Am I allowed to say that I don’t think Sam Smith can sing at all, without being accused of homophobia. How he won the best music oscar last night is beyond me: his ”Writings on the wall’ is by far the worst bond theme for decades, if not ever. I find it whiney and nauseating, and not at all in keeping with the Bond ouvre. Frankly, Smith shouldn’t have got passed X-Factor, or whichever crappy talent show he won. The dude cannot sing, but whines into a microphone. Compared to the great bond themes – Tina Turner’s Goldeneye, Carly Simon’s Nobody Does it Better, Paul McCartney’s Live And let Die etc – Smith’s song is abysmal. This has nothing to do with his personality or sexuality, but his (lack of) talent as a singer. I’m glad a bond film at last won an oscar, just baffled that it was due to Smith’s nauseating theme.

Update: I just read that Adele won an oscar for her theme for Skyfall last year so this wasn’t the first, but you get my point.

Staying with politics but in a different aspect, I think I’ll just direct you here today, to an article alleging (or rather, pointing out) that George Osbourne seems to have all of a sudden magicked up an new economic downturn in order to justify more cuts. Not long ago, the tories were assuring us that the misery would be over soon, but now they’re on about cutting the welfare state even further: ”Suddenly the promise has gone from ‘happy days in a couple of years’ time’ to ‘more cuts, more austerity, more pain’. And it’ll be the poor who have to pay for it, of course.” How much more evidence do you want that these oh-so-necessary cuts are entirely ideologically motivated? The world economy is at last on the mend, but that doesn’t suit the tory narrative. People are starving, but they still want to cut tax for their rich friends, so the tories conjure up an excuse lest we all realise the criminality of what they are doing. It’s sickening; we’re being treated like fools.

I was watching a podcast last night by a guy with ties to David icke. Lyn likes him, so I thought I’d give him a try. Truth be told, apart from a few spurious attacks on the BBC and some bollocks about vaccinations, I found myself agreeing with eighty to ninety percent of what the guy was saying. However, one patently ridiculous comment, made towards the end of the show, stuck in my mind: he was talking about the referendum, and the people now leading the Out campaign. He pointed out that they were all vile, despicable creatures, people you wouldn’t ordinarily touch with a barge pole. People like Iain Duncan-Smith, a man who, the guy said, wouldn’t have been out of place in nazi Germany. But the guy, an outer himself, then made one of the strangest most far-fetched insinuations I had ever heard: rather than making him reassess his own position as one might expect (”if so many of these neocon shits want us to vote out, perhaps I’m wrong”) he tried to make out that these horrible people had been planted on the out campaign, and it was all a big conspiracy to make sure we stay in the EU. The odd thing is, I don’t think he was joking.

Such an idea is, of course, absurd enough to simply be dismissed out of hand. Yet it points to something deeper: a deep mistrust, felt by many people in this country, of those in power. They seem to think that, whatever we do and however we vote, existing power structures would be preserved. The guy was highly political, highly knowledgable, but this absurd insinuation revealed a deep, heartfelt cynicism and disenfranchisement. No wonder he wanted to leave the EU – he saw it as just another layer of power for a ruling elite who will do anything to cling on to their dominant position. And, you know what? My desire to keep europe united aside, I think there he may have a point.

I read earlier that the outists are trying to organise some kind of concert or music festival in aid of their cause. It’s obvious they are trying to re-frame or re-present their message as something positive and social; they think that by holding such a rally, they can come across as something popular and inclusive. But frankly, this festival, if it happens, will be more akin to Nuremberg than Live Aid. No doubt they want to invoke the massive social events of recent times like the diamond jubilee or the olympics, allowing Farage et al to preach their isolationist, intellectually void bullshit to a massive, cheering audience of unthinking halfwits. It would be a sickening sight. I only hope no popular musician is stupid enough to sign up to play; or that, if it happens a similar ‘in’ festival can be organised in reply.

This morning sees me really quite excited. Last night was the first meeting of the group organising the Greenwich and Woolwich film festival. Such small festivals, run by volunteers, are becoming quite popular; getting involved in one was too good an opportunity for me to miss. Last night was only an initial ice-breaker to gauge interest and get the ball rolling, but it was well attended and generated a good discussion. I made a few contributions and suggestions. Not much was set in stone last night, but I am now eager to get involved: I’m thinking about doing something based on my MA subject. I now can’t wait for the next meeting.

I also want to note that, even though the meeting was in a local pub, I didn’t drink a drop of alcohol; I now feel rather proud of myself.

Lyn wrote this yesterday and I think it’s definitely worth linking to. It’s about her time living in a Scope home in the eighties, and the institutionalisation she witnessed in the residents there. She writes of how they were used to the routine of ”basket weaving, art, woodwork and so on.” and how it was intended ”To keep the. residents busy [and] to make them more alive but the opposite was true.” She then describes how she tried to break them out of that state and to shake things up, but was resisted. ”They had been Institutionalized by the rules and the routine and this is now the norm. Trying to change that comfortable state leads to fear. If you tell people that have been living in a way that is wrong, you are demeaning their lives. So if you are that one person in the room that is saying, then it’s you that is the problem.”

I think I know what Lyn is getting at. She and I disagree on the EU; she is saying people have been institutionalised by it, and so will stick with what they know. It’s a very good point: change is always resisted, and the advocates of change fought against. People will want to stick with what they know, so Lyn fears people will vote to stay in the EU simply because of that instinct. But I would, in reply, like to point out that this is not about resistance to change: things must change, or else stagnate and rot. Indeed, I see this issue as about changing the way we see ourselves: we should no longer think of ourselves in terms of belonging to a certain nation state, but as citizens of the world, working together and respecting one another. I see organisations like the EU, and indeed the UN, as a step towards that goal. Thus this is not about sticking with what one knows because it is comforting, but just the opposite: it’s about shaking off the old nation-state paradigm and seeing ourselves as part of something bigger and better. Lyn’s allusion applies equally to the state – that is the institution we must break free of. Lyn tells us how the residents of her old home did not talk to one another, but communication would be even harder if we withdraw from the community and shut ourselves away in our room.

I just rewatched Spectre having bought the DVD yesterday, and, first things first, I’d like to totally refute the criticisms made in the video I referenced in this entry. Spectre emphatically does not suck. While perhaps not as good as Skyfall, I now think the supposed ‘flaws’ cited in that review do not hold water. For starters, I saw no grounds to say that it was too slapstick or too Austin Powers. What I just watched was a serious (insofar as bond films can be serious) film addressing a serious, increasingly relevant issue. A film about a global organisation that wants to spy on everyone is highly salient, even speaking to concerns about globalisation and the EU. To tie those concerns into an organisation created by Fleming, rooting it into the Bond franchise’s history was a masterstroke. To bring blofeld and spectre back, updated to reflect contemporary fears but still using the iconography of the ‘classic’ 007 films such as the white cat, is not only great filmmaking but also says something about why this franchise is so special. It can both constantly reinvent itself and play with it’s own history. To criticise it for referencing it’s past, to say that to echo older bond films is somehow lazy or that characters like Blofeld or oddjob are now out of bounds because they have been pastiched in things like Austin Powers, is not only to completely miss the point but also to misunderstand the bond franchise and film as an art.

Another criticism that video made was that it was wrong to connect Bond and Blofeld as family; that that made the story too personal to Bond. His missions should be about the safety of the country, not him as a person; he is an anonymous government assassin, not a figure like Jason Bourne or Luke Skywalker (”James, I am your brother”). Thus that criticism holds a bit more water with me, but after a second viewing I now think they got away with it. Skyfall touched on Bond’s boyhood and family life, and this film leads directly on from that. In Skyfall, bond says Judy Dench’s M knows his full history, and in Spectre it is she who sets him on his path. Granted, perhaps that makes this film more about Bond, and perhaps it is a bit too coincidental that the leader of this evil organisation just happens to be Bond’s adopted brother, but I don’t think that makes this a bad film, and it certainly does not warrant disregarding for it. Even if it was more about Bond than other bond films, I thoroughly enjoyed the film I watched this afternoon, and found it a great addition to the franchise. Far from being holed, the plot works well, both speaking to the history of the franchise and continuing it’s relevance. As when I watched it in the cinema, it just left me dying for more.

I just caught up with The Night Manager on the bbc Iplayer, and would now thoroughly recommend you do the same. An adaptation of a John Le Carre novel, it concerns Jonathan Pine – polite, calm, charming, confident but self-deprecating, a little mysterious, very English – an ex army man who, at the piece’s opening, is working nights at a Cairo hotel. One night, a beautiful woman comes in, and asks Pine to keep a document safe for her. From there, a web of intrigue unfolds, involving the arms trade, the Arab spring, and a branch of the british secret service apparently based in a grotty flat in Victoria. It is a well written, well directed piece: perhaps not quite Bond, but it certainly has bondish overtones, especially in it’s hotel-heavy mise-en-scene. It drew me in: I began to care for the lead character quite early; I felt the anguish he feels at the tragic mistake he makes in this opening episode, and the ending left me dying to see what happens next.

The choice on the 23rd of june is clear:

[img description=”undefined image” align=”centre”]/images/ballot paper.jpg[/img]

(Sorry it’s not very clear, but you get the idea)

I have always thought that there must be more to human existence than the state. To keep ourselves divided into petty little nation states is to waste our potential. Think what we can achieve if humanity United, combined it’s resources and worked together. Of course, I am well aware of the problems involved in establishing a world government: some say it would be too big to be democratic, while others argue that it would eradicate human variety. Both are problematic although not impossible to overcome: after all, different cultures can exist perfectly well within one country. The Welsh have not lost their welshness despite six hundred years of union with England. Thus I think those who voice such objections do so for other reasons, veiling their arguments with liberal sounding ideals when in fact their arguments are born of xenophobia and nationalism. They want to maintain essentially arbitrary borders and preserve the ‘us’ and ‘them’ mindset, not realising that, far from creating a universal, bland culture, the mixing of peoples is the only way a culture evolves.

That’s why I plan to vote to stay in the EU in the referendum, the date of which I am told will be announced later today. The European Union might not be perfect, and I certainly have problems with CaMoron’s so called renegotiation (he wants to remake the EU in his own neoliberal image, bastardizing it from it’s original ideals), but there are ideals at stake here which are far more important than the present moment. This is about going beyond nation states; it’s about working with our neighbours rather than building walls. It’s about not shutting ourselves from the world. Surely we cannot be so shortsighted, so moronic, that we decide to shut ourselves off for our closest neighbour. Europe is not perfect – it needs reform, but we need to e a participant in that reform, not a shortsighted irrelevent little island to it’s north.

I just got in from a good, long walk, only to find this sad news being reported. Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, has died aged 89. I don’t want to do too much eulogising, save to say that Lee was a writer I truly respected. I first came across Mockingbird at school, and it has always stayed with me: it’s one of those books which profoundly effect the way one looks at the world. Mind you, I was less impressed with Go Set a Watchman, which I have yet to finish. Nonetheless, the literary world and the world as a whole has today lost one of it’s leading lights.

I just came across something rather heartwarming on my friend Kate’s Facebook page. There was a picture of a man with CP; underneath, a message asked everyone to share it, explaining that the author of the post, the boys mum, had posted previously about her son’s Ipad being stolen. It had been taken from him at Cadbury World in Barcelona, but the thief had seen the post and returned the ipad. ”The thief had a change of heart and has returned it to Cadbury World’s head office in Barcelona! They have just called his dad to confirm it’s not damaged and they are returning it to us this week”. That really made me smile. The boy obviously was using his Ipad as a communication aid, as I do, and I know what it feels like to have one of those stolen. The thief must have realised how vital the Ipad was to him. I’m glad to see he had a conscious – if only every such case ended like this. The post ends by saying that this goes to show that ‘people power’ works; it also demonstrates that posts like this on facebook can achieve results after all.

I haven’t been to Soho in ages. I went up there a few times when I first moved down to the capital, but we decided it was kind of dangerous for me to get dressed up and go there on my own of a friday or Saturday evening, so my visits there stopped. But I rather miss it: it struck me as a unique part of the city, full of life, where one can express the sides of your personality which otherwise must remain hidden. Part of me wants to bite the bullet, break out the sequins and head up there again, but having just come across this I’m not sure. Soho is dying: Soho regular Kalvin Ryder explains how the area is not what it once was. The bulldozers are moving it; it is being cleaned up, made more ‘family friendly’. While some may argue that that must be a good thing, it is the eradication of a community, the obliteration of one of London’s most distinct corners. It’s painfully obvious that Boris and his intolerant Tory pals hate having such an area in central London – they want the city remade in their image: white, straight, rich and small-minded. If this article is correct, Soho will soon be just like any other part of central london: all coffee bars, book shops and offices, and we would have lost one of the coolest parts of the city.

I have been feeling rather bad recently that I haven’t written anything substantial in ages. I find myself wondering what I contribute to society, and telling myself I should be writing books or scripts by now. I look at Lyn, in her studio every day for hours on end working on her music. Yet another voice in my head points out that I contribute in other ways: I still volunteer at school, where there are a couple of big projects coming up; the same goes with UEL. As for my writing, when you think about it the word count for my blog must now be well into the hundreds of thousands. While the last thing I wrote that you might call substantial was my masters thesis, I’ve contributed a hundred words or so to the electronic ether every day for quite some time. I know my entries are usually quite short and light in terms of analysis, but I don’t think they’re completely worthless. I rather like jotting down my thoughts on a different subject every day; the difficulty with a more sustained piece of text is finding a topic that interests you enough that you want to keep working on it. While I search for that subject – and I have no doubt it will come – I’m content to keep blogging. After all, it isn’t exactly nothing – while short, this form of prose has a kind of directness to it which I kind of like; taken as a whole, moreover, I’d argue my blog constitutes a fairly substantial body of work.

I feel I ought to flag this quite shocking news up. The government wants to ban public bodies such as students’ unions boycotting Israeli imports. ”Under the plan all publicly funded institutions will lose the freedom to refuse to buy goods and services from companies involved in the arms trade, fossil fuels, tobacco products or Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.” They justify it by saying that such boycotts foster antisemitism, but that’s bull. This amounts to a gross infringement of civil rights: the Tories want to prevent us standing up for what we believe. Of course, the situation in Israel is very complex, and one must be careful not to stray into antisemitism; but in many ways what he Israeli government is doing amounts to the wholehearted persecution of Palestinians. It is no better than apartheid, and we must have the right to demonstrate our disapproval of it just as we did with the one in South Africa.

I was thinking about deliberately not posting today, just to end my year-long run of entries, but this is just too amusing not to note. It seems that CaMoron is doing such a fine job of mucking up the country, even his aunt is protesting against him: ”David Cameron’s aunt has told a protest she is against cuts to services proposed by Oxfordshire County Council. On Saturday Clare Currie spoke at a demonstration in Oxford that saw hundreds of people march through the city centre.” When even members of your own family is protesting against you,, and virtually the whole country views you with something approaching revulsion, surely it’s time to go.

Lyn and I had another awesome night last night: we went to see the Who at Wembley. We had a great time, rocking out with a timeless mega-band. To be honest though, now that I come to think about it, there’s not that much I feel I can say. To list the tracks they played would just produce a list of tracks; it would not convey the energy or atmosphere in the SSE Arena last night. To see one of the all-time great bands perform their greatest hits was incredible. I was especially struck by the visuals projected to the back of the stage: winding, swirling images often referencing the band’s cinematic life. I must say too how impressed I was with the venue – it would seem that last night I discovered yet another of London’s great places. A place where, like at the O2, awesome things happen; but the SSE is smaller that the O2, giving the gig a more intimate feel, which I felt suited the aged rockers (both onstage and in the audience). I’d love to head up there again, if just on one of my exploratory trips, but even better to see another mega-band.

I had been planning to launch into a tirade on how the neoliberal belief that competition drives up standards is a delusion rejected by everyone but the most imbecilic*, and about how opening the NHS up to the market would put thousands of lives at risk, but I think I’ll just direct you here instead – it’s far more fun.

*Anything run for profit only has the illusion of improvement. It leads to corners being cut, everyone’s safety and welfare being disregarded behind the urge to make money. Instead of pushing up standards, competition leads to the greed of the entrepreneur taking priority over the needs of those who need help. The Tory worldview is thus utter folly: a total delusion born of selfishness. It is a fiction anyone capable of thought can see through, but one tories must cling to in order to pretend they don’t just care about themselves.

I owe my life to a doctor; they are the profession I respect the most. I take pride in the fact I live in a society where healthcare is free at the point of use, and where the healthcare system is staffed by the best professionals in the world. The doctors of the NHS work tirelessly, saving lives day in, day out. They deserve all our respect, so to see them treated so badly yesterday by Jeremy hunt was more than I could stomach. How that petty little embarrassment to humanity cold just come in and impose his will on doctors, disregarding there concerns with an air of superiority only a Tory could possess, enrages me. These are people many of us owe our lives to: how can this sniveling piece of shit whose whore of a mother should be punished for giving birth to such an arrogant little fuck treat them so badly? How can Hunt still be in office this morning? If he had any honour, he would have offered his resignation last night. But of course, no tory has honour. All they care about is what [i]they[/i] want, imposing their will on us. They do not care who suffers as long as their profit-driven plan comes first; and indeed, like many I suspect this is all part of their plan to undermine the NHS until it collapses and they can install a private system, and only their rich friends will get the best care. It’s sickening to see this happen before my eyes.

In an effort to combat the type of obscene injustice I blogged about yesterday, Lyn and I created a new Facebook group called Care Package Cuts. We want it to be a mutual support group for people with disabilities now facing cuts to their personal care. There are, of course, quite a few such groups out there now, but this one is run by and for severely disabled people, most of whom know firsthand the fear of having ones care cut. The group can be accessed here.

Today started really rather well. I got an email from a lady I work with at school this morning, asking whether I’d be interested in the newly-established Charlton and Woolwich film Festival. That proposal was too delicious to turn down – apart from a part of Antonioni’s ‘Blow Up’ having been filmed in a nearby park, I wasn’t aware of much of a film culture around here – so I replied that of course I’d love to be involved. We’re going to meet next week during half term to discuss a plan of action, and the festival’s website mentions a meeting in a local pub on the twenty-fourth I plan to go to. The opportunity to meet local cinephiles made me really excited.

When Lyn got up, however, she told me something which changed my mood utterly. She had been speaking online to a friend of hers who lives in Liverpool, after I had gone to bed. He has very severe CP, and had told Lyn that he’d received news that his care was going to be cut. I checked his facebook page: the poor man was despairing. He needs round the clock support, but now is in agonizing limbo, having to wait a week for social services to tell him how much care he’ll get.

Words fail me. No doubt this is a result of government cuts. What sort of government, what sort of people, could justify cutting the support people need to live, and function as members of society? Suddenly it hits home: if they are so heartless as to cut this man’s support, they can cut anyone’s. The bastards do not care – how could anyone with a shred of humanity do such a thing. This guy has really severe CP, yet they have him wondering whether he’ll be able to get out of bed, eat, go to the bathroom. How dare they inflict so much anguish on anyone, simply to satisfy their petty, greed-based agenda? And all so that they can build their ‘low tax economy’ where their rich pals hoard their money while those who need help are left isolated, alone and starving.

Something must be done – this barbarity cannot continue. With this man’s permission, lyn and I plan to tell the press, although, being controlled by the very bastards pushing through the cuts, I doubt they would bat an eyelid. As enraged as I feel, as much as I want to march up to milbank and end each and every one of their obscene, selfish lives, I know I cannot. All I can do is sit here shaking with rage at the injustice of it all.

Confirming what I have long suspected, the Canary is reporting today that the British press is the most biassed and right-wing in Europe. ” Asked about coverage of issues like housing, crime, health, immigration, and economics, the British media was viewed [by survey respondents] consistently as having a right-wing bias. And there were always more people who said the press favoured the right over the left.” It’s pretty obvious, really: the reason why the insults to humanity currently ruling us aren’t being given the pounding they deserve is that their right-wing friends control the media. Editors won’t say a bad word about CaMoron and his pals as long as their taxes are low. Besides, they all know eachother; buddies scratching one another’s back. And as soon as someone tries to speak out, or even try to tell the other side of the story, it is instantly derided as left wing or communist. It is sickening how bad things have got. Day after day, I see reports of the suffering the Tories are causing, with people with disabilities dying in their thousands, but none of it appears in the mainstream pres.

It’s getting windy, here in the city

Bins are starting to shift – oh my, it’s swift.

Really starting to blow trees to and fro;

Bins fly around, causing such a sound

A cacophony of wind, a great resounding din;

Outside she grows: blows and blows;

Maelstrom pounding maelstrom. While, in here, all is quiet

and warm

Although I’m not sure how far I believe it, according to this Mirror report, David CaMoron could be planning to step down and hold a snap election later this year, whatever the verdict of the EU referendum. I must say I find it unlikely: that bastard seems to want to cling to power as long as possible. But the article says he might be intending to catch Labour off guard. If that is so, we must be ready; the tories have already caused too much suffering, and this might be too great a gift to waste.

I just came across yet another buffoon railing against the apparent evil of political correctness, saying how it stifles free speech and so on. Such people annoy me, for they use a principal we all hold dear – freedom of speech – to defend their right to be a bigot. They say we should all have the right to offend and be offended, but it occurs to me that that is to misunderstand and misrepresent the idea behind political correctness. Of course we should have the right to insult one another, but those insults should be due to what one has said or done, not because one belongs to a particular group of people. Point out my failings by all means, but to say those failings are due to me being a man, a cripple, a trekkie or member of whatever other minority is not acceptable as it tars an entire group of people with the same brush. That is lazy thinking; it is not logical. I am a man, I am lazy, but not all men are lazy. Rather than stifling free speech or coddling people, then, political correctness safeguards against such broad-stroke thinking; it stops us relying on stereotypes when making judgements of others. I fear that those who oppose political correctness would prefer to have those stereotypes unquestioned: they want the right to use racial slurs because it’s easier than having to assess everyone on their own merrits.

I don’t think I like alcohol any more. Of course, my tastebuds haven’t changed, and no doubt were I to have a beer I’d probably enjoy it: I don’t like what alcohol does to me, or the power it has over me. I don’t like looking forward to it all week; I don’t like how it tempts me to go to the pub when I know driving my chair back drunk will be dangerous. I don’t like how, whenever I have a pint, I always want more and more. I don’t like how it turns me into an arrogant arsehole who thinks it’s somehow manly or cool to drink until I’m sloshed. I dislike how it makes me resent people who say, after I’ve had about three beers, that I better not have any more. I don’t like how I somehow think that to have a good time, alcohol must be involved. I don’t like the look of sadness and disappointment on Lyn’s face when she sees me drunk; or being to drunk to help her. I don’t like waking up in the morning, knowing I have once again fallen back into childish habits and got myself paralytic, after promising myself I wouldn’t. I dislike having a ‘break’ for a few months, only to get as bad as ever the moment the break is over. I hate it – I hate it all, and I want rid of it. I don’t want anything more to do with alcohol. No more ‘breaks’, as they just have me looking forward to an arbitrary end point, after which the problem starts again. Nor am I going to ‘just have one’, as that doesn’t solve anything – I still retain the taste, pandering to the problem. I mean to stop completely. I’ve had enough of this stupidity, enough desiring a substance which only causes trouble. Alcohol has a power over me that it is time I shook off, and the only way to do that is to stop drinking altogether.

Before yesterday, I didn’t know much about TTIP. I was vaguely aware of it, but didn’t really understand what it was. Then I saw it being discussed briefly on this RT interview with Kerry-anne Mendoza, Editor-in-Chief of The Canary, and began to wonder why there weren’t currently mass protests over it. TTIP is an international deal which gives private companies to sue governments over legislation which prevents them from making profit. In other words, a company could come in, and if there was legislation or a public body in their way, they could sue the government for millions in taxpayers’ pounds. The greed of the individual would come before the authority of the state; power would be in the hands of the businessman, whose profit would be more important than our welfare. We can effectively wave goodbye to the NHS: under TTIP, a private health insurance company will be able to just wade in and claim that the NHS prevents it from making money – it will have to be broken up. Why aren’t we all out protesting against this disastrous loss of sovereignty? And why hasn’t there been anything about this in the mainstream media? Things like this are making me turn away from news sources like the beeb, and towards independent sites like The Canary.

After today, I don’t think anyone could ever accuse me of neglecting to update my blog. I’m pleased to say that, as far as I can see, today marks the day that I’ve posted an entry every day for the last year. Please feel free to check the archive and correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m quite sure I have, and I’m proud of it. It wasn’t always easy, finding something to write on here every day, but I just wanted to test myself. I know it lead to me posting any old nonsense on here some days, but I told myself to keep it up, to see if I could stick at it. I’ve tried it once or twice before, but always ended up missing days and having to start again. Now that I’ve succeeded, I intend to keep going, posting an entry daily – it is good writerly discipline – but forgive me if I don’t pressure myself to post every day quite as strongly as I did this last year.

Shortly after posting my entry yesterday, I began to wonder whether I was becoming too London-centric. I had assumed the Star Trek event was going to be in london, either at the Excel or somewhere else, because this is where everything happens, isn’t it? The website had just referred to a ‘UK convention announcement’, though, and I’d somehow forgotten that there are plenty of places outside of london where cool things can happen, too. I love this city, it’s vibrancy and energy; if you live here, it’s easy to forget that London is not the centre of the world. The capital seems to have a self-important buzz to it, and that seems to have infected me. After all, this is were the queen is escorted to her engagements by 007, and where Monty Python performed their last ever gig: surely that makes it the coolest place on earth, doesn’t it? So why wouldn’t the star trek event automatically be in London, rather than a poxy little town like Birmingham? It’s a mentality lots of people here seem to have, and, having livd here for six years, something I too am guilty of.

I’m currently feeling rather disappointed and deflated, not because of the deal CaMoron just struck with the EU (which, let’s face it, had probably been reached ages ago and sold to us as a ‘last minute deal’ so the tory p’tahk could look all prime ministerial). The wind has just been knocked out of me for an entirely different reason. A few days ago, I got wind that there was going to be another Destination Star Trek convention in the UK this year, and that the location would be announced today. I got all excited about this; I thought it would probably be in the Excel centre again. If that was so, I was planning to immediately zoom over there to get tickets (having forgotten what happened last time). The chance to meet Sir Patrick Stewart again, making sure I got a photo taken this time, was too good to miss. This morning, I was counting down the hours till noon. Then the news came: Destination Star Trek 2016 will be at the NEC Birmingham. I instantly felt deflated. Of course, I could get myself up to Birmingham if I really wanted, but I don’t think I’ll bother. The cool thing about the Excel is that it’s just over the river, a cable car ride away. Birmingham is more complicated to get to, and given Patrick Stewart isn’t on the guest list, it’s not worth it. What a Pity: I’d been gearing myself up for something potentially awesome, a possible repeat of that incredible Saturday in 2014, only for it to dissolve into nothing. Birmingham? Why Birmingham?

The more I think about it, the less I realise I know and understand about gender. I’m fine with the basic principal: gender is a social construct which needs to be reread; it is a artificial barrier to be crossed. That’s fine with me, and I’ve been doing that myself, on and off, for a while. Yet when you go beyond that starting point, things get kind of hazy. For starters, some might say this form of nonconformity is itself a form of conformity, inasmuch as I’m sticking to the standard dress code of ‘men’ and ‘women’. It’s also still something of an event for me; something I do every few days for a bit of relaxation or fun. I’m still predominantly a guy; I still conform to the social construction of manhood most of the time. Other people go far beyond this, politicising it into areas I don’t really understand, to be honest. That, I must admit, sort of worries me: am I pretending to be something I’m not, playing in an area I ought not to be? Yet, time and again, everyone in this area faces that same contradiction: how does one reread a gender binary without automatically adhering to one gender or the other? Even if one fully transitions from one gender to the other, is that not still a type of gender conformity? (It’s not that simple, of course – transpeople don’t transition just to make a political statement). Others have postulated a creation of a third gender; but even then the features of any such gender will inevitably be set down in relation to the other two. The question I find myself asking is, how do we escape a naturally occurring binary? But to say it is natural contradicts the assumption that gender is a social construct. The more I think about gender, the more lost I get an the less I realise I understand. At the same time, I think the ‘each to their own’ principal applies: I may not understand gender, nor why I like dressing up. I just do, and if by doing so I add to the infinite diversity of humanity, then that must surely be all to the good. I am who I am, whether I’m in trousers or my pink tutu; and what applies to me of course applies to anyone else. Whether you call me a man or a woman does not matter – they are just labels, as superficial as any other.