I realise it may be a slightly random thing for me to link to, never having mentioned it on here before, but Dom just sent me this link to a video of the most incredible beatboxing I have ever seen, and I found it too amazing not to flag up. As someone with quite little control over my vocal abilities, I find what these guys do truly stunning: they seem to be able to use their mouths as musical instruments, creating rhythms and beats out of nothing. I think this is another urban, fringe artform I need to start exploring, like skateboarding and so on. It’s exciting and fresh, and judging by what I just saw, it has the potential to blow my mind.

How awesome was it to see Sir David Attenborough back on our screens last night? Going by the first episode, Blue Planet II will be every bit the equal of it’s 2001 prequel, and live up to the standards we have come to expect from Attenborough and the BBC Natural History Unit. Some of the footage we saw last night was stunning: I even found some of the shots of the sea on it’s own so evocative it was mesmerising, even without any wildlife. It’s great to see this legend of television, the greatest of all presenters, back doing what he does best. I frankly find it utterly remarkable that Attenborough is still going after all these years, let alone making programs which captivate the entire nation. It apparently even beat Strictly and X-factor in terms of ratings, but then, going by some of what we saw last night, that is hardly surprising: who needs tired old talent shows when you can watch the wonders of nature on the other side?

Having enjoyed my extra hour in bed this morning, this seemed too topical not to nick.

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It occurs to me that the internet may be forcing film, as a language and means of communication, to change. People now often capture short film clips on their iPhones and post them on social media sites like Facebook as they would sentences of text. New technologies, it seems, have helped film evolve from an art form reserved for the wealthy and elite into an everyday means of expression. As I touched upon here a few weeks ago, expression in both writing and film is becoming shorter and more direct. Look at Twitter as a prime example: where once we took time to get our thoughts and feelings across over several paragraphs, we now use 120 characters or less. In fact, I would go as far as to say it is a new fourth form of writing, alongside prose, script and verse; one which incorporates hypertext. To take that a step further, I think a similar thing is happening with the moving image: where once creating film was the domain of the wealthy elite, anyone with an iPhone can do it these days. That has brought about the emergence of a new form of film, shorter, more immediate, and perhaps not always quite as refined as the things we see coming out of the big studios. Snippets of film can now be captured more freely than ever before, then posted online, bringing about a new type of filmic expression. Could it thus be argued that we are seeing the rise of a new [i]mode[/i] of film online; one with the immediacy of Twitter, and – dare I say – the refinement of a moody adolescent’s facebook status update? This new mode would sit alongside the other manifestations of the filmic art, ie feature films, documentaries and television (the theorist Christian Metz called them ‘dialects’), but has a fresher, more direct and less refined feel to it.

I think I’ll just flag this up this evening, simply because it’s so cool. What better way could there be to round off a lovely day cruising around South-East London with your girlfriend than to take a virtual 3d trip in a car which will eventually go at 1000 mph? It was just too awesome for me not to link to: to get to see what it’s like to see out of the windscreen of the fastest car on earth must be every big kid’s dream come true, especially when you have been going at about six all afternoon.

I still can’t decide whether to be appalled, frightened or to burst into howls of laughter at what is currently going on with Brexit. A glance at the Daily Mail’s front page today filled me with rage at it often does, but at the same time, doesn’t this strike you as deeply, darkly comic. The New Statesman reports how the Mail’s (witch) hunt for academics with Remainer tendencies has hilariously backfired: the rag put a call out to anyone with any information on university lecturers with proEuropean ‘bias’, and some of the responses they got had me in stitches. University students, it seems, can be very adept at sarcasm when pointing out the sheer stupidity of outism and the clear lack of logic in what they are doing.

At the same time, behind the chuckles there is the realisation that this is all deeply sinister and disturbing. While, as I noted here a couple of days ago, such things are a clear sign of outist desperation, it is nonetheless an attempt to stifle opposition. They seem to now want to stamp out opposition to brexit and to ensure that only their views are broadcast and taught; anyone who speaks in favour of reversing the stupidity of last year must be silenced. A sign of their desperation, yes; darkly comic, certainly; but there is also a whiff of fascism to all this. With the referendum ‘won’, they are nominally in the controlling position – they assume a right to dominate the discourse, and now feel the need to bear down on anything that might threaten that. On one level this is funny, like something Monty Python might have dreamt up; but on another, with an increasingly threatened group of people fighting to force their will upon the country, it is deeply, deeply scary.

It’s a beautiful day out there, and I was just in the park getting my daily dose of caffeine. It may just be because it’s half term, but the skatepark is now in full swing. There must have been forty or fifty kids on there, using skateboards, bikes and everything else to do all kinds of tricks. Some of the stunts the more proficient guys do take your breath.

Someone had brought a sound system, so there was music playing, albeit quietly. That made me think: the only thing missing from that joyous scene was some kind of performance space. I still say, as I wrote here, that what Charlton Park needs now is an area in which bands can play and shows could be put on. I know it’s early days for it yet, but the skatepark seems to have given the whole area a new lease of life. On days like today, how awesome would be to have a local band – perhaps even Lyn or our friend Gus – laying down some beats while the dudes do their tricks? I can see the park becoming a hub for local culture, where people meet and enjoy theirselves, and where local artists of whatever kind can express theirselves. Man, I gotta make that happen!

I just came across this profoundly worrying Guardian article. An outist tory MP has written to several universities to ask them what they are teaching about Brexit. In a decidedly McCarthyist move, ”Chris Heaton-Harris, Conservative MP for Daventry and a staunch Eurosceptic, wrote to vice-chancellors at the start of this month asking for the names of any professors involved in teaching European affairs ‘with particular reference to Brexit’. Neatly ignoring the long tradition of academic freedom that universities consider crucial to their success, his letter asks for a copy of each university’s syllabus and any online lectures on Brexit.” Basically, this p’tahk wants to vet what universities are saying about Brexit to make sure it’s nice and positive, rather than the obvious truth that it has completely fucked the country.

Obviously we should be appalled at this. Any move to censor what academics can and cannot say is a step towards somewhere very dark. Heaton-Harris will know that eighty percent of academics voted Remain, and he doesn’t want them teaching students to question what is going on. At the same time, this is also a clear sign of how worried the outists are: if things were going as well as they would like, they would be fine with people saying whatever they wanted. But as reality becomes clearer and clearer, people will begin to realise how badly they were deceived last year, and Brexit will start to crumble. The only way the outists can keep their farce going is to try to suppress the truth and silence opposition. We saw another instance of this recently with Farage protesting on his LBC show that the media weren’t showing the good side of brexit; trying into con people into thinking that everything was turning out to be wonderful, but the evil, liberal mainstream media weren’t allowing that to get across.

In both examples we can see a form of desperation; both men realise how badly things are going, but scared that the public will finally see them for the scum they are, they concoct all kinds of bullshit to have us believe they were right all along. Either that or they try to get the truth suppressed. In their desperation we can also read a sign that, sooner or later, brexit will collapse – that is now inevitable, but as it becomes more and more difficult to keep the fiction going, I fear the lengths the outists will go to will become increasingly extreme.

If you ask me, the current state of Brexit negotiations is summed up quite perfectly by this short yet astute piece of animation. ”You’re a dick!” indeed.

I took myself to powerchair football practice yesterday afternoon, not having been in ages. I’m finally making a bit of progress on the film I want to reacquaint myself with the sport. I had forgotten just how much fun it was, to be honest: once I transferred into one of their powerful chairs, I instantly fell in love with the sport again. My eagerness to get this film made was automatically renewed.

Progress on that has been rather slow, but I finally have a fairly solid treatment written, and all the right interested parties. I had a good coffee-meeting wit Sharon on Thursday, who had the wonderful idea of somehow tying the skatepark into it. It looks like this idea of mine could get off the ground pretty soon, and I have a good feeling about it. It may have taken a bit of time, but everything seems to be falling into place so that the world can finally be introduced to the incredible, adrenaline filled sport of powerchair football.

I just got back from the opening of the skatepark. My intention to film it turned out to be a non-starter, as we couldn’t get our hands on the camera equipment in time. It is a shame, because it was quite a cool event. The various bigwigs were there, of course, and the place was bustling with chatter, music and the sound of skateboard wheels. Going by what I just saw, I now seriously doubt the reservations a few of the locals have about the park will ever materialise.

I just went onto the park for the first time, just to see how accessible it was in my chair: some parts are okay, but other ramps are simply too steep. In particular, there is a large, curved skate-pit which I didn’t dare going anywhere near, and which I can see becoming quite a nice pond if it rains heavily enough. It’s quite a nice day out there now though, apart from a fairly stiff breeze, so I’ll probably go back out there soon. I may not have been able to get the footage I wanted today, but, from the looks of it, there will be plenty of other opportunities.

The new scatepark opens in Charlton Park tomorrow. I was just in there, and kids are already skating on it. I must say, it looks really impressive, and the tricks some of the skaters were doing were very cool. It isn’t even open yet, but I can tell that this park is going to be well used: having cost so much, one would certainly hope so. What I just saw, the amount of activity that was going on already, certainly gave me cause for optimism though. Expect a full account of the park’s grand opening on here tomorrow, and after that who knows how much fun I’ll be able to get out of it.

Yesterday was another day which reminded me how cool this city is. I went up to the South Bank to meet up with my old school friend, Dan. We met at Waterloo and then spent a couple of hours in the gallery at the Royal Festival Hall. Some of the artwork there is amazing. We talked quite a bit: Dan writes too, and we were discussing how to best express ourselves as disabled men, belonging to a section of society the mainstream, by and large, completely ignores. It was good to hear his opinions on stuff. I also updated him on progress on the Powerchair Football film, as Dan plays on the team. We had a (soft) drink, and said goodbye intending to hook up again soon.

Then, the weirdest, coolest thing happened: I was in Waterloo station trying to find the Jubilee Line to get home, when who should I bump into but Claire, the very person from Chocolate Films with whom I’ve been liaising to try to get the film made. How cool is that! She put me in the right direction and asked me to email her. It was only a brief, fleeting meeting, but it could make all the difference. Where but in a metropolis like London could something like that happen? God, I love this city!

I studied To Kill a Mockingbird at school, and it remains one of my favourite books. Although I never got around to finishing reading it’s sequel, I still cherish TKAM as one of the texts which helped make me who I am. The image of Atticus Finch standing up to the racist mob come to lynch Tom Robinson is one I still draw strength from, so to discover here that some schools in the American deep south now want to ban it disturbs me greatly. They say they don’t like the use of the N-word, or produce a load of other bullshit excuses; but it’s clear they just don’t like how it portrays the white majority as being in the wrong.

This is part of a frightening trend in the States – the resurgence of white dominance over any other minority. They want to get rid of anything which might show them in a bad light, and distain anything attacking their bigotry, past or present, as ‘liberal propaganda’. It’s as if, inspired by the embarrassment to humanity they currently call a president, these poor, poorly educated, disenfranchised white zealots want to recapture the power they once had as the dominant group, and still think they are entitled to. Thus they want to get rid of anything which opposes bigotry or speaks up for equality. Such people perhaps even think the mob was in the right and should have lynched Tom, simply for having the audacity to make love to a white girl. It’s very scary: first books like this will be taken off reading lists; pretty soon figures like Martin Luther King will start to be attacked.

Lyn and I went to the cinema yesterday afternoon/evening to watch Blade Runner 2049, and I’m more intrigued than when I rewatched the first part last week. While there is slightly more daylight in this sequel – just a tad – the [i]mise en scene[/i] is no less ominous and dystopian. Walking to the cinema under a sky spookily reddened by sahara dust put us perfectly in the mood for a great noir, and that was exactly what we got.

Blade Runner 2049, then, is a great film: as many critics have been telling us, it is every bit the equal of it’s prequel. To be honest, though, I think I badly need to rewatch it, as I think I may have missed a few plot points. Nonetheless, I still feel able to make a few comments about it. First of all, it struck me as quite a Lacanian film: it was all about the relationship between the Symbolic, Imaginary and Real. What is real? What is merely created as symbols? And what do we imagine? As with it’s prequel, this film raises all kinds of questions about the nature of reality. It’s rather like The Matrix films in that sense, inasmuch as it is science fiction used to convey highly intriguing philosophical ideas. Memories are part of the Imaginary Order, yet in this film they are created; does that make them Symbolic? Memories make us who we are, but if memory can be manipulated and recollections can be deliberately given to us, who are we? I would love to see a proper Lacanian reading of these two films.

I don’t want to say much more: I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone who hasn’t seen it, and, as I say, I think I need to rewatch it before I do any proper writing about it. If you haven’t seen it, though, you must. It was great to see Harrison Ford back in the role of Deckard, and although I thought it dragged on ever so slightly, as we rolled home last night my head was abuzz with ideas and questions – Blade Runner 2049 had done exactly what a film is supposed to do.

I just came across this piece of communication-aid related news on the BBC website. A company in the states is working on making personalised voices for VOCA users. Having realised that we all have the same, generic mechanical voice, they are working on a way to give each user their own unique sound. Frankly, having lost count of the times I’ve been told I sound like Stephen Hawking, I can tell you this is long overdue.

I’ve always known Nigel Farage to be a selfish, egocentric scumbag; this puts it beyond doubt. The Mirror reports that he has been caught red handed dodging taxes via a fund on the Isle of Man. ”Mr Farage opened a trust fund in the Isle of Man in a plan to slash his tax bill, our investigation revealed,” the Mirror reports. How dare this p’tahk claim to be a man of the people when he refuses to help pay into the system? He manipulates people into voting for something totally outside their best interests, then buggers off to an offshore island. This embarrassment to humanity should be rotting in a jail cell.

Twelve massive rallies were held across the country yesterday, aimed at stopping Brexit. I didn’t go, not wanting to get myself into a state, but thousands of people apparently turned out. I first heard about it on Tuesday, going down Whitehall on my way back from the Pink Floyd exhibition: I was handed a flag and a leaflet. From what I see on social media, the protests were huge. Up and down the country, the public mood is turning against Brexit. For my part, I’m now quite certain that, sooner or later, this embarrassing farce will come to a crashing end and we’ll re-enter the EU. Given the inherent contradictions of Brexit, that is more or less inevitable. The mainstream media outlets didn’t cover these protests because they wanted to avoid accusations of anti-Brexit bias, but there are lots more to come. Sentiment opposing Brexit is growing; pretty soon it will be impossible to ignore, and it won’t stop until the stupidity of last year is reversed.

I just spoke to my parents. We usually leave our Skype chats for Sunday mornings, but I needed to tell them something, and I thought I’d call them instead of just sending a message. Over the course of our conversation, though, Dad mentioned this rather alarming story: a Chinese space station, launched in 2011, is now out of control and will crash to earth within the next few months. ”[I]n 2016, after months of speculation, Chinese officials confirmed they had lost control of the space station and it would crash to Earth in 2017 or 2018. China’s space agency has since notified the UN that it expects Tiangong-1 to come down between October 2017 and April 2018.” Dad only mentioned it in relation to the poor grammar used in the comments, but I was left wondering, why was this the first I had heard of it? Why on earth is this not all over the news? there is nothing about it on the bbc website, and not a whiff from any other broadcast news. Most of it will probably burn up in the atmosphere, but if a socking great space station was about to fall out of the sky, I’d nonetheless want to know about it! I find it bewildering that this story should be almost universally ignored, perhaps even censored, by the mainstream press.

If anyone needs a bit of a laugh, I’d advise them to go here. I just stumbled over it, and almost wet myself laughing. What could be funnier than a guy with Cerebral Palsy trying to cover a David Bowie song? It’s almost as bad as when I tried to do Karaoke with Rob back at uni. Mind you, I must say I like the wit in the changes Ted has made to the lyrics to fit his theme.

I think I’ll just flag this video from The Young Turks up today. On one level it’s highly amusing, but on another it’s very very worrying. There is apparently increasing concern in the White House about Donald Trump’s mental state. According to white house sources, Trump’s behaviour is becoming increasingly dark and unstable. It seems being president didn’t turn out to be as much fun as he thought it would be. In fact, according to the video, there are increasing discussions about invoking the twenty-fifth amendment, where a president can be removed from office on mental health grounds. If you ask me, that would be the thing any sensible nation would do: Trump’s an egotistical buffoon with no idea how to run a country; the longer America insists on calling him it’s leader, the more of a joke it appears. Trump’s a reality TV show star who craves attention, too stupid to grasp the fact that not everyone thinks he’s as wonderful as he thinks he is. By invoking this amendment, america would show the world that it can act like a responsible, mature nation after all.

Something incredible has happened. On Tuesday, on my way back from a good long walk by the river, I stopped in Co-Op to buy dinner. While queuing to pay I thought I’d just check my email on my ipad. To my utter astonishment, in my inbox I saw an email from Steve Dale – he had obviously seen my blog entry and decided to make contact. I squealed with joy and surprise and, having payed, quickly made my way home to reply. He is doing well, and is now a Learning Support Assistant at a college in cheshire. I told him how I was, about moving in with Lyn and about university. So much has happened since I was in his GCSE English class; so much has changed.

Reading that email, and the second one I got from him the day after, felt as if I was hearing a voice from the past. In many ways I’m a completely different person to the wobbly little boy who sat at the back row of his classroom. Mind you, in a lot of ways I’m exactly the same. I confessed to him that I don’t read much in terms of literature these days – I’m more likely to be found glued to my computer, watching youtube or writing a blog. I was very pleased to read that his daughter Ellie, now aged twenty, is doing very well for herself, working as a hair stylist. It felt so good to reconnect to him after all this time.

He closed his email saying that he often comes down to london, so it could be possible for us to meet up. That would be great; I’d love to catch up with him in person. In the meantime, it’s great to be connected with him online. Late last night, I connected with his daughter over Facebook. This is one of the truly awesome things about the internet: you can never truly lose contact. I now look forward to lots of email exchanges with him, as well as getting to know his daughter. When I typed that blog entry three days ago, I had no idea that this would be the result; I was just musing wistfully, with no real hope of actually finding my old English teacher. I think the key was posting a link to the entry on the Woodford Lodge Facebook page. I remember the man whose enthusiasm about books stays with me, even today. Getting to know him again, as well as his daughter, will be wonderful.

I just rewatched Blade Runner for the second time in two days, so to speak, having watched it yesterday for the first time in over a decade. L and I will probably go to see the sequel soon, so I wanted to refresh my memory. The film I found myself watching yesterday afternoon was utterly intriguing: dark and brooding. It intrigued me so much yesterday that it nigh on demanded a second viewing today.

I won’t attempt to post a full review on here now. Whole theses, even full volumes, could be written about this filmic text – as I’m sure there have been. Of course, it harks back to the film noirs of the thirties and forties; but there is also something emphatically eighties to this film. The [i]mise en scene[/i] cannot seem to escape the period when it was made. It is also very urban, never escaping the confines of a claustrophobic, dystopian, future los Angeles. I noticed too that it is shot exclusively at night, and there isn’t a single glimpse of daylight throughout the film. Could this mean that the entire story just takes place over one night.

I can now see why so many cinephiles are so interested in this film. It raises so many questions while you watch it, and leaves you to wonder about so many things: what would it mean to be a replicant? Are our memories what makes us who we are, and if a memory could somehow be implanted would that personality be real? Can you create artificial personalities so detailed that even they think they are human? The biggie, of course, is the question of whether Deckard was a Replicant: I was just watching it, scanning each frame for clues, and I cannot decide. Ridley Scott did not think he was supposed to be one, but I think you could find good evidence that he is. Either way, I now can’t wait to see the sequel: this is a franchise I can see myself getting into – it is science fiction taken seriously and used to say something about the human condition.

Yesterday was a very cool day indeed. We went up into town to see the Pink Floyd exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum. While of course I’ve known about them, I’ve never particularly been into Pink Floyd; but this was something Lyn on the other hand was really looking forward to seeing.Pink Floyd have a reputation as one of the most inventive and influential music groups around, so I was curious to find out a bit more about them.

It took a bit of time to get up there (it always does when we go into central London) but once we got in, we were immediately fascinated. There was so much information on the band’s history and style; there was so much to see and digest. The only problem was, the headphones the museum gave us to listen to as we walked around didn’t quite work: they were meant to trigger as you went past a particular exhibit so you could listen to information about it, but mine seemed to keep fading in and out at random even when I wasn’t moving. Either I’d be listening to something and it would suddenly fade out, or something random would start even when I wasn’t moving. It soon began to get very irritating.

That aside, we had a great afternoon. We had arranged to rendezvous with Dominik up there, and we spent a good two or three hours at the exhibition. I came away my curiosity whetted and itching to discover more. Pink Floyd now seem quite awesome, and I want to go deeper. What I managed to glean from the headphones was fascinating: an inspirational, inventive and unique band which has been at the forefront of music for over fifty years. I now see why people like Lyn, and indeed my Dad, are so enthusiastic about them. Most of all, though, now I really want to go see them play live.

You know, this autumn marks twenty years since I started my GCSE English. My parents had to fight for me to do it: I went to a special school which luckily had a comprehensive nearby. A few students from my school – the more academically able ones – took the odd class at the nearby comp. I had always shown a gift for writing and a passion for literature, so the idea was for me to do GCSE English alongside able bodied peers. That way, I could benefit from more specialised teaching, and hopefully go on to do the more advanced stuff, instead of frittering away my potential.

It was fairly daunting at first. Up until that point, my education had been a matter of small classes of no more than eight or nine fairly disabled classmates, being taught at the most basic level. All of a sudden I was in a class of twenty or thirty able-bodied kids, where I knew far more would be expected of me. I didn’t have a LSA to accompany me until a month or two in, so for the first few lessons I was completely on my own. I knew I had to pull my socks up and make an effort, so that is precisely what I did.

Luckily we had the most awesome teacher in front of us. I often still think of Steve Dale these days, wondering what became of him. It was Mr. Dale that gave me my first taste of proper education: through him I got to know Shakespeare, and books like To Kill A Mockingbird. He was an inspirational, energetic teacher. I also recall that, that first year, he took some time off for the birth of his first daughter. The aura he gave off when he came back was truly wonderful. She would be nineteen or twenty by now; I wonder what became of her.

Time, inevitably, passes. I think I have mentioned on here before that the comprehensive school, Woodford Lodge, has now been demolished. Yet without it, without that first taste of real education twenty years ago, I doubt I would be who I am today. I have been thinking about Mr. Dale a lot recently: he was wisecracking, yet wise. He shared my love of Tolkien. I wonder what he would say about me – I’d love to show him my MA Thesis. It seems a lifetime ago that I first began to walk, two or three times a week, over the fields to Woodford Lodge and back, my head full of wonderful new ideas and imaginings, little realising that I was becoming me. It now seems so distant, yet I still remember the breeze on my face and the singing of the birds in that quiet corner of cheshire.

I’m afraid to say that, after this week, any residual respect I had for the United States of America is now gone. If it’s withdrawal from the climate change accord wasn’t bad enough, how can anyone possibly respect a country which allows its citizens to get hold of guns so easily, and then does nothing when so many people are shot in cold blood? I realise this might be a cultural issue, and that one must respect cultural diversity, but as far as I am concerned, America is nothing more than a collection of umpteen million fools, deserving only the worlds derision. Don’t they realise the obvious truth, self-evident to anyone capable of anything approaching rational thought, that making guns harder to get hold of would make bloodbaths like the one we saw this week far rarer? It really frustrates me, as I’m sure it does many people. This, on top of the election of Trump and the rest of it, means that I cannot respect America any more.

I’ve only just got to my computer, but I’ve already found something intriguing. This bbc story on immersive cinema literally begs me to explore it further: it’s something I’d not come across before, but it ties directly into my master’s subject. It’s a new type of cinematic experience, where, as well as watching the film, viewers apparently interact with characters played by actors who come into the auditorium. It’s just about begging me to try it out and explore it further, as it seems to take the cinematic art in a new direction. My masters was about the ways in which the audience could be said to ‘enter into’ film via their art or analysis; this project specifically encourages and invites such entry. I’d also love to see whether anyone has written anything about how this new form of filmic reception ties into more established ciniphiliac writing, such as the work of Bazin (where’s the nearest decent academic library when you need one?!). I’m intrigued, and itching to find out more.

I know there’s a lot of this meme going around, but it was just too funny for me not to make my own contribution.

I just came across this short video on the bbc website, and thought it definitely worth flagging up. Part of their 100 Women series, it’s by a transgender woman who is also a scientist. She fascinatingly and tellingly talks about the differences in the way people treated her before and after she transitioned: people stopped assuming she knew as much, and trusted her to know technical details less. It’s perhaps only through situations like this that we can see the true extent of sexism in our society: we have a person here who has experienced both sides of the divide, and who is able to articulate the differences between them very well.

I now need to make a confession. When I posted my entry earlier, I hadn’t actually watched May’s speech. Suspecting it would just have made me angry, I just read a few headlines and guessed the rest. Watch one tory speech and you’ve watched them all, eh? However, I just watched the evening news bulletins: the speech was an utter, utter car crash! Almost everything which could go wrong, it seems, did. In fact I very nearly began to feel sorry for may, but then I remembered who she was and what her party is doing to ‘us’. For all her sops about building more council houses to try to convince people may is on their side, this is a government pushing through draconian benefit cuts, which is inflicting some of the most conservative, regressive legislation for decades upon us.

The tories are clinging on to power by the skin of their teeth. They really, really needed a good speech today – a performance strong enough to turn their fortunes and bring the country together behind them. What they got was so bad it was comic: an about average tory speech so riddled with mishap it was almost Pythonesque. Yet it is nothing more than these jerks deserve, and May’s days in Downing Street must surely now be numbered. I must admit, I love a good car crash sometimes.

If Theresa May had any honour, she would have got up on that stage in Manchester just now, dropped to her knees and started pleading for our forgiveness for all the pain she and her party have put this country through recently. She does not, and so instead we were subjected to the usual mixture of half-truths, lies and slander directed at the opposition we have come to expect from the Tories. The party is a joke, clinging to power by a thread, forcing the country through a brexit process based on a delusion. How dare she stand there and claim she is motivated by compassion, when the only thing that motivates any tory is greed and pure self-interest? And how dare that p’tahk Patel slander Corbyn and Labour, claiming that the tories, not Labour, are the ones who care about the poor? To hear these vile, vile people spouting such bullshit, insulting our intelligence with their outright lies, makes me incredibly angry. Daily I see evidence of the suffering these scumbags are causing, often firsthand; for them to stand there, patting their own backs and pretending to be a force for good, makes my blood boil with rage.

I just finished watching the third episode of Star Trek Discovery for a second time, having given it an initial viewing late yesterday afternoon. I now think I’m ready to say how disappointed I am with Discovery: last week I was more than willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, but what I just found myself watching was utterly disappointing. The plot makes no sense, for one: why are they giving a known, convicted mutineer so much freedom on a new ship? Indeed, why is the program as a whole just focussing on one character, Burnham, in stark contrast to every other Trek incarnation? It is’t as if she is a particularly interesting character; indeed, she just strikes me as neurotic and melodramatic. The whole show just feels like an average american drama with the Star Trek title tagged on to it. It had none of the qualities we first fell in love with Trek for: instead of the depiction of a diverse group of people working together to explore space, this was merely about one rather irritating woman and her struggle to fit in. The fact that, despite having been convicted of mutiny she seemed able to roam the ship doing whatever she wanted, made no sense. On top of that there was a lot of psuedoscientific gibberish about some sort of biology-based propulsion system apparently faster than warp drive, totally out of keeping with the rest of Trek. Of course I’ll continue to watch Discovery – Trek is Trek – but, as it stands, it has a lot of work to do to redeem itself and bring itself alongside the likes of TNG and DS9.

Why is the bbc or any of the major news outlets not saying anything about the major anti-tory protests up in Manchester yesterday? Tens of thousands of people were marching against both Brexit and the tories, yet you hardly hear a word about it down here. Of course, one glimpse at social media tells you it was huge: many of my northern friends were involved, and some of the stories and details I’ve come across are really rather alarming. Vast crowds kettled by the police as the tories try to keep up the pretence that the country does not loathe them; people being arrested in their droves despite protesting peacefully. As far as I’m concerned that protest represented the british public as a whole, appalled at the tory party currently at it’s draconian worst, and at Brexit being forced upon us essentially against our will. If the beeb et al. is truly committed to showing us what is really going on in this country, why didn’t they cover this protest?

Lyn and I had quite a lovely evening yesterday. The cafe in the park was putting on a charity nights, and had invited L to go along and do a DJ set. We had a great time: everyone had a free burger and beer (I stuck to coke – I’m still off the hard stuff) and we sat there chatting, listening to Lyn as the sky went dark. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else, so it was a great social event. One of the staff there, Sakiko, is a singer: at one point they asked Lyn to pause her set while she sang three or four beautiful songs, her opera singer-quality voice gliding up into the quickly darkening london sky.

Unfortunately soon after that it began to spit, and everyone started to head home. It had been a great event, and all for a good cause. It was in aid of the local hospice, so I made a small donation and we set off home, hoping they will put on more events like that soon.