There is a point at which the world has to stand up to America and say ”enough’s enough”. When the egocentric moron they currently call their president starts to retweet bullshit posted by far-right bitches, surely a line has been crossed. This has now gone far beyond funny, to a point which, only a few years ago, would have been unthinkable. Trump is a joke, and the longer the United States calls him president, the more ridiculous it looks; but when that joke starts putting racist, islamophobic propaganda created by the morons of Britain First on his twitter feed, then surely the world must call that joke a day. The man has no idea what he’s doing, or the consequences of his actions, yet somehow this egotistical little p’tahk has been put in charge of the most powerful nation on earth. Surely there’s something the rest of the world can do to remove him from power, so that america can elect someone more qualified. This joke cannot continue.

As a person who usually doesn’t have a lot of choice in how he pronounces words – I just tap things into my speech app and have to live with what comes out – I find this quite amusing. There is a debate boiling up over the correct way to pronounce the word ”Brexit”. Is it Breggsit or Brecksit? While some may point out it is a silly thing to think about, I think it goes directly to the hub of the issue. An absurd question to ask of an increasingly absurd subject. After all, as the old song goes: ”You say tomayto, I say tomarto / let’s call the whole thing off!”

An interesting new show aired on the beeb last night. Employable Me looks at the employment prospects for people with disabilities, following several as they struggle to find work. It is a problem I know quite a lot about: like most disabled people, I’d love to have a job, but my physical impairments make that virtually impossible. The same goes for Lyn. It isn’t as though I’d be incapable of having one. After all, my first class degree and Master’s demonstrate I can do anything I put my mind to. It’s more a question of, what employer would ever hire me with all the specialist provision I need? Very similar problems were demonstrated by people on last night’s program: the chap with severe Tourette’s, for example, was obviously very capable at what he wanted to do, looking after animals, but his tics were so bad that most pet shop managers would have second thoughts about hiring him. At the same time, there’s a lot of accusatory nonsense going around, particularly in the right-wing press, that we’re all workshy slackers. This is a program I’ll be watching quite keenly, then, making sure it portrays the issues at hand fairly, and hoping it shows the country just how severe the employment problems ‘we’ face are.

Late last night I listened to the fourth and final part of Michael Palin’s diaries. I had started listening to them a few days ago, and had been happily dipping in and out of the four hour-long recordings ever since. In the last part, Palin tells of the rise of Python, the writing of The Life of Brian and the reception it got once it was made. I found it rather fascinating, and it made me want to get my as-yet-unopened copy of the book off the bookshelf. You can argue that Python played quite an important role in British cultural history, clearing the way for so much that followed. Without Python, would we have had Blackadder, the fast show, or so many other things which were clearly influenced by messres Cleese, Chapman, Palin, Jones, Idle and Gilliam?

I also found Palin’s diary entries rather poignant; there is a sort of dramatic irony to them. Reading or listening to them these days is somewhat bittersweet, as we know now what was to follow. For instance, Palin regularly notes, especially towards the end, Graham Chapman’s failing health and slow drift into alcoholism, unaware of the tragedy which that heralded. On the other hand, he also speculates about what was ahead: he mentions travelling once or twice, which I found quite amusing. I also liked hearing him wonder about ‘the death of Python’, noting how he thought that it was time to put an end to that period of his life, not knowing that Python wouldn’t die (if indeed it has) until 20 July, 2014.

Thus one gets pleasure from knowing more than the writer, but that is surely the irony of reading any diary, journal, or indeed blog. You know the next part of the story, so you both pity their naivite and envy their innocence. Most of all, though, you find pleasure in being afforded a glimpse of another person’s life, and to glimpse a life as interesting as Palin’s is a treat indeed.

Yesterday was quite a wonderful day. Dominik had been talking about me having a massage for a while, and yesterday we finally got around to it. He took me in my manual chair up to Camden, where one of his friends works as a masseuse at a spa called Triyoga. I was a little apprehensive at first, but as soon as I lay down on the bed and the massage started, I knew this would be the first trip there of many. The feel of her hands somehow made me relax instantly, as well as giving me a strange new energy, like coffee only less sudden, agressive and more natural.

She worked on me for about fifty minutes, before we called Dom back in. We both then went into the sauna, from where Dominik had just come. Sitting there in the baking heat (although Dom insisted it was just mild) I could barely have been more content. As D had promised it would, this treatment was doing wonders for me. I was relaxing more by the moment. I didn’t want to stay there for too long, fearing that the heat might damage my Ipad, so a short while later I asked to come out.

Dom and I both had showers and we got dressed. It had been a wonderful afternoon. As Dom had promised, the massage had done wonders for me – I was so relaxed.As I wrote here, Camden is a part of London which I love. On the way home we took a walk through the market and along Regent’s canal, before taking the tube back. By then, it was getting late; it was quite dark. Yet it’s such an awesome part of the city, and now that I know yo can get such great treatment up there, I think we will be going back quite soon.

If anyone is looking for yet more evidence that Donald Trump is nothing but an egotistical little slimeball, just head here. The p’tahk is now claiming that he turned down being named Time Man of the Year, even though the famous magazine deny he was up for consideration. This is just what we have come to expect from Trump: he seems to think we should all regard him as a great man, and that he should be the centre of attention, on every magazine cover. And when he isn’t, he comes out with bullshit like this, insisting that he was offered the accolade but valiantly turned it down. How could any respectable nation persist on calling such an immature jackass it’s leader?

Just to make this absolutely clear, I have no doubt that the earth is a sphere. However, a couple of times recently I’ve come across the startling news that belief that the Earth is a flat disk is rising. That astonishes me – how can anyone believe something so absurd these days? I just found this video exploring the phenomenon. Like conspiracism, belief that the earth is flat stems largely from disenfranchisement with the status quo: people like to believe in a big, bad centralised power which they can blame for all their woes. This power hides the truth from them. Thus, everyone who says that the world is spherical is under their control, and anyone who tries to cast doubt on that is rebelling against this big bad authority. The thing is, like other conspiracy theorists, flat earthers often happen to be selling something – usually books or tickets for their shows. They give often disenfranchised, poorly educated people the promise of hidden knowledge which only they can bestow, offering a sense of power and advantage to the often powerless and disadvantaged. It’s a sickening scam which relies on peoples ignorance and naivete to sell them bullshit, and I think it’s reaching a point where it has to be stopped.

Lyn broadcast the interview I wrote about here last night. She has a show on Revival Internet Radio at ten on Wednesdays, so I turned the TV down and went into her studio to listen. It was an awesome piece; Moat was an excellent interviewee, and L asked many interesting questions. She deserves a lot of good feedback for it. I wish I could link to it from here, but listening to such a great piece of music journalism by Lyn last night made me feel very proud indeed.

I think I’ll just flag this review of Justice League by Mark Kermode up today. I haven’t seen the film, so I can’t comment on it’s veracity; but I must say it echoes my own recent musings about film. I finally got around to watching one of the Marvel films last week. I bunged Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer into my DVD drive, intending to watch all four and then pen a lengthy review. The film was such godawful crap however, that that idea went out the window. It was just one CGI sequence after another, with very little plot in between. What narrative there was reminded me of the crappy American soaps I used to watch in the summer holidays in my early teens like California Dreams: nauseatingly cliche and sickeningly melodramatic. By the end I could barely wait for the credits to roll.

The cinema seems to be becoming saturated with these comic book films. If Kermode’s review is anything to go by, I think it’s fair to assume that they are all as dire as the one I saw – all just as derivative, assuming a gravitas but actually being childish pap churned out by a studio for easy money. When I recall how magnificent film can be as an art form, these comic book offerings seem to insult it. My fear is that this is what the cinematic art is increasingly becoming: rather than being used to say something about the human condition, like Star Wars films, comic book films ply the viewer with the visual equivalent of monosodium glutamate, hurling computer generated images at us justified with the minimum of plots and poorest of acting.

Just as an update to this entry, Robert Mugabe has resigned as President of Zimbabwe this evening. I must admit that I’m both surprised and relieved: I had visions of that stupid old man trying to cling on to power to the bitter end. He seemed to have the air of the despot too him, the kind that thinks a country is their property to rule, and any attempt remove them from power, or even criticise them in any way, is an attack on the state itself. (I get the same feeling from Trump, frankly). Now that he’s gone, hopefully Zimbabwe can begin a bright fresh chapter in it’s life. We should all be happy to see the back of such a brutal despot.

I must admit to being a monarchist, sort of. I know I shouldn’t be. I know the monarchy is an outdated, undemocratic institution which, as a leftist, I should want rid of. Yet at the same time, I feel the monarchy is one of the things which makes the UK what it is; a constant in a world of constant change. I admire the Queen: she didn’t choose her role, but has stuck with it for sixty-five years.* And yes, I also admire the fact that today marks her seventieth wedding anniversary with prince Philip. These days, people tend to move about, picking and choosing what they want from relationship; the idea that you should remain committed and loyal to one person seems not to be fashionable. Some people seem to regard partners like shoes or coats, to be just discarded when you fancy something new. Of course I know that such notions of loyalty could be seen as rather conservative and that they aren’t without their problems, particularly when it comes to people becoming trapped in abusive relationships; but I like the idea of staying with someone through thick and thin, of choosing someone and sticking with them. Thus I congratulate the Queen and Prince Philip on their anniversary, and thank them for setting such a wonderful example for us all.

*I also still have a big soft spot for this film.

According to this BBC video, some gamers think their sport has a real chance of one day becoming more popular than football. As much as I like computer games, and as intrigued as I am by the rise of so-called e-sports, my initial reaction was that he was utterly deluded. How could any sport ever eclipse the multi-billion pound industry that is world football? But then I thought: fifty-two percent of the voting public think the UK could survive out of the EU – is he so deluded in comparison? Absurd delusions seem to be becoming more and more popular these days. Framed like that, this chap may well turn out to be right; who needs to go to footie matches when you can watch someone play Quake? Mind you, by the same token, I have a chance of one day becoming President of America, or winning the Formula One world championship.

This might be slightly lazy blogging on my part, but if you want to chill out listening to something quite fascinating, just head here. Michael Palin reads his diaries in such a relaxing tone that you can’t help but be drawn in; but the things he tells us about in this audiobook give us a glimpse of the creative process behind Monty Python. As a writer, I am intrigued by his references to the script writing process, and his description of how that became the now legendary shows. He is convivial, but behind that conviviality lies a fascinating insight into an era of British social history, now long past. I really think this is well worth a listen.

The utter stupidity of Brexit becomes clearer every day, to the extent that I’m now as certain as I can be that, sooner or later, it will collapse and we’ll remain in the EU. But I think this is a perfect illustration of just how absurd things are now becoming:

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I recently came across word that a tory MP had suggested the rather bizarre notion that we could persuade Ireland to leave the EU too so they could join us in our own customs union. Seriously, how could any intelligent person let this utter foolishness continue?

Not that I ever watched it when I was little, but it would seem that Spitting Image is going to make a comeback. According to this BBC report, the guy who did the show in the eighties, Roger Law, has been approached by NBC about rebooting the series. It will be interesting to see how it turns out. It will be written in America, but Law will be making the puppets, and he’s apparently already made the one for Trump. Truth be told, the thought of seeing that buffoon done up as one of those famous character marionettes is enough to make me really want to see how they handle this. I’m no expert, but I suspect Trump would be quite perfect for it.

I’m watching events unfold down in Zimbabwe quite intently. The ruling party there are still trying to deny that what is happening there is a coup, but if it walks like a coup, swims like a coup and quacks like a coup, what else can you call it? But I don’t mean that in a bad sense: Robert Mugabe is – or was – a tyrant by anyone’s standards; they should have booted him out long ago. My only concern is, what will now replace him? It’s one thing to get rid of a despotic crackpot, quite another to replace him with something even worse. Thus while Zimbabwe might be miles away, and it isn’t as if we don’t have enough to be worried about here at home; but I think we all will be keeping an eye on how events unfold out there in the coming days and weeks, I fear with growing concern.

I was witness to something which I found utterly remarkable yesterday afternoon. Lyn has recently been doing a slot on Revival Internet Radio. She usually just selects the music and triggers some jingles for her shows, but yesterday she conducted an interview with Garry Moat, the lead singer of Burnt Out Wreck. It was fascinating to watch: L had been preparing for days, typing questions into her Ipad ready to play when she contacted Moat on Skype. She had also found software which lets you record Skype conversations. Then, at about five yesterday with everything set up, I watched her ring Moat on her computer and hold a very successful, rather fascinating interview.

I felt very proud as I watched Lyn. More and more communication aid users are doing stuff like this and L is one of the people leading the way. She spent the rest of the day editing the audio she got, ready to broadcast on Friday. She played the final piece last night for me though, and I was struck by how professional it sounded and the quality of the conversation – it really was quite fascinating. Let’s hope this is the first interview Lyn does of many.

Just as an update to this entry I posted last week, The Guardian reports that the new TV series based in Tolkien’s Middle Earth has been confirmed and will be set before the events of Lord of the Rings, but after the Hobbit. That is, it’s not going to be a retelling of either story. They say it will be based on Tolkien’s work, but as far as I know, he didn’t write much about that period – not enough to flesh out a multi-season television series, that’s for sure – so it looks to me like the writers will be making their own stories up.

I still feel quite strongly against that idea. Tolkien’s work is Tolkien’s work: it should not be meddled with or added to. I’ve loved those stories ever since dad started reading them to me and my brothers when I was about eight or nine. They are now set to be tampered with by some American hack who I doubt would know what they are doing. No doubt they would write some sort of romance into it; they would also force their American, nationalistic interpretation onto it, with power and combat always shown to be the right way. They would have looked at Jackson’s adaptations, seen all the epic battles, and thought that that was what Middle Earth is all about. Forgive my gross pessimism, but I can’t see this turning out to be anything but a total mess and a betrayal of Tolkien’s work.

After watching the latest episode of Star Trek Discovery this morning, I had to pop to the shop for a few bits. I’m still in two minds about Discovery, although I think I’m slowly warming to it. This week’s episode featured the Klingons quite heavily, and going around co-op I began to wonder: What would a Klingon shop look like? If you think about it, even a warrior culture must have basic commerce. Klingons need food, and how else do you distribute food than through shops? To become a warp capable, space-faring civilisation, they presumably must at some point have been an advanced society, with cities, commerce and shops. That would mean that their society would have needed builders, technicians and shop-keepers. Therefore, not every Klingon could have been a warrior.

Of course, such things are never addressed in Trek: Klingons are a warrior race, and that’s it. Yet the second you start to think about how such a quazi-feudal, militaristic society could have come about, questions like this crop up. I assume Klingons would see no honour in shop keeping; no fighting is involved. But how could they have ever built ships capable of flying faster than light if they did not at some point have their own version of our local Co-op? And if they did, were there Klingon versions of me tootling around them, buying their lunch? What would a Klingon supermarket look like? Would it have a newspaper stand? Magazines? The same flower rack? Oh, the weird things I ponder when I go to buy milk.

As I trundled down to woolwich yesterday I was in two minds over whether to participate in powerchair football practice. My shoulder feels back to normal, the pain almost completely gone; but I was concerned that it would flair up again as soon as I got into one of those awesome wheelchairs. I told myself that I would just do half an hour’s practice or so, and see how I felt.

However, my fretting turned out to be moot. As soon as I got to the sports hall, I was greeted by the quite impressive sight of two powerchair football teams warming up to play a full march. I’m not yet a proper member of the team so I couldn’t play, but I was warmly invited to stay and watch. The match was set to begin about half an hour later, giving me time to nip for a coffee in Woolwich high street.

When I got back, they were about to kick off. I made my way to the touchline and got ready to watch. I was quite surprised by how close to normal football it was, complete with referee and linesmen. They first held a minutes silence because it was November the Eleventh, and then got going with two halves of twenty minutes.

The action was fast and exciting. Unfortunately, the visiting team, whose name I never caught, clearly dominated the game. Yet I was easily able to get into the exciting game, cheering the guys on while trying to avoid anyone accidentally ramming into me. It ended two goals to none to the visiting team, but it was still a great game to watch. In fact it was quite a nail-biter as it drew towards it’s close.

Rolling home last night, I felt as if I had just experienced something new and great. Watching that game made me eager to see more; maybe I will take Lyn next time, and I really must tell my cricketing friend James about it. Powerchair football is a great new sport not many people will know about, but from what I saw yesterday afternoon, it has as much power to draw people in as any other. The film I want to make about it is going quite slowly at the moment, but I know it will get there eventually: I want to help give the world a taste of what I saw yesterday; to help others feel the excitement I felt as I sat in that sportshall. I’m not sure whether I will ever be able to play at any decent level, but I now really want to help give others a glimpse of that great game.

We all know that the usual method of evaluating a city’s size and importance is by population. Rather than looking at a satellite image to see how big a city is physically, the cultural relevance of any given city is judged by how many people live in it. But recently another method occurred to me: I was looking at a map of the London underground and, noticing how elaborate it looked, wondered how it compared with the tube maps of other cities. I looked a couple up – New York’s and Sydney’s – but they didn’t look anything near as complex as London’s. Paris‘ tube system is slightly more elaborate, but I still think London has the edge. I think this method gives you an idea of how advanced a city is; how built up and used it is. In a way an underground rail system is metonymic of a city’s character: each has it’s own distinct personality; and each grows organically, growing naturally through it’s use by thousands upon thousands of people. Thus this is a way to compare the great cities of the world; a way to make an essentially meaningless comparison through an integral yet often overlooked and forgotten aspect of a city. After all, all these cities are awesome and unique, so if you need to weigh one against the other, why not go by something which they all have and every citizen in the city uses, yet which embodies a city’s personality and aura: the tube network.

I challenge anyone to read this and not be instantly enraged that such arrogant, self-important scumbags are currently governing the country. The Evening Standard reports that Tory MP Roger Gale is now trying to blame female journalists for the current sex scandal. He seems to think that these women are making stories up or suddenly remembering long past experiences. It’s as if he thinks men like him should have a right to harass whoever they want, and their victims have no right to complain. How disgusting. Surely something needs to be done to get lecherous old twats like him out of power and into homes, where they can’t hurt anyone else.

As a guy who can barely control his powerchair sometimes, zark knows what mess I would make were I ever to get into one; but I would love to try one of these. ”British inventor Richard Browning has set the first world speed record for ‘flying a body-controlled jet engine power suit’.” Probably having taken inspiration from something dreamed up by Q-Branch, these guys have created the most awesome-looking jetpack I have ever seen. How could any warm-blooded person not watch this and just want a go?

Farewell, Patel, you are quite Pritti; although most of what you say is truly shitty.

Getting into trouble in the Golan Heights

And then being fired in the middle of flights.

Still, one less Outist is just as well; It’s about time the whole government fell.

The mess they’re making is truly dire. If we’re ever going to get out of this mire we’ll have to get rid of the stupid cow May,

Forget about Brexit, and decide to stay.

So, farewell Patel, take Johnson too;

The country will be much better without either of you.

I am fast becoming a firm fan of Ted Shires. He’s a comedian with cerebral palsy who frequently posts videos on Youtube. I agree with a lot of what he has to say. He’s very funny and witty, but there’s also a core of truth and a serious dissatisfaction with what is going on underlying many of his videos. It would seem he recently got a letter from the DWP about a PIP assessment, and he has posted his reaction to it here. He points out the stupidity of such assessments well: it’s not as if the severity of conditions like CP changes, and surely conducting such ultimately pointless procedures must cost the authorities more than any possible savings. Shires makes these points and more in such a way, with such sarcasm and wit, that you can’t help taking note. The guy is surely a rising star of the disability rights movement.

A couple of days ago, I came across a piece of entertainment news more interesting than most I’ve seen in a while. Variety reports that Warner Brothers have teamed up with Amazon to develop a television series of The Lord Of The Rings. They have apparently been in talks with the Tolkien estate about it for quite some time. Big Tolkien fan that I am, I’m not sure what to make of it: Peter Jackson’s film adaptations were marvellous, and I feel they found the right balance of affection for the books combined with the need for cinematic scope which pleased almost everyone. A tv adaptation might not be so diligent: what concerns me is that they will want to increasingly commercialise the Middle-Earth saga, and make it more palatable for tv audiences. Stripped of the scope of the cinema screen, I fear the changes they will have to make to the source material – cutting it into forty-five minute episodes, each with a beginning, middle and end, for starters – would be so radical that it would do a disservice to the books.

It’s also patently obvious that TV execs are now after a new blockbuster series along the same lines of Game of Thrones, and are looking to Tolkien for it. But audiences now know these stories due to the films, so I don’t really see how another small screen adaptation would fit in. Retelling a story already told in the cinema wouldn’t go down well; yet there is no other Tolkien material they could base a series on. The only other option for them would be to create new stories based in Middle-Earth, and I really can’t see that ending well. JRR Tolkien created a rich world full of fantastic races, with languages, cultures and stories. He was quite precise and exact about how Elves, Dwarves, Men and Hobbits behaved. While this may seeman enticing world to expand upon and play in, my fear is, as soon as some American tv writer starts to play with such characters and cultures, they would take it in entirely the wrong direction, motivated by the need to make mass entertainment. Tolkien was an Oxford linguistics professor, writing from a fairly specific, english, scholarly standpoint. An American tv writer, even one with the best of intentions, simply would not come from the same position, and would end up making a mockery of the whole thing.

I’ve felt this twinge of reticence before. I always do, whenever I come across a story like this. I then think of all the ways it could end badly, and frequently it ends up being great. Yet this time I worry that tv execs are about to do a series of books I love a great disservice. I suppose it remains to be seen though, so this is a story I’ll be keeping a very close eye on indeed.

If anyone is still in any doubt about what Brexit is really about, just head here. ”The government will not protect the UK economy from market forces after Brexit, Theresa May is set to warn.” In other words, they plan to turn the country into a free-market, neoliberal paradise. This is what the Tories wanted all along: quit Europe and create a place where greed rules, the haves lord it over the have nots and the rich rule the poor. The country will become a deregulated tax haven where, if you don’t have the means to care for yourself, you’re on your own. The wealthy and privileged will be set free to persecute the rest of us, free of the safeguards and human rights guarantees we got from europe. This was their plan all along, and anyone brainless enough to vote leave is partly to blame. The NHS, social services etc will all soon go, replaced by a market-based system where profit rather than people’s welfare is the ultimate goal. Surely this is now clear to everyone, regardless of how they voted last year. This cannot be allowed to stand.

I didn’t go to powerchair football practice yesterday. I have been going every Saturday for a few weeks now, but after last week’s session and the one before, I found my right shoulder hurting like a sonofabitch. I didn’t realise what caused it at first, thinking I might have been sleeping in the wrong position, but it didn’t take much to connect the two. I razzed down to the leisure centre in Woolwich where they practice anyway, just to let the guys know what was up; they suggested I rested up for a week or so, and then just do a little bit of practice next time. I wouldn’t ordinarily complain, but the pain last Sunday was quite, quite excruciating.

It’s a shame, because powerchair football really is quite awesome. I’ve been looking into it, trying to get a film about it off the ground, and the more I look the cooler it seems. On top of the simple fact that whizzing around in specially-adapted, ultra-powerful powerchairs is seriously fun (trust me, it’s incredible), I have a new sport and social phenomenon to explore, one still relatively in it’s infancy, but one with the potential to one day be quite huge. Founded in france in the late seventies, the sport’s organising body, FIPFA, is currently in the process of getting it incorporated into the paralympics. If you ask me, it’s only a matter of time before it succeeds: while some pedants might argue that it doesn’t require much in terms of physical exertion, the skill needed to control those chairs properly is considerable. Trust me, it’s harder than it looks, so it easily ranks alongside any other olympic or paralynmpic sport. Thus I have a relatively undocumented sport to make a film about, one still by and large on the fringes but with the potential to come centre stage. I might not be very good at it, and my shoulder might object to the chairs they use, but I can’t wait to get into this great new game, both as a player and film-maker.

Yesterday I took myself to watch The Death Of Stalin. It wasn’t playing at our local Odeon, so I had to go over to Greenwich to see it. It is a fascinating film, simultaneously hilarious and horrifying, I didn’t know whether to laugh or be petrified. The horror the characters describe is unnerving, especially given you know it actually happened; yet it is delivered with such satirical wit that you can’t help laughing. This is comedy at it’s darkest. Also, even though it is historical, you can’t help but wonder about the timing of this film’s release, and whether the director, Armando Iannucci was trying to make some points about the contemporary era, and Trump. This is a film about power and the corruption which inevitably comes with it.

I have studied the history of Russia a bit, and it is a subject which I find quite fascinating. Stalin was completely despotic and paranoid to the point of absurdity. What happened in Russia after 1917 was almost farcical, in a way, and I can see how it could be ripe pickings for satire. Mind you, the deaths of so many million people at the hands of a crazy guy who thought the world was out to get him are hardly a laughing matter, but I can see how some may want to use it as the basis for a parable. There are some truly comic moments in this film, as well as witty observations which strike a chord with the modern era. While it must have been well underway long before Trump came to power, this portrait of an insecure egoist chimes with what we see today on the other side of the Atlantic.

There are some great performances in this film: I’m a fan of Michael Palin, and it was good to see him acting again, in a role he really got his teeth into; Paul

Whitehouse was just as fabulous. Rupert Friend as Vasily Stalin was hilarious and terrifying in equal degrees. It was something of an all-star cast, and everyone got a good crack of the whip.

I suppose it’s a tough balance to strike: how can you make comedy out of something so horrifying? How can you make light of something so dark, and turn tragedy into entertainment? Yet, somehow, this film succeeds in doing so. Not only that, but it is a film which makes you think and reflect upon our own era. It is comedy with something serious to say – that surely is the best kind.

I just got to my computer to find this hilarious story, which I absolutely love. Donald Trumps twitter account was temporarily deactivated by a Twitter employee on his final day in the job. He was leaving, so he decided to hit the embarrassment to humanity where it hurts. How glorious! I bet the child was fuming. Trump seems to use twitter to vent his feelings directly to us; it’s something he can control, and seems to think it’s an outlet for his personal power and dominance. The self-styled big man wants to also be the big man of twitter, through which he can bait who he wants and say what he likes without anyone getting in his way. Farage uses his LBC show for the same thing – not that I ever listen to it. To have that ability to vent, to talk to us directly as he would see it, taken from him must have sent Trump wild. It just goes to show how fragile this man’s ego and real authority is. He’s so unrespected that a former twitter employee thinks nothing of deactivating his account, rendering him unable to vent his warped, egotistical views onto us. Good on that former employee, I say.

I have recently been using Netflix to catch up on old Star Trek Enterprise episodes. I have never sat down and watched Enterprise properly before now; it did not air on terrestrial tv like other Trek series, so I did not know it as well as TNG or DS9. Now I have Netflix, though, I decided to put that right: for the last two or three weeks, I’ve watched an episode or two every day, either in the morning before our PA gets here, or last thing at night. I’m currently halfway through the third season, and the crew are well into Xindi space.

To be honest, though, I think I’m beginning to see why Enterprise didn’t do as well as Trek incarnations. The xindi story ark is starting to get dull. They seem to have been heading for a red giant for a few episodes, and never getting there. Watching it, I don’t feel as compelled by it as I did when I used to watch TNG orDS9. The stories don’t really draw me in, and I can’t relate to any of the characters. For me, Captain Archer simply does not have the gravitas of Picard or Sisco. Frankly it just feels like it’s written by someone who has simply decided to throw together elements they have seen in other shows, without creating anything new. The only vaguely interesting character is Dr. Phlox; none of the others have anything which makes them stand out. Of course I’ll continue to watch, but I think I’m beginning to see why Enterprise didn’t make it past it’s fifth season.

I was just in our local Co-Op where as usual I got a glimpse of all the papers’ front pages, and I must say what I saw on the front of the Daily Express infuriated me. It was an out-and-out barefaced lie intended to stir up animosity for the EU. Apparently, we pay the European Union 267 million quid a week; but that figure has been totally rejected by every expert out there. The truth is, we stand to lose a hell of a lot of money when we leave the union, which is why I find it so infuriating that rags like the express still have the audacity to print such bull on their front pages. Small disagreements I can accept – after all, as one who knows there is no such thing as absolute, objective truth, I realise there are bound to be things in the papers which I disagree with. Yet falsehoods like this go far beyond that: the Express has knowingly printed a lie on it’s front page, one intended to manipulate readers’ opinions to suit it’s petty, far right aims. Brexit will ruin our economy, and when we all start to suffer because of it, the papers which printed such lies will be to blame. The Express says we need to speed up the Brexit process, but it’s obviously getting anxious: the outists know full well that the longer this farce goes on, the more likely it is to come to a crashing end with the UK remaining in the EU. As big a fan of freedom of speech that I am, surely the time has come to get this rag taken out of print. We deserve a better press than one soiled and taken into the gutter by such insults to journalism.