I am not a conspiracy theorist. I know full well that, as soon as you start to speculate on ulterior motives, or to claim that certain events were orchestrated by certain people, you start down a very slippery slope and you soon start spouting inane gibberish which nobody wants to read. I also know that we must be wary of making light of events which were very serious indeed, and could have ended tragically. Yet over the last few days, my curiosity and bemusement concerning the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump has grown steadily. I’m sure I’m not alone in now thinking that there are things about it which don’t make sense, or that there are details which are just too convenient to have happened by chance.

Just from a semiotic/iconic perspective, it seems too good to be true for Trump. Someone shot at him, yet all he has to show for it is a bandaged ear. That way, he can appear before his supporters bearing the outward signs of his attack, but without having to endure anything worse. Now, I know next to nothing about guns and firearms, but surely the notion of a bullet just flying past a man’s face, hitting his left ear but not doing any further damage, pushes the limits of credibility. If something similar had featured in a film, it’s plausibility would surely have been torn to shreds and viewers would be asking why the guy’s brains weren’t blown out. If the shots came from the range and angle we are told, Trump’s head ought to have been blown off.

Yet apparently it wasn’t, and forty-eight hours after this highly traumatic event in which he was mere millimetres from losing his life, Donald Trump was out in public again, with nothing but a small bandage on his ear to show what had happened. Again, I avoid conspiracy theories – such speculation very quickly descends into idiocy – but there are things about what happened a few days ago which don’t sit right. Trump should be dead; any bullet flying through the air at far above the speed of sound would have torn the man’s head off, not just given him a bloody ear. Yet he seems to be already back on the campaign trail, basking in the glory of his survival. Trump will obviously now use this to his advantage, making the most of having been shot at by his enemies.

Forgive my cynicism, but this is fantastic publicity for him which no doubt he’ll now use to his great advantage in the upcoming American election. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person to smell a rat here.

I think I would be lax as a disabled blogger if I did not direct everyone to this horrific story this morning. It was the first thing I saw when I turned my computer on a few minutes ago, but it was too tragic and troubling for me to ignore: according to the BBC, a man with Down’s syndrome in Gaza has been attacked by an Israeli Defence Force dog and left to die. The report goes into quite a bit of detail, and doesn’t make for easy reading at all; but you have to wonder how such things could be allowed to happen. At the top of their article, the beeb warns us that some readers may find some of the details below distressing, but given that it informs us all of something which is essentially a war crime, I think that’s rather an understatement. While it may not be anyone’s fault as such, surely things like this cannot be ignored by those of us who are concerned about things like minority rights and social justice.

John suggested going to check out the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Greenwich observatory today, so that’s where I just got in from. To tell the truth I hadn’t heard about it before John told me about it, but I’m now very pleased that he did: the vast majority of the pictures in the exhibition are truly, truly remarkable. I don’t really want to say anything about them, as trying to describe the images we saw earlier would just do them a disservice, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more fascinating and evocative set of images. Space fascinates me anyway, but many of the pictures blew my mind; the vast majority were just so spellbinding and intriguing that I couldn’t help this song starting to play in my head. If you have the opportunity to go, I wholeheartedly recommend checking it out.

As coincidences would have it, I was up stupidly early this morning. I couldn’t sleep, so lying awake in bed at about four I opted to get up and check the news. I’d intended to get back into bed before long, but when I saw the headlines, that suddenly wasn’t an option. As much as we may despise Donald Trump, what happened in Pennsylvania last night was unacceptable. I personally find it ludicrous that the world’s richest, most advanced democracy would even contemplate electing (indeed re-electing) such a charlatan, but I don’t think he should be assassinated. Surely resorting to violence would make the already frighteningly heated political environment in America even worse. The guy’s a disgrace, but killing him would just reduce American political discourse to something totally uncivilised. I thus just wanted to record my horror at the utterly disturbing news coming to us this morning. Frankly it’s remarkable that Trump wasn’t killed, because then things would surely have been far, far worse.

Something quite curious caught my attention this afternoon. John and I went up to London again, this time to watch Bye Bye Tiberias at the centre for contemporary art. It’s quite a shocking non-fiction film centred on Palestinians. After the film, we had a short walk along the South Bank, where we found something I didn’t expect: a stall by the river was giving away free beers. Just small ones mind, and everyone who received one had to have their hand stamped so they couldn’t get a second, but free all the same. It cheered me up I must admit. What caught my attention enough to want to note it here, though, was that John then told me that such things aren’t allowed in the EU: giving away free alcohol is apparently prohibited in the European Union, so it’s only now we’ve left that such things can happen. If that is true, may we have encountered one of the very, very few positive effects of Brexit this afternoon?

I must admit that I feel rather pleased with myself this evening. I just got back from watching La Chamera with John at the Barbican. The film itself isn’t that great: it was slow, and didn’t seem to be going anywhere. It was just a dull story about some Italian grave robbers. However, what I’m happy about was that the film was mostly in Italian, and for once I had no problem with the subtitles. I’ve noted here before that I tend to struggle keeping up with subtitles because my head usually keeps moving around too much, but today I was able to follow them quite easily. To be honest I feel rather chuffed that I did so well- such little things often mean the most.

To be honest I’m not sure how much say about this, given that I’m not American so I don’t have any real right to interfere in or comment on American party politics. Yet the fact is that America remains the world’s most powerful nation, and what happens there effects us all. The fact also remains that it’s becoming clearer and clearer that their current president is becoming less and less fit for office: anyone watching can see that age is swiftly catching up on Joe Biden, and people like me are starting to worry whether he’ll be able to hold his ground against Donald Trump.

At the end of the day, the last thing the world needs right now is for the USA to let Trump back into office: He’s a total charlatan obviously under Putin’s control, and things are likely to take a very dark, worrying term if he gets back into power. Of course, we can hope that any sensible American would vote for anyone opposing Trump, including Biden; but it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Democrats need a proper candidate to stand up to Trump, and that Biden probably won’t be able to deal with the disgrace to humanity as he needs to. Any decent, educated, articulate politician should be able to send Trump back to the fetid hole he belongs in, but given the recent evidence it’s not at all clear that Biden will be able to.

As much as we may like Biden, then, and as much as we may prefer him to the spoiled man-child the Republicans selected to oppose him, we can only hope that American Democrats see the light, choose to be sensible and put forward a younger, fitter candidate. Until then, we can only watch as Biden deteriorates even further, and worry about the carnage we’re likely to see, not only in the coming presidential debates, but also if Trump regains control of the world’s most powerful economy.

Just as an update on this entry from Tuesday, I’ve now been assured that the crash was non-fatal. A teenage boy on a bike was hit by a bus: he broke his shoulder, but his injuries were non life threatening, and he’s expected to recover. Read this for details. Given that what I saw looked so serious, that is quite a relief.

I suppose that, alongside the awesome, thrilling stuff I record here about life in this great city, I ought to touch upon the grizzly stuff too. It has been quite a mundane, drizzly day, spent mostly with my friend Eddy as he helped me carry out a few routine chores. Nothing noteworthy really, except that, when we were just coming out of a shop on Eltham high street earlier, we noticed that police cars and ambulances had started to gather on the road just a few metres from where we were. They hadn’t been there when we went into the shop just twenty minutes before, but all of a sudden it appeared that something quite catastrophic had happened. A blue tent had been erected on the road, but apart from that I couldn’t see much. Ed tried to take a closer look, and told me that it appeared that a young boy had been knocked down by a bus: it looked like he was still breathing, but was in a pretty bad state.

Things like this really get to me; I feel extremely upset by what just unfolded in front of me a couple of hours ago. It’s just an average, damp, Tuesday afternoon. I was just out shopping, yet at a moment’s notice something catastrophic had happened. We didn’t hang around, but thought it best to return home. From what I have heard since then though, the news about the boy isn’t good. Such things make me reflect how delicate life is, and how quickly things can change.

One of the reasons why I love London so much is that you never know what you’ll come across next. I was trundling through Greenwich Park earlier, fretting over this and that, wondering what on earth had happened to summer, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted something interesting. A film crew was at work down the hill from the observatory. It wasn’t very big, but it was clearly using a lot of high spec, professional equipment. Of course I Immediately charged course to investigate.

My mind naturally went back all those summers to when I met Danny Boyle filming in Charlton House, but this was clearly a different kind of production. Appropriately enough though, when I asked one of the .crew what they were filming, they told me it was something to do with the Paris Paralympics: it was a promotional film for Bupa about two para-athletes as they prepared for the games.

After a short trip home to get a jumper, the rest of my day was spent watching the filming. It was extremely cool to see a professional production crew at work – they were even using a proper clapper-board and everything! I spent the rest of the afternoon in Greenwich Park following the film crew around as they went from site to site. They were friendly people and I think I made a few friends. I was, however, told that I couldn’t give too many details away here, but I’ll probably say more in due course.

How can you not love a city where there’s a chance that you can come across a film crew at any moment?

Yesterday was a pretty weird day for me to be honest. First things first I needed some cash, so I headed up to my Building Society in Eltham bright and early before it shut at midday. That was nothing unusual to be honest. The problem was, it was starting to rain, but going back home wasn’t an option as Serkan would be still cleaning my flat. It’s usually best that I’m out when he does so, so my freshly-mopped floor has a chance to dry without me getting footprints or tyre tracks all over it.

I decided to hang around on Eltham High Street for a bit, dodging the showers and trying to get the loud, annoying street preachers to shut up, before hopping onto a bus to Woolwich. I thought that perhaps there I’d find something interesting, without any luck. From there I hopped onto the Elisabeth Line to see what was going on at the Excel Centre, but that too was oddly quiet for a Saturday. The rain was clearing a bit by then though, so I headed out to explore some more of North-East London.

East London is an odd place: much of it reminds me of the town centres in Cheshire I grew up in, but it is much more compact with none of the wide open farmland dividing the commercial areas. There are, however, quite a few pleasant paths running through parks and beside rivers which I often like to follow. Most of these lead up to the Olympic Park in Stratford, so that is where I eventually found myself yesterday afternoon. By then, it was around 3pm, and the park was getting busy as the England Football match drew closer and closer.

At the far end of the park is Canalside, a line of four or five nice little bars built into the former media centre. By the time I got to the area, I was getting hungry, so I bought myself a wrap from the Tesco which is now there and went into one of the bars to eat it. It was one of these trendy little places where people go to play video games, with various kinds of games consoles lining the two side walls. The situation seemed straightforward at first, but as kick-off drew closer and closer things became busier and busier. Fortunately I had managed to eat my lunch before the place became really crowded: two or three large screens had been set up for people to watch the match on, and they were filing in by the dozen. To begin with, from the table I was sat at I could see the football perfectly well, but as time wore on my view became more and more congested. To make matters worse the bar was card only, meaning they wouldn’t accept my cash for drinks.

Things were, it must be said, getting less and less comfortable, so when the first half ended a disappointing nill-nill I decided to call it a day and come home. It had been an interesting day, but the culture and excitement I had been looking for had never really materialised: It had just lead me to quite a pretentious bar in an increasingly gentrified corner of the city. By the time I got back, extra time was just ending, so I hadn’t really missed much of the match. It’s always great to go out into this vast metropolis though, to experience a bit of what my fellow Londoners are getting excited about.

To be honest I’ve been pondering what to say here all day. By now, anyone reading this will be well aware of last night’s epic election result, so I don’t really need to break any news. Frankly, I’m just glad that we finally have someone with a shred of humanity to him leading the country. Starmer obviously isn’t perfect, but I’d choose him over any self-serving Tory scoundrel any day of the week. I’m just glad that the polls held true, so that perhaps now the country has a chance of getting back onto something resembling the right, socially just, outward looking track.

Mind you, having said all that, I’m not at all happy that three Reform p’tahks have been elected. Such xenophobic scum surely shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near parliament.

Perhaps the most interesting, relevant thing I have noticed over the past few days and weeks is that I have barely encountered any political campaigning. It could have been banned or something, and nobody has told me, but whenever I have been out and about, I haven’t come across anyone trying to persuade me to vote for one party or another. That has surprised me to be honest, as I would have expected such campaigning to be more visible than ever, given that this election is so crucial. All of the suburban town centres I have been through recently, be it Eltham, Woolwich, Greenwich or Bromley, have, however, been politically silent. Perhaps it’s because London is such a labour stronghold, and the result here is more or less a foregone conclusion; but even so I wouldn’t have expected other parties to have given up on the capital so wholeheartedly. Even so, I really hope that this is a good indication of tonight’s result.

I just got back from the cinema, where John and I watched a film called Kinds Of Kindness. I don’t think I can even attempt to write any kind of review of it, but can only ask what the hell we just watched. I mean that quite earnestly rather than rhetorically: I doubt I have ever seen a bigger departure from post classical Hollywood cinema than the film I saw this afternoon. Nor have I ever seen anything more dark, chilling, perverse yet somehow weirdly comic (although perhaps that was just me). It was as if Silence Of The Lambs had merged with some kind of occult melodrama. I don’t think I can do any more than encourage people to go and watch the film and then tell me what it was about. Don’t say I didn’t warn you though.

I have, of course, been watching the coverage of the UK election quite a bit recently, and I can’t help noticing something which has cropped up again and again. Whenever he has been interviewed or asked anything, surely it is obvious that Rishi Sunak always tries to drag the issue back to tax. No matter what he is asked to talk about, the current PM always makes the point that Labour will put up tax if they are elected, as if the very idea is an anathema which everyone will want to avoid. If you ask me, this small trait tells us all we need to know about Sunak and the Tories in general: they are people who are only in it for theirselves, and who resent contributing to wider society via taxation or any other means. To them, money is theirs to be hoarded rather than used to contribute to the wider community, even if that means letting the poorest, most vulnerable people in society go without the help they need. Given it is our primary means of contributing to society, improving it and making sure nobody goes without, paying tax should be cherished, not begrudged. Tories are thus like spoiled children who were never taught to share, keeping all their toys for their selves and throwing a paddy whenever any other child wants something to play with. That’s why Sunak thinks people will be scared about tax increases, not realising that by making the point, he’s betraying himself as the vile, selfish, money-hoarding scumbag he is.

We have all woken up today to yet more extremely worrying, troubling news: France’s far right National Rally party lead by Marine Le Pen is now in poll position to win it’s general election. Now, I don’t know much about French politics, but I know that Le Penn, like her father, is a vile xenophobe who would take France down a very dark path. Such politics should have been banished from Europe and the world in general decades ago, yet for some alarming reason we’re now seeing it’s resurgence: Trump in America, National Rally in France and the growing popularity of Reform here in the UK are symptoms of the same chilling trend. They are all a conscious rejection of the liberal, tolerant, accepting values we should all now hold dear, and the return of the reductionist, idiotic, “my group is better than your group” mentality which should have been made extinct at the second world war.

Why we’re seeing this resurgence we can only speculate: personally I think part of it is connected with those who feel left behind in the last two decades; those who never got to university and couldn’t keep up with the recent cultural revolutions, both online and off, such as the rise in LGBTQ+ acceptance, now feel disenfranchised. They want to see the return of the ‘traditional values’ they feel comfortable with, and the restoration of a simpler world they could understand, not realising that such a world allowed the overt exclusion and persecution of countless minorities. But perhaps such people don’t care, as long as straight, white and able-bodied people are once again dominant.

We cannot let that happen; we cannot let this far right resurgence continue. I think we should all be very, very worried about what we’re now seeing, in France and elsewhere. I glimpsed it here in London a couple of weeks ago. We currently live in a world where people are accepted for who they are, irrespective of skin colour, sexuality or physical ability like never before; it’s far from perfect, but it’s better than it historically has been. Yet those who feel disenfranchised by such trends now seem to want to undo them, and return the world to one where they are free to persecute and belittle anyone they feel is inferior to them. Such notions should appal us all, so the time has come to stop it. Surely we want to live in a world where diversity, equality and tolerance are cherished, and where anyone who doesn’t fit the straight, white able-bodied norm is free from persecution.

I just have two links to direct everyone to today. As I said, I didn’t watch the Trump/Biden debate, and from what I have caught of it since, that was a good decision. As with when I watch Farage, watching Donald Trump speak automatically makes me fly into an intense, red hot fury: I do not understand how that total disgrace to human civilisation can have the audacity or arrogance to spout the bullshit he does. Thus I don’t think I can comment much on the debate itself, given I didn’t watch it. I will, however, direct you all here, to Steve Shives evaluation of it. It’s somewhat long winded, but shives makes some veery good points: Biden’s performance wasn’t excellent, and his age was clearly showing, but that is no reasons not to loose faith in him. Shives advises his fellow American Democrats not to panic, and that above all Biden is still a far, far better candidate than trump.

The second thing I want everyone to watch is on the same subject, but is far more lighthearted. When I watched it half an hour ago, this piece from Wierd Al Yankovic blew me away. It’s a brilliant piss-take on the debates, but what impressed me most was how Yankovic created and got it online so fast: barely forty-eight hours after the actual debate and we’re already seeing rap parodies of it, with clips of the two candidates speaking being re-edited, mashed up and put to music. Brilliant!

Both pieces of media are very different, of course. But in their own ways I think they both show just how concerned progressive, liberal America is becoming about their upcoming election; as well as just how worried – even petrified – they’re understandably becoming about the prospect that Trump could return to the White House.

One of the most pressing questions of our time must surely be, why don’t Americans see Trump for who he so obviously is?

If you were expecting a bit more commentary from me on the recent political debates on TV, I’m sorry to disappoint you. The truth is I have consciously tried to avoid watching them – what would be the point? I had decided who I wanted to vote for months if not years ago, and watching such political Punch and Judy shows would only wind me up. As it is, the short clips I saw on breakfast TV the morning after such debates were quite enough to get me going to the point of wanting to hurl stuff at my screen; Sunak clearly lied his arrogant Tory head off last night. I therefore think it’s far better just to watch something else, like the football. The same, of course, goes for tonight’s Biden vs Trump debate in America, although no doubt there will be so many clips of it circulating online that it will be impossible to avoid.

I just got in from a lovely long stroll along the Thames. I took one of my favourite routes: down to Charlton, up to the Dome and along to Greenwich before coming home through Greenwich park. It really is a lovely walk, and the river looked beautiful. You know, I still find it stunning to think what a major facet of London’s geography the Thames is; before I moved here, I had never realised how intertwined the metropolis is with the wide, stately waterway dividing it’s north and south. I also hadn’t realised how much the Thames is used for transport: all kinds of boats use it, from the Clipper service to great big cruise ships.

Mind you, it must be said that I’ve never seen anyone swimming in the Thames. That isn’t surprising, as it’s far, far too dirty. It may be beautiful, but only a complete nutter would swim in it. On that note, when I got in I came across this quite alarming Young Turks video. The Paris Olympics are only a month away, and there are apparently plans to hold not just the opening ceremony but the swimming competitions in the Seine river. As the guy in the video says, that is a recipe for disaster: the Seine is far too dirty, and efforts to clean it haven’t gone at all well. It has cost millions, and the river is still filthy. On top of that, there have been huge protests with people threatening to poo in the river to show their objection to how much it is costing. At least London built a brand new Aquatics Centre which is still being used, but it seems the Paris Organising Committee is prioritising the potential picturesque-ness of having athletes compete in Paris’s river over the obvious dangers to their health. As much as I am looking forward to seeing how the french capital shows itself off this summer, I must say that strikes me as quite appalling.

I may be slightly biassed, but I don’t remember London having this much trouble in the run up to it’s games twelve years ago.

I won’t say much about it because it’s a pretty thorough exploration in itself, but if anyone is still interested in cinephilia and it’s demise, I highly recommend watching this Steve Shives video. While to be fair Shives covers a lot of the ground many academic writers have been going over recently, he lays out a pretty decent summation of why cinemas – referred to by him as movie theatres – have lost their appeal. Basically, it boils down to a question of, why go out to a cinema when you can watch any film you want at a click of a mouse? Yet Shives also points out that cinemas will always have a romance to them. While accessing films might be easier than ever, there will always be an attraction to actually going out, physically entering a screening room, sitting down among hundreds of other people as the lights go down and watching a film on the big screen. What he says thus has strong overtones of Andre Bazin, although Shives does not mention the father of cinephilia.

Yet I certainly agree that watching a film at a cinema will always be different: even as someone for whom going out to a cinema is especially difficult, I’ll always relish going out to watch the latest Bond or Star Trek film. Where watching a film on my computer can be something casual which I can take or leave on the spur of a moment, going to watch a film in a cinema, even one just a twenty minute powerchair ride away, is something which requires intent, purpose, and is something to be relished. Thus I seriously doubt that, even with so many people predicting their imminent demise both online and off, physical cinemas will ever lose their place in contemporary culture.

There was an item on the news today about a new way to control epilepsy. A new device implanted into a boys brain has reduced his seizures dramatically. The report showed viewers what his seizures looked like, and to be honest it wasn’t pleasant. To tell the truth, though, it just made me reflect on how lucky I am: I have hardly had any absences in the last few months, and when they have happened they have only been mild. They just last a few seconds, and I never loose consciousness. As a form of epilepsy I know that they could be far, far worse. Things like the item on the news I saw earlier thus just make me feel incredibly lucky: they remind me how fortunate I am. I still sometimes fret about my absences, especially when I can’t remember what happened immediately after them, but it’s clear how much worse they could be. I find it reassuring to know that I can go about my day to day life, safe in the knowledge that I won’t suddenly loose consciousness and wake up hours later in hospital.

This photo was just too incredible for me not to nick. It was apparently taken by Athena Tucker in Arches National Park, Utah.

I might well be imagining it, but I’m pretty sure I have started to see a lot more people using powerchairs when I’m out and about. Over the last few weeks especially, the number of people using powerchairs seems to have quadrupled. Not long ago, I would be lucky to encounter one or two fellow powerchair users a week on my trundles around London. All of a sudden, though, they seem to be everywhere. I’m not talking about mobility scooters used mostly by old people, but the type of electric wheelchair I first encountered back at school. I was just in Lewisham, and I must have passed eight or nine other people in powerchairs at least. Of course, I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing; it just strikes me as an odd trend, and if it is real, rather than me just imagining things, it makes me wonder what is behind it. Has anyone else noticed anything similar?

Being me is pretty cool sometimes. I love how random people who I don’t remember ever meeting, seem to recognise me out of nowhere.

It has been a bit of a rough day, to be honest. A few weeks ago, Dom got in touch about finally organising a funeral for Lyn. Of course I thought it was a good idea, although I knew it would be difficult. We were just talking about it at first, but today we finally got going, selecting a few pictures of Lyn to use. Dom then suggested going to Lewisham to get them printed.

Dom could cycle there, but of course for me it meant taking the bus. It was an easy enough journey, but I was just approaching the bus stop at the end of my road when all of a sudden I heard someone exclaiming my name.

“Matt! MATT!” I looked up to see a heavily set Jamaican man coming the other way. I didn’t recognise him at first, but as he came closer I realised who he was.

When I first moved to London, there used to be a small pub between Charlton and Woolwich which I took to drinking in called The Kings Arms. It was an odd little place, famous for once being bombed by the IRA. It was a quiet place where I rarely saw anyone else, so over time the owner, Cox, kind of got to know me. He even began to help me drink my beer, memorably repeating “Cold and nice! Cold and nice!” in his rich Jamaican accent as I sucked my straw. It was more or less the first pub I came across on my own after moving in with Lyn, so it briefly became kind of a personal retreat for me.

That was well over twelve years ago. The Kings Arms has long been closed and demolished. I only really went there for a month or two, and soon forgot about it after that. This afternoon, however, who do you think I should bump into but Cox, the pub owner, who I hadn’t seen for so long. He obviously recognised me and greeted me like an old friend. Sadly we didn’t have time to catch up as my bus was soon approaching, but little occurrences like this only serve to remind us what a small world it really is, and that we’re never really very far from friends.

Just for the record, this morning I filled in and posted my postal vote. In fact it was pretty much the first thing I did today, second only to drinking my morning coffee. I better not say who I voted for, but any long-term readers can probably guess anyway. I wanted to get it done, out of the way, box crossed and into the post box, just so that I knew it was done. With so much riding on this election, with so much at stake, I’d encourage everyone to be similarly conscientious.

As a writer, and particularly a screenwriter, I really don’t know what to make of this story. “A central London cinema has cancelled a private screening of a film which was entirely written using artificial intelligence (AI) following a public backlash.” The film, called The Last Screenwriter, had been ‘written’ entirely by ChatGBT, but was apparently axed after an audience backlash. Frankly, I’m not surprised: surely film, like all art, is by definition a human creation; the stories film is used to tell are human stories. Like my blog entries, I write scripts in an effort to tell others about my thoughts, feelings and experiences. A computer program cannot do that, so is it any wonder that an audience will reject such emotionally void pap?

I have just watched something which I found utterly, utterly sickening. Last night’s Panorama program was discussed on this morning’s BBC Breakfast show, and what I saw earlier compelled me to watch it. It was an expose of a special school up in Liverpool, where pupils with autism and ADHD were shown to be regularly bullied and abused. I don’t want to say too much about it because the program speaks perfectly well for itself, other than it sickens me that things like this are still going on today. From the footage we see, it was clear that the halfwitted scumbags who were supposed to be teaching and looking after these young people had just assumed that they would be immune from any sort of repercussions, and so took perverse pleasure in bullying and belittling them. It obviously helped them to feel better about their selves, but you have to wonder how such vile, inferior cretins came to be employed in such schools in the first place.

Mind you, I think more could be said about the type of school it is. The program mentioned but did not emphasise the fact that it was a ‘free school’, part of David CaMoron’s pet project to create essentially more private schools. As such, it would have had to go through much less regulation than state schools do, which may well explain why it could employ such sickeningly unqualified and inappropriate members of staff. I seriously doubt that we would see behaviour like this in any ‘ordinary’ special school – I certainly hope not anyway – so I think this is, at least in part, a repercussion of the Tory quest to turn education over to private hands. In doing so they opened schools, especially special schools, up to abuse like this. It really worries me how much more of this disgusting behaviour could be going on; with more and more young people being diagnosed as having SEN these days, this could be just the tip of an utterly repugnant iceberg.

I know I have touched upon this before, and I don’t really want to repeat myself, but to be honest QR Codes are really starting to annoy me. We see them everywhere these days, from bus stops to political party leaflets, but because I can’t use the camera on my Ipad to scan them, I have no idea what they do. To be fair, there is usually a website address beneath them which I can just type into a web browser, but their increasing ubiquity is bothering me more and more. This is a form of technology and information distribution which I, as a disabled man, have absolutely no way of accessing. Of course, I’m not unhinged enough to think that this is all due to some kind of anti-cripple conspiracy, or that those of us without the manual dexterity to use our Iphone or Ipad cameras are being deliberately left behind. But now that these codes are being used as a way to access quite important information, and are starting to appear on things like political leaflets, this is really starting to bother me. It’s really starting to feel like I’m being left behind or excluded.

I’m presently seeing so many things on social media taking the piss out of Rishi Sunak for his comments this week about not having Sky TV as a kid, I almost feel sorry for him…almost. It’s pretty intense. My favourite of course are the memes based on Monty Python’s* Four Yorkshiremen sketch, with Sunak’s head placed over one of the character’s (“You were lucky!” etc”). It interests me how such a classic piece of British comedy can be reused/referenced like that to make such a witty comment about contemporary politics. The memes are getting funnier by the day. But there’s no denying that he brought it upon himself, and only has himself to blame. Did he really think he would get away with sounding so whiney and spoiled? Frankly I think it tells us all we need to know about not just Sunak’s sense of entitlement, but that of virtually every member of the Tory party. Oh how I relish seeing those tossers being ravaged!

*Or was it originally from the 1948 Show?

You may have noticed that I haven’t been writing much about the election recently. To be honest, politics just winds me up, and you probably know which party I want everyone to vote for anyway, so I’ve just been avoiding the subject. However, I really think I should flag this Led By Donkeys video up. It’s a short profile of Rishi Sunak, and really gives you an idea of what a privileged, arrogant p’tahk he is. He’s the type of guy who seems to think that everything should just be given to him simply because he was born into a certain family, that contributing to society via tax is some kind of evil, and that those less fortunate than he happens to be don’t deserve any state help. So, he’s a typical Tory then. More to the point, this short film really gives you an idea of what a vile person Sunak is, making it seem all the more urgent that he isn’t re-elected.

To be honest I’m pretty proud of my weblog. I see it as my primary output as a writer, and my way of telling the world what life is like for a disabled man. You may have noticed that I like to keep it updated pretty much daily: that’s just to make sure I don’t fall out of the habit and start to neglect it. Recently though, I’ve been wondering, how many blogs are on the web like mine? How many other bloggers have kept their pages going for over twenty years, updating it as regularly as I have? I know my posts aren’t often very long, and probably vary in quality hugely, but if what I’m doing here is as rare as I’m beginning to suspect, then I reckon I deserve at least some credit. Indeed, I’ve heard that many personal blogs are only active for a few months, and only tend to be updated once or twice a week. If anyone can point me to another weblog which has been going for so long and which has been added to so regularly, I would like to see it.

After I made and posted my entry earlier I decided to go out again, this time to Woolwich. I think I’ve described here before how Woolwich is quite an up and coming area: it has a reputation for being a bit rough, but it has a lot going for it, such as an Elizabeth Line station and a large public square with a big screen, where people can gather and watch sports and state events. When I was going through the square today though, I was rather bemused to encounter not one but three street preachers, all standing separately and reading different parts of the bible. I couldn’t help reflecting on how stupid it seemed: they were talking over one another, so all that was audible was a garbled nonsense. Needless to say nobody was listening to any of them. Part of me really wanted to stay and tell all three of them to shut up, but I knew it was pointless. It just struck me as a brilliant illustration of the idiocy of such behaviour: perhaps if they worked together and coordinated what they were trying to tell people, some might listen. But because all three wanted to do his own thing and be the centre of attention, the one to deliver the message which they apparently thought was oh-so-important, the only thing anyone passing by could hear was three voices of garbled, competing nonsense.

This came to me as I was rolling through nearby Kidbrooke earlier. The flats there seem to multiply by the week!

I am, of course, still a huge James Bond fan, and I’m sure like many Bond fans I’m beginning to wonder more and more when we’ll see the return of our favourite spy. I know I’ve written about this before, but it has now been three years since Daniel Craig’s final Bond outing, No Time To Die, so isn’t it time to see the resumption of cinema’s greatest franchise? After all, Craig was first announced as the sixth actor to play Bond in October 2005, three years after Pierce Brosnan’s final, Die Another Day. We’ve recently seen a bit of a Bond drought, possibly due to events like the pandemic, so I’m pretty sure the guys at EON productions will be eager to resume services.

Then again, Craig’s innings was such a success, and he made such a mark on the series and character, that recasting it will be harder than ever. Whoever they choose will have bigger shoes to fill than any of his predecessors, particularly given the scrutiny and negativity Craig himself received when he was first selected. Yet that is what will make the choice so interesting, and for my money I suspect we’ll hear something about it quite soon, possibly this autumn. After all the trouble the world has seen in the past few years, I think we could do with some more martini-fuelled escapism.

Earlier today I heard that Farage has caused quite a stir over the weekend with the sickening statement that Rishi Sunak left the D-Day commemorations early last week because he didn’t understand ‘our culture’. Of course I’m not a Sunak fan, but surely we were past crap like this. The ridiculous statement has apparently made many people extremely uncomfortable, probably not least because of the sheer arrogance of it: what gives Farage the right to say what constitutes ‘our culture’ and what doesn’t? More to the point and probably more dangerously, he seems to think he has the authority to determine what constitutes ‘us’, and who does not belong in that group. That is exactly the type of thing we saw the Nazis do. While I suspect the embarrassment to humanity is just spouting such shit to stir up far right support and cause controversy, he is undeniably trying to take UK politics down a very dark, dangerous path.

Just as an addendum to yesterday’s entry, if you can I would thoroughly recommend checking out Baby Reindeer on Netflix. I can’t really comment upon whether it’s based on fiction or reality of course, but either way just two episodes in and I’m engrossed. It’s very psychological and very very dark: it’s clearly about a woman with some extremely deep psychological issues. To a certain extent the program strikes me as a commentary on the modern world, where everyone is constantly in touch with one another via social media to the extent that it can become obsessive, or at least unhealthy. The picture the series is beginning to paint just two episodes in, of a clearly disturbed woman stalking the main protagonist both in reality and online, is extremely disconcerting. Either way I’ll continue to watch in the hope of getting to the bottom of what I heard about yesterday.

Above all, though, one thing is certain: we never see stuff like this on conventional TV.

I just saw something on the evening news which I found genuinely, genuinely baffling: either there’s something about it which I haven’t understood, or it’s one of the most stupid things I’ve ever heard. According to this story, a woman is suing Netflix for making a drama series which she says is about her, but which alleges she did things she says she didn’t do. “A Scottish woman who allegedly inspired the stalker character Martha in hit Netflix drama Baby Reindeer is suing the streamer for defamation, negligence and privacy violations. Fiona Harvey – who has identified herself as the woman on whom Martha is based – argued in a lawsuit that Netflix told “brutal lies” about her to over 50 million viewers around the world.” Both Netflix and the show’s writer, Richard Gadd, deny that it is about her.

Am I missing something here? If the series is supposed to be fiction, and it’s creators claim it isn’t about any real person, then how the smeg can this woman sue it’s creators for making stuff up about her? It’s like me claiming the Hobbit is about me, then suing Peter Jackson because I never went on a quest with a bunch of dwarfs; or claiming to be the inspiration for James Bond, then suing EON productions because I never met Pussey Galore! The program is supposed to be fiction, and Harvey only seems to have met Gad a few times in a pub. Either there’s something I haven’t picked up upon about this, or it’s one of the most stupid, idiotic thing’s I have ever heard.