Ipad passcodes are all well and good when it comes to making your device more secure, but when you use your Ipad as a communication aid and are required to type in a six digit code each time you want to say anything, they can really be a pain. I suppose it’s one of the drawbacks of communicating via an ipad, and particularly annoying if the function activates itself automatically after an update; although fortunately, as I found out earlier, it can easily be deactivated.

I first read this article on Thursday, but decided it would be a bit too curmudgeonly to flag up on my birthday, yet I think it’s the best piece of political and semiotic analysis I’ve read in a while. It’s a fairly long Guardian article examining Johnson’s clownish persona and the way he seeks to present himself as jovial, likeable and friendly while belying a much meaner, nastier reality. I don’t agree with it completely as I think Johnson thinks of himself as more of a statesman than a clown, but nonetheless I think it”s very well written and well worth reading.

Given I got so excited about Bond’s appearance on Comic Relief yesterday, I’m probably expected to say something about it today. To be honest, though, I don’t think there is that much I can sink my analytical teeth into: they obviously played it for laughs ass befitted the occasion, but these were more chuckles than full on belly laughs. There were one or two references to things like Bond’s sexuality and carbon footprint, as well as to the pandemic, but apart from that the skit did not strike me as particularly noteworthy. There was no moment of awesomeness I was kind of hoping for. That said, it was good to see Daniel Craig back in the role, and I liked the way Cathrine Tate’s Nan cheekily made fun of Bond while Craig tried his best to keep a straight face, but failed ever so slightly at the end. Both actors were obviously having fun, and I think this sketch should just be seen as a bit of lighthearted frippery more than something to delve deeply into.

I just heard something which is simply too hilarious not to flag up here. According to this TrekCulture video, when Star Trek Deep Space Nine was being produced, whenever the USS Defiant cloaked, shooting had to be stopped while the production crew changed every light bulb on the set. The reason I find that so funny is, as the chap in the video says, it will ring a bell with Red Dwarf fans everywhere.

Not that I wholly approve of charity fundraising events as a means of supporting society, but this news about tonight’s Comic Relief has predictably raised my interest. Daniel Craig’s 007 is apparently going to appear in a sketch with Cathrine Tate’s character Nan. “The Bond-themed skit will see Nan – now a cleaner at MI6 – take an unexpected call from 007 while cleaning M’s office.” While I doubt we can expect anything as incredible as Happy And Glorious (although I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a reference to it) this has the potential to be one of those interesting crossovers which fascinate me. From the stills, it looks like they will just be interacting via webcam, but even so I’ll now be looking forward to seeing what they do with this all day.

This awesome cake just arrived from my brother Luke and sister in law Yan, ahead of my birthday tomorrow. It needs to thaw before I eat it, but it looks so delicious I just had to blog about it. Thanks bro!

For the first time in my life, I honestly think I have a belly. I was looking in the mirror yesterday, and my stomach looked bigger than it has ever done. I’ve always been rather thin, probably because I constantly move, yet recently I’ve started to notice a distinct paunch. I can certainly no longer fit into all the dancewear I used to muck around in. Why this may be I have no idea: I’m not really eating more than I used to, and I’m exercising about as much as I ever did. Perhaps I’m just getting old.

Yesterday I had a brief look at how to get to Clapham Common from here in Eltham. It’s an area of London I’ve never been to, and I was curious about checking out the events currently unfolding there myself. I therefore did what I usually do in such situations, and headed to the TFL website. However, there I came across a problem: Clapham Common tube station, on the Northern Line, is not wheelchair accessible, and I couldn’t see any other route to get there. At that I ditched the idea. Yet in a way it strikes me as ironic: women are currently their protesting their right to cross the Common – a well-known cruising zone – without fear of sexual attack, but at least they can get there in the first place. Of course, I’m not disputing a woman’s right to go anywhere they wish without fear of sexual assault; they just seem to forget just how lucky they are to have the option, or perhaps they wouldn’t feel so hard done by. They claim they are not free, yet these mostly straight, white, middle class, able-bodied protesters don’t seem to realise how free they really are. Or to put that another way, they have every right to protest; I’d probably be there with them, if only I could get there.

It has been a long, hard year for everybody. Although we speak daily over the web, I haven’t met my parents physically in months, and to be frank I feel their absence. I have always been close to my parents: we are a close, tactile family in which hugs were always at the ready when needed. Today of all days, I am missing my mum. I miss her cuddles and kisses, her infectious laughter, jokes and wit, and especially her delicious cooking. I know it won’t be too long now until we can meet again, but today I just want to note how much I miss my mum, as well as just how much she means to me. I know I’m not always the best of sons, particularly when it comes to sending cards, but I know how lucky I am to have her. Happy Mother’s Day mum; I’ll see you soon.

Late yesterday afternoon I came across something on Facebook which I found very disturbing indeed. My friend Luke F. had posted an account of his experiences at his special school. It’s quite a well known school, so I won’t name it for fear of breaching confidentiality, but what Luke described was chilling. From what I read, the school forced Luke, who has fairly severe CP, to take pills (I’m not sure what pills) against his wishes, bribed him, and made him wear arm restraints.

Now, I know I wrote on here not long ago about how I can see the need for special schools in certain, specific instances: I am not an ‘all means all’ guy because I believe that trying to educate the most severely disabled children – those with, say, severe autism or learning difficulties – among their able bodied peers would put so much pressure on the child it would probably be cruel. I also don’t think this is an issue one should be dogmatic about. Yet cases like Luke’s give me pause for thought. While I never encountered such cruelty at my special school, I’ve heard many accounts of children being similarly mistreated; teenagers being put to bed at seven; kids barely being fed; students getting the most cursory, half arsed educations imaginable. Indeed, Lyn went through such an ordeal. I had hoped such travesties were well in the past, but Luke told me he only left school in 2003.

This cannot be right; it cannot be legal. Of course disabled children should be educated alongside their able-bodied classmates where at all possible, for the benefit of both. Yet while I feel there are select, specific instances where segregated, special education is necessary, surely horrific accounts like Luke’s cannot keep cropping up.

Just to back up my entry yesterday, I just came across this Youtube video by the IOC about the legacy of the 2012 Olympics. As expensive as they were, the games totally transformed that area of North East London; their impact is still being felt in terms of sport, society and education, nine years on. Frankly, I’d far rather public money was spent on such projects than pissed up the wall by the Tories on systems which don’t work, and are really just mechanisms for channeling money back to their donors.

If anyone is in any doubt that the Tories are nothing but a bunch of incompetent money-wasting morons, you now only need to point out the alarming fact that they have now wasted £37bn on a test and trace system which was totally useless. Frankly, I find that staggering, particularly when you remember that the London 2012 Olympics only cost about £9bn. The Olympics, of course, were a mega-event: entire stadiums had to be constructed; London got a completely new park, which you can still walk around; four awesome ceremonies were organised and performed; and so on. How, then, could more than triple the cost of the games have been spent on a test and trace scheme which almost nobody used, did not work and was obviously useless in preventing the UK from having one of the highest mortality rates on Earth? At the end of the day it was just an app: no expensive buildings needed to be constructed, no events needed to be organised. More to the point, how the hell can nobody have resigned or got the sack over this jaw-dropping waste of money? When you think of all the ways that that obscene sum could have been put to better use, I think we should all be very angry with the entitled scumbags now running the country.

Perhaps I shouldn’t admit this, but my daily trundles are gradually growing longer and longer. Yesterday, for instance, I made it across the city to Wembley. It was quite a long trip on public transport, but there was something in that area I needed to check (family business). Everywhere I go, though, it seems something is being built. Vast swathes of London are being regenerated; I was only there briefly, but Wembley is starting to look like Stratford, with sleek, modern shopping arcades and housing blocks replacing what was until recently a fairly run-down area. The case is the same all over the city: huge amounts of money are obviously being pumped into London. Woolwich, for example, now looks completely different to how it did twenty years ago, with it’s bright, open public square, complete with large-screen TV for special events.

It makes me wonder, though: what about other parts of the country? Are other cities in the UK receiving the same attention as London? Are, say, Glasgow, Birmingham or Stoke seeing the same kind of redevelopment? Or is London being singled out as the capital for preferential treatment, supposedly representing the country on the world stage, to the detriment of other areas? I’ve been in London so long I couldn’t say, but if this is the case, I daresay it would give rise to the burning resentment we now often see pointed towards the capital from elsewhere in the country.

I don’t want to breach confidentiality etc, so I won’t say too much, but today I just want to extend my huge and heartfelt congratulations to Beth M. upon gaining a first class degree in Social Policy. A fellow Communication Aid user, I first met Beth at Onevoice over fifteen years ago: back then, I could tell she was a little bundle of vast potential. It would seem that that potential is starting to be realised, although I have a strong feeling that this is only the beginning of Beth’s achievements.

I’m not even going to try to say anything about the Operah Winfrey interview last night, not least because I didn’t watch it. Frankly, the notion that everyone should watch an ultra-privileged woman bawl her eyes out about supposedly being mistreated by her husband’s absurdly wealthy family, when there are so many other things to worry about and so much real suffering aroundd these days, really takes the biscuit. After all, they chose to step back from royal duties, but now they’re complaining about not getting enough support from the royal family. It’s almost like a country choosing to leave an international community of nations, and then complaining about loosing the privileges it got from being a member of that community. More to the point, I don’t see why we have to endure this bollocks on prime time TV as if it was some sort of soap opera, when we have so many other things to worry about: it’s almost like someone is trying to. distract us…

One of those minor-yet-awesome events happened today: I got a census form through my letterbox. That might not sound much, but when you consider it’s my first census as the sole owner of my own home, it’s pretty epic. I haven’t filled it in yet – I need help from someone capable of using a pen – but when I do it will be quite historic, at least for me. And when I do, I have every intention of registering my nationality as European.

Surely this must be the picture of the day, as well as the coolest thing I’ve seen in months:

Fortunately, there’s a rational – and rather fascinating – explanation, which can be read here.

By modern standards of course, BBC Micro computers are slow, quaint and very outdated (understatement of the week!) Yet I think it’s fair to say I owe a lot to them. They were the first sort of computer I ever knew. I remember, age five or six, my parents sat me in front of one and told me to write stories. In a way that was probably my first opportunity to demonstrate how much I understood about the world around me. The stories I wrote were naturally quite childish, and it took me ages to tap out just a few words, but nonetheless that was the beginning of my love of writing.

This year the BBC Micro is celebrating it’s fortieth birthday. The (other) BBC has made a short film to mark the occasion here. These days computers are part of our everyday lives; it’s amusing to think that the smartphones and Ipads we all now use to chat to one another have far, far more processing power than you could ever dream of back in the eighties. Yet I think it’s fair to say that the BBC Micro is at least one of the machines which kicked the computing revolution off, and with out it we wouldn’t be where we are today. It’s fair to say I owe a lot to it, but so do many others.

I am very perturbed by this news. I can’t say I read the New Scientist regularly these days, but my parents subscribe to it, so growing up I used to occasionally read it’s fascinating articles. It’s one of the best sources for news of the scientific world. However, to read that the magazine has now been bought by the group which publishes the Daily Mail, a rag I wouldn’t wipe my arse with for fear of insulting my shit, has me very concerned indeed. Of course, the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) claims it will guarantee the magazine’s continued editorial independence, but this is coming from the publishers of a rag known to lie through it’s teeth in order to impose it’s highly conservative, narrow minded, socially intolerant worldview onto public discourse. Zark knows what they plan to do with the New Scientist, or the unscientific, anachronistic codswallop they’ll have it churning out. It’s quite sad, really: a fascinating little magazine now stands to be taken over by people for whom most scientific, progressive ideas are an anathema; yet another victim of the ever-deepening culture war.

In my opinion, this is probably the most interesting news of the day, or perhaps week. After six years based online, the Beeb has decided to relaunch BBC3 onto ordinary television. Now, I was never a particular fan of BBC3, although there were a few fairly interesting shows on there, but what interests me about this news is what it might imply. The Beeb moved Three online because, at the time, that was the way things were going: websites like Netflix were just starting up, and it looked we were getting more and more entertainment from the web. The BBC was thus reacting to a trend: the internet was the place to be for funky, cutting edge audiovisual output. Does this U-Turn imply things are now going in the opposite direction? Is the Beeb returning to it’s traditional routes as a response to consumer trends? Or is it turning it’s back on younger, online audiences in order to appease older, more socially conservative viewers, still unused to the Web and the new ideas which come with it.

I can’t claim to be very up to date with French politics (keeping track of uk politics is bad enough at the moment) so all I can say about this news that Nicolas Sarkosy has been jailed for corruption is, our french neighbours definitely have the right idea. If our politicians had more of a threat of jail sentences hanging over them, perhaps they would behave themselves a bit more, and not lead the country down blind alleys which they know it will take us decades to recover from.

Darryl is surely one of the coolest people I know. He’s so cool, he even has his own coffee brand. You can watch him talk about his latest coffee blend here. Unfortunately it’s based in Australia, so I probably won’t get to try any. What interests me about that video, though, is how Dazz opted to communicate: rather than use a communication aid, he has chosen to speak the words vocally and have Ferg (another excellent fellow) translate or convey them to the camera. It’s an unusual method, but it could perhaps be argued that the result is more personable or friendly than watching someone type into their communication aid.

This evening I would just like to wish my brother Luke a very happy 35th birthday. It has now literally been years since we saw each other, apart from online, and these days personal contact seems more important than ever. I miss him, but I’m very proud of him: Luke’s updates to the family over Skype get more impressive every week! I hope he and Yan are having a great day. Computer permitting, I’ll speak to you soon bro.

I know I’m a bit sad (ie uncool or geeky) to keep going on about the Olympic games, but I have to say, you have to feel sorry for the people of Tokyo. There they were, all geared up to play party host to the world, only to have it delayed for a year by a global pandemic, and even now it’s not absolutely certain whether the games will go ahead this year. As it stands, Tokyo citizens have been told they can watch and clap the torch relay, but not cheer for fear of spreading the virus. I can’t help thinking, can you imagine what things would have been like if the coronavirus bomb had dropped in 2012, and this had happened to London? I remember how geared up and excited the city – and country – were. We had been preparing for seven years; had the games been snatched away at the last moment, there would have been carnage. And on top of that, there’s the fact that the CEO of the Tokyo olympics is in hot water for sexist comments. What would have happened if Seb Coe had been so naughty? It kind of makes me relieved to think that the Olympics are now just a happy memory for us Londoners, but having hosted the games and the memories still being quite fresh, our hearts must go out to our Japanese friends.

This was one of the first things I saw when I got to my rapidly failing computer this morning, but I think it’s very pertinent these days:

My Imac has a problem: the screen has started to go blank, randomly at any second. It’s obviously getting old. Luckily my parents have helped me order a new one, but until that arrives and is properly set up, I’ll probably be stuck writing hurried little blog entries, hoping to get it published before the screen goes blank again. Bear with me – my normal half-assed political and social commentary will resume shortly.

According to this rather fascinating Guardian article, a group of scientists now think that the flipping of the Earth’s magnetic poles about 42,000 years ago may have caused, among other things, the extinction of the Neanderthals. “The Earth’s magnetic field acts as a protective shield against damaging cosmic radiation, but when the poles switch, as has occurred many times in the past, the protective shield weakens dramatically and leaves the planet exposed to high energy particles. One temporary flip of the poles, known as the Laschamps excursion, happened 42,000 years ago and lasted for about 1,000 years.” The effects of this flip were quite severe, and the only way humans survived was to shelter in caves. Rather worrying, though, is the fact that they are due to flip again sometime soon – ie, in the next few hundred years – causing catastrophic damage to our electricity network. When I read that, my first thought was that that really would be all we need right now.

You mean, NF doesn’t really care about Brexit and put us through this entire nightmare just to get attention? You don’t say!

Given that America is so full of Evangelical Christians, you might think that one of the worst Coronavirus death rates on earth, together with the worst snow storms for years would give at least some people pause for thought about the idea of an all-powerful, loving God. It strikes me as very odd how so many people can cling so fervently to an obvious delusion when faced with so much contrary evidence. Oh well, maybe all the intelligent Americans just work at NASA.

This is without doubt the picture of the day.

I was watching the footage of the landing on Mars last night, and got very excited. To pull off such a complex landing is an awesome achievement, both for NASA and humanity itself. What is even more exciting, though, is the fact that last night was only the beginning: as incredible as the landing was, as the Beeb notes here, Perseverance has two years of research and exploration ahead of it. I can’t wait until the real data starts coming back.

I reckon blogging has driven me a teensy bit mad. Ever since I started keeping a weblog, it has been a personal rule to upload an entry at least every two days. I know how lazy I can be, so I told myself to make an effort to keep it up. An entry every couple of days seemed reasonably regular. The thing is, you may have noticed that I usually blog every day; this is because, whenever I skip a day, on the second day I get rather anxious at the thought of knowing I must do an entry, so to avoid that anxiety I blog every day. It’s kinda crazy: I know nothing bad will happen if I don’t keep my blog updated – nobody will take my blog away from me. Yet this has been the state of affairs for about eighteen years. I try my best to blog and get anxious if I don’t, resulting in entries about all sorts of random things – even about getting anxious about not blogging.

I am starting to worry about how angry I get sometimes. It had been a nice day until about an hour ago: I had had a lovely walk through a couple of the local parks (I even found a new one) before buying lunch and coming home at about three. Looking for something interesting to get into for the rest of the afternoon, I thought I’d check for news about next year’s Brexit Festival. There”s still not much detail about it, and I didn’t find anything interesting; like most people, I’m still convinced it will be a complete waste of money. However, on Youtube I came across a political vlog about it. The video struck me as ambiguous, and I couldn’t quite tell whether the chap who made it was for or against the festival, so I thought I’d watch another of his videos.

This turned out to be about Brexit, and again the vlogger’s stance seemed hard to discern. I had no problem with it at first, but then it showed footage of someone I’ll name only as NF. I instantly began to get angry: NF is one of those people I cannot abide the sight of. He is a charlatan whose baseless, arrogant views have done so much damage to the country, if you ask me he should be denied the right to voice them. If he had his way, he would do away with the open tolerant society I hold dear and turn the UK into a backward-looking neo-victorian hell. Airing the footage he produces only panders to him and facilitates him when he should be ignored as the irrelevant embarrassment to human civilisation he is. I instantly felt my body tense up and shake with rage; even the merest sight of this person or sound of his loathsome, self-important voice is enough to reduce me to white hot anger. I know how illogical getting so angry is, but for a few moments I felt an intense, burning hatred: I wished with every fibre of my being that the pestulent scumbag on the screen would die a slow, agonising death for all the damage his lies have done.

Such thoughts horrify me: capital punishment is never acceptable, and one should never wish such ill on anyone. Yet I can’t help thinking such things, as if for a few moments I become so angry that I lose all perspective. In the end I had to turn the video off and move away from my computer. In my bedroom looking out of my window, I could feel my heart beating. I know many people with Athetoid Cerebral Palsy experience this kind of lack of emotional control, and that it is connected to the brain damage we suffered at birth. It only lasts a few moments before I calm down. Nonetheless, to hate someone so intensely, to begrudge him every breath he draws into his chest, and to feel so angry that you lose control of your limbs and have to consciously stop yourself putting your fist through your computer screen, is truly frightening.

I’ve never really considered applying for a job, but I just saw this story on BBC evening news. “The European Space Agency says it wants to recruit someone with a disability as part of its call for new astronauts. Esa will be accepting applications in March to fill four-to-six vacancies in its astro corps but it wants this draft process to be as inclusive as possible. The search for a potential flier with additional functional needs will be run in parallel to the main call.” The Trekkie in me really, really wants to apply. I’ve always dreamed of flying into space, exploring the galaxy and boldly going where no one has gone before. Then again, it might not be such a good idea: would I be able to look after myself in zero G? And given I can barely control my powerchair sometimes, who knows what damage I’d cause if the ESA let me loose on a multi-billion Euro rocket.

What? A Tory trying to avoid difficult questions about Brexit? Who’d have thought it?

How very telling.

I may be going out on a bit of a limb here, but I’m going to come out and say that I seriously do not think that anyone who believes a person’s ability to make money is as important as our security from a deadly virus is a fit and proper person to be anywhere near the government of this or any other country. It makes me furious to hear that a group of Tories is now lobbying to get the Coronavirus restrictions lifted as soon as May. They argue that the risks to public health must be weighed against the damage lockdown does to the economy, as if the two should be somehow perceived as equal, and the ability of individuals to make money is just as important as peoples right to live long, healthy lives.

Do such people not care that lifting restrictions too soon practically invites a third, even more severe wave? Do they not see that the sudden return to normal they crave would mean everyone coming out and mixing, transmitting the remnants of the virus, leading to many more deaths? Of course they don’t: all that matters to these Tory monsters is their ability and the ability of people like them to make money. The way they see it, who cares if others are dying as long as the economy is on the mend and they’re getting richer. After all, an improving economy makes the government look good.

Theirs is a selfish, arrogant worldview which values the greed of the few over the welfare of the many. A country should be governed for the good of all. Thus, given that their views pose such an obvious danger to our health, I seriously think that the members of this group of tories (no doubt the same despicable charlatans who conned the country into voting to leave the EU) should be forced to resign immediately.

Regardless of how depressing – and disturbing – the political news from both sides of the Atlantic is becoming (it seems that, in the United States, no matter how obviously guilty you are, if you’re Donald Trump and you’re being tried by the Republican Party, you can get away with anything) at least those of us interested in the exploration of space have this to content ourselves with. “The United Arab Emirates’ Hope mission has returned its first picture of Mars. The spacecraft entered into an orbit around the Red Planet on Tuesday, making the UAE the first Arab nation in history to have a scientific presence at Earth’s near neighbour. This first image will be followed by many similar such views of Mars.” Taking the politics surrounding the UAE as read, the pictures being returned to Earth are fascinating. I hope this goes to show that, no matter how divided we all are right now, there should always be things such as scientific research humanity can come together over.

Sometimes all you can do is wonder what might have been, but this could have been pretty awesome if they had pulled it off. According to Screenrant, Sam Mendes initially considered Sean Connery for the role of Kincaid in Skyfall. Of course, as the article points out, that idea was not unproblematic: casting Connery in the role may well have been too much of a distraction from the main plot of the film; audiences would have been too fixated on the return of the first James Bond actor to notice what was happening to the latest. Yet, I have to say I can’t help thinking it might have kicked arse: the elderly Connery would have been perfect for the role, and his return to the franchise may have been one of those delicious little throwbacks or extra-textual references I and others get so excited about. It would have been like 007 was returning to his roots just as he was returning to his family home. That could have added an extra dynamic to the film which may well have made it even greater than it was. In the end, I suppose the fact that they cast Albert Finney in the role was for the best – he did an excellent job, after all – but I still can’t help wondering what might have been.

I just came across this article about a film called Music by someone called Sia. I’ve not watched or heard either, but the film apparently has a character with Autism who is the sister of the main character. The author of the article complains that an autistic actor was not cast to portray her. As I’ve touched upon on here before at some length, that is an argument those of us with physical disabilities have been making for years, and it gets on my nerves how such so-called self-defining autistics seem to be using it as their own more and more, yet without any recognition of what went before. It feels like it has somehow now become fashionable to have some kind of disability or impairment and to take up the language of advocacy. I find seeing what can be a very profound disability being treated so flippantly deeply troubling and even insulting. The problem is, if this trend continues, voices like mine risk being drowned out as a result.

Yesterday was quite a dismal day. Stuck at home due to the weather,, at about four I was mucking around on Youtube when I came across a video about Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I was fairly dismissive of it at first, but it looked at how influential the film was in terms of film history, arguing that it more or less lead to a revolution in animation. It aroused my interest enough that I thought I would try to check the original film out – I reckoned I needed a bit of cheering up anyway.

I found Who Framed Roger Rabbit on Disney Plus (thanks Luke) and settled down to watch it. I vaguely remember watching it at home with my parents and brothers when I was six or so, but I don’t think I had seen it since then. I expected to be watching a children’s film, but soon realised Who Framed Roger Rabbit was far, far more interesting. While on the surface it was fairly lightweight and slapstick, it was obvious there were some pretty serious themes running through the film: most obvious, perhaps, was the clear cultural division between humans and toons, and the way in which humans treated toons as second class citizens being a metaphor for racism. On top of that, as demonstrated in this very good piece of analysis, when you watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit as an adult, you quickly find it is anything but a children’s film.As well as the fact that the dialogue is replete with double entendre, there are references to things like alcoholism, sex and violence children simply would not pick up upon, yet which are quite overt to grown up viewers.

I found the way in which this film thus worked on two separate levels intriguing, as well as the interplay between live action and animation. Who Framed Roger Rabbit might ostensibly be a children’s film, but it’s a very interesting piece of cinematic art: comic, slapstick but with noirish overtones and quite a serious subtext about prejudice and oppression. Not having seen it since I was about six, it was a great way to cheer up on an otherwise fairly miserable afternoon; yet, viewed as a work of art, there is a hell of a lot to explore about this film. I must admit I was quite taken with it, and now intend to look deeper.

The nice thing about cricket is that support for it never goes to far. No matter how impassioned rivalries on a pitch may appear, at the end of a day’s play, supporters of both teams should be able to meet in the bar for a beer. As I’ve mentioned a couple of times recently, I’m a huge cricket fan, and I still have vivid memories of going to Australia to watch the (dismal) 2006/07 Ashes series. The Ashes, of course, is one of the most well-established rivalries in international sport; when tests are on, things can get pretty passionate. Yet that does not stop me having a soft spot for Australia as a whole: it is an astoundingly beautiful country; my favourite band, The Cat Empire, comes from Melbourne; two of my best friends Darryl – through whom I first met Lyn – and James/Tesco – with whom I first went to see The Cat Empire live – are Australian; and so on.

The same goes for India. England are currently there, but watching them play just brings back happy, fascinating memories for me of my trip to India with John three years ago. It truly is an intriguing, exotic place, and watching the tests on tv just makes me wish I could be there watching it live.

The point I’m trying to make is that sport should never go too far. Sports are essentially games, after all, and games should always be played between friends. That’s why I’m so obsessed with the Olympics: what other event can bring people from all over the world together to meet in one city to play games, party and celebrate?

Yet this seems less and less to be the case with football. Only this morning, I saw a report that referees were getting racially abused online. Things seem to be becoming more and more partisan, with rivalries between teams, or the supporters of teams, becoming increasingly vitriolic. I suspect this is a reflection of the atmosphere in the country as a whole: Brexit has stirred up a maelstrom of nationalism and tribalism; people with certain socioeconomic and educational backgrounds, let’s say, seem to feel much freer to direct their animosity towards those they perceive as other, particularly European nations. Rather weirdly, I’ve seen this done more than once using football rhetoric, as if nationalism and support for the England football team were one and the same. That is to say, certain people seemed to think that flying the English flag automatically meant one was doing so in support of the English football team, as if nationalism and football were intertwined.

Thus nationalism/tribalism is finding an expression through football in quite a worrying way. It would be fine if such rivalries stayed on the pitch, but, possibly due to Brexit, the pandemic and the recession, they are overflowing into other areas of culture as people feel the strain more and more. Football lacks the nuance of politics – teams either win or lose – meaning complex issues get boiled down to simple binaries, and opposition groups such as Remainers/Rejoiners become perceived as enemies to be defeated.

It is a very worrying state of affairs: due to Brexit, the world seems to have become simplified into an us and them binary, and the British state has become akin to a football team to support as it plays against it’s European opponents. In such people’s minds, ‘we’ can either win or loose, seemingly forgetting that it is far wiser to remain friends, and to meet in the bar together at the end of the day.