A storm is coming and it looks nasty. I just heard on the news that the Met office has issued it’s most severe weather warning for the north of Britain: storm Eunice could bring gusts of over 100mph. I should be okay here: I plan to hunker down and stay inside; and the capital should be spared the worst of it anyway. But to all my northern friends and family reading this, I say: stay safe guys – this storm looks nasty.

Perhaps I’m overreacting or being melodramatic, but I’m currently checking the news headlines every few minutes or so. In the last two or three days at least, it would seem that Eastern Europe has edged closer to a war than it has been for a long time, and I must admit I’m quite worried about it. Of course, you could point out that Russia now says it’s pulling back it’s troops from the Ukrainian border, or that this entire affair might just be one of Putin’s ploys to get everyone dancing to his tune; yet surely the last three days or so has brought us closer to a cataclysm than it has been for a long time. The ramifications of such a war could be catastrophic. I have no idea what Putin may be playing at or the forces at work here, so while the whole debacle will hopefully blow over as quickly as it arose, you’ll understand why I currently keep checking the news.

He can try to dress it up as an issue of bodily autonomy all he wants, if you ask me, Novak Djokovic is an anti-vaxxer prick who should be immediately stripped of all his trophies, banned from playing tennis for life and put to work collecting rubbish. This is a man who thinks he has a right to put other people in danger simply because he does not want to take a jab most other people have now had. Too precious about what goes into his body, he would knowingly risk spreading a deadly virus rather than get vaccinated. As I wrote here a few weeks ago, selfish idiots like him infuriate me. Surely we need wiser, more altruistic rolemodels than this arrogant idiot in the media and on our sports pitches. Not only should he be prevented from playing in upcoming competitions; he should be stripped of his previous titles and banned from professional tennis. At least that would send a clear message that such selfish, arrogant behaviour is not acceptable.

Would it be fair to say that American Football is a slower sport than test cricket? I realise that may be a bit of a random question coming from me, but this morning, out of pure curiosity I thought I would watch last night’s superbowl. I had never seen an American Football match in full before, and wanted to see what it was about. Long ago, back at uni, Ricardio used to have his drama group play American Football as part of their warm up, from where I knew the basics: it is a rather chess-like game, with a strong tactical element. It’s also much more start/stop than football (soccer) with play continuing in spurts rather than flowing continuously. The way it was comprised of planned out plays made me wonder whether it could be reminiscent of test cricket, made up of balls and overs.

With that in mind, I started watching the Superbowl on Iplayer earlier this morning. At first, I began to get into it; but then, three minutes into the match or even less, the play was halted and the Beeb cut back to the studio (presumably in America this is where adverts would be). It soon became clear that this would continue for the whole event: we would only see snippets of action before it was interrupted, and four fifteen minute quarters would be stretched over three hours. I know people call cricket slow-paced and boring, but this struck me as ridiculous: in tests, you get a ball every minute or two, but in American football there was far more studio time than actual sport.

It’s strange: I have the patience to watch and appreciate a four or five day long cricket match, but an hour long American football match struck me as tedious. I don’t think it was the sport itself, which still strikes me as quite tactical, as much as the way in which play was interrupted every few seconds for overlong breaks. In fact, I got as far as the third quarter before I lost patience: about 35 to 40 minutes into the match and I’d had enough. Mind you, whereas in a soccer match that would be just before half time, I had already watched over two hours of the program to reach that point. I really can’t see how so many people can be so enthralled by American football when so much of the time dedicated to it is wasted.

I just watched the latest episode of the Green Planet, on deserts, and I really must say how utterly amazed it has left me. I have written about my admiration for Sir David Attenborough on here before: here we have a man who has surely done far more than anyone else to open our eyes to and increase our knowledge of the natural world. Not only that, the filmmaking in these programmes is incredible. Watching just now, my jaw dropped at the complexity and beauty of some – indeed most – of the shots. As someone who is interested in filmmaking as an art form, I was spellbound. There was one shot in particular, in about the middle of the programme, where Attenborough is filmed standing by a large bush in a desert. He visited the same plant for another show forty years before, so they were able to film him from the same angle, with the plant in exactly the same place, and seamlessly merge the two shots. The great man ages four decades, but the plant barely changes. I find that sort of filmmaking astonishing, but you can only do such things with people with careers as long and brilliant as Sir David Attenborough’s. This is television at it’s best; even after seventy years, he is still the greatest thing on television.

As doom-laden as it is, I think the best thing I can flag up on here today is this Guardian article. In it, Johnathan Freedland begins to spell out precisely what a mess Brexit is making and the damage it is doing to the UK economy. Of course, you could point out that it was all predicted by the Remain campaign years ago, but now, almost day by day, it becomes clearer and clearer what a catastrophic mistake Brexit was: the referendum result was reached based on proven lies, and we have seen none of the fanciful benefits the Outists promised us. Now that the Brexshit is starting to hit the fan, I think the most prudent thing to do would be to get the campaign to rejoin going as soon as possible.

To be honest I’m a bit baffled by Cressida Dick’s resignation from the met. Why did she need to go? There’s not much I feel I can write about it, but I think this sums the farce up nicely.

Ages ago, when I started blogging, I used to occasionally write entries on the Evolution/creationism debate. It was a subject which really got me worked up and I wanted to have my say in it. I stopped writing about it on here when my brother Luke pointed out that there were far more knowledgable people writing on the subject, and perhaps I should concentrate my ramblings on things which affected me personally, or which I had personal knowledge of. Luke was right, of course, but it is an issue which has never stopped fascinating me: the evidence for evolution is utterly overwhelming, so how can so many people refuse to acknowledge it, and insist that everyone is taught the myths in a two-thousand year old book instead? I find it baffling. I would be content to ignore these nutcases, of course, but what concerns me most is that they appear to be gaining power, particularly in America. Yesterday evening I came across this fascinating Youtube channel run by an American biology teacher. He takes creationist Youtube videos and goes through them, point by point, explaining why the original vids make no sense. He clearly knows what he’s talking about, but I thought it worth flagging up on here because it shows how worryingly distorted certain aspects of american society have become: It seems like they will stop at nothing to ensure their religion dominates over all other views, and that they are becoming more and more aggressive and extreme. I think we should find this very concerning, particularly given how reactionary and conservative they are too. At least certain Americans, like Forrest Valkai, are trying to hold them in check.

I’m now slightly curious about something which I keep seeing, which I wonder whether anyone could enlighten me on. A few times now, I’ve spotted pairs of shoes which have been tied together by their laces and thrown over overhead telephone cables. There’s an instance by the small park at the bottom of my road. At first I assumed it was just a kid pratting about, but I’ve seen the same thing two or three times now: footwear, tied together, hanging from overhead cables. Does anyone know what that might be about? Has anyone else seen this?

It may have been one of the very first things I came across on Facebook this morning, but I think this certainly warrants a blog entry. The RSC has at last cast a disabled actor as Richard III. After years of campaigning, we are finally going to see a disabled actor portray a famously disabled character. “Now, for the first time, the Royal Shakespeare Company has cast a disabled actor in the title role of Richard III in a new production opening later this year. For Arthur Hughes, it is a “dream come true” although his first reaction to being cast as the 15th-century king of England was disbelief.” Hughes goes on to say how complex the character is, and how his own disability will help him portray the role.

In many ways this is quite a step forward. Disability activists have long campaigned for disabled characters to be played by disabled actors: there is something about the lived experience of having a disability – social exclusion, the feeling of being outcast or different etc. – that only we can bring to a role. More to the point, just as you wouldn’t cast a white actor in a black role, I think having able-bodied actors play disabled characters is a tad patronising: it sort of steals our voice from us, as if able-bodied people presume they can speak for disabled people. Believe me, we can speak for ourselves, given half a chance.

The article also touches upon When Barbara Met Alan, the upcoming BBC drama about DAN. I really can’t wait to see it. Arthur Hughes is in both. I’ll be intrigued to see what they do. Mind you, perhaps it’s worth pointing out that, without the activism of groups such as DAN, we wouldn’t now be seeing disabled actors in the RSC.

I was just watching the evening news, which carried the remarkable story of a man with a severed spine being helped to walk again through the use of an electronic implant. This is, of course, incredible, and I don’t begrudge the guy his treatment in the slightest. Yet I just feel I want to point something out: the treatment cost £100,000; wouldn’t it be a better idea to use such staggering amounts of money to make society more accessible? Rather than pouring so much money and effort into making disabled people fit into environments they aren’t suited to, why not change the environment to suit them? Instead of helping this guy walk again, why not simply ensure he has a great quality of life as a wheelchair user? At least that way, far more people are helped, rather than a select few individuals with specific, treatable conditions. Why is it so important that people like this are ‘fixed’ or ‘repaired’, when they can have great lives just as they are, if only society changed slightly to meet their needs.

I think I made something of a mistake this afternoon. Yesterday I came across Mark Kermode’s review of Moonfall. The good doctor was so damning, and found the film so awful, that in a strange way I became intrigued. No film could possibly be that bad, I reasoned; maybe it was some kind of spoof or joke film. Maybe the direness was some kind of intentional gimmick.

Wanting to see for myself i therefore took myself to the cinema this afternoon. It had been a while since I last went to the flicks anyway, so I think it was in order. But I now know how utterly wrong I was not to just trust Kermode. I seriously doubt I have ever seen anything as mind-numbingly crap as the film I watched earlier: I am staggered that it was ever made. It had the scientific literacy of a gerbil, and the shit I did this morning was probably more intelligent than the script. It was so nauseatingly stupid it was insulting. The concerning thing is, it seemed to take itself and want to be taken seriously; it didn’t seem to realise it was so moronic and thought of itself as a standard blockbuster. More to the point, the way it pressed certain ideas onto us, such as the validity of conspiracy theories, gave the film the aspect of having quite a concerning agenda. There was nothing ironic or self-knowing about it – the film was just dire, but dire with a nutjob agenda. Frankly, I left the cinema flabbergasted that any producer or director could have read such a screenplay and decided to turn it into a film, rather than throw it straight into the bin where it clearly belonged.

Just to clear up the ‘happy news’ I was talking about here a few days ago, it is my joy to announce my friend Charlotte has given birth to a baby girl. Olive Robyn was born last week, and both she and her mum are doing well. C asked me not to broadcast it immediately, but has now given me permission to write this entry. I now can’t wait to go up and visit them, Alex and the rest of the Joneses. Mr. and Mrs J must be overjoyed! I daresay a Jones garden party is long overdue.

I haven’t watched it from start to finish, but I just had a quick whizz through of the Beijing Winter Olympic Opening Ceremony. Truth be told, I didn’t see much to get my analytical or critical juices flowing, although I’d just like to point one thing out: does it not strike anyone as odd that, apart from Chinese, the main language being used is English? Why is English now so prominent? They may have used a smattering of French (I suspect due to IOC rules) but all the speeches were delivered using English, the signs were english etc. As I was saying here a couple of entries ago, English seems to be becoming ubiquitous, so that it dominates international events like the Olympics, even in places as far flung as China. While that might work to my advantage given English is the only language I understand, to see one tongue becoming so dominant to the exclusion of all others is surely a bit of a shame.

It has reached the point where seemingly random people are starting to recognise me. I was out trundling near the Royal Standard this afternoon, when all of a sudden a man walking the other way says “Hi Matt.” I had no idea who he was, but apparently he knew me from when I drank in the King’s Arms in Charlton about eight years ago. That sort of thing seems to happen wherever I go: I bump into people who claim to know me, but whom I can’t remember ever meeting. It used to happen when I was living in Congleton  or Alsager, but  they were relatively small, compact places, so I find it amazing that I am now being recognised by random people here in the metropolis.

Say that a guy catches his girlfriend cheating on him. She screws their relationship up so badly that he’s on the verge of dumping her. What does she do but give him the most almighty blowjob she can, in the desperate hope that he’ll forget the entire incident. She hopes that the ultimately superficial, meaningless gesture will distract him so well that the whole thing will blow over.

Now say that the head of a government is caught lying to the people he governs: he is caught blatantly breaking the rules his government itself put in place to ensure everyone’s safety, and then lying about it. People are so angry about it that most want him removed from office. What does he do but announce a glitzy new policy costing millions, purporting to address the needs of those who he says have been neglected? Called, say, ”Levelling Up”, it sounds wonderful, noble and fair: it’s sneakily designed to appeal to those who feel disenfranchised while drawing attention away from the current scandal, while in reality merely partially undoing the cuts to the state his own party had put in place over the last decade. In both cases we see vapid, meaningless gestures designed to feel good and distract people, while failing to undo the damage which has been done.

Johnson and the Tories are just trying to suck our cultural cocks – don’t let them.

In May 2020, Lyn’s death was still fresh and raw in my mind. She had passed away just the month before, and I knew that she was the type of person who could never be replaced. Before she died, I’d gone to visit her in hospital: I will never forget the sight of her unconscious in a hospital bed, hooked up to a respirator. She had a tumour which had been growing for months. Of course, I didn’t stay there long: this was the height of the first wave of the pandemic, and I didn’t want to put anyone at risk, least of all my friend. I assumed I would be going back to see her again before long, or perhaps when she returned home, but Lyn died a few days later.

We now know that that was when Johnson and his friends were having parties in the garden at Downing Street. Just when I and so many others were going through the most horrific of times, they were behaving as if the pandemic was something which happened to others; sipping wine and laughing while the rest of us mourned lost friends. Perhaps I shouldn’t make such matters personal, but I can’t help noticing the coincidence: my best friend was dying and I didn’t dare visit her, but they were partying on patios, as if it was their birthright and that they were above the suffering everyone else had to go through.

Knowing what we know now makes my blood boil with rage. Those were the darkest of times for so many, and the Tories didn’t give a fuck. And now, watching them all try to defend their leader, spouting lie after lie, insisting that it is perfectly ok for him to make a mockery of the rest of our suffering, pain and grief, is an insult I can and will never forgive.

Yesterday I came across a tidbit of information which made me slightly puzzled. In France, certain university courses, at least Master’s courses, are taught in English rather than French. That is, English is used in Master’s physics classes in Paris rather than French. I’m not sure yet how widespread this is, but it struck me as very odd: The English language has become so widespread and commonplace that it is now being used in our neighbour’s institutions. If I was French, I think I would probably find that quite galling: I know how proud the French can be of their language and culture; to see it slowly being taken over by your old adversary, so that their language rather than yours was being used to access academic courses, would be quite upsetting. Can you imagine the uproar if the reverse happened here? Of course, there will be several reasons for this, not least the ubiquity of American English and it’s use in academic and scientific papers, but nonetheless, to see one language rise over all others like this is pretty weird.

Today I just want to express my sorrow at the sad death of Barry Cryer. He was one of a generation of comedians who made British comedy truly great. Although I must admit it has been a while since I listened to it, I love radio shows like Just A Minute and I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue: Cryer was one of the voices who made such programs so funny, and so remarkable. In that spirit, I want to close this entry by starting a game:

London Bridge.

I received some very good personal/friend news earlier today which I have been asked not to tell everyone about yet, so let me just say that it has been a great, joyful day, and that this evening finds me in the mood for a party… I mean socially distanced work meeting.

Having just watched Prime Minister”s Questions, I seriously believe that it’s now very clear that the UK has no government but a bunch of lying, self-serving disgraces to human civilisation categorically unfit to rule. The Tories shouldn’t just leave office but the party should be disbanded. The Conservative party has it’s origins over two centuries ago as an organisation dedicated to keeping power and wealth in the hands of a rich, landed few. To this day, that remains it’s sole aim, and it’s now clear that they will do anything, including blatantly deceive the entire country, to achieve it. This lunchtime, we saw the party rush to the man they call our Prime Minister, a known liar and charlatan, spouting blatant untruths in an effort to absolve him of responsibility for breaking the law. The only thing coming from Johnson should have been a grovelling apology and resignation; any other bullshit he spouted was an insult. This is a group of people which believes they are born to rule and thus are above the rule; they think they have a right to party while the rest of us mourn. They thus treat the rest of us with utter, utter contempt, and to a man are fit only to collect rubbish, not govern the country.

The United Kingdom deserves better than to be governed by this bunch of entitled, selfish, disgraceful scumbags. The Tories must go.

I rewatched Don’t Look Up yesterday afternoon, having watched it the first time over Christmas with my parents. It’s a very interesting Netflix film which seems to be splitting opinions. On the whole, Don’t Look Up struck me as quite a delicious satire, but I couldn’t help thinking that in reality the ESA would have blown the comet out of thee sky months before the yanks even spotted it! That is to say, it is a very Americano-centric film, where Americans are the chief players in a global crisis, and the rest of the world is completely forgotten about. Americans are the ones who first spot the impending doom and attempt (and fail) to find a solution to it, and the rest of us barely get a cameo. Of course, you can say that of any film like this (Deep Impact etc), but last night it really jarred.

Naturally, this film is supposed to be more American social satire than straight science fiction, so I suppose that focus is to be expected; but the way the film ignored the rest of humanity nonetheless grated. On the other hand, the film does what it sets out to do quite perfectly: as a comment on contemporary American culture, I don’t think you can get better. It is a delicious pastiche of Trumpism, american consumerism, and the control that a few rich white Americans have over the whole country. It is a commentary on American mainstream media, and their education system. It’s a witty, intelligent film; a comment on how, even when faced with unambiguous impending doom, some Americans still refuse to believe the reality in front of them. As a social commentary, it is great; I just wish it didn’t frame itself like America was the entire world. After all, while the whole satirical point of the film may be that it is the American desire to make money which ultimately causes the end of the world, that assumes viewers forgot that there are other cultures in the world, less focussed on capitalism and more focussed on securing our future.

If I can just put my James Bond fan hat on, I just came across this treat on Youtube. It’s a 45 minute retrospective of Daniel Craig’s tenure as 007, going through his five films. As it explains, the impact Craig has had on the franchise has been massive. He brought so much humanity and pathos to the character, while still being the cold, violent spy Ian Fleming created. Like many fans, I think Craig is my favourite actor to play the role. The Ironic thing is, when he was first cast in the role, he was lampooned in the press for being blonde, and everyone expected him to be a failure. To think that Craig then went on to be such a fantastic success is what makes this story so great.

The question now is, where does the franchise go from here? As the program details, over the past five films and fifteen years, Craig’s Bond has become a cultural icon: by and large, his films have been huge critical hits, and who can forget that this was the 007 who escorted the queen to the olympics – a cultural moment which must surely rank as one of the greatest in history. How can that possibly be followed? How can any actor follow Craig? Whoever the producer choose, I would hate to be in their shoes.

But then, they said that after Brosnan. I’m now very interested indeed in how Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson deal with this issue. Whoever they cast, it’s sure to come under a lot of scrutiny; but my hunch is, they’ll take a totally new tack. Craig played Bond so straight, so brutally, that the only way forward is to completely change the tone. As others are saying too, they’ll cast a lighter, more comic Bond – anything else will risk comparisons with hiss predecessor. Of course, the danger with that is, go too far down that route and it risks not being James Bond any more; stray too far and their choice will certainly be panned. Thus, largely thanks to the success of Daniel Craig, Bond’s producers are in quite a predicament: I can’t wait to see how they get out of it.

I kind of fancied another explore today, so earlier I had a look at the map to decide where to go. I go up to Stratford quite often, and I’ve been exploring the area around Canary Wharf a bit recently, but today I wanted a change. I looked at what I might find if I headed south rather than north, and noticed a shopping centre called the Glades in Bromley. I thought it might be interesting to look around, but it was clearly too far away to try to reach in just my powerchair. Luckily though, I soon found it was a single bus ride from Eltham, so with that I set off.

The bus ride was quite a convoluted one, and it took longer to get there than I thought. When I did though, I was pleasantly surprised: being South London, I was kind of expecting to find something rather run down and shabby, but The Glades is a nice, well-kept shopping centre, with trendy sushi bars and a well-stocked Waterstones. It might be nowhere near as big as Westfield in Stratford, or as upmarket as Canary Wharf, but what I found wasn’t anything to turn your nose up at. The thing is, such places aren’t that uncommon in London; you find them all over the capital. Yet, thinking about it earlier, I reflected that you would never find a shopping centre like that in Congleton. The Glades might be on the small side for London, but you’d be lucky to find such a place in my hometown or similar small towns; there, such a centre would seem huge, opulent and perhaps even misplaced. It’s another instance of the glaring disparity between London and the rest of the country.

I just got in from a very cool trip. Yesterday I learned from a Facebook meme that Sir Ian McKellen now owns a pub called The Grapes. Being a big Lord Of The Rings fan, I naturally tapped the name into google, only to find it was in Limehouse, just the other side of Canary Wharf. That instantly got me excited, so after breakfast this morning I set off to see if I could find it, catching the DLR over the river and trundling west. I knew it was very unlikely that I would actually meet Sir Ian, but I was curious to see what a pub owned by a wizard was like.

The Grapes wasn’t very hard to find: it’s in a well to do area by the Thames. The only problem was, being about three centuries old, it’s door was rather narrow and hard to get my powerchair through. Once inside though, I was intoxicated: you could almost smell the history; the decor was very rustic and wooden. People must have been drinking there for eons with very little change. The best thing of all, however, was catching sight of Gandalf’s staff behind the bar: I could feel the presence of Mithrandir!

After some deliberation, I decided to stay for a solitary pint before heading on my way. It was still early, and I had more exploring to do. Yet it was already a very cool trip, if just to find that fascinating old pub, owned by one of my favourite actors.

I’m suddenly very, very excited. If you want to see a sneak peak of the second season of Picard, scheduled to hit the airwaves in a couple of months, check this out. This trailer was released less than an hour ago, and looks fantastic. Guinan, one of my all-time favourite Star Trek characters, is back! [Squeal!]

This morning we heard the sad news of the death of Meatloaf. I don’t think I’ve mentioned liking him on here before, but when I heard the news my mind automatically went back to 1993 or ’94, when I was ten or eleven. At school during breaks, the lads in my class used to play music. I remember we all used to dance our young heads off to Meatloaf’s I’d Do Anything For Love. We may have barely understood the lyrics, but we knew it was a cool song.

Meatloaf was one of the greats, whose quintessentially American style of rock meant so much to so many. He will be missed.

Note to self: no matter how bright and sunny it may look outside, some days it is just too cold to go trundling. Far better to stay home in the warm, than get to Kidbrooke to find you feel like you’ve walked into a freezer. Urban exploration is definitely a spring and summer activity.

I just had one of those moments when, idling away a quiet, fairly miserable afternoon, I come across something incredible. And by that I mean truly, truly incredible. If you want to see robots dance the Mash Potato, watch this. It’s a video by an American robotics company called Boston Dynamics, which specialises in top-of-the-range robots. Obviously in this video they’re just showing off, albeit quite wonderfully, but some of the things they have created robots to do,, including gymnastics and parkour, is mind-blowing. I defy anyone vaguely interested in technology not to watch their videos and be blown away.

Watching PMQs earlier, I was enraged as I was last week by the stream of absolute bullshit produced by Boris Johnson. I get so enraged that I probably shouldn’t watch it. Johnson spouted lie after lie, obfuscation after obfuscation; blatantly refusing to answer any question directly while claiming credit for the phenomenal work of the NHS, an organisation he and the Tories would destroy if they had the chance. The hypocrisy, the pomposity, the arrogance we are subject to every Wednesday, from a snobbish toff who thinks authority was his birthright but who should be sweeping the streets, twice fired for lying, boils my blood. We deserve better than the blatant misrule of a group of entitled, privileged toffs who only care about their own wealth and power, and who would lie their heads off to cling on to it.

‘Vandal’ is putting it mildly.

You can probably all predict what I’m going to write about on here today. The stupid Tory bitch currently calling herself our culture secretary Nadine Dorries has announced the end of the BBC license fee. She has said the next announcement about it’s renewal will be the last. I am, of course, a huge fan of the Beeb: alongside the NHS, it is one of the few institutions which make the UK worth living in. You only have to watch programs like The Green Planet to realise how wonderful it is, and as this Guardian article explains, it does so much more. We would loose an institution of unparalleled, inestimable cultural value if we let the Tory p’tahks continue to play politics with it, using the beeb to distract us from the mess they have created.

To be fair, Dorries is not calling for an end of the BBC (I doubt any politician, apart from utter shits like Peter Bone, would do that), but alternative ways to fund it. Yet as the Guardian piece points out, the bbc is only as great as it is because of the independent way it is funded. ” The principle that matters is that everyone pays in, so it costs far less for a panoply of programming right across the taste spectrum than could ever be funded by subscriptions from a few.” We thus all have equal access to an incredible range of cultural, scientific and current affairs content: we must not allow the tories to threaten that so that only their rich mates can access the best content.

Is anyone else getting irritated with videos on Youtube suddenly becoming adverts? I’m sure I’m not the only one getting pissed off with this phenomenon. Youtube is one of the websites I use the most: like anyone else, I watch all sorts on it, from clips of my favourite films to vlogs about subjects I’m interested in. In the last few months though, I’ve noticed more and more vids being broken up by adverts. I don’t mean the ordinary adverts which you can choose to skip after a few seconds, which are irritating enough. I mean adverts where the person narrating the video – be it a film review say, or a piece about history – suddenly breaks the flow of the film to advertise some random, totally irrelevant product. The manufacturers of the product obviously pay them to do so, but to have a video which you may be enjoying suddenly broken up by an advert which you cannot skip, presented as part of the video itself, really pisses me off. It would be like me suddenly interrupting the flow of my blog entries to tell readers to buy a random, unrelated product. It strikes me as a complete sell out and I instantly loose all respect for whoever is delivering the film.

A few days ago, for example, I was watching a video by Calvin Dyson, a James Bond reviewer who I used to have a lot of respect for: the video was quite an interesting one about a 1987 James Bond TV special with Roger Moore, but about nine minutes in, Dyson suddenly started trying to flog a random brand of wallet. He too had obviously sold out to those trying to make money out of people’s interests. The problem is, it’s happening more and more on youtube as big corporations try to cash in on the growing popularity of it’s users, but in doing so they wash away the independence and integrity which made the site so great. Part of what made people like Dyson so interesting was their fresh, raw sense of independence; the fact they have no attachments to big, mainstream media. They are just creating videos for the love of the subject. As soon as they start getting paid to advertise things as part of the videos they make, however, they loose that independence, and with it my respect.

I was watching the BBC lunchtime news earlier, and I couldn’t help noticing a bit of a theme running through at least the first two stories: First there was a report about yet more parties in Downing Street during lockdown. Apparently civil servants there were breaking social distancing rules willy-nilly, having boozy parties whenever they wished. This coming on the back of the revelation that Boris Johnson had attended such a party just weeks before. These tory toffs clearly don’t think the rules don’t apply to them, and that they have a right to do whatever they like, no matter who it hurts or insults.

We then had the news of the arrogant prick Novak Djokovic, still trying to get into Australia to play in the open despite refusing to get vaccinated. He and those supporting him are now arguing that he’s being treated unfairly somehow, and that the Australian government should waive the rules and just let him in because of who he is. Just how arrogant can you get? I’m glad to see the Aussies are sticking to their guns and insisting no one enters without a vaccination.

Both stories obviously relate to the pandemic, but both are also about wealthy people attempting to use their privilege to escape the rules which apply to the rest of us. In both stories we see rich, white, able bodied people trying to escape the restrictions which we all must obey, just because of who they are. In both we find the same kind of arrogance and contempt for others; the same kind of entitled disregard for the wellbeing of those they see as below their inherent social rank. The only way to get passed this pandemic is if we all work together and obey the rules; but if that is so, it is people like this who are the problem.

I have described what I call my ‘rages’ on here before: how, due to my cp, I tend to express anger very viscerally and physically. I tend to lose control, and start shouting, shaking and throwing things. Well, today watching PMQs, they were worse than ever. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more furious with anyone than how I now feel with Boris Johnson. That he had the sheer, barefaced arrogance to stand in the House of Commons and attempt to justify throwing a party while the rest of the nation was sheltering from a deadly virus, is beyond contemptible. How dare he? How dare he carry on as if the rules don’t apply to him, offering lame excuse after lame excuse; patronising us with the gut-wrenching ‘I know best’ tone of a man who thinks political power is his birthright, and that nobody else has the authority to take it from him? It was more than I could stomach, and by the end I was shaking with rage. Between that and the sight of his Tory sycophants trying to cover the arse of their dear leader, I had to go for a walk afterwards to try to calm down. Why should we put up with these charlatans? As far as I am concerned the Conservatives are not a political party but a group of selfish, arrogant power-hungry disgraces to humanity unfit for government. They don’t care who else suffers or how unfair things are as long as they are on top. The party should be forced from office and disbanded immediately.

Some days I struggle to find something to write about on here, but today it’s obvious. The only problem is, I don’t know what to say about it. Of course, I was as furious as anyone to hear that Boris Johnson and his cronies thought it was perfectly ok to have a garden party at Downing Street in May 2020, and even more pissed off that his Tory chums were trying to justify and excuse it this morning. What do you expect when your country is being governed by a bunch of spoiled, arrogant scumbags who think they are above the law? The thing is, what can I say about it which will contribute anything meaningful? Naturally, part of me wants to launch into one of my rage-filled tirades, full of insults and swear words, about how the Tories are utterly unfit to be in government. While the rest of us were feeling the effects of isolation, they were behaving like they were too superior to have to obey the rules. Yet apart from potentially damaging my keyboard, that wouldn’t achieve anything: I’d hope anyone reading it would agree with me, so I wouldn’t be changing anyone’s mind. The thing is, I’m tired of getting furious; I’m tired at being frustrated that the country is currently being run by a bunch of arrogant, entitled scumbags, but knowing that, at the end of the day, I can’t do anything about it. So please take my fury as read while I try to find something more constructive to write about.

I suspect this will be the most amusing thing I’ll be able to blog about today (it’s either this or a post about arrogant Serbian tennis players who think they don’t need to be vaccinated, just because they’re champions). The wankmuffin Gove was trapped in a lift at the BBC for half an hour. “Cabinet minister Michael Gove missed an interview slot on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme earlier after getting stuck in a lift. The levelling up secretary missed his slot on Monday’s show, after an elevator in the BBC’s Broadcasting House stopped working.” Naturally I don’t believe in karma, but if I did, this would be the perfect demonstration. Gove has inflicted untold suffering of thousands of disabled people over the years, so perhaps he gets what he deserves. The arrogant, entitled tosser should have been using the stairs anyway. The only downside is, the p’tahk was eventually let out.