‘..And then just be in a good mood?’

If anyone was wondering the title is a quote from a supremely intelligent gent who goes by the name of Scroobius Pip. It’s part of a longer verse that I'll leave it to you to listen to – the track’s called ‘Waiting for the Beat to Kick In’ if you don’t know it.

Right now that’s explained I can get on with the real point of this blog, happiness. Yeah that’s right I’ve become a complete fucking lefty hippy type, but I honestly think it’s something that people often overlook and not in the way you might think.

We all have shit days right. Everyone has them, it’s a natural part of being part of our society. Anything can cause it, from just it being slightly gloomier than yesterday to an actual tragedy like missing Neighbours or something horrific like that. It gets you down – I just think I should say here I’m not talking serious shit here like death or illness or anything like that, just the occasional day where you feel a bit crap – and seems like it’s completely not your fault.

That may be the case but who is it happening to? Just because it’s cloudy or someone spoke to you with a bit of an uppity tone, in the end you can choose how these things really make you feel. You, not anyone else, you and only you have the power to change your mood. Now I’m not about to completely deny that someone making me a cup of tea (yes, I drink tea now, fucking weird isn’t it?) has the power to make my day, but that’s exactly the point I’m trying to make. You can decide that a cup of tea cheers you up but you can also decide that the simple and incredibly beautiful wonders of this life might just do the same. Everyone has their bad times but you also have so many of the good, why allow your life to be completely dictated by the little bad things that happen in a day? It’s far too short for that bollocks.

Thank you for putting up with this quite odd and out of character post. Normal lefty, hippie, socialist nonsensensical, foul-mouthed service will resume shortly.

I haven't blogged on religion for quite a while, mainly because it hasn't irked me. And this blog may take a while to finish. I'm starting this literally 00:00am on 4/8/08.

So you have this thing call free will, which is pretty awesome you know, you can be free to do as you will. Good name ay? So that's cool, and you know it's a complicated bit of evolution but it's at the cutting edge of evolutionary neurobiology which is cool just leave it until we come up with a theory that fits. Yeah sounds good, application of science and all that, embrace the mysteri- what's that about God?

Oh good, we have to deal with the usually Christian invasion of that ever so useful and forward thinking three letter word, God. So now free will is the invention of the omniscient lord, or Lord I suppose I should call him, Him. Right ok, so like everything else that is mysterious in this stunningly beautiful and humblingly complex universe it has to be put down to something beyond our understand, beyond human understanding or comprehension. Why? Why can't we just worship the unknown? Is there anything so criminal about that?

I think Einstein put it best:

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed"

Why does everything need an instant explanation? Especially one as unsatisfying as 'god did it'.

-As a side note here, I don't like to capitalise god. The idea of god is just that, it's an idea, nothing more, get used to that, an idea can't be a proper noun. Like saying Nationisation, it doesn't work. Anyway, I digress.

Our imagination that has brought us so many incredible things: Funk drumming, Vaccination, Quantum Computing, the Hubble Deep Field. Why do we need religion to inspire us? We have our own minds, our own inspiration and most of all our own invention. Whether that's in literature, art or whatever. Create for yourself. If you want to do something, do it, if you want to love, love, if you want to drink, drink. If you're reading this blog I'd assume you have your own morals so you won't do anything to hurt anyone because that's what makes us human, not our Christian values, fuck that, they're human values. Not hurting someone, not stealing, killing, that's not god telling you not to do that, it's your own mind. It's powerful. More so than any of us could ever imagine so keep it open, wide open. Allow it to wander. Allow it to show you the mysterious and more importantly, show the beautiful.

Enough of the preaching. Stop worrying about what's coming up when you kick the bucket, because there's shit all to enjoy, enjoy life instead.

Maybe not, only an hour and a half...

I'm Nationalisin' It

Ever got on a train and thought; "well this is shit"? Or that it's too expensive, or not on time, or just generally poor? I'm sure you're not the only one. The reason is quite simple really, there's no reason for a company to give you better service. The bare minimum creates the biggest profit margin so why bother improving service? Wait a second, surely the whole principle of the free market ensures that there'll be competition and that would bring about a better service? Well that only works if there's competition for the same service which unless some bright spark builds a track along side the existing one, isn't going to happen.

So you might ask, why keep this system that is obviously not beneficial to anyone? Well if you're even asking that frankly stupid question you're forgetting the point of New Labour! Remember that prefix which pissed the morals of a formally decent political party right into Murdoch's mouth (he likes that sort of thing you know), that simple word that means a war criminal is now in-line to becoming the first EU President or maybe even those three letters that did nothing to help the common man beyond give them a minimum wage (which is still just under £300 less a month than Luxembourg)? The point of New Labour isn't as that very nice murderer Mr Anthony Blair told you in 1997 which was that those 'evil Conservatives, who are evil, even though we like a lot of their policies, are no good, even though we're not going to change a thing, and stupid and are all smelly and old, so ner' (I'd just like to point out that's not a direct quote but I'm sure he said similar). New Labour's ideas are all about fucking you and not in a good way that normal people might enjoy, but in that kind of awkward way that most people I think nowadays call rape.

New Labour is essentially rape then and the trains are perfect example of this. Lets be honest, Neo-Liberalism doesn't work anyway but in the places where it's meant to work, there needs to be potential for competition which there just simply isn't in the British railway system. Sarcasm aside, why the fuck aren't our trains a national institution? But why stop there? Surely all Public Transport should be just that, public? It would solve so many problems and actually bring about positive change in this country rather than just the same old shit again and again.

Anyway, I'm going to stop before I actually become sensible, that can wait for tomorrow.

A Question of (Self?) Defence

As I'm you will have read, since the start of the month 15 British Soldiers have died in Southern Afghanistan, of which 8 within in 24 hours of each other. I normally avoid topics of the two major conflicts in the "War on Terror", but this I think is such a disgusting waste of human life I felt compelled to offer my opinion.

That is one of my issues with this conflict and the war for oil, politicians can only seem to see a body count as a number, and as you probably know I'm not one of tear jerking sob stories about the families left behind because they're not necessary; most normal human beings can understand the implications of a family losing a member without having Natasha Kaplinsky tell us how tragic it is. This government however refuse to admit that this latest operation is failing due to the simple reason that the task force in Helmand is not properly equipped in terms of both troops and hardware.

And yet, there are two projects that come under the title of Defence, although they don't both come out of the defence budget, which come to a combined total cost of over £50bn. Now I've written about the renewal of Trident, the first of these two projects (and the most expensive by a significant margin), before but I'll just go on to say that with Obama now in the White House this is the ideal time to not increase (as we are doing) but completely get rid of our stock of nuclear weapons if only because we simply cannot afford them. The second is probably less well known. It's known as CVF (no idea why) and is concerned with the replacement of the three Invincible Class aircraft carriers with two brand new, 65,000t Queen Elizabeth Class carriers. This CVF project is - according to figures released by something called the Defence Procurement Agency (which sounds horribly Cold War) - running up a bill of £2.9bn for the UK taxpayer.

- Just as an aside here I should mention that I can't find if CVF is coming out of the £42bn Defence budget, (I know most of Trident doesn't) but there doesn't seem to be anything about CVF not being within that budget so since it is a piece of military hardware I'd expect it to come out of there.

So you'd think if the government was spending that much on a Defence project then the Chiefs of Staff would be incredibly thankful? Actually no. They don't want a hideously expensive platform for air superiority because in the wars that we are involved in at the moment, Afghanistan in particular, that's not actually what our armed forces need. They need more support, helicopters in particular. For example, in the operation taking place in Helmand at the moment the army is having to rent helicopters from the US. Doesn't this beg the question of why not buy more support helicopters instead of a useless couple of boats that won't provide our Armed Forces with any more capability to fight the kind of counter insurgency battles that seem to be the only ones being fought all over the world.

Lord Ashdown, former leader of the Lib Dems, is saying basically all of these things but in a much more coherent and intelligent way. According to his assement;
"We went into Afghanistan with one-25th of the troops and a 50th of the aid per head of population that we put into Bosnia."

With that shocking level of support, how is Gordon Brown ever hoping that this final pillar of Blair's regime will ever slip inot the shadows.

This is a war that now we're involved in, has to be won, and can be. Yes we probably should have never gone into Afghanistan in the first place but we now have a chance to make right this wrong and fix a fuck-up. Just has Gordon the balls to admit it?

Let the racist see the Queen.

Nick Giffin was invited as a plus 1 to the Queen's summer garden party in June. This is because there are quite a few racists in London and they voted for another racist in the London elections. Richard Barnbrook, member of the London Assembly and one of the most orange men I've ever seen, was the person that invited him. Aww, how cute, a white power day out to see the Queen, that said Barnbrook did direct a short film called 'HMS Discovery: A Love Story' which apparently is in no way homoerotic. Of course. Who'd have ever thought that a film with the name of a ship, a ship of line as well, and the words 'A Love Story' would ever be at all gay.

So a homophobic, racist gay porn director invites a another homophobic racist (who sadly hasn't been exposed as having anything to do with any kind of naked sailor films) to a party. But the incompetent blonde doesn't one want them to be there because she (ok, Boris is male but go with it) doesn't want to get embarrassed if the two racists have their picture taken with the Queen. Wow, when does the series hit Paramount Comedy?

Want to hear my opinion on this? If not, apologies for the rest of this blog. I say let them go. Let the country see who represents it's capital, and the North West in the EU elections if Giffin gets his way. But more importantly, let them see how the two most prominent figures of the far-right movement in this country are treated when they attend an event where there are no cameras, there can be no publicity stunt, other than maybe one leaked picture from the royal press office showing them rightfully, on their own. Because that's all that'll happen. Who's going to even go near them? Certainly not the queen.

What if they have to introduced to her though? Won't that show that the royalty accept fascists in their presence? Maybe two photos are needed then, and who wouldn't want to see the Queen spit on someone?
I've descended into silliness by my point is that we the normal people of Britain obviously find the BNP so abhorrent that shouldn't we show this disgust? Maybe if we actually stood up to these fuckers and said no, as a nation, as a populous, as a huge majority. Show the world that we don't accept the watered down neo-Nazi policies of the self proclaimed party of modern Britain, I know I don't. And I don't think I've ever met anyone that even thinks of them as a party that can be taken seriously, which is a brilliant view! Laugh in the face of fascism! I think that's a pretty good way to lead your life in general! Admittedly the problem of racism in this country can't just be dismissed but surely this is the only way forward.

"There's no love in fear" Maynard James Keenan

If everyone in this country was scared of the BNP, I think it would be as bad as them coming into power. If everyone in this country laughed in Nick Giffin's face every time he walked down the street, surely he wouldn't leave his house? Of course, tell him that you think he's a disgusting human being, but do it with a smile on your face, if just for the reason that you know that if he was buried, his grave would become a public urinal. Laugh at the hateful little Nazi, it's what he deserves.

Possibly one of my worst pieces of writing, but I am procrastinating so cut me some slack!

Own Inaccuracies

Reading the Guardian today alerted me to the fact that today is the 30th anniversary of the start of the still continuing Thatcherite governance. The title of this blog is because of the first piece I wrote here (30 Years of Thatcher), is of course only accurate today, apologies if anyone really cared. However this tide of bile some people like to call New Labour or Social Conservatism (unfortunately that's also how Mr Obama describes his political thought) isn't going to stop after Miliband - David that is - takes over from Gordy before the next election so Labour have a small chance of winning. Because the Tories will inevitably win the next election ensuring that we keep this repeating cycle of Neo-Liberalism followed by Neo-Liberalism followed by Neo-Liberalism, oh wait that's not a cycle that's just the same thing over and over again...

Anyway, Happy Anniversary of the day politics that benefited everyone died. Oh and how is Maggie not dead yet?

Article 20

I've written a blog on the intrusion of our government on to our civil liberties before which can be found here (along with all the other blogs I used to write on mystalk), this one may cover a few of the same things but I'm meaning to cover a specific subject with this and not just a over-view. That said, my views on this whole issue I wrote about last year and they haven't really changed so read that if you want, if not, here goes.

On the 1st April a series of protests were organised across London. They were designed to be the day before the G20 London Summit, so as to maybe have some effect on the decisions made the next day when the leaders of the 20 largest economies met at the ExCeL Centre - there was actually more than 20 heads of state at the summit, but that's irrelevant to what I'll be looking at. These protests had been preceded with unprecedented media coverage of the build up with the Daily Mail saying that "Thousands of City staff told to stay at home next week" and a bizarre article claiming that “G20 anarchists use Google Streetview to target the City”¹ - why they couldn’t use their own photos is beyond me, lazy “anarchists”. By the end of the day police had arrested 63 people, out of a possible 5,000 who had been pushed around, beaten and – to use the new word on all the kids’ lips - kettled. Oh yeah, and some guy died...

Ian Tomlinson, a newspaper vendor, 47, was on his way back from work on the evening of the protests; I’d like to say that again, he was not a protester. Initial reports (from guess who) said that he had collapsed in a police cordon and that protestors had been throwing bottles at police medics² who tried to help him. The first post-mortem allegedly showed that Tomlinson died from a heart attack. However further reports showed that if he had collapsed, it might have been because he was hit with a baton and pushed to the ground³. This report was then followed by a second post-mortem ordered by his family and the IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission, note Independent). This surprisingly found that he didn’t die from a heart attack, in fact the cause of death was found to be an abdominal haemorrhage, i.e. internal bleeding. Granted the cause of this is unknown but from my medical knowledge of knowing that organs don’t just rupture for no reason, you’d think that maybe being beaten to the floor might just cause trauma sufficient to do that?

And what if the police realised this? Would they happen want this not to get out? Perhaps allow a false post-mortem and altered news reports to be released? Maybe I’m getting a little conspiracy theorist here but it’s not like they didn’t lie in the first account... The original police report said that there was no CCTV footage of the incident, even Nick Hardwick the chair of the IPCC went on Channel 4 and said "We don't have CCTV footage of the incident... there is no CCTV footage, there were no cameras in the location where he was assaulted”. However in an inspired piece of investigative journalism, the Evening Standard went to the and looked at streets around the Royal Passage Exchange and incredibly - in the city with the highest concentration of CCTV cameras in the world there just so happened to be some covering the incident! Well fancy that! Makes you wonder what else in the report that happens not have maybe, quite, perhaps been completely accurate doesn’t it…

Whilst Tomlinson’s death is more likely to be the main focus of these protests, it wasn’t exactly an isolated incident of violence committed by the police. Just look at the article I linked at the bottom, all of them examples of police brutality, examples of a new cultural change that has started to consume not just our police force but the whole of the political structure of our country. The whole point of taking a public office is to serve the public, whether that is a police officer, civil servant or member of parliament, they are meant to serve us. The system that this government - by that I mean the Thatch rite government that’s been in power for the past 30 years (see “30 Years of Thatcher”) – has created has put people in the office of public service, above the public that they are meant to serve. What this does is create a society which destroys the whole foundations of democracy; it puts the power of the country in the hands of a few. It’s allowed to exist because it’s happened over so long that people can’t even see that it’s happened.

Now, I’ve been writing this for about 6 hours on and off and it doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere. I just wanted to put across the idea that this isn’t democracy that we’re living in. Democracy, well actually, the Universal Convention on Human Rights, Article 21 (I think, check me on that), entitles every man, woman and child to the right to peaceful assembly, this right was impeded by the public order measures used by the police on 1^st April, but is that what’s reported in the media? No, just the “anarchists” that turned the protests violent. It’s a problem with our media, but most of all, it’s a problem with how we view our leaders, because we view them as leaders! Each MP works for their constituent. They have a responsibility to serve their constituents, you in fact! Hence why they should be held responsible for their actions, but like the police, they are not. The MPs that voted for the illegal war in Iraq; are still in office. Jack Straw, the minister who authorised the extradition and torture of British citizens; is still in office. I could go on but I really can’t be arsed.

My point is, they need to know that they’ll be held accountable. They need to know that if they fuck up, they’re out, like it is in a normal job. To do that, they need to fear us. When I worked in a shop, I was pretty scared of my boss, he was a cock, but I would fuck him around because I’d get sacked. Politicians should be afraid of us, we’re their bosses!

Email them, vote, and make them do their jobs; make them serve you.

1. I’d like to point out that I don’t read the Daily Mail (I’m a snob you see) just that I was looking for examples of the coverage and they seemed most appropriate.
2. If this did happen, they might have a reason.
3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/15/g20-protest-police-videos-catalogue - Fourth video down. If anything, this page of videos says more than any amount of words I could ever write.