My parents called this morning to talk to me about the blog entry I posted yesterday. They pointed out something that I hadn’t been aware of, but which I now find troubling. Looking back I should have realised, but there was a major religious component to the protest yesterday. I had assumed the people opposing assisted suicide were doing so out of a well founded concern that it could lead to far more dark consequences, but my parents pointed out that many people were there for religious reasons.

Thinking about this while out on my trundle this afternoon, it should have been obvious really. Along with many disabled people, there were quite a few overtly religious people at yesterday’s protest. When they started to play religious music out of a loud speaker, I naturally took issue, assuming that they were trying to hijack the action for their own means. Later on in the afternoon, I also got into quite a heated debate with a couple of people over whether you need to believe in god to have a sense of morality, ethics and right and wrong.

The problem I have now, however, is that I really, really object to the notion that the political action I attended yesterday had any kind of religious basis. I was there in an effort to make sure that the lives of disabled people remain as long and as full as anyone else’s, and that there is no chance that people will start being coerced into ending them prematurely. My stance had nothing to do with any religion or belief system. Frankly, I find the idea that some people were only there because they saw the issue at hand in terms of their soul or relationship with god rather disturbing, as it completely distorts the genuine, well founded concerns of most of the people who were there.

I don’t want to get wound up tonight so I’ll try to keep this brief. It has been a long, difficult afternoon. Before now, I have always tried to position myself on the fence when it comes to assisted suicide: people have a right to choose what to do with their lives, including ending them if they so wish. Yet at the end of the day, there is no getting around the fact that what happened today in Westminster is very dangerous indeed. Legalising suicide under the guise of ‘Assisted dying’ effectively makes it legal for one person to kill another. Like many disabled activists, I worry that, whatever safeguards are put in place, sooner or later this bill will lead to people with disabilities or severe medical conditions starting to feel coerced or obliged into taking their lives. That is why I went up to Westminster this afternoon to join the protest against it.

Consciously or unconsciously, what happened today opened a very dangerous gate. After all, the right to die is the right to kill, and all too soon I fear we’ll see some very vulnerable people being offered euthanasia as an option. However rigid or stringent the new guidelines will be, the danger is they will be gradually watered down so that eventually more and more people will be offered assisted dying as an option. Frankly, I wonder whether it could one say include conditions like Muscular Dystrophy: if so, might this bill have included the guys I grew up with at school? Could they potentially have been given the option to end their lives; and might they have felt obliged to do so for the sake of their parents?

Perhaps not, but nonetheless I fear what happened today potentially opened the gate to somewhere truly dark. It ultimately sends out a message that certain lives aren’t worth living and should be ended in an act of compassion. However noble those who back this bill may try to frame it, today we crossed an extremely dangerous, dark threshold.

I have written about the pilot Inn before. It’s a pub on the North Greenwich Peninsula, not far from the O2. It looks like it’s a couple of hundred years old, and is at the end of a terrace of four or five houses. I go past it fairly frequently, either on a bus or just in my powerchair. I must say, though, that it’s looking stranger and stranger, and more and more out of place: like the rest of east London, the Greenwich Peninsula is getting rapidly built up. It has changed enormously even since I moved down here. Countless blocks of upmarket flats have sprung up where there were once car parks for the arena. Yet, oddly, The Pilot Inn has been allowed to remain where it is, like some remnant of a time long gone. More than ever, it looks totally out of place, the surrounding tall buildings leaning in on it; yet somehow still seems to being where it is. What more fitting image could there be of modern London in general?

I still remember when these roads were new.
When this landscape seemed foreign, alien.
When this was a place for me to explore;
Stretching out in all directions like a vast labyrinth,
It’s concrete and tarmac so different from the green I was used to.

The people around me so distant and hostile.

Yet somehow the city has since shrunk.
And what seemed exotic is now familiar.
Paths which once begged to be explored are now well used.
And a metropolis which was once so vast and daunting
Now feels like home.

It’s people so welcoming and warm.

I have noted my thoughts on assisted suicide on here before. Broadly speaking, while I think that people should ultimately have a right to choose what to do with their lives, and this should include ending them, I share the concern of others that, should the upcoming bill become law, terminally ill and vulnerable people will feel coerced and pressured into taking the suicide option. This concern is obviously shared by many others in the disabled community. Watching the issue being reported on the evening news just now though, I have to say that I’m not happy that the opposition to this change in the law seems to be being championed by religious leaders or clergy. The BBC report showed various bishops etc saying why this bill was such a mistake, but my opposition to it has nothing to do with religion. You don’t have to believe in any imaginary creator-beings to worry about the problems and issues this law may cause. More to the point, such reporting simply reinforces the wholly baseless, unearned authority such religious leaders claim: they were not voted into their positions, nor do they possess any special academic qualifications, yet they claim a right to appear on the evening news bulletin to give their opinions on a rather critical issue. Their authority is derived from a few outdated, debunked myths, but by framing these people in such a way, such authority is perpetuated and reinforced. I’m surely not the only person to see that as quite screwed up.

I just want to note something which I’m now rather pleased about. You may remember, a few months ago I blogged about going back and re-inserting all the links into my old blog entries. I wasn’t pleased that all the entries I’ve written over the last twenty years didn’t have the links I originally put into them. Well, it has taken me quite a while, but I have finally got there: all the links have been restored. It was quite a slow process. I did a month at a time, working back through my archive, but at last all 240 months worth of entries have their links back. Naturally I might have missed a few – you know me – so I don’t think this arduous exercise is finished quite yet and I’ll keep at it, but frankly it feels great to know the links I used in all my old entries are back.

I’m sorry, but given my love for both Tolkien and my morning cuppa, this was simply too amusing for me not to nick.

Trust me, I can certainly relate!

If I can put my James Bond fan hat on briefly, I found this video interesting and worth flagging up. Did you know that Quentin Tarantino was considered to direct an adaptation of Casino Royale? He’s apparently quite a Bond fan, and after Pulp Fiction in 1994 was in the running to continue the series in the Brosnan era. According to this video, it would have been black and white, and starred Samuel L. Jackson as Felix Lieter. If you ask me, it sounds like it would have been awesome. Mind you, at the moment I daresay we’re going through such a James Bond drought that we can really do with more things like this: we really need a maverick director like Tarantino to get the franchise back on track post Daniel Craig, and to restore it to it’s usual cultural position. We haven’t seen a new Bond film in so long that the energy and excitement which they seem to bring to our culture is really starting to get missed.

I watched the first couple of episodes of The Listeners last night, and I think it’s worth flagging up. I seldom go in for new dramas like that, but I thought I would give it a try. To be honest I found it rather interesting: it’s about a group of people who can hear a strange sound which nobody else can. Obviously this can be read as a metaphor or allegory for some other minority, but the question is which. This group of individuals all begin hearing this odd noise, but have no idea anyone else can until they begin grouping together. What is the Beeb trying to tell us here? Who could this minority represent? Gay people? People with disabilities? In an era when just about everyone seems to be desperate to belong to one minority or another, such fiction seems quite timely.

I wouldn’t be able to justly call myself a Star Trek fan if I didn’t flag this new short film up today. In it, William Shatner at last returns to the role of Captain Kirk – or at least appears to. As explained in this Trekculture video, it’s a fantastic film by Otoy films called Unification, which blends together old and new footage and has loads of awesome Star Trek references. While it isn’t the full on, big screen, resurrection of Shatner’s Kirk we might like to see – well, I would anyway – it is fantastic to see what people can produce these days. Watching it, it may strike you as slightly sentimental, but as they did with Regeneration a year or so ago, it’s great to see these characters who we trekkies grew up with return in some way. As I wrote when I saw that film, it’s also amazing to see just how advanced such unofficial online fan films are becoming. Ultimately, though, it’s a very touching short film indeed, particularly if you’re a Star Trek fan.

Pretty much the first thing I came across on my Facebook after quite a long day out and about just now was this Huffington post report. Liz Truss is apparently now saying that the UK needs its own version of Donald Trump. “The former prime minister said she wanted to see a UK version of the president-elect’s Make America Great Again movement.” I’m sorry, but that really does defy belief: she was pretty much the shortest lived and most abjectly ruinous Prime Minister in British history, yet she seems to think that she still has the gravitas and authority to make such judgements. It’s as if she sees herself as some kind of great leader worthy of respect, rather than the epic mistake which history will record her to be. To make matters worse, any thinking person can see what an utter disaster Trump will be, not just for America but for the entire world. For Truss or anyone to say he is some sort of goal worth aspiring to is patently ridiculous, and just makes her look even more unhinged.

I just wanted to flag this up because it struck me as so ludicrous.

Staying with the public transport theme from yesterday, earlier I came across this report that the government wants to spend £1bn on bringing public transport in the rest of the country into line with London’s. If you ask me, it’s about time. These days, I’m used to being able to wheel on and off busses and trains without help. Public transport in the capital is far from perfect, of course, but it’s far better than that outside of it. For instance, whereas around here I’m used to busses having automatic wheelchair ramps, to the best of my knowledge, outside of London bus drivers still have to get out of their cabs to open the ramps manually. While that may only sound like something minor, believe me, when you’re faced with grumpy, reluctant bus drivers who see letting you on and off their bus as nothing more than a burden, having an automatic ramp which glides smoothly out to let you on without a fuss is a great relief. I really hope that busses across the country will now be brought up to the same standard. More to the point, it seems to me that, while London is used to getting massive new infrastructure projects like Crossrail, the rest of the country gets woefully left behind; perhaps this plan will go some way to resetting that imbalance.

I just got in from my usual afternoon trundle, and decided to watch this review of Gladiator 2 by Mark Kermode while I ate my late-afternoon snack. I’m not usually that big a fan of such sequels – I’d just assumed it was an attempt to revive a twenty-five year old franchise – but the way Kermode described it has won me around. Believe me, he makes it sound incredible: the film apparently involves colossal battles, space-monkeys and everything! Listening to the review is a treat in itself, but now I really want to go and watch the film.

I heard on the news this morning that Justin Welby has resigned and the so-called Church of England is now looking for a new leader. Well, I have a far better idea: wouldn’t this be a good opportunity to disband the church altogether? I’ve written on here before about how profoundly undemocratic and anachronistic I find it. It is a body which derives it’s authority from a set of outdated, thoroughly refuted myths; it’s members weren’t elected through any kind of public vote; yet the leadership of this church claims the right to intervene in our politics. To make matters worse, it is now clear that this organisation has been covering up child abuse within it’s ranks for decades. The church leadership obviously knew this abuse was happening but did nothing, pretending it was completely oblivious and innocent. In any other context, were this any other organisation, it’s leadership, including Welby, would be standing trial. Were this a supermarket chain, or a high street bank company, whose executive knowingly allowed it’s employees to abuse children over several decades but hushed it up, the scandal would be huge. The company would probably be broken up. Yet because it is a religious organisation it seems to be above the law, including those concerning child abuse. Does that not strike anyone else as utterly fucked up?! If we are indeed a modern, educated democracy, surely this is something we must outgrow.

The subject of assisted suicide has cropped up again today. Before now I have always tried to appear on the fence on the issue, unable to quite say whether I was for or against it. Yet, the truth is, the more I think about the notion, the more repugnant I find it. Of course, I’m not speaking from any form of religious or spiritual standpoint; I just feel that life is to be cherished and lived for as long as possible. If we only have one life to live, why would anyone want that finite existence to end sooner than it otherwise might? The world is full of so many awesome things, why would anyone want to die before experiencing as many of them as possible?

More to the point, legalising assistant suicide brings up a few hideous possibilities: roads so dark and dangerous we cannot risk going down them. As many others are pointing out, this bill may start us down a slippery slope which ends with people being coerced or encouraged to end their lives. People with disabilities might start to feel like a burden to others, and suicide might be presented to them as some kind of altruistic option. No matter how far fetched this scenario might seem, no matter how many safeguards are put in place, that is a risk we cannot take.  One step down this path opens the door to a plethora of hideous possibilities,which is why I stand (or sit) with any other disability rights activist worth their salt in opposing it. 

I swear I saw a woman wearing piedros on the tube yesterday evening. Piedros are a kind of special boot which my school friends and I were forced to wear, made specially for us by a guy who visited the physio department. They were very stiff, and were supposed to hold our feet in the right shape, rising high above the ankle. Yet the woman on the tube was clearly able bodied, and was wearing them along with a very short back dress and a cream-coloured blazer. Sat next to her boyfriend, she was obviously one of those fashionable people who think London exists simply to be seen in: they must have been going to some kind of event or party. She was obviously trying to be trendy, but her shoes were clearly the kind given to disabled kids, or at least resembled them very closely. Could piedros be in fashion? The irony of that would just be too hilarious!

It’s a bit long and slightly nauseating, in the way that American comedy can sometimes be, but I think this clip from the Daily Show is worth flagging up. It strikes me as odd: as a piece of public broadcasting, I assume it’s supposed to be a fairly unbiassed form of social and political commentary. Have I Got News For You, for example, is political satire, but it makes fun of both sides of the political aisle fairly evenly. In this clip, however, we see the comedians openly lamenting the election of Donald Trump. It isn’t that I disagree with them, but they do it overtly, in a semi-comedic semi-serious tone, so you get the impression that these guys really think that something truly dire has happened. They openly wonder how their fellow Americans can be so stupid. At one point, one of the comedians refers to Trump as a fascist. While that may be true, the words were said with such earnestness, and with such underlying anxiety and dread, that it was impossible not to get the sense that they thought something was gravely amiss. Their despair was open and genuine.

That overt bias strikes me as strange. Of course, you could just put it down to these comedians coming from a certain section of the population, and wanting to mock a candidate who they didn’t vote for. But I think it may also reflect a deep, deep anxiety now surfacing in America. Beneath the laughing, you get the impression that these guys think that something truly dangerous and unprecedented has happened; that their country has suddenly entered into uncharted, horrifying waters; and that they are genuinely scared.

This is all I can say about what happened today.

And so we wait. There isn’t much else we can do this evening. The world stands atop a precipice as it’s most powerful country chooses between open, liberal democracy and a form of deranged totalitarianism. Should it veer one way, things will probably continue as they have; but should it veer the other, who knows what insanity, what brutality, may be unleashed. All we can do is hope, with every fibre of our beings, that it chooses the right path, keeps heading towards the light, and rejects the path back to a kind of darkness which the world has not seen in eighty years.

And so, once again, this evening we wait.

I’ll keep this one short: if you ever fancy watching the most fucked up film of all time, go and watch The Substance. I watched it last night, again at The Barbican, again with John. Frankly, I left the cinema wondering what the hell I had just seen. It is a gratuitous, horrifying film. It’s essentially about vanity and one woman’s desire to retain her youth and celebrity, but it’s played out in a way which is both obscene and ingenious. It is the type of film which is repugnant and awesome at the same time. Mark Kermode sums it up far better here. Check the Substance out….if you have the stomach.

I couldn’t put it better myself!

I was enjoying my usual post-breakfast internet browse earlier when I came across this BBC Panorama documentary called Trump: A Second Chance. It apparently aired three days ago, but must have crept under my radar. What it depicts is truly chilling: it is a vivid, ghastly description of the state the USA is currently in politically, where Donald Trump has built up a cult around him and seems intent on taking power by any means. As I wrote here last week about a similar documentary, it is becoming clearer and clearer what a dangerous man Trump is: he is now openly being likened to a fascist, and, as the Panorama program explains, the goals of Trump’s Project 2025 explicitly echo the rhetoric of Nazism.

This is serious. We may joke, we may get hyperbolic, but the world’s most important economy and powerful nation stands at a crossroads. In a few days there is a good possibility that it could elect a dangerous, unstable, convicted criminal who has openly stated his aspiration to become a dictator and his desire to arrest anyone who opposes him. Surely any intelligent person even remotely aware of history will know how critical this situation is. Humanity, as one unified body, cannot allow such an important nation to slide to such depths. I mean that wholeheartedly: I don’t know what we could do, and it is obviously wrong for one country to interfere in the elections of another, but surely we cannot just sit back and watch Trump ride roughshod into the White House and tear American Democracy to shreds.

Everyone needs to watch this program. It can also be viewed here on Youtube.

It is my sad duty to report the death of Tom Tamalin. I didn’t know Tom that well, but he was an old friend of Lyn’s and an outstanding disability rights activist. Over the last thirty years, he went to countless DAN protests and was one of the leading figures in our movement. He will be greatly missed.

I once described something I called the Paradox of Liberalism – the tendency to be perfectly ok with other people saying anything they like, unless we disagree with it. Frankly, I think it’s cropping up more and more these days, and is becoming increasingly problematic. As right-wing populism shows itself in increasingly sickening ways, how do we speak out against it without being accused of hypocrisy? Ricky Gervais sums it up rather nicely here.

Just as a follow up to what I wrote two days ago about the growing divisions between London and the rest of the country, I think this video is worth flagging up. It’s an excellent account of England’s North/South divide, going into much of the politics, history and sociology of an imbalance which is becoming more and more blatant. I found it fascinating, although it horrified me to find out how much damage Thatcher’s closure of the coal mines did across the North Of England. I also think it’s another great example of how advanced this kind of online video discourse is becoming.

I think it’s really important that I direct everyone to watch this documentary, which aired last night on BBC2. It details the actions of Donald Trump around the 2020 election, and his refusal to admit he had lost. What really becomes clear from the program is just how unstable Trump is: we may joke and laugh about him, but he is actually quite a dangerous man who will stop at nothing to get his way. He seems to think he is above the law, as do those around him. This documentary makes it clear how worried we should all be about Trump. Given that the USA is still the most powerful nation on Earth, I honestly think the prospect of him becoming president again would be a serious threat to world stability. If that happens, surely the rest of us would need to take action.

This might sound a bit weird, but I must admit that I find Bond Street tube station rather amazing. Not that I’m turning into a public transport nerd or anything, but I find the fact that Londoners can now switch between the Jubilee and Elizabeth Lines so easily pretty incredible. As a feat of engineering, it’s pretty phenomenal when you think about it: Bond Street is quite an old, well used station, but they have managed to link it into a brand new underground line so seamlessly that it feels like it was originally designed that way. The amount of planning and work that must have taken blows my mind: how did they manage to do so much digging without disrupting what was already there?

Mind you, that also brings to mind a much more important point: a hell of a lot of effort and money is spent on London’s infrastructure, but I fear that that makes the chasm between the capital and the rest of the country even wider. Two years ago London got a brand spanking new tube line costing billions, making getting around the city easier than ever before, while it seems that the rest of the country is being left to crumble. As a project, Crossrail as a whole is mind blowing; yet the Northerner in me still remembers the crumbling little towns served by slow, inaccessible busses I grew up in. (Do busses outside of London even have automatic wheelchair ramps yet?) As I roll through stations like Bond Street, so sleek, well designed and reeking of London’s affluence, I can’t help also feeling a deepening sense of unfairness.