Needless to say, I couldn’t agree with this more.
The problem is, decisions like the one last week fracture society more and more. Such shortsightedness turns people, or groups of people, against one another in a mind-numbing competition over whose rights should take priority. Ultimately nobody wins, but we are all the poorer for it.
I was watching breakfast tv earlier, and there was an item on hoarding being recognised as a psychological disorder. I must admit it caught my interest for several reading: my initial reaction was to indignantly wonder how something so seemingly trivial could be seen in the same general sphere as more significant medical problems and disabilities. But thinking about it a bit more deeply, post my second coffee, it occurred to me that the issue is rather more complex.
The question is, what is a ‘condition’, be it medical or psychological? Probably the simplest, broadest answer I can think of is that it is a list of symptoms which significantly impact someone’s quality of life or ability to live. My cerebral palsy, for example, effects my ability to move, walk and talk. The question therefore arises: how could hoarding effect your quality of life to a similarly significant degree?
I think it’s fair to say that we all collect or hoard things we like. I have quite a large collection of books and DVDs: I hardly watch or read any of them these days, but as I wrote here, they are nonetheless significant to me. Does that therefore qualify me as a hoarder; and might it mean that I have a psychological condition?
I don’t think that it does, particularly given that all my books and films are neatly filed away on my bookshelf. If my books and DVDs were strewn all over my flat to the point that I could barely move, it would be a different question. That obviously gives rise to questions about cut-off points, any of which will inevitably be arbitrary and subjective. Although I can see how excessive hoarding may cause issues, especially if people are living in small houses or flats, if it does not prevent someone from living a productive, happy life, I think that pathologising such behaviour might do more harm than good.
Most obviously perhaps, would it not just serve to reinforce such behaviour? As soon as you give anyone a label or identity of any kind, they unconsciously internalise that identity; they start to emphasise the traits which mark them out as a member of that group, often without realising it. It becomes part of their identity, and ultimately creates yet another artificial sub-category with which society can fragment itself even more. Thus as soon as you label someone as a hoarder they will start to identify as a hoarder and start to hoard even more.
Moreover, in pathologising a fairly common, rather innocuous set of behaviours, in defining them as a medical condition, I feel we are making things too complicated. Why must everything be categorised and diagnosed? While medical diagnosises sometimes help people access the support they need, in this case, if their behaviour isn’t harming them, why not just let people do what they are to? Would it not be wiser to just accept people as they are, without labelling them as strange, abnormal or impaired?
I’m sure everyone reading this knows how enamoured I am with Stratford and the Olympic Park; I’m sure you all know how much I like the Elisabeth Line too. I was up there once again, albeit on a wild goose chase. I had initially intended to head to Liverpool Street to explore that area a bit, but got sidetracked at the last minute (long story). After I had finished what I needed to do in Stratford, I realised I could just get the Elisabeth Line to Liverpool Street. I had caught a glimpse of it a couple of weeks ago, and it looked like one of those jazzy new areas of the metropolis with a lot of interesting things being built, so I wanted to give it a closer look.
The thing is, it wasn’t simply a case of just wheeling onto the train: the Elisabeth Line platform at Stratford is not step free. I must admit this strikes me as very odd indeed. We all know how new the Elisabeth Line is, and Stratford Station underwent colossal redevelopment for 2012, so why on earth isn’t the platform there completely step free? The Jubilee Line and DLR platforms there are, so why is there still quite a large step between platform and train for the Elisabeth Line? Of course, in the event it was just a matter of asking one of the station staff to get the ramp out; but even so I would prefer to be able to just roll on and off trains as easily as everyone else. Yet what strikes me as weird is, if TFL/London is capable of constructing all these wonderful new cable cars, tunnels and bridges, why can’t it make all it’s train platforms step free?
There is something truly magnificent about the feeling that you get when you wheel into a cricket ground for the first time in the year, and all the players preparing for their match greet you like an old friend. It feels like all the woes of the world have suddenly lifted, and summer has at last begun. That was the feeling I had this afternoon, and it was truly joyous.
To be honest I had already had quite an interesting morning: I thought I would go see the what I could of the marathon, so after breakfast I went to where it starts in Blackheath. I then decided to trundle along the route for a bit, just to see if there was anything interesting going on. I followed the runners along Shooters hill, past Charlton and Woolwich, and then back to Greenwich. That is quite a way, and quite amusingly it reached the point where people seemed to think that I was actually participating in the marathon; but at Greenwich I decided it would be unwise to go any further. Besides, I had somewhere far cooler to go.
Yesterday when out on my daily trundle, I thought I would pop in to the cricket ground to see if there was a match on. There wasn’t, but I was told that the Mighty Eights, the team I first saw playing in Charlton park when I first moved to London, would be playing a pre-season warmup match there this afternoon. That, then, is where I headed, and I instantly found myself among friends.
It was incredible. My Australian friend Tesco was there, preparing to bowl. They kept offering me beer, but I’m still abstaining. I got chatting to a couple of the new guys, including one who has a disabled son. The atmosphere was warm and friendly, and with the sun beating down and all the talk around me being about overs and innings, yorkers and maidens, it seemed like summer had definitely begun in the most glorious, reassuring, optimistic way possible.
This surely tells us all we need to know about Trump.
Trump obviously wanted to stand out, so he wore a lighter-coloured suit than everyone else so the cameras would pick him out among the other mourners. Even at a funeral, Trump wants to be the centre. of attention. What a shallow, arrogant, self-important thing to do.
The week is turning out to be quite an awesome one, thanks largely to John: great bit of cinema, a fantastic evening at the theatre, and yesterday, a wonderful trip to Windsor. To be honest I was feeling slightly cynical about even getting there at one point, as it meant taking the overground and booking ramps. Our train was slightly delayed, so I was starting to think that it could all become pretty farcical. But we got there in the end, and almost instantly I was mesmerised.
Windsor is a wonderful, beautiful place where you can almost smell the history. The town, with it’s pretty little streets, overlooks the Thames, much narrower there than at Greenwich of course. We spent a while looking around, trying to avoid crashing into the hundreds of tourists, before going up to the castle. Windsor Castle is a stunning place – if you have never visited I would recommend it. It is the longest occupied Royal Residence, and has stood for almost a thousand years. The displays in there are jaw-dropping: paintings, models, antiques, and, most fascinating of all, genuine suits of armour. I was captivated. The cool thing is, despite it’s age, it has all been made wheelchair accessible, so I was able to explore like anyone else.
John and I spent about an hour walking around the castle, before going down to Windsor park. To be honest by then I had one eye on my powerchair’s battery gauge as I really didn’t want any more catastrophes, but it was fine. Windsor Park is an incredible place, as beautiful as anywhere I’ve ever been to: there is a long, straight path we spent an hour or so walking down. John took lots of spellbindingly beautiful photos, and I stopped a few times to type a bit. By then, though, it was starting to get late, and I think we were both getting tired, so we caught the train home.
Windsor, then, is a wonderful place: not part of London and certainly feeling quite separate from the metropolis, but close enough to it that we could get there fairly easily. It was a place I had never been to, despite it’s proximity to London; but it certainly whetted my appetite for getting out of the city a bit more.
I think I have mentioned before that, if you ask me, the concept of race, as in a biological subcategory of humanity, is intellectually moot. While there are obviously differences between communities such as skin colour, we are all one species which can interbreed without a problem. No group of people is inherently superior to any other: the notion that people from Europe are innately superior to people from subsaharan Africa, for example, is the very definition of racism. I think we can all agree that such thinking needs to be outgrown if we are ever to achieve true equality. Surely we are all one glorious global species, with no subdivisions to divide or break apart that whole.
Does it not strike anyone as odd, then, that people who identified as Jewish seem to go out of their way to cling to such notions? On the face of it, they look like any other white European person; yet they seem to want to emphasise their Jewishness, as if they want to set themselves apart. I was watching an interview with David Baddiel earlier, and he said that, although he was an atheist, he somehow still saw himself as Jewish as if it wasn’t just a religion but some kind of sub-category of humanity. We know that, historically, clinging to such divisions between communities has brought about the most horrific of crimes, so what good does such thinking serve?
I honestly don’t understand it. Baddiel was saying that he felt some kind of inherent link to other Jewish people, in spite of his atheism. He seems to think this gives him a link to the suffering other Jewish people have endured historically, a notion which I find rather problematic.
I have come across such thinking once or twice elsewhere recently, for example with Irish people claiming to have somehow inherited the trauma inflicted upon their grandparents and great grandparents by the British. Surely the experience of such hardship cannot be inherited, and maintaining that it can be just allows old wounds to remain open.
It seems to me that the only reason anyone would seek to do this is to justify their own political agitation. That is to say, there seems to be a desire in many people these days to be seen as a member of an oppressed group, so they go to whatever lengths they can to become a member of such a group. It is no longer politically fashionable to be seen as white, straight and able bodied, as that is to hold too much privilege.
I think this is probably why David Baddiel went out of his way to emphasise his Jewish ancestry, even though he says he does not believe in Judaism. Where this becomes slightly problematic or complex, of course, is culture: Obviously, cultural diversity is to be maintained and cherished. Baddiel has as much right to celebrate his cultural Jewish ancestry as I have to celebrate my Greek Cypriot cultural ancestry: I eat galombrama and paglava, and my mum and dad used to sing greek nursery rhymes to me. But having Cypriot grandparents does not somehow set me apart from other people; nor does it give me the right to claim to share in the suffering other Cypriots went through historically. More to the point, Baddiel claims membership of the Jewish community even though he as an atheist does not participate in it’s (religious) rituals or traditions. How can anyone claim to be a member of a community or group while rejecting it’s very core component? This analogy may be a tad flippant, but is that not like someone claiming to be a member of the Star Trek fan community without ever watching an episode of Star Trek?
Of course, as a disabled person I often say that I feel a bond with other disabled people, to the extent that I feel we are a community. However, that commonality is born of shared experiences such as broken lifts, inaccessible public buildings and going through segregated education. It is a community of necessity and shared struggle, rather than one of culture or inheritance. I do not think that being physically disabled gives me the right to claim to share the brutal hardships which disabled people have endured historically.
Does it not strike anyone else as very problematic indeed, then, that Baddiel would claim membership of a group based around a religion that he doesn’t believe in, and to share in cultural experiences which he could not possibly have any concept of? Is this not just yet another case of a straight, white, able bodied man desperately trying to other himself? Unfortunately in doing so he revives anachronistic notions about race, which in the long run can only do more harm than good.
I enjoyed another treat last night. John and I went to watch Operation Mincemeat at the Fortune Theatre. Truth be told it was his idea, and it had been years since I last went to a theatre, but what we saw last night was stunning: a well-oiled, well-choreographed piece of musical entertainment. I saw the film three years ago, but the stage adaptation was something new to me. The story being told is now a fairly well known one: the plot to deceive Hitler towards the end of the war using fake documents planted on a dead body, for the Germans to find when it washed up in southern Spain. Yet the way the story was told, with all the verve and razamatazz you would expect from a West End Show, really took my breath away. There was humour, great songs, moments of pathos, and – best of all for me – three or four Bond references.
Mind you, I don’t think the irony of the evening can be overlooked. Historically, Operation Mincemeat was deadly serious: millions of lives depended on the Germans falling for the deception. It would have been thought up in the war rooms, not that far from where we watched the show. Had it failed the consequences would have been truly dire. Yet last night, just eighty years after it was actually carried out, it was depicted as a lighthearted musical comedy, full of gags and dance routines. Does anyone else see that as slightly odd? How strange that something so inherently dark can become something so light and jovial so quickly.
Mark Kermode wasn’t lying or exaggerating in his review of Warfare: it is a harsh, brutal film, and one which is quite difficult to watch. The thing is, it’s also an extremely interesting piece of cinema. For one I’m not sure I would call it a film, at least in the contemporary post-classical Hollywood sense. There is no plot and very little character or character development in the way we conventionally perceive such things. There is absolutely no music, diagetic or non-diagetic. The action we are witness to happens in Iraq in 2006: we follow a band of American soldiers as they try to secure a section of a town. We know very little about these men – we don’t even hear their names. What we the audience watch over the ninety minutes of the film is a brutal depiction of what they go through in real time. It is visceral and gruelling: even watching is an act of endurance, the wounds these guys suffer and the pain they go through is is depicted so vividly.
But that is the intention. This isn’t supposed to be comfortable viewing, but leave us with the impression that war is truly hellish. I think it certainly succeeds in that. This is not conventional cinema but a filmic statement, in your face, uncomfortable and impossible to ignore. Yet as I rode the bus home last night, there was one nagging thought in the back of my mind: for all it’s upsetting depictions and brutally realistic portrayals of what this group of men went through; for all of it’s noble aspirations to cut through the usual gloss of action cinema, Warfare totally forgets that, at the end of the day, in Iraq in 2009, these men weren’t supposed to be there in the first place.
John and I are probably going to watch Warfare at the local cinema later. To be honest I hadn’t heard anything about it before today, but after watching Mark Kermode’s review I’m quite enthusiastic. It sounds gritty and brutal, but also very interesting. It sounds like the kind of film which breaks quite a few moulds; and given that there’s currently so much lightweight, commercial bollocks on at cinemas, that is a very enticing prospect. Anyway, expect my review/reaction here soon.
I was just on a bus coming back from my daily trundle, when I heard some people behind me talking about religion. They weren’t being particularly loud or offensive, just chatting about which church they go to and what pastor they liked. Even so, I felt a very strong urge to turn around in my powerchair and tell them not to sound so proud about their baseless delusions. On days like this especially, it infuriates me that people still cling to such nonsense, and that we as a society have yet to outgrow what boils down to a form of social control based on a few anachronistic myths. The fact that it happens to be easter was the lead item on all of today’s BBC news bulletins, as if the inane spewings of some self-appointed men in silly robes and hats are as important as what is currently happening in Ukraine or the middle east, or as though such mystics hold the authority of elected politicians or academics, frankly struck me as perverse.
Yet this afternoon I kept myself to myself and said nothing. To have made such an intervention would just have been rude. As much as the idea of people worshiping a supposedly loving, all powerful god sickens me, at the end of the day I know that, in a multicultural, multi-ethnic world city like London, human diversity must be respected. That includes religion, faith, superstition or whatever you want to call it. We might urgently need to outgrow such divisive, anachronistic, oppressive social mechanisms, but shouting at people on busses won’t help.
To be honest I was a bit gutted yesterday evening. I’d had quite a nice afternoon, taking the bus to Abbey Wood and then trundling back to Woolwich (having rather a nasty crash with a guy on a bike who was going far to fast on the way – don’t ask). When I got home, however, I saw that I had missed a massive pro-trans rights protest up in Westminster. Apparently, thousands of people had gone to Parliament Square to protest against what the supreme court had decreed this week. I was rather miffed: that was the first I had heard of any such protest, and had I known about it I would probably have gone to join them. I might not be transgender myself, but as I wrote a couple of days ago, such injustices are simply too wrong to be allowed to stand. The obvious question now is, how can I be informed of such protests, and are there any more planned?
I saw on last night’s news that Trump now says he will ‘take a pass’ on trying to make peace in Ukraine if no progress is made soon. Surely it should be blatantly obvious what has happened: the childish fuckwits currently governing the US have just got bored. Trump is so arrogant that he thought he could resolve the situation in Ukraine within months, and when he didn’t – when he was proven not to be the awe-inspiring dealmaker he claims to be – he became impatient and moved his attention elsewhere. He doesn’t give a damn about the millions of more Ukrainian lives which will now be put at risk, or the fact that this sickening conflict will be prolonged for several more years; all Trump cares about is himself, and the acclaim he would have received if he had managed to end the war. His mindset is truly, truly vile, and allowing such a vainglorious, arrogant disgrace to human civilisation to continue to lead the world’s leading economy puts us all in grave danger.
The critical, important question I’m asking today is, should I shave? I genuinely cannot decide and would like to get people’s opinions.
I’ve been letting my facial hair grow for a few days. I was going to get John to shave it off this morning, but decided not to at the last moment. I think it kind of suits me. Of course, my parents would say that I definitely should shave, as I don’t want to get food, dribble or badgers tangled up in the hair; but I think it rather suits me in a Parisian intellectual sort of way. What does everyone else think?
Yesterday we bore witness to something utterly disgusting: a step backwards from liberal, open democracy towards the dark depths of fascism. I have been thinking about what to say about this all day, but as someone whose former partner – a woman I loved deeply – was transgender, I feel I must say something. Yesterday’s ruling at the high court was perverse. In decreeing that gender/sex reduces down to a simplistic matter of biology, they effectively eliminate a person’s agency and right to live as they feel comfortable. Obviously this is a very complex subject with lots of issues you can get sidetracked by, but surely it boils down to a matter of agency: surely everyone has a right to define their selves as they see fit, and that includes gender. Yesterday’s ruling effectively strips thousands of people of that right, and instead rules that the rights and views of snooty, arrogant, intolerant TERF bitches are more important. That I can neither stomach nor abide. Frankly, as both a liberal, educated writer blogger and filmmaker who knows how valuable personal autonomy is, and a man who still thinks his trans former partner was the most incredible person I’ll ever meet, this injustice boils my blood with rage.
I just got up and turned on my computer to be greeted with this, surely the most exciting scientific news I’ve seen in a while. Scientists operating the James Webb Space Telescope have detected the most promising hints of extraterrestrial life yet in the atmosphere of a planet called K2-18b. Of course, the BBC article contains lots of caveats, and we’re still a long way from detecting any form of advanced, intelligent life yet; but nonetheless this is enough to have me intrigued. This is the first real hint that life may in fact be abundant in our galaxy. If that is true, then we might indeed be on the verge of a final, awesome frontier, exploring millions of worlds teeming with life. I find that incredibly exciting, and can’t wait to see what we discover next.
It is now my conviction that all lifts on the London Transport Network should be strictly reserved for wheelchair users and prams, punishable by at least a stiff fine. That might sound mean spirited, but I’m serious. I have now lost count of the times that I’ve had been unable to get to where I have wanted to go because a lift has been out of order. Earlier today, for example, I took the DLR to Star Lane, intending to take one of my regular strolls along the River Lea up to Stratford. However, I got to the station only to find the lift wasn’t working. Obviously if fewer people used such lifts, if they were only used by those of us who need to use them, they would break far less often.
I know I have written things like this before, but this issue is really beginning to infuriate me: I’m fed up of people who are perfectly capable of climbing stairs just being too lazy to do so. I have had enough of being prevented from getting to where I need to go by such selfishness and idleness, and now waiting something done about it. If, say, a motorway was blocked or damaged by a particularly wide, heavy lorry whose load could more suitably have been transported by rail, I’m sure motorists would be up in arms demanding that the haulage firm was punished. What is the difference? Why should it be acceptable for people to use lifts out of sheer idleness and arrogance?
If you want a glimpse of how complex, nuanced and interesting online film analysis is becoming, check this out. I won’t even begin to give any form of summary, but it’s an hour long video essay on why Ireland and the Troubles there have effectively been written out of James Bond films. When I first came across it, I thought it was quite a silly question to ask: Bond films are set in all sorts of sunny, exotic locations – why would 007 ever go to Ireland? But if you think about it, relations between the UK and Ireland have been a major aspect of British foreign policy over the last fifty to a hundred years, so it’s rather odd that a film series about a British secret agent has completely ignored the subject, almost as if it did not exist. The short, simple answer is that the EON producers didn’t want to enflame tensions or offend viewers on either side of an extremely complex issue, so they understandably avoided it entirely. But what this video delves into to an impressive, intriguing extent is the politics behind this rather conspicuous absence. While I’m not sure I wholly agree with everything that is said in the video, it certainly makes for an interesting, thought-provoking watch.
I don’t see the point of golf. If you ask me it’s just a bunch of over-privileged, arrogant guys wasting time walking around a park trying to hit balls into holes. It’s far more a matter of luck than skill, but for some real BBC news has chosen to lead today’s bulletins with the news that Rory McIlroy has won the masters. How interesting! Surely there are far more important things they could cover.
If you ask me, golf isn’t even a sport: it’s a waste of time played by men too inept to do anything else. Building golf courses ruins otherwise beautiful areas, and I don’t see how anyone could be so dull that they would want to play, let alone watch it. Famously, of course, Ian Fleming was something of a golf aficionado; although my current disdain for the game may be in large part due to the fact that the turd who Americans currently call their president thinks he’s some sort of golf champion. Trump brags that he’s an oh-so-great golfer, as if such sporting prowess puts him on a par with Michael Johnson or David Beckham, but any fuckwit can hit a ball into a hole given enough time!
As a rule I try to blog about upbeat, interesting, cheerful things; if anything miserable happens, I’m sure you can find it out for yourself. However, earlier I came across some news from America which was just too disturbing for me not to flag up here. According to this, a severely disabled man has died after being shot by police, who assumed he was drunk. “An autistic, nonverbal teenage boy who was shot repeatedly by Idaho police from the other side of a chain link fence while he was holding a knife died Saturday after being removed from life support, his family said. Victor Perez, 17, who also had cerebral palsy, had been in a coma since the April 5 shooting, and tests Friday showed that he had no brain activity, his aunt, Ana Vazquez, told The Associated Press.” Needless to say, I find that truly chilling. How could any society reach such a fucked up point where such things are possible? How can American police be so trigger happy? How could they think this boy was any kind of threat?
If this can be read as any sort of reflection of the state America is currently in, I think we should all be very, very worried.
At 31 minutes it’s a tad long for a casual Youtube video watch, but I really think I need to flag this one up. I have been watching Joolz Guides for a while now. I enjoy his explorations of London, explaining the history of an area as he goes. What I find cool about this vid is that he is exploring Woolwich and the Arsenal. That, of course, is a part of London I now know really well: I now go through Woolwich every few days, and recognised nearly all of the places pointed out in the guide. The Arsenal has a long, fascinating history, both as a port and a munitions factory. What he neglects to mention, though, is what I think the greatest irony of that area: it was once called the ‘secret city’ – closed off and highly guarded, full of dirt, grime, explosions and toil. These days, however, the Arsenal is home to an Elisabeth line station, with thousands of people passing through it every day, going to and coming from central London just minutes away. It is clean, open, and I think very pleasant.
This afternoon, what happened yesterday still very much on my mind, I thought I would set myself a bit of a challenge: how far could I get while using as little powerchair battery as possible? IE, could I still get out and about, without needing to actually drive my powerchair very far? Obviously that would mean sticking to public transport as much as I could, but given the alternative was staying at home on my computer all day, I was up for it.
With that in mind, I must say I just got in from a rather cool afternoon. The route I took was quite an elastic one: I caught a bus to the Royal Standard, then another from there to Elmers End in order to catch a tram. I had been intending to check out London’s tram system again for a while, and today seemed quite a good opportunity.
The tram ride was sleek and modern, if rather slow. It is essentially a tube line across south London, built on the surface due to the water-logged ground south of the Thames. If anything, I started to wonder why the line didn’t extend further east to, say, Woolwich or Greenwich, in order to link up with the tube. That would make it much more convenient if you ask me, but that’s a question for another time.
After an hour or so on the tram I found myself in Wimbledon. I haven’t been to that area of London much before, at least not for a while, so decided I’d have a brief look around. I was, however, still conscious of my need to conserve battery power, so before long I returned to the station to get the District Line. By then the system was getting crowded, but it wasn’t too bad. From Wimbledon it was a short(ish) ride up to Paddington, the Elisabeth Line from there to Woolwich, and then a bus back to Eltham: all sleek, smooth and accessible.
I don’t think I’ll ever stop being amazed by London’s public transport system. It is very much the circulation system of this thriving metropolis. It is far from perfect, but I’m happy to say it is gradually becoming more and more accessible. Today on the tram I went through places I had never visited before, even after fifteen years of living here. But the flip side of that is, while London gets all this fantastic new infrastructure – trams, crossrail, superloop – I can’t help worrying the rest of the country, especially the north, is being left further and further behind.
I know from my study of psychology that you should be fairly cautious when dealing with IQ as a measure of intelligence, but if this is true (and accurate) it shouldn’t surprise anyone.
It would seem that I’m not the only person to have been infuriated by what Kemi Badenoch said on BBC Breakfast yesterday. If you want to hear what Youtuber Maximilien Robespierre made of it – and I suggest you do as it’s quite perceptive – check this out.
Trust me everyone: you don’t know what fear (or relief) really feel like until you’re trundling along in your powerchair, and you suddenly feel your speed dip. You haven’t gone that far, at least compared to the epic journeys you used to take, but you have felt this dip in power before and know what it means. It happened a few days ago up in Stratford. Then, you didn’t worry about it too much, only for your motors to cut out completely a few minutes later, leaving you totally stranded miles from home. In the end, after two or three hours of trying to explain to various people what is wrong and how they can help, you have no choice but to get a taxi back.
To my great relief, none of that happened today. Fortunately I was at a bus depot, from where I could get a couple of busses home. Yet all the way back I felt a constant, gut-churning fear that as soon as I got off the bus my motors would suddenly cut out again. That would have lead to at least a few hours of trying to get someone to help me get home, probably followed by a few days of trying to get the chair repaired. Thank zark this time they didn’t, and my powerchair is now charging nicely, ready for tomorrow’s trundle. But trust me, the sensation of dread that your chair could suddenly stop and refuse to turn back on, leaving you completely stranded, is nothing to be laughed at.
Why do we as humans make art? That, of course, is an extremely vast, open-ended question, but one possible short answer is that we make art as a way to reflect on ourselves. Art casts light on the human condition. Painting depicts people in ways really does not; novels often put characters throughout ordeals people would never face in reality, and in doing so articulate aspects of our existence which would otherwise remain hidden. Thus art is an essential means to reflect upon ourselves.
If you were watching BBC Breakfast earlier, however, you would have witnessed someone articulating one of the most moronic things earlier ever. They were interviewing Badenoch, and the subject got onto the Netflix series Adolescence. Adolescence seems to now be causing quite a stir, and has got people talking about issues which previously were rather taboo. The Tory leader, however, replied that she hadn’t seen the series, and didn’t need or intend to watch it as she already knew about the issues it raised.
I’m sorry, but that must be one of the most stupid, arrogant things I have ever heard anyone say. It’s like refusing to watch Star Trek because you had already seen a rocket launch, or read Tolkien because you already own a ring. Again, art reflects humanity; we create art in order to comment on the human condition. To refuse to engage with such art, to trumpet that you already know all you need to about an issue, so there is no need for you to engage with anything more about it, surely tells us all we need to about this arrogant, big-headed cow and her wretched party.
Not that I’m becoming a public transport geek or anything, but today I thought I would try out one of the new Superloop busses. I had heard a bit about them from my browsing on YouTube, and I thought they might be worth investigating. I saw that a new route, SL4, now runs from Lee Green, not far from Eltham, up through the new Silvertown Tunnel to Canary Wharf.
That, then, is what I did this afternoon. To be honest there isn’t that much to report: a bus ride is a bus ride; it was smooth and uneventful. The passage through the new tunnel was cool, if that’s the sort of thing you find cool. From Canary Wharf I simply took the Elizabeth line back to Woolwich. Perhaps the only noteworthy detail was that I was virtually the only passenger on the bus, but that’s probably just because it is so new.
Well, that’s another new piece of London’s spectacular public transport system tried out. Quite a convenient new way to get to Canary Wharf, but that’s about it. To be honest if I wanted to get to Canary Wharf I’d probably still take the jubilee line from North Greenwich, but it was still worth investigating. Even so, all these super new bus routes make me wonder what TFL will come up with next.
It looks like I have once again wandered into a quagmire, albeit an interesting one. Earlier on one of the Monty Python fan groups I keep an eye on, I came across a post essentially saying that comedians had a right to cause offence and it should have no taboos. I, of course, took umbrage at that, as it would mean people could justify discriminating against or offending whoever they wanted under the guise of comedy. That was manifestly not what Python was about: those guys wanted to expose the absurdities of British culture, among other things, not poke fun at or belittle those who could not fight back. As I think I’ve said here before, the fact that Monty Python is now increasingly being invoked as some sort of anti-woke, anti-PC bastion, and used to justify persecution and mockery, is to fundamentally misrepresent it.
However, one of the replies I got cited a film called Blazing Saddles. I had never seen it, so of course I looked it up. What I found was, at first glance, abhorrent: a trailer for some kind of 1970s western ‘comedy’, crammed with shockingly racist language. It looked appalling, so at that I went on my afternoon trundle. Coming back though, I naturally decided to dig a little deeper, and this time found something far more interesting. For example, this Guardian article from January argues that, far from being racist, Blazing Saddles is a satire on contemporary American culture. “Westerns were white American. Certainly, the earliest examples are propagandist. No other culture mythologises its own creation in such a cinematic way. One tried and tested western blueprint is the tale of the great white saviour bringing the savage land to heel. Blazing Saddles turns this formula on its head….What transpires is a torch shone on racist, sexist and bigoted attitudes which absolutely captures the mood and prejudice of the time. Those attitudes still exist.”
Thus, like Python, rather than defending bigotry, Blazing Saddles apparently reveals it’s idiocy. I obviously need to watch it before commenting on it further; yet the fact that it, like Monty Python, is now being invoked as a justification for discrimination still does not sit well with me. People now seem to think they can use whatever derogatory or discriminatory language they want under the guise of humour, and to speak against them is to just not get the joke. Not only does that completely misunderstand the nature of comedy, but it leads us down a very dark, dangerous rabbit hole in which persecution and bullying become acceptable. That is obviously not what the guys behind Python or any other great comedians wanted.
Yet perhaps what is most interesting is how such misunderstandings expose people’s underlying ignorance in a way they wouldn’t have intended. If Blazing Saddles was about shining a light on American racism, the way in which these people have so disgustingly misread it exposes them as the ignorant, barely literate racists they are.
I was reflecting to myself earlier that harbouring animosity towards Americans because of Trump is as foolish and illogical as resenting Germans because they once elected Hitler. The problem is, it is getting harder and harder not to do so. While I know full well that resenting a group of people or country because of the actions of their leader is foolish, with the world teetering on the edge of a potentially catastrophic economic war, and with America and Americans drifting further and further to the right, I doubt that I’m the only person to feel like this. Who can look at the USA these days, and resist the urge to wonder how that bunch of inbred numpties became the most powerful nation on earth? Is it me, or do they all seem more arrogant and self-important? Needless to say, it was this growing anti-Americanism and feeling of bewilderment which gave rise to this entry the other day.
Yet we all know that not all Americans are stupid, that a lot of good comes from America, and that thinking that way gets us nowhere. Indeed, it is precisely such foolish, lazy thinking which gets charlatans like Trump elected in the first place. What frightens me is, as things get worse and worse, as Trump becomes more and more deranged, resentment towards America will build and build, and we risk going down a very dark cultural rabbit hole indeed.
Truth be told I’m feeling a bit low at the moment. It’s yet another lovely sunny day and I’m stuck at home. I was still out and about when I posted yesterday’s entry, and shortly after putting it online thanks to the Wifi in Westfield, Stratford, my powerchair conked out. Very long, frustrating story short, I ended up having to get a taxi home. Thus, as bright and sunny as it is today, I’m stuck at home. Mind you, it has meant that I have had some time to muck around on Youtube, which I’ve not done in a while; so with that in mind I think I’ll direct everyone here. It’s a political video by Maximilien Robespierre about Kemi Badenoch’s comments this morning concerning Israel and it’s rather disgusting treatment of two Labour MPs. I won’t try to summarise what the Youtuber says, save to say that I think he’s spot on: that the Tory leader can sit there and justify Israel’s totally unwarranted, even illegal actions, obviously for her own political gain, shows us what a vile, contemptuous charlatan she is.
My deep loathing for religion was compounded even further today. I was out and about again, this time exploring north of the river, around Gallons Reach. There is a big new retail park there which I was looking around. I was starting to think of heading home when unfortunately I took a wrong turn and headed onto some rather deep gravel. I thought I could make it but almost instantly my wheels got stuck. I tried reversing but that made the problem even worse, and pretty soon I couldn’t go anywhere.
I was down a bit of a back street behind the large shops, so there was nobody around to help. However, within a few minutes a couple came through the gate I had initially been heading towards. I called out for help, but to my astonishment they completely ignored me. They were obviously a Muslim man and woman, presumably a couple, who got on their knees to pray.
I called for help again, but again they completely ignored me. To be honest that made me rather exasperated: I was sure they could see and hear me, so why weren’t they helping? Was their religion more important to them than a disabled man who clearly needed help? How sickeningly perverse could you get?
In the end I was rescued by two kindly women on their break from working in one of the shops. They went and got a security guard, and I was free within a few minutes. Nonetheless I was still incredulous at what had happened. I don’t want to sound like an islamophobe, but surely that couple could have broken off their prayer to help me. Or does religion matter more to such people than a disabled man urgently needing assistance?!
If I can just put my James Bond hat on for a moment, this is at least slightly reassuring. The Beeb reports that, while there was no major news from CinemaCon in Las Vagas yesterday, the producers stressed that they were committed to cinema: “As movie theatres struggle to bring in audiences and as many consumers stay home and watch YouTube, Amazon MGM executives repeatedly told the crowd they were committed to the theatrical experience.” Needless to say, that is quite a relief. As a cinephile, I would hate to see film’s greatest secret agent watered down into just another generic, mass market streamed character. On the other hand, the producers Amazon have put in place, Amy Pascal and David Heyman, are behind dross like Harry Potter and Spider-Man, which does not fill me with optimism.
In 1776, Britain had a choice: we could either send troops to Jamaica to suppress a rebellion there, or to our colonies on the eastern coast of North America, to combat a similar insurrection there. Given how lucrative the Jamaican sugar trade was to the British Empire, troops were diverted to the Caribbean, and the colonists in North America were allowed to try to govern their selves. By and large, it was an act of benevolence: everyone knew that the people who had been sent to those thirteen colonies were duller than average, but it was thought it would be kinder to let them try to deal with their own affairs.
For a time the experiment seemed to be going well. The colonies expanded into a nation stretching across the continent; massive amounts of wealth were produced, mostly through the exploitation of the expertise and resources of others. The former colonies even reached the point where it could create a space program, mostly through luring technical experts trained elsewhere and then claiming the credit. Now however, two and a half centuries on, the consequences of Britain’s mistake have become clearer than ever: in letting these incestuous halfwits try to run their own affairs, they have selected the biggest halfwit among them as their leader. This imbecile is now actively threatening the stability of the entire world through his sheer arrogance and shortsightedness.
Frankly it is now obvious that we should never have let those colonists try to govern their own affairs. We are now akin to parents who gave their learning-disabled son his own flat, only to see him set it alight. If only there was a way they could take him back under their wing.
After less than a week back in the metropolis, I’m afraid this is what I came up with.
Not that I’m about to start claiming to be a massive Beatles fan, but I really think the four films outlined here stand to be very interesting indeed. The great Sir Sam Mendes will direct the quadrilogy of films, each focussing on a different member of the legendary band. While it may not be a full scale reunion, a la Monty Python in 2014, I think this series of films will put some focus back onto a highly influential, significant band which we may be starting to forget. At the very least they stand to shed light on a very significant part of british cultural history, and will definitely be worth a watch.
The Ill-Informed Ramblings of a Cripple 