Something rather cool happened yesterday. I was just pottering around in my study at about lunchtime, when Lyn called me. She was in her studio, and sounded excited. She said she had been naughty: she had bought another speaker. Audiophile that Lyn is, she already has plenty, but I still said it was cool. Lyn and my dad share a liking for Bowers and Wilkins speakers – i can’t blame her for buying the best.

Lyn had bought it from ebay, so we expected it to arrive in two or three days. However at around dinner time, our doorbell rang. To our complete surprise, there was a guy there, who handed over over a speaker! I was astounded. Apparently the guy Lyn bought the speaker from lived quite near.

Lyn, of course, was over the moon. She has a new toy to play with. As I sit here on the sofa blogging, she is busily trying it out, blasting out tunes as joyful as a child. It is quite a wonderful, happy spectacle.

I think I’m developing a kind of arrogance or big-headedness about myself. When out and about, I seem to have adopted an internal sneer; a contempt for anything and anyone which irritates me. Of course, I better make sure this new mean streak does not get out of hand, but I think it has something to do with passing my Masters. I am now more confident than I ever have been in my abilities: I know I’m not stupid; I know I can write, research and analyse. Part of me thinks that it is therefore time I stood up (metaphorically) for myself, held my head high, and stopped being a pushover.

Of course, I’ll need to make sure I don’t take this too far – on must, naturally, remember to be courteous to all – but I think I could benefit from being a little more selfconfident and forthright. Far too often I let people push in front of me in queues; I let opinions and statements I know are incorrect go unchallenged; I allow myself to be looked down upon and my abilities be questioned. No More! I am Matt Goodsell, Master of Arts! I am not an idiot; just because I’m using a wheelchair does not mean you can push in front of me; and when you are wrong you will be told. I think I deserve some respect, and I now plan to get it.

I just gave UKIP: The First 100 Days a second viewing. When I first saw it last night I was very taken by it, but I could tell it required and deserved another watch; now that I have done so, I find myself utterly taken with this brave and sophisticated piece of television.

On one level, you could say this constitutes Channel Four standing up to UKIP. Parts of this program are very anti-ukip, making no effort to hide it’s underlying racism. Last night I was applauding Channel Four for having the bravery to stand up to this xenophobic party: it clearly spells out what a catastrophe a ukip government would be. Yet after the second viewing, I think the film’s approach is more subtle: it tries to show both sides of the argument. This is not the hatchet job part of me wants someone to make; it is very careful not to present ukip or their supporters as monsters I especially like how actual footage of ukip’s bufooonery, including footage of Farage’s speeches, was interspersed into the fiction, so there can be no debate over their accuracy*. This is a very clever move on the part of channel four, because, this way, the film cannot just be dismissed as just propaganda. At the same time, it spells out what a disaster a ukip government would be, and the division it would cause..

Parts of this film had me in appoplexisms of rage last night and again this morning. UKIP have that effect on me, even when they are presented in a fiction. part of me wants to launch into a venomous tirade against Farage and the bunch of idiots he calls a party, but this film reminds us that pure bile is not the solution. It spells out the folly of UKIP, yet holds back from going too far. It is a drama, a fiction; but beneath that fiction lie very salient truths about the dangers this party represents and the dark places it would lead us to. It is thus a brave bit of tv for which it’s makers need to be congratulated. This is why channel four is great.

*I nevertheless just read that ukip has complained to ofcom about the program, and farage has called it biassed and partisan.

I still have a strange fixation with the Olympics. It is not the sport that excites me, but the bidding process and choice of venue. The Olympics draw the world’s attention onto a city, each unique and vibrant. For a month or so, a city can show itself off; the world gets to explore a new metropolis, a new city-scape, a new people. Through the olympics we become flaneurs walking the streets of a city in a moment of celebration. The way in which each city choses to reveal itself to the world fascinates me. Yet, no two cities are alike; each has it’s own idiosyncrasies, it’s own unique heartbeat. How, then, can anyone choose one city over another?

It seems to me that it is a selection process like no other, with the steaks higher than any other. Countries compete directly with each other as in no other area. Unlike in war, this is entirely peaceful; unlike international sport, this is not about the physical prowess of individuals. It is a matter of enticing a committee to choose one city over another; about who has the best application, the best city. The associated costs aside, being awarded an olympic games by the IOC is a huge source of national pride, and thus it is a highly competitive process. Vast amounts of capital – cultural, social and monetary – rest on the IOC’s decision. Like winning the world cup, a host receives the esteem of the world; the benefits, though, are more concrete and long-term, often involving the opportunity to transform a city and refresh one’s cultural image.

Soon, cities and countries will start preparing to bid for the 2024 games, where I suspect the tension will be higher than ever: On the other hand we have Paris, no doubt still resenting loosing out to London in 2005 and desperate to host the games after so many set-backs. The French take a huge amount of pride in their capital; one senses they resented not being the first city to host the olympics three times, and want to catch up with London. This, together with the fact that 2024 will mark a century since the last Paris olympics, means this bid will really matter to them.

One might think Paris will be a shoe-in because of this, but the Americans, I sense, want to win this bid just as badly. After all, they were just as disappointed in 2005: they take enormous pride in New York. They were hurt deeply when the big apple bid failed, and again when Chicago’s bid for the games of 2016 was rejected, in the first round no less. American pride is such that they also think it’s time they hosted the games again; they think, as ”the worlds greatest country”, they deserve it, and don’t give a rat’s ass about Paris. Of course, one could argue that selecting Boston over say, New York or LA – truly world cities – implies that the American Olympic Committee is only putting a token bid in, but I really think they want it.

Thus, given that Rome and Berlin (two national capitals) are also bidding, we have a very interesting situation. A huge amount of national pride rests on the IOC’s decision. Only one city can win, meaning that either america or France will be disappointed yet again. You might say it’s only an olympics, and that is true; but to have a city chosen to host the world’s biggest party is a huge source of pride. To loose out to another city in another country automatically feels like a slight, regardless of how patriotic one is. For either country to be rejected yet again will hurt badly – there could well be friction.

Indeed, given how much the US contributes to the IOC, rejecting them in favour of what to the Americans would be yet another Old European capital could be gravely risky. The americans invest a huge amount of capital, both monetary and cultural, into their bids. Hypothetically, another rejection could push them over the edge: they could withdraw from the olympic movement altogether; without the US, the entire event would lose it’s credibility and relevance. From that point of view, the committee has no choice but to go with the American candidate. But could it really say no to paris yet again? Such a blow would be truly devastating for the french. I’d hate to be in the IOC’s shoes.

That’s what interests me: how will they play it, and who will the IOC choose. To a certain extent, I guess my fascination with this stems from my gleeful pride at living in a city which went through this process and won, and at getting to watch the losers from 2005 have to go through this process all over again; indeed, I admit there may be an element of Schadenfreude stoking my interest in this. Yet the subject, given it’s context, is oddly intriguing to me. Being awarded the olympic games is a huge signifier of a city’s importance and esteem on the world stage; the more games a city hosts, the more relevant it can be said to be. There is far more to this decision than financial gain. 2012 was the ultimate confirmation of London as one of the world’s major cultural hubs; it’s status was put beyond doubt. Other cities want that status, that cudos, too. What all bidding cities want, more than anything, is the esteem of the world.

We all know – or, rather, are lead to believe – that politics ad economics are vastly complex subjects. Yesterday I tried to condense my opinions on the economic situation into a form of allegorical children’s story. Of course, I grossly simplified things, and some would say it was a highly biassed misrepresentation. Ask an american republican, for instance, and the economic upturn is all down to their cuts. Everything here is subjective, and depends on how one sees it. From there it follows that there are no objectively right answers.

Yet I think you can take that a step further. People differ on how they see things, but those differing viewpoints have reasons behind them; reasons which make one more reasonable than the other.

As babies we are selfish: we demand parental attention, milk, and all the toys; we feel hard done by if, say, mummy and daddy move their attention to a sibling. Babies think they are the centre of the world, and only their needs matter. As we grow, however, we learn to share: we come to realise that there are other children in the playroom, and that their needs matter just as much as ours. Moreover, we learn that if we share, other children are more likely to share with us in return, so we all benefit.

This, to me, is what is at the base of the difference between left and right. Right-wingers still demand that undivided attention; they still think their needs come first. They therefore begrudge contributing to society (sharing) by paying tax. Of course, they might try to rationalise their worldview by citing other ways to contribute, or other convoluted arguments; yet their neoliberal stance boils down to the simple, childish greed of children who have not yet learned to share. To frame it in psychoanalytical terms perhaps, their superego is left underdeveloped.

The left is made up of those who grew out of that stage, who realise that sharing is good. They realised that other children in the room needed toys, milk and attention too, perhaps because their parents were careful not to spoil them. They therefore develop the nascent idea of equality, of fairness. In turn this matures into a communitarian, leftist stance.

That, for me, is what is at the base of the difference between right and left. It is a dichotomy of greed versus selflessness, of spoiled and unspoiled children. This also accounts for the anti-liberal attitudes of those on the right, for, like small children, they desire security and continuity over difference, novelty and change. Granted, it might be slightly reductive, but I think my theory sums it up well; it’s why I think leftism is a more mature, adult and ultimately more productive worldview. After all, is it not the grown ups who have to remind children to play nicely and share their toys? And it is only through sharing, and through working together rather than for personal profit, that we will be able to solve the problems humanity faces.

Once, a group of wise men lived together in a house in a town. They looked after their house well: good roof, pretty garden, strong walls. But one day, a huge storm came and destroyed the town, and most houses were wrecked. The local greek restaurant was utterly ruined, and its owners needed lots of help to save it. However, the house in which the wise men lived was not too badly damaged, and they were soon repairing it.

It was almost back to how it was when the wise men got some bad news and needed to move out. Shortly after that, some other people moved in. They weren’t so wise. For some reason they thought he storm had been caused by the wise men, and thought the house was in a terrible condition. They set about trying to repair the house, but, fools that they were, did a very poor job. But they were lucky: the storm had passed, and the wise men had done such a good job starting the repairs that the house continued to recover. The new guys were so gormless though, they didn’t realise: in their arrogance they assumed things were getting better because of their flawed repairs. In fact, everyone else could see that they were getting worse due to what they had done.

The house will soon fall down if the wise men do not return, for the new tenants have bodged the repairs. They claim to have improved the house when in fact it has become worse. The only reason it looks so good is because of the work started by the wise men – ironically the people the fools, in their ignorance blame for the storm. If the house is to flourish, the fools must be evicted and the wise men must return…lest another storm comes.

Something about wandering this city fascinates me

Exploring, surrounded by people, alone with my thoughts

Hearing all the tounges and dialects of the world.

Endlessly curious in this endless three-dimensional labyrinth.

Slightly guilty about leaving Lyn home alone as I roam,

But she has her own wanderings, through music and sound

While I listen to the glorious cacophony of the metropolis:

The music of the voices of the world, the great harmony of humanity.

So out I go into the maelstrom

Unto the chaos of the city

Ever changing, full of life

Utterly fascinating

I just tapped ‘London’ into the search engine of startrek.com, hoping for news of another convention here, and found news of something even better – something astounding. Paramount Studios is now planning to build a theme park to the east of London: ”Paramount London, a proposed entertainment resort, will include a Star Trek-themed area when it opens on the Swanscombe Peninsula, east of London, in 2020. Spread across 800 acres, Paramount London will be the first of its kind in the UK and is expected to attract up to 15 million visitors a year”. I can’t believe my luck: although Lyn made a ‘oh god no!’ moan when I told her about this over the dinner table, and although it’ll pack the area with tourists and opportunists, trekkie that I am, I can’t wait! Here’s the project’s website.

I just read that ‘legendary’ comedy show spitting Image is due to return to British tv under a new name. Now called Newzoids, it will basically be the same satire-through-puppetry program. While I have heard a lot about it, and while I’ve seen clips, I don’t think I have ever sat through an entire episode of Spitting Image. I’ll be interested to see how this tuns out then, and I’m certainly keen to see how they handle people like Farage and CaMoron. Mind you, I do know something about Spitting Image: THIS!!

One is a cartoonish halfwit, whose simplistic, childish views make him a target of derision mocked by all;

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The other is Homer Simpson

Happy first birthday to my nephew Oliver. It barely seem a full year since I wrote this entry, but indeed it has – and what a year it was too! I just spoke to his grandparents, and he’s doing well; beginning to talk, and apparently taking to his toy xylophone with great enthusiasm. I hope he and his parents have a really fun day.

I remember writing on here once that I didn’t think london had an equivalent of the Louvre in Paris; no truly stylish, classy buildings. Today I found I was wrong. Today I visited the British museum for the first time, and my jaw dropped as soon as I saw that high, round, glass ceiling and those columns. Okay, it’s not a great glass pyramid, but it seemed jus as awesome to me.

More importantly, I was there with the Rix centre. They were having an event there to trial the use of sensory objects. These are intended to make museum exhibitions more accessible to people with learning disabilities by incorporating more of the senses. For example, a display concerning the spice trade may incorporate the smell of spices, This way, those who learn differenty to how others might are included. It’s a fascinating idea. Not only is it great on a practical level, but there are also theoretical questions which it raises, which I am now getting my teeth into.

It has been a great day: a day of exploration in more ways than one. I went to a great building, and my mind is now abuzz with ideas and questions. Night is drawing in, and as I roll home to the person I love like so many other Londoners, I couldn’t be more content.

I was shouting at the tv again earlier, forcing Lyn to retreat into her studio and turn the volume up. I was watching CaMoron’s speech, once again lying to the country that things are now all hunkey-dorey, that we are now thriving, and acting like his policies have some kind of intelligence behind them rather than boiling down to greed. I get really angry when I see him like that, pretending he is being rational and thoughtful; assuming he deserves the authority he stole in 2010. People are going hungry because of benefit cuts, yet he expects applause for cutting tax.

People like him have the audacity to say that those on the left have a politics of envy. Our politics is not about envy but about fairness, about evening out preexisting inequalities. Their politics is about greed, maintaining inequality and making sure the lucky few can continue their privileged lives lording it over the rest of us. I find it sickening to see CaMoron try to portray it as a valid worldview, when I can see the suffering such selfishness has caused so vividly. We deserve better than this rat, standing behind a podium, trying to tell us greed is good, that capitalist fat-cats should be treated as heroes and that the state – the only mechanism through which the people those fat-cats would otherwise rule over can get any power or justice – is a bad thing and should be diminished. How can people be fooled by such arrogant, selfish folly?

The oddest thing just happened. Lyn and I were just out for a walk. It is a bright, crisp, early spring day here, and we were out enjoying the sun. L was being pushed by dom, and they were leading the way through the small wooded park very near our house. I must have gone through that park at least five hundred times by now; it’s the last fragment of an ancient forrest which, I’m told, used to cover the entire area. Today, though, at a turning we I’d ordinarily go right, Lyn lead us straight on, down a path where I had assumed there were steps.

I suddenly had the most uncanny feeling. After five years living in Charlton, I feel I have come to know the area rather well. And yet, all of a sudden, within just a few metres of home, I had no idea where I was. It was quiet and serene, and felt as if we’d entered one of the secret places of the world. The sound of traffic faded as we followed the path past the animal enclosures and out of the park onto a road I had never seen before.

I was astounded. I felt lost, yet I knew we were still in Charlton, not far at all from home. How could I have missed this place, which felt more like a back street in a cheshire town than part of a sprawling metropolis? I told myself that I needed to explore more thoroughly.

On we went. And suddenly we were back on the main road to Woolwich, a road I know well; and I knew where I was. Yet I still felt amazed at what had just happened, as if we had stumbled briefly into another world and back again, so near to home yet so unknown, new and foreign.

Someone really should do something similar to this in response to Farage’s band of thugs. In the german town of Wunsiedel, residents decided to cunningly hijack a march by a group of neo-nazis by sponsoring it and donating the proceeds to anti-fascist charities. In effect, every step these neanderthals took collected money against them, and they didn’t even realise. I think the word in internet parlance is ”pwned”. While it is scary to see people with such hard-line xenophobic views still exist, and indeed might be in resurgence, I’m relieved others are standing up to them, and that their stupidity can be demonstrated so comically.

I think I’ll flag this Guardian piece up today, in which Stephen Hawking rallies to the defence of the NHS. He rightly points out that it is a national treasure which must be preserved from commercial interests at all costs. Although I heard recently that a report had found that Labour had exaggerated the degree to which the Condems had opened it up to privatisation, it is nevertheless true that they have increased the market pressures exposed to the NHS, undermining it’s very ethos. It is therefore good to see a man currently so high in the public agenda sticking up for the greatest of British institutions.

The article also recalls the hilarious episode when some clueless american journalist assumed that Hawking was american and wrote that he would have died if he lived in Britain with our ‘commie’ NHS. EPIC FAIL! Mind you, it did bring about an opportunity for Hawking to pay tribute to our health service, so it backfired on the journalist really sweetly.

I have started to write again. While I have never stopped writing regularly for my blog, I have got back to the sort of playing around with ideas that I used to do when I first started my masters. Now, of course, my musings are in relation to my work with UEL. It feels so good to have got back to that type of playful curiosity again. And, as I wrote the other day, I think I could be onto something phenomenal. Just as my musings with my masters eventually lead to probably the greatest thing I have yet written, I have a feeling that these musings could lead to something even greater. For now it’s just play; but through that play I sense something fascinating emerging.

Lyn has been beavering away in her studio again – her productivity puts me to shame. Taking it’s name from our trip on tuesday I suspect, her mesmerising latest track, Spirit at the Roundhouse, can be heard here

I have no idea how it crept under my radar (a seemingly appropriate phrase for a program about a spy franchise), but I’m now quite giddy after finding this excellent documentary on James Bond. I found a reference to it here, and looked it up. At ninety minutes, it is quite long, but I found it very thorough and engaging, full of pieces of trivia which daw you in further. Everything Or Nothing goes through the history of the phenomenon, from it’s origins to present. I’m fascinated by it: the success of the franchise, the character, the history. No other character – not even, say, Luke Skywalker, or any comic-book hero – holds such a dominant cultural position; while it is not mentioned in this program, what other fictional person could escort a monarch or world leader to an Olympic opening, and indeed reuse/reference one of the franchise’s most iconic moments in doing so? As I wrote here, I find it truly intriguing, and watching programs like this only intensify that fascination.

Anyone who loves books and literature will no doubt be rejoicing at this incredible news. An unpublished novel by Harper Lee is to finally get published in July, 60 years after the US author put it aside to write To Kill a Mockingbird. When I saw this story last thing yesterday, I was astounded. I’ve loved To Kill a Mockingbird since studying it at school; I truly think it is a masterpiece. How Lee will possibly follow it up I do not know – it’s apparently set some twenty years after the events of the original – but Scout is such a great character I just can’t wait to hear her voice again.

Until yesterday I think I still preferred Paris over London. As much as I love London, I thought the french capital had a special magic to it the british one lacked: something in the city’s layout, it’s sleek, snazzy boulevards which gave it a nose ahead. But yesterday we went to Camden, and I was so instantly taken by it that it made me swap preferences. While Camden is not that sleek, it has an idiosyncratic snazziness of its own. We were there to see a concert by the Waterboys in the Roundhouse, an amazing place in itself, but before the show we had a chance to explore the local area. It is such a cool place: the labyrinthine market there made me drop my jaw, and want to look around for hours; I fell in love with it and indeed london.

The concert itself was just as awesome. Truth be told I didn’t know much about the Waterboys, but lyn is a big fan. They played one or two tracks I knew, but most of it was new to me. Nevertheless we had a great time, and I think they have a new fan this morning.

London, then, is a great, great city. I love how varied it is. The beauty of paris, of course, comes from the fact that it was re-laid out after world war two, giving it a symmetry and elegance. London, though, is more organic, more natural; it has quirky little areas like Camden. I love how varied it, and how it can surprise you like Camden surprised me last night. It does indeed have a magic to it. Aye, after such a great evening and all the ones before it, I now genuinely think London is the greatest city on earth.

It might be slightly premature to start heralding the demise of Bond, as I suspect 007 has a fair few adventures to go yet, but yesterday I took myself to see Kingsmen and was deeply impressed. I’d been wanting to go for days: I wanted to see how it squared up to the Bond phenomenon, having been quite intrigued by the trailers. To be honest I was half expecting it to suck, but what I found myself watching yesterday afternoon was a witty, self-referential, self-knowing film. It knew the characteristics of it’s own genre and pointed them out to us. There are lines, for instance, where the baddie points out what he would usually be expected to say, but that he is not going to say it. It borrows Fleming’s/Bond’s connoisseurship for fine drink, and plays with it, for instance supplying us with an alternative martini recipe (‘gin, not vodka, of course’). It was absurd, but that absurdity is pointed out when the characters say they prefer the older Bonds, before he got serious. However, unlike Austin Powers, this had fairly serious thought-provoking themes: for one, I feel it has quite a bit to say about class, male-ness etc. I found it worthy of consideration rather than just a silly, action-packed romp. It’s self-knowledge and serious edge gave it a depth Powers lacks.

We have, it seems, a new hero, and a new service more secret than MI5 or the CIA, beholden to no government. I’d be interested to see what they do with it: personally, unlikely though it is, I’m now itching to see a Kingsmen-007 crossover.

Having been using London transport for five or six years now, I’d like to flag up this charmingly enthusiastic piece about the London red bus. The writer thinks it’s great how visiting London from Liverpool, all our busses in this city are now accessible, and that he can roll on and off busses with ease. He is right, of course. I suppose I now take it for granted, and don’t give much thought to it – after all, remember the trouble I had getting on the number twenty from Alsager to Crewe. At he same time, I have become rather jaded: bus drivers in london can be pricks! They can refuse to stop; they can pretend the ramp isn”t working; they can say, in that bastardised form of English only bus drivers seem possessed of, that ”they got a buggy on, mate”’. Things are thus far from perfect; once you’ve been a Londoner a while, the problems with London transport, great though it is, become blindingly obvious.

There are few men left in the world one can call great; few truly amazing people, leading remarkable lives. There are no Churchils or Hemingways – no men who, for all their flaws, captivate, fascinate and inspire. Perhaps their era is simply passed. Yet, there is one left: one man as great as any of history. David Attenborough inspires and fascinates me, as he does most people. It was great to see him back on tv last night. I find it remarkable how, even after sixty years on tv, he still presents the best things on the box. To me, he is a comforting, reassuring constant; a (grand)father figure, who, no matter where I am, I’ll always be able to find. Long may that continue.

Stephen Hawking appears to be getting everywhere these days. First he appears on star trek; then he took centre stage at London’s paralympic opening ceremony. He has been on the Simpsons, the big bang theory, and, my personal favourite, Monty python live. There has very recently been a film released about him, my response to which can be read here; and now I hear he just filmed a sketch alongside David Walliams and Katherine Tate for comic relief. He is currently everywhere you look. I am in two minds about this: while it is great to have such a high profile disabled person out there, it could get too much, go too far and start looking like self-publicity. The professor seems to be currently being wheeled out at every opportunity, like some symbol or totem of human greatness. Yet he is not a symbol but a man, and should be seen as any other human. Besides, what with all these media appearances, it’s a wonder the dude has time to do any physics research.

I would count myself a negligent blogger if I didn’t direct you to this fascinating and wise Guardian article. It defends the right of Katie Price to have services for her severely disabled son paid for by the state. People have apparently been up in arms on social media about it, screaming their tiny little brains out that Price can afford to pay for such things herself. Yet, as the article points out, the point of the welfare system etc is that it is universal, there for all; as soon as we start begrudging it to certain people, we start down a path that ends in it’s complete collapse. Thus, the way in which everyone is now lining up to lambast price is symptomatic of a culture we’ve been lead into: a culture which scapegoats those who rely on benefits as scroungers and shirkers. In other words, Price is being used as a tool with which to make public enemies of those who cannot defend themselves. It’s the old ‘divide and rule’ ploy, and is indeed precisely what the nazis did in scapegoating minorities. Kate Price’s right to state help for her son must therefore be defended. After all, she presumably pays high-rate tax; if she contributes to the economy that way, she has the same right to state help as any other member of society.

In all the current talk of the holocaust, I need to get off my chest that there is one thing that still puzzles me. If the nazis believed that what they were doing was right, why did they go to so much effort to hide it. I am not trying to deny that they are guilty of the crimes they are accused of – only a complete fool would attempt to do so – but it strikes me as odd that they would try to hide their crimes. To them, they were acting justly; they believed they were a master race trying to purify humanity. Why would they care what others thought? To A Nazi, only nazi opinions matter. Yet hiding their actions, not recording their murderous actions, implies they knew others would think what they were doing was wrong, and cared about what they thought. Why would a master race, arrogantly considering itself above all others, feel the need to hide its actions from those it considered inferior? Surely it would want to record what it saw as its glorious actions for posterity.

I did it! For the first time in a long while, I just sat through an entire prime ministers question time without shouting at the TV. It’s not that I didn’t want to – once again we had to endure the sickening sight of CaMoron refusing to answer for his misdeeds – but last week I got so agitated that Lyn told me off. ”Do you mind?” She said ”I’m eating!” This week, then, I made an effort to restrain myself, and apart from a yelp or two I think I succeeded. Yet it nevertheless demonstrates how frustrated I am with politics right now: so what, for instance, if Miliband said he wants to ‘weaponise’ the NHS? It is a major issue, and the Tories need to be held to account for the damage their top-down reorganisation has done to it. Labour has every right to use it as a subject with which to attack the current government.

There are ninety-nine days until we hopefully get rid of the Tories, lowering taxes while people starve; 99 days which can’t pass soon enough.

Today, as we all know, marks seventy years since the liberation of the extermination camp at Aushvits. DPAC had a protest up at westminster o coincide with it, their aim being to draw parallels between what the NAZIs did and what our current government is doing, with it’s rather fascist-sounding ‘back to work scheme’ and so on. I was going to go, but left it too late to leave. Truth be told, though, I was in two minds as much as I hate this tory government, it left a bad taste in my mouth. I can’t help thinking the protesters were using probably the most barbaric event in history for their own ends; almost usurping the suffering of others. Moreover, as vile as they are, the tories don’t deserve to be compared to the Nazis. While people are suffering and indeed dying under the tories, what is happening does not constitute the methodical extermination of an entire people. It was a bad move on our part, and probably made ‘us’ look childish, as much as I sympathise with the sentiment behind it.

As a blogger, political commentator and leftie, part of me knows I shoul write something about the Greek election. Of course I can quite understand why the Greek people voted as they did; truth be told I would probably have voted the same way. The Greeks were desparate, feeling humiliated – of course they elected someone who promised to solve their problems. Yet part of me can’t help thinking they have simply elected a con man claiming to have a magic wand. If Greece were to unilaterally refuse to pay its debts, chaos would ensue: for one it would set a dangerous precedent other endebted nations would be tempted to follow; for another, how would we make up the cash we are owed, having effectively been robbed by Greece. It would probably make matters worse for the rest of us, so, oddly, I find myself siding with those demanding the Greeks continue to pay, even though I know it means they continue to suffer,

Today I received some awesome news. To be more specific, I got an email regarding something which has the potential to become awesome. It is very early days, and might yet come to nothing, so I better not go into detail, save to say that it regards my academic life. A lot of talking must happen before anything becomes concrete.

However, it was an email with an embryonic possibility, which, hopeless optimist that I am, has me very excited indeed. Watch this space. [spastic squeal of glee!]

I still haven’t given my new wheelchair a name, despite having it for over a year. The truth is, I had not warmed to it: compared to my old chairs, it is slow and unwieldy. In my internal monologue, I thought of it as sapoc, or slow-ass piece of crap. Today, though, I went on one of my long walks. Slow as it was, the chair kept its end up, performed admirably, and earned my respect. I resolved that it needs a name. The question is, what to call it? My previous chairs, defiant and bat’leth, had Star Trek related names, but I thus far can’t think of a name for this slow but sturdy vessel. Any ideas?

I am suddenly very angry indeed. I was just at my building society getting money. I wear a bumbag with my wallet in, and invite people to get out and put in money as and when needed. The last couple of times I have noticed that the staff at the bank have taken to putting on plastic gloves when I come in. While I understand the need for hygene, I find it utterly condescending and insulting. It looks like they think I am dirty or contagious. I was so upset that I asked to speak to the manager, but she batted me away with the usual condescending bullshit. Think they were right if you must, but I will not be treated like something dirty.

I am just on my way back from watching A Theory of Everything. I had been in two minds about going to see it, given its controversial use of a non disabled actor playing a disabled man. Yet, having touched upon cosmology in my recent conversations with Lyn, I thought I would go see it. Now that I have, however, the actor has become the least of my concerns.

I have never felt so torn about a film. At the same time it struck me as a delicate portrait of one of my heroes, and a piece of pity porn of such enormity that it made me want to vomit. At times the emphasis on disability and pity became so gratuitous that I almost walked out; the lingering shots of Hawking struggling to get up and down stairs as his condition worsened being a notable example. It was so cloying and cliche that, at points, I despaired the film had ever been made. Things were redeemed, though, when upon receiving his first communication aid, they remarked with disgust at hawking now having an American accent. There were also a few good shots of Cambridge, including a couple of the quad where this piece of Hawking-related awesomeness was probably filmed.

The various controversies surrounding him aside, hawking has long been one of my heroes. Yet this film has me torn in two, and, I must say, extremely perturbed. Part of me is glad it was made, yet another part deeply objects to it’s pitying, wallowing, anti-disability overtones.

I find myself growing uneasy at a number of people I’ve encountered who, like me, seem pretty cynical about the current state of things, but who take that cynicism too far. Take this catchy tune, for example. Much of what they say I agree with; but then they go on about ”the new world order”, ”reptillians” and so on. I see no evidence for any such conspiracy. Also, tellingly, they lump taxation in with their otherwise left-sounding list of grievances. When I heard that I smelled a rat: either they are right wing trying to hijack the concerns of the left, or they are just politically naive, rebelling because they think it’s cool but lacking any true understanding. People like these, influenced by p’tahks like David Ilke, thinking they’re being profound but not actually helping. The higher reality they keep asking the rest of us to wake up to boils down to neoliberal greed, and they don’t even realise they’re the ones being manipulated. I suppose it is symptomatic of much bigger issues: political dissatisfaction, lack of true understanding and engagement, and a type of naivete.

It’s the beeb’s democracy day, commemorating the seven hundredth anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta. They had Douglas Carswell on earlier, and I have never seen a more insulting display of pure hypocrisy. Carswell was purporting to stand up for plurality of opinion, freedom of expression, dissemination of democratic power, and most of the things I usually go for. Yet anyone with a functioning brain could tell he was saying things we wanted to hear. This was coming from a member of a party which, if or when it is elected, will destroy the bridges to Europe, revoke just about all of our human rights, suppress any and all minorities, and more than likely suspend democracy and install Farage as a permanent overlord (‘Fhurer’ would probably sound too germanic). Thus for Carswell to pretend to be a champion of democracy flies in the face of everything he and his party actually stands for. It really got my goat. Just as hypocritical, though, was CaMoron tweeting about today being Martin Luthor-King day, and about being ‘inspired’. What a fucking cheek! Dr. King would be appalled at what the Tories are doing, persecuting the defenceless and cutting tax for the rich while millions starve.

This will again probably sound a bit silly, but recently I’ve been pondering the fact that, given I do not have a photo of me meeting Patrick Stewart, how do I know it really happened? How can I confirm it actually occurred? My memory could be playing tricks on me. Of course, we all know that, if push came to shove, I could look up the member of staff at the Excel centre who helped me, who could confirm my experience; and it is very unlikely that my brain is playing tricks. Why should I be concerned that my brain might be tricking me over this particular event, when there is a long list of other events of which I have memories but no pictures, simply because it is so important to me? Yet, when you think about it, this is an interesting question. Barthes said that the photo has a unique ability to verify the past, to say ”only and for certain what has been” – although I suppose even that is no longer strictly true these days; so, without a photo, how can we be sure something happened? This is what interests me about historiography, which I began to write about the other day: the idea that history is a discourse open to change and debate. I have a vivd memory; I have several other photographs placing me at the event; but how can I be absolutely sure I met Sir Patrick Stewart without direct photographic evidence? The only possible solution, I suppose, is to endeavour to meet him again!

I was suddenly just thrown into one of my funks. Lee Mayer’s family keep his facebook page open, and it reminded me that he’d be 31 today. The fact of his death still gets to me: he, like my other friends lost, deserved a long, full life; I still feel white hot rage at the injustice of it. Yet I also know I can’t let myself get too down about it. The last year, for instance, truly was a great one – hey, I met Patrick stewart ffs! – and have a feeling this coming year could be even better. Plus I just stumbled over quite an amusing article debating what music the beeb should play if and when the apocalypse comes. Their answer? What else but this! Very Mayer! Short of the world ending, then, I have much to be cheerful about, and quit a bit to keep me busy, even if such thoughts will still just hit me, as they hit everyone, from time to time.

Loathe though I am to link to anything in the Daily Mail, I’d just like to flag up this excellent speech to the house of lords by baroness Cambell. She raises many questions about the Assisted Dying Bill. Why I try to stay away from the subject, Cambell makes many points which I definitely agree with. People with disabilities, including those with ‘terminal conditions’, need assistance to live, not die. Having seen my mates with muscular dystrophy fight so hard to enjoy their lives to the last, I know what she is talking about.

This will probably make me sound rather daft, but these days I keep going back to my masters thesis and wondering ‘did I write that’. At 40,000 words, it is the longest thing I have ever written, and I suppose part of me is surprised I was capable of it. Thinking about it, of course, I’m sure I did: when it was being written, nobody saw it but me, Esther, my tutors and my parents, and they would not have added to it. I also recall writing every sentence, every paragraph. I know I’m just being paranoid, doubting my own abilities. I think it also shows how proud I am of it. Mind you, reading it, I come across so many typos I know only I could have written it.