Entirely voluntary.

That’s what I want you to remember over the coming months. I hope it goes great, I really really do. I hope that whatever happens, when the safety net of the transition period is swept away next month, things are excellent. But tired of them or not, every expert, every person, think tank or organisation that is in a position to know anything about it is predicting a disaster that nobody is ready for. Supermarkets are being advised to stockpile food. Military boats are going to be guarding fish. Fish! In a win for UK interests (not really) the contract for monitoring the fishing boats was awarded to a French company. That doesn’t bother me too much, but there are still many people that are looking forward to the chance to tell folks with different accents they’re not welcome, so I doubt that went down too well. I read somewhere that our entire fishing industry is worth less than the Warhammer 40K brand. Seems like a strange hill to die on.

Remember how it started. Easy. Millions more for the NHS. Sunlit uplands. Remember how this stonking majority was achieved. Getting it done. Oven ready. Now look where we are. Military police threatening to board boats over fish. Who wants pizza anyway, when we’ve got toast, chips and milk? An international laughing stock, baffling our neighbours near and far, pursuing a course of potentially monstrous self-harm all because we can’t bring ourselves to admit that this is a really bad idea and because too many of us get angry when we hear someone talking in a non-local accent or different language. The press are still behaving abominably – taking a quote from a UK source referring to broken glass and applying it to the country where Kristallnacht is burned forever into the collective consciousness is monstrous.

The ludicrous idea that we, the plucky underdogs are trying our best to be civil, but those villainous Europeans keep changing the goalposts is yet another lie. We’ve spent the time basically demanding as good or better than the terms we currently have as a member assuming if we demand it for long enough, we’ll get it. Of course we’re not going to get it. There are benefits to being a member, duh. Spending all this time treating them as enemies rather than allies and our closest trading partners.

A bad deal or no deal is all that’s left to us and every step that got us here was voluntary. I hope we don’t run short on food or medicine over the coming months, but if we do, the steps that took us here were entirely voluntary. I hope we don’t stop being able to import, and even imports that come through are tied up in days of queues and red tape somewhere in in a parking lot in Kent, but if that happens every step we took to get there was entirely voluntary. I hope it doesn’t come to any of that and I’m worrying for no reason, but if it does, I hope this weird obsession with sovereignty that never was actually a real life problem was worth it. It’ll certainly be worth it to the pukes in the financial world making billions out of it while everyone else loses something precious.

I cannot understand why we are doing this, but more to the point, why we are doing it in quite this way. I really hope everything comes up roses and those sunlit uplands really do appear, but there is nothing that suggests to me that hope is remotely based in reality. 2020 was a real shitter of a year. Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but for our little island, there is no reason that I can see why 2021 won’t also be, for want of a better word, difficult. Still, chin up eh?

It's bad to do good.

That seems to be the message I’ve been getting recently. Not sure I understand it myself. To be a human rights lawyer. To point out that systemic racial inequality is a thing, no matter how much some of us like to insist it isn’t. To suggest that maybe we try to acknowledge that life is easier if you’re white and that Black lives do matter, to be told only that all lives matter, as if you were ever trying to suggest anything different. Obviously all lives matter. Including the lives of the people drowning in the Channel. It seems the people that like to declare, frothing at the mouth, that all lives matter also suggest we deliberately sink boats and drown people, with no acknowledgement of the cognitive dissonance required to hold both of these points of view at the same time.

But to be a lawyer defending the rights of humans in a difficult position with no other way to get help, in accordance with the laws of this very country that seems so hostile to people from other countries at the moment, more than I ever remember, is seemingly a bad thing. They’re merely do-gooders. Doing good is apparently worthy of contempt nowadays.

And we appear to have adopted that perception from over the water, where the (outgoing, hopefully) administration declares that Nazis can be ‘very fine people’ but ‘Antifa’ are a terrorist organisation. Antifa isn’t an organisation all, but merely stands for people who are anti-fascist. That’s right. If you oppose fascism you are an enemy of the state in the good old freedom-loving U S of A. With luck, their entire system of democracy and free and fair elections will survive the current sustained attack on it and will soon re-confirm that opposing fascism is a good thing. And then hopefully members of our own government won’t contemptuously label them do-gooders.

I don’t get why we think that doing nothing but clapping health workers and nurses is all that is necessary. Pay people risking (and often giving) their lives to help as many people as they can. Provide them with the equipment they need, by acquiring it using transparent procurement processes, rather than giving the money, uncontested, to a company that happens to have a mate or their other half on the board. This is the dictionary definition of corruption and still almost nobody gives a shit.

We get instead ludicrous statements like nobody could have predicted the current mess without a crystal ball from people in control of the country’s response who really should know better. Well I guess I for one must have had a crystal ball when I called the resurgence back in this very blog in June – and that’s without retroactively changing it like a certain supposed brains behind the power did.

There is other terminology designed to make simply being good seem worthy of contempt out there as well. Stating on a public platform that maybe we should try to make sure children don’t go hungry is merely ‘virtue signalling’. As if the people accusing you of ‘signalling your virtue’ cannot possibly conceive of a thought that isn’t entirely selfish and just a case of simply expressing that it would be better if children don’t go hungry. And the argument that it’s because parents should be responsible for their children’s wellbeing and that they shouldn’t have had children if they couldn’t afford to look after them seems to assert that somehow one must know all possible futures before deciding if they can afford to procreate. Which is just silly. And taking this argument to its logical extreme, maybe you have a parent that is an addict. Maybe they don’t feed their kids because they’re feeding their habit. Maybe they’ve found a way to exchange school meal vouchers for hard drugs. In what possible reality is the appropriate response to allow the child to bear the brunt of that neglect? To just let the child go hungry and accept that as some kind of just punishment for the parent? Costs a lot less to feed kids than it does to pay companies to fail to produce protective equipment for nurses. But hey, one is business, the other is disgusting virtue signalling. How can we justify reducing the percentage of our GDP we spend on overseas aid using the excuse that we need to help people in our own country, and then when the need to help people in our own country arises, we just…don’t?

One more: woke. To be woke, is to be a subject of ridicule. Define for me exactly what is meant by being woke. Put simply, it’s to be made aware of the struggles of other groups of people that don’t benefit from the privilege that you enjoy. It’s to be made aware of the danger they often find themselves in. It is to be woken up to the fact that as bad as you think you have it, there are entire demographics that have it worse, and have always had it worse, and without your acknowledgement and without you resolving to take steps to change it, will always have it worse. Usually the people that resist this acknowledgement are striving to keep the status quo where their privilege allows them to keep their eyes turned away from the difficulties faced by others. Difficulties they could help with, if they would only open their eyes and see.

I guess I’m just going to have to become public enemy number 1, because I can’t see a time when I will ever be proud of not caring about others, no matter how much that becomes the cool thing to do.

Cry songs.

I’ve mentioned before on here about how since having kids I cry much more easily now, usually at films. Along with a lot of other people, I think sometimes I feel like crying in general. But I've noticed recently that certain types of songs will also make me cry. They all seem to have something in common as well: regret. That’s what gets me about, for example, Magnolia. Man, that hits hard.

I think that’s my emotional Achilles’ Heel. Looking back on a life of promise unfulfilled. I don’t really feel that about my own life. I have a lot to be grateful for, not least a house I love, a wife I love even more, job, family – all the stuff that’s supposed to show you’re doing ok. Of course, I think generally using a metric like that to measure success is bullshit – it’s perfectly easy to be content without any of that. But my point, I think, is I’m not sure why this theme of regret hits me so hard. I think it’s also a wider theme – now I’m getting older it feels like the idea of looking back over a life evoked by music and film strikes a strong chord.

There’s something quite satisfying about being induced to have a proper cry as well, a kind of emotional release, so I do find myself fairly frequently revisiting the songs that trigger that reaction in me. Is that weird? I dunno, maybe.

The current crop of cry songs I keep going back to then:

The Kinks, Come Dancing. An ode to a long-demolished dancehall that was the centrepiece of an older sister’s happiest memories. “The day they knocked down the palais, my sister stood and cried. The day they knocked down the palais, part of my childhood died.”

Bruce Springsteen, The River. A life lived in a poor conservative working class America that went from few prospects to none at all for the sake of a fleeting moment of love and happiness. “All them things that seemed so important? Well mister they vanished right into the air. Now I just act like I don’t remember, and Mary acts like she don’t care.”

Joni Mitchell, Come in from the Cold. Feels like a cry from everyone who ever felt isolated and without love. Genuinely a wreck before the end of the first chorus. “We really thought we had a purpose, we were so anxious to achieve. We had hope, the world held promise, for a slave to liberty.”

Lana Del Ray, Gods and Monsters. Feels like a life deliberately thrown away just because of an inability to conceive of anything better. “You got that medicine I need, dope shoot it up, straight to the heart please. I don’t really wanna know what’s good for me, god’s dead? I say: ‘Baby that’s alright with me’.”

Operation Don’t Die: Update.

Previously on this kind of update I’ve talked about being too fat. Turns out that’s not really what I meant, and it has taken observing my kids to realise that. Driven (I am assuming as I don’t use the same kind of vernacular) by peers and social media and popular culture, the youngest has taken to using ‘fat’ as an insult. Not just in terms of body types, but as a general insult – she has before now used the term ‘fat brain’, not only directed at her sibling, but also herself. We are frequently pointing out to her that fat is not a negative, that thinness isn’t an indication of health and there are many mitigating factors that show higher weight isn’t necessarily indicative of poorer health.

We’re not currently getting through to her – both of my kids are at that age where the influence of parents is low compared to other places and getting lower. It did however, give me cause to think about how on previous ‘Operation Don’t Die’ updates I tended to pile insults onto myself about being fat.

Previously when I actually lost weight, it occurred to me that I was in a job in retail preparing for Christmas, working 80-hour weeks and skipping at least one meal a day. Everyone told me how good I looked at the time, and that positive reinforcement I think stuck with me, linking not eating properly and losing weight because of that being a good thing. Clearly that isn’t healthy.

Another time when I pretty much cut out sugar and bread and left everything else the same I also got a great deal of positive comments. I didn’t lose as much weight as I did during the stressful meal-skipping period, but I did drop a few centimetres off the belly, just not so much that I wouldn’t still have considered myself overweight.

I am not one of those people that have used this lockdown period to turn myself into a godlike specimen of human physicality (well-played those of you that have managed to do just that). But it isn’t the larger waist that should be concerning me; it’s the lack of exercise. I no longer walk to work, at least for now, and finding the time to replace even that amount of cardiac exercise has proven problematic. Between not feeling like I’m giving enough attention to my kids, as well as not being able to spend as much time ‘at work’ in the little study in the corner of the house, taking out an hour or more each day to go off and walk for my own health feels selfish, although nobody else at home or work would think so.

So things to work on then, both physically and mentally. Only thing to do is keep trying I guess.

Sometimes hypocrisy isn't hypocritical.

Some things are hypocritical. Being President of the U.S.A. saluting the military while doing nothing about Russia putting bounties on the heads of American soldiers? That’s hypocrisy. Getting yourself elected on the promise of an ‘oven-ready’ deal, when months later it’s clear there’s no such thing? That’s hypocrisy. Living as a migrant in a foreign country for 6 months of the year, voting to prevent migration to your home country and then being outraged that the result prevents you migrating to your holiday home? That’s hypocrisy. And idiocy, to boot.

There are some things that get called hypocrisy, but aren’t. Or if they are, they are a different kind altogether than the examples mentioned above. Feeling distraught because you see signs of a collapsing ecology everywhere, desperate for governments, politicians, billionaires and companies everywhere to actually stop this course we’re on that leads to the literal destruction of all, and then buying a product from one of those companies? Not hypocrisy.

It's an argument that gets used too often. ‘Oh, you want to live in a fairer society without the devastating effects of rampant unchecked capitalism? Why are you spending money on products then?’ Following such an inanity, these people then tend to leave the conversation with an air of smugness. Where would I end up if I just decided to not ‘take part’? Fucking homeless, that’s where. That doesn’t prevent me from putting forward an argument that the current system, that I have no choice but to take part in, is unfair and in its current form, will lead to the ruin of all.

Jeff Bezos has enough money to end world hunger, and every day chooses not to. I can’t even imagine having that kind of power and simply not doing it. Between them, a mere 100 companies could have prevented the utter climate destruction that will soon be unavoidable at any point in the last 30 years. Every day for those 30 years they chose, and continue to choose, not to. Jeff Bezos, and billionaires like him, instead keep the money that they could not spend on material items in 10 lifetimes, to themselves. Pointing out that that makes them awful, awful people – proper Bond villain stuff, while watching Amazon Prime, is not hypocrisy.

I don’t want to destroy society, so I still choose to partake in it. That doesn’t mean I don’t want it to be fairer and less destructive.

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.”