Who Is The Lord Of The Trolls?

I feel it in the air. I feel it in the earth. I feel it in my water.

The internet is much changed for nothing is as it once was.

It began with the forging of the great chat media platforms.

MySpace for the aesthetically challenged cyber-dwarves. LinkedIn and Facebook for the middle-to-upper class aspiring elves who wished to share photos of their kittens and their children and what bottled wine they’d drunk the previous evening. And Twitter… Twitter was created for all those who wished to leave snarky, anonymous comments in 140 characters or less.

But in this they were much deceived, for in secret an umbrella term was forged – social networking – and into this was poured all hatred, malice and the will to denigrate all life on virtual Earth…

And I could go on and on but you get the picture.

The internet is not a nice place. I know it has always had dark corners; cyber attics and damp basements where the virtual world kept its various madnesses and psychoses locked up. In fact, not even locked up – the correct URL would take you there in an instant. But at least the internet used to have a happier, lighter side; it used to have a tangible nod to the ethos of freedom and free information. Something unfettered (largely) by legal constraints, authoritarianism and the bigoted fears of the few. Something fun, frivolous and nicely rebellious.

Sadly I fear the Internet’s Woodstock years are over.

The bigots and haters have taken over the playground.

Cyberbullying is rife – anything from common-or-garden peer pressure to the kind of nastiness that drives people to suicide. Trolling is commonplace – anyone or anything is subject to cowardly attack but if you are a celebrity who dares to have a Twitter account you can consider yourself easy meat for the armchair reactionaries. If someone steps out of line or is seen to be out of step the mob sets upon them in a manner that is as disgusting as it is unforgiving and unreasonable – think of that poor scientist bloke who was virtually destroyed last year for wearing a shirt that featured pictures of bikini-clad women on it; the punishment most certainly did not fit the crime. And who are these self-righteous gnomes who feel they have the right not only to judge but also to condemn?

Stealing information and photos is seen as the fault of those who stored the photos online in the first place (kind of like blaming a victim of burglary for only having a shop bought lock on their front door whilst daring to own stuff). And various groups can now shutdown whole web servers with seeming ease for a major cause or a minor gripe or just because they are so pathetically maladjusted they just want to create havoc for the sense of transient joy it inevitably brings them in-between bouts of Warframe or whatever other massively multiplayer online game is currently distracting them from thoughts of incessant masturbation.

I’m not feeling the love anymore, people, and I don’t like it.

I’m not sure I feel comfortable being a part of the internet; a part of the media monster that social networking has become.

Lord knows I’ve taken a pop at the odd celeb over the years on this blog. But in my defence I hope I’ve presented a balanced (or at least an entertaining) argument, have been able to admit if I’ve been wrong or missed a redeeming point and always, always I am identifiable and accountable. I don’t operate an anonymous blog and I can be easily contacted and given a spanking if I’ve been a naughty boy.

I don’t make death threats or rape threats or threaten to harm other people’s family or property just because they voice an opinion that is at variance with my own. I don’t call down holy war on individuals who I disagree with or who present an ethos that is the opposite of the one I choose to adhere to. I don’t even wish dead those few souls who I utterly despise. And there are a few, believe me.

Because their divergent views, in my opinion, do not mean they should be exterminated from the face of the earth at my say so. I recognize that other people have the right to their views, no matter how ill-informed I think they may be, and have a right to live unmaligned even with those views up to but not including the point where they start directly affecting others adversely.

There has much been made of the ideal of the freedom of speech in recent weeks. The murders in Paris have placed it in the forefront of everyone’s mind. And regardless of whether Charlie Hebdo was a platform for healthy political satire or just an outlet to knock already beaten down minority groups I would argue the point that people have a right to express even offensive views. The freedom of speech must be freedom for all without any caveats or it is not freedom at all.

And yet I despair at the nastiness that proliferates the internet now and wish it could be stopped. And I think it bothers me because too many people are voicing their bile in a most cowardly fashion. Using nom de plumes or alternative accounts. Obfuscating their identity. Claiming and utilizing a personal freedom in order to destroy the personal well-being of others without the risk of any come-back or fall-out.

And that is wrong. That is my problem with it.

If you want to join in the latest witch-hunt then do so without a mask on your face. Let the world see who you are if you have such strong opinions that they must be expressed in aggressive and violent language. If you want to verbally threaten someone then let them and the rest of us see you coming. Take responsibility for what you are saying / spouting.

Don’t stab someone in the dark and then run away back into hiding and imagine you are a hero or have somehow done the world a great service. Because you haven’t. You’ve lost all moral high ground and placed yourself lower than a snake’s arse.

At the end of the day I don’t want the authorities or the powers that be to police the internet. I believe it would be disastrous. But until enough people make a stand we can’t, alas, police ourselves.

So it is up to the owners of all these social media networking platforms to do something. To close down the trolls and the snipers. To make users somehow as accountable for their digital outpourings as they would be if they’d shouted a hate filled slogan out on the street in the real world.

Am I wrong to want this?

Tell me and I will reply. Engage with me and we can talk.

I’m happy for you to have a different opinion.

Please express it with respect.

A Nice Bit Of Chaucer

Like most of my countrymen I have a long established love affair with swearing.

Despite Irish Navvies possibly protesting the claim, I believe that nobody on this planet swears quite like your average Englishman. Possibly at one time, your choice of cuss was influenced by class and proclaimed the same but these days a Peer of the Realm is just as likely to drop the C word as some habitual fly-tipping dole-ite on Benefits Street and your average tramp on the street sometimes has more breeding than your average bank manager.

When I was at Secondary school I swore every day. It was de rigueur. It was part of the atomic make-up of the rarefied atmosphere of “hormonal teen”. More than that. If teenagehood was a nightclub then swearing was the stamp they put on the back of your hand to prove you’d paid to get in. And that you were probably too immature to be there.

As I got older swearing, for me at least, was no longer about expressing anger but expressing humour. Peter Cook might have been swearing like a trooper in the 60s but for me it was the alternative comedy scene in the 80s that awoke the realization that a fuck placed strategically into a sentence could be the source of much mirth. Suddenly expletives – not denying their inherent shock value – became a tool of comedy and humour.

And that emotional response is pretty much where I have stayed. Which isn’t to say I don’t wince when I catch my eldest boy befouling the air with an age appropriate / environment inappropriate F bomb. Or sneer when I overhear some yob in the street linking every second word he utters with a mispronounced “fock”. This is quite possibly hypocrisy but, well, what can I say but fuck you? Swearing is open to everybody but as an art form few master it properly.

Swearing is on my mind today because I have just finished writing a new Kindle book. It’s a joke autobiography and is scurrilous, blatantly un-PC, cartoon pornographic and deeply puerile and will be published under an assumed name. I had enormous fun writing it and it made me laugh out loud. My wife has now read it and it has made her laugh too. She also complimented me with the remark that it is very well written but just like my (proper) novel, The Great Escapes Of Danny Houdini, I have peppered it (or even soaked it) with the kind of language that will probably drive away a good portion of the book buying public.

The ones that say “breadbin” instead of “bastard” or “bum” instead of “arse”. The nice ones who suffer bouts of apoplexy when someone let’s rip with a “the pope be damned!”

She’s not the first person to say that. A colleague who is currently reading Danny Houdini has also admitted to me that she found the frequent bad language shocking and hard to take. She’s enjoying the story so is “persevering” but she made it sound like she was having to wade through the sewers of Calcutta to reach a promised Eden. More, she couldn’t conceive how a polite, well-spoken individual like myself could produce dialogue of such excoriating depravity. My words not hers. Because I’m bigging myself up as I took it as a compliment.

But. It does niggle me a bit.

For me, swearing is a reality. It is all around us and, really, there are far more important things to be offended by than mere language and phonetics. In literature generally, but especially in the books that I write, I like the dialogue to be real. People swear. They say the wrong thing. They say silly things. They are offensive deliberately for a laugh. They lack the education to express themselves well so swear. Or they are well educated but like to swear for the effect it has. For some, swearing is its own subculture and, like teenage swearing, is evidence of their membership to it.

But I worry that perhaps I am deliberately sabotaging myself. The gist of my wife’s remarks to me this morning are that I come up with great stories and then render them inaccessible to 50% of the population. If that is true it’s hardly a winning marketing strategy.

You see, I suspect that just as half of me yearns for artistic success, the other half of me is scared of it.

Fucking scared?

Possibly.

Or maybe I’m just sticking to my comedy bollockycunty guns.

Ban The Berk

I knew something was wrong the minute I got home.

My letterbox was grimacing. Like it had a horrible taste in its mouth.

Behind the door, laid out on the mat like cat vomit, was the item pictured below.

I felt sickened and shaky. I felt besmirched. Like my home had been violated. I had been on the receiving end of a BNP leafleting campaign. One of their hate-monkeys had actually walked up my path and touched my door. And then had slid something bilious and nasty into my inner sanctum.

My first reaction was to screw it up and bin it without looking at it. But then I thought, “No. Know your enemy.” So I read the leaflet. Every word. And my gut ran through a gamut of emotions. Everything from contempt, scorn and vituperative ridicule to the confirmed belief that these people are genuinely missing a chromosome; that the wiring in their brain is missing a couple of essential connectors, forever denying them the opportunity to reason and feel like normal, adult, articulate human beings.

What I hate most is the way this leaflet doesn’t pose any questions to the reader. It tells. It orders. It assumes. There is no facility here to interact mentally with this leaflet. It doesn’t care what you think. It doesn’t care what you feel. It doesn’t care for your life or the precious individuality of your particular existence. And that is nasty. That should be of concern to everyone who has any truck with this absurd political party.

And then there are the pictures, the images. The lazy buy-in to outdated, outmoded metaphors that only have meaning to idiots whose view of Britain is trapped in some fake, bromide stained stasis chamber of pre-war empire-fed glory full of working men wearing cloth caps, wives who stay at home to cook Beef Wellingtons and children who play solely with gender appropriate toys. And we all extol the Christian virtues of love thy neighbour as long as your neighbour is as British as you are. And don't worry of you have no idea of how to benchmark those Great British credentials because the BNP will do it for you.

Check out the picture of the Burka wearers:

They want to ban the burka because it is “offensive and threatening”. And to drive that singularly stupid and vapid point home they have pictured a couple of Burka wearers flicking their V’s at the camera – thus, in my opinion, totally proving their true blue British credentials forever. But that irony is lost on your average BNP member (and let’s be honest; they are all average). Is the picture mocked up? Is it real? Who cares. It’s like something out of Viz magazine. It is comic and laughable. But it is also tragic and lamentable because there will be some BNP mongrel somewhere, working himself up into an orgasmic fury of outraged indignation over this picture. It is akin to the fake Boer war footage that was played to English citizens centuries ago – shot in a London park but purporting to show Boer atrocities to galvanize the zeal of the average Englishman and give him fuel for the fight. It is nasty propaganda designed to spread hatred and xenophobia. And if that hatred and xenophobia already exist then it is designed to inflate it up into atomic mushroom cloud proportions.

And at the end of the day, is the Burka really, truly threatening and offensive?

Only if you are such a pussy you are scared of women’s clothing. It is no more threatening and offensive than a dog collar or a monk’s cassock and a good deal less threatening and offensive than a BNP rosette.

This entire leaflet does not seek to enlighten or educate. It does not seek to question. Because that would be dangerous and self-defeating. The BNP relies on the stupid misconceptions and inborn bigotry of its incestuous membership to continue its existence. The BNP more than any other party wants to halt upward mobility and free thinking and trap this country forever under a glass jar of anachronism and vile paranoia. This leaflet has but one purpose. To reaffirm the idiocy of those who are already tainted with stupidity and make them feel that they are right. Seductive. Comforting. And, sadly to some, a vote winner – those people whose innate cowardice prevent them from questioning and second-guessing their own assumptions and hatred of people who, if they got to know them despite their different languages and cultures, would be discovered to be just like them. More or less. Just without the silly haircuts. Possibly.

In all honesty, I would rather have had a urine stained tramp shove his cock through my letterbox than this leaflet. In fact, to piss Mr. Nick Griffin off even more I’d go as far as to say I would rather welcome a whole army of Polish / Arabic / Asian immigrants, each of them taking it in turns to make love to my door than to ever have one of these puerile leaflets land in my hallway ever again.

Ban the Burka?

No. Let’s keep Britain for the intelligent and the liberal and the fair minded and those with the guts and humanity to question and oppose hate-filled manifestoes and find a way forward that unites all cultures and all races.

Let’s ban the berk.

Freedom Of Speech For All Or Freedom Of Speech For None

Deyka Ayan Hassan, the 21 year old student who stupidly tweeted that anyone wearing a Help For Heroes T-shirt deserved to be beheaded in the wake of the murder of soldier Lee Rigby, has been sentenced to 250 hours community service. She’d gone to the police herself after receiving hundreds of abusive Tweets in response to her own threatening to kill her, rape her and burn down her home.

The facts of the matter are simple enough but my gut response to it isn’t.

The whole thing makes me uncomfortable.

Morally the standpoint of the authorities and those who participated in the original Twitter exchange is on ropey ground. It is either a criminal offense to post / write / utter an abusive Tweet / comment / joke or it isn’t. And if it is what the hell has happened to the idea of freedom of speech?

Freedom of speech is something we very rarely think about these days. I possibly only think about it so much because I am a writer. For most of us it is like the air we breathe. We take it for granted because we mistakenly believe it has always been there and will always been there. It is part of this country’s genetic make-up.

It isn’t and never has been. It is a right that was hard won by our forebears and a right that is now slowly being wrested away from us under the guise of common decency; under the guise of protecting us and responding to our sense of outrage, disgust and, ironically, our sense of justice and morality.

Yes, Deyka Ayan Hassan’s Tweet was stupid and reprehensible. A joke that backfired and wasn’t really funny in the first place. The audience for gross shock-jokes is thin at best and very choosy even when it is at large – just ask Frankie Boyle. But are we really going to arrest people for making poor quality poor taste jokes? What common good would that serve? Protecting the rest of us from our own sense of anger and sense of disgust? Excuse me, but I don’t want Mr Cameron and the law courts inserting themselves so intimately into my sensibilities, thank you very much! I’m quite happy to process my own anger and deal with my own indignation. I just want to be protected from would-be murderers, thieves and rapists (and immoral politicians and non-tax paying corporations). I can deal with crap comedians myself.

Of course, in an ideal world everyone would always say nice things about each other. We wouldn’t have hate preachers, or racists or inflammatory orators. We’d all quote Wordsworth all day long and be utterly bored witless.

This isn’t an ideal world. But having the right to freedom of speech makes it not quite as un-ideal as it could be. We can mock our politicians. Satirize those in power over us. Challenge the law and the state when they behave ridiculously and fail to serve us, the people, as they’re supposed to. That is our TRUE protection. But freedom of speech also means that other people can disrespect us, our favourite band, our hobbies, our beliefs and our country itself. They also have the right to make disgusting jokes and be verbally offensive and utter absolutely any old crap that comes out of their mouths. There is no halfway house in this folks. We either can all say what we like or we can’t.

And it would be a much darker world if we couldn’t.

I’m thinking Hitler. I’m thinking Stasi. I’m thinking police state.

The most disturbing thing though about the Deyka Ayan Hassan case is the lack of consistency. Why were those threatening her with murder and rape - far more personally offensive attacks (with no chance of any of it being “a joke”) – not also condemned to community service? Why were they allowed to be abusive and Deyka Ayan Hassan not?

Because in this case the weight of public outrage was on their side?

Well, who decides how far and exactly when that particular pendulum has swung?

Because it certainly isn’t you and it certainly isn’t me.

Is freedom of speech now dependent on the opinions of the majority? Or just those that are in power over us? Do we now need someone else’s permission and approval to divine if what we want to say is in line with our peers and therefore acceptable to say?

When that happens freedom of speech isn’t worth the paper (or blog) that it’s written on.

And that is a true abuse.

BAFTA

The wife and I made the mistake of watching the BAFTAs last night.

I say mistake because the BAFTAs are a viewing pleasure that is by turns guilt inducing and frustrating.

Guilt inducing because you know this is a horribly cliquey, elitist, uber-lovey event that you really ought to sneer at and boycott. And frustrating because the winners inevitably do not match up to your own personal BAFTA winner’s list that you’ve drawn up completely ad hoc as the names of the shortlisted nominees were being read out.

In my BAFTA award ceremony Miranda Hart, Benedict Cumberbatch, Fresh Meat and Misfits were all winners. But plainly I am out of touch with the official BAFTA judges because they all came away with absolutely nothing. Not a sausage. And I very much would have liked to have given Miranda Hart a sausage.

Best part of the night was Rolf Harris getting some kind of fellowship award. Fellowship of the ring, perhaps? He’d certainly terrify the Orcs of Mordor with his impressive didgeridoo blowing. Worst part of the night was some actor twat (whose name I have intentionally chosen not to remember)  deliberately not reading out the names of the Best International Drama winners because they were Danish and he couldn’t be bothered to learn how to pronounce them. Of course, he didn’t actually say that. He just joked, “ho ho... I’m not even going to attempt to read out these names... ho ho... aren’t I cool?” Actually he didn’t really say that either but something very close to it. How rude. Learn the names of the winners next time, matey. Show some respect. The best part of it was one of the names was “Adam Price”. How difficult is that to pronounce? Obviously Mr Actor had lost considerable dexterity in his tongue after years of bum licking his way up the greasy poles of RADA .

So why do I watch the BAFTAs then, when all I do is sneer and sigh and stamp my feet?

Because I have a dream that one day I will be there, that’s why. One day it will be me getting the top writer’s award like Steven Moffat did last night (well deserved). It’ll be me expressing genuine surprise when I am called up to the stage by Miranda Hart to accept a prestigious BAFTA award because I really, genuinely was not expecting it, so much so that I haven’t even prepared a proper speech or anything but I would like to thank my wife and kids and [reels off a long list of showbiz celeb pals]. And best of all it’ll be me kicking twatty Actor chappie in the pants and telling him next time to get an effing language coach (no pun intended)!

Until then all I can do is sit and watch and sigh and gnash my teeth at all those who are lucky enough to be there right now but squander the opportunity with poorly prepared presentation speeches and crap jokes and smug looks to the camera because they are out on an industry jolly.

Grr.

One day these people will all be my friends and colleagues and I will have to play the game.

But until then I can say what I damn well like about them.

And surely that is as good as any kind of BAFTA award?

You Have Lovely Eyes But I’m Not Expecting Sex

A friend of mine told how an old workmate of his, hitting retirement age, got himself
into trouble one day whilst carrying out some work he’d been contracted to undertake in a
suite of offices. Apparently he told one of the female workers there that she had “lovely
eyes”.

I must admit my initial reaction was, “there are far worse things he could have said”. My
mate’s reply was, “yeah, he could have told her she was effing dopey”.

I could see this conversation was going nowhere productive fast so I let it drop but
mentally it stayed with me.

Part of me thinks Mr Contractor was plainly of that generation that considered it
normal if not a man’s right to comment positively on a gorgeous filly’s attributes. I’m
sure he meant nothing lascivious about it and imagined himself as being rather charming
and gallant. But another part of me can see the other side of it. He was a stranger to
the office – an outside contractor – and his comments were over familiar and totally
outside the scope of his works... which I’m sure were along the painting and decorating
lines rather than “let me sell the wonderfulness of your own body to you Gok Wan style”.

And old boy or not he cannot fail to have noticed that things have moved on in the world
and people conduct themselves very different these days compared to the Carry On
shenanigans of the 1950’s and 1960’s. He plainly made the girl very uncomfortable and she
complained about it as was her right. And Mr Contractor got the type of dressing down he
wasn’t expecting.

Does this scenario sadden you or not though?

Is it sad that we can’t offer free, gratuitous compliments to the people around us? Lord
knows there’s plenty of people around happy to bestow the fruits of their negativity upon
all and sundry at the merest drop of a hat. Why can’t we offer niceties and good wishes?

The trouble is, I suspect, that deep down, such compliments as Mr Contractor was offering
weren’t entirely free and without imposition. Even if he were the most decent upstanding
guy in the world if you peel back the layers of civility and courtesy I’m pretty sure
you’d get down to the dirty little nub at the core.

Sex.

It’s a sad fact of life that guys tend to not show an interest in a woman unless he, on
some level, fancies her. You might disagree. You might argue. I’ve had this fact of life
told me by several different women who were quite blasé and even accepting of it and I
was hard pressed really to refute their claim. Most men I’ve met have merely replied,
“yeah?” to the accusation in a tone of voice that unmistakably says, “so what?”

So when a man you’ve never met before offers you flowers or smells your hair and asks if
you are or if you aren’t... it’s because deep down he wants to get into your knickers.
He’s looking for the compliment to be well received. He’s looking for that blush response
and a slight coquettishness. Maybe even a giggle and a bit of badinage. He’s looking for
an opening. He’s looking for that little green light which will lead him to imagine that
he is undeniably, irrefutably “in”. He’s still got it. He’s still The Man.

The chances of sex occurring is, of course, for most people absolutely minimal. But it is
sex that is at play undoubtedly.

And in this day and age to do the subliminal sex-thing is bloody dangerous. We, of
course, all know it as flirting.

But you know what? I think flirting should be a privilege of having got to know someone.
I realize context is an issue here and behaviour in a nightclub or a pub is vastly
different to our everyday living and working environments... but on the whole, flirting
should only be done with someone that you’ve already got to know. So you both know how
far you can push it. So you know where the boundaries are. So you are both comfortable
with each other. There needs to already be in place a foundation – an association – that
goes beyond simple caveman boy-girl attraction.

And in this context flirting is fine, healthy and can inject some enjoyment in what is
probably otherwise a very dull day.

If flirting came in a tin is would have the following printed on it: Men! Don’t try this on
strangers, you will merely come off as sleazy.

Flirting still occurs in the modern world but the rules of engagement have changed. And
changed for the better in my opinion.

See, if I tell you that you have lovely eyes I am merely solidifying our friendship. I
don’t want sex of any sort. I just want to buddy you up.

However, if I tell you that you’re effing dopey it’s safe to assume that you are not on
my buddy list at all.

Me And Mr Clarkson, We're Like That

We love a bit of hoo-ha in this country. A little bit of brouhaha. A little bit of outrage and apoplectic armchair slapping.

A little bit of whoa. A little bit of ooh.

On some deep perverse level all those people who complained about Jeremy Clarkson’s comments on The One Show (that striking public sector workers should be shot in front of their families) must have secretly enjoyed Clarkson’s comments. Been secretly pleased that he’d made them.

Because it got them excited. Made them feel alive. Got the blood surging through their veins and got their moustaches bristling in a thoroughly British bulldog manner. Here is some meat we can savage, Goddammit, get stuck in lads!

But really. It was a storm in a teacup. It was stuff and nonsense. It was nothing.

A comedy grenade tossed into the crowd to see which fellows it would take out and which it would leave standing.

Before I continue I need to make it clear that I am one of those striking public sector workers that Mr Clarkson would apparently like to see shot in front of my wife and kids.

Am I offended?

No. Not at all. I watched the show and took it all with a punch of salt. It was plain – absolutely plain – that the comments were off-the-cuff jokes designed to illicit nervous chuckles from those watching. Designed to shock. Designed to both offend and entertain. Frankie Boyle uses a similar kind of shtick though to greater effect (i.e. Frankie Boyle is actually funny). My wife wasn’t offended by Clarkson’s comments either though I’m pretty sure she got straight onto the phone to our solicitor to see whether she could amend my life insurance policy to include “death by publicity seeking celebrity”.

See. I made a joke out of it. It really isn’t worth twisting one’s knickers up about. The whole thing was tongue-in-cheek.

And I have sympathy with Mr Clarkson. No. Really I do. I’ve got into trouble on this ‘ere blog by people reading posts that were clearly meant to be tongue-in-cheek and not-to-be-taken-at-all-seriously and then taking them very seriously indeed. And being offended. And, worse, seeking to be more and more offended by coming back for more.

Because, let’s face it, some people just like being offended.

So what are the alternatives?

Everybody is censored and is not allowed to say anything at all that could be construed as even slightly controversial? Well. We all better start wearing gags in that case and gimping ourselves up. None of us had better say another word. And where the hell do you draw the line anyway? Who decides what is offensive and what is not? Most jokes – even the genuinely funny ones – have a slightly offensive component to them. You could even argue that most things we find funny are built on someone somewhere being offended and offensive. Do we want to live in a world where humour is outlawed? Where no one can tell a joke because no one can take a joke?

I certainly don’t.

Get a sense of humour. Lighten up. Stop taking things so seriously.

If Jeremy Clarkson wants to drive past my house and take a pot shot at me from his Bugatti he is most welcome.

He won’t be able to get up my street anyway. The bin men were on strike on Wednesday and the roads are now chocka with crap.

Salt And Vinegar

When you’re watching a Western and you see all those dust balls rolling across the main street just before the main gunfight kicks off, have you ever wondered where they all end up?

No? Well, they end up in my street.

Along with yellow foam-styrene chip cartons, McDonald’s milkshake containers and old copies of The Sport (which could very well become museum items over the coming years).

I tell you this so that you don’t think my street is so clean it looks like something out of Trumpton. (How come Mrs Honeywell’s yapping dogs never foul the pavement, eh? Where are her pooper-scoop and her little plastic shit bag?)

My street is just a messy street. The town planners, when laying out the residential housing grid in the 1950’s, inadvertently created a trash vortex that pulls in rubbish from miles away and dumps it in the gap between my hedge and next door’s garden wall.

Or at least this is what I thought. This is has been my long held belief for years.

But I was finally disabused of this belief last Friday.

Leaving my house I chanced to look across the road where I witnessed a man in his thirties finishing a packet of crisps. Now, given there are public bins not 100 yards away, you’d expect him to screw up the packet and dispose of it responsibly. Well, you would if you were an idealistic fool who think that people actually care about their immediate environment. If, like me, you have a cynical bent you wouldn’t be too surprised to see him screw up the packet and lob it onto the pavement. ‘Cos that’s just how the majority of people behave these days. Like scum.

But no. It seems there was a third option.

This surprisingly well dressed lout carefully flattened out his crisp packet and took considerable pains to slide it between the slats of a neighbour’s fence.

I couldn’t believe it.

I mean, it’s bad enough to throw your litter to the four winds – people do it unthinkingly all the time. But what kind of inconsiderate, thoughtless, selfish prick expends time and energy shoving his rubbish into and onto the property of someone he doesn’t know?

I know, I know. Bigger things are happening elsewhere. This is a small issue.

But I can’t help but think it is somehow representational. There seem to be more and more people around these days who go out of their way to cause problems for others. Not just causing problems accidentally for other people, but deliberately doing it. Planning it. Devising ways to do it. Doing it even when doing it is not even the easiest option.

And what did I do? Nothing. I gave him a hard stare, Paddington Bear style, enough to make him turn around and face me under the iron disapprobation of my censure. But like Paddington I merely felt like I was a lone 3D character in a world of animated 2-dimensional cut-outs, i.e. I was the odd one out in this scenario.

The odd one out for caring and being pissed off at what this guy had done.

I did consider removing the crisp packet and following this guy home and shoving the offending article somewhere prominent on his own property but, I’ll be honest, even though Brian Turner has revamped the menus at the local A&E I am not overly fond of hospital food.

And besides. Why expend all that energy? A good gust of wind and that damned crisp packet will end up behind my front hedge anyway. The world is still the world.

Nothing has really changed.

*Sigh*

I never did like Status Quo.

Gob

Eavesdropping is necessarily a snide pastime.

I don’t think I’ve ever eavesdropped on a single conversation and come away thinking, “Ooh, they’re lovely people – I wish they were in my friend’s network so I could get to know them better”.

Generally I come away shaking my head, sneering, laughing and quite often disgusted at the small minded, bigoted, malapropism-rich outpourings of my fellow man.

Of course, I’m quite willing to accept that maybe I am just a big snob per se and congenitally live in contempt of my fellow humans.

But that in no way invalidates my claim that eavesdropping inevitably positions those being eavesdropped upon well beneath the moral hobnailed boots of those doing the eavesdropping. It’s just human nature.

This being the case, I was walking quite innocently back to work after my lunchbreak yesterday afternoon when I stopped at a pedestrian crossing. While I waited for the lights to change in my favour two other pedestrians approached the lights behind me and waited at my back. Two young teenage girls, the ubiquitous mobile phone held out in their hands like a Ghostbuster PKE metre and their overly glossed lips pulled into pouts big enough to form the south facing wall of a bouncy castle.

“Fockin’ gaffa tape. Fockin’ gaffa tape. Bastard. I mean, look, that’s what he wants me to get. Fockin’ gaffa tape. Can you believe it? Bastard. Fockin’ gaffa tape.”

And on and on and on. Those same few phrases repeated over and over while the orator’s companion laughed like a drain and no doubt was as familiar with the gutter as one.

I actually began counting how many times this delightful young lady swore. I got to 15 before the green man finally appeared and rescued me.

As I sped away I could still hear, “Fockin’ gaffa tape, fockin’ gaffa tape, bastard” singeing the air like hastily deposited nuclear waste and I found myself wondering whether anyone on this planet can ever find such constant expletive incontinence attractive. Or even think it adult or mature?

I mean I am right in thinking that someone who effs and blinds every second word is chromosome deficient, aren’t I? Their emotional / intellectual development has somehow stalled at the ‘bike shed badinage’ stage and they’re forever stuck with the mentality of a 15 year old where they think that heavy use of the eff word automatically bestows upon them the heady mantle of ‘Adult’.

I instantly found myself dismissing this pair as a couple of foul-mouthed, uncouth, thick as shit, nob chompers who will end up working in McDonalds and exorcising their dissatisfaction with life by wiping malicious bogeys onto the underside of all the bread buns.

Which isn’t fair. They might actually make it to Burger King.

Joking.

They might actually be intelligent. They might even be nice girls. From good homes. With a staunch moral view of the world and an acceptance letter from Oxford.

But I don’t think so.

We are how we talk. Our voice and choice of words express our personalities and our aspirations. I’m not talking about accents here. I’m talking about what we say rather than how we say it. To choose to swear so prolifically and so (deliberately) loudly speaks volumes about a mindset that has not only normalised aggressive displays of behaviour but has also promoted them as being the most efficient way to navigate modern society.

And that is deeply, deeply saddening and possibly speaks volumes about the rest of us.

Possibly.

Or it could just be that a potty mouth is a habit that people fall into when young and like all nasty habits needs a jolly good kick to get it broken.

Believe you me, I was tempted.

Racist? Or Just Minority Interest?

We have a long running detective drama show in the UK called Midsomer Murders. It’s been running for donkey’s years and the format never changes. And neither does the plot. Basically each episode runs like this: a quaint, idiosyncratic, stereotypical English personage of a certain age who on the surface has their roiling emotions constrained by their stiff upper lip suddenly goes on the rampage and murders another quaint, idiosyncratic, stereotypical English personage of a certain age with something profoundly incongruous like a Black & Decker hedge trimmer or a Moulinex hand blender. Cue police investigation led by grumpy, cranky genius detective who solves the crime just in time to enjoy a cream tea at the local cricket club with his bridge playing wife and university graduate daughter. Cue titles.

Do feel free to take me to task (those of you who are fans of the show) if I have missed out any important plot points; I don’t think that I have.

The show’s creator, Brian True-May has, this week, got himself suspended by ITV chiefs for comments he made along the lines of “Midsomer Murders is the last bastion of Englishness” and he’d like to keep the cast all white as he feels to bring ethnicity issues into the show would change what the show is about. Basically he sees the show as being a fictional representation of an England that, if we’re honest, has never really existed. It is a stereotypical view of what we (the English) and more likely what others (the Americans) would imagine is a traditional English village. Cricketing whites, tea and scones, old boys clubs, war veterans with walking sticks, toffs with chips on their shoulders and Mellors the gardener nobbing one of the posh ladies of the amateur dramatics society behind the back of her boorish husband.

It ain’t real, folks, and it’s never been real. But this is the show’s very successful shtick. It has after all been running for over 14 years and been sold to 231 territories around the world (I wonder if any of those are Indian or African?).

The question is: is Mr True-May being racist in his adherence to a formula that has earned those very same ITV chiefs an awful lot of revenue over the last decade and a half. Is Midsomer Murders as a concept, racist?

‘Cos the backstabbers are coming out of the ITV executive director’s office with their knives of righteousness gleaming and freshly polished. They are “appalled” by his comments. An “investigation” has been launched. The story has even made the papers and the internet – no mean thing when it’s hardly been what you’d call a slow news week.

I’m going to stick my head out here and say that, in my opinion, neither the show nor Mr True-May are racist. Not on your nelly. What he and the show are being, however, in non-representational. But that is very different from being racist. But – and here’s the rub – the show isn’t meant to be representational. It’s a work of fiction. It taps into a stereotype of middle class Englishness and runs with it. Metaphorically the show is like drinking a cup of tea with your pinky sticking out. Chin-chin. Fancy a game of croquet?

I feel quite annoyed at the unspoken suggestion that the show should suddenly acquire itself an ethnic family just to tick that particular demographic box. I can’t think of a more cheap, shallow and cynical reason to get a black actor onto the cast. And I’m at pains to point out here that I’m not a fan of the show. What I am a fan of though, is the freedom of writer’s to be able to write what they like without having to jump through hoops just to appease the politically correct brigade who are so scared of offending anyone that they feel the imperative to impose the same restraints on every single show until all shows tick the same tick boxes and everyone is happy but no-one is watching the bloody show in the first place because it lacks character or individual personality.

Maybe I’m wrong. Christ, maybe I’m being racist. Am I? If the show was about an Asian village and about Asian life and values would someone be demanding a white family move in? Would that argument even get aired? Maybe that’s over simplifying it – which is a bad idea as this topic is a bloody minefield as it is.

As far as I can see, the show is a cultural backwater. Literally. What sells the show is this fake, incestuous, closed-off Englishness that inevitably leaves little room for an ethnic dialogue. The show is not real and makes no attempt to engage with real life and the real culture of England which – thankfully – is wonderfully diverse and culturally rich. But that is this particular show’s selling point. I think True-May is right. To meddle with that formula – for all it does little to appeal to me – would kill it off and ruin it for those fans who wish to suspend their disbelief and wallow for a couple of hours in a dream of England that didn’t even exist in E. M Forster’s time.

Ethnic issues are well represented on other shows and in other dramas. Nobody is being hard done by. What is happening is that the fear of racism and the fear of being perceived as being racist is resulting in a good many Union Jack bloomers getting themselves tied up into a right royal twist.

Chill out, people! It’s a minority interest show! Doesn’t that tick a tick box too?

For those of you that are interested here is the opinion of a Midsomer Murders viewer from India: Ramana's Musings...

P.S. Thank you for all reading my 700th post.

Boycott Stupid Blogs

Most of us accept spam now like we do litter on the street. We don’t like it. We wish it wasn’t there. We wish we knew who the people were who scatter it all around so we could rip off their heads and piss down their necks (or is that just me?) – but by and large we put up with it. We grit our teeth and accept that it is the natural consequence of sharing the world with inconsiderate, lazy, self serving idiots.

We get used to it. The offers of cheap Viagra. The invitations to join casino syndicates. Those “hello darlink, I want to be your love-woman from the Ukraine” emails from people who speak to us with an intimacy lifted straight out of a 1970’s top shelf magazine.

I turn a blind eye. I hit delete. I wash & go.

But occasionally, just occasionally, one gets my goat (or gets right up my goat if you’re of an Australian persuasion). I bet as soon as I type the title of this insidious piece of blogging spam at least 50% of you are going to put your hand up and say, “Ooh, I’ve had one of those too”. The other 50% of you will put your hand up and ask to go to the toilet. Well tough. You should have gone before you came in here, shouldn’t you?

Boycott American Women.

Or as the perpetrator writes it: BOYCOTT AMERICAN WOMEN. ‘Cos those capitals make all the difference, don’t they? You wouldn’t notice it otherwise. The entire message would get lost in the mindless, knee-jerk invective that swirls around this piece of blogging spam like a particularly nasty huey in a centrifuge.

I’ve lost count now of how many times I’ve had this “comment” suddenly leap out of nowhere at me for moderation. Plainly a cut and paste job, it doesn’t change at all.

But bizarrely it does actually link back to a bona fide blog / web site. It is not some yank-phobic computer trying to sell me Viagra. Behind this one-track publicity campaign is a real person. A real person who not only is vociferously swearing off American women himself but feels so passionate about the ill-health effects of dating American women that he wants us all to swear off them too.

Why should we boycott American women? Well, visit this guy’s web site and allow him to count the ways. No, I am not going to link to it – a basic Google search will no doubt encourage this particular floater to rise to the top of the toilet – and I suspect I am merely asking for trouble just by giving this dope free publicity by writing about it on my blog.

I just want him to stop proselytizing his [frankly] bigoted, sexist, chauvinistic, primitive creed on my blog. Not that he reads my blog, you understand, he just sees it as a gratis advertising platform for his own ego-rotting vendetta against the female members of his own community. And I object to that. To be honest, I’d much rather collude in the selling of fake Viagra or Russian mail order brides than participate is this guy’s “I’ve got a really small dick” smokescreen. And no that isn’t an invitation to the Viagra companies and the Kremlin to get me to play business footsie with them under the table.

Now, as it is, I have never dated an American woman and am not ever likely too (when I was in the market for Cheryl Ladd I was only 10 years old and now that I’m old enough I suspect she is too old to care for the idea). I am a happily married man. But every time I get one of Mr Boycott’s missives (is his first name Geoff? I’d love it if it was) I feel an almost overwhelming desire to go out and speed date Sigourney Weaver, Natalie Portman and Heather Graham all in one night. Just to be bloody perverse.

‘Cos this guy’s campaign is just not working. It is risible. It is sad. It speaks volumes about this guy’s inevitable loss of esteem, secret low self worth and perhaps a doomed date with a busty Valley Girl who took one look at this guy’s shrivelled Empire State Building and laughed so hard her retainer shot out of her mouth and performed an impromptu vasectomy.

This to me is the only explanation for this guy’s bizarre standpoint. Given enough time and money I could probably prove it empirically.

So to be short, my plan is to boycott Boycott American Women. And I’d like to invite you all to do the same. Not by infecting your blog with my manifesto but by using my own blog to exercise my own freedom of speech. Just as this guy is entitled to do on his own blog. Because, at the end of the day, he can write what the hell he likes on his blog. I just don’t want it on mine. I don’t want it foisted on me to the point where I have to take action to remove it again and again and again.

And to all you American women out there... I’m sure it would have worked. The sex would have been great (once I’d got you properly trained), the good times they would have rolled and we would have made beautiful non-Justin Bieber-music together... but the fact is, I’m married.

This isn’t a boycott. I’m just honouring the precepts of true love.

And as for reasons not to date American women go, that’s possibly the best reason there is.

This Is Not The News

I know there is a longstanding tradition in broadcast news that you always round off your headlines with a light hearted story or joke. It’s the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. Yes, there might be armed blaggers shooting holes in the diaphragms in the local chemists as they make a grab for the methadone but Bertie Entwhistle from 2 doors up has spent the last 3 weeks with his genitals dunked in cold baked beans to raise money for disadvantaged ASBO hoodies so they can go pony trekking in the Brecon Beacons, ho ho ho, it’s a wonderful life really.

If you live in Bedford Falls.

I accept this. I find it tiresome sometimes but I accept it. It’s a tradition.

What I don’t accept is the slow metamorphosis that has been occurring over the last few decades (it all started with breakfast television, I’m sure) whereby our newsreaders – invariably the male – think they are really stand-up comedians who just happen to read the news.

We now get banter in between the major news items. Banter between Mr Stiff-In-A-Shirt-News-Reader and Miss-It-Was-Acceptable-In-The-Eighties-To-Power-Dress-Like-This-News-Reader:

Talking of the war on terror, my dog has no nose. Oh really – how does he smell? Like your cheap and nasty newsroom perfume.

Oh how we chortle.

But one day this week it got too much. It got callous and insensitive. Worse, it made me question just what the hell we as a race of human beings are turning into.

Mr Slick Anchorman rounded his day’s run on News24 with the following paraphrased words: “and to round up our major news story for the night a Muslim cleric in Sheffield has been found guilty of raping 2 young boys. [Pause and then turn to Miss Plastic Anchorwoman.] You know I find going to a petrol station these days really emotional. Yeah, I don’t know what it is I just can’t help filling up...”

Boom-boom-tish. Cue titles.

Did I miss something? Something important? Like a respectful pause between this horrific news item and this inordinately lame and unwarranted piece of comedy shit?

I mean, the guy barely took a breath between the two items or even changed the tone of his voice. I swear to God he was just in a rush to get his gag into the show before his shift ended and the new Mr Cocoa-The-Comedy-Newsman jumped into his throbbing news seat.

No! No! I’ve had this gag lined up all day and I’m going to get it in there no matter how irrelevant and painfully offensive it might be to all victims of child abuse, all children, all parents and basically everyone with an ounce of sensitivity and decency. We’ve got to go out on a high, Goddammit! It’s a tradition! I’m dancing dressed as a kipper for Comic Relief next week! This is show business, people!

Yeah. ‘Cos it sure as hell wasn’t the news.