Defending The Right To Free Speech

Despite the fact that most people have nothing interesting to say ever, the right to free speech is something we will defend to the hilt.

I’m not sure if this is because people actually value their right to free speech or because, like a child who is reluctant to give away a toy they never play with, they value it simply by merit of it being theirs.

‘Protect free speech’ people will tweet, alongside the pusillanimous disclaimer ‘all tweets are my own.’ Here, the modern day Voltaire, willing martyr for his cause, beats his drum of principle loudly and proudly (while being careful to remain slightly out of earshot of his employer, who they fear will not tolerate such flagrant public self-expression).

So it was last week that the ‘all tweets are my own’ brigade took to the internetz to register their disgust against SOPA. Curtailing the right to steal the work of artists is, it was argued (not by the tweeter’s employer, you understand, I can’t make that clear enough, the employer would never say this), a natural stepping-stone to the shutting down of Wikipedia, the censoring of tweets and the ushering in some bleak, post-Soviet world.

Now, being lazy, I didn’t read the proposed bill very carefully so what follows may be completely on the wrong lines. Maybe SOPA does openly threaten to shut down Wikipedia and Google and ban people posting their opinions on message boards. Maybe it did promise the cessation of the web-as-we-know-it and to turn us into the new China.

Perhaps naively, I assumed ‘stopping online piracy’ was an attempt to stop people stealing other people’s art. But, according to many people I respect, it’s actually the opening gambit in an all-out assault on free speech online.

Well, an assault on free speech is a serious thing. It is not a right we should ever take for granted. Hearing or reading an interesting thought is one of the few times I feel connected to, and happy to be part of, mankind.

But who are the great exponents of free speech in the west now that the philosophes are long buried and the heretics largely victorious?

It is not our politicians. We traded in Westminster’s reformers and rhetoricians for a collective of Oxbridge-educated businesspeople some time ago.

It is not the assembled masses of Web 2.0. The group ‘anonymous’ by definition cannot claim to be unafraid of open expression. While twitter, sadly, is a platform with a greater propensity to stifle the utterances of others. Check Ricky Gervais’ regrettable ‘mong-gate’ episode, or Jeremy Clarkson’s ‘have them all shot’ outburst. #hecantsaythat could have been a trending topic for 2011 such were the twitch-hunts over people saying stupid things. Free speech is free speech. The concept is absolute. No caveats. Sorry.

Even the rock stars have nothing to say. Not any more. Today, a songwriter is more likely to write a song called “Velociraptor” than to write “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.” Yes, I’m looking at you, Kasabian.

“Hey, thanks for coming, this is a song I wrote about a scary dinosaur, I hope you like it.”

With so many people getting their knickers in a twist about free speech, is anyone actually making use of it?

One group springs to mind: the stand-up comics.

Stand-ups are not afraid to seize their sacrosanct oratory privileges and say the things other people are afraid to even think. Bill Hicks had more in common with Voltaire than anyone of my generation.

“It’s all about money, not freedom, ya’ll, okay? Nothing to do with fuckin’ freedom. If you think you’re free, try going somewhere without fucking money, okay?”

“Go back to bed, America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control again. Here. Here’s American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed, America. Here is American Gladiators. Here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go, America! You are free to do as we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!”

He was a man who had something to say, who said what other people couldn’t find the courage to say, and who said it LOUD.

His natural successor is Doug Stanhope. When Stanhope raged against “some troops being assholes” recently and joked of his delight when those assholes got killed met with much moral outrage in America. But when you see the footage of US soldiers urinating on the corpses of their enemies, you realise it is important that these things are said. Pissing on the dead is what happens when there are no dissenting voices.

Louis CK is another who isn’t afraid to make a controversial point.

If a stand-up comic is any good (sorry, Mark Watson) it’s their job to flex their right to free speech.

Which brings me back to SOPA.

Most of the stand-ups seem largely to be against online piracy. Of course they are, it’s their work that is being stolen. They go through a rite of passage of putting their feelings on show in tiny venues. Then when they eventually make it big, some couch potato, who has never been to a comedy club in their life, can simply pick the fruits of their labours for free. Louis CK recently tried an alternative payment model to see if he could, you know, get paid for his hard work. He did – handsomely. And good for him.

If the rewards are not there, why should the artist create? Why should the talker talk? What good is it if the comedians say the things we are too afraid to if they can’t pay their rent? Why would a young comedian – the new Hicks, the new Stanhope, the new CK, or perhaps someone even better still – bother to get on stage if they can’t make a living from it? It’s unreasonable to expect anyone to be that magnanimous.

The world is becoming a fucking shithole, and we need free speech now more than ever. But as things stand, it seems to be only the comics who have the guts to use it.

And that’s really what I’m trying to get at here.

People attack SOPA on the grounds that it could threaten their right to free speech (while, y’know, lacking the courage to exercise their own free speech within earshot of their employers on a social networking site), when in truth continued online piracy might in fact silence the few people who are actually brave enough to use this privilege productively.

The definition of ‘free speech’ has contorted into a view that anyone who has the guts to make a living out of speaking must do so for free.

How fucked up is that?

SOPA may be concocted by the same forces of evil who are determined to frame Assange (our only other real hero of free speech). But stopping online piracy is not in itself necessarily a bad thing. Paying for stuff that people make is a social contract. It’s how we function as a society.

Of course, if and when the State steps in to censor our tweets about Beyonce’s baby then that is the time to fight. When the State clamps down on our online trolling and banal Facebook updates then we must fight for our right to say fuck all with everything we’ve got.

But until then – as a good boy who pays for my comedy, my music, my movies – I’m not too worried about SOPA.

The sense of entitlement to art and the creative work of others is getting out of control.

As long as every other fuck in the world gets paid for what they do, so should those who create the entertainment that fills our dull unimaginative little workaday lives.

That’s just fair trade.

(All views expressed are my own and do not reflect the views of the company I work for.)

Vegetarianism and The Banking Crisis

People don’t really agree on much.

It may be the result of some fucked up Hegelian necessity but, as a rule, mankind just doesn’t tend to see shit the same way.

Which is why the popular invective towards bankers at the moment is such an interesting phenomenon. It seems we’ve finally found someone we can unite against and something we can agree upon.

Bankers are bad.

No-one has a good word to say about them. Even the BBC, that self-proclaimed bastion of neutrality, finds itself unable to defend them. Bankers, it has been agreed, represent everything that our morally upstanding and selfless society hates.

They are avaricious, selfish and, worst of all, they have the temerity to be very, very wealthy.

But there’s more than a little hypocrisy at work here.

I’m not saying the bankers aren’t scumbags, I’m sure they are. But are we really such angels that we can claim the moral high ground?

Would most people behave differently if they could accumulate as much money as the bankers have?

Questionable, I’d say. Very questionable.

As a test, for a bit of fun, I’d like you to imagine you were asked to turn Vegetarian tomorrow.

I know this seems like something of a non sequitur. But bear with me…

In some cultures eating meat is seen as barbarous and unethical. The case, whether you agree or not, is undeniably reasonable.

Meat eaters, to satisfy their lust for flesh, are willing to slit the throat of a peaceful, living creature without a giving single fuck.

That’s because the meat tastes good. We don’t care how reasonable or scientific the arguments to abstain from it are. We like meat, we are greedy for it, and we are willing to kill for it.

What’s more, the case for eating meat is just as reasonable as the case against. The human animal has always been carnivorous. It is in our nature to eat meat. The world is a dog-eat-dog (or an x eats y) place, and that is simply how things are.

But here’s where it gets interesting…

Is it not also in our nature to be competitive? Have we not evolved to be avaricious? Is this not a game of survival in which we fight each other to achieve the status of alpha male or female?

Why, I think it is.

It would seem to me that the bankers we detest so much are being no less ‘human’ than the meat eaters are. The only difference is that, in this instance, it is we who are being sent to the slaughter house.

For Bob Diamond, Fred Goodwin and the like,  the money, the power and the lear jet lifestyles are every bit as juicy and delicious as a rump steak is to a meat eater. The bankers don’t give a fuck who they hurt to satisfy their appetite any more than your standard carnivore gives a fuck about how a chicken was tortured before it was covered in breadcrumbs, boxed up and branded KFC.

“Now, steady on,” comes the counter-argument. “We’re talking basic morality here. The  bankers have broken our society and let people around them suffer. Humans should be better than that. Talk about animals all you want, but morality is a people issue. People come first.”

Bit convenient that, though, isn’t it? A law of human betterment with a loophole that says although we must not damage the economy,  we can continue to slaughter living things? It’s the hardly most Utopian aspiration I’ve ever come across. Yes, people come first, but as long as people are saying that, it’s not strictly objective, is it?

Christians (as ever) can perhaps weasel out of it by claiming we are encouraged to eat meat in the Bible. But I’m pretty sure there are only ten real rules in that fucking book and chief among them is ‘thou shalt not kill.’ It wouldn’t have harmed the Almighty to have added the word ‘humans’ at the end of that particular diktat if He was really gunning for clarity.

If we believe the bankers should find it in their souls to overcome their nature and curtail their appetite for money, should we not do the same with our diet? We expect the bankers to make sacrifices and accuse them of acting in the interests of their own greed. But *cough* *cough* really?

Of course, the other aspect is that it doesn’t matter anyway. Because the bankers won’t change for shit.

They can’t see what all the fuss is about. The bankers are so brainwashed by their desires that they have applied a kind of financial casuistry to their lives. They cannot see that what they do is wrong. The sweet meat of success has driven them insane. You will not change a banker’s mind or persuade him to give up what he loves. He simply cannot see the same values in the world as we do. He doesn’t want to.

The Hindus, the Jainists and the Buddhists, were they not so forgiving, would look at us exactly the same way.

They can see the harm that eating meat does (in some cases claiming it to be the cause of war). They look upon it as an act of cannibalism and murder. But no matter how clear and reasonable the case against the slaughter of animals is, our taste for flesh is too strong for us to listen to it.

We are not going to give up the things we love, no matter what has to suffer to provide it.

And that is something we have in common with the bankers we all hate so much.

Am I saying we should all give up meat? No (I’d like us to, but that’s a different thing).

Am I saying the bankers are unfairly demonised? No.

I’m just making a case for consistency.  So if you eat meat and you do not believe you are acting immorally, then accept that they are not acting immorally. If you are, they are. Otherwise it’s simply nothing more than a bunch of turkeys voting against Christmas.

Personally, I suspect much of the bitterness towards bankers comes from tacit material jealousies. But if that’s not the case, if the rage we are seeing towards the bankers really does come from a genuine desire to see people living more ethical lives, then surely it was Gandhi who said it best:

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

A beautiful idea.

But then Gandhi was a Vegetarian.

‘You Must Learn to Drive’

It wasn’t that he ever had anything against learning to drive.

It was just that he had never seen the need.

Besides, this was no longer the age of the automobile. The halcyon days of the sleek E-type or the charismatic veedub, they were gone. In fact, aside from the fashionable enclaves of West London where parked cars retained an undeniable sex appeal, the world was now awash with vehicles as mundane as the people who drove them.

There were the vulgar SUVs – all confidence, no charm – assuming, wrongly, that their mass alone would be enough turn a head, or raise an eyebrow.

There were the company cars – a race of artless abominations with their flaccid names, their meaningless three-letter accolades and their air fresheners.

There were the meek, safety-conscious family cars – replete with signs celebrating the existence of another soon-to-be-mollycoddled brat.

No, this was not a time for falling in love with cars.

Yet still his loved-ones insisted: “you must learn to drive, you must get your licence, you must buy a car.”

They never looked beyond it.

Yet, if this was not the time for falling in love with cars, it was certainly not the time to being seduced by driving.

30 years ago it was another matter entirely. Get five pints down your neck, break the speed limit by as much as your motor would allow, tap the brakes at the wrong time, propel yourself inexorably towards some unflinching tree or another and make a run for it before the pigs could brethalyse you. Who wouldn’t want to pass a test that allowed you to do that? That was fun.

But not today. Driving today was, true to the character of the age, sterile, joyless and monitored. Snitching cameras watched your every move. Endless tailbacks on motorways halted any forward momentum while grass-verges denied you even a consoling view of the landscape. Strapped to a seat. Radio playing. Blood-pressure rising. Cancer conspiring in the spine.

Everything about it struck him as hellish.

Yet still the loved ones insisted: “you must learn to drive, you must get your licence, you must buy a car.”

His protestations were on a different frequency, it seemed. Even if you never had the need to drive, it was something you must do. A licence is good to have. It is appropriate for a man to drive. That was the party line.

Year after year, he would make the same case. Year after year, the response was the same: “you must learn to drive, you must get your licence, you must buy a car.”

Even when he confessed that his attention span and patience were probably ill-suited to controlling a one-and-a-half-tonne missile as it wound its way through built-up areas – even then! – they shook their heads and insisted: “you must learn to drive, you must get your licence, you must buy a car.”

Well, there comes a point when one simply cannot ignore the petitioning of those one loves any longer.

So he learned to drive. He got his license. He bought a car.

But if he hadn’t?

Well.

It is safe to say the little girl would still be alive today.

September 11th 2001

So there it goes.

The sun has set on the 10 year anniversary of those events that have come to be known collectively as ‘9/11.’

I wasn’t there. I didn’t lose anyone I loved.

If it wasn’t so political, it wouldn’t really be any of my business.

But it is nonetheless an event in my life. Rightly or wrongly.

At the time, I didn’t know anything of America outside of popular culture and a bit of Enlightenment history. I didn’t really know what the World Trade Centre was.

I, like most of the world, was a spectator that day.

And I had an immature, student-view of the whole thing.

My contemporary history had never been great. If anything, it seemed to me like the little guy had hit back. You can’t go round treating people like the USA had been doing and expect them to lie down.

(It was only with hindsight that I could see 9/11 as it really was: a vile but brilliant act of defiance by a group of people who could never win a foot war, but knew the historical importance of symbolism.)

But that didn’t make it any less awful. Those people, jumping. The feelings of empathy.

However, even then, it wasn’t real heartbreak. Not like you’d actually lost someone you loved.

If you were a spectator it was different. It was, more than anything else, a really fucking massive event.

They hadn’t been all that forthcoming in my life up until then.

The first time I was exposed to anything like it was the Challenger disaster in 1986. Our primary school had let us watch the live broadcast. We saw the space shuttle take off and we saw it burst into a bunch of ugly, chaotic, orange patterns in the night sky and the spectacle was over. The TV was turned off. We didn’t know what to say. “Was that supposed to happen?” We were kids. An adult told us the astronauts were dead. It seemed a bit sad. Like E.T (only not nearly that sad).

The Hillsbrough Disaster in 1989 was the next one. I watched the scenes in my parents’ living room after coming back from playing rugby. But, in truth, I was more worried about the upcoming FA cup final. Everton had beaten Norwich in the other semi. “They aren’t going to cancel the final are they?”

It couldn’t really bring myself to care about the deaths. That’s how a 12 year old boy thinks. Too happy to be sad.

Then it was Diana. 1995. Older. Working a bar in Edinburgh. Didn’t give a shit. My mum died the year before and no-one gave a fuck. Balls to Diana. One person, it happens every day. I was too busy thinking about which of the girls I was working with I was going to try and score with. But I still remember the news like it was yesterday.

And then, ten years ago today, some psychopaths flew two planes into the twin towers.

An event like the others but much, much bigger.

I was older, but I still felt no personal loss. How could I?

(Many faked grief. Who outside of family members and friends of the dead, New Yorkers, or patriotic Americans could have felt genuine loss? Most people were just rubber-necking a traffic accident and feigning concern)

I was too interested in the poltics to feel what is honestly called ‘grief.’ The discussions were interesting and informative. The news was too good.

(For a kid from the countryside, this was a TV event set in the land of Hollywood. It was gripping viewing. I had been conditioned to enjoy this kind of thing)

((During the London riots, the Northerers on my facebook were settling in with a beer to watch London burn on TV while we in the capital shat ourselves. Then the trouble started up there. And it suddlenly seemed to matter to them. No more jokes. News vs Real Events))

Today, I have fond memories of September 11th 2001. It’s one of those exceptional dates in history where you can remember what you were doing.

It’s a kind of existential safe-box.

The boomers had the Kennedy assasination. We had 9/11.

I remember the surroundings. I remember the faces, the names and the personalities of the people in that moment. And thanks to 9/11 I probably always will.

This was a great year in my life. It was my first job as a copywriter. I was in a big agency. I was making friends. I was learning from adults other than teachers.

It’s nice to remember. You know, really remember.

Generally, life moves on. We move on. We forget.

But big events are different. They paint an indelible picture of a moment-in-time in our consciousness.

“Where were you when you heard about 9/11?”

Me? I was surrounded by brilliant people at a brilliant time. I remember hearing the collection of sounds “all kai eed ahh” from my unfathomably intelligent boss (only the most assiduous follower of contemporary events knew who they were at the time). I remember an email from a senior-management moron saying how we could all go home in case the next attack was on Coca Cola’s offices in the Hammersmith Broadway (oh how we love to make misery our own).

I remember it all perfectly – such was the imprint of the terrible events that had happened stateside.

It is strange that I owe such a pristine recollection to such an unspeakable disaster. But it’s the same with Challenger. The same with Hillsborough. The same with Diana.

These terrible events enable us to remember where we were on a single day in history – and that is something quite special.

Now.

My heart goes out to anyone for whom today is a day of true personal sadness. I understand grief and I hope your private moments of mourning today have taken you a little closer to closure

I also appreciate, I suppose, the minute’s silences around the UK’s football grounds for a tragedy that happened in another country. I can just about respect the facebook updates of condolences that won’t be read by anyone who was affected. I’ve nothing against these, what would you call them? Prayers? They are well-meaning and uplifting acts of human behaviour.

But I was a spectator to those events.

And the truth is that spectators enjoy terrible news events. We lap them up.

Wars. Riots. Disasters… It doesn’t matter who gets hurt.

Unless, of course, it is ourselves.

You know.

Then it’s different.

Murder Most Trivial

Of all the crimes man can commit, the most heinous of all is unquestionably murder.

This is backed up by the severity of the sentence it carries: life imprisonment or the death penalty.

The victims of murder are not just the dead, but also the living the dead leave behind. The former pay with their lives, while the latter are left to mourn their loved ones with unimaginable bitterness at the fact that the loss came at the hand of another person (the ultimate in defeat).

It’s surely something that stays with you every day for the rest of your life, such is the absence of any kind of adequate closure.

So when you take all that into account, you’d think we might take it a little more … well … seriously

What I mean is this.

Dr. Mark Sloan is the protagonist in the show ‘Diagnosis Murder’. He works in a hospital and, as a sideline, likes to solve multiple murders with his son, Steve, who happens to be a police detective. I suppose you could say solving murders is Dr Sloan’s hobby. Someone gets killed and then Dr. Sloan, in between being doing his surgical work, solves the case. Something for which I presume the shellshocked living relatives are enormously grateful.

This light-hearted and badly-produced show ran for 8 years on CBS.

This mesmeric maltese-looking chap is ‘Detective’ Adrian Monk. He has OCD and the comic corollary of his condition is the uncanny knack of spotting details that can help solve murder cases. He’s not even a homicide detective any more. But murder seems to follow him wherever he goes. When he goes on holiday, there’s a murder. When he goes to the bank, there’s a murder. Even his wife was murdered. And in his own bumbling way Monk manages to solve all of them.

The final episode of this light-hearted murder comedy, in which Adrian solves the murder of his wife, holds the record for the most watched scripted drama episode in cable television history.

Watch your back, brutal killers of the innocent. It’s an old lady with a magnifying glass (essential equipment in all serious investigations). And she’s onto you. Jessica Fletcher is a novelist who also has a sideline interest in solving gruesome and tragic murders. She is co-opted by the police to … well, by now you get the picture.

Jessica’s trashy little show ‘Murder, she wrote’ ran to 12 seasons on US TV.

Here’s a fictional colonel with a colorful surname and a conical constitution. He’s a character in the popular children’s board game about murder.

We’ve all played it.

You see this pattern of glibness emerging?

Is it not a little strange that the worst crime of all, with the most severe sentences, which destroys lives in the most horrific ways … is it not strange that this crime should be treated in such a trivial way in popular culture?

To test this absurdity, maybe we could try subsituting murder with a few crimes which carry a lesser penalty of law.

Can I for a moment suggest we create a board game about child abuse? I dunno, rather than ‘Cluedo’ we could call it ‘Paedo’.

Was it Reverend Purple in the library? Or Stepfather Pink in the bedroom?

Or a TV show called ‘It looks like Rape, Doctor’, in which a comical ophthalmologist with dyslexia makes good his troubles with the written word to think laterally about cases in which women have been sexually assaulted. It will be badly acted, scripted and produced. But it’s targetted mainly at a daytime demographic, so it’s fine, right?

Is it likely that the boardgame would be a success across generations? Or the TV show would run for 8 seasons or so?

I imagine it’s more likely that people would think I was a disgusting and twisted fuck and tell me to get out of their office at the commissioning stage.

But murder?

Murder’s trashy and fun.

Unless, you know, you happen to be one of the victims of the crime and have to be reminded of it every day by the lowest representations of the tragedy you could possibly imagine.

Nothing So Childish

“Daddy, look!”

Urged the wide-eyed little boy to the man in the Deportivo La Coruña shirt as we sat in the coffee shop at the airport.

The wide-eyed little boy could have been no older than four. The man in the Deportivo La Coruña shirt maybe 30.

The wide-eyed little boy had finished a drawing. Standard abstract toddler stuff. Looked to the nosy man sat at the adjoining table like it was maybe a house set against a blue sky. A mess of colours and squiggles. Now it was complete.

The man in the Deportivo La Coruña shirt just grunted and carried on reading his newspaper.

“Darling, look what he’s done.”

Nagged the pretty wife to reinforce the appeal of the wide-eyed little boy to the man in the Deportivo La Coruña shirt.

“Not now. I’m reading the paper.”

And that was that. The man in the Deportivo La Coruña shirt had spoken.

He was a grown up. It was quite clear that he had no time for anything so childish. He was reading the paper and didn’t want to be distracted by something as immature and meaningless as a wide-eyed little boy’s drawing.

“And there’s nothing wrong with that,” thought the nosy man sat at the adjoining table. “It is correct and appropriate that when a man reaches a certain age he no longer engages in childish pursuits and focuses his efforts on more adult and serious matters.”

Deportivo La Coruña:
National Titles
La Liga
Winners: 1999-00
Copa del Rey
Winners: 1995, 2002
Supercopa de España
Winners: 1995, 2000, 2002
Segunda División
Winners: 1939-40, 1952-53, 1961-62, 1963–64, 1965–66, 1967–68
Tercera División
Winners: 1974-75
International titles
UEFA Intertoto Cup:
Winners: 2008

That’s What Friends Are For

So, this appeared on my facebook.

It was a status update from one of my very best friends: Web MD.

Such a good pal. We’ve been friends since primary school.

Anyway, my old mate Web MD, at whose wedding I was the best man and gave a most impressive speech, asked me a rather interesting question this evening:

“Do you know healthy facts about fish?”

I thought about it for a moment. “No…” came the gradual realisation. “No, I don’t know healthy facts about fish.”

At first I thought it a little strange that he would ask such a thing.

But the more thought I gave it, the more I realised, well, that’s the sort of thing my old mucker Web MD would do. He can make you stop in your tracks like that. He’s a real interrogator.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not an idiot. I know some facts about fish.

Not all the facts about fish – a fish expert I most certainly am not.

But I can tell a perch from a bream. I know the taste of salmon to trout. I know a pike can be attracted to shiny things and that there’s a story in my family where my great-great-grandfather invented some kind of method where you put a stake in the ground to catch them. In fact, come to think of it, the whole Rae side of my family come from fishermen so, even though I do know a few facts about fish, I’m probably a bit of a family dissapointment when it comes to piscatory-knowledge as a whole.

And now this ancestral negligence had come back to cruelly bite me on the arse.

“I don’t know healthy facts about fish!”

I felt empty.

“Why don’t I know healthy facts about fish?” I asked myself. “I’m a relatively intelligent and well-educated chap.” And while my old friend Web MD had not specified a specific number of healthy facts about fish with which I should be familiar, talking as he was in more absolute terms, I did find myself thinking:

“Surely I must know at least one healthy fact about fish?”

But none were forthcoming.

As sure as I could not recall the registration plate of my Dad’s first car, I was drawing a categorial blank when it came to healthy facts about fish.

The shame!

So, suitably humbled and chastised by my old pal Web MD for my unforgiveable ignorance on this matter, I set about immediately upping my game, sorting myself out, and going to the library to take out every single book they had on the well-thumbed subject of healthy facts about fish.

I will be a better man because of it.

But, hey, that’s what friends are for, right?

Thanks facebook!

Why I love Ryan Air

First things first.

I know you probably think Ryanair are one of the worst brands in the world.

I understand, I do. I know that all they have done is ruin your holidays and made your children cry. I know they have ruined business deals, lost you money, maybe even cost you your job. I know that.

I know they are often late and then brag that they are the always on time. I know they have lost your luggage more than once. I know they have even tried to charge you 50p for taking a shit.

But that’s your experience.

Mine is completely different.

Because, for not much over a year and a half, I was in a long-distance relationship with the most wonderful girl in the world. The most beautiful, soulful, sexy, vulnerable, artistic and funny girl in the world.

Surely some exaggeration?

No exaggeration.

And when I would go over to Sweden to see her, this soulmate, I would fly with Ryanair. I would pay about 40 quid, and Ryanair would take me to my love for the same price it would cost to get to somewhere shit like Lincoln.

Ah, that fine flying machine, with its gauche colourings, its grimy seats and shitty attention to detail. That fantastic plane to me meant the promise of love no more than an hour and a half away.

What a wonderful thing to be inside.

That plane.

Squashed between two fatties, a child screaming delightfully in front of me, how I would daydream of what was waiting for me. Those classless try-too-hard stewards would make me smile, for I knew they were assisting me in my journey to Gotheburg’s shitty second airport and the jewel that would be waiting for me when I got there.

That plane took me from aggression, work, and fear to a place that I didn’t know could exist on this planet. It took me to a snow-white pillow with the prettiest head lying next to me. It took me to a calm, affectionate and easy place. That big, brilliant blue bastard plane took me to a sexy bum in a red neglige bending down in front of me to take out the chicken its gorgeous owner had kindly cooked for me.

Aww, that’s the stuff boys!

*the writer pauses to reflect*

So, you understand, where you see cheap, rotten, dishonest, corporate shit … I see my own ‘magic bus’ that took me to a place of tickles and laughs and all sorts of naughty business.

Now, I know you are probably not buying any of this. I know you see Ryanair as cheap, classless wank. And I’m not questioning your view. But I will say one thing: I don’t know where they took you, why they took you, and what went wrong on your particular fight.

But those London to Gothenburg flights of theirs?

I tell you, boys, they are well worth a shot.

London

(this post was written before the riots)

London.

London has a lot to do with living, but little to do with being alive.

It’s an amazing city, it really is. When asked what life is like in London by people in Northamptonshire or Scotland (or anywhere with fresh air for that matter), the only answer I can give them is that it is like a relationship with a bad woman. The kind of woman you never wanted. The kind of woman who destroys you. But the kind of woman who makes you feel alive. And to whom you return time and again for that good stuff.

You know that there is nothing wholesome in it at all.

But it’s exciting.

But the big problem is when you see past the living and decide you want to be alive. When you decide you want to be human. You decide you want to look past the distractions and see who you are, where you are, and understand what you’ve become. In London, this makes for a terrifying and sobering (ha!) realisation. At least it does for me.

A quick lowdown on London. London is a place where much of the bad that happens in the world is created. If you were looking for the laboratories of global exploitation, the places where the world’s injustices are created, London would be up there.

It is a bona fide successful megacity, and it is fucking savage.

People in London aren’t like normal people. They are not talkative, friendly, polite, generous, kind, humble and happy. Not as a rule. People in London are rude, aggressive, greedy, ostentatious, empty and destroy the present and the past with glee as they try to create the future. That, or they are white-faced, broken, corporate pussies who haven’t got any life left in them and might as well die today for all the joy they will ever experience henceforth.

(Now, that last paragraph isn’t aimed at the middle class 20 somethings for whom London is a back garden where they can play, dance, fuck each other, and have a bit of a laugh before failing at advertising, media, or music and going home to their home counties cradles with mum and dad to become a teacher or something. This lot are generally nice, fun, sexy and happy people. My point is more about the people who are trying to make an adult life for themselves in the city.)

Which leads to my main point. The people, of course, aren’t really bad. They are just behaving badly. Like good children in a bad crowd. The intense competition for space is enough to turn on that primate aggression. The megacity is designed to make the ape bear his teeth.

It’s a fucking cage!

In my ten years I have found myself behaving like anything other than a human. I’ve had cowboy-style fights in pubs. I’ve got into punch-ups over a taxi. I’ve slept with strangers I didn’t find attractive. I’ve been indiscreet with secrets. And I’ve bad-mouthed people who mean no harm to anyone.

I’ve been a horrible cunt.

But that’s not me. That’s London.

London makes you behave badly. This place, where we kill pensions, sell subprime mortgages, decide to invade Iraq, write TV shows that exploit children, sponsor sports, put logos on festivals etc. This force for evil in the world. It fucking gets to you.

And even if it doesn’t get to your soul, you go the other way. The shine of the gold the city offers can keep you so cosy that you never look inside your soul again. You. You cowards. You are the ones who avoid the competition in its physical form. But you are complicit in the city’s machinations. You hide your shame in the money, you show the money, you build exclusive behaviours, networks and etiquette around the money. You may not be out to hurt anyone, and you may have succeeded, but the likelihood is your absolute rejection of truth or beauty or fairness, means that you must at least be hurting yourself.

That money doesn’t make you pretty. I promise.

So what can be done?

Well, fuck all.

But seeing as I’m writing. I might as well make some suggestions.

We can be human. Being human counts more when you are in London. Those humans you do meet in London are to my mind some of the greatest souls of all. They exist. They just ain’t the rule.

You can try and be nice to people. Yield. Do let people off the carriage before you get on. With this many people in one place, the rules are important. It’s not the Government trying to break our will, it’s just that rules in a city allow us to function without giving each other cancer. So, yeah, we could all try and obey these simple rules.

“It says no entry, but fuck it, I’m not going to do what The Man says”

Don’t be such a cunt. That’s not rock and roll. That’s just cuntish. Everyone is stressed out. You are just making them more stressed. Show some fucking consideration.

So be nice to people. Say thank you. Say please. Be considerate. Call someone with a nametag by their name. The basic politeness that enables us to be civilised.

Give money to the homeless. They may spend it on drugs. So what? It might also get them some food. Stop being so judgemental. Nothing is perfect.

Take a leaflet from the person giving out leaflets. You may not want what he’s selling. But think for a minute how terrible that constant rejection feels every day. It’s a shit job he’s doing to feed his family. Take his fucking leaflet. I take one from the same guy every day. He’s starting to see the funny side now. But at least he gets treated like a human being. (I might stop and talk to him next week. But equally, I might not. I’m a Londoner.)

There are a million ways you can be a better person in London. And they all benefit your own soul as much as they do everyone else.

Commercially there are things we can do, too. After all, unless we were born here, or came here to avoid a war in our native country, or ran here to escape homophobia in small towns, we are probably here for the money.

For instance, we could respect those of us who are better at our jobs than we are. If someone is smarter than you, that’s okay. Let them progress in front of you, you’ll be the better for it, as you’ll have someone who is better than you taking care of all the difficult stuff and making your life easier in your work. When you are ready, it would be your turn.

It is a peculiar truth that none of us like the idea of anyone being ‘better’ than we are, but none of us would ever reasonably proclaim to be ‘the best’. Those two points naturally conflict.

There are of course also people worse than us at what we do. After all, none of us would ever think of ourselves as the ‘worst’ at what we do. So it’s a give-take situation.

Let the better ones pass, and the ones we are better than should let us pass in turn.

But no.

“Competition” – that much-celebrated term for the foundation of all that is wrong in the world – wouldn’t let us do that. We fuck people over because we want more stuff, more power, more recongition, so that we can eventually hold a job that is out of our comfort zone so we can make more money, impress our wives (or so our wives can impress their friends), and eventually die of cancer from the stress of the job we hated and were in no natural position to do.

But that is London. It isn’t going to change. That is who we are.

And while there is so much art, so much activity and so much beauty in this city, it sometimes doesn’t hurt to look at what it really is, what it is doing to us, and the extent to which it is turning us into liars.

We are beating ourselves up. Each other up. Our very souls up.

But like that bad woman I spoke of, it’s brilliant. It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever fucking known. And I am certain it will be the death of me.

London is what going to hell feels like.

The Misanthrope Counsellor

When I grow up I’d quite like to be a counsellor.

Not just yet, mind. As things stand, I’ve still enough energy to do a young man’s job.

But the ‘older me’ might want to do something a little more helpful to society at some point. Something more meaningful.

And surely it is the counsellor who has the most fun.

First, you really can help people. Life is getting harder and more savage. Depression, disillusionment and anger seem the only reasonable mental states for anyone who pays attention to anything at all these days. Plus, with so much ‘self’ in everything we do it seems, to this blogger at least, inevitable that mortality, insignificance and reality will weigh heavy on Gen X and Y as they creep past 50 years old.

But that’s only partly why I would like to do it.

Yes, it would be great to help people in this state. But I also want to do it because watching this generation fall apart will be fucking hilarious.

What more could a misanthrope wish for?

“So what you are saying, Ms Williams, is that you were once very beautiful? How interesting. But now, at 55, people don’t look at you like they once used to? Oh dear. People don’t help you as much as they once used to? They don’t give you special favours that they wouldn’t give others because they no longer have an unspoken hope that you might one day return the favour sexually? How awful for you. If only you’d considered your inner self rather than using your outer self to claw every advantage you could get for yourself.

“Love eludes you too? You spurned the very rare blessing of good looks for lots of sex, social power, and popularity with those around you. Yes, that sounds terrible. You ignored love because you were more interested in what you could get and not what you could give, or share. Nobody was good enough for you or your killer body and now nobody wants your saggy old tits or your bitchy personality – and the best you can hope for is the occasional night with drunk kid with a cougar fetish. How humbling for you. Right. That’s the hour. Same time next week?”

How nice to know that you are helping someone. While enjoying front row seats for this intimate and spectacular collapse.

“So Mr Smith. Let’s recap. You spent all of your life making money? You devoted everything you had to the pursuit of gain? You loved the game, you wanted to win, you stepped on everyone and anyone to get to the top. But now that the game is up, you’d like to get to know your children. But your grown up children don’t really want to speak to you? They don’t see you as much of a friend or really love you that much? They only see you as someone who gives them money? How horrible and empty for you. I can see how it must hurt. Why would a child love someone who has done nothing but reject them their whole life? Yes, I suppose the idea of growing old must be quite frightening and lonely. If only there had been some cultural warnings for you when you were making your life choices – you know, saying things like ‘money can’t buy love and friendship.’ Yes, this new concept must come as quite a blow to you. But at least you still have your money, eh?”

And then a shrug of the shoulders, a tap of the wristwatch and, before you can say “serves you fucking right” the Misanthrope Counsellor is off to the pub to bask in the wonderfully interesting act that has just been played out before him. But at the same time, the fat cat feels a little happier in himself too.

“Mr and Mrs Francis, welcome. So, from our last session, it says you are trapped in a loveless marriage? Oh dear. How did that possibly happen? I mean, those were quite a few important vows you made in front of everyone you know. How can you go from wanting to make those enormous promises in front of your friends and family, to no longer loving someone anymore? Seems almost impossible. Oh, i see … you didn’t actually take the vows very seriously. You simply wanted to get married because everyone else was doing it. You wanted to please your parents. You didn’t want to be excluded from social functions as a ‘singleton.’ I see. You were incapable of unconditional love, but you also lacked the courage to be on your own, or wait until someone you could love with all your heart turned up? Yes. I’m sure you do feel a little depressed.”

Yep. The kindly old counsellor will help these tortured souls get better while laughing his fucking head off all evening at what a fantastic and interesting day he had.

As society continues to allow its communities to crumble, as it continues to create competition and enmity between anyone and everyone, as it continues to allow its national institutions of care get broken up and sold, it will be the kindly old professional counsellor that will be sweeping up the debris.

And he will probably be loving every minute of it.