Englishness.

From Shakespeare's Hamlet.

If you ask some people, they'll tell you this isn't the issue...

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty!

Nor this...

In form and moving how express and admirable!

This neither...

In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!

They'll tell you this is the issue.

Man delights not me.

Hubris. It’s what’s for dinner.

It seems we, the Great Britannia, don’t have to follow the advice of actual experts in contagious disease. Actual virologists. Image being the cause of passing a virus to someone with a compromised immune system, leading to their death, because you went to a Stereophonics gig. Or Lewis Capaldi.

No, I’m not that worried for myself. But that doesn’t mean I ought to be an arsehole about it. Based on the advice we’ve been given, we could be excused for not knowing what the hell to do, but we do seem to have more in common with the Trump approach than pretty much everyone else (not that we’re that bad yet – we haven’t refused the test provided and decided to make our own unreliable version, we haven’t refused to test in large numbers in case it hurts chances of re-election (although it does seem we’re not testing anywhere near enough), and we certainly haven’t tried to bribe scientists for an exclusive vaccine. Seriously, the guy is such a maggot).

Even if it ‘only’ kills 1% of the infected (at best – more like 3-4 at worst), it seems a little callus to immediately write that 1% off without even trying to prevent it. Doesn’t seem that difficult. Stay away from people if you can, especially those more at risk. Wash your hands more often, for longer (regular ordinary soap kills this thing in approximately 20 seconds, breaking down the protective barrier the virusy bastard has evolved for itself). Even if you don’t want to sing Happy Birthday twice over, just find something else (for sci-fi nerd me, it’s the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, spoken slowly).

I doubt there’s no cause for alarm at all like some muppets are saying (step forward, again, Ms Hopkins), but we do seem to be panicking in an entirely unhelpful way. It seems to be either one extreme or the other – either a ‘meh, who gives a shit’ or a ‘pandemonium! Sell, sell, sell! Tell your clients to invest everything in canned food and shotguns and get to the bunker!’ when neither approach seems sensible. Not that I actually know, of course. All I can really do is my best to keep myself un-infectious.

Oh, and if you’re sitting on a years’ worth of bog paper or hand sanitiser for no other reason than you are every man for himselfing or thinking you can sell it on at an increased price, may you be cursed with everyone always remembering what a selfish prick you were when this thing passes. When the much worse consequences of unchecked climate change bite, you’ll be begging for the good old days of pandemics.

This weird thing of us all thinking because we’re British we can just carry on regardless is actual insanity, and is born of repeated nonsense spewed out over years and is the same reason we’re doing that whole leave the EU thing. The Sunday Times spaffed out an opinion piece: ‘I’m 83. I survived rationing. The coronavirus doesn’t scare me.’ These things are not related. I’m 40. I survived Alton Towers. Getting eaten by rabid lambs doesn’t scare me.

Then there’s the data that suggests that during the peak of the outbreak in China, total mortality rates actually went down because day-to-day living and working in such a polluted environment is actually more damaging to people than a pandemic. That doesn’t mean pandemics are good things, but it does mean we (or, more specifically, the global economic systems we have in place to prop up this weird obsession with capitalism) are the problem.

The advice we’re getting from officials is contradictory and changing every couple of days:

Day One: Carry on as normal, taking in on the chin, and because of some pseudoscientific thing I heard, everything will be fine, and only half a million people will die. And more importantly, the money my rich mates cream off the economy will be saved. Hooray! What’s that? The World Health Organisation thinks that’s bullshit? To hell with them. We’re British!

Day Four: So you know a few days ago we said disregard what the rest of the world is doing? Yeah, actually, do what they are doing. Don’t go out, don’t mingle. Schools? Staying open (economy first, lives second, remember?). Businesses? Staying open – just don’t go and use them. That way, my rich mates in the insurance industry don’t have to pay out.

Day Six: Um. Yeah, schools are closing. The science has changed. And by that we mean the science is the same as it always was, but we’ve just not listened until now, and it seems like we’d better start doing the same as everyone else.

Seems like nobody actually knows what to do. Or is putting the economy and the financial interests of the very wealthy above, literally, the lives of the vulnerable. Or simply doesn’t give a single shit about any of us. Or all of the above.

I hope that this thing will blow over with not much more damage than swine flu or bird flu, or even regular flu. But if it doesn’t, I really don’t think the mere fact that We Are Britain will do much to help us in the end. Seems unlikely this time, but eventually, our media-led, chest-beating hubris will be the ruin of us all on this fair isle.

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, Frank Herbert's Dune.

Work unto death.

There’s a particularly insidious type of propaganda that waxes and wanes in terms of its popularity. You see it in the results of studies conducted by right-wing think tanks, or in the headlines of right-wing newspapers, about how you live a longer happier life if you keep working into old age. How ‘keeping busy’ in a job staves off degenerative brain conditions for longer. How those in their 60s and 70s are going to save us from economic woe by working, thereby powering a new boom.

It's all bullshit. There is a difference between a person being lucky enough to have made a comfortable living doing something they love, something that defines them, and for them to continue doing it, be it related to art, such as writing, painting, sculpting, acting, directing or playing music, or engineering, such as designers or mechanics, or indeed anything else, and someone having to work long past the time they should have retired simply to be able to afford to put their heating on.

And those scummy misleading headlines and studies know it.

Yet I keep seeing the reality of it. The old man shuffling around Sainsbury’s in a uniform when he should be shuffling around his garden or chatting down the pub or something. My local Asda is a pretty depressing place for this. An elderly woman operating the till, going as fast as she can, but still going slowly. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong and she loves it, but she didn’t strike me as someone enjoying herself.

It would be better if she was paid properly for it. If the people at the top of the hierarchy of that company didn’t make more in a month that she would make working full time for a whole year. The next till along is operated by a guy with a tube attached to his nose to assist with breathing. Looks to me like he’s just focusing on moving each item in front of the scanners at a steady pace and trying not to overtax himself. There are those that will tell you this is what people need to give them purpose, but doing something a machine can do for not really enough money to live on is not purpose.

As a populace we’ve fully bought into the bullshit that as a country we simply can’t afford to look after people. That the welfare state is just too much, and sadly there’s just no way to help the millions of families that have fallen below the poverty line since the said welfare state has started to be dismantled. That leaving the EU has already cost us more than the welfare state ever did doesn’t seem to register. That tax avoidance costs us orders of magnitude more every year doesn’t seem to register. Perhaps because the avoiders run much of the media and a chunk of the government. Hey look at that, propaganda works.

We can afford it. We could afford it if greedy arseholes paid their fair share and didn’t rig the whole thing to ensure they don’t. But we appear to be hardwired to kick against it. Some deep-rooted instinct to tip our hats to the gentry, being thankful for the dribble of scraps they deign to throw our way, contemptuous of those that fall behind, unable to get by on barely more than nothing. It’s truly bizarre, and I don’t think I’ll ever understand why.

Occasional feature: Ending with a song loosely related to the post (or more like a lyric I can take out of context and loosely relate to the post):

The Jam: Smithers Jones: “Work and work and work and work ‘til you die, ‘cause there’s plenty more fish in the sea to fry.”

Not a traitor.

We’ll start with a Final Jeopardy question:

The irreparably corrupt convincing the (mostly) uninformed to demand the incompetent deliver the impossible.

Answers on a post card.

It was intimated to me not so long ago that not wanting to leave the EU meant that somehow I was a traitor to the UK, siding with the enemy. I suppose the first point is that when did the EU become our enemy? Secondly, I have long established my dislike of obsessive patriotism, how it’s little more than mild racism, and how one of the best things for us as a species in the long run would be to stop allowing lines drawn on a map dictate where we can and can’t go, drop this infantile tribalism and just, you know, treat each other as fellow humans rather than allowing the country of one’s birth or one’s parents’ or grandparents’ birth inform how worthy we think people are of basic respect.

Feeling sad while posh twats cheer a person declare an end to free movement with a smirk on her face does not make me a traitor.

Thinking it's bizarre that said person seems really pleased about introducing an 'Australian-style points system' under which her own family would have most likely been denied entry to the UK doesn't make me a traitor.

Feeling bereft that my children and their children (if the species lasts that long) will be denied the chance to work, live, love and settle in nearly 30 other countries as easily as getting on a train does not make me a traitor.

Wanting to be part of a larger international community working together to achieve positive outcomes, and not wanting to retreat to a more insular existence looking to a rose-tinted past does not make me a traitor.

Being worried about people I know having to deal with uncertainty regarding their right to stay in the place they’ve lived and worked for years and years does not make me a traitor.

Pointing out that the vote of 17 million people out of a country of 66 million doesn’t really give anyone carte blanche to do things that will take decades to recover from doesn’t make me a traitor.

Disagreeing with the assertion from the Daily Express that the said 17 million have been ignored, because the past three years has been almost nothing but an attempt to deliver this impossible thing you think you want does not make me a traitor.

Pointing out that about 1.5 million of them have died in the 3 years since, and that millions more now have a right to vote, making the original result somewhat out of date doesn’t make me a traitor.

Thinking that it’s strange that those in positions of influence advising we go ahead and leave without a deal stand to make £8.3 billion from their hedge fund speculations betting against the performance of UK companies because they know the country will be negatively affected isn’t reported more widely in the press doesn’t make me a traitor. (Eat, and I can’t stress this strongly enough, the rich.)

Feeling depressed when thinking about the sheer amount of good that could have been done year after year if dickheads didn't obsess over stupid shite don't make me no traitor.

Finding it hard to understand how non-racist leave voters don’t think that the massive level of support from racists and the sharp rise in racist violence the day the result was announced isn’t cause for concern and possibly a rethink doesn’t make me a traitor.

Pointing out that precisely nobody voted for no deal, which in fact highlights the profoundly unworkable nature of the original referendum, cursed from the outset, does not make me a traitor.

Being afraid for people who are dependent on drugs imported from other EU countries does not make me a traitor.

Saying that if you’re surprised that the ‘plan’ to take us out keeps falling apart when it comes up against the cold light of reality and long-established Parliamentary law means you’re not getting enough actual fact in your tabloid-fed bullshit does not make me a traitor. (As a starting point, try supplementing your red-top nonsense by following actual legal expert David Allen Green, if you can stand the hellscape Twitter has become.)

Thinking that ripping up over 4 decades of social, legal and economic integration without anything to replace it with is highly likely to cause recession, anxiety, social unrest, violence and the collapse of institutions and arrangements dependent on this integration (like, say, the NHS or the Good Friday Agreement) doesn’t make me a traitor.

Feeling impotent fury watching an old colleague’s record store go from a growing business to a stagnating one, barely afloat in the years since the referendum as stock imported from Europe rises steadily in cost due to a floundering and uncertain pound, and punters find themselves with less disposable income does not make me a traitor.

Repeat after me: NONE. OF. THESE. THINGS. MAKE. ME. A. TRAITOR.

Pointlessness.

I went to a well-known convenience store the other day. I walked around the shop and picked up what I needed to, joined the queue, had a few polite words with the cashier and after paying, made my way to the exit. Before I could leave the shop, however, there was a person standing by the exit with a clipboard. They also had a badge. The clipboard and badge combo was how I knew they were official and had the right to inconvenience shoppers.

They asked for a few minutes of my time to basically rate my experience in the store. I’d bought a loaf of bread and a few other items, so goodness knows what they were expecting. They asked me to rate the service I’d received out of 10. I’d figured everything had been entirely reasonable, so thinking of what I score films I like when writing about them, I figured an 8 was a decent score, reflecting a positive, yet common experience. The immediate response was “Why are you marking them down?”

“I’m not,” I replied, “I thought 8 was a good score.”

“We expect our staff to get 10.”

Many things went through my mind at this point, none of which I said to the person asking my opinion. The first and most oft repeated thought was this: If the only good score you will allow your staff is 10 out of 10, and everything else, up to and including 9, is unacceptable, then what the fuck is the point of marking out of 10? It’s a yes or no answer: was your service of an acceptable standard today?

To get a genuine 10 out of 10 – i.e. a perfect score, they’d have to give me my shopping for free, chuck me a winning lottery ticket on the way out and carry me home on a palanquin. 10 out of 10 should be almost impossible to get. 6-8 out of 10 service when popping to a corner shop is perfectly acceptable. So should I stick with my 8/10 and get the cashier into trouble, or give them a perfect score?

“Suppose I’d better say 10 then,” I responded.

I was asked a few more questions, equally as pointless, to which of course I had no choice but to score 10s for as well. Like most kinds of consumer polling like this then, it’s entirely pointless, and the company will be able to claim something stupid like ‘9 out of 10 customers rate us 10/10 for service!’ when actually it’s complete bullshit.

On the way out I very nearly reverted back to the 8 and gave the reason for ‘marking down’ as being stopped on my way out and asked to take part in a survey that is, at best, stupid and pointless and at worst downright dishonest. But I didn’t. But I will now have a clearer indication as to how big a lie the ‘customer satisfaction’ bollocks that companies use actually is.

Not losing the will to try.

That’s what they want you to do. You’re bombarded with so many outrages – lies upon lies upon lies. It’s fatiguing. It gets so tiresome that it can sometimes be hard to find the will to give a shit.

Take the presidency over the water (lower-case ‘p’ on purpose, before you wonder – that piss-filled cheese piece isn’t worthy of being called a President). Mere weeks ago a story broke about how he inherited hundreds of millions from his father that was laundered illegally – it should’ve been enough to finish any democratically-elected world leader, but it’s already been forgotten in the midst of his administration approving the launching of tear gas at migrants seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border. Granted, the facts of the matter here are not simple to ascertain, but following the administration’s previous efforts at separating families at the border and locking children up, even forcing distraught toddlers to appear in court, you’d think they’d want to be mindful of their public image. He’s just rolling from one dreadful abuse of power to the next as a constant diversionary tactic. And somehow, it’s working – Republicans are mildly critical, but won’t move to remove him as long as their agenda is being pushed through and Democrats don’t have enough power to mobilise (although that might now have changed following the recent midterm elections). It’s mind-boggling how a supposedly democratically elected party can represent the views of such a small percentage of a country’s population and yet hold such a large majority of the power. Makes the UK’s first past the post system and elected oligarchy seem positively fair. Although it isn’t, but I’ve mentioned that before. Speaking of our own fair isle, the press are largely doing their damnedest to convince us there is anything remotely positive to the shitshow that is our attempt to leave the EU – so far there is not one damn thing that is set to improve – our quality of life, our standing in the international community, our GDP – everything is going to get worse. But hey, we had a vote before anyone knew anything about the details of the consequences of our national brain fart, so you know, better just get on with it.

A similar tactic has been employed regarding climate change over the years. The future projections are now so dire that most people appear to be plugging fingers in ears and just hoping it will go away or somebody else will solve the problem. There are 100 companies responsible for about 71% of all carbon emissions, so the truth is we could have solved this years ago easily if people just weren’t greedy arseholes. It’s not going to go away. It’s going to get worse. Unless an asteroid comes along in the meantime and wipes us out it’s going to ruin us, and the timescale appears to be a matter of decades, not centuries. Not even the next generation – my generation. The changes that we can’t be arsed to make now will be forced on us, and frankly, I find it hard to think of a reason why we wouldn’t deserve it.

What was I talking about? Oh yes, the way all of this makes it hard to avoid being ground down. It’s ok to feel like that – there are times it’s unavoidable. Sometimes it pays to take a little time to collect yourself, then pick yourself up and do better. Continue to vote, to resist the creeping xenophobia and wider acceptance of it. Arm yourself with fact, not bullshit opinions spouted by others that have zero regard for objective truth. Do your research, don’t rely on one source of news, because it will misinform you. Don’t stop, because that’s what they want you to do.

New occasional feature: Ending with a song loosely related to the post:

Ocean Colour Scene: Up on the Downside: “I am a witness to a land of a million fools.”

The problem with equality.

Most people appear to support the idea of equality. The idea that everyone is treated, supported and respected equally, regardless of race, gender etc. The problem is that many of these people don’t support equality at all, because if things were really equal, I mean really equal, then those people would have less. Those with more than their fair share aren’t willing to part with it to make equality anything more than a pipe dream to be paid lip service to. It’s why Liam Neeson is all in favour of men and women being paid the same, but isn’t willing to take a pay cut to make it a possibility. Does he really need $20mil per movie? Does he fuck. I know cutting pay isn’t necessarily the best way to achieve parity, but who the fuck needs twenty million dollars? Ever, never mind per movie?

It's why The Sun thinks the right thing to do is insisting women should be employed to walk around in their underwear at darts, boxing and Formula 1 events for no earthly reason whatsoever. It’s why the richest and most powerful will always, almost without exception, insist that they retain what they have, while the poorest make do with less, or nothing. If they’re famous they can always appear on Comic Relief or Children in Need, using their likability and fame to entreat the far less wealthy masses to fork out, so they can continue to exist in this wildly unequal reality that is to blame for a world in which things like Comic Relief and Children in Need continue to be necessary year after year after heart-breaking year.

It’s why The Sun (again) thinks it’s outrageous that someone should use their benefits to buy Christmas presents (should they and their children literally have to live a miserable existence because they are poor? Would that make you happy? Do you want to live in Oliver Twist?). This shit is all misdirection. If you’re getting angry at someone claiming a few quid because they’re out of work, or a disability benefit even though they might be able walk a dog, then their ploy has worked and you’ve been had. If you’re thinking it’s perfectly acceptable to spend most of your life working hard for barely anything then you’re doing their job for them. Those people that barely have any money aren’t the ones making it difficult for you. I read an analogy for this somewhere which basically compares the whole thing to a plate of 10 biscuits. Those CEOs, those off-shore money-hoarders take 9 and 9 tenths of the cookies before you even see them. To stop you from noticing, they point out that this person is cheating you of your hard-earned cookie crumb by not working themselves to death – doesn’t it make you angry? Don’t you think we should persecute them? What? The other 9 and 9 tenths? Don’t worry about them – we’ll keep them and that way a few crumbs might trickle down to you over time. But probably not. Anyway, it’s this person’s crumbs you should be fighting for. Look, even The Sun says so.

Don’t give me that bullshit about how by reducing some of the obscene profits of some people would trigger some race to the bottom we should avoid, not when in 2017 the richest 2% in America made enough to fund the entirety of America’s social programs designed to support the poor. There’s no reason whatsoever why with our current level of know-how we couldn’t have 10 billion people comfortably supported on this planet – we have the technology to feed, clothe and sustain everyone without destroying natural resources or ruining the planet’s climate. If we were able to redistribute wealth, resources, develop alternatives to the current status quo it wouldn’t even be that hard. But those that have the majority of the wealth and power are willing to literally let the world burn before tolerating equality. No, scratch that, they have a vested interest in it, and they will never stop distracting us by going on about the other humans in the same boat with different beliefs, gender, skin colour, country of birth etc. like they could in any way be to blame for this shit.

Genuine equality is not going to be within reach anytime soon, because it isn’t actually wanted, in spite of what is said. Hopefully one day. But don’t hold your breath.

Too many.

“A person is smart. People are dumb dangerous animals and you know it.” – Agent Kay (Tommy Lee Jones, Men in Black, 1997)

There’s a perfect world that most people have in their heads and think that if only they could arrange for certain things to happen, then that utopia would be within reach. Trouble is everyone is complex, multi-faceted and different, so one person’s perfect world is another’s hell on earth. Some might want peace everywhere, an informed and intelligent populace with a social conscience, leading to the overcoming of catastrophic climate change, poverty and a new age of enlightenment, co-operation and scientific discovery. Some people think their perfect world would be one without people that are a different colour, religion or [insert culturally-relevant subject matter here for yourself, because frankly, the list is endless]. It seems that many of those in charge of numerous countries think a perfect world is one without poor people (on the face of it, a commendable aspiration, but methods of achieving said aspiration are sadly much less commendable).

The truth of it is we’ll never see that perfect world we want to strive for, because we don’t all share common cause, and there are far too many people to be able a convince a significant enough portion of them to build the world you see. You might throw names like Ghandi or MLK in my face in response to that. Fair point, but are we really any closer to the world they envisioned? They just had MLK day on the US, where Paul Ryan posed in front of a statue of King, spinning some bullshit about how he agrees with the message of equality and peaceful resistance, which for him appears to mean spending much of his political career trying to reverse the Affordable Care Act, seemingly for no other reason than it was introduced by a black President and brokering a monster tax cut for the rich while standing by and watching while poorer immigrant families that have been living in the US for 30 years are torn apart by the Government of which he forms a major part. Then being bunged a cool half mil by some of the super-rich he’s working for. I’m genuinely baffled how someone doesn’t literally fall apart from this level of cognitive dissonance.

You can talk to people one-on-one, and maybe have a chance of each of you understanding the other’s perspective, which is a start you can build from. But how do you do that when there are so many of us, in thrall to different ideologies spouted on all forms of media with no thought as to how it might affect other people. You just can’t resolve that on a larger scale – everything from the democratic process (although technically we don’t exactly have a democracy, more an elective oligarchy or a kakistocracy, but I’m well aware I’ve laboured that point a number of times previously), through the ability to maintain an informed, educated and non-impoverished populace, or an ecology that can support us, right through to not going to war. There are simply too many of us to sustain it.

At some level, I think most of us know this (or is that my own brand of cognitive dissonance?). But as far as I can see are carrying on regardless hoping that somehow we’ll find a solution. But what to do? How do we even begin to move towards a point where we can begin to see eye to eye? To be honest, I’m buggered if I know. How can you fight such a large scale collective difference of opinion, particularly as it’s often fuelled by those supposedly in control? Abolish the politicking for personal profit that passes for democracy both at home and abroad, dismantle press outfits that demonstrably lie consistently to further a profit-increasing agenda. Make asshole millionaires and asshole companies pay tax. Smaller generation sizes. That might be a start. A big ask, and not something that I can see happening any time soon. A steadily deteriorating climate provides a ticking clock that makes it even more unlikely.

Ah well. We’ll either figure it out in time or we won’t. Take comfort in the knowledge that wider Universe doesn’t care a jot for your cares or mine, and try to find enjoyment where you can.

Newish occasional feature: Ending with a song relating to the post:

Blur: There are too many of us. “That’s plain to see.”

In case for some reason it isn’t clear.

It is not normal to be a Nazi. There has been a recent New York Times article about one of the newly-bold Nazi pieces of shit over in America in the wake of Trump. It talks about how this pond scum is just like everyone else with the unfortunate exception of his extreme right-wing viewpoint. It cannot be said clearly enough: Fuck. That. Shit.

If you consider yourself an average everyday person but somehow you’re convinced that your skin colour (not your genetic heritage – that’s different – everybody’s got a bit of everybody else in their genes, Nazi or not (the video that links to, by the way, is just beautiful and should be watched by absolutely everybody)), or the religion you prefer, or the fact that you have a dick, makes you automatically better than others because they’re different, then take a long, hard look at yourself, and think about what it was that made you white, Christian, or male. Nothing special. Genes. The part of the world where you happened to be born. If you still can’t see it, then please feel free to lie down and die.

Same goes for you if you think the fact that you’re a multi-millionaire means you should pay less tax. Lewis Hamilton, Bono and the Queen can promote Children in Need or tell us what we should do to end poverty or make the world a better place all they want; the truth is, if they and every other fucknut like them didn’t invest the country’s money offshore so they could sit on a fortune of £250 million instead of a mere £198 million, there’d be much less need for Children in Need. Selfish, greedy fucks.

There are so many other examples (denying obvious truths like the facts that leaving the EU is turning into exactly the custerfuck those of us wanting to stay told you it would, that being in a position of power or celebrity doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want with the bodies of other people, that climate change is now likely to prevent us seeing the next century in as a civilised species because we couldn’t be arsed to do anything about it when we had the chance, running a newspaper that channels utter bullshit, becoming the biggest enabler of this crap out there, and, the newest – deciding that animals don’t feel pain to prevent you having to deal with pesky welfare regulations when you have your ‘sovereignty’ back (which you never actually lost in the first place)), that to go into depth would take for ever and make me sick in my soul. That’s if a soul was anything more than a human invention.

But most of all, the Nazis.

The trick is to recognise it.

People talk about unconscious bias, and other people react as if they have been mortally insulted by the suggestion that they are judging people and situations without even thinking about it. This primal instinct is ingrained and there’s nothing you can do to change it. The world in which we live is rife with traditions and assumptions about what is and isn’t normal, about what should and shouldn’t be.

Those that get mortally insulted are missing the point. It isn’t wrong to have these ingrained assumptions, because we all have them. While having a conversation with someone about some recent time they’d spent in hospital I referred to the nurse they’d been talking about as ‘she’. In fact, I’d never been told the gender of the nurse, and my friend gently and casually corrected me because the nurse in question was in fact a man. No harm no foul, but a sharp reminder that even someone like me who likes to think he’s not judgemental needs to remember that I can still fall into this unconscious assumption trap. The thing is not that we do it, but that we should recognise that we do it and correct ourselves when necessary.

It seems important to me to also recognise that other people don’t see the world in this way. On the one hand, I witnessed someone getting upset over a Stonewall poster that said “Some people are gay. Get over it.” His offended response was something like “We did. In 1985.” On the other hand, I overheard someone else that very same day claim that homosexuality was not natural. I suspect that pointing out that homosexual behaviour has been observed in over 400 species and homophobia in only one would have done little to persuade them of what is truly unnatural.

An attitude that seems all-pervading at the moment is that this unconscious bias is not only OK (it is, because it can’t be stopped – it’s recognising it and correcting it that is the important thing, and is the thing that will eventually lead to it disappearing altogether), but because it’s something we do naturally, it is something that we should continue to do, deliberately and consciously.

A story broke recently that a game that included a scene of sexual abuse on a male character would not be for sale in Australia caused some of this on a forum (the decision has since been changed and the game will now be on sale in Australia). Somehow, outrage at the game not being available in one country caused some commentators to point out that if the scene had involved a woman there would have been much more controversy, and ‘the feminists’, as they put it, would be up in arms. This struck me as a very odd reaction to the news, but the comment was soon joined with other offended people, one of them pointing out that women get more upset about being the victim of sexual assault than men do, and that his manly brain didn’t dwell on it, like women did. This kind of illogical logic struck me as one of the most stupid things I’d ever heard. It really is very stupid, but it is also the result of a person being unable to recognise that being male brings a certain amount of privilege that, if you’re not careful, or if you have no concept of empathy, makes you very, very stupid. Obviously (or rather it should be obvious), being male, you are not going to have to worry about being sexually assaulted because [newsflash!] you’re a man. You don’t have to live with the very real possibility of being sexually assaulted, harassed or raped pretty much every day of your life. You therefore have the luxury of considering the possibility as an interesting mental exercise. Not keeping your unconscious bias in check leads to this kind of idiocy. So try to remember to put yourself in other people’s shoes and not be a bloody moron.

Control of what, exactly?

Since Article 50 will be likely triggered any time now, with no plan beyond demanding the impossible, pointless aggressive posturing, the failure of which is being blamed on the negativity of those of us who are, correctly, saying that what the plan wants to accomplish is blatantly impossible, I’m still wondering what it is we’re actually going to be taking control of. Straight bananas? Seems to me that the loss of workers’ rights, the Good Friday Agreement, higher standards of food and environmental protections, millions and millions of pounds in investment in infrastructure and a place at the table of a coalition of countries with a vested interest in peace is a high price to pay for straighter bananas.

I suppose there are our arms sales to consider. As Saudi Arabia is bombing Yemen with bombs built by us and sold to them, it is possible that the EU might have stepped in and told us that, you know, selling bombs to nations that are dropping them on schools, villages and other targets full of innocent people isn’t something a supposedly advanced nation should really be doing. But hey, guess what? If we split from the EU we can keep on selling! Death to Yemen school children if it means profit for us, right? Is that what taking back control means?

Trump-mania in the US is also cause (apparently) for Farage & co to celebrate. I mean, climate change? The single biggest threat to our species? Well, putting a collection of people who will happily tell everyone it doesn’t exist in charge is a great way of forgetting all about it…until it’s too late to stop Florida going underwater, that is. Resources are getting scarcer. There are occasional shortages of food, that, at the moment, are still cause for joking around – there’s a shortage of Iceberg lettuce, isn’t that funny! It’s going to get worse, you know. While the reasons may have been a mere coincidence of unfortunate weather conditions, what effect do you think climate change has on the weather? More uncertainty, more freakish coincidences. More shortages, for longer until, inconceivable as it is right now, you and your children may actually be in danger of going hungry. And what then? Will it still be funny?

It really is getting harder and harder to convince myself that within decades, war won’t engulf us all. Still, try making a suggestion that we need to make some large changes. For example, stop selling bombs and other arms to other countries, stop digging up carbon from underground and shitting it into the sky, work together with other countries instead of pretending we’re still an Empire that runs half the world (and causes untold suffering while doing it). Try that and you get told that you just don’t understand, your position is just childishness, lacking in understanding in how the world really works. No, I understand just fine. I understand that that those on top will commit and endorse any atrocity imaginable as long as they stay on top. I understand that they can go fuck themselves, and that there will always be a resistance. There will always be those of us that resist the idea that the only way to get on in life is to turn away from the suffering of others just to protect your own position and wealth.

Orwell’s vision of humanity’s future, of a boot stamping on a human face, forever, has not yet come to pass, and there are those of us who are still determined to jam a knife right through that fucking boot.

New occasional feature: Ending with a song relating to the post:

Jeff Buckley: Eternal Life. “While all these ugly gentlemen play all their foolish games, there’s a flaming red horizon that screams our names.”

So long 2016…

Good riddance bitch, you’ll not be missed. In fact, just to piss you off, I’m gonna work on remembering pleasant and positive things from the last year, because the EU vote and the Trump ascendancy have only just begun and if I remember you for those events, then future years are just going to be impossible to face up to – best case scenario; we’ve got years of suffering the consequences of those terrible decisions, worse case; we’ll descend into fascism and war. To imply I’ve suffered from depression at any point last year wouldn’t be true and could be insulting to anybody that genuinely suffers from it, so I won’t. But there have been times I’ve struggled to focus on something other than the anxiety all this is causing, and it gets difficult to shake off. Decades of wealth transference to the rich elite, leaving communities to struggle on without investment, without help, convinced by a lying press that lurching to the right and blaming those who aren’t responsible caused this. The fact that after repeating the catchphrase ‘Drain the Swamp’ on the way to election, he’s now putting Goldman Sachs in positions of power would be hilarious if it didn’t mean unnecessary hardship for so many and the reversal of decades of progress.

But I’ll be fucked if I’m going to let that define my year – those fucking parasites have brought death to our home towns for years, and they’ll continue to do it for years to come. I’m sick of swallowing the fear they’re feeding. I know the people I share my neighbourhood with, whatever skin pigment they have, whatever they pray to, whomever they love, are not the cause of this. I know there’s room for more of them, if only the wealth wasn’t siphoned off elsewhere; if the system was actually given a chance to work as it was supposed to.

So I’m going to remember the year for the good stuff. And if only you focus, you’ll have some good things to remember too. At least, I hope you will. I’m going to remember it for my friend’s wonderful wedding, where I got to dress in a posh suit, spend a few days in the company of many happy and lovely friends and acquaintances in an atmosphere of joy and love. I got to spend the evening in glasses and shoes that light up. I’m going to remember it for a week spent in Wales with the people I love most in the Universe and did nothing but have fun and relax in unseasonably gorgeous weather, by the end of which I think I was possibly more relaxed and content than perhaps I’ve ever been. I’m going to remember that I have books, music, film and video games as well as good friends and loved ones to enjoy them with. I’m going to continue listening to David Bowie and Leonard Cohen, to laugh at Victoria Wood and Caroline Aherne, and to watch movies that were all the better for the presence of Alan Rickman and Carrie Fisher, because that’s how you pay tribute to them, not with misery. And I’ll remember it for the million little moments of bliss that make up any year, little moments that become all the more important in years that come with as much bullshit as that one did.

New occasional feature: Ending with a song relating to the post:

The Boss: Death to My Hometown: “Get yourself a song to sing and sing it ‘til you’re done. Sing it hard and sing it well, send the robber barons straight to hell, the greedy thieves who came around and ate the flesh of everything they found, whose crimes have gone unpunished now, who walk the streets as free men now. They bought death to our hometown.”

Another species?

I’ve sometimes been feeling lately like I’m a different species from this sapient race I keep reading about and hearing about that, faced with an oncoming cliff edge, rather than trying to apply the brakes or even swerve, have elected to accelerate. I’ve still only heard one remotely sensible reasonable explanation for voting to leave the EU, and with the election of President Fucktrumpet over the water, it just seems that we are absolutely determined to burn our world down around us.

While some people have been celebrating these things, other people have been trying to make excuses for them and still others have been watching them unfold with a horrified look on their faces. We’ve heard lots of people giving their own opinions on who is to blame. Jonathan Pie thinks the left are at fault. Others blame the voting public (and the non-voting public). Yet more blame media bias. Something to me seems obvious – this clusterfuck has been brought on by a combination of all these things and more.

It’s true when you tell a pro-lifer they’re stupid and full of shit they tend not to want to debate you. It’s true if you call someone worried about unchecked immigration a racist prick it is unlikely to change their mind, or even make them stop to think. It’s true we need to engage with people who think differently. The problem is I’m not sure evidence and facts really work as well as they once did. Lies are told blatantly and repeatedly by the press and the powerful, but they don’t seem to care because by the time it is inescapable, they’re already on to the next lie.

But. While the best thing for the press in all its current forms would be to piss off up its own wretched arse, it is only partly to blame. Farage, Trump, Murdoch and co are only partly to blame. You can’t have a proper democracy without an informed and engaged populace. It is undeniable that some people are wilfully ignorant and purposefully deaf to attempts to engage. People that can be presented with hard evidence of climate change and claim that it’s just a Chinese hoax and that burning more coal is obviously the answer (seriously, America, what were you thinking?) It is every person’s responsibility to ensure they are aware of all sides of the debate, to at least make an effort to see the other side. To be open to the possibility that just because you’ve always voted one way, it doesn’t mean the current incarnation of your party has your best interests at heart. If you ensure your only source of news is the Daily Mail or the Guardian because they fit best with your worldview, then you are part of the fucking problem. Stop being part of the fucking problem and get yourself a balanced view of the world from multiple sources that aren’t just interested in reporting events through their own distorted ideological prism.

It isn’t really a case of left and right – few politicians have turned out to be quite so Tory as the warmongering, bank deregulating Blair and Brown show, and Hilary Clinton was so far up Wall Street’s arse she probably couldn’t smell her own rank hypocrisy. If you want a genuine change, this is not what you vote for. Of course, the change that President Fartfeathers represents is entirely the wrong sort, and, given the choice, I’d take the more of the same that Clinton would have been and the minimum wage that Nu-Labour introduced over the legacy of needless austerity we’ve been living with recently any day.

I know it doesn’t do you any good to spent lots of time stressed and anxious about what you can’t change, but this year it has been particularly hard, and I can’t really see things improving much any time soon. Maybe I can find a way to move to a little town overlooking a mountain lake or something. Maybe the people who are more like the species of human I remember are all hiding out there.

New occasional feature: Ending with a song relating to the post:

Pixies: Caribou: “This human form, where I was born, I now repent.”

On the pursuit of wealth.

The best things in life may be free, but everything else, up to and including the second best things in life, costs a bloody fortune. And if it doesn’t, you can bet that some bugger somewhere is trying to figure out a way to make it. It’s going to be hard to make it sound like I’m not just coming from a place of jealousy, but I really don’t mind that people and companies make ludicrous sums of money. Good luck to ‘em, if it makes them happy.

I do mind when the deliberate actions they take impact directly on people who are not rich just to protect their already-ridiculous-and-still-increasing profit margins. Governments inflicting austerity measures on people, with the loss of amenities all across the country while resolutely failing to try to collect masses and masses of unpaid corporation tax, while also trying to convince people you should manage a country’s economy the same way you manage a household budget. A press that relentlessly bullshits its readers and focuses on stirring anger and hate against others who have the fucking cheek to, wait for it, be born or have parents that were born on the other side of a line on a fucking map, because it sells more papers. Companies that aggressively market milk formula in a third world country as an alternative to breastfeeding, leading to the deaths of a significant number of babies due to the unclean water the formula is made up with and other issues (hi Nestlé! Fuck you Nestlé!). Businessmen who will bully and cheat smaller businesses out of money owed just because they can (an example of such a person being the fucktard who is the current Republican Presidential candidate). We’ve got to the point now that the effects of climate change are beginning to be unavoidable, and yet there is still a huge push to deny it is even happening (I’m actually impressed Brian Cox didn’t deck this fucking prick) amongst our elected leaders everywhere, and even the ones who admit it’s happening seem pretty powerless to do a damn thing about it. The opportunities and the progress we’re going to lose over the coming decades because of this deliberate cuntery is heart breaking.

All because being really ridiculously rich or turning over stupidly high profits isn’t enough. They’ve got to be even richer, make even more, pushing our species and our planet’s ability to support us to the brink in the process. I don’t regret having children, but I regret the desolate future I’ve brought them in to. The so-called 'American Dream' is no longer a romantic ideal (if it ever was). It is simply economic wealth at the expense of everything else, and it is poisonous, and has infected many developed and developing countries all over the world, to the detriment of all.

How can this be changed? What can be done? This is the kicker. Everyone thinks you need money, and it is reinforced everywhere. And because that’s what everyone thinks, it means you kind of do need the money. You need money to make headway against it. Even if you’re content, like me, to do the best you can on a smaller scale and live by your own set of values ("Do the good you see in front of you" to once again quote Pratchett), you still need it. Even two working people on, for the area, not terrible salaries, can’t afford a place to live. You could see the confusion in the face of the mortgage advisor when we explained we’re not interested in a Shared Ownership on a newly built shoebox in the middle of a number of other identical shoeboxes, with the intention of climbing the property ladder, but we just want to find a place to settle, comfy enough to set up a home and not move on every few years. We can afford it – over a decade without a single missed rent payment is proof of that, but saving a monster deposit? That we cannot do. So we’re stuck, with a choice between staying put and continuing to rent or moving into the Shared Ownership shoebox. Renting it is, then.

Who decided that living life this way was a good idea? Because it smells like bullshit to me.

New occasional feature: Ending with a song relating to the post:

Hives – Without the Money: “Without the money, there’s nothing you can do.”

“The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems”.

‘What is alcohol?’ is the Final Jeopardy answer to the above in case you’ve never seen The Simpsons. I sometimes think I shouldn’t drink, because it stops my brain from working properly. I’m not exactly what you’d call a big time drinker, but I do drink, and I do occasionally drink too much.

When I say stupid things that make me look either like a complete dick or a drooling idiot, it’s usually because I’m drinking. If I post something dumb on social media or offend someone, it’s usually because I’m drinking. When I do stupid things at work, it’s usually because I was drinking the night before. I’m not saying I’m particularly smart, but I’m not exactly a moron either (somewhere in between the two usually). But when I’m drinking, I usually start to slide down the scale towards the ‘moron’ end.

It’s not always the case, however. There was the time I’d been drinking and joined some friends online in a game, shouting ‘What’s up bitches!’ by way of introduction and proceeded to kill twice as many Locust as everyone else, or the times when drinking gives me the little boost I need to be able to talk to good-looking strangers on a night out or to forget that objectively I’m quite unattractive or that I really, really, can’t dance for shit. Believe it or not, there are also those who have suggested I’m quite funny when I’ve been drinking as well. Whether that says more about them or me, I’ll leave to you to judge.

Since I am now bearded as well as balding there has been a few times when it seems assumptions have been made that I could be quite intimidating if I had a mind to be, appearing that I could go from mild-mannered to full-on nutter on a dime. As I am, frankly, about as tough as jelly this could lead to dire consequences if I allow myself to believe, even a little, in those assumptions when I’m drinking.

So should I stop drinking so I don’t make myself look like more of an idiot than I am? I have considered it, and I’m not going to do that. The truth is, I like to drink. I like tasting wines and ciders, and I could sip all variations of Jack Daniels all night long. So, I figure that the more unfortunate side effects of drinking are simply part and parcel of me, and anyone who knows me has long since accepted that sometimes I say weird or stupid things. And if you don’t know me? Consider it part of the charm.

The little things.

Perhaps I’m alone in this, but lately it seems to me that there is more of a sense of the world spinning out of control than usual. Politically, we continue to lurch to the right both here and elsewhere, paying little attention to the damage we’re doing to ourselves or others. I’m half tempted to move to America just so I can leave the country in protest if that shit-stain becomes President (it beggars belief that I can genuinely look back on the Presidency of Dubya and think ‘Now he was pretty smart for a Republican’). It all feels a little like the beginning of the end.

Climate Change is gathering pace, as we were repeatedly warned it would until we just put our fingers in our ears and shouted “La la la not listening!”. Now that genuine progress has been made in Paris there’s a distinct feeling of ‘too little, too late’ and when talk turns to staying within that magical 2 degree warming limit, you feel like patting them on the head and treating them like a young child who declares their intention to fly because they’re too young to understand gravity: “Aww, sweetheart. Keep dreaming, that’s the important thing.”

The banking world continues to go completely unpunished for their rampant buggering of the West’s economy, while all the normals have to collectively foot the bill. More than that, it seems they’re also allowed to continue on just as before, as if somehow the oft-repeated line it was all the previous Labour government’s fault; they caused the GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRASH (keyword: global) has actually become the accepted truth. There should be scores of hedge-fund managers (generally known to most people as ‘cunts’) in prison. Instead we keep filling jails up with black people and poor folks for minor drugs charges.

Not to mention a bunch of utter fucktards who are constantly trying to murder everyone in the world because hey, god says. Which gives us a great reason to go on selling arms and bombing poor people in the hope of killing some of the aforementioned fucktards.

Up on the world stage it all feels a bit overwhelmingly shitty at the moment, and if I’m not careful, it’s going to start getting to me. I’ve felt like this before though, and I’m sure most people have felt something similar. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like all of that stuff is too big to overcome. Well, so what if it is? As I’ve said before, the key for me is to remember the universe’s opinion of Donald Drumpf or ISIS: complete and utter ignorance. Couldn’t give a sky full of flying fucks. I find focusing on positively effecting my local sphere of the world helps to drive away some of that choking feeling that I get from being a fairly well educated, not particularly well off human in today’s world.

Find joy in the little things. One of your favourite ever TV shows coming back for a 6-episode mini-series and coming back far stronger than we had any right to expect (seriously, I’ve been quietly retro-gasming ever since they announced it and having Mulder & Scully back on screen has been nothing short of glorious). Losing yourself in film (Song of the Sea is worthy of all the comparisons to Ghibli, and it is utterly engrossing and so, so gorgeous). Reading. Meeting new people while out drunk in a new city only to find you seem to agree about absolutely everything. The people you love. Getting a headshot on an Armoured Kantus on insane difficulty (granted, that one might be a bit niche, but there are few things in this world that are more satisfying).

Maybe we’ll find a way to get past the big stuff. Maybe not. Do what you can and let the rest go. I’m not convinced the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders will ever actually get elected, nor that anything will change if they do, but if The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Harry Potter have taught us anything, it’s that sometimes you need an old white dude to save the world.

I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

Terrorism. If one were being cynical, one might think that the ill-conceived ‘War on Terror’ was nothing more than a marketing ploy on behalf of the arms trade, with the ultimate aim being to keep volatile situations unstable to perpetuate weapon sales. It’s obvious that a war on terror is unwinnable – you can’t declare war on a concept. May as well declare war on smoke, or time. Perhaps a war on quarks? Or Donald Duck?

The whole point of terrorism is to promote terror. To make people so afraid of you they’ll do exactly what you want. So if we’re too scared of an attack to see people as people first, before all other things like, in this case, religion or skin colour, and, acting on that fear, we refuse to help humans in dire need of our help, or actively seek to hurt (or terrify?) those of a similar religion or skin colour, then, logically, they’ve already won and we’ve already lost.

On the other hand, if we continue to recognise that grouping people together and giving them a label is always the first step on a dark path to dehumanising a whole section of our society, then we’ll never be beaten. That path did not end well the last time it was travelled. It’s fine to be afraid. I’m afraid. But I’ll tell you something. I may be afraid of weirdos with guns murdering gig-goers to impress their made-up god, but I’m much more afraid of a popular Presidential candidate assuming that banning everyone who happens to worship that same made-up god from his country will actually help the situation, while at the same time proposing a wall to keep Mexicans out.

All I can really take from the fuckery that passes for the world stage at the moment is that people make absolutely no sense at all.

Some questions (not exactly Keats).

Widowmakers, are you pleased at what you’ve done?
Are you celebrating, having fun?
Mission accomplished.
Many hundreds dead.
Many lives extinguished.
The fires of hate well-fed.
Your war you can’t ever expect to win, defeat is all you are,
Nous sommes ensemble dans la lumière, pour brûler le noir.

Orphanmakers, what drives you to such hate?
Some deep-seated fear, fear of your fate?
Murdering innocents.
For your made up god.
Do you think that’s what he wants?
Is he really such a sod?
We’ll beat back every one of your attacks; beat back all you are.
Nous sommes ensemble dans la lumière, pour brûler le noir.

Beautykillers, how do you think this will end?
Our death? Your death? The death of all we defend?
You want to make us afraid?
We already were.
Did that ever stop us?
Not bloody likely, sir.
Just a modern day inquisition; that is all you are.
Nous sommes ensemble dans la lumière, pour brûler le noir.

Motherfuckers, what right have you to do this?
Is it still because cartoonists took the piss?
You do not have the right.
No-one has the right.
The hundreds you have killed:
They did not start this fight.
Cunts like you try to drown us in terror, but you only light the spark.
We stand together in the light, to burn away the dark.

Dear Nestlé.

Fuck you. Seriously, fuck you. Fuck your opinion on water and your utter contempt for the lives of people everywhere. Fuck you for declaring, without a shred of decency, that we should pay you for water. Fuck you for stealing water from places where it is becoming increasingly precious. Here's hoping the lawsuit succeeds. Fuck you for not giving a thought for the people who would have no choice but to die if your ambition of making clean, drinkable water, the thing that every living thing on this planet needs to stay alive, a commodity that people would have to buy from you. Fuck your posters that you’ve put up around my town declaring you are building healthy families over pictures of smiling families or of children drinking from a plastic bottle of your water. The poster that was vandalised to make the bottle look like a big cock was disturbing, but let’s face it, that’s kind of what you want to do to all of us. Fuck you for being among the most shamelessly hypocritical companies this world has ever seen. Fucking die in a fucking fire you fucking fucks.

Why is everybody doing it wrong?

So. Let’s just say, for example that you wear a clown suit all day. You wear this clown suit because you have a deeply held belief that in the beginning of time the all-knowing Bongo squirted the heavens from his holy plastic flower water pistol, and humanity came into being when the all-knowing Bongo threw the sacred custard pie. You absolutely have the right to hold that belief close to your heart and wear that clown suit. I have a right that is equal to that however. I have a right to find your belief ridiculous. And I have a right to say so. I have a right to point out the existence of the all-knowing Bongo flies in the face of all known science, logic and reason. I have the right to publish my opinion on your belief where I want, be it on a blog like this one that almost nobody reads, or in a satirical magazine sold somewhere in Europe.

There is something I don’t have the right to do. I don’t have the right to make personal attacks on you because of your belief in the all-knowing Bongo. I have no right to desecrate the place where you pray by re-enacting the hallowed step ladder routine. I have no right to curtail your rights in any way or see you in any way other than a fellow human because of your religious beliefs. Your religious beliefs, however, are very different. They are nothing but fair game. There is no creator myth that I do not find inherently nonsensical, be it the all-knowing Bongo, or the stories that sit at the heart of Christianity, Islam or Scientology, or any other religion that purports to know how everything we know and are came to be. That doesn’t mean I can’t find you to be a complex and brilliant human in spite not sharing in your belief. In the words of Tyler Durden, you’re not your fucking khakis. Nor are you your religious belief. It’s not a difficult thing to recognise. And yet, our insistence on putting people into ready-made boxes will never cease.

But. And it’s a big but. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that gives you the right to murder, least of all that preposterous religious belief of yours. There are times when it is possible to see the reasons behind murder – to understand, although not excuse, the reasons. And then there are times when it is not. Whatever is it that makes a person think that a death sentence is an appropriate response to drawing a cartoon that takes the piss out of their religion? It’s like those times when a kid responds to an argument they know they’re losing by completely over-reacting; screaming, hitting, knocking shit over. That’s what they are. Children in adult’s bodies who, having never learned the life skills of empathy and debate, have heard something they don’t like and happen to have a lot of guns.

That’s the really poisonous thing about religion. When looking at it in any depth, sooner or later you have to come face to face with the fact that the whole thing comes crashing down if you don’t force yourself to believe something that is simply so illogical, so damn unlikely, with nothing in the way of observable proof, that all you can do is blindly have faith in something that is almost certainly untrue. I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it must be living with that impossible paradox forming the heart of how I define myself. Of course, I don’t imagine it would cause me to walk into a school and start shooting children like those rotting pustules of cat sick. It feels like the Spanish Inquisition might have if they all had automatic weapons.

I recognise that religion isn’t the cause of all wars, merely the excuse, that if it didn’t exist we’d find some other thing to justify all the despicable things we get up to, but I do fucking despise the way it’s used by the mindless faithful to commit these terrible crimes. And then what do we do? We use it as an excuse to persecute members of the same religion who had nothing to with these atrocities. Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day. It might seem a little extreme to suggest that the current way in which people of a certain faith are casually discriminated against by too many people in this country, given a veil of credibility by a lying, fetid press, because of some acts of violent cowardice by other shit munching fuck farts in the name of that same religion could lead to something as horrifying as a holocaust, but the more you learn about the one that took place in Germany during WWII, the more you see that casual discrimination is exactly how it started. It’s the thin end of the wedge, and it pays to remember that.

People are people, whatever else they may be, whatever box they’re put in, whatever label they’re given because of their colour, gender, age, sexuality or faith. Forgetting that puts you on a very slippery slope that ends nowhere good.