Very vague rumours about Bill Shatner agreeing to return to the role of Captain Kirk aside, there is just one thing for me to do here today: once again I want to wish my brother Luke a very happy birthday. I still don’t see him, Yan or little Ellias half as much as I’d like. Enjoy it bro – relish your last year in your thirties! And once again, sorry about the incident with the cap!

When I’m on a bus, I like to see where I’m going. I usually just roll up the ramp and face forward in the wheelchair space. More often than not, drivers are fine with me doing so and for the vast majority of my bus journeys over the past fifteen years I have faced the front of the bus. On very rare occasions though, some jobsworth drivers have insisted that I turn my powerchair and ride backwards. It happened this afternoon, and frankly it really pissed me off: I found it very disorientating, to the point where I almost felt sick. Not only that, but the sensation of having the fifteen pairs of eyes of my fellow passengers staring at me was truly ghastly. It was like I had been put on a stage like some freak for people to examine.

I know the rules are the rules; but sometimes some rules need to be broken. I like to ride alongside my fellow passengers, looking in the same direction as everyone else, able to see where I’m going. Being forced to ride backwards made me feel like a child being told what to do; I felt singled out and made to feel different. It hadn’t been the best of days as it was, so I found it a truly repugnant experience.

I now honestly believe that we are fast approaching the point at which Donald Trump must be removed from office before he does irreparable damage not just to the USA but to the rest of the world. I know he is a democratically elected leader, and that the next elections in America won’t be for another four or five years; but many Americans will be as aware as the rest of us are what a danger Trump is. Surely the American intelligencia will realise how imperative it is that their country gets a leader who knows what he is doing, and isn’t just a self-important buffoon using the position for his own vainglorious ends, before it is too late. There must be something they can do to remove the buffoon from office, be it via their version of the civil service or whatever.

Trump’s links to Russia and Putin are now becoming clearer and clearer. He is tearing up decades of carefully constructed diplomacy and international alliances for his own petulant, obscenity ignorant whims. Enlightened Americans will be as aware of this as anyone. They will surely know that this madness cannot continue; surely – surely – there is something America can do to put itself back on the right track before it is too late.

I’m not sure whether I ought to broadcast this here, but it made me smile. I few days ago, when I was stuck for so long at the Woolwich Elizabeth Line station, the staff kindly gave me me the password for their WiFi network so I could contact people like Dom. Well, I was out and about again today, this time taking the Lizzie Line up to Bond Street, just for a look around. On my way back, when I went into the Tottenham Court Road Elizabeth line station, I noticed I had a WiFi connection and had received several messages. Cooly, it seems I can now use WiFi in every Elizabeth line station! That will certainly be very handy indeed!

I suppose everyone will be expecting me to say something about the news that Amazon now hold the rights to James Bond. Frankly, I’m not sure I can: As far as I can tell, nobody knows what this actually. means, although this rather speculative video by Calvin Dyson is pretty insightful. Nobody knows what Amazon is planning or how they intend to treat their new acquisition. Bond films are cinema’s longest running, most venerated tradition; the rights to produce them have now been bought by a massive American company apparently intent on mining it for all it’s worth. To be honest, as hard as I try to be upbeat and open minded, I can’t help but feel a deep sense of sadness and dread.

If you are American and you’re reading this, you’re an idiot and you’re not welcome. I wish I didn’t have to write that, but as far as I can see it’s the only way forward: I now firmly believe we all need to collectively ostracise America and Americans until they get a proper, decent president. The USA through Donald Trump is now acting with such belligerence and arrogance, ripping up international law, sidelining Europe, shafting Ukraine while sucking Putin’s genocidal cock, that it needs standing up to. We need some way to show our objection to what is now going on, however small, and I think that may lie in the active ostracisation of America and Americans.

Of course, that will be easier said than done: I have many American friends, especially online; I use lots of American products, not least my Imac and Ipad. But how else can we object to what is going on? How else can we collectively display our disgruntlement with the way Trump is now acting? We all need to stand up to this utterly contemptible bully, and as far as I can see shunning America and Americans, treating them all with the fury and disgust which must be shown to their government, may now be the only way to do so.

I was up at Westfield in Stratford yesterday. I go there fairly regularly as it’s a good place to head to whenever I want to get out of my flat but don’t want to freeze my arse off. If you’ve never been there, Westfield is a huge, lavish shopping centre on three levels next to the Olympic Park: it’s like the Trafford Centre but probably even bigger. Thousands of people must go there every day. The thing is, yesterday afternoon I was having trouble with my powerchair again. It had conked out, and I had been pushed to customer services.

Long story short, in the end I needed to get a taxi home. While sat near the customer services desk though, I overheard the staff talking about quite a large and growing problem: more and more kids are now thundering around the mall on rollerblades, deliberately ignoring the rules. They are becoming more and more arrogant, blatantly ignoring anyone who tells them to stop as if they think the rules don’t apply to them, or that they are too cool to be told what to do. Apparently, many now come to the mall in normal footwear and then change into their rollerblades, as though they have come specifically to break the rules. Whenever they are confronted or told to stop, they snidely ignore the request.

The thing is, more and more people are being hurt by these little shits. They zoom around banging into whoever can’t get out of the way fast enough, not giving a damn about who they hurt. I have narrowly avoided crashing into one two or three times. The issue is growing so severe that one lady called them a pest, and I think that’s quite apt. This is obviously a craze among young people where they think they display how cool and anti-establishment they are: they break the rules, but put other people in considerable danger.

To be honest, that kind of arrogance really pisses me off. It’s a kind of “We do what we want and are too cool to be told not to” attitude which now seems to be endemic in young people. It could have come about through the alienating effect of social media or whatever, but regardless last night I decided to do something about it.

Sat there last night waiting for my taxi, I began to wonder if these kids would be so jaunty if a cripple in a powerchair crashed into them. And with that I chuckled.

I was very pleased to see that Warwick Davis won a BAFTA Fellowship last night. When I was very small I remember watching Willow repeatedly; it was definitely one of my childhood favourites. Davis is obviously a great actor who deserves his fellowship very much, not least for the tremendous work he has done for the representation of people of reduced stature.

Once I get onto that subject however, it seems to me that several issues and questions crop up. Willow is obviously based on The Lord Of The Rings, with a baby standing in for the one ring. It’s as if the producers wanted to tell the story but couldn’t get the rights to Tolkien’s book, so they made up a fantasy-adventure narrative using many of the same tropes without making it so similar that they could be sued for breaching. copyright. Unlike Peter Jackson’s Oscar winning official adaptation though, Willow cast actual short people rather than using complicated camera techniques to make normal sized people look short. That would seem to me to raise certain questions 

There is a long-standing principle in disability arts that disabled characters should always be played by disabled actors, and the same naturally goes for people of reduced stature. In that case, did Jackson get wrong what Willow got right? Should he  have cast actual short people as hobbits? No doubt Elijah Wood and Sean Astin were incredible as Frodo and Sam, but if we are going to take the representation of social minorities in film seriously, then this is something we could find problematic. Warick Davis is an outstanding actor who has done a great deal for the representation of people of reduced stature; it’s just a pity that the greatest film ever to be made involving short characters didn’t have any actors like him in it.

This is a far better name if you ask me.

If we’re going to start renaming gulfs, we might as well be imaginative.

I am not sure whether anyone will have noticed, but yesterday I decided to add a bit to the entry I posted on Thursday. It was only a couple of sentences which didn’t change the entry much overall, but I thought it was a good idea. I wanted to explain why I chose not to accept anything to eat when the staff at the station offered to get me some food. Of course, by about seven on Thursday evening I was growing rather hungry so I would have gladly eaten something. But the problem was there were no tables around for me to put any food on, so a sandwich or something would just have disintegrated, and I didn’t want to get myself too messy, especially given that I didn’t know how long a night lay ahead.

This was obviously a fairly minor point. I thought it was worth making though, as it explained the difficulties which I as a disabled person face. On my blog I think it is important that I present my perspective as much as possible, which includes elaborating on things like why I might need to go hungry in such situations. After all, not many people will ever experience being stuck in the entrance hall of a tube station for two or three hours. I think that, at least in part, is the point of my blog. My only other option was to ask one of the staff to feed me something, which I naturally felt pretty awkward doing as it wouldn’t have been in their job description. That is why, as famished as I was, I felt compelled to decline their offers and stay hungry. I don’t think many people would realise how such things might be an issue though, which is why I went back to specifically add that detail to the entry.

Returning to international affairs, I turned on the news this morning to see that Trump is essentially trying to appease Russia by selling out Ukraine so he can claim to have made peace. I’m sure I won’t be the only person to find this gut-wrenchingly abhorrent: Trump is so arrogant and self-important that he thinks he can bypass the precious progress made towards peace, and just capitulate to Russia to get what he wants. Trump will then presumably do his big man act and brag about having made peace and ended the conflict, while not giving a fuck about the suffering he has caused or the fact that he would have sold an entire sovereign nation to it’s conqueror just to suit his own personal image. Surely we in Europe cannot stand back and let this happen. It’s like Chamberlain allowing Hitler to sweep through Poland and wherever else he fancied, before claiming to be a hero for avoiding a war. It is a vile, vile act of betrayal by a man who deserves to be rotting in jail.

Frankly, it is time the world treated trump and America as the egotistical bully it is now behaving as, before it causes more damage and suffering just to look good. We are perfectly capable of resolving conflicts on our own, without criminal moronic charlatans ruining things to suit their own vanity.

I was watching the news again this morning, this time about the awesome AI Summit in Paris. Artificial Intelligence is obviously very exciting indeed, and obviously holds vast prospects. What I couldn’t help being irritated by, though, was the fact that they let US vice president JD Vance speak.

Now, I don’t want to seem crazy or deranged here: there is no denying that America is still one of the world’s foremost movers and shakers in the science and technology sector, no matter who it elects as it’s president. Yet with so many earnest, intelligent people gathered in Paris to discuss something so important, the sight of a representative of a country fast descending into a deranged fascist dictatorship felt jarring. Let’s face it: since last year the USA is not what it was; since the re-election of Trump, the respect it once enjoyed has drained away. One can only be sickened by his recent comments regarding Gaza. Thus to see a representative of America appear at such a conference, speaking as if he still warranted the esteem his country once enjoyed while clearly trying to bend proceedings towards his perverse America First worldview, was sickening.

If you ask me, America and it’s representatives should not be welcome at such events any more. That is the only way the world will be able to show it’s contempt and disgust at what is currently unfolding there. After all, it adds nothing. Despite it’s delusions about being so technologically advanced, going to the moon and all that, the only reason why America got to where it is is by hijacking the work of other people! There is nothing which America brags about doing which other countries can’t do better, and the vast majority of NASA scientists were born in other countries.

Again, I know how unhinged this might sound, but at the moment I cannot look at America without feeling a deep, scathing contempt. The arrogance and brashness with which it conducts itself, talking about invading sovereign nations and renaming gulfs after itself, turns my stomach. Frankly, I still feel that the 2028 Olympic games should be reallocated. Of course, I know not all Americans side with Trump, and that some will be as appalled by him as I am. Nonetheless, Donald Trump is American president, and as such America needs to be taken down a peg or two. It no longer deserves it’s position as the world’s foremost global superpower, and we’d all be far better off without such an immature, arrogant nation interfering in matters of critical global importance.

I just saw on the lunchtime news that a second Labour MP has been made to apologise for offensive comments he made on WhatsApp, as a consequence of being reported in the Sunday Fail. “Burnley MP Oliver Ryan said in a statement that comments he made in the group “were completely unacceptable” and he regretted “not speaking out at the time”.” Of course a Member of Parliament should not offend or make disparaging comments about anyone, but what triggers me about this story is the fact that the Fail is clearly going after Labour MPs. It is blatantly obvious that the writers of that rag are digging around in the personal and private messages of Labour MPs in an effort to find something they can smear them with, probably breaching their privacy, while letting more right-wing politicians go unchecked. What more grotesque example of right-wing bias in the Tabloid media could there be? Thus if you ask me, it should be the Fail and it’s writers who ought to be under investigation.

Pretty much exactly the same thing that I recorded here a few days ago happened again today, uncannily in exactly the same place! I was getting off the bus outside Tesco again, and the bus ramp refused to come out. Fortunately it was a different driver, so he let me reverse off the bus with the ramp only half way out rather than making everyone else get off the bus; but even so it is still a clear sign that bus ramps aren’t maintained as well as they might be. I still think mechanical bus ramps are awesome, and far better than manual ones where bus drivers need to get out of their cabs to unfold the ramps to let you on and off the bus; but I must admit there is something to be said for the older, simpler way of doing things. At least I never got stuck on a zarking bus!

We all know how valuable democracy is, and how important it is to respect another country’s sovereignty; but surely there comes a point at which other countries are forced to interfere in the political affairs of another. When a state is putting another in jeopardy, or when a government is unfairly persecuting an ethnic or social minority, for example. This is especially the case when the country in question happens to hold a significant amount of power.

I now firmly believe that we have reached that point with regard to the United States. Donald Trump is now tearing up decades of policy and progress in the Middle East, based on nothing but his vast ignorance. Every day it seems I am met with another report of his utter stupidity: he is now putting the peace of the world in danger, openly advocating the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. How can we stand back and let this Luddite, who knows as much about geopolitics as a turd, run roughshod over values like having equal respect for a people’s links to an area, irrespective of who they are? Surely  it is time that the wider world puts whatever pressure it can on America to replace Trump with someone who knows what they are doing.

I think I’ve mentioned before how I currently roll around town wearing a red baseball cap with the words ”Make America Think Again” written on it. It’s just my way of showing my disgust at what is unfolding on the other side of the Atlantic. I have been rather surprised at how many people have noticed it: when I’m out and about, I get complemented on it fairly regularly, often by people with American accents. Once or twice, though, people have misread it. The problem is, if they only catch a glimpse of my cap, they can think that I actually back Trump! I then have a massive problem trying to get them to look at my hat again in an effort to make it clear that I am not, in fact, a MAGA-supporting imbecile. It happened earlier today: I was up in Camden, believe it or not, when a guy passed me on a bike coming the other way. He must have caught sight of my cap and shouted something like “Get Trump out!” Before I could turn around and explain that I fully agreed with him, he was too far away. I suppose it’s a risk of wearing such a cap: people think it means exactly the opposite of what you are trying to express to them.

For the last few weeks since Christmas, I have had a very nice guy called Artor as my Personal Assistant. Dominik was in Sri Lanka so Artur was covering for him. To be honest I was uncertain about the situation at first, but it very quickly became clear that Artur is a PA of the highest order: he’s a first class chef, excellent at shaving me, and above all is a great laugh. The fact that he was willing to do things like lug my Imac all the way to Stratford and back blew my mind. I’m very lucky indeed to have had him helping me.

However, Dom is now back so today is Artur’s last day working with me – for now at least. I just want to record how fond I have already grown of him. It’s strange how such friendships can sometimes spring up so rapidly; yet when you see someone day in, day out for just a few weeks you can often grow very close very quickly. I certainly feel that I have made a very good new friend, one to whom I’d like to express my enormous thanks and hope that it isn’t too long before we see one another again.

Kier Starmer is now talking about wanting to reset the relationship between the UK and the EU. That is obviously a good sign and a step in the right direction: it’s time we openly admitted the obvious truth that Brexit was a catastrophic mistake voted for based only on lies. More and more people are realising that, the polls show quite clearly. However, Starmer has ruled out rejoining the EU. Perhaps he knows he has to pander to Labour voters who voted Leave, but surely he will know what a mistake brexit was: it’s becoming clearer by the day. With the buffoon who the Americans now call their president currently trying to start a trade war, Starmer will also know that the only way that the only way that the only way the UK will be able to withstand the coming global turmoil is if we reunite with our neighbours. It is surely thus time for our government to get real, face reality, and start down the long path to undoing the idiocy of 2016.

Trust me, you haven’t experienced true embarrassment until you’re coming home on a packed London bus: you’re reaching the stop you want to get off at, so you press the wheelchair user’s stop request button. The driver stops the bus and presses the button for the ramp, but instead of sliding out as usual the ramp gets stuck half way. The driver tries again but the same thing happens. He tries and tries but the ramp refuses to extend, no matter what he does. This goes on for ten, then twenty minutes, until eventually the driver is forced to ask all the other passengers to get off the zarking bus! Their angry, contemptuous looks burn into you as they walk past.

With everyone else off the bus, the driver radios for a mechanic. But then, about twenty minutes later, the bloody ramp suddenly extends properly. The driver opens the door and you can finally get off; and you’re left to trundle your way home, now in the dark, reflecting that as much as you admire London public transport, you wish they looked after their aging bus fleet a bit better.

Particularly given his recent disgusting comments trying to politicise a horrific aircraft accident, it’s hard to understand why intelligent Americans are putting up with such an embarrassment. Trump has to go.