So, the worst of all possible combinations then.

At this point, I’m not convinced there’s a right way to resolve the situation we’re in. If we’d have acted sooner, more decisively and for longer with proper support and enacted a working test, trace and isolate system, then things would most likely be, if not peachy, a good deal peachier than they are. But shoulda woulda coulda ain’t gonna do a whole lot about the now. Not that I think it’s okay, what happened; taking the opportunity to give out contracts to donors and friends – which has proven to be most lucrative, while they were crying out for PPE and then attempting to gaslight half a nation by claiming there never was a shortage.

But what’s going on now is a little difficult to fathom. Basically treating it like flu, even though it’s not flu. Claiming we’ll just have to live with it and a whole load of people will just have to die, because, you know, Costa’s been low on profits for a while. Which is obviously worse.

Well, ok, but better to try that when we have more of us vaccinated yes? Because you know, this is a virus that mutates as it spreads. So just letting it go nuts on a partially vaccinated population means a good chance of more variants that the vaccines are not effective against that are more deadly to more people and are more transmissible. It’s already happening; hello delta variant. Then there’s the mounting evidence that surviving it isn’t just a case of ‘that’s it, well done, off you go’; it affects the brain and the body in ways that won’t be clear for a long time, not forgetting long covid, which is present in all age groups, children included. No other country in the world is trying this experiment of just giving up and letting the population just get infected and see what happens, and it seems to be baffling the international community (I admit I laughed when CNN compared our PM to Lord Farquaad). It is entirely unsurprising that the new health secretary is a mega fan of Ayn Rand, and I don’t see why we should be happy for them to take this risk with the lives of people they are entrusted to safeguard. Of course, they’ve left us with little alternative other than to forever go on the lock-down/reopen/lock-down/reopen carousel. Might it just have been a bit better to have held on until the vaccine roll out was complete, or near as dammit? It’s weird how anti-lockdown folk tend to also be anti-vaccine folk. So what, your preferred option is for as many people to die as possible? Why?

Being sick of experts unfortunately doesn’t stop them usually being right. Ignoring expertise has led to the most bonkers strategy to deal with the virus; to leave the EU in the most nonsensical manner imaginable and I’ve no doubt that scientific expertise will continue to be ignored regarding climate change.

Like some kind of Sunnydale-on-Sea (it genuinely does look like a hellmouth), we’ve actually managed to literally set the ocean on fire, and we’ve allowed a small town in Canada to literally burn down to the ground (note the ridiculous journalistic standards on that article that still make no mention whatsoever linking the temperatures and wildfires with climate change – the media are fully complicit in this being as bad as it is), but we still won’t move away from our dependence on fossil fuels with the urgency that was required decades ago. The response to this, and the growing protest movement from Extinction Rebellion? Change the law so the right to protest is rendered powerless and, according to the recently-passed bill, noisy protests can carry a 10 year jail term. So you can now be jailed for longer for, say, pulling down the statue of a slave trader than for rape. Well, they shouldn’t have inconvenienced people trying to grab a Costa should they? (Granted, the change in the law is likely also in response to Black Lives Matter in addition to Extinction Rebellion, but you know what? Black lives do matter, and they are still largely treated as though they don’t, or at least that they matter less, and until that changes and there is some kind of proper social justice, there are going to be those protesting about it.) Those in power call themselves libertarians? When they want to jail you for a decade for disagreeing with the endless corruption and incompetence that is leading to the actual end of our civilisation as we know it and the death and forced migration of billions of people (not as far away into the future as you would like to think)? I don’t think that word ‘libertarian’ means what they think it means.

Somewhere in the multiverse there is a reality where Murdoch, Koch, Rothmere et al don’t have the kind of influence they have here and we don’t have such a significant portion of the population that are so enamoured with populism, nationalism and jingoism, or so happy to get apoplectic about whatever culture war nonsense is used to distract them that they are happy, to borrow from Christopher Nolan, to watch the world burn so long as they can be mean about a princess from another country with brown skin. A reality where the statement given by an expert that has spent their entire life studying a subject isn’t given the same weight as some fool that’s read something online and now thinks he knows more.

I want to go to that reality.

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):

Dirty Pretty Things: Bloodthirsty Bastards: “Bloodthirsty bastards making plans for no one/but themselves.”

Ugh.

Getting fed up of it now. Acting illegally. Bigging up a deal to increase corporation tax while at the same time trying to sort a loophole for your mates in the city. Mates that are still funding the destruction of us all. An opposition that appears to do literally nothing to oppose. And yet, what gets focused on? Vilifying black footballers that would like it if people stopped showering them with racist abuse. Vilifying a group of students that didn’t want a picture of the queen up. I mean, I had a picture of a queen up when I was at Uni, but it was the queen known as Buffy Summers, not Liz Windsor. More non-news. More culture war bullshit to distract from the endless corruption.

And people continue to lap it up.

As I said: ugh.

On statues and history.

I appreciate that destruction of public monuments is considered a bad thing. A worse thing, in my own humble opinion, is deliberately misunderstanding a point or a situation to allow you to argue for maintaining an untenable status quo.

Statues are erected to celebrate people, erected by people that admire them. Statues are not 3D history lessons. That’s why there’s a statue of Jim Henson (pictured below), and not a statue of Hitler or Jimmy Saville. I don’t think we’re in danger of forgetting about them though are we? Arguing that pulling down the statue of Edward Colston is erasing the more troubling aspects of our history is inaccurate. I had no idea who Edward Colston was until his statue was pulled down and dumped in the water, and I’m willing to bet that almost none of you did either.

The man traded people as if they were goods and was responsible for the deaths of thousands of them. That’s mass murder. Whatever else he might have done, it will not erase that stain. There are many, many more suitable ways to ensure this unpleasant part of our history isn’t lost than maintaining a statue in devotion to him. Teaching it as part of history in schools, colleges and universities would be one. A museum would be another. Frankly the idea that he should be immortalised in statue form can get in the bin. Or the Bristol Channel, either’s fine.

Just try to imagine. Centuries of it, going back as far as you can imagine. First not being treated as though you’re even human. All these years later and you’re still treated as second class citizens. Frequently denied even basic courtesy, all the while those that continue to oppress you complaining it isn’t fair when someone gives you a job or a promotion. It’s insidious and it’s hidden in plain view everywhere. It is 100% true that to the privileged, equality feels like oppression. I don’t blame the protestors at all for dragging Colston’s murdering ass down.

Perhaps it would have been better, or more acceptable to campaign for the removal of the statue? I agree, and it turns out that it seems they’ve been trying for years, but were refused. Even the request to change the wording on it was vetoed. A bit like when kneeling during the National Anthem in the states was met with outrage, so when real anger came out following yet more needless deaths it was all ‘Why can’t you protest peacefully and respectfully?’ Being civil didn’t work.

Perhaps, if universities weren’t reducing their history departments through lack of funding, teaching the public about people like Edward Colston wouldn’t be the job of tributes in the form of statues. Maybe if they taught some of the less pleasant parts of our history, like the looting of Africa, or the Opium Wars, and stop pretending our history starts and stops with WWI and WWII, we wouldn’t grow up with a vastly inflated sense of our own importance and vote to do silly things like leave the EU. We like to think we’re big damn heroes since the ‘40s, but we were still torturing people in Kenya for not wanting to be under British rule in the '50s. I understand a significant amount of this cutting back of history in education was accomplished under the previous Labour government, which while not as awful as the Iraq war, was still a crappy thing to do, if you think I’m dividing this along party lines.

The argument that without that statue and statues of other slavers, we’d all just forget that Britain was heavily involved in slavery is a false one. Nobody ever stopped to look at that statue of Edward Colston and thought, while looking up at him like a supplicant, ‘My, he was a terrible man, I’m glad this statue’s here so we can ruminate on some of the terrible things Britain got up to in the past. Well, moving on, what’s for lunch?’

Statues ain’t history, history is history, and as long as culture, honest media, libraries, museums and quality education exists, it won’t be forgotten if the statues are binned.

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.”

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.

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.

I suppose you’ve still gotta hope, right?

There’s been a lot of stuff getting me down lately. Following the 2016 illegally fought and won advisory referendum on our membership of the most successful peace-project in human history (yeah, alright, I’m over-egging the pudding a bit; I know the EU isn’t perfect, but it’s a damn sight better than any possible outcome we’re now faced with), the UK press are still pushing for this fucking catastrophe and since then we’ve gone from ‘£350 million a week for the NHS’ to ‘People will have the food they need’ and ‘Nah, we won’t abide by the law if we don’t feel like it’. This is not the same thing.

Over the pond, people are still sending ‘thoughts and prayers’ to families of shooting victims, while at the same time making it easier for any Trump-inspired numpty to buy an automatic death machine.

Still no sign of governments anywhere doing anything to tackle climate change that might actually make an appreciable difference – no, setting fire to the Amazon rainforest doesn’t count. But, there might be reason here for hope. For young people all over the world are no longer content to sit back and watch their future burn and are fighting back. Awareness of the scale of the issue is increasing everywhere and rich old white men are working hard to discredit the movement by launching consistent personal attacks on young figurehead Greta Thunberg. So far, little significant change has happened, but the movement is gaining ground and if the tide turns, then maybe climate change won’t be the civilisation-ender it’s gearing up to be.

Too many powerful people with a vested interest in things staying the way they are preventing real change for there to be anything more than a tiny chance, but you never know, and I’m trying not to take the ‘it’s a lost cause, might as well give up’ route, like Jonathan Franzen, who, quite frankly, appears to be trying to convince people not to disrupt the status quo so he can live out the rest of his life not having to give a shit. (I'm not linking to his article, because it's the last thing he deserves, but I will link to this glorious counterpoint.) It’s hard and there are still days when all feels lost, but kids with a lot more to lose than I have (I’ve already had 40 years, they haven’t) and people much, much smarter than I am haven’t given up yet. I suppose I can do no less.

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 Strokes: Heart in a Cage: “So don’t teach me a lesson, ‘cause I’ve already learned; the sun will be shining and my children will burn.”

A lasting impression I could do without.

Have you ever read a book or watched a film that you know is extremely good, but you still wish you’d never gone anywhere near it? I’ve done it twice now. The first was when we watched Grave of the Fireflies. Studio Ghibli has a body of work that pretty much nobody can touch for quality, save maybe Pixar. Grave of the Fireflies is a 1988 animated film directed by Isao Takahata which forms part of the Ghibli collection. It brings home the devastating cost of war by focusing on two children in Japan near the end of the second world war, who lose their parents and have to try to survive together in the face of starvation and the antipathy of a population numb to tragedy. Studio Ghibli films are not afraid to focus on hardship, loss and grief, but they are generally optimistic. When I had finished watching, I felt something I’d never felt in reaction to a film before or since; a physical pain. My heart was broken and I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. The film is incredible; told with the same gift for character and astonishing artistry that is par for the course for Ghibli, but I don’t ever want to see it again and I can’t bring myself to recommend it to anyone. It was like having my heart stomped on by the one person I can usually expect to make it soar. I was in a funk for weeks afterwards, unable to shake the feeling of desperate hopelessness it left in me. Art that can do that is undeniably powerful, but all the same, I’d rather not feel like that.

I recently read Random Acts of Senseless Violence. Written by Jack Womack and published in 1993, it tells the story of Lola, a young teenage girl living in a in a well-to-do area of New York, while the world around her falls apart. When her parents can no longer find work and have to move to a more dangerous area, we follow Lola as she changes from private school girl to ruthless gangster, and it makes for such a depressing read. It’s very well done, but it is so infuriating to see this innocent girl have her life taken from her and her potential lost. Not just Lola, but a society that could’ve been so much more devolve into shadow of itself, beset by riots and greed. It felt the same way reading High Rise felt, this chilling feeling of a society making the decision to let itself topple from the cliff edge, and the sense of everything slowly going to hell, when with just a little more will, it might’ve pulled itself back from the brink. A bit like living in a UK forcing itself to leave the European Union even though it knows full well what the consequences are going to be, or like I would imagine living in the U.S. under President Cockwomble feels like.

This book has stuck with me not just because of that though, but because of something specific, and that’s the death of Lola’s father. No longer able to make ends meet as a screenwriter due to the volatile world the book is set in, he has no choice but to work extremely long hours in a job in which he is constantly under pressure and screamed at and berated for barely enough money to afford the rent on the crappy apartment the family have had to move to. There is a truly haunting scene in which poor Lola finds her father dead having had a heart attack in the middle of the night, and eventually, this is the thing that pushes Lola beyond the point of no return.

I’m not saying that the world in which I live and work is anywhere near as bad as the unfortunate Lola’s. But I am on that borderline between just managing financially and not managing. And I do work overtime. Since reading that book, the only thing on my mind when I get up at 6:15 on a Saturday morning to work overtime to supplement my wages while my family sleeps is that dreadful scene of Lola discovering her father’s body, after he worked and stressed himself to death trying play a rigged game just to keep his family safe and alive (he’d already given up on happy).

If this strikes you as overly melodramatic, well you’d be right. I actually quite enjoy my job. My family are, relatively speaking, safe and happy. While I do always feel like I don’t have enough money to get by, the truth is, we’ve managed it so far, so I expect we’ll be fine. But that’s the effect of well-made art on the psyche. We are going to have to deal with major crises over the coming decades because nobody has got the will to do a damn thing about climate change, but instead of the biggest emergency our species has ever had to deal with dominating the news and the political stage, we’re arguing about whether or not it’s a good idea to rip up the fragile Northern Ireland peace agreement so Lord Snooty (how can you not look at that snivelling weasel Rees-Mogg and think of anyone else?) can keep hold of his unearned, inherited, offshore tax-free millions and withdrawing from the agreement that ended the Cold War (good job America. Well done).

So it feels like, as in Random Acts of Senseless Violence, we are also a society deliberately deciding to step off into the abyss, and that’s why Lola and her father struck such a chord with me; forced to narrow their view and look out only for themselves, and as far as her father goes, eventually die trying.

Still. Chin up, eh?

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.”

We might be in a lot more trouble that we think.

It might just be the negative effects of social media. It might not be as bad as it can sometimes seem. But it might be that our democracy is being dismantled right in front of us.

Let’s start with America. It’ll be hard to catch you up if you’re new to this, but, to summarise, it seems with the recent indictment of 12 Russians for interfering in the election of Drumpf that the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller has uncovered some pretty damning evidence that Putin was heavily involved in installing the orange cockwomble in the Whitehouse. Cambridge Analytica appears to have been involved, stealing the data of many, many Facebook users. Hundreds of thousands of fake social media accounts were set up in Russia to spread untruth and cloud the issues. Twitter has, only recently, starting to delete these profiles – thousands of them at a time. That’s a good thing, but it’s also a bit late, and I expect they’ll be replaced before long.

Republicans have been warping democracy for some time however, and the most damaging of these arsemaggots has been Mitch McConnell. Mitch is, to put it mildly, a huge fucking arsehole. A hateful shit of a man so far in the pocket of the corporate and ideological interests he serves in place of actual people that if there is such as thing as a soul, his is no longer anything more than a wank stain on Bernard Manning’s bed sheets. The Supreme Court of the United States, when it needs to appoint a judge, has that judge selected by the sitting President. Obama’s choice was denied a place because McConnell had control of the Senate and delayed the hearing until after the election, which Drumpf won. The spot Obama was not allowed to fill has therefore now been filled by a Republican nominee, needless to say of a hard-right persuasion. I’ve heard a number of times that this is not legal. But I don’t get it – if it is illegal, why has it been allowed to go on, and why was nobody arrested. Is it illegal or not?

The Republican’ts’ (see what I did there?) dodgy tactics has meant some wins for them at the Supreme Court, not the least significant is the Court’s decision to allow them to continue gerrymandering. This means using your knowledge of what people are most likely to vote for in a geographic area and using that knowledge to draw constituency boundaries to give one party an unfair advantage. In many places, because of gerrymandering, constituency boundaries look utterly bonkers, Democrats require a great deal more votes to get elected, and the newly Republican-favouring Supreme Court shut down a motion to prevent it. Even better, one of the more moderate judges is now retiring, meaning it’s possible McConnell could get another hard right judge on the court, potentially paving the way to overturn the historic Roe vs Wade, making abortion illegal again. In 2018. Even better, the latest nominee doesn’t believe a sitting President should be investigated or impeached, and should basically sit there like some kind of emperor, immune to law and judgement. So Mueller’s investigation could be halted at any time, leaving the whole corrupt lot of them free from criminal prosecution. I keep reading people dramatically tweeting that the Republicunts (see what I did there?) will be remembered on the wrong side of history, as if at the end of all this America won’t just be an annex of Russia, with democracy and actual freedom and independence a thing of the past. They still assume they’ll win, but from what I can see, that is somewhat up in the air.

But why should anyone in the UK care? First of all, because that attitude of not caring about anyone except ourselves is what’s got us in the current mess we’re in. Secondly, like it or not, America does have a large impact on world events, and the current clusterfuck in the White House will have far-reaching effects for everybody, not just Americans and their brown-skinned neighbours.

But mostly, because there is some evidence that Russia also had a significant impact on the vote to shoot ourselves in the foot leave the EU. The same Russians that have been involved with the U.S. election, were involved with Farage and the Vote Leave campaign. Cambridge Analytica were involved, as was Facebook, who has recently been fined the maximum amount possible for violating the Data Protection Act during the time of the election. And then trying to cover it up. The only place this appears to be being investigated is at the Guardian, by award-winning journalist Carol Cadwalladr. It’s being picked up by American newsgroups but nobody else in the UK is covering it. I’d expect that of the Fail and the Scum, but not even Channel 4 is really covering it. It does appear that the Leave camp broke electoral law, but it still doesn’t seem to matter. So many people are so disengaged that either they don’t know or don’t care.

Or is it something else? Have I actually got nothing to worry about? Is it nothing more than a conspiracy theory that has snagged me and some of the people I follow on social media? Am I worrying that democracy in the U.S. and, by extension, here too, is being dismantled by a hostile foreign power and some collaborators in country unnecessarily? I kind of hope so. And you can tell it’s a truly messed up state of affairs if I hope my mental state is a bit off rather than what I’m seeing and reading being true.

But if it is true, and Rees-Mogg, Farage and BoJo force us to leave the EU without a proper deal (leaving them free to inflict all manner of right-wing ideology on us – has this been the plan all along?), and the band of reprobates over the water continue to push America to a lesser, more insular and racist version of itself, then hopefully enough people won’t roll over and let them do it, and will continue to resist.

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.

Losing their grip.

The press are losing their power to sway opinion. That’s the clearest and most overwhelming feeling I got from the recent election. It’s always been a cliché that you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the paper, but, if that paper is re-enforcing an entrenched opinion then readers will generally lap it up, regardless of whether or not said paper is spouting utter bullshit.

The right-wing press certainly tried their best to ensure the complete and total victory of the ruling party, by spraying an astonishing amount of vitriol, most if not all of which is completely untrue, at the opposition. I would like to think that this is cause for hope. Might people finally be calling bullshit on Murdoch’s empire of hate?

There’s some way to go yet – just recently the Sun suggested that socialism will lead to mass graves and the ignorant kids don’t know what a vote against rampant capitalism will mean for them. I think the Sun continues to be full of shit and that perhaps the kids can see with their own eyes where rampant capitalism has led us and want something a bit fairer. I could be wrong, but I still hope.

If you read a paper I want you to challenge yourself. Read two, ensuring the second one is of a different persuasion. They’re not newspapers, they’re opinion pieces, and some are backed more by facts than others. Get out of your own filtered bubble. If you read the Sun, firstly, my condolences. Secondly, pick up a Mirror as well. Mail or Telegraph? Try a Guardian or Independent as well. See the other side of the story. Get a more complete picture.

Then, and this is the difficult part, refine your opinion based on what is actually true. Then, when it comes time to vote, choose based on manifestos (not the papers’ versions of them, but the actual manifestos), and not on how you’ve always voted before. Maybe then we’ll find the Magic Money Tree (clue: it’s offshore and in a computer). Maybe then we can prevent fucknuggets like Farage from dropping the whole country in the shitter and somehow being proud of it.

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

The Jam: News of the World: “Little men tapping things out, points of view, remember their views are not the gospel truth."

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.”

So what happens next?

We voted to leave, and there’s nothing we can do about that now. My own opinion is that this was a very bad decision, and it is infecting many of my waking thoughts. I’m frightened that the already depressing future we were heading for has been made exponentially worse. The Government has fractured and the end result will be a significant shift to the right from what was already a fairly right wing position. People are still turning away from Labour in droves. If Parliament get cold feet and fail to enact the will of the people, irrespective of how mind-bogglingly bad I believe that decision to be, there is another party ready to fill in the gap. It isn’t outside the realms of my worst nightmare that come the next general election UKIP will be the second party. How about the first? Unlikely, sure, but we’ve spent years now underestimating them. Prime Minister Farage. How does that sound? Zero policies, but certainly willing to press the article 50 button. Plus, it does appear that none of the main parties have much in the way of policies at the moment. Except perhaps the SNP, who quite understandably want to get the fuck out of there. Perhaps nobody really expected it to happen. Not even those voting for it. But.

First thing. It did happen. There is no do-over. Maybe, if the 17 million people who voted to leave sign that utterly pointless petition, there might be something to it. If you wanted to remain but didn’t vote, then you are a fucking idiot. If you voted to leave without any idea of what the implications might be and now regret it, then you are a fucking idiot.

Second, I don’t believe for a moment that everyone voting to leave is a racist old person or irretrievably stupid. Many of them undoubtedly are, which is why the only people cheering for this result are other extreme right wing groups throughout Europe, the lying scum-fingering press, and Donald Trump. Oh, and Farage of course. The continued weakening of the pound into recession was expected. The sharp rise in racist attacks was expected, as the aforementioned irretrievably stupid now feel their idiocy has legitimacy. However. Remain voters who are now tarring all leave voters with the same brush don’t seem to see the irony in doing the exact thing they voted against. Intelligent and informed people I know, respect and love voted to leave, and I won’t accept for a second that they did that because they wanted to see violent attacks rise and our fragile economic footing shaken again. I have better taste in friends and loved ones than that.

I too recognise that the EU is bloated, corrupt and inefficient. What I don’t see is how extricating ourselves from it is in any way going to improve things for anyone. Imperfect as it was, it alone could enforce measures that may still mitigate some of the very worst effects of climate change. It alone could take steps to restrict the power of corporations to abuse the rights of people. It alone can help you if your Government is treating you unfairly. It alone can share intelligence between all of its members to combat terrorism. It alone can provide you with a choice of other countries for you or your children to live, work, love and retire in.

I don’t think remain voters should have to ‘get over it’ – we are distraught over the loss of our place in the world and all that came with it and we have every right to be distressed and angry. Five days on, I’m still depressed and anxious, and that isn’t going to change anytime soon. But what we don’t want to do is do what too many of those in the north of England and in Wales did – express that anger in a way that makes things worse. Decades of neglect from both Labour and Tory governments has left a lot of people from these regions ready to lash out. Unfortunately, they’ve lashed out in a way that will, almost certainly, make things worse for them. Don’t do the same thing by lashing out at them. Unlike when the millionaire politicians declare it, we really are all in it together, and we’ll have to find a way to reconcile the difference in opinion and try to make the best of it.

What I fear is that we’ve effectively pulled the plug out of the bottom of the EU bath and over the course of the coming decades too many of the things we take for granted are going to dissolve before our very eyes. But I’ve been wrong before. Many times. I hope with every fibre of my being that I’m wrong here, too.

What I intend to do is continue to live life in peace with a smile on my face for all of my neighbours, regardless of who they are or how they vote. Engage with each other, don’t simply shout your own point of view at everyone else and assume you’re the one in the right. That’s what being a citizen of England, Europe or the world means. It means taking responsibility for your own education and your own opinions and trying to change your corner of the world for the better. We’re Britain for crying out loud. We wrote the Magna Carta, over 500 years before those Americans and their imperfect Constitution. We wrote the European Convention on Human Rights to ensure that never again could a country in Europe alter its laws to make genocide legal. We sit at the very heart of protecting human rights. We will not allow our country to slide into degenerate lunacy, where acts of violence against innocent people who happen to be unlike us are not only tolerated, but encouraged. We’re better than that, and for as long as I have breath, I will never give that ideal up. And neither will, I’m sure, the majority of people who voted to leave. She’ll be right. Eventually. Hopefully.

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.

It’s like they knew somehow.

A few of the books I’ve read fairly recently have a few unsettling things in common. First off, not too long ago, I read George Orwell’s 1984. Published in 1949, it tells of a rigidly controlled society where to even think outside the accepted lines is to invite horrifying conditioning until your mind thinks the proper way. The population are told what to think, and the structure of society ensures the population think it, even when it flies in the face of all observable facts. Recorded history changes overnight and yet to call attention to this, to question what those with authority tell you is truth is simply not conceivable. It’s hard not to find echoes of Orwell’s totalitarian vision in the way newspapers will publish blatant untruths again and again because it backs their ideology, driven to recent ludicrous highs in the lead up to the election.

(Loosely related tangent: Russell Brand is a cock; we all know this. There is, however, no denying that the cock has become a bit of a figurehead for the disillusioned non-voting masses. So, appearing on Brand’s web show The Trews as Ed Miliband did, in an effort, however half-arsed, to at least try to engage with these people is surely worthy is it not? It seems not. The official Government line is that Brand, and therefore by extension, the large percentage of the population he is speaking for, is a joke. Way to show contempt for the people whose lives you’re supposed to be working to improve. The papers declared it to be the desperate move of a lunatic. Why is it such a terrible idea to try to talk to the apathetic non voters? I agree that they should vote, but apathy doesn’t justify the contempt the press has shown them, lumping them together as some kind of bad smell it’s impolite to even acknowledge. Of course, judging by the recent election results, the silent majority might well consist of mostly UKIP voters, so now here I am, quite out of character for me, kind of hoping they go back to being silent.)

Anyway, back to the point; prescient novels. It seems Orwell’s future is one increasingly within the realm of possibility with every passing year. I’ve mentioned before how one of my favourite films growing up was the 1960 adaptation of The Time Machine, but I hadn’t, until recently, read H. G. Wells’ original novel. Rach picked it up for me from one of our local libraries (I get a delicious thrill every time I remember I’m lucky enough to live in a place where ‘local library’ is plural, and now that where I live has gone blue for the first time in over a decade, I’m concerned that may not be the case for much longer). Published in 1895 and set in Victorian times, it follows a scientist, known in the narrative only as ‘The Time Traveller’ to the year 802,701 to discover what has become of Earth and humanity in the far future. It turns out the divide between the rich and poor in our society continued to grow and grow and grow. It’s incredible that even pre-1900 there was concern in society about the widening gap between the classes, and that over 100 years later, we’re still having trouble with that issue. Did I say incredible? I meant incredibly depressing. But hey, I suppose I’d better get used to things being incredibly depressing for a while.

Having conquered the need to struggle for anything, the upper classes have evolved into the Eloi; mindless children, spending the days frolicking, eating, fucking and, well, not much else. Certainly not thinking. Their language is hugely simplified and their attention span is practically non-existent. The Time Traveller contends that this shows that struggling and fighting for a better world is what has driven us to achieve so much throughout the years, and when we finally got what we had struggled for for so long, our drive, our intelligence, our will to improve and our creativity withered and died, no longer needed. Meanwhile, the working classes have retreated underground and evolved into pasty, light-fearing Morlocks, living in dark holes full of machinery and manufacturing. The relationship between those above ground and those below is no longer economic, for there is no longer the need for an economy. Nor is it master and slave. The Morlocks continue to manufacture clothes and shoes for the Eloi, but it is not to serve them, nor is it because they are still some beaten down underclass. For the Morlocks have become cattle farmers, and the Eloi their unthinking food source. The gap between rich and poor, between upper and working class, has been widening for some time and is already pretty sickening. Inexplicably, we seem happy for it to get worse. The 19th Century concerns expressed in The Time Machine seem more timely now than ever.

And then, I came to High Rise. I’d read some J. G. Ballard before; The Drowned World, The Wind From Nowhere, The Terminal Beach & The Drought were my first experiences of the British writer, which I picked up after raiding my father-in-law’s book shelf. When news broke that Ben Wheatley was adapting it and that it is widely known as Ballard’s best novel, I reached out to my local libraries again and picked up a copy. High Rise was published in 1975 and is set almost entirely within the concrete walls of a recently opened self-contained living apartment. 1000 apartments on 40 storeys, the building includes shopping malls, swimming pools, schools and anything else the occupants might need. The only reason to leave is to work.

It doesn’t take long for things to start going awry; able to shut themselves off from society completely, those living in the high-rise begin to alter their self-contained society into something more primal – physical class distinctions evolve, literally lower, middle and upper class, reflected in the floors they occupy – and, freed from the restrictions placed upon them by a civilised society, a different rule takes precedence, that of hunter/gatherer, of predator and prey.

The really uncomfortable thing about High Rise is the fact that the inhabitants of the building actually welcome this degeneration, like a long-tamed beast finally throwing off its shackles. There is a sensation of the people actually pushing things further and further deliberately, out of a need just to see how far it can actually go; they embrace the darkness eagerly. The thing about High Rise is that it is so disturbingly plausible, that while the apartment building offered the ideal environment for the events described, sometime it feels there is every possibility of pockets of civilisation going this way as a prelude to the whole of our society plunging purposefully and giddily down this path of de-evolution. The intent of our new Government to re-legalise foxhunting and stop Britain being subject to the Human Rights Act, maybe even to withdraw from Europe altogether, make it feel like our entire country is becoming a self-contained high rise of its own, and the feeling of the balance tipping, gently at first, then quicker and quicker towards oblivion that many of us currently have is evoked so strongly in the early chapters of Ballard’s novel it is dizzying, and not a little disconcerting.

Of course, things on the whole aren’t quite as depressing as all that. While it is really quite depressing that in the decades since these novels were written and published, it seems we’ve failed to progress at all, there is hope in that we don’t yet appear to have slipped any closer to the hellish visions dreamed up in them. We might yet find our way to a future civilisation more positive than those described in 1984, The Time Machine and High Rise. More like The Commonwealth described by Peter F. Hamilton. More Star Trek, less Mad Max. Here’s hoping.