same city, to see. No doubt you could say something similar of any large metropolis, and I certainly want to explore other cities too; but this is the first chance I have had to get to grips with a place like this under my own power and in my own time, and even after five years living here I still find myself utterly captivated.

I’m out on one of my longer trips today. One of the things which fascinates me about london is the number of different ways to get around the place. There are the busses and the tube, the cable car and the boats. These are all cool, but it occurred to me that the only one I had yet to try was the tram. Not many realise london has a tram system. It is a little out of my way, and it took a whil to get here, but I am writing this sat on a tram in beckenham. So far so good. Mind you, I’m not too sure where I’m going, or how exactly I’m going to get home, but I suppose that’s all part of the adventure.

I was just going through my blog archive, as I often do, and found that a decade and a day ago I posted this entry bemoaning the demise of quality tv. Reading it, my opinions haven’t changed: I still think most tv, especially reality shows and talent contests, are abysmal. Mind you, the irony is I watch more telly these days than when I wrote that entry: at uni I didn’t have much access to a tv set, whereas now I often settle down on the sofa to watch tv of an evening – much to lyn’s chagrin. While I try to watch quality stuff, I have been caught watching the odd bit off trash.

Yesterday I took myself up to the olympic park. I’ve been watching some of the wheelchair rugby on tv, so I thought I’d go check it out. I got to the Copper Box arena just in time for the start of a Great Britain Vs France match. Before that moment, I had known very little about the sport, apart from it’s nickname: murderball. I was, however, instantly taken with it: not only was the rate at which those men were hitting each other’s chairs quite phenomenal, but the tactics involved in the game were quite intriguing. Indeed, I’d heard it referred to as a mixture of violence and chess. Within ten minutes, I decided I could see myself getting into the sport. It is slightly stop/start, but nevertheless it really draws the spectator in. I was really getting into it by the end, and went away, Great Britain having won the match, resolved to look a bit deeper.

I went to bed slightly early last night as I was tired, so I missed Question time. I just gave it a watch on Iplayer, though. I probably shouldn’t have, because it made my heart pound with rage. Firstly, why the fuck did they waste a perfectly good panel seat on a bigot from UKIP? He added nothing sensible to the debate, but merely spooled out the same old xenophobic pseudofascist crap one expects from his ‘party’ about how the EU is the source of all evil and singing the praises of segregated, two-tier education. Second, Rod Liddel proved himself a complete hack: the way that barely literate turd accused Simon Schama of being too emotional when he outlined the reasons for a tolerant approach to immigration really got my goat. Thirdly there was the usual snobbish turd from the tory praises, singing the praises of CaMoron, spewing the usual lies about how they are turning the economy around, refusing to apologise for the suffering those insults to humanity have inflicted. Then there was Simon Schama and a woman from Labour, valiantly trying to insert reason, logic and humanity into the debate, while the rest of the panel and most of the audience attacked them. I fear this is the way things are going: I fear more and more people are falling for farage and his posse of imbeciles, not helped by that vile insult to humanity currently in downing street, and turning away from reason, tolerance and the pursuit of true equality. If that is so, then I can expect more ‘debates’ like the one I just saw, where most of the audience members seemed to be unthinking young twits who see nothing wrong with the shit Farage and his minions spew. Given this one had me shouting at my screen so violently that no doubt I disturbed Lyn, still trying to sleep (sorry dear) I better stop watching things like Question Time.

I can no longer watch PMQs or any parliamentary debate. The merest sight of the tories laughing and heckling, as they apparently did yesterday, makes my blood boil. It is unbearable. Every day I see reports of the suffering they are causing; every day another sanctions-related suicide, or a story of a mum who cant afford to feed her children. To then see these spoiled etonian scumbags jeer at Corbyn, a man with more humanity in his little finger than in the entire Conservative party, as if they regarded hm as just a senile plebian nuisance, is now more than I can handle. I can no longer stomach that charade, that sickening flaunting of privilege while others suffer. Today they are even screwing up the education system, setting the clock back forty years to fit their outdated, unfair class-preserving (which they insultingly call meritocratic) ideas. The very sight of it now fills me with a hatred beyond words, and I no longer have any respect for Westminster.

I had had a very good morning and was in a good mood until a few minutes ago. I had been into school, where the kids ‘interviewed’ me about film. Then, having received an email earlier to tell me they were ready, I trundled to the opticians to pick up my new glasses. On my way, however, something happened which really pissed me off.

I haven’t seen Chopper in over a year. I want nothing more to do with him. I was a fool to ever see him as a friend; he was only after my money and free beer. When I was hanging around with him, a local worm known as Metin used to tag along. I still sometimes see him in the street, but he usually ignores me and I him. Today, however, we passed eachother on opposite pavements: I ignored him, but he beckoned me over the road. I was about to cross anyway to get to the optician, so I thought I’d be polite and say hi. Almost immediately, he suggested going to the pub, but before I could even turn my ipad on to say I had given up drink until December, the slimeball asked if he could ‘borrow’ a pound from me. Of course this set bells ringing – chopper used to ask to borrow money often after I had had a drink,, then never seemed to pay me back. Now here was this prick, whom I hadn’t spoken to in ages, suddenly pretending to be my friend and trying to use me as an easy cash supply. Utterly offended, I just turned my chair and proceeded on my way, ignoring the mumbled insult the toad hurled as I drove off.

Yesterday I attended a GAD seminar about hate crime toward people with disabilities. It is apparently on the rise, and I’m currently considering reporting this incident as such. A man just tried to take advantage of me. I’m wiser now, but there was a time when I might have fallen for it. I’m sure this incident comes under that heading – yesterday I described my experiences with chopper to the group, and the consensus was that it could be classified as a hate incident. Most of all, I’m angry at the audacity of this worm thinking I’m a soft touch and thinking he could play games with me. In act, at the moment I’m furious.

I just came across this story: ”The UK has become the first country in the world to be placed under investigation by the United Nations for violating the human rights of people with disabilities amid fears that thousands may have died as a consequence of controversial welfare reforms and austerity-driven cuts to benefits and care budgets.” For a country to be investigated by the UN on such charges would seem pretty huge news to me; why, then, is there not a word about it on any of the major news websites. Very odd.

What can any subculture, under the rule of a government which oppresses it, finds that one of it’s own has started to write pro-government articles in a popular online newspaper? It is clear that this person is doing so for his own ends – to gain attention and infamy, to stand out from the crowd. To anyone else in his community it is clear that what this person writes has no basis in reality, but it sings to the tune of the government so much that the could cite it as evidence of support for their oppressive actions from within the community. It is akin to a black person in sixties america denouncing Martin Luthour-King as reactionary and singing the praises of segregation, asking ”we have good homes and jobs and masters – what more could we ask for? I prefer the back of the bus!”. Those who favoured that regime would cite him as support from within the black community; attention would be lavished upon him, and he would gain personal fame and power. Meanwhile the efforts of those who strove for equality would be set back years.

Thus such writing is dangerous: written with self-proclaimed authority but falling down under the slightest analysis, to call for it to be taken offline would contravene the concept of freedom of speech; yet to allow it to remain online would only massage the ego of the fool who wrote it, giving him a credibility he does not deserve and hindering the efforts of the rest of the group. Rather like a UKIPper all to eager to hypocritically cry ‘free speech!’ the moment anyone calls them up on their hate-ridden bull, trying to question or debate him only adds to his delusions of persecution, as he seems to think that the rest of the community is trying to silence him for speaking against popular opinion; in turn his adds to his notion of self-importance. This self-proclaimed community leader pronounces himself a consultant on the issues he talks about, when to everyone else within that community he is nothing but an attention-seeking irrelevance with very little understanding of the issues he presumes to speak about.* The problem is, how can members of the subculture make it clear to those outside it that the latter is the case, rather than the former?

*Indeed, although he attempts to write authoritatively, his language use gives one the impression that he employs half-remembered and poorly understood phrases from elsewhere, even implying that he has some degree of learning disability.

I found this yesterday, and agree with it so strongly I decided to repost it here

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I’ve noticed that more and more people seem to be defining themselves as disabled these days. The online forums are filling up with all kinds of people with all kinds of mental and physical conditions, many of which I’ve never heard of. The disability community is becoming increasingly crowded as more and more people self define as disabled. Some could have a problem with this: this morning, for instance, I came across a post by a deaf guy on the Disability Politics Discussion Group on facebook asking whether some people really were disabled, and positing that some people were putting it on to get perks like better parking spaces. I responded that making such assumptions and generalisations is dangerous given that some peoples’ disabilities are not obvious, and that ”if we’re going to start using disability hierarchies, I could just pull rank an say that you’re not a real crip unless you went to a special school or spent your childhood in an institution, making most of the people reading this ‘norms’.” Such talk is folly as it divides us. As soon as we start questioning one another, as soon as we start saying ”I’m more of a crip than you”, our community looses all cohesion. We would start to compete with eachother, begrudging eachother support. That is exactly what the Tories want: united we can oppose them, but as soon as we start questioning other people’s right to say ”I’m a disabled person”, we adopt their individualist worldview. After all, given, as I wrote here, in a way everyone has a disability and nobody has the authority to decide who is and is not disabled, ours should be the most welcoming, supportive subculture around. Even if I had experiences others escaped, it does not mean I’m further up the hierarchy or more disabled than anyone else. Nor does it entitle me to more support: support should be based on need, and that requires us to work together to ensure eachothers needs are met.

Lyn’s productivity puts me to shame. No sooner than she posted her latest awesome track online yesterday, she’s already working on a new song today. Cool beats seem to be constantly emanating from her little studio, even as I type this. While I try to keep my writing up, the rate of her artistic output embarrasses me.

Not only that, while we were waiting for our first brew this morning she came up with a rhyme about coffee which I think is worth recording, if simply because it is currently stuck in my head, going round and round:

I like coffee in the morning,

I like coffee at night,

I like coffee

I like coffee

I like coffee all the time!

(repeat ad nauseam)

Right at the end of Question Time last night, a young eighteen year old girl spoke up: she said she had ben to the tory conference and that, as she was walking out, protesters had called her ‘vermin’ and ‘tory scum’. She said she found it disgusting. Well, boo hoo! Frankly I have no sympathy: she, as a tory, brought every heckle and insult upon herself. Normal political discourse should always be refined and civilised, of course, but we have now gone far beyond normality. People are suffering due to what the tories are doing; we are dying, and we are angry. And if prissy little tory scumbags can’t deal with the anger they brought upon themselves, that’s their problem.

I love how quickly Lyn churns new tracks out. For the last couple of days I had been hearing some great sounds coming from her studio: the piece she was obviously working on sounded a bit different from her usual stuff – slightly faster, it made me want to dance. I decided to wait to see how it turned out, and it was well worth it. It gives me great pleasure to direct you here, to Heart, Lyn’s first foray into Drum and Bass and an absolute cracker!

Yesterday afternoon I came across this link to a recording of a play. It was quite long, but I thought I’d give it a watch. Before I got far, though, I sent the link to Lyn so she cold watch too: it was an incredibly powerful piece of drama. The First To Go is about the famous T4 program, in which the nazis exterminated thousands of people with disabilities. Written by Nabil Shaban, it depicts the experiences of a group of disabled people during that time. Clearly well researched, it’s accuracy renders it utterly chilling, and at times hard to watch. Nonetheless, it’s well worth watching. I now intend to investigate further, perhaps getting hold of a script or looking for a performance.

I had been trying to avoid politics all morning. I had kept myself busy: I have, in fact, started work on a new essay, collecting together everything I’ve written about Happy And Glorious on here and starting to edit it into one text. However, I just glimpsed the headlines and flew into a rage: CaMoron has stood up in manchester and lied his empty selfish head off. The bit I caught was about Corbyn having sympathy with Bin Laden – a monstrous, ad hominem based on an out of context quote. Everyone wilt access to Google knows what Corbyn actually said on the subject not that it was tragic that bin laden had been killed, but that he’d been killed rather than put on trial; but CaMoron stood up there making an attack which has no place whatsoever in political discourse. Moreover, the stain on humanity spoke of fairness and equality, claiming to fight for both when his cuts have made our society far more unfair and unequal than it has been n a long, long time. For him to be so arrogant as to preach to us like that, casting himself as some kind of good guy when he has inflicted so much pain and misery makes me angry beyond words. This insult to humanity, preaching greed and selfishness and calling it compassion, should be made to apologise for his lies and put in jail. I don’t see why we should have to put up with this smarmy little scumbag and his party of greedy, selfish morons.

I just read that, in a speech earlier today, Iain Duncan-Smith claimed to have got his sense of fairness from his parents. Well, they obviously did a pisspoor job: what sort of scum could raise such a monster as a son? A monster who, if there was any justice in the world, would immediately put on trial for his crimes; a monster whose policies have caused thousands of deaths; a monster who punched the air at the announcement of cuts to welfare cuts which he knew would lead many to starvation. Who stood there this afternoon patting himself on the back claiming to care and tying to make jokes, while those he was hurting marched outside. Any parent would be ashamed to have raised such a son; or, if they aren’t, are as monstrous as he is.

How dare they? How DARE THEY!? The day after 80,000 people march against them – people who have suffered because of the cuts, who have seen friends and relatives die as a direct result of the cuts they are imposing on us, tory shits like Boris Johnson and David CaMoron make jokes and stupid puns. They insult the protesters by calling them ‘a mob of assorted crusties’, or say they should have more respect. Words fail me: at the moment am shaking with rage at their arrogance, furious that this group of bigoted, selfish, insults to humanity thinks itself fit to rule over us, saying it has the best interests of the country at heart when it serves only the rich and leaves others to starve. Nor can I say what I think should happen to them in case I make myself look like some extremist nut job; save to say that, taken as a whole what these scumbag tories are doing amounts to a serious crime against humanity, and they should be treated like criminals they are.

Not that there is a word about it on the bbc or any other mainstream news websites, but there are currently huge anti-tory protests up in manchester. A few pictures can be seen here. People are clearly vehemently angry, enraged at the tories. They don’t want that bunch of selfish, arrogant scumbags in their town, and if it were possible I’d be standing with them. No doubt many of those protesting will have first hand experience of the tories’ savagery, and I hope manchester lets the tories know how much the country hates them.

I have the pleasure to report that Lyn’s plan yesterday worked really well. She got in last night bubbling with joy having been to an apparently awesome David Gilmore concert. She had met up with Libby, whom we had met at the Waterboys concert, and they had had a great time. This morning practically the first words out of here were that she now plans to have plenty more outings like last night’s. It’s great to see her confidence so renewed of course, although I just hope she won’t forget about me!

Mind you, if her latest awesome music video is anything to go by (and please go buy it!) pretty soon she won’t just be watching gigs but performing them herself.

I can barely believe that today marks a year since I met Sir Patrick Stewart. I still think of that five to ten minutes or so as the single most special moments of my life. As a star Trek fan, I was meeting one off my all-time favourite characters; not only that, that moment marked the end of my masters – the climax of seven years work, an end point more special to me than the graduation ceremony, in a way. It felt like a reward – a great one. Right now, sat here writing this, the past year seems to have flown by, and I still vividly remember walking away from the Excel Centre, as happy as I ever could be. For I had just met Sr Patrick Stewart – Captain Picard himself – shaken his hand, told him about writing about the Ahab Scene; and he had congratulated me on the academic achievement I’m proudest of. I will always treasure that memory.

I frequently go all over the place in my chair. As I often mention on here, I often go off on my own, exploring the city like some weird hybrid of Baudelaire and Timmy from South Park. When I do, Lyn usually stays home, happy to let me go wandering while she gets on with some work. I often feel a bit guilty about leaving her here, especially when I go to cool places or to gigs. Well, tonight it’s L’s turn: she’s off to a David Gilmore concert. I would naturally have gone with her, only there was just one ticket left. I hope she has a great time – you should see the shade of vivid pink she dyed her hair yesterday, especially for the show. Lyn will travel alone, and plans to meet a few friends of ours once there, then take a taxi back after the gig. While I am sure she she will be fine – after all, lyn is a very independent person, well used to travelling on her own – I can’t help but feel nervous. For once lyn will be the one out in the city, and I’ll be them one at home quietly worrying, hoping everything is going okay.

When I was very small, I used to love playing with play-doh. Mum used to make it, and I used to have hours of fun creating a hell of a mess on our kitchen table. I suppose it was a way to get my hands working. I haven’t really thought about it since then, but I just found this rather cool little article on the bbc website: Londonbased artist Elanor Macnair has recreated several famous portraits and art-works using play-doh. It amuses me that something most people used as infants for fun is now being used as an artistic medium; the very stuff I made such a mess with when I was four or five I now used to create beauty. That is, in large part, the point, of course: Macnair intends her work to be a comment on art in general; but for someone who was given play-doh as a child as a type of therapy, this story has a certain extra irony.

Yesterday we heard that, while in Jamaica, CaMoron refused to apologise or give compensation for slavery. When I heard that, I tutted and thought, ‘Of course DavidCameron wouldn’t apologise for slavery; tories like him probably still secretly lament it’s abolition.’ At first I thought I was being facetious, but then I came across this Guardian article this morning: CaMoron has Caribbean slave-owners in his family background, and the CaMoron family fortune was built on the backs of enslaved african people. I know nobody can be held responsible for the misdeeds of their ancestors, but the way CaMoron glossed over the fact yesterday as if it does not matter leads me to think he doesn’t regret it one iota. Hell, he probably thinks that dark period of british history was a glorious enlightenment, the toffy scumbag. Do we really think this p’tahk is fit to run our country?