Yesterday afternoon I finished reading From Hobbits to Hollywood, a book of essays looking at Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings. I would have finished it long before now, but it has been a busy few weeks. It is, however, an excellent collection of essays: as a student of film, I was glad to see this trilogy treated with such a degree of academic rigour rather than being completely ignored. I always said Jackson’s was a remarkable achievement.

Now, as with any collection of essays, some are better than others. However, overall, the quality of these essays was very high. Of course, I was mining the book for material I could use in my never ending Master’s thesis, and I am pleased to say I think there are one or two useful bits. Surprisingly, an essay of the architecture in these films by Steven Woodward and Kostis Kourelis might be the most useful for my purposes, as it explores background details, something which links nicely into Cinephiliac Moments. There is also an essay by Murray Pomerance exploring the dramatic aspects of disappearing in relation to cinema history. Pomerance, who also edited the book, also wrote The Horse Who Drank The Sky, a fascinating text about filmic love. Also noteworthy is Golum as Golem by Tom Gunning, the essay which took me the longest to read: I was not that enthusiastic about it, and I kept getting distracted, but the last few pages proved interesting. It examined the philosophical aspects to CGI, which might also be useful in relation to my thesis.

There are about twenty individual texts in this book; summarising all of them would take far too long. I found most of them quite fascinating even if they were not relevant to my thesis, although it was clear from some that their authors, having been asked to write an essay for this book, had merely watched the films once or twice and dashed off something general.

I’m currently keeping a keen eye on Jackson, the release of the hobbit being only months away. He did a superb job with Lord of the Rings, and my liking for those films has only deepened since reading these essays. That’s why I’m quietly optimistic about the hobbit, although the current rumour that he’s now making three films rather than two seems rather odd. Mind you, I don’t think one should ever underestimate Peter Jackson.

The official Paraorchestra blog is not yet up, so I think I better record this here. It’s very cool anyway, and definitely blogworthy. I don’t remember feeling as

intimidated or out of my depth as I did yesterday since my first day at uni; I felt like I should have been wearing my suit (or, perhaps, my best evening dress). Lyn and I were at the meal welcoming the Paralympic team: the Paraorchestra played during the event, so we were backstage rather than at the meal proper. Nevertheless, I was rather awe-struck: we were at a posh venue in central London; big guys in suits were everywhere; the British Paralympic team were all there; Jeremy Hunt was due to give a speech. And there was I, wondering how on earth I had stumbled into all this.

The performance itself went well, and I’m pleased to say was very well received. Charles gave a short speech introducing the orchestra, and I watched from the wings as the group played a short version of their ‘Greensleeves’. There was huge applause at the end, but I think the audience was expecting them to play another song, as then there was a sort of expectant silence. I think they were surprised to see the orchestra leaving the stage, and indeed disappointed. I think I’ll mention the idea of expanding the repertoire to Lyn and/or Charles.

All the same, it was a great event; I don’t know about Lyn but I got home shattered. There were apparently a few A-list celebrities there, but I didn’t notice any – I was too busy resisting the urge to go and have a firm word with Mr. Hunt. Mind you, at one point during the build up, I wondered if Boris was coming – now that would have been fun.

Yesterday was quite a day; a fantastic day! It started ordinarily enough, but when she got up, Lyn proposed we go to the current 007 exhibition in the Barbican. Bond usually isn’t her thing, but I had been yearning to go for a few days, and I think she thought it best to get it out of my system. So off we went. I have such a great girlfriend!

I must say I was quite impressed with the exhibition. It focuses on the stylistics of the bond films – the sets, the locations, the cars, the costumes – and it was interesting to see such things deconstructed. You might say it was about the mise-en-scene of the bond films. I felt like a child in an amazing new playground: I got a thrill from seeing Scaramanger’s infamous Golden Gun (made from a pen and a cigarette box, apparently), but sadly I don’t recall seeing any jetpacks.

To round it all off, they had a martini bar, where I enjoyed my first authentic martini for a while. It reminded me of the one I had in Sydney, and I was able to say ”one medium dry vodka martini, shaken, not stirred” for the first time without the barman looking at me like I was some kind of freak. Lyn did not like hers, so I finished hers off. I then thought, perhaps foolishly, that I would try a Vesper, which I found I preferred. After that, feeling rather light headed, we started for home. I was thrilled at having seen this fascinating exhibition, and would highly recommend it to any bond fan or film student.

Bloggers seem to carry more and more weight these days – it’s quite an interesting phenomenon really. I as just reading this article about the Hobbit, where I saw Peter Jackson mention the influence of the so-called blogsphere: ” There is a huge audience waiting to see ‘The Hobbit,’ and any positive press from Comic-Con will truthfully have little impact on that. However, as we saw at CinemaCon earlier this year, with our 48 frames per second presentation, negative bloggers are the ones the mainstream press runs with and quotes from.” Reading that, it suddenly struck me how much power bloggers now hold. Writers have always held power, of course, but historically that was an art form reserved for a select few with publishers and editors acting as gatekeepers. These days, anyone can write and have their musings read by a potentially vast audience.

Yet I don’t think this has brought about the democratic parity you might think: not all blogs are equal. A few blogs have risen to the top, and their authors have become very influential, reaching vast audiences. Below them are a vast amount of blogs written by guys like me, harping on about anything that interests them; they usually have their own domains, and moderate readership (mind you, apart from my immediate family and maybe a few friends, I have no idea who reads my entries.) They are also written by people who call themselves bloggers..

Lowest in the blogsphere hierarchy are guys who write stuff on things like Livejournal or Blogspot. I don’t think they should be called blogs as that connotes a specific personal site. While no doubt some of the writing on those can be brilliant, most constitute the inane rantings of hormonal adolescents. There are too many of them for any one to stand out, so I tend to see them as a mass of irrelevant drivel. They usually aren’t updated frequently, aren’t written by people who call themselves bloggers – ie writers who specifically intend to impart their world view to others – and so I don’t think should be taken as seriously as other blogs.

But that’s only my view. I suppose I am spoiled by having my own domain. Yet I do think there’s a certain blogging hierarchy which is part of web culture, and that interests me as a student of culture in general. Nevertheless, it is fascinating to note how much power the blogsphere now holds, and especially the new type of miniblogging on twitter.

I have been pondering a blog entry about the lords reforms all day. This morning in the bath I was all set to write a fairly long entry about it; the subject certainly deserves looking into in some depth. Yet, now that I have sat myself in front of my computer and started to write, what can I say? On the one hand we have the fact that the upper house functions as a fairly good safety measure in case the commons ever goes too far. On the other, we have the fact that it is undemocratic, and that some lords are lords simply through birth. Then again, he fact that some lords didn’t choose to be there – ie, they are not motivated by personal ambition – may in fact be a good thing. I like too how certain members of the public can be appointed to the lords on merit, like Lord Winston and Lord Attenborough, bringing their expertise and wisdom to the chamber but without having chosen to be there. That, perhaps, is the way to go: not an entirely elected chamber, but a chamber with some members appointed on merit. Nevertheless that is not to say I find the idea of hereditary peers at all palatable: the notion that some people can be ‘born to rule’, holding power simply through accident of birth, has no place in a modern western democracy.

I just stumbled onto this oddity, a cartoon-based blog about a family whose members all have disabilities. I don’t know where they’re going with it, and to my mind this first entry is written in a wierd, over-explanatory way – ie, they [i]tell[/i] rather than [i]show[/i] – but it seems to have huge potential for highlighting the plight of those with disabilities in britain today. Definitely worth keeping an eye on.

I don’t have that much to say today. I am, of course, rathe disappointed with the tennis result: Murray gave his all, and the nation should be proud of him, but Federer was just too good. I did however come across this interesting article about the research into communication systems which are controlled directly from the brain. It seems systems are being developed which would allow one to control a VOCA just by thinking. An interesting prospect indeed, although I’m not sure I like the idea of others being able to hear my thoughts: my brain can be an awfully fucked up pace at times – believe me, you do not want to go in there. Mind you, the question does arise over how they would control which thought remain thoughts and which ones are actually said. I sometimes consider five or six ays of saying something before saying it, whether on my Lightwriter or vocally, so how would such a machine know when you have decided on your final utterance?

I love this city. I hate this city

It’s size thrills me. It’s size daunts me.

I find it’s complexity intimidating. I find it’s complexity intriguing.

I love it because of it’s endless variety. I find it’s variety hard to comprehend.

I love it’s motion, but hate it for never staying still.

I may sometimes hate London, but I’ll always love being a Londoner.

It has been another long, busy day, and I’m quite tired. I don’t think I’ve had such a busy couple of days in quite a while, and it feels good. The thing is, as often happens not much happened today tat I can blog about in short, so I’ll just direct you here, to a rather excellent article on Last night’s Newsnight about the cultural inapt and relevance of James bond, of which I am still a huge fan. I started to watch it about ten hours ago, then we went out, and I only just got round to the second half

Just so you guys know, today I was confirmed as the semi-official blogger for the British Paraorchestra. I felt I had to do something for the organisation, and, since I’m a writer rather than a musician, I volunteered my services as chronicler. I will, of course, continue to write my own blog – after all, the two have very different focuses – but from time to time I plan to link from here to my entries on there. After all, it’s hard enough sometimes keeping one blog up to date, left alone two! I’ll post the details when it’s all set up.

It has been a fairly long day. Lyn and I got home fairly late and I flicked on the news, hoping to relax before bed, when I saw this remarkable news. The higgs has been discovered – it is real! I’m not a physicist, and I can’t begin to understand the implications of this finding; I only know that this is a momentous day upon which history has been written (if i is confirmed, of course), and I would be a lax blogger indeed if I didn’t mark this event. Mind you, exploring what this means will have to wait until the morning for me – bed must sometimes take precedence over fundamental physics.

I do not have much to blog about today. Lyn has a busy few weeks with the Paraorchestra coming up, and I now really want to become involved in that in some nonmusical capacity too, so today I think was a chill-out day before the madness. I just read and watched tennis. I did, however, come across the beginnings of an idea which I think needs flagging up: Katie Caryer has proposed the creation of a monthly disability-based comedy club in london. I do not think such a thing exists yet, so I think it’s an awesome idea. I don’t quite know what Kate has in mind, so you, like me, will have to ask her about the details, but as an embryonic idea I think it’s fantastic and well worth pursuing.

I do not recall ever feeling more proud than I did yesterday afternoon – both proud of Lyn and proud of belonging to the disability community. I know I have written that elsewhere recently, but the events of yesterday were even more incredible than the recent solo concert the Paraorchestra did. Yesterday they played together, as one group, in front of a live audience, for the first time, and they sounded wonderful. A festival called Orchestra in a field at a venue not far from Glastonbury Abbey saw the debut performance of an orchestra composed entirely of musicians with a disability, and I now have absolutely no doubt it will be the first of many.

I had been worried that the idea of an orchestra exclusively for people with disabilities sent the wrong message. That, in an era where we are all working towards inclusion, in overtly segregated disabled musicians. Yet unlike the special schools, the Paraorchestra was formed through choice. It’s members choose to play for it. It allows them to express their talents which have been disregarded elsewhere. Thus, rather than being an effort to segregate, the Paraorchestra is an exercise in inclusion, bringing musicians with together all kinds of musical interests. On this level, I think it’s an expression of disability culture and vibrancy of the first order.

Indeed, after the performance yesterday afternoon, I had a chance to talk briefly to Charles Hazlewood, the man who set the Paraorchestra up, about just that. He shared my concerns, and had encountered them before from others. He was well aware of the potential dangers, but said that the Paraorchestra should be seen as just a first step, a platform from which musicians with disabilities could go on to other things. Moreover, as I found out from emma, the assistant producer, on the bus coming back, it has always been Charles’ intention to include able-bodied musicians too. That being so, I really hope the Paraorchestra is embraced by the wider disability community.

They really do first rate work: yesterday, they did two pieces, versions of greensleeves and ballero. It’s based on improvisation, where each member of the group, instruments ranging from harp to Ipad, picking up and playing variations on a set tune. Thus the music might be seen as a metaphor for disability itself, if not life in general, where diversity and variety come together to form a beautiful, melodic whole. I therefore truly believe that what I saw yesterday down in Glastonbury was the birth of something incredible.

My glasses broke earlier, occasioning a trip to the opticians. I go to a small, local, family-run opticians; they know me quite well in there. My specs took ages to fix, and the young lady really had to perciveer. So, given too how many times I’ve had to rely o them, I thought that I’d buy them some wine just to say thanks. I therefore popped two door along to a nearby off license. That, however, eventually resulting in me writing the following:

[quote=”my messege to nisa”]I am a 29 year old with cerebral palsy. I use an electric wheelchair and a lightwriter communication aid. I was at your nisa drinks store in charlton earlier, buying some wine. I wish to complain about the staff there: firstly, when I tried to use my credit card to pay, they insisted I paid in cash. Later, after I had acquired the cash necessary, They still refused to serve me, Insisting that the law somehow states that I needed a ‘carer’ with me to buy alcohol. Needless to say, I know of no such preposterous law, and, given that I have bought alcohol from other shops before, suspect that they refused to serve me simply because I’m disabled. I felt patronized and insulted, and would like to know what action, if any, you are going to take. Yours

Matt Goodsell[/quote]

Sorry this is such short notice, but just a quick note to say that the British paraorchestra will be playing at Orchestra in a field, glastonburry abbey, tomorrow afternoon. I had the good fortune to go to their rehearsal yesterday, and they sound brilliant! please come if you can.

I was thinking about noting this yesterday, of course, other things were on my mind. Did it not strike anyone else as slightly ironic that the queen this week shook the hands of Martin McGuinness, an ex IRA commander? While I think it was an excellent sight and was to be welcomed, I had to raise an eyebrow. After all, this man was the leader of a terrorist paramilitary responsible for killing hundreds. Does this not jar with the UK’s participation with the war on terror? How can we support the americans in their crusade against terror when our experience in Ireland teaches us that today’s terrorist is tomorrow’s respected politician? Im not saying the IRA are or were like al qa’ida, but that this surely shows that the american belief that you can only deal with terrorists by blowing the living daylights out of them is bollocks.

I am not against freedom of speech; it is, after all, one of the most important democratic values. But I am starting to think, albeit not without reservations, that some people should just be made to shut the fuck up. Some people spew such hatred, such bile, that they should be denied the right to air their views.

Part of me can’t believe I just wrote those words, but that is now what I think. Yesterday I came across a picture on facebook of a small child with Down’s Syndrome with the words ”Here’s the thing: I have a really awesome life…There is no prenatal test to predict that”. It struck me as cool, so I simply pressed share; it was a simple but sot on message about disability. I thought no more of it till some time later, when I noticed that it had been seen and reshared by an online associate of mine. Through him, it had come to the attention of a certain, well-known disablist bigot who I won’t even dignify by naming. She had predictably replied with her usual unthinking, moronic bile about how infanticide should be legalised for parents of disabled children and about how ” Mothers of disabled children [sic] ought to be ashamed of themselves. They really should have the decency to shut the fuck up than to encourage the rest of the world to glorify disability and degeneracy.” I know I should ignore this crap, and that the person in question is no more than a lonely, ill-informed old woman craving attention deluded enough to think people listen to the piffle she spouts. But I cannot let the fact that she insulted the mothers of kids with disabilities stand.

My mother is a noble, loving woman; I think back too to the mums of my school friends, deeply loving an supportive of their kids. To see this online nobody call them degenerates and to seek to dispute, as she did, the right to life of the child with Downs, to me goes beyond the pale. Such people must be brought to account for their arrogance and hatred. She seems to dispute the fact that people with disabilities are valuable members of society, and accuses anyone who argues against her of being emotional, feminine and wimpish. Well, perhaps my argument is indeed invested with strong emotion – after all, she is questioning my own right to life just because I don’t fit her narrow-minded idea of ‘normal’ – but it is also based on cold, hard facts. Any life can be productive, any life can bring joy. I know many people with disabilities who contribute far more to society than some ill-informed old woman spewing bile over the internet all day. Thus her arguments are not based on evidence, morality, economics or any other thing she tries to pretend they are, but sheer, pure, unthinking intolerance. If they had been, I would have less of an argument: how could I possibly argue that someone has no right to say what they say if it was grounded in some degree of truth? But there is no logic behind what she says, only a bigoted dislike of difference.

On such grounds, I think I am within my rights to call for her to be silenced. She has, in effect, called for my death after all, so I am not being unreasonable. A lunatic shouting in the high street that the Jews or black people should be gassed would surely be arrested and possibly sectioned; in a way, this is no difference. She is being a public nuisance, actively upsetting people, trying to question their very right to exist. Why should anyone have such a right? in spewing such intolerant, murderous bile, has she not forfeited her right to free speech? Of course, this is only my blog, and writing it will achieve nothing, but I will not let such hatred go without calling it what it is: the ranting of an ill-informed, bigoted woman whose unfounded ravings symbolise absolutely nothing. Just shut up, bitch, nobody who matters cares what you think.

I think it would be lax of me not to flag this fascinating documentary on Tolkien up. It concerns the possible inspirations for his created world, as well as drawing out and looking at some of the themes of his work. It’s quite long, but well worth a watch, as it examines how the mind that created middle-earth could possibly have come about.

You might be surprised to read that I have yet to go and explore the Cutty Sark. I have a great affinity with ships, especially old ones, but for some reason I must have missed the fact of her rebirth at Greenwich this year. It wasn’t until I passed her on Saturday that I saw her and thought ”I need to go and have a look at that soon”. It cannot be denied that she looks magnificent now she has been rebuilt, but something about the sight of a ship held firmly on land by iron and glass. Part of me thinks that they should have rebuilt her as a working, sailing vessel, as they did with Endeavour. The replica of Cook’s ship, as I wrote here, looks magnificent in Darling Harbour, Sydney, but she can actually still do the job of her namesake and explore the oceans. You can smell the salt on her bows. In contrast, I can’t help but feel just a little sad at the sight of a ship that goes nowhere. Who knows, maybe once I take a closer look I’ll be just as impressed as I was with Endeavour. After all, to make her seaworthy again they would have had to have started from scratch, so they probably did the right thing under the circumstances. Even so, it is rather interesting to compare these two cases of historic ship maintenance.

How odd is it that in life people sometimes come and go like the tide? They come in to it then go out of it just as suddenly. This weekend, as I wrote yesterday, I was doing some volunteer work at Greenwich market. I was manning a stall in the corner of the ancient place, working with a man called David. He was, I’d guess, in his late fifties or early sixties, and we quickly struck up a conversation, mostly about history. We thus got to know a bit about each other, and I really enjoyed talking to him: he has a daughter in Melbourne and had travelled Australia extensively, although I don’t think he had ever heard of the Cat Empire. He helped me with my lunch and even bought cookies. I liked the guy, and at the end of the weekend, when the stall was being dismantled, we shook hands and parted. It’s rather odd to reflect on the fact that I will probably never see this man again, and what that says about life in the modern maelstrom, and human relationships in general.

Our PA Mitchel just showed me this short film, involving two wheelchair users. He said it was a comedy, and on one level it is indeed rather funny, but on another, given the two protagonists are homeless and clearly have psychological issues, it is very, very dark indeed, and frankly quite unsettling.

This is just a quick note to say that today I’ll be down in greenwich helping out at the festival. I was there yesterday, mostly handing out leaflets in the market, but I did get to learn some history: the original festival, of which this is a revival, was banned in the 1840s for being too rowdy. Who knew that the people of greenwich could be so debauched? I’m kind of hoping they recreate the riot which apparently ended the thing. Anyway, I better press on, but if your in the area come have a look.

Today I think I will write something which I’ve been thinking about penning for quite some time, but have been weary of committing to my blog. It is my firm belief that conservatives and those on the right in general are less intelligent than liberals and left-wingers. I know that sounds awfully arrogant, especially coming from someone who calls himself a liberal, but nevertheless it is my firm conviction. Let me explain why.

As I see it right-wing politics places the individual over the group, but left-wing politics conceives individuals as belonging to a greater whole. That greater whole is the state. Given that, to the leftist, we are all equal, we can all contribute to the state and, in return, the state should do what it can to ensure equality. That’s why liberalism goes hand in glove with the left: the assumption that liberalism means people should be left alone to do what they want is to confuse liberalism with neoliberalism. To be a liberal is to hold that all views and ways of life are equally valid; that concepts such as class, morality and religion are arbitrary and divisive, and should thus be broken with. That requires people to come together as a community to ensure that everyone has equal access to resources. If all lifestyles are of equal value, then all people should have equal opportunities to express theirselves and attain happiness, which means equal support. Hence liberalism is of the left. It is also my conviction that the only way for us to solve problems like global warming and the energy crisis is for people to work together as one organism, rather than as individuals. they could only do this through a state system which prizes individuals equally.

The problem is people mistake liberalism with neoliberalism, which advocates the complete withdrawal of the state, leaving people to their own devices. This conservative, individualist idea leads only to the perpetuation of an unequal status quo: without the intervention of the state, unfair structures like the class system are allowed to continue, so only a minority are allowed happiness and freedom. That isn’t liberalism but its opposite: conservatism.

To return to my opening statement, to see the world only in terms of yourself, to question taxation because you don’t see why others should take your money, to try to cast doubt on well-established theories like global warming, to seek to perpetuate things like class and tradition simply because you benefit from them while others suffer, is a sign of a self-centred worldview. To me, to hold such a view boils down to stupidity, by which I mean an inability to see things from other perspectives, to think that only your needs and desires matter. To see things individualistically or in terms of your own immediate group (be that family, tribe or ‘race’) is to ignore the many other perspectives, mechanisms, histories and so on which combine to explain why the world is how it is. To refuse to accept new ideas, to try to hold back change, to object to immigration, betrays an inability to understand or to cope with difference. Such views impoverish society, which is why we, as liberals, must speak out against them. In a way that seems pretty illiberal, but if we want a multicultural, tolerant society, we must speak out against those who speak against multiculturalism and tolerance.

Liberalism is about equality and tolerance. Not pure, unthinking tolerance, but a kind of tolerance which realises that equality cannot be gained unless certain barriers are broken down. Thus true liberalism means one must be aware of oppressive forces in society: to be liberal is to think, to understand the mechanisms which explain why the world is how it is, which in turn means seeing the world in terms of the whole and not the individual. That’s why liberalism is left wing, as only a large, wellfunded social sector means that everyone can have equal opportunities. To refuse to accept the complex nature of the world, which conservatives seem unable to do in favour of the certainties of individualism, betrays an inability to understand which, I’m beginning to think, boils down essentially to a kind of stupidity. The way in which they seek to maintain the advantages of the few over the many – a few which most conservatives belong to – reminds me of children who haven’t learned to share.

If the cricket match on Saturday made me think back to Melbourne, what happened yesterday caused me to think of graduation, as I was trying to think of an event where I had felt as proud as I did. For yesterday was indeed up there with graduation day as one of the proudest moments of my life. Lyn was performing at an event up in Bloomsbury; she plays with an organisation called the British Paraorchestra, who were doing a fund-raising gig. Strangely, it struck me that I had never seen my future wife play live before: of course, I’d heard her play in her studio at home countless times, but never in font of a live audience. I could barely have imagined the treat I was in for.

The Paraorchestra usually play as a group, but last night it’s individual members got to show off their skills as soloists. All the musicians involved have a disability of one kind or another, so in the back of my mind I must admit I had experienced a few cries of ‘tokenism!’ After all, there has been this slight but persistent concern in the back of my mind that this project might look to a casual bystander like someone getting a group of disabled people in order to cry ‘Wow! Look at the brave cripples playing music!’ In other words, some kind of stunt designed to boost egos rather than create cool music. I was also concerned that the project was fundamentally anti-inclusive, that musicians with a disability should be playing alongside their able-bodied peers, not set apart from them in their own segregated orchestras. The only way for such concerns to be dispelled is for the music it generates to be as good as that of any other musical group – in other words, the project needs to stand up artistically, or else it smacks of patronisation.

I need not have worried. The members of the Paraorchestra are all first class musicians. I was utterly blown away by all of the performances, especially one blind guy who played the recorder in ways I had never seen before. The evening amazed me, and Lyn, I’m pleased to report, got a rousing round of applause. I have always said she is amazing, but last night in Bloomsbury she amazed me afresh. The Paraorchestra is an amazing group of people, brought together by talent, not tokenism, and destined, I’m sure, for great, great things. I’m sure this will be the first of many gigs I go with Lyn to, and only the start of my life as the proud other half of a worldrenowned musician.

I have another disability-related item to cover today, but one rather more complicated and more troubling. A guy called Tony Nicklinson will go to the high court today to argue that he has the right to ask doctors to kill him. Nicklinson, who has Locked-in syndrome, argues that he has no quality of life but, given that he cannot commit suicide on his own, wants the right to ask doctors to legally end his life. Needless to say this case has me in a quandary: on one level, I agree that disabled people should have the ability to do anything they whish, which of course includes topping theirselves. But on another level, I must say I find this story very, very disturbing indeed.

I don’t want to sound like a right-wing moron going on about the sanctity of life, and nor do I seek to tell others what they can and cannot do, but frankly, to hear this guy go on about having no quality of life fills me with rage. I suppose it might be slightly different for those who become disabled after birth, especially people who had previously lived very active lives, but having seen people far more disabled than he is relish life to the full, I find what Nicklinson says absolutely cowardly. It is as if he thinks that, now he is disabled his life is worthless, as he can no longer do what he once was able to. When I hear him speak I think I detect a touch of disabledist baggage carried over from his previous life. It is as if he thinks that now he has a disability his life is over as he can no longer do the activities he once enjoyed. The implication of this, at least in my mind, is that he thinks people with disabilities live lives which are less worth living.

Indeed, should he get his way and the law is changed, I fear that is the message which would be sent out. For starters, the general public might start to assume that we all think like Nicklinson does – that we all think our lives to be unbearable and want to top ourselves at the earliest opportunity. Such a change in the law would thus devalue the lives of all disabled people, and under the right circumstances it would be fitting and right to kill us. Such a prospect mortifies me, and to hear a fellow disabled person advocate it using the language of equality is horrifying. If we think it through, such a judgement would open a pandoras box of concerns for other disabled people as well as fundamentally changing how disability is perceived. What Nicklinson is doing, then, is selfish in that he doesn’t seem to care about the implications of what he is asking for for other disabled people. He just wants to end his life without caring that A) he can still do all the activities that he used to, given the right support, B) there are people with far more profound disabilities than his who would probably be appalled at what he is saying, and C) he may find using his communication aid slow and laborious, but he is bloody lucky to have such equipment and can communicate at all. I keep thinking of all the people I have known over the years, far more profoundly disabled, who would never stoop to such self-pity, so to see this guy spout such lachrymose drivel fills me with bile. At least he had the chance to do all the things he did and, who knows, might one day do again.

On one level, perhaps a general one, Nicklinson has a point: people with disabilitites should have as much freedom as anyone else, including the freedom to end one’s life. But to see it in such terms is far too simplistic: effectively legalising murder, albeit with consent, leads on into far darker places. The freedom to ask to be killed is something quite different to, say, the freedom to decide what to eat or where to go. It has profound consequences following on from it, as well as raising the prospect of people actually being coerced into asking for death. Should the law be changed, the value of the lives of all disabled people would be downgraded and seen as something barely worth living. Murder must therefore remain murder, and Mr. nicklinson must learn to be content in the body he has, as the rest of us do.

I heard today, as I’m sure we all did, that Jack Osbourne has been diagnosed with MS. Apparently, Multiple Sclerosis is more common in young people than one might think. I just thought I would flag it up here as a bit of disability-related news. After all, it isn’t often that someone with such a high profile enters into the ranks of us cripples; I’ll be interested to see how he copes with it, and how his condition is now treated in the media. I’ve already seen a segment on the bbc news channel about other people with MS. Of course, I hope Jack’s OK personally, but I also think this presents us with quite fascinating opportunity to observe and learn something about societies’ relationship with disability.

Today I could not help but think of a day five years ago in Melbourne. That day, like today, was bitterly cold; I remember sitting at the test at the Melbourne cricket ground, watching in desperations as England lost to Australia. I could not help but think back to that match today as I sat in the park watching Blackheath have their not negligible score of 151 eroded. I had intended to stay to the bitter end, but it grew too cold and too dark, and I began to miss the girl I love. Cricket is an amazing sport, and I can spend entire days watching it, but today, like at the test in Melbourne, other factors took precedence. Unlike that day in Melbourne though, when it was only the bitter cold which made the return to our hotel room so welcome, today it was mainly the thought of returning to Lyn which drove me homeward.

Sometimes freezing your arse off just ain’t worth it, especially if the woman you love is at home.

Rather than writing anything else today (I can’t really write the rant against CaMoron I’d like to, as he didn’t really hand us the self-damning testimony we’d all have liked yesterday) let me just wish my mum a happy birthday. As I keep saying, I don’t see mum much these days, except on skype; she and dad were and are wonderful parents, and I do miss them, just as any child of a loving home will inevitably miss the securities and certainties of his youth once he goes out into the world. But time passes, and I am independent and free, making my own way in this maelstrom. I have my own life and my own family. And yet it still feels good to call ‘home’, to Skype my parents, to see them sitting at the same kitchen table I sat at for so many years, sipping tea from the same huge cups they have always used, and to know that they will always be there, at the other end of a webcam.

Happy birthday Mum!

Not to be outdone by lyn’s music, I just came up with this short poem. Perhaps we could use them as lyrics in something: Sharing your life makes me so happy you are the one I’ll one day marry

‘Love me’ you say. But you are you

And I know our love will forever be true Nowhere on earth I’d rather be than in our bed, with you by me.

Although you’ll have to sign up to soundcloud (it took me about five seconds tho), Lyns latest track, ‘Love Me’, can be found here. It is, in my opinion, one of her best pieces to date, although I’ll have to ask her what the title is a reference to. We are planing to make a video for youtube to go with it, but in the meantime enjoy.

Not too much is going on in the world of matt and Lyn today. I went to school, then over to greenwich to see if I could volunteer again at GAD or something – I really do need something else to get me out of the house. GAD no longer takes on volunteers, but they directed me to the volunteer coordinator nearby, with whom I now have a meeting on the 21st. Anyway, short of much else to write about I thought I’d submit this for your attention. It is a review from Ouch of a film festival in leeds which has a high proportion of disability-related films. Most of them sound interesting and might well be worth a look.

Coming from a liberal this may sound pretty hypocritical. Mind you, as a liberal one must always be conscious of and negotiate the paradox of liberalism – tolerate everything, only be intolerant of intolerance. I heard today about the church’s objections to gay marriage, and was struck with rage. It’s a complicated argument of course, and I can’t pretend to have heard all the perspectives, but what gives religious people the idea that they have the authority to pronounce who can and cannot marry? Leaving aside the fact that marriage is an outdated and often repressive institution, the fact remains that, if two people love each other, then they should be free to hold any ceremony they wish. After all, as I learned today, the concept of marriage is not fixed; it has evolved over time. There are no set rules governing what constitutes marriage, so in these postmodern enlightened times, the idea that a bunch of conservative bigots who think they can force their narrow-minded ideas on others by invoking a book of bronze-age fairy stories should be allowed to dictate who can and cannot marry appals me. If marrying and having the status of a married couple makes two people happy, then let them. I don’t see how that effects anybody else, unless some feel the urge to impress their homophobic beliefs on others so violently that they seek to oppose equality, ay rights and minority rights in general at all costs. Frankly, part of me wonders why we are still listening to the church at all, when, if you think about it, what they say is based on outdated beliefs and discredited myths.

I don’t like to just repost images I find on the ‘net here, but this one is just too brilliant for me not to.

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Does it not strike anyone else as rich that the tories are trying to blame the economic woes in europe for the lack of growth in the UK when, when Labour was in power, europe had nothing to do with it and it was all Brown’s fault? That is surely classic tory, and classic CaMoron. When I saw Osbourne utter this hypocrisy on the news earlier, I almost laughed out loud at the cheek of it. Our current lack of growth is entirely down to the drastic cuts currently being imposed upon us, but rather than admit that their ideologically-inspired ransack of the state is making things worse rather than better, the tories choose the nearest scapegoat, even when, when it really was the fault of external markets, the blamed the very man who prevented the crisis from being ten times worse. anyone with a memory of more than five minutes will surely see this hypocrisy, and despair at the pack of cheeky, lying sods we currently have in power.

Having visited the replica of the Endeavour myself in 2007, I am fascinated to read that she is once again at sea. She is currently on day 11 of a voyage to observe the Transit of Venus – the very thing cook set out to do. Thus I find reading her log online glorious; it’s good to see that people still have a sense of history, and good to see that people can still do such crazy things. I hope all goes well, and that that wonderful ship gets back to sydney safely.

Apologies again for yesterday. I was rather disappointed not to see Lyn on the one show; my hopes were so high it was quite a let down when her face did not appear. I was quite perturbed, in fact – so much so that I wrote to the beeb to ask why Lyn was cut. They replied that the length of the film had to be shortened so stuff had to be cut out, including the part with lyn. It’s a shame: to me, Lyn is an utterly remarkable woman deserving the attention of the nation, if not the world. I want everyone to see what an incredible, unique person my girlfriend is.

Although part of me suspects a slight whiff of transphobia in their decision, on a practical level I suppose I can understand their reasons for cutting lyn rather than someone else out. Portraying an interview with a VOCA user on screen requires more work in editing out all the gaps and pauses than just using one with a vocal person. Mind you, I was interviewed on tv once: back in ’99, granada news came to film my class for winning a wheelchair display competition, and I did a brief interview. If memory serves, that went very well indeed: they handled my interview quite well, editing it so I came across as fluid, eloquent and spontaneous. I was hoping they would do the same with lyn, but no such luck. Oh well, it’s not the end of the world: let’s just say we have one or two surprises for you all to look out for yet. The world will be introduced to the amazing person that is Lyn Levett yet.

Sorry I’ve made so many shortish entries recently – this will be another. I would just like to flag up that I have it on good authority that Lyn will be appearing on the One Show tonight, which is on bbc 1 at 7. Please watch if you can. I can’t wait.

Not one to be outdone by the real thing, and following on from my entry yesterday, the spastic queen has made this jubilee address.

I suppose it is fair to say that I’m in two minds about the monarchy. I can certainly see it’s good points: having a queen, I usually say, is part of our national identity. Yet yesterday, as I was watching the river pageant on tv and thinking how beautiful it was, it suddenly struck me that, on quite an important level, it was utterly stupid, obscene even. All this money and effort, in the middle of a depression, to ‘celebrate’ an unelected old woman becoming head of state sixty years ago. If you think about it, why do we need the monarchy? It is a symbol of everything that I usually despise: the undemocratic figurehead of the class system, the human representation of the idea the outdated idea that some people are born to rule. Why should that be part of our national identity? Tory-types will say that the queen is ‘prepolitical’, and holds the nation together, but, when you think about it, that is utter bullshit. That is an excuse to maintain an innately unfair class system, designed to keep power in the hands of the few. They argue that the queen is just a figurehead with no real power, which is true; but she is also a symbol of inequality and unfairness – a symbol of an outdated, extremely expensive system which we all unthinkingly accept because we all swallow the idea that it is part of our identity. Why should some people be born to rule? Why should we all just accept the unfair, repressive class system so obviously symbolised and therefore maintained by having a monarchy? The tories want to keep the monarchy because they have a vested interest in maintaining the class system, a system they claim is meritocratic, but when analyzed is revealed to be a system covertly designed to keep power in the hands of the few. Isn’t it time we all engaged with such ideas, realising how oppressive they are, instead of just accepting them because they are tradition? Why do we accept spending so much on something so outdated, especially these days?

I suppose I am mildly disappointed. As I wrote earlier, I’m not really a monarchist, but I do have a liking for boats. As is well known there is a huge flotilla on the Thames today, the biggest in 250 years, and part of me fancies the idea of going up there and taking a look. But, as is also well known, the weather is not that good, so I think I’ll stay in and watch it on TV. Although I’ll probably get to see more if I stay in, I’m also gutted: I’m a Londoner now, and thus I’m in a better position than ever to go see such things. Living in Cheshire, central London was at least three hours away; now it’s a simple tube ride. It just seems a wasted opportunity. Then again, I was out much of yesterday, and the day before, so it’s high time I paid Lyn some attention instead of romping round London.

I’m also disappointed not to see Endeavour in the flotilla. The replica of Cook’s famous ship would have been a great addition to the show. She is my favourite boat, having visited her in Sydney, and I would have loved to see her again, this side of the equator. Had she been here, rain or no rain, I’d have been up there like a shot, Lyn preferably in tow. But the skies grey and Endeavour remaining in the south seas, I’m content to stay home. I’ve a feeling today will be a good one anyway: not because I get to see any mighty ships, but because I’m warm and safe where I belong.