I think the highlight of my year must obviously be my trip to Spain and Morocco with John a couple of months ago. Overall it has been a quiet, subdued year for me: I’ve just kept myself busy trundling around East London, doing a bit of writing and keeping my blog updated. There were no epic gigs or concerts to recall this year. The Morocco trip, though, was the stand-out point: I’ll never forget exploring those North African cities with their fascinating medinas and insane traffic, not to mention places like Ronda and Casablanca. Such trips – going out and exploring this awesome world – are surely what life is about.

Mind you, I must say that another personal highlight of 2023 was becoming an uncle for the third time. I haven’t actually met my newborn nephew Elias yet; that’s something I really want to do as soon as possible in 2024. Indeed, truth be told, it feels like an age since me, my parents and my brothers with their young families all got together. I think the pandemic, as well as various other factors like schools and geography, just got in the way. Well, I think we’ll certainly have to put that right in the new year: I have nieces and nephews to get to know!

As long term readers have probably gathered, I adore London: as far as I am concerned, it is pretty much the greatest city on Earth. However, it seems I’m not alone in thinking that. I just came across this Time Out article. “London has been crowned the best city in Europe for 2023. Resonance Consultancy, publisher of the Best Cities named the UK capital as the superior city in Europe, placing us higher than Paris, Barcelona and Zurich.” It goes on ” The firm looked at the 100 best cities in Europe to visit or live in in 2023, considering several factors. It took into account attractions, diversity, the environment, employment levels and even Instagram hashtags and TripAdvisor reviews.” Needless to say, I couldn’t agree more: while London isn’t without it’s problems, having lived here for almost fourteen years I have come to know it’s culture and diversity; it’s charming little parks and rivers; it’s mighty stadia and arenas. It’s a place where anything is possible, and the potential for awesomeness is truly infinite. I’m glad to now see that I’m not the only person to think that.

I suppose there are many ways you can define ‘home’ or say whether an area has started to feel homelike. I think I just came across one which, for me personally, really fits the bill: the point at which the people around me not only begin to know me by name, but have started to understand my speech. I just got in from a nice, long walk along the Regent’s canal. On my way home I knew I needed to get three or four things, so I popped into my local Tesco Express, as I often do. The staff there now know me quite well, as I have been a regular customer for four years. As usual, I went in and parked by the tills to wait for a member of staff to become available to help me.

Soon enough, a guy came and together we went around the shop collecting what I needed. The task was going well and didn’t take long, the only slight delay being when I needed to decide whether or not to buy beer, but I chose not to tonight. However, sitting at the tills, after I had payed and my shopping had been packed in my bag, I suddenly remembered that I also needed bleach.

“Bleach!” I yelled, waving my hands in exasperation. To my great surprise and relief, the fellow helping me knew exactly what the problem was and what I needed.

“Do you need bleach too?” he asked. I nodded, and a few moments later the problem had been solved, a bottle of bleach in my bag with my other stuff. It was only a small, trivial incident I know, but I left the shop reflecting upon how such things make me feel welcome and at home. The staff in that Tesco store now know me quite well, enough to greet me by name and understand my speech. Having gone through life struggling to get people to understand how I speak, surely that would be enough to put anyone at ease.

At one point while I was staying with my parents, Dad recounted to the rest of the family how, two years when I was living with Lyn in Charlton, the guys at the Charlton Park Cafe , the Old Cottage Coffee Shop, had very kindly cooked Christmas lunch and delivered it to us. That was a wonderful gesture of course, and Dad’s mentioning of it naturally got me reflecting on the fact that it had been so long – years, in fact – since I’d been to that sweet little cafe. There was the fact I moved to Eltham, plus the pandemic meant I fell out of the habit. But I think the biggest issue which prevented me from drinking my coffees there was the fact that they started serving in paper cups rather than solid china ones, which meant I could knock my drink over too easily. It was a shame, because it was a great little cafe owned and frequented by some wonderful people. At one point I used to spend entire afternoons there.

I was thinking about it this morning. Dad mentioning it reminded me how kind those people were, so short of anywhere else to go, I thought I’d head over there just to say ‘Hi’ and get back into contact. Charlton isn’t that far from my flat, and I go through Charlton Park fairly regularly, yet I never stop at the cafe. This morning, though, I made a point of doing so.

Going into the cafe, I was pleased to see it was just as I remembered it, with dozens of paintings on the walls, flyers about local activities on the notice board and a rich smell of coffee. I spoke to Mimi, one of the owners: she seemed happy to see me back. However, I explained my problem with the paper cups, and she said they still used them, unfortunately. They are too light and tip over too easily, which can be fairly hazardous when they have a load of hot coffee inside. I’m not sure I can see a solution, apart from taking my own mug.

Nonetheless I now intend to start going their quite regularly again, especially when Spring comes. The last few years have taught me how important friendships are, and maintaining contact with people: it is far too easy to loose touch with guys you were once fairly close to, and before you know it, before you even realise what you had, they’re gone for good. I remember that cafe being a happy, jovial, social place where everyone met up; it would be good to experience some of that again.

For what it’s worth, I spent a nice, quiet Christmas Day with my parents., cousins and their children. I don’t really have much to report, other than it was one of those lovely family Christmas days like I had growing up. In fact since I didn’t have my Neater Eater so Mum was feeding me, it even felt slightly like I had stepped back into childhood.

I’m back at home now though, having taken the tube train across this sprawling metropolis like so many other Londoners. It’s almost like taking a tube ride between my first London and my third. Just as I find great comfort in knowing that I can always go back to that old family house if I need to, I set great strength in knowing that I am capable of getting around one of the world’s greatest cities pretty much alone. My family gave me a lot of support when I was growing up, and it still does: that support has ranged from giving me outstanding Christmas lunches to encouraging me through university. 

Without such support I doubt I would be where I am today, an accomplished blogger, writer and filmmaker living alone in south east London. I wonder how I would have reacted if someone had told my ten year old self, or even the insecure young boy who still crawled over the floors of the  old family house which I just returned from, how things were going to turn out.

I’m sat in a room whose floor I have vivid memories of crawling over. I have returned to a house in north west London which I have visited since infancy: a house which my family has owned since the sixties. A lot has changed, of course: my grandparents are no longer with us, and the place has been extended and renovated and redecorated. Yet these rooms have somehow kept the same aura.

Much of my family is here including my Brazilian cousins and their young children. The three kids are about eight or ten, and still fairly uncertain and clinging to their parents. The strange thing is, I remember doing exactly the same thing in these very rooms. Whenever we visited this house every few months during my childhood, I remember feeling similarly uncertain, with the adults all talking together about things I didn’t understand. The strange thing is, I am now one of the adults, talking about complex, boring adult things.

Time is time, unstoppable and relentless. Things will always change. I now walk across a floor I remember crawling on, having come across the city from my own flat on the other side of the city. Yet, somehow, something is the same; something about this house has a timelessness to it. It is still the house where my family comes to meet, to get together and enjoy one another’s company. Entering earlier I came through the same front door which I was once helped through as an infant; and I felt exactly the same feeling of warmth and welcome today that I felt as a child.

I have blogged about my views on religion before and I don’t think I need to again go into how oppressive and repugnant I find it as a sociopolitical phenomenon. However, I don’t think that should stop me saying here today that I hope the next few days are very enjoyable for everyone. Part of me is worried that, just by saying that, I’m playing into the religious narrative and reinforcing it’s control; yet, at the end of the day, Christmas is about getting together with family and friends, enjoying each other’s company, exchanging gifts and chilling out. In that case, I have nothing against it. After all, the pagan midwinter festival which the event we call Christmas essentially stems from has more or less nothing to do with a religious or cultural leader living in the Middle East two thousand years ago.

I’m going to visit my parents tomorrow and staying with them until Boxing Day, so mine should be a Christmas like the ones I had growing up. I’m really looking forward to it, and especially enjoying one of my mum’s Christmas lunches. Thus, putting all my concerns about social control aside, let me just wish everyone reading this a merry Christmas and a wonderful new year.

I just came across this meme on facebook, and instantly felt rather old. It took me right back to my teenage years and 486 and Pentium computers. Yet, interestingly, as one comment put it, “I can hear this image!”

Although the dude narrating it sounds a tad reactionary at times, railing against concepts like ‘inclusion’, I think this is worth a watch. It’s a bit of Youtube analysis explaining why we are unlikely to see anything as revolutionary or phenomenal, culturally speaking, as Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings again. His argument is that, twenty years on from LOTR hitting our screens, cinema has become so artistically timid and ‘wishy-washy’, no-one will be bold enough to create anything as mould-breaking as Jackson was almost 25 years ago. I certainly see his point: film has grown so bogged down with franchises and derivative commercial pap that no director will be as brave enough as PJ was to go against the grain. LOTR was, and still is, a stand-out work of art. I had been a fan of Tolkien since Dad read the books to me as a boy; to see those stories translated onto the big screen was phenomenal in a way which I think can rarely be matched. It’s also good to see film and cultural analysis on Youtube has reached this depth, with content creators on the web now generating things just as sophisticated as anything you’ll read in a paper or journal.

Something happened this afternoon which I think I need to record here. It was one of those happenstance events which, although unconsequencial in the grand scheme of things, just makes life slightly brighter. I was out on my trundle over on the Isle of Dogs, following the river round. I was feeling slightly sorry for myself, not having slept well last night. All of a sudden a huge gust of wind rose up and blew my baseball cap off. It landed on the other side of a fence on an old dock, and of course I assumed I had lost it. I could see the cap, but there was no way I would be able to retrieve it. It was a shame, because I had had the cap two or three years, and it always seemed to come back to me whenever it blew away.

I was on the verge of turning my back on it and carrying on my walk, though, when a man came walking along the road. He said Hi in a friendly tone, so I greeted him in return, gesturing toward the lost cap. He instantly realised what had happened, of course, and to my great astonishment and gratitude offered to retrieve it for me.

A couple of minutes later I had my cap back, amazed that I hadn’t lost it after all: The cap had proven itself unloosable once again. More to the point, I was once more in awe of the kindness of a total stranger, who had gone out of his way to help me. I offered to buy him a beer in thanks, but he said he needed to take the parcel he was carrying to the post office, so we parted ways. It was just one of those lucky little events which might not really be worth recording, except that it made me feel so fortunate and instantly brightened my day.

*The Batazoids are a telepathic humanoid civilisation from Star Trek.

It’s a wet, grey, Tuesday afternoon, so I just rewatched Being James Bond, a 45 minute documentary about Daniel Craig’s tenure playing James Bond. I’ve watched it before, of course, but not for a while. Craig is obviously the most recent actor to play Bond, and the documentary makes it clear what an impact he had on the series: when he was first cast, everyone dismissed him as completely unsuitable. As the program shows quite well, however, the doubters were shut up as soon as Casino Royale came out in 2006; and over the next five films, Craig made a deep impact on the role. He made 007 more human, but no less suave, sophisticated and awesome. In fact I’d go as far as to say that Craig left two shoes to fill which are bigger than ever, given the impact his five films made, socially and culturally, on the Bond franchise.

The obvious question that leaves is, how can those shoes be filled? Craig left Bond in a more prominent cultural position than ever; his five films were smash hits, with everyone just about loosing their heads every time a new one came out. Moreover, how can Craig possibly be followed, given the depth and humanity he brought to the role? Here we have an actor who was almost totally unheard of, who everyone completely dismissed when he was first cast, yet who blew everyone out of the park and contributed five of the greatest films of the Bond series. That is not to dismiss the five great actors who preceded Craig, but he secured James Bond films position as a cinematic franchise culturally unlike any other. Whoever is cast their task is going to be impossible given the expectations everyone now has.

Mind you, the fact that it will have been so long since the last film was released won’t help that. No Time To Die hit screens in 2021, and we haven’t heard anything about the future of the franchise or who’ll next play Bond yet, so it will probably be ’25 or ’26 by the next time we see a new Bond film. By then, expectations are going to be almost insurmountable, with everyone remembering the legacy of Craig and expecting something just as good or possibly even greater. Frankly I don’t see how any actor is going to live up to that, which probably explains why the producers are taking so much time in casting someone.

I am still a huge Bond fan, of course. I love the entire series and all six actors to play him. They all brought something slightly different to the role, but as I once wrote here, I think Daniel Craig is my favourite, given he played Bond as the flawed, three dimensional character most akin to the one Ian Fleming created. The problem is, I don’t see where the franchise can be taken from here, the impact Craig had on it was so massive. As I touched upon here a while ago, one option is to take the franchise in a different direction, perhaps by reintroducing a lighter, more comic, Roger Moore-esque tone. Either way Craig has left a huge cultural opening which someone will have to fill. I’m sure it will be, sooner or later – James Bond always returns - but whoever is selected faces a truly unenviable task.

Just as a brief update on this entry from a couple of weeks ago, I can now see why Sadiq Kahn vetoed the construction of a whacking great illuminated arena up in Stratford. I just thought I’d google it to see if there were any developments in that story, and found this Evening Standard article. The thing would have been a bloody great health risk which would have spread light pollution for miles and made the whole area uninhabitable. Even more pressingly, there was a risk of the sphere triggering epileptic seizures. I can now easily see why the plans were rejected: what might look cool in Las Vegas, surrounded by the deserts of Nevada, does not necessarily suit suburban London.

Even so, I’m still curious about what will be done with that crumbling car park.

I was out and about again yesterday. I thought I’d head in a direction I hadn’t been before, so I took myself east from Eltham along Shooters Hill. That whole area is crammed with lovely little parks and patches of ancient woodland. About halfway through my trundle though, I came across a wide open piece of grassland called East Wickham Open Space: from the outside it looked lovely, with lots of well maintained paths leading across it. The problem was I couldn’t get onto it, because the entrance I’d come across was blocked by a gate which I couldn’t get through in my powerchair. I thought I’d go round and looked for another way in, but they were all blocked by the same kind of gate. They’re obviously intended to prevent cyclists going through at speed, but if you’re a wheelchair user there is no way you can get through, especially if you’re in a large cumbersome powerchair, and especially if you don’t have anyone with you to help. It almost felt like guys like me had been deliberately prevented from entering.

I must say I was rather disappointed. The park looked quite lovely, but for all the progress London has made towards accessibility recently, it seems that there are still parts of the metropolis which we wheelchair users still can’t get to.

There is really only one place I can direct everyone today, and that’s here, to last nights episode of The Last Leg. To be honest, I didn’t watch it when it aired live last night, but just caught up with it. I had seen something this morning on Facebook about Suella Braverman getting an award for Dick Of The Year on the show, and knew I had to check it out. Having just done so, I can confirm it is absolute gold: the cruel cow is duped into thinking she is opening some sort of yaght club, and it isn’t until the very last moment that she realises she’s been royally had, and has been called out on national TV. Qa’pla Channel Four! Qa’pla!

I loaded up Netflix earlier. I’d come across a reference to a Star Trek DS9 episode yesterday which I wanted to check out. There, I came across something even more interesting: a documentary called A Life on Our Planet, presented by Sir David Attenborough. Believe it or not, I don’t think I had ever come across it before, but I thought I would give it a watch after breakfast this morning. When it comes to Attenborough, I sort of tend to stick to the stuff he does with the BBC: the two kind of feel like they go hand in hand, so that any program produced by any other company which they get the great man to present feels a bit like poaching.

Nonetheless, today I thought I’d give Netflix the benefit of the doubt. A Life on Our Planet was apparently released in 2020, so zark knows why I hadn’t come across it. Broadly speaking, it is a recounting of Attenborough’s seventy years as a natural history television presenter. There is a lot about his past programs on the BBC. Yet, unlike his usual terrestrial output, this Netflix show is a lot more openly persuasive: Attenborough details, at some length, how human activity is affecting our planet, and how things like industrial agriculture is eating up natural environments. This felt overtly political in a way which I don’t think would have been permitted on the Beeb. The final segment of the show was about how we can prevent the cataclysm, and what we humans can do to reverse the damage we are doing to nature.

All of which is, I think, entirely necessary. The notion that human activity is adversely affecting nature is now totally beyond debate; the evidence is growing constantly. Having someone as widely respected as Attenborough outline that evidence, laying it before us for all to see, is a great idea. We’re pumping Carbon into our atmosphere at a rate which simply cannot be sustained. Mind you, it is slightly unfortunate that such an overtly persuasive program is only available to Netflix: this problem is becoming so important, co critical, so imminent, that surely things like this need to be broadcasted as widely as possible. Sadly though, Attenborough seems to temper such content on his terrestrial programs, the BBC no doubt fearing a backlash from right wing viewers who don’t like such truths being spoken.

All that aside, this only adds to my conviction that David Attenborough is the greatest broadcaster ever. I think I have written this here a couple of times now, but as far as I’m concerned, Attenborough has no peer in terms of broadcasting. Has anyone else, from any other country across the world, had a career which could even come close? Series like Life On Earth and Blue Planet are milestones in British Cultural history; jewels in the crown of the BBC. He deserves our respect, and for him to turn his attention to man-made climate change like this means it is an issue which cannot be ignored.

I went up to Stratford again today to try to get my Christmas shopping done. Coming home, I came across exactly the same guy I wrote about last week. Irritated, I decided to try to do something about it, and fortunately saw three police officers on patrol not far away. I went up to them and explained the problem, showing them my blog entry to help them understand why I saw it as such an issue. At the very least, I reasoned, if he did turn out to have learning difficulties after all, perhaps they could get him the support he would need.

Somewhat perversely however, I was told that there was nothing they could do, given the guy wasn’t breaking any laws. They could see why I was so upset, but their hands were tied. Feeling rather disgruntled, I decided to head home and leave things at that: as insulting as it is, it seems there are no laws to stop people pretending to be disabled to scam people out of money.

For the sake of fairness I think I ought to record that I have now used my freedom pass several times, so it has proven useful after all. Mind you,  I’ve only needed to use it in the DLR station where the problem of not having one first cropped up. I should note too that using it is always rather fiddly, as it means rummaging in my bumbag to get it out. It always takes me several minutes for me to get through the gate. But at least I now have it, which means I’ll (probably) never get stuck in an unmanned DLR station again.

Today I just want to reiterate what I wrote here a few days ago: the Tory party, as a group of privileged, arrogant, xenophobic people, are manifestly unfit to govern the united Kingdom. Later today the party’s leadership will try to get a policy approved which would allow them to deport people coming here seeking refuge to Rwanda. Instead of helping people in search of aid, these Tory scumbags would have us turn our collective back on them, all in order to placate the knuckle-dragging xenophobes most likely to vote Tory. They may try to dress their fixation with this up as a concern for stopping dangerous boat crossings or breaking up criminal gangs, but it is blatantly obvious to any thinking person that this boils down to a hatred of people the tories perceive as ‘other’ coming here. If the tories truly cared about the safety and welfare of these refugees, they would have invested the obscene amount of money that this scheme has already cost into creating bodies which could practically help them once the asylum seekers get here.

Suffice to say, I really hope the government does not win tonight’s vote. As many others are pointing out though, given the results of the last election, it would require a near impossible rebellion. Nonetheless I passionately believe that this is not who we are: as a country, we should not be lead or represented by a group of people who would turn their backs on refugees, and would abolish international human rights law if it got in their way in doing so. I find what the tories are doing utterly, utterly disgusting; as a group of people they have only my deepest contempt. As a nation we should be so much better than the xenophobic cess pit the Tories have dropped us into. They may have won the last election by a huge margin, and Labour may now need a swing bigger than the one Tony Blair achieved in 1997 to get back into power; but surely the last few years have made it obvious that the values the tories advocate are utterly alien to any modern, outward-looking, intelligent society.

Not that I want to start sounding like an ad for the BBC, but I’d just like to flag up the fact that the final episode of Planet Earth Three airs on BBC1 tonight. I find it staggering that Sir David Attenborough is still making such wonderful programs: over the last few episodes, the great man has, once again, shown us the beauty and majesty of the natural world. Last week I found it captivating to see how humans are effecting nature and how animals are starting to adapt to human-built environments. Attenborough has opened our eyes to nature like no-one else, over a career without parallel. I find what he has achieved utterly mind-blowing, and while I’m certainly looking forward to watching tonight’s episode, I really hope we haven’t seen the last of Sir David Attenborough, the greatest broadcaster ever.

I just got in from a long, frustrating afternoon trying to find a branch of HMV. According to the web, there is one in Canary Wharf, but when I went there, there was no sign of one. From there I decided to go up to Stratford in search of similar stores, but again found nothing. Frustrated I opted to give up and head home.

Coming across the bridge to Stratford station though , I encountered something which really, really pissed me off. There are often beggars on that bridge, trying to fleece people going to and from Westfield shopping centre. The spectacle I saw today was, however, particularly disturbing: a man was walking up to people and trying to appear like he had learning difficulties. He was moaning and groaning and speaking in a distorted way that could only be a sickening stereotypical imitation of someone with LD. Needless to say I found it utterly disgusting and insulting, and instantly wanted to do something about it.

I think I have written about this before. If these people really had learning difficulties, they would presumably have social workers and bee entitled to just as much support as I have. There would be no reason for them to stand in public places begging for money. It is therefore far more likely that they are doing a perverse imitation of someone with a disability, and playing off the sympathy that gets in order to get money. No social worker would allow their client to beg in the street like that.

If that is so, then how can I feel anything other than personally insulted? It is akin to someone painting their face black, adopting a crappy southern US accent, and walking up to people to ask them to “Spare some change for a poor old n*****r?” It deliberately portrays people like me as nothing but useless wastrels or vagabonds, reliant on peoples’ charity to survive.

When I saw this I stopped in my tracks and looked around for some security guys. I was there for a few minutes, but when two men in high viz jackets arrived the guy with supposed learning disabilities had suddenly disappeared. There was nothing for me left to do but continue on my way home. I know I should just ignore it, but things like this get to me: what this guy was doing, in crassly imitating having a disability for sympathy, and using that sympathy to cheat people into giving him money, felt like a physical insult. I am proud of who I am; I am proud of being disabled and of my disabled friends. To see someone imitate us like that, using disability for pity when they would have never experienced what it is like to live a life like mine, mocks and degrades not only my life but those of my friends. It is something I find utterly, utterly intolerable.

In all seriousness, I think this country needs to take some kind of nonviolent collective action to sever the Conservative Party from power immediately. It is becoming clearer and clearer that this group of people is totally unfit to govern. They are now openly discussing withdrawing the UK from international human rights laws so that they can implement their savage, inhumane anti-immigration policies. People are coming here, looking for a better life, often fleeing intolerable violence and persecution; but instead of welcoming and supporting such people as any civilised country would, the Tories want to deport them to Rwanda in order to look tough and appeal to the deranged bigots who can’t stand anyone who they see as different coming to this country. On top of that, because such horrifying policies would violate international human rights law, the Tories now want to withdraw the UK from that law, effectively stripping us all of our rights and safeguards so that they can deport these refugees without fear that they might appeal.

Surely that is not who we are as a country or community; surely that is not where we, as a nation, have descended to. We are an open, tolerant society who should welcome people coming here looking for help, not savagely turning our backs on them. Above all, we should be the sort of civilised, educated society who holds things like civil rights and international law above all else. We know all too well that, without such safeguards we can effectively be run roughshod over. Yet now that we have been torn out of the European Union by a bunch of idiots who didn’t realise what they were voting for, the Tories think they have free reign to do as they wish with our rights. They think they can do what they want with all our hard-earned safeguards, treating minorities and immigrants like dirt and ignoring anyone whom they don’t see as ‘one of them’.

Unless we take action immediately we risk losing it all. It is now quite clear that the Tories don’t care whose rights they rip up, as long as they can enact their regressive, xenophobic policies. I realise this may sound rather extreme, undemocratic, or even mad, but we really need to do something to force this party from office immediately. As a group of people they are totally unfit to govern, caring only about themselves and those like them. They perceive the world in simplistic, anachronistic terms, far too limited and unenlightened for any modern, western democracy. Again, this is not who ‘we’ as a country are; the Tories do not represent us. Surely there must be some action we can take before theis bunch of charlatans goes too far and strips us all of our rights.

People often think of London as a grey, dull urban sprawl, but that is not what I have found over the last fourteen years. There is just as much beauty to be found in London as anywhere else.

This picture was taken by John from King John’s Walk, Eltham when we were out on a walk together this afternoon.

A couple of days ago John downloaded three or four films for me to watch over the next few days. To be honest I had never heard of any of them, but J seemed to think they were worth checking out. I just watched one, called M3gan, and I must admit it was an amusing couple of hours. On the face of it I think it was supposed to be a horror film about a robotic toy doll which comes to life and turns into an evil psychopath, but there were points at which I couldn’t help bursting into laughter. Not only is the entire premise of the film absurd, but watching this 1.5m tall doll marching around killing people in the most grotesque ways simply made me laugh out loud. I wouldn’t say I regret watching it, especially on a cold, grey afternoon, but it baffles me that such bollocks is being made.

Check out Mark Kermode’s slightly more detailed review here.

I think I’ve written here before about how passionately I support the BBC. One of the things I was considering writing about today was last night’s episode of Planet Earth Three. To have such magnificent, beautiful television programmes on our screens, presented by the incredible Sir David Attenborough – himself a national treasure – is something to be grateful for. Yet we only have such wonderful television, commercial free and accessible to all, because of how the beeb is funded. Thanks to the license fee, everyone contributes what they can to our national broadcaster, and we all have access to the finest world class news and entertainment. In many respects I think it’s as culturally valuable as the NHS, and both organisations deserve our support.

That’s why I was appalled to hear this morning that the Tories want to effectively cut the license fee. “An increase to the BBC licence fee by almost £15 would “absolutely” be too much, the culture secretary has said. Lucy Frazer said she was concerned a “significant rise” in the fee would add to cost of living pressures.” Of course, they’re justifying it with stuff about the cost of living, but we all know that the tories hate the BBC: they despise the notion of everyone getting equal access to a public service, irrespective of their ability to pay for it; they also clearly resent being held to account by that broadcaster, trying to dismiss it as too left wing whenever the beeb calls them out on their neoliberal schemes. The Tories will thus do whatever they can, however covertly, to weaken the BBC, ultimately wanting to destroy it altogether.

Of course, there’s no denying that the media landscape has changed dramatically in the last few years. We’ve seen a massive rise in online streaming services, both payed for and free, and with it has come a massive diversification of televisual media. For one, we have all started to consume film in shorter snippets. Corporations have naturally needed to respond to that change. Yet that does not mean that well established public broadcasters like the BBC don’t need funding or maintaining. In fact the more diverse and varied the mediascape gets, the more we need the BBC as a sort of backbone or base standard which we can all fall back on. At least we know we can trust the beeb, no matter how crazy the rest of the mediascape gets. To it’s great credit, the BBC’s Iplayer is one of the best streaming services on the web.

Yet services like the Iplayer are only possible if the BBC is funded properly through the license fee, otherwise it risks becoming just another source of derivative commercial dross. Without the license fee, the entire raisin d’etre of the beeb would shift from entertaining, educating and informing to making money and forcing products upon viewers. It would just become another ITV, and the wondrous natural history documentaries of David Attenborough would be replaced by the repulsive spectacle of failed politicians eating zark knows what in fake jungles. The Beeb thus needs defending against these Tory attempts to destroy it. It is only as valuable as it is because of how the BBC is funded, but unfortunately that funding paradigm goes against everything the Tories stand for.

This seems quite timely, given the current cold snap. 007 seems to like snow, doesn’t he?

Well, he certainly seems to be able to handle it much better than I can.

I must admit that I was a tad disappointed to hear, a week or two ago, that a massive new spherical arena will not be built in Stratford. Mayor Of London Sadiq Kahn apparently vetoed the idea of a MSG arena being created there, mostly because it would cause too much light pollution. I suppose I can see his point: they propose building it on a deserted, unused car park near the station. I pass it every time I go up there. It’s surrounded by railway tracks and buildings, and it’s hard to see anything being built there because it would be so difficult to access. Putting a colossal entertainment venue there would seem rather odd.

But then, part of me thinks it could be awesome. I just came across this video about the recently opened Sphere in Las Vegas, and I couldn’t help being blown away. There, it’s a massive glittering golf ball in the desert, visible across the city. It will no doubt be hosting era defining concerts and mega events for years. Wouldn’t having a similar venue here in London have been cool? Obviously, as I wrote here when I first heard about it, you can point out that East London already has a perfectly good event venue in the O2 at North Greenwich; and even if they build it, the new arena would be surrounded by buildings so it would be nowhere near as visible as the sphere in Vegas. The LED display on the outside of the globe just wouldn’t have the same impact.

Even so, I still think it could be incredible. This second dome may well complement the first one, four stops down the Jubilee line. Surely rejecting this idea would mean London missing out on something awesome. Any reservations aside, at the end of the day leaving that space as it is, a disused car park which nobody can get to, would just be a total waste; and simply using it for yet more housing strikes me as extremely boring and uninspired. At the moment, the decision over whether it will go ahead lies with Michael Gove, so even though Kahn vetoed it the idea isn’t quite dead. Stratford is currently one of the most vibrant areas of the metropolis, and such a new entertainment venue may be the cherry on the cake.

You can probably tell that I watch a lot of Youtube videos. In these autumn and winter months, I feel less like going out in my powerchair and I’m more likely to stay at home browsing the web for hours on end. You have probably noticed too that, these days, we’re seeing more and more vlogging on youtube, where users talk directly to the audience to express their thoughts and feelings on various topics. Of course, for the most part, I have nothing against this: it’s a perfectly good means of communication. The thing is, these videos often begin with their creators noting how many subscribers or viewers they have. Such figures are usually quite high, going up into the thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands, and get higher each week.

I can’t help feeling slightly disheartened by this: I’ve been keeping a blog for over twenty years and have made an effort to update it as regularly as I can. However, even after so long I only have around 85 subscribers and I’m lucky to get a hundred views a week. That’s obviously nowhere near what these p’tahks on Youtube get, even though I have been blogging far longer than any of them. Of course, I know Youtube is one of the biggest sites on the internet, whereas I just yammer on in an obscure corner of it, but it nonetheless feels rather deflating to realise that I get so little traffic compared to my contemporaries in the vlogsphere. On the other hand, that isn’t why I blog: I don’t post here so regularly just to see how many hits I get. I think it’s important that I convey to the world what life is like for a disabled man living independently in East London; no hitcount would change that. Of course, I can’t deny there is an element of egoism in what I do: I like to know that people are reading what I write and paying attention to what I think. That’s probably why I feel so deflated about this. Either way I’ll just keep waffling away on here just as I have for the last two decades, and ignore how many people are reading.