Lyn wrote this yesterday and I think it’s definitely worth linking to. It’s about her time living in a Scope home in the eighties, and the institutionalisation she witnessed in the residents there. She writes of how they were used to the routine of ”basket weaving, art, woodwork and so on.” and how it was intended ”To keep the. residents busy [and] to make them more alive but the opposite was true.” She then describes how she tried to break them out of that state and to shake things up, but was resisted. ”They had been Institutionalized by the rules and the routine and this is now the norm. Trying to change that comfortable state leads to fear. If you tell people that have been living in a way that is wrong, you are demeaning their lives. So if you are that one person in the room that is saying, then it’s you that is the problem.”

I think I know what Lyn is getting at. She and I disagree on the EU; she is saying people have been institutionalised by it, and so will stick with what they know. It’s a very good point: change is always resisted, and the advocates of change fought against. People will want to stick with what they know, so Lyn fears people will vote to stay in the EU simply because of that instinct. But I would, in reply, like to point out that this is not about resistance to change: things must change, or else stagnate and rot. Indeed, I see this issue as about changing the way we see ourselves: we should no longer think of ourselves in terms of belonging to a certain nation state, but as citizens of the world, working together and respecting one another. I see organisations like the EU, and indeed the UN, as a step towards that goal. Thus this is not about sticking with what one knows because it is comforting, but just the opposite: it’s about shaking off the old nation-state paradigm and seeing ourselves as part of something bigger and better. Lyn’s allusion applies equally to the state – that is the institution we must break free of. Lyn tells us how the residents of her old home did not talk to one another, but communication would be even harder if we withdraw from the community and shut ourselves away in our room.

I just rewatched Spectre having bought the DVD yesterday, and, first things first, I’d like to totally refute the criticisms made in the video I referenced in this entry. Spectre emphatically does not suck. While perhaps not as good as Skyfall, I now think the supposed ‘flaws’ cited in that review do not hold water. For starters, I saw no grounds to say that it was too slapstick or too Austin Powers. What I just watched was a serious (insofar as bond films can be serious) film addressing a serious, increasingly relevant issue. A film about a global organisation that wants to spy on everyone is highly salient, even speaking to concerns about globalisation and the EU. To tie those concerns into an organisation created by Fleming, rooting it into the Bond franchise’s history was a masterstroke. To bring blofeld and spectre back, updated to reflect contemporary fears but still using the iconography of the ‘classic’ 007 films such as the white cat, is not only great filmmaking but also says something about why this franchise is so special. It can both constantly reinvent itself and play with it’s own history. To criticise it for referencing it’s past, to say that to echo older bond films is somehow lazy or that characters like Blofeld or oddjob are now out of bounds because they have been pastiched in things like Austin Powers, is not only to completely miss the point but also to misunderstand the bond franchise and film as an art.

Another criticism that video made was that it was wrong to connect Bond and Blofeld as family; that that made the story too personal to Bond. His missions should be about the safety of the country, not him as a person; he is an anonymous government assassin, not a figure like Jason Bourne or Luke Skywalker (”James, I am your brother”). Thus that criticism holds a bit more water with me, but after a second viewing I now think they got away with it. Skyfall touched on Bond’s boyhood and family life, and this film leads directly on from that. In Skyfall, bond says Judy Dench’s M knows his full history, and in Spectre it is she who sets him on his path. Granted, perhaps that makes this film more about Bond, and perhaps it is a bit too coincidental that the leader of this evil organisation just happens to be Bond’s adopted brother, but I don’t think that makes this a bad film, and it certainly does not warrant disregarding for it. Even if it was more about Bond than other bond films, I thoroughly enjoyed the film I watched this afternoon, and found it a great addition to the franchise. Far from being holed, the plot works well, both speaking to the history of the franchise and continuing it’s relevance. As when I watched it in the cinema, it just left me dying for more.

I just caught up with The Night Manager on the bbc Iplayer, and would now thoroughly recommend you do the same. An adaptation of a John Le Carre novel, it concerns Jonathan Pine – polite, calm, charming, confident but self-deprecating, a little mysterious, very English – an ex army man who, at the piece’s opening, is working nights at a Cairo hotel. One night, a beautiful woman comes in, and asks Pine to keep a document safe for her. From there, a web of intrigue unfolds, involving the arms trade, the Arab spring, and a branch of the british secret service apparently based in a grotty flat in Victoria. It is a well written, well directed piece: perhaps not quite Bond, but it certainly has bondish overtones, especially in it’s hotel-heavy mise-en-scene. It drew me in: I began to care for the lead character quite early; I felt the anguish he feels at the tragic mistake he makes in this opening episode, and the ending left me dying to see what happens next.

The choice on the 23rd of june is clear:

[img description=”undefined image” align=”centre”]/images/ballot paper.jpg[/img]

(Sorry it’s not very clear, but you get the idea)

I have always thought that there must be more to human existence than the state. To keep ourselves divided into petty little nation states is to waste our potential. Think what we can achieve if humanity United, combined it’s resources and worked together. Of course, I am well aware of the problems involved in establishing a world government: some say it would be too big to be democratic, while others argue that it would eradicate human variety. Both are problematic although not impossible to overcome: after all, different cultures can exist perfectly well within one country. The Welsh have not lost their welshness despite six hundred years of union with England. Thus I think those who voice such objections do so for other reasons, veiling their arguments with liberal sounding ideals when in fact their arguments are born of xenophobia and nationalism. They want to maintain essentially arbitrary borders and preserve the ‘us’ and ‘them’ mindset, not realising that, far from creating a universal, bland culture, the mixing of peoples is the only way a culture evolves.

That’s why I plan to vote to stay in the EU in the referendum, the date of which I am told will be announced later today. The European Union might not be perfect, and I certainly have problems with CaMoron’s so called renegotiation (he wants to remake the EU in his own neoliberal image, bastardizing it from it’s original ideals), but there are ideals at stake here which are far more important than the present moment. This is about going beyond nation states; it’s about working with our neighbours rather than building walls. It’s about not shutting ourselves from the world. Surely we cannot be so shortsighted, so moronic, that we decide to shut ourselves off for our closest neighbour. Europe is not perfect – it needs reform, but we need to e a participant in that reform, not a shortsighted irrelevent little island to it’s north.

I just got in from a good, long walk, only to find this sad news being reported. Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, has died aged 89. I don’t want to do too much eulogising, save to say that Lee was a writer I truly respected. I first came across Mockingbird at school, and it has always stayed with me: it’s one of those books which profoundly effect the way one looks at the world. Mind you, I was less impressed with Go Set a Watchman, which I have yet to finish. Nonetheless, the literary world and the world as a whole has today lost one of it’s leading lights.

I just came across something rather heartwarming on my friend Kate’s Facebook page. There was a picture of a man with CP; underneath, a message asked everyone to share it, explaining that the author of the post, the boys mum, had posted previously about her son’s Ipad being stolen. It had been taken from him at Cadbury World in Barcelona, but the thief had seen the post and returned the ipad. ”The thief had a change of heart and has returned it to Cadbury World’s head office in Barcelona! They have just called his dad to confirm it’s not damaged and they are returning it to us this week”. That really made me smile. The boy obviously was using his Ipad as a communication aid, as I do, and I know what it feels like to have one of those stolen. The thief must have realised how vital the Ipad was to him. I’m glad to see he had a conscious – if only every such case ended like this. The post ends by saying that this goes to show that ‘people power’ works; it also demonstrates that posts like this on facebook can achieve results after all.

I haven’t been to Soho in ages. I went up there a few times when I first moved down to the capital, but we decided it was kind of dangerous for me to get dressed up and go there on my own of a friday or Saturday evening, so my visits there stopped. But I rather miss it: it struck me as a unique part of the city, full of life, where one can express the sides of your personality which otherwise must remain hidden. Part of me wants to bite the bullet, break out the sequins and head up there again, but having just come across this I’m not sure. Soho is dying: Soho regular Kalvin Ryder explains how the area is not what it once was. The bulldozers are moving it; it is being cleaned up, made more ‘family friendly’. While some may argue that that must be a good thing, it is the eradication of a community, the obliteration of one of London’s most distinct corners. It’s painfully obvious that Boris and his intolerant Tory pals hate having such an area in central London – they want the city remade in their image: white, straight, rich and small-minded. If this article is correct, Soho will soon be just like any other part of central london: all coffee bars, book shops and offices, and we would have lost one of the coolest parts of the city.

I have been feeling rather bad recently that I haven’t written anything substantial in ages. I find myself wondering what I contribute to society, and telling myself I should be writing books or scripts by now. I look at Lyn, in her studio every day for hours on end working on her music. Yet another voice in my head points out that I contribute in other ways: I still volunteer at school, where there are a couple of big projects coming up; the same goes with UEL. As for my writing, when you think about it the word count for my blog must now be well into the hundreds of thousands. While the last thing I wrote that you might call substantial was my masters thesis, I’ve contributed a hundred words or so to the electronic ether every day for quite some time. I know my entries are usually quite short and light in terms of analysis, but I don’t think they’re completely worthless. I rather like jotting down my thoughts on a different subject every day; the difficulty with a more sustained piece of text is finding a topic that interests you enough that you want to keep working on it. While I search for that subject – and I have no doubt it will come – I’m content to keep blogging. After all, it isn’t exactly nothing – while short, this form of prose has a kind of directness to it which I kind of like; taken as a whole, moreover, I’d argue my blog constitutes a fairly substantial body of work.

I feel I ought to flag this quite shocking news up. The government wants to ban public bodies such as students’ unions boycotting Israeli imports. ”Under the plan all publicly funded institutions will lose the freedom to refuse to buy goods and services from companies involved in the arms trade, fossil fuels, tobacco products or Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.” They justify it by saying that such boycotts foster antisemitism, but that’s bull. This amounts to a gross infringement of civil rights: the Tories want to prevent us standing up for what we believe. Of course, the situation in Israel is very complex, and one must be careful not to stray into antisemitism; but in many ways what he Israeli government is doing amounts to the wholehearted persecution of Palestinians. It is no better than apartheid, and we must have the right to demonstrate our disapproval of it just as we did with the one in South Africa.

I was thinking about deliberately not posting today, just to end my year-long run of entries, but this is just too amusing not to note. It seems that CaMoron is doing such a fine job of mucking up the country, even his aunt is protesting against him: ”David Cameron’s aunt has told a protest she is against cuts to services proposed by Oxfordshire County Council. On Saturday Clare Currie spoke at a demonstration in Oxford that saw hundreds of people march through the city centre.” When even members of your own family is protesting against you,, and virtually the whole country views you with something approaching revulsion, surely it’s time to go.

Lyn and I had another awesome night last night: we went to see the Who at Wembley. We had a great time, rocking out with a timeless mega-band. To be honest though, now that I come to think about it, there’s not that much I feel I can say. To list the tracks they played would just produce a list of tracks; it would not convey the energy or atmosphere in the SSE Arena last night. To see one of the all-time great bands perform their greatest hits was incredible. I was especially struck by the visuals projected to the back of the stage: winding, swirling images often referencing the band’s cinematic life. I must say too how impressed I was with the venue – it would seem that last night I discovered yet another of London’s great places. A place where, like at the O2, awesome things happen; but the SSE is smaller that the O2, giving the gig a more intimate feel, which I felt suited the aged rockers (both onstage and in the audience). I’d love to head up there again, if just on one of my exploratory trips, but even better to see another mega-band.

I had been planning to launch into a tirade on how the neoliberal belief that competition drives up standards is a delusion rejected by everyone but the most imbecilic*, and about how opening the NHS up to the market would put thousands of lives at risk, but I think I’ll just direct you here instead – it’s far more fun.

*Anything run for profit only has the illusion of improvement. It leads to corners being cut, everyone’s safety and welfare being disregarded behind the urge to make money. Instead of pushing up standards, competition leads to the greed of the entrepreneur taking priority over the needs of those who need help. The Tory worldview is thus utter folly: a total delusion born of selfishness. It is a fiction anyone capable of thought can see through, but one tories must cling to in order to pretend they don’t just care about themselves.

I owe my life to a doctor; they are the profession I respect the most. I take pride in the fact I live in a society where healthcare is free at the point of use, and where the healthcare system is staffed by the best professionals in the world. The doctors of the NHS work tirelessly, saving lives day in, day out. They deserve all our respect, so to see them treated so badly yesterday by Jeremy hunt was more than I could stomach. How that petty little embarrassment to humanity cold just come in and impose his will on doctors, disregarding there concerns with an air of superiority only a Tory could possess, enrages me. These are people many of us owe our lives to: how can this sniveling piece of shit whose whore of a mother should be punished for giving birth to such an arrogant little fuck treat them so badly? How can Hunt still be in office this morning? If he had any honour, he would have offered his resignation last night. But of course, no tory has honour. All they care about is what [i]they[/i] want, imposing their will on us. They do not care who suffers as long as their profit-driven plan comes first; and indeed, like many I suspect this is all part of their plan to undermine the NHS until it collapses and they can install a private system, and only their rich friends will get the best care. It’s sickening to see this happen before my eyes.

In an effort to combat the type of obscene injustice I blogged about yesterday, Lyn and I created a new Facebook group called Care Package Cuts. We want it to be a mutual support group for people with disabilities now facing cuts to their personal care. There are, of course, quite a few such groups out there now, but this one is run by and for severely disabled people, most of whom know firsthand the fear of having ones care cut. The group can be accessed here.

Today started really rather well. I got an email from a lady I work with at school this morning, asking whether I’d be interested in the newly-established Charlton and Woolwich film Festival. That proposal was too delicious to turn down – apart from a part of Antonioni’s ‘Blow Up’ having been filmed in a nearby park, I wasn’t aware of much of a film culture around here – so I replied that of course I’d love to be involved. We’re going to meet next week during half term to discuss a plan of action, and the festival’s website mentions a meeting in a local pub on the twenty-fourth I plan to go to. The opportunity to meet local cinephiles made me really excited.

When Lyn got up, however, she told me something which changed my mood utterly. She had been speaking online to a friend of hers who lives in Liverpool, after I had gone to bed. He has very severe CP, and had told Lyn that he’d received news that his care was going to be cut. I checked his facebook page: the poor man was despairing. He needs round the clock support, but now is in agonizing limbo, having to wait a week for social services to tell him how much care he’ll get.

Words fail me. No doubt this is a result of government cuts. What sort of government, what sort of people, could justify cutting the support people need to live, and function as members of society? Suddenly it hits home: if they are so heartless as to cut this man’s support, they can cut anyone’s. The bastards do not care – how could anyone with a shred of humanity do such a thing. This guy has really severe CP, yet they have him wondering whether he’ll be able to get out of bed, eat, go to the bathroom. How dare they inflict so much anguish on anyone, simply to satisfy their petty, greed-based agenda? And all so that they can build their ‘low tax economy’ where their rich pals hoard their money while those who need help are left isolated, alone and starving.

Something must be done – this barbarity cannot continue. With this man’s permission, lyn and I plan to tell the press, although, being controlled by the very bastards pushing through the cuts, I doubt they would bat an eyelid. As enraged as I feel, as much as I want to march up to milbank and end each and every one of their obscene, selfish lives, I know I cannot. All I can do is sit here shaking with rage at the injustice of it all.

Confirming what I have long suspected, the Canary is reporting today that the British press is the most biassed and right-wing in Europe. ” Asked about coverage of issues like housing, crime, health, immigration, and economics, the British media was viewed [by survey respondents] consistently as having a right-wing bias. And there were always more people who said the press favoured the right over the left.” It’s pretty obvious, really: the reason why the insults to humanity currently ruling us aren’t being given the pounding they deserve is that their right-wing friends control the media. Editors won’t say a bad word about CaMoron and his pals as long as their taxes are low. Besides, they all know eachother; buddies scratching one another’s back. And as soon as someone tries to speak out, or even try to tell the other side of the story, it is instantly derided as left wing or communist. It is sickening how bad things have got. Day after day, I see reports of the suffering the Tories are causing, with people with disabilities dying in their thousands, but none of it appears in the mainstream pres.

It’s getting windy, here in the city

Bins are starting to shift – oh my, it’s swift.

Really starting to blow trees to and fro;

Bins fly around, causing such a sound

A cacophony of wind, a great resounding din;

Outside she grows: blows and blows;

Maelstrom pounding maelstrom. While, in here, all is quiet

and warm

Although I’m not sure how far I believe it, according to this Mirror report, David CaMoron could be planning to step down and hold a snap election later this year, whatever the verdict of the EU referendum. I must say I find it unlikely: that bastard seems to want to cling to power as long as possible. But the article says he might be intending to catch Labour off guard. If that is so, we must be ready; the tories have already caused too much suffering, and this might be too great a gift to waste.

I just came across yet another buffoon railing against the apparent evil of political correctness, saying how it stifles free speech and so on. Such people annoy me, for they use a principal we all hold dear – freedom of speech – to defend their right to be a bigot. They say we should all have the right to offend and be offended, but it occurs to me that that is to misunderstand and misrepresent the idea behind political correctness. Of course we should have the right to insult one another, but those insults should be due to what one has said or done, not because one belongs to a particular group of people. Point out my failings by all means, but to say those failings are due to me being a man, a cripple, a trekkie or member of whatever other minority is not acceptable as it tars an entire group of people with the same brush. That is lazy thinking; it is not logical. I am a man, I am lazy, but not all men are lazy. Rather than stifling free speech or coddling people, then, political correctness safeguards against such broad-stroke thinking; it stops us relying on stereotypes when making judgements of others. I fear that those who oppose political correctness would prefer to have those stereotypes unquestioned: they want the right to use racial slurs because it’s easier than having to assess everyone on their own merrits.

I don’t think I like alcohol any more. Of course, my tastebuds haven’t changed, and no doubt were I to have a beer I’d probably enjoy it: I don’t like what alcohol does to me, or the power it has over me. I don’t like looking forward to it all week; I don’t like how it tempts me to go to the pub when I know driving my chair back drunk will be dangerous. I don’t like how, whenever I have a pint, I always want more and more. I don’t like how it turns me into an arrogant arsehole who thinks it’s somehow manly or cool to drink until I’m sloshed. I dislike how it makes me resent people who say, after I’ve had about three beers, that I better not have any more. I don’t like how I somehow think that to have a good time, alcohol must be involved. I don’t like the look of sadness and disappointment on Lyn’s face when she sees me drunk; or being to drunk to help her. I don’t like waking up in the morning, knowing I have once again fallen back into childish habits and got myself paralytic, after promising myself I wouldn’t. I dislike having a ‘break’ for a few months, only to get as bad as ever the moment the break is over. I hate it – I hate it all, and I want rid of it. I don’t want anything more to do with alcohol. No more ‘breaks’, as they just have me looking forward to an arbitrary end point, after which the problem starts again. Nor am I going to ‘just have one’, as that doesn’t solve anything – I still retain the taste, pandering to the problem. I mean to stop completely. I’ve had enough of this stupidity, enough desiring a substance which only causes trouble. Alcohol has a power over me that it is time I shook off, and the only way to do that is to stop drinking altogether.

Before yesterday, I didn’t know much about TTIP. I was vaguely aware of it, but didn’t really understand what it was. Then I saw it being discussed briefly on this RT interview with Kerry-anne Mendoza, Editor-in-Chief of The Canary, and began to wonder why there weren’t currently mass protests over it. TTIP is an international deal which gives private companies to sue governments over legislation which prevents them from making profit. In other words, a company could come in, and if there was legislation or a public body in their way, they could sue the government for millions in taxpayers’ pounds. The greed of the individual would come before the authority of the state; power would be in the hands of the businessman, whose profit would be more important than our welfare. We can effectively wave goodbye to the NHS: under TTIP, a private health insurance company will be able to just wade in and claim that the NHS prevents it from making money – it will have to be broken up. Why aren’t we all out protesting against this disastrous loss of sovereignty? And why hasn’t there been anything about this in the mainstream media? Things like this are making me turn away from news sources like the beeb, and towards independent sites like The Canary.

After today, I don’t think anyone could ever accuse me of neglecting to update my blog. I’m pleased to say that, as far as I can see, today marks the day that I’ve posted an entry every day for the last year. Please feel free to check the archive and correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m quite sure I have, and I’m proud of it. It wasn’t always easy, finding something to write on here every day, but I just wanted to test myself. I know it lead to me posting any old nonsense on here some days, but I told myself to keep it up, to see if I could stick at it. I’ve tried it once or twice before, but always ended up missing days and having to start again. Now that I’ve succeeded, I intend to keep going, posting an entry daily – it is good writerly discipline – but forgive me if I don’t pressure myself to post every day quite as strongly as I did this last year.

Shortly after posting my entry yesterday, I began to wonder whether I was becoming too London-centric. I had assumed the Star Trek event was going to be in london, either at the Excel or somewhere else, because this is where everything happens, isn’t it? The website had just referred to a ‘UK convention announcement’, though, and I’d somehow forgotten that there are plenty of places outside of london where cool things can happen, too. I love this city, it’s vibrancy and energy; if you live here, it’s easy to forget that London is not the centre of the world. The capital seems to have a self-important buzz to it, and that seems to have infected me. After all, this is were the queen is escorted to her engagements by 007, and where Monty Python performed their last ever gig: surely that makes it the coolest place on earth, doesn’t it? So why wouldn’t the star trek event automatically be in London, rather than a poxy little town like Birmingham? It’s a mentality lots of people here seem to have, and, having livd here for six years, something I too am guilty of.

I’m currently feeling rather disappointed and deflated, not because of the deal CaMoron just struck with the EU (which, let’s face it, had probably been reached ages ago and sold to us as a ‘last minute deal’ so the tory p’tahk could look all prime ministerial). The wind has just been knocked out of me for an entirely different reason. A few days ago, I got wind that there was going to be another Destination Star Trek convention in the UK this year, and that the location would be announced today. I got all excited about this; I thought it would probably be in the Excel centre again. If that was so, I was planning to immediately zoom over there to get tickets (having forgotten what happened last time). The chance to meet Sir Patrick Stewart again, making sure I got a photo taken this time, was too good to miss. This morning, I was counting down the hours till noon. Then the news came: Destination Star Trek 2016 will be at the NEC Birmingham. I instantly felt deflated. Of course, I could get myself up to Birmingham if I really wanted, but I don’t think I’ll bother. The cool thing about the Excel is that it’s just over the river, a cable car ride away. Birmingham is more complicated to get to, and given Patrick Stewart isn’t on the guest list, it’s not worth it. What a Pity: I’d been gearing myself up for something potentially awesome, a possible repeat of that incredible Saturday in 2014, only for it to dissolve into nothing. Birmingham? Why Birmingham?

The more I think about it, the less I realise I know and understand about gender. I’m fine with the basic principal: gender is a social construct which needs to be reread; it is a artificial barrier to be crossed. That’s fine with me, and I’ve been doing that myself, on and off, for a while. Yet when you go beyond that starting point, things get kind of hazy. For starters, some might say this form of nonconformity is itself a form of conformity, inasmuch as I’m sticking to the standard dress code of ‘men’ and ‘women’. It’s also still something of an event for me; something I do every few days for a bit of relaxation or fun. I’m still predominantly a guy; I still conform to the social construction of manhood most of the time. Other people go far beyond this, politicising it into areas I don’t really understand, to be honest. That, I must admit, sort of worries me: am I pretending to be something I’m not, playing in an area I ought not to be? Yet, time and again, everyone in this area faces that same contradiction: how does one reread a gender binary without automatically adhering to one gender or the other? Even if one fully transitions from one gender to the other, is that not still a type of gender conformity? (It’s not that simple, of course – transpeople don’t transition just to make a political statement). Others have postulated a creation of a third gender; but even then the features of any such gender will inevitably be set down in relation to the other two. The question I find myself asking is, how do we escape a naturally occurring binary? But to say it is natural contradicts the assumption that gender is a social construct. The more I think about gender, the more lost I get an the less I realise I understand. At the same time, I think the ‘each to their own’ principal applies: I may not understand gender, nor why I like dressing up. I just do, and if by doing so I add to the infinite diversity of humanity, then that must surely be all to the good. I am who I am, whether I’m in trousers or my pink tutu; and what applies to me of course applies to anyone else. Whether you call me a man or a woman does not matter – they are just labels, as superficial as any other.

I’m so astonished and pleased to see this quote being attributed to this man that I’m gonna repost this image here. I just found it on facebook; I only hope it isn’t a hoax. I never thought Clarkson would be a Corbyn type of guy.

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It has been a terrible week for the tories. According to this piece in The Canary, the tories have suffered no less than nine humiliating defeats: it started on monday, when the Lords shot down IDS’s attempt to redefine child poverty, presumably in an attempt to hide the extent he’s making kids suffer. Then they had to abandon their proposed benefit cap for cares after it was ruled to be discriminatory and offensive by the high court. And then, of course, there’s their historic defeat over the bedroom tax. The list goes on, but the odd thing is, you would not know it if you stuck to the mainstream news. The beeb, for example, seems to be making out it’s just business as usual. Where are the calls for resignations or inquiries? Came there none. How can we possibly get rid of these jokes, these insults to humanity when, thanks to media bias, they come away from a week like this virtually unblemished.

I have long dreamed of a united world; a single world united as one nation. Yet, discussing this with Lyn recently, she pointed out that such an enormous state would be impossible to control. She was right: how would elections be organised, for one? It would probably require some kind of dictatorship where the diversity I love would need to be stamped out and the world would adopt a single uniform culture. Yet that would imply we cannot be united, and must remain divided into nationstates. However,follow that logic through and one must oppose the EU too, as it is born of the same idealism. Could I therefore be wrong about the European project? I dream of a world united without borders or devision, where humanity works together towards common goals; yet such a state would be so big that it could not possibly be democratic. The same could be said of europe as it moves towards ever closer union. After all, how could one government represent all humanity in it’s rich diversity. If that is so, then my utopia in which humanity’s petty devisions and disputes are outgrown cannot possibly be realised, and we are forever doomed to squabble as petty nation states.

I received some very worrying data from my colleagues at GAD yesterday. According to this, disability-related hate-crime has seen a sharp rise. ”15% of people have witnessed at least one hate crime or hate incident based on disability in the last year, according to research released today by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust on Holocaust Memorial Day (Wednesday 27 January 2016). In total, over a quarter (27%) say they’ve witnessed a form of hate crime or hate incident in the last year, defined as acts of violence or hostility directed at people because of who they are or who someone thinks they are. More than two thirds (69%) of those who’ve witnessed abuse of this kind say they regret not challenging it.” The report also states that abuse towards minorities on the whole is on the rise. Again, I can only add that it is a sign of the times: with resources being cut, those the tories and the right-wing press portray as scroungers are going to be ostracised and victimised more and more. Fortunately I haven’t experienced much abuse, but I’m beginning to think, given the way social attitudes towards people with disabilities are heading, it’s only a matter of time before I do.

I love to travel, and go a-roaming whenever I get the opportunity, so I find this story in today’s Independent quite disheartening. A woman with CP was forced off a British Airways flight from London City Airport to Glasgow last october. ”ParalympicsGB athletes are being encouraged to boycott British Airways when flying to the Games in Rio de Janeiro this summer, after the airline allegedly forced a disabled passenger off a flight and broke her electric wheelchair…She was told to leave after staff realised they would not be able to fit her electric wheelchair in the hold, despite being informed 72 hours in advance that she would be travelling with it.” As tenuous a link as this may seem, I suspect this is symptomatic of the times: with the cuts beginning to bite, society will see people with disabilities as more and more of a burden, so we can expect more crap like this to come.

My parents just paid us a visit. It was good to see them, catch up with family news and so on. As usual I came in for a bit of a nag for not writing anything more indepth such as magazine articles, but I suppose it’s true that I could write things with a bit more substance to them. Blog entries are all very well and good, but you can only go so far with this form of short prose.

However, Mum and Dad also told me something that made me raise an editorial eyebrow. As you may know, The Reith Lectures are this year being given by Stephen Hawking. When in London my parents stay at my grandmothers’; my uncle is also there at the moment. This morning, when he heard Hawking on the radio, he apparently called my mum ”Come quick! Matt’s on the radio!” It was, of course, an innocent enough prank, but I must say it gets my goat that people still liken me to Hawking just because I use a communication aid. Joke or not, it belies a serious problem. Other than the fact we both use VOCAs, I have very little in common with Hawking: I’m a writer, blogger and film maker, not a physicist, so why would people think it’s acceptable to liken me to him just because I supposedly sound like him? I’m not trying to get at my uncle, but the supposition which underpins his joke worries me. It is essentially grouping a set of people together because they share a common trait, and history teaches us that that can be a big mistake.

Yesterday was an incredible day. When, on Wednesday, Lyn told me that we were going to see Adele on Sunday, I assumed she meant we were going to a concert. I didn’t know Lyn was into her, I thought, but maybe she’ll perform the theme from Skyfall. Fortunately, Lyn had something far more awesome in mind. Yesterday was adele Drake’s birthday, and we had been invited to a get-together at the Royal Festival Hall on the south bank to celebrate.

Adele Drake is a remarkable woman – one of those people who stand out, and whose life stories makes one’s jaw drop in admiration and amazement. She once headed Drake Music, which enables musicians with disabilities to perform. Lyn was involved in it, long before I met her, which is why we were inited yesterday. It was great to see L, chatting away to old friends. I tried to keep to one side, as the day wasn’t about me, but socialite that I am I ended up getting into things. I spoke to adele quite a lot, even showing her my thesis on my Ipad.

By the time it came to go home, I was left wanting more; there were some truly brilliant people there yesterday. As usual, drake music has had to cut back a lot, but I got the impression yesterday that a few plans had been set afoot. It felt like the beginning of something, or at least a restart. The warm afterglow of the Paralympics having long since fizzled out, people with disabilities are becoming increasingly marginalised, making projects like Drake Music and indeed the Paraorchestra all the more important. Thus I hope something comes out of yesterday and can’t wait to see what it is.

I suppose you could say nothing unusual happened yesterday. After all, what is unusual about two mates going to a football match? It’s something lots of guys do of a Saturday afternoon. Yesterday, then, me and James went to see Charlton play Blackburn Rovers. We had arranged it over facebook, and I’d razzed down the hill a couple of weeks ago to buy the tickets. Yesterday, James met me here at two, pushed me down to the Valley, and we had a beer before watching a somewhat unremarkable game which ended in a one all draw. I was back here by five, rather cold and looking forward to dinner. Nothing special really – similar stories could be told about people all over the country yesterday. Going to watch a football match with a friend is quite a normal thing to do. Why, then, do I think it’s so cool, and feel so grateful to James for taking the timeout to do it with me?

I’m furious after just reading the closing line of this Welfare Weekly piece. The article is about an open letter from charities such as Mencap to the DWP, asking Iain Duncan-smith to urgently rethink his cuts to Employment Support Allowance. It details how, instead of helping people back into work, such cuts leave them more vulnerable and isolated. ”Jan Tregelles, who chairs the DBC and is also the Chief Executive of Mencap, said the poll ‘should make the government listen, especially when this cut seriously undermines their plans to halve the employment gap experienced by disabled people’. She said: ‘Not only are disabled people telling us loud and clear that this cut to ESA will make their lives harder, with both their health and chances of returning to work being harmed, but we also see how the general public are deeply concerned by these cuts to disability benefits’.” But instead of listening to such concerns as any human with a shred of compassion would, the tory scumbags dismissed this letter as scaremongering. I can barely believe their inhumanity or their arrogance. As long as they can hoard their money and cut tax, they don’t care who suffers or how many people top themselves after being driven to despair because of the cuts. On top of that they have the affront to claim to be making things better. The tories sicken me.

I just watched the first part of the beeb’s new series on the history of China, and found it fascinating. China is a place I don’t know much about: it just seems so different to what we’re accustomed to in europe, especially in terms of it’s language. The question I find myself pondering is, is there a common ancestor of the Chinese and Indo-European languages? They seem so different, you wouldn’t think there would be, but that would imply human language evolved twice in two separate places. It’s just one of those odd questions which has me pondering. I suppose we’ll never know given any such ancestor tongue will inevitably pre-date records. Something to look into nonetheless.

Far be it for me to criticise anybody for their spelling, but this Mirror story is too funny for me not to flag up. A home office website intended to help migrants learn to speak english was criticised for spelling ‘language’ wrong. Talk about epic fail! It has been called ‘beyond parody’. Of course I’m in two minds about the whole concept: on a purely practical level, most people get by more easily when they speak the local language; on the other hand, this move whiffs a bit of the government trying to dictate to people, demanding that everyone conform and use English. Either way, you’d think that if they were going to make such a website, they would take a little more care with their spelling.

It’s raining buckets here in Charlton, and it looks like I’ll be staying in today, but at least we aren’t having the epic snowstorms forecast in america. In those, people like me and Lyn really are stuck at home – it often becomes quite a problem. However, I just saw this cool Huffington Post piece about a man who has converted an electric wheelchair into a snow plough. With his father and brothers’ help, 30-year-old Tim Taylor has converted what looks like a standard powerchair into a snowplough, complete with scoop at the front. The article does not say whether they had to soup up the motors, but I think they would have had to. Nevertheless, if weather over gets much worse, this is something I’d have to consider investing in, too.

Playing about with my film studies hat on, I created the following image simply to juxtapose two highly climactic moments from the Star Trek films. In a way it occurs to me that they mirror each other, a fact I find interesting enough to note.

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Last night I watched quite an interesting BBC 3 documentary about freak shows in the US, in which ”actor and presenter Adam Pearson explores the world of freak shows and meets people who use their medical conditions to educate, entertain and make money.” Far be it for me to deny anyone a chance to make a bit of cash, but I found the programme extremely troubling. The fact that such shows, in which essentially disabled people put their bodies on display for all to gawp at, says a lot about how people with disabilities are still perceived. Judging by this program, things have not come on much since the nineteenth century. Of course, you could argue, as Pearson does, that it is a matter of taking control and ownership of one’s body; these people do what they do because they are proud of who they are. Yet it struck me that you could also liken it to selling your body, and surely there are better ways to make money than parading around as a freak. I’m no stranger to the odd bit of exhibitionism: Spastic Ballet attests to that; but as I wrote here, spastic ballet was supposed to be ironic. It was also a one-off, and not for money. What the people in this program were doing was completely different, and I must say it left a bad taste in my mouth. Playing with perceptions of disability is one thing; deliberately conforming to those perceptions in order to make money is quite another, and does the rest of us a disservice,