Fragile things.

It’s not always easy to imagine our world crumbling away before our eyes. It all seems so sturdy. Or rather, it did. It all seems a bit more fragile at the moment. When I was younger it all seemed so obvious. Racism is not a good thing. That seems obvious doesn’t it? And yet… And yet.

Whether you like to admit it or not, the primary reason we’re leaving the EU is racism. We’ve been fed the narrative that 'the other' is here to take everything we’ve got, and so we must build walls around ourselves to keep them out, not noticing for a moment that some poor folks coming over from Poland, Romania or wherever to pick fruit or work as hospital porters don’t actually take anything from us, and on balance provide more for the country in labour and taxes than they take out in benefits. And the ones feeding us this narrative are the ones in charge of the companies, newspapers and banks that divert billions that should be fed into our national coffers and hide it away offshore. But no, let’s all get angry at the fruit pickers because they speak more than one language.

But oh my is it ever worse in America. The place seems like a genuine hellscape at the moment. It’s never really been safe to be black over there, but a counterfeit $20? That’s something that requires having your neck kneeled on until you’re dead? The police force in America appear to be uncivil to murderous extremes. I’m not surprised at all that angry protests have sprung up everywhere, which has, of course, caused the police to go in hard to disperse, which has of course, caused the protests to turn violent, which allows right wing white political commentators and politicians to now blame black people, reinforcing the racist narrative.

The video evidence coming out of America at the moment showing excessive use of force against peaceful protests, stacks of bricks conveniently placed near protest sites and white fools destroying property and police cars while black protesters beg them to stop also shows that blame for the rioting cannot simply be laid at the door of black communities. You’ve got cops flashing ‘white power’ symbols, you’ve got journalists and FBI agents being arrested on the street because they’re black, you’ve got reporters being shot in the eye with rubber bullets indiscriminately, you’ve got children being pepper sprayed, you’ve got people being thrown to the ground and kicked even while doing what they are being told to do. All of it white the aggressor, black the oppressed.

Compare that to a week or two ago, where white folks protesting efforts being made to keep them alive (and oh boy both the UK and US in for a resurgence of The Virus), all angry, tooled up with guns and forcing their way into government buildings. You simply cannot look at those two extremes and tell me white people are not ridiculously privileged. Well, you can, but you’d be a liar and a racist. And possibly president.

It's almost as if a persistent pushing of the narrative that non-white people and journalists are somehow the enemy of the people and deserve to be treated violently has given the police cause to treat journalists and black people violently. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

And if you think having sympathy for journalists here doesn’t chime with me complaining about the press elsewhere, you and I both know there is a difference between a reporter on the ground trying to capture events as they happen and the billionaire offshore account holding owners of Fox News, The Daily Mail and The Telegraph.

Just stop killing black people, and stop treating them as less than people, and stop replying to #BlackLivesMatter with #AllLivesMatter because your deliberate misunderstanding of the problem just shows a severe lack of empathy. Because how can all lives matter when black lives are treated as though they don’t?

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):

Bruce Springsteen: American Skin (41 Shots): “It ain’t no secret, no secret my friend. You can get killed just for living in your American skin.”

The good old days...

Worst single-day death toll in all of Europe. Seems quite possible we’re still weeks away from the peak. The people that caught The Virus from the people that went to Cheltenham and to see the Stereophonics are going to be amongst those dying in the coming weeks. It’s hard not to be freaked out and afraid. Still no sign of the mass testing and tracing that the countries successful at limiting the spread were using from the start. This isn’t going away any time soon it seems.

Seems the magic money tree did exist after all. It seems inevitable that this will cause a change in the way this and other countries are run, doesn’t it? Seems like all those important jobs like, I dunno, hedge fund speculation, can all be done at home, or even not done at all, and the ones that don’t pay enough to live on are the jobs that are actually important, doesn’t it? Seems like this minor trial run of the climate change-led catastrophe-laden future that is already underway might make folks think twice about continuing on this path, doesn’t it?

If I might offer a brief cold shower? The propaganda shat out by the press and social media trolls and bots have successfully caused us to lurch further and further to the right-wing, destroying, piece by piece, the very institutions we are all now reliant on for our lives and the lives of our loved ones. Truth means nothing. Sensationalist journalism and viral social media has made absolutely sure of that.

When the daily death toll in Italy was going up to 700, 800, 900 it was reported like the disastrous tragedy is was. It took us a couple of weeks longer to put similar (but less effective) measures in place, and now when our own death toll has exceeded Italy’s worst day, The Sun declared it really was Good Friday, focusing only on the fortunes of one man. As the Prime Minister, it’s quite an important man whether you voted for him or not to be fair, but the uplifting positivity in the face of all that potentially preventable tragedy is exactly what The Sun and papers like it do. Nearly a thousand people dead in one day, and it’s framed like a good news story.

I’m afraid, therefore, I don’t think this inevitable sea change that others see is necessarily on the cards. I’m afraid, I can see all too clearly all that’s happened being left behind for the continued quest for a Britain of the past that never really existed. It's currently 'not the time' to question or criticise apparently. But then it'll be 'why bring up the past? Move on' when questions are asked afterwards. They’ll continue to lead us ever onwards, telling us burning all of our relationships with Europe (like, I don’t know, telling them to piss off when they offered to help us source desperately-needed ventilators) will bring back the good old days.

Let’s hope I’m full of shit. Let’s hope the worst is behind us, The Virus is defeated and we actually put in place decent pay for nursing staff and think about how amazing all these places around the world look without smog and put in place all the technology that already exists and build an infrastructure that isn’t built on making people rich at the expense of, well, absolutely everything.

But let’s not kid ourselves that it’s an inevitability, because The Sun (and others) are going make damn sure we continue on our path into headlong destruction.

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 Libertines: Good Old Days: “It chars my heart to always hear you calling, calling for the good old days. ‘Cause there were no good old days.”

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.”

Alone? Not alone.

I was anxious about climate change back in the ‘90s. I wondered why, if it will inevitably lead to global catastrophe, nobody in a position to do anything about it was bothering. Throughout the early 2000s it became increasingly clear that the monster campaign of disinformation and bribery backed by the fossil fuel industry, influencing policy and media coverage, was able convince the public that the threat was vague, possibly not even real, and climate scientists, while trying repeatedly to get the message across with no funding, no experience, no backing and only research on their side, were side-lined and maligned at every turn. Each year that went by increased my anxiety and my fear and while I did what I could, the obvious truth was and remains no matter how much we recycle, reuse and repurpose, we won’t stop the ecological collapse without either overcoming or securing the backing of the capitalist machine that holds the media and the governments of the world in useless limbo.

Recently it’s become ever more difficult. The anxiety has morphed into a constant terror, a dull thudding knot always with me in the pit of my stomach, ready to snatch away any peaceful moment of introspection, semi-regularly spilling over into extended periods of frantic hopelessness that drive out other thoughts, robbing me of sleep and causing me to snap at my children.

Why, when extreme weather events are becoming ever more consistent, are Exxon Mobil still allowed to flood social media with greenwashing about how they’re funding bullshit, untested technology about sucking carbon molecules out of the air, while continuing to invest millions in fossil fuels? Why, when wildfires spread further and burn for longer every summer are we (that’s the royal we, as in governments and people actually in a position to invest) not building more offshore windfarms when it’s a proven technology that could replace coal (wind currently accounts for about 22% of energy sources)? Why, when research says we are currently waving goodbye to our chance to limit warming to 1.5 degrees and coming up on multiple major climate tipping points that will push us beyond 3 degrees (which will affect us all, ruinously) are we still increasing the amount of carbon we shit into the atmosphere year on year?

It didn’t seem like anyone else was being affected in this way. It seemed like the frightening reports just kept coming to a collective shrug from everyone else, while I quietly fretted more and more. Well, it turns out I’m not alone. Inspired by a child, almost one tenth of the entire population of the world walked out on a Friday to protest the criminal lack of action from those in positions of power and influence around the world. It turns out millions and millions of other people are terrified, and want things to change. It doesn’t sound like a good thing, but it sure made me feel less alone.

Slowly, too slowly, the needle is turning. Even the global disinformation network has mostly stopped denying climate change exists and is caused by humans, although it is still trying to stop anything being done about it, and business as usual on this front possibly gives us barely a handful of years before widespread collapse (and as that article points out, in some places, the collapse is already happening in a smaller scale in some countries). So far this year 100% of academic papers agree on the science.

It was women that helped me to get up and carry on, as usual. The doom and gloom articles, trying to get me to give up hope completely are usually written by men. The global strike was triggered by a girl, and it is the female climate scientists that are largely inspiring me to not lose all hope and acknowledge that yes, while catastrophic warming is now largely inevitable, leading to an uncertain and shitty future for my kids and likely curtailed old age for me, extinction is not yet a foregone conclusion. In the not-too-distant future, we’re all going to have to make a choice: Extinction? Or Rebellion?

Too late?

I’ve been banging on about climate change a lot lately. Well, I don’t intend to apologise for that. Just because too many of us are either not aware of what’s going to happen, or are ignoring it and choosing to carry on regardless, or, like me, carry on fully aware that everything I can do to reduce the damage I’m doing is like using a teaspoon to clean up an oil spill, it doesn’t mean the future we’ve decided for ourselves is something I can stop going on about.

Because I can take a pretty decent guess at how I think my kids are going to die. The latest IPCC report paints a pretty bleak picture of our future if major changes aren’t made yesterday. That bleak picture is actually pretty rosy compared to the likely reality, knowing full well as we do that those with the power to effect real change don’t have any intention of doing it. Keeping within 2 degrees of warming will merely mean the deaths of millions and the resettling of millions more. Not speaking for myself, we’ve always pretty much accepted this, because it will mostly be impoverished countries taking the brunt of it, so we’ll all be able to feel sorry for those poor folks living far away, maybe donate a bit to a charity and keep on pissing away the planet’s resources like we always have, assuming we can do enough to keep within 2 degrees.

But we’re not doing enough. It’s years too late. Maybe decades. But hey, this has only been known for 100 years or so in scientific circles, so it isn’t like we had enough time to change, you know? Murdoch, Koch and other names of very rich white men are continuing to push the discussion in other directions. The good we could have accomplished, and the progress we could have made if we hadn’t spent our time focusing on shite like leaving the E.U. (noticed how the Venn diagram for those heavily in favour of leaving and those that deny climate change is a clear and present threat (or even exists) pretty much overlaps?), abusing folks migrating from other countries (you have no idea of the shitshow coming if you think we’re overwhelmed now (which we’re not)) or countless other political pursuits that won’t mean anything in the long run if this isn’t tackled simultaneously breaks my heart and fills me with fury enough to, when I let it, stop me being of any use to anyone.

We’re currently banking on technology that hasn’t been invented yet to fix this mess at some point in the future. The truth is too ridiculous for parody. It’s like an American senator assuming praying will do a damn thing to stop idiots shooting schoolchildren so they can continue to do nothing (as with climate change, the lack of action by those with the power to affect change, leashed by the power of money, is now beyond reprehensible). There’s a Venn overlap again in there somewhere.

The increasingly likely outcome then is looking more and more like 8 degrees. That’s not ‘just’ the deaths of millions. That’s ecological collapse. That’s impossible to grow food (no, we can’t just switch to growing bananas and coconuts). That’s everybody dying. I’m guessing those on top of the economic tree using their influence to convince as many people as they can to keep the status quo and allow this to happen are assuming their money will protect them, and that they will somehow be able to profit off it. But sooner or later, food won’t just be expensive, it simply won’t be there.

And that’s why I’m worried I can take an educated guess as to how my kids might die. If it is, it’ll be the same way your kids will die. It might even be how I go out if I hold on long enough: starvation. Doesn’t seem possible at the moment does it? That’s why you listen to the people spending their lives in study of it telling you this could happen. It’s probably too late to swerve it, and we’re still going straight at it full throttle, ignoring the shouts of those telling us to change course.

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.”

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.

Growing up, guitars and good friends.

When I was in my teens, the big musical thing was Britpop. Now, that isn’t my fault, so don’t be too hard on me. The thing about music is it isn’t necessarily what’s best in a technical sense that becomes your favourite. Sure, everyone can appreciate decent lyrics and great playing. But your favourite music often becomes your favourite because of how you felt, or what you were doing, or even how old you were when you heard it. So when I first really got into music, following a brief flirtation with the mighty Jovi, it was to the strains of the Britpop movement. Blur’s Parklife was the first record I truly fell in love with (and to this day I remain so), but Oasis slowly eclipsed Blur as my favourite. As with so many of today’s leading guitar acts, Definitely Maybe inspired me to buy a guitar. I lacked both the talent and the will for it to go any further than a hobby, but being able to play first Oasis, and later Stereophonics, Blur and Weller was among the greatest joys of my teenage life.

One of my childhood friends, Ian, loved Oasis as much as I did, and there is no doubt that we bonded tremendously over this mutual love. Entire weekends would disappear learning Slide Away or Champagne Supernova; Ian singing, me playing guitar. Our friends were probably bored half to death listening to us, but we didn’t care. Then we got older, and things change as they always do. Girlfriends, jobs, moving all conspired to move my guitars to a cupboard under the stairs. Late last year Ian died of a rare form of Leukaemia, and now I find myself remembering all those weekends spent playing guitar. Turns out I can’t listen to Live Forever all the way through without crying anymore.

We never did get a band together. But in the end that isn’t what matters. What matters is the comfort of the memories I have of those years. There has been much talk of Ian looking down on us and the things we’re doing with approval and love. If you’ve read enough of these you’ll know that in my heart that’s a belief I can’t share, but at times like these I feel and understand the need people have for it, and I cannot give enough kudos to the vicar who spoke at Ian’s funeral, who happily admitted that he had been tasked with giving the ceremony just enough religion ‘to get him in’, and the good grace with which he managed this.

Thoughts now turn to those guitars, gathering dust under the stairs. I think maybe I’ll bring them out again into the light of day and give Don’t Look Back in Anger a whirl. It feels like a modest tribute, but somehow the most heartfelt.

Cherryade and Chocolate Eclairs.

When someone you love, someone who’s been a fixture of your life for, well, your whole life, is gone suddenly, it is a strange feeling. For a while, I hadn’t even been seeing granddad with any great regularity, but occasionally we’d go and visit. He was in his late eighties and hasn’t exactly been well lately, but it is still an unpleasant experience. The three grandparents I grew up with have now gone, all in the last five years, and I find the things I retain of them are a collection of memories, triggered by tastes, smells and days of the week.

Any Sunday lunch I eat is judged according to how close it was to my nan’s, and the mingled smells of make-up and cigarette smoke remind me of her. Visits to National Parks would always remind me of the funny stuff my first granddad would sometimes come out with – while on holiday with family to Lanzarote, we went on an excursion to Timanfaya National Park, which is on the site of a dormant volcano. Upon arriving, granddad took one look around and said “There aren’t many people at the park today, are there?” which has always cracked me up. And my last granddad who went just recently? Late Sunday afternoon in Winter, before driving home through Christmas lights, snuggled down in the back seat in my duffel coat, we would go to granddad’s and he would have fizzy pop and sweets for us, my favourite being cherryade and chocolate eclairs.

It is sad that they’re gone, and I hope my parents cope OK with being the oldest generation in our family now, but I’m glad I have these warm comforting feelings to drawn upon and remember them by. After all, that’s what grandparents are for, isn’t it?

Was it worth it? In which I stick my oar in where it’s probably not wanted.

So. The very bad man is dead. Super-Barack got the guy after a couple of years, while Bushtucker couldn't do it in eight. Apparently Bill Clinton got closer to killing him than Bush. Probably while getting his dick sucked. America celebrated loudly and proudly. "I'm pleased that the last thing Osama bin Laden saw was the power and might of the American military" tweeted Rose McGowan. Street parties materialised instantly, with smiling faces reminiscent of the jubilation some Middle Easterners exhibited one devastating September day.

To be fair, you can't really blame the US. The loss of the towers was one of the most shocking events to happen in my lifetime. I remember watching it with a feeling of spaced out detachment - seeing the buildings go was like seeing some impossible vision dreamt up for a new Roland Emmerich movie. Then you start to think about the number of people dying, about the panic and terror they must be feeling and the tears start to fall. Those of us not directly affected cannot even begin to imagine how it must have felt. I have read several accounts from people retelling their view of events that day, most recently this one which never fail to bring the tears back unbidden.

It's just, in the joy, some of the cost seems to have been forgotten. This isn't Kill Bill, after all. Rip-roaring rampages of revenge aren't really appropriate, and to me this certainly smacked of pointless vengeance for the sake of closure. On the whole I don't think we British go in quite so much for closure and therapy. Must be our stiff upper lips and habit of bottling everything up. It's not going to improve things in Iraq or Afghanistan. It's not going to stop Al-Qaeda being arseholes. It may even make things worse in the long run by provoking a further counter-attack in the way revenge for the sake of revenge tends to do.

I understand the lack of objectivity from America, I really do. What the country suffered was gut-wrenchingly awful. A body count in excess of 3000 innocent people. Who wouldn't feel even the smallest amount of satisfaction at the man responsible for it getting his unholy comeuppance? I'm certainly not sorry to see him go.

But there's still that nagging feeling that maybe it wasn't worth it. Are the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, Afghans and Pakistanis worth it? It's normal to place more importance on your own innocent countrymen than on innocent foreigners, especially in situations like this. But more than three times as many dead than September 11 as a direct result of America's hunt for one man? Is Rose McGowan happy that the last thing all those innocent people saw was the power and might of the American military? I doubt it. And you don't just get accidental civilian casualties. There are some, in all armies and in all wars, so in no way is this the province of the US alone, that see the nationality or the colour of the one they are trying to kill, and assign the 'enemy' tag to everyone of that nationality or colour. That's why you get a group of soldiers gang-raping a 14-year-old girl before murdering her, her six-year-old-sister and their parents. Assuming this is true (the place I read it didn't seem to quote sources), I would imagine Ms. McGowan would be rather ashamed of this small minority of the American military.

The September 11 atrocities, dreadful and indefensible as they were, were attacking a symbol of Western capitalist dominance over the rest of the world. It seems to me that the trail of dead left by the invading forces is every bit as inexcusable. Should we not weep equally as hard for the loss of life on the opposing side, which seems more personal and hate-fuelled? I think we should.

I guess the truth is I don't really know how to feel. I'm not sad he's dead, but I'm sorry so many others had to die on both sides of the conflict to achieve that end.

“Excuse me; aren’t you all fuckin’ hired killers?” (Bill Hicks)

Like everyone, I tend to overhear parts of other people's conversations in a number of different places during the course of my daily life. Occasionally I hear something that makes me smile ("Don't give me that Star Wars bollocks - it's totally over-rated. No way is it the greatest film ever made. Not even top ten.") Some of it makes me incandescent with bottled-up rage ("I stopped watching Eastenders ages ago - too many fucking foreigners. They should call it Wogstenders.") And sometimes I fail to understand it at all.

I recently heard someone talking, and talking, and talking about the army - someone in their family is in the armed forces. In the Middle East somewhere I think. They hear first hand about how bad it is out there - the death, the underfunding, the crippling tension, the pressure. And yet they appear to believe unthinkingly that whatever our army is doing out there, there is no question about its validity, its inherent rightness. Surely there's a need to question the obvious point of contention regarding the doubt about the reasons and the need to invade and occupy land out there? I guess if someone you love is involved in it, you would want to be convinced the conditions and the risk of death was a necessary evil to help the oppressed, and not an attempt to control resources and make money.

I don't question this person's obvious love for their family, and I accept that everyone should be permitted an opinion and the freedom to express it. What I do question, a little, is the wider issue of this blanket acceptance that every single member of the armed forces is a hero and the pressure to fall in with this propaganda-like generalisation. To express the kind of sentiment shown by the great Mr. Hicks is to be guilty of betraying your country and to become outcast. Just because I don't donate to Help for Heroes, read The Sun or hang the St. Georges Cross out my bedroom window with a patriotic tear in my eye (I wonder sometimes if some of the people doing this are simply so stupid they need reminding every morning what country they live in), and just because I don't consider killing other people necessarily heroic, it doesn't mean I side with the poppy-burning uber-fucks who like to scream loudly that the husbands and sons of grieving family members are burning in hell. Clearly the poppy-burners missed the point of Remembrance Day, which is to honour the sacrifice of an entire generation to keep us free of fascism, and not to support a misguided war effort in an attempt to lead the country down a route that will likely lead to ... fascism. So the poppy-burners are wrong, but so are the people that use Remembrance Day to support our current war effort (which couldn't be more different than WW2, and less essential).

Bill? Bill was, as ever, spot on.

A cycle of anger and guilt.

It's been a tough week for a colleague of mine. He's experienced just about the worst thing that can happen to a person. His 18 year old son has died, apparently by his own hand. I don't know any of the details, and it's not my place to enquire, just like it's not my place to reveal anything else about it to you. This single fact alone is enough to portray the magnitude of his personal tragedy. What I've gone and done is what almost any person tends to do - try to understand how he might feel by relating the experience to my own memories, but nothing has ever come close (and I fervently hope nothing ever will).

The only remotely relatable experience is a Boxing Day over 15 years ago when we heard that my 15 year old cousin had died of a previously unknown heart condition. Now, this was terrible news and dreadfully upsetting, but I was only just into my teens and didn't see Simon that often, so I was unable to grasp how my uncle must have felt, just like I can never understand how my colleague feels. Recently another cousin of the same family died due to drugs related problems - the uncle in question having now lost both sons has only a daughter left, a daughter who has herself recently given birth to a daughter - funny how life keeps going round like that, isn't it? In a similar vein, my grandad passed away just before my first daughter Katie Erin was born, and now that her sister Emily Karen is on the way, we've lost nan.

What's difficult to come to terms with is how angry I was at the pointlessness of my cousin's death. He was young, strong, smart and full of potential, and all he's done is cause untold grief to those who he loved and who loved him the most. While not on the same scale, there was a minor resurfacing of this anger when hearing the news of my colleague's tragedy. It seems careless to me to leave behind your loved ones with such a gaping hole in their lives. But, on further reflection it seems callous of me to judge them in such a way - in Christian's case, he never intended for the drugs to kill him, so he's worth remembering with love, not anger, and in my colleague's case, who am I to feel this way without having the slightest clue to this young man's circumstances and feelings?

So, guilt inevitably follows anger, but I can't stop these feelings any more than I can stop the events from taking place at all. It's a shite state of affairs probably best not ruminated on for too long. One thing that these tragedies do for certain is to convince me to squeeze every last drop out of life while I can, which is as good a lesson as any to take away, I guess.