Its begining to look a lot like Christmas

I don't think this very unusual for a 40-something without children, but Christmas doesn't mean as much to me as it did when I was 10.

Not the most startling declaration, I agree. The thing with Christmas when you've already had 40 of them (I don't really remember the first 3) is that this time of year seems to just come round so often. As the christmas lights go up in city centres (earlier and earlier, but thats a cheap shot at the commercialism of Christmas which isn't my main point here) I usually shrug them off and promise myself to wait a bit longer.

When the work Christmas events parties start and the Christmas cards start to arrive then I have to conclude that '"Its begining to look a lot like Christmas" - Which is not to say I don't want invitations or cards. Its always good to be remembered after all.

I spend Christmas Day with my family and I enjoy that very much too. I enjoy their company at other times of the year too, so that isn't specifically Christmassy, but as a day, I enjoy Christmas day. I even like roast turkey now (which I didn't when I LOVED christmas as a kid). Present giving and receiving in our family is made easier by the fact that we are all intrepid readers. So its books all round.

A universal problem with Christmas, which I don't feel so badly but I can see in many others, is the overbearing pressure to feel happy. Now I feel happy, or at least not too unhappy, but people close to me are facing unavoidable 'issues' that are going to change the future. The need to celebrate isn't most naturally at the top of our thoughts.

My personal reasons for indifference this year is a feeling of not DESERVING a celebration. Christmas comes round every year whether I've wasted the whole year pulling fluff from my navel, or if I've worked hard enough for three promotions, run an organisation to save the whale or, as is my special ambition, finish two fantastic new publishable novels.

I've done none of those things - I've climbed few more Wainwright fells, read a few novels (one of which was outstanding) and, I hope, been good company to my friends some of the time.

But Christmas comes anyway.

(Oh, it may be true that it would mean more if I let Jesus into my life, but that isn't going to happen)

There is one song that does get close my current Christmas philosophy, and the strange thing is I've known the song for years but last year I was 'awakened' to the words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O_fCs5Buwg&NR=1

Sometimes the words might seem cynical but I think they are spot on about how I feel about Christmas and the memories of how I have experienced Christmas over the years. Most of all I love the turn on the usual christmas card message.. its all very well being Merry at Christmas and Happy in the New Year.. but a Hopeful Christmas? And Brave New Year? And a wish that your road be clear. This means Christmas is just part of the way forward, not an excuse to stop time and wear a paper hat.

So thats why my wish for all my (probably non existent readers) is for your Christmas to be Hopeful and your New Year Brave.


(Lake rather spoils that video by wishing Merry Christmas at the End! But in the other versions I found he looks too young to have the world weary view of the song!)

When is a wild prejudice OK....?

When its against Ginger haired people, apparantly.



First let me state an interest in Ginge. My hair may have darkened, greyed at the corners and become scarce all over... but my indentitification with the cause is eternal and fringed with pride.



And in that light I read a news story on the BBC website today of a Christmas Card being sold in York carrying the message ""Santa loves all kids. Even ginger ones."

The redheaded mother of three redhead daughters complains to Tescos, who immediatly withdraw it from sale with apologies. The makers of the card refuse to comment. Presumeably someone in their design department mutters something about people not having a sense of humour. 'Political Correctness gone mad' may even get a mention.


The question here, laying aside immediate responses like 'what if ginger had been replaced by black', is why is this card 'funny'.

I was asked this once by a university housemate - not about this particular case of course - but about what I find funny. I still find this difficult to explain. I tend to take this on a case by case basis, but for the sake of this posting I'll need some kind of definition. Funny is about personal foibles, its about something of the unexpected. Clever wordplay and satire come into it to, no doubt.

There is only one 'point' being made by this card - That kids with ginger hair are less lovable for that reason alone. Having a colour hair isn't a foible. There is no word play, and its not particularly surprising either. 'Ginge's' nave been the 'acceptable' target for a while. Satire is about what adults that do that is funny. its not about what children are.

This card wasn't just offensive - It was lazy and unfunny, it promoted laughing at difference for the sake of it.

And yeah, i know this posting hasn't been as light hearted as i usually aim for , but so be it.

Oh Just shut Up

In the absence of anything else coming to my mind after this week.. here are two 'conversations' I just loathe and will always make me argumentative, or more likely, scarce from the speaker....

"You know I went into bar in Wales, and everyone there just switched into speaking Welsh when they saw me... "


Er, no, they were almost certainly speaking Welsh before you arrived. That's how a small but significant number of people in Wales communicate. And even if it were true, its their conversation so if they don't want you eavesdropping then thats their business and their right. And anyway, its not as if Welsh is a private code. If you want to listen in - and as a would be writer I'm often of this mine - you know, you can actually buy books on the Language in Shops. Even in England.

But silence and retreat is probably the best approach, just to save energy. I suspect many people who will start with this conversational piece are also the sort who think communicating with a foreigner one just needs to speak louder. Or at least their descendents.


"Its not that I mind gay people, but its such a shame they have 'spoilt' such a lovely word like gay'.

Well, no. You can still use the word gay in its original meaning. English is a language of synonyms where context is all. BUT, even if it were so, given the years of persecuation that homosexual people have suffered, if all they ever claim in retribution is one word I suspect we should be thankful - those of us who, by some freak of nature prefer the opposite gender. The French Peasantry asked for more than a few heads.

Thoughts on the Knox case

Something that always fascinates me is how some stories become news, and once news, how stories become big news (1). The story I write about here is of the latter category – The murder of an English student abroad was always going to be a mid-broadcast page five type of news item. But is seems this story really took off and arrived on the front page when we learnt that the prime suspect was a beautiful woman with ‘so much to live for’.

I have no comment to make on the guilt or otherwise of Amanda Knox. I've only followed the case at a distance and have been no where near the courtroom, the appropriate place to make a judgement on such matters. My reaction to the trial’s conclusion must have an element of sexism but I doubt I'm alone in that. I do still have this instinct is still to write ‘if the judges are correct’ or ‘if she did really do it’. I'm aware there is an element of sexism/”lookism” in this – I seem to have a pre-conditioning to disbelief that an attractive woman could be capable of an evil act. I never felt the same uncertainty when I heard of the guilt of Rosemary West or just about any male killer.

One piece of evidence given in the reports I found slightly confusing. Knox wrote a short story in which a male character spoke of a ‘chicks desire to be hurt’. If all writers are responsible for the thoughts of their characters the supply of fiction could take a bit of a knock. I can only presume this was not the clinching argument in the case.

I also don’t quite see the need for compensation of €4.4. Its unlikely Knox has such funds. I read somewhere that her parents have to pay, but surely she is an independent adult now and there doesn’t seem to be any suggestions that they were ‘negligent parents’ and this was some kind of factor. On the other side, does £2 million plus ever compenstate for the lost of a beloved daughter anyway? I’d say not.



(1) Newsrooms certainly look for trends – Once one child has been attacked by the family’s pet, this seems to happen three of for times a month. Unless the canine community is able to orchestrate periodic attacks on us, one must conclude a certain amount of unoriginal thought must be at play with journalists

Geeky time again!

I'm geeky about a few things. I don't think I'm generally geeky, though I guess these things are relative.

But I am geeky about draws for big international competions; a winning combination of football, geography, and, well combinations. And people taking something very seriously that could easily be organised in a back room somewhere. When I was younger I was fascinated by the disperate approach of the FA cup draw - three elderly adminsterators with a velvet bag in a commitee room - to the World Cup Finals, all pomp and ceremony with rules so complex that no one in the room really understands them. The team names sign would fall off, nearly decappitating the small boys who always seemed to get a starring role - which of course I wanted. And half way through someone would realise that Scotland had been given too easy a draw and they would all have to start again.

These days the cup draws are more televisual, using rejects from the National Lottery Machine design competition, and a compere who always has to make a quip about each team, also in a rather National Lottery way (So Hartlepool will play Rochdale, their third appearance in the second round draw since 1958).

The world cup draw format is much the same as always, but the technology has improved and this year at least the rules were not TOO complicated. At least I could understand them, so could the organisers. Not sure Charlize Theron did, but she did flirt quite charmingly with everyone.

The end result is a four by eight combination of thrirty two country names, and that I have usually memorised within the hour.

Did anyone mention geek?

A series of e-mails are hacked from a Science department at the University of East Anglia, and now all the people who make claims against ‘Climate Change’ can truly believe that they have ‘them’ on the run.

I’d heard something of the ‘story’ but first became aware that the topic was ‘hot news’ while watching Question Time last week. Here is a remarkable co-incidence – or a conspiracy even (1) - that Melanie Phillips should have been booked to appear on QT the week this story broke. The woman who is number three in George Monbiot’s top ten Climate Change Deniers given such an opportunity to let rip (2)

Actually that was something she wasn’t happy about. Being described as a ‘Denier’. She said this made comparison with Holocaust deniers. Now I write as an ‘Existence of God’ denier and an ‘Aliens live among us’ denier. I freely own up to both. I would say that all four things are connected only by denial (They just make a varying degree of sense.) That’s not an uncommon rhetorical devise - Make out that a description is just like another that is ‘worse’ means the initial description should never have been made. Its still baloney of course.

To me there is always a piece missing in the central theory of Phillipsism (in case she ever reads this I’d better stick to a safe albeit invented term). There is a basic truth that isn’t mentioned. The theory is all these scientists have a self interest in keeping the ‘Climate Change Myth’ going. Their grants depend on it, the argument goes. This line of thought conveniently ignores the fact that grants are available to take the counter argument - from oil companies, to the obvious example – that far exceed what governments are likely to pay out.

But let’s forget grants. Climate change is in nobody’s interests. Scientists, me, and you all love guzzling fuel, switching on lights, watching TV, heating our homes, taking cheap flights. Why invent a theory that stops one living the ‘modern high life’? (Of course I've heard the line that scientists came up with the theory so they could take all the cheap flights but unless someone comments on my blog to the contrary I can’t really find the enthusiasm for countering that)

Of course, governments have jumped enthusiastically on the Climate Change bandwagon because it gives them the perfect excuse to tax us more.

Except, of course, they haven’t. It’s taken more than forty years to reach the current consensus that something must be done, and that has only been possible since GW Bush left the Whitehouse. The psephological truism is that no government can be elected in a Western Democracy on a platform of more taxes. I know that well enough, as the member of a party often called ‘honourable’ for attempting the reverse(3). If there was the credible scientific research out there that Climate Change theory is a scam, then the modern democratic politician would be seeking it out. That there is a growing consensus amongst them that Climate change science is on to something is what I’d describe as ‘suggestive’

So, there is the psychological, psephological, motivational line of reasoning for why I don’t doubt that ‘Inconvenient truth’

And that’s even before I've started on the Science!

(1) Assuming Phillips wasn't a late addition to the panal given the news to discuss. Do the BBC do that?
(2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/mar/06/climate-change-deniers-top-10
(3) Remember 1p on Income tax for Education? Or 50% top rate of tax? Both positions I wholeheartedly supported by the way.

West Country Diary - The Wrap up

Calling a halt on the west Country diary now.. this blog wasn’t meant to be a postcard from anywhere and with said holiday now more than a week in the past my enthusiasm for recalling it is fast diminishing…..

So in three easy pieces. In Bristol
Good – playing balloon with Bethan and visiting old friends
Bad – a 1-2 reverse to Bristol Rovers
Interesting – A tour of Artisits homes in the suburb of Totterdown

In Wells/Glastonbury
Good – The climb up the Tor
Bad – The weather

And a restless day in Bath where I couldn’t really settle to do anything and found myself in a museum of Far Eastern Art which was kinda interesting something I wouldn’t normally do. In the evening I saw Lloyd Cole play. which will be reviewed in full later. The following morning I ate a lot – and enough to mean didn’t need to eat until 3pm – of French toast

Only one of these three activities was planned.

West Country Diary - Part 3

When I was at school, the first book we 'did' in English lessons Was Treasure Island. Now I think that book has West Country connections. I've always assumed all that Shenanigans with Bild Pew happening in some Devonian Inn next to a cove - I'd better reread it sometime to check out the accuracy of my very fuzzy recollection

Anyway it was not to investigate that book, but the second 'class book'. What I remember about the book is as follows - Note, the list does not include the title
1) My mother loved the book
2) I didn't, it seemed very long and tedious - but was quite short (I think)
3) It was about a real life incident when the residents of Lynmouth had to drag their lifeboat a long way to get it launched.
4) Though I didnt enjoy the book at age 11 I did develop an ambition to visit the place.

It was with some trepedation that I set my car in that direction, because a previous study of the map had me worried that the hills round about would be jolly steep and my car would struggle to make it.

My concern was misplaced..... it was the hill out of Porlock that I should have been worrying about, which i seriously misconcrued as a 2nd gear slope and very nearly conked out half way up. By comparrison the slope down the Lynmouth was a doddle, almost an anti-climax, which was was a mood that kind of carried over to my exploration of the Twin Towns.. as i'm sure they'd be called in the US of A. There didn't seem to be much to Lynmouth, but i didn't really explaore in the hour I had before sundown (and driving back down Porlock hill in the dark didn't appeal). I did take the walk up the hill to Lynton - unsurprisingly, out of season, he Hydarulic Cliff railway was not running, to perhaps the most curiously situated town in the land. Lynton sits on a curved ledge half way up a cliff. On a chilly november afternoon it wasn't buzzing, wo or three groups of unhurried late season tourists and just a snese of locals around, somewhere. On the walk back down I passed a large group of teenagers, French by the sound of them.

West Country Diary - part 2

I can say one thing for Minehead - it didn't exactly meet my expectations. The main 'Drag' - called the Avenue which is an arboretually accurate name - was an mixture of functional shops, often local rather than chain. that much is rather refreshing, but the oddest thing is that it wasn't trying to be a seaide town. Tucked away in the East end of the promenade is a Butlins, but else where I saw not one amusement arcade. Maybe it was not the season. Maybe in the summer the butchers shop clears out its hanging jonts and moves in the one arm bandits.

Actually the oddest thing of all it between the estate agents and pound shop was the Minehead hospital. Is there any other town where the NHS is placed on the high street?

Having done inland Exmoor on the first day, my second days objective was to be Coastal Exmoor. I identified a headland to walk to; Hurlstone Point. It had a seat, a ruin, and a lovely view across Porlock bay to the forbidding clouds dropping rain on the eponymous town. They were clearly coming this way, but I was sure was only a shower. The plan was obvious. Shelter in the ruin reading the reviews in the Friday Guardian. Problem one with the plan - the ruin had no Roof. problem two sort of offset problem one - The rain never arrived. Well a spot or two maybe.

After my brieviated nature of my walk the previous day I decided to 'let rip' and scrambled up the cliff to another beacon, Selworthy this time.

West Country Diary - part 1

The general point of this 'blog' is to write about what I think about what I'm reading or whats going on in the world - This is quite an easy line to take because writing about my life is either Dull or I'd have to make comments about people I know and I might get into TROUBLE or lose friends (always assuming anyone ever reads my drivel)

But I've escaped, I've been away... I've been touring the West Country, so I thought a few words about the places I've been to might be in order.

Glastonbury, more than any place I've visited, surpasses a pre-conception I have of it - In this case for new-ageyness. That first visit was seventeen years ago on a late summer afternoon and the streets were full of hippy types, some of them occasionally overcoming their late summer afternoon stupour to visit one of the many shops called names like Mystic Magic or The Speaking tree. Now, in the early evening the shops were still there, but the streetscene populace was better characterised by skate-boarding youths.

One of my principle objectives of the expedition was Exmoor - and so complete a set of all the England & Wales national parks (though some visited before NP status was conferred). I thought I'd aim for the top at the very start by 'climbing' the highest point of Dunkery Beacon. The quote must be included there as my car did most of the work. I'm a bit stuck for wildly interesting things to say about the walk; It was an increadibly pleasant walk to an increadible windy summit. A look at a map now makes it clear could I made the whole thing more of an exercise, I guess then I wouldn't have vistited Exford, which was very pretty in a non-consequential kind of a way. I probably wouldn't have had twenty minutes to spare to contemplate the world from a point called Webbers Post, surrounded by Exmoor ponies. That sounds very poetic but actually I didn't realise I had company until I turned round to leave. just as well really, what with my equinophobia (or indeed fear of any animals that might be bigger than me)

Missing Jigsaw pieces

My life is currently blighted by missing jigsaw pieces.

These are jigsaws I'm designing myself, and the pieces are not hidden under the sofa, nor have they have they been eaten by the hamster.

They just might not exist, or they might be just out of reach. My solution is to write loads about where they might be, what they might look like.

Enough of the metaphor - I now have about six pieces of fiction started, and they all seem to have reached the same state... I hae a start, I have rems of nnotes about character. In most cases I have an ending too. But I'm missing a middle, a key motivation to get me from A to C.

I'm not going to call it writers block. Like Alan Bennett* I dislike that term. Its writers laziness, it might be writers overstretched ambition. It might be solvable, it might not.

I know the solution is to keep riding, but maybe change horses. Trouble is recently I've just started off on a fresh hosre, a new journey. the other trouble is I've just started another metaphor that I don't think I'll be able sustain.

So I have Rosa. She owns a touristy nick-nack shop she hates. She is thinking of burning it down. A young man breaks into her shop. He ties her up. He has a knife. And in my head she is going to fall in love with him. in the next 1500 words.

Puh.

(*As he wrote in at least one of his diaries. He is part of the problem though. I spend so much of my time daydreamingly comparing myself to my favourite writers is just gets so damned difficult when I get stuck.)

At last, my first entry about football - its just as well Guiseley 0 Frickley 0 gets a mention here, because its not likely to livelong in anyone's memory otherwise.

Guiseley have been my local team of choice since moving to Leeds, but my suport for them has been somewhat erratic, being almost a regular at times when I've been familiar with the abilities of the squad, then maybe I'll stay clear for a season or two when an exciting team brakes up. This happens quite a lot a Unibond league level, with a revolving door particularly in evidence with Farsley, and to an extent, Bradford PA. The management of Terry Dolan kept me away on year, as did my City Council election candidacy for Farsley which meant I felt obliged to watch that team. (Their presence in the conference that season a co-incidence!).

Today was only my second visit this season, and the match is easily summed up. Turgid first half, but a better effort from the home team in the second when they created enough chances to be worth a goal, but none came.

Ouch ouch my Knee!

Hours, maybe only minutes, after my last posting, my knee started to.. well hurt. And because these 'columns' are not meant to be sob stories but commnetaries on the world, I'll cut to the chase and explain how now I have 'Tendonitis' and have some quite brightly pink tablets to take again...

And in case any Americans ever read this, the fact that this resolution could be reached so quickly, and without me having to worry about the pennies.. its because we have a NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE.

Thats all I have to say today.

Tony Blair! Europe! Arrrgh!

As an aside, I doubt very much that our former PM will get this job of 'President of Europe' - Too many people accross the EU have 'marked his card'

But what I really really wish is that our political commentators would stop speculating who will get this position, and start explaining what the position actually is. This isn't a question I can answer, though I might do some research before I write on this matter again. I am pretty sure though its nothing like being an 'Obama' to the EU, its just the chaimanship of a committee. If this were made clear then we wouldn't be scaring the horses.

Of course a good proportion of our press have an interest in 'scaring the horses'.

On Tweeting

Tweeting is something I started doing a while back, and now think I'll use mainly to follow a few public figures and try and persuade people to read this blog...

Anyhow twittering and blogging both seems to me like shouting into a darkened room, or from a fell top.. never sure there is anyone there listening, and I'm never sure I'll continue. Neither is a replacement for proper 2 way discource, though blogging is at least practise for my writing.

Which brings me to the news story yesterday that Stephen Fry is going to give up tweeting because someone said his tweets were boring. Now I'll have to be very careful here unless Mr Fry ever reads these words (which does seem very unlikely), and the most important thing here is he isn't at all boring. He is one of the handful of public figure I would mourn as a friend, he'd be top of my list for that fantasy dinner part, I'll watch just about anything on TV with him on. You'll get the picture. Some of his tweets are, well, of less interest, he tells us when he's off to bed for example. But if his tweets are boring then thats a comment on the medium.

The surprising thing about the story is that he knows this already. I recently read a quote from him expanding on the essential triviality of the medium. Of course, he is also open about his medical condition, and I'm in no position to advise on how he should cope with that. I'd have thought he has always been well advised to steer well clear of his critical notices during his 'down time'. A little extention to the tweetsphere (is that whats its called?) seems appropriate.

And maybe a look at the other tweets by the tweeter who started all this might be appropriate, as I doubt they mainatain a high level of interest. I hope I will use Tweeting as a means of bringing forth my 'wit' and 'bon mons' though no doubt my standards will slip from time to time. Saying the obvious - like I'm off to bed, or 'Twittering is sometimes boring' is all part of the scene, it seems, but these comments need to be taken for what they are.

A belated 'Get Well Soon' to a man who has done just that

I've been dipping in and out Stuart Maconie's musical memoir 'Cider With Roadies', and so last Saturday I was in a Halifax reading how he first came across The Smith's.... and in a sort of non-connection (since I don't hold with the view that the fate of the world lies in my reading habits) the next news I heard was that Morrissey had collapsed while performing in Swindon... And I've delayed this posting long enough to read now that he is up and perfoming again, so, er, thats good isn't it?

SM writes that he connects his falling in love with the music of Morrisey, Marr and co while travelling in the boot of a car. My similar recollection isn't quite as transportingly uncomfortable but it is still in the 'never forget catagory', but mainly because it was the night that Gillingham nearly knocked Everton out the FA cup.

Like many shy males of my age, The Smiths provided the soundtrack to my university career. I don't listen to the music as much as I once did, but there are a handful of lyrics so solidly fixed in my brain that certain trigger words never fail to bring them to mind.... Specifically if anyone ever mentions their intention to spend the evening socially outwith their abode, I'll pipe up, possibly internally, Well, I would go out put I havn't got a stitch to wear.

Another example is any mention of 'The Book', to which my natural response is to point out that there is more to life than books y'know, which you may just have noticed I've tried to immortalise even FURTHER - if that were possible - in the title of this 'publication'.

Anyone following my train of thought will also know that the rider on the quote is 'but not much more'... so perhaps I'm guilty of a controvening of some blog description act, for I have as yet not mentioned any books

Warren Buffett - man of the day

I woke up this morning to an interview on the Today program with Warren Buffett. I knew the name, and knew he is jolly rich, but hey, this is my most researched entry so far and I find he is 'The richest man in the World'

It occurs to me I could 'go off on one' here about 'the injustice of the inequality of wealth', but instead I'll just quote, or paraphrase, the man, and make him my 'Person of the day'

"The Market system allows me to get an enormous amount of the country's resorces into my hands one way or another a fair amount should get back to society"

(Interviewer) "Are you saying we should have higher taxes"

WB "I don't think society to count entirely on the goodwill of the rich... i believe in a very progressive tax on income."

I've been watching a load of people on TV waving banners, and I find myself sympathising but not agreeing with them. The BBC really had no choice, within the terms of its remit, to invite NG onto QT.

There are two reasons why I agree with the BBC's decision. For the first I wouldn't expect the protestors to agree with me. Time will tell if I'm correct with the second reason.

I've never been too sure how far I'd personally take Voltaire's declaration that he would die fighting to protect free speech for his political opponent. Call me a coward, but I've only got me, so I suppose if I were to actually die in defence of anything, I'd choose a different cause. But as a principle, it does stand. Democracy can only exist on a fundemental level if freedom of speech is awarded at a higher level than any one individuals whim, or even the whim of a group. That ceases to be democracy and starts to be dictatorship by the majority, and the BBC couldn't survive if it was forced to be the arbiter.

The second reason I want NG to be heard is this man's views are our greatest weopon against him. While he is allowed to float around in a quasi-mythical anti-politicians space, he will be able to bask in some kind of heroic victim hood. Subject his views to the full glare of scrutiny and he will find that position far more difficult to maintain

Its only been two days since I discovered the new Muse record, but I already feel intimate with the first two songs. this is partly a function of my car CD player which is having difficulty translating into unjumpy sound anything past the first two songs on ANY CD, so I get to listen to those two again and again and again...

I've been playing with the idea that either of these two songs could act as a 'Theme Song' for one of my current Fictions in progress, but I'm now of the view that neither quite works on that score..

and then I was mentally humming one of the tunes this evening and i've realised why its so familiar... its really a reworking of Erasure's "A Little Respect"!


The other 'News of the week' isn't going to die down until after Thursday, thus keeping the BNP in the news all week, which is a regretable side effect of what is nevertheless the right thing to happen...

In my university days it was standard practise to say 'no platform for racists and fascists' and as a bit part player in the politico scene I sorta went along with it. The time has come though to shine a bright light on Griffen, because the man is an idiot and he will be exposed. Right now he is able to hide behind an aura of outsider to the current discredited political scene, but he has no answers. the last time he was given 'the floor', on Radios 4 & 5 the day after he snuck under the wire into the European parliament, he used that moment to

i) Say that to be 'British' you have to prove your genetic make up was on these islands at the time of the last Ice age. Now I'm not sure there even were British isles then, but its certain that the migration of mankind around the world was such that the 'British' were some millenia away - the Celts hadn't reached this part of the world, let alone the Angles or Saxons with whom BNP types like to claim 'affinity'..... which is far more effort typing that the initial argument deserved, so now I'll be brief

ii) Deny the reality of man created Climate change. So, er, he was talking bollocks.

So lets bring on rational argument, and watch him shrivel in the spotlight

On Jan Moir

Loosely themed introductions aside, this birth of these pages was strated under the influence of a day following Twitter - something I don't do often because I'm still trying to find a place for twittering in my life. However like many beginining twitterers I do follow Stephen Fry, which means I did get to follow the furore over The Jan Moir article on Stephen Gateley. I'm now listening to a radio 5 debate on this woman's article and the response to it... and some how all participants are talking round the issue of 'free speech'... its like should people have the right to write utter nonsense.. Do people who object to offensive articles have the right to suppress the free speech of writers of utter nonensense?

Of course not. But they have the right to point out that it is utter nonsense, and in this case utter nonsense that is offensive to many and dangerous to us all. Thats all I've heard from Moir's detractors.

A person should say what they think, short of inciting actual violence, and if that leads me, or others, think the writer an ill-informed bigoted idiot then I shall... and in this case I do.

Free speech is a right. Unchallenged Free speech is not.

We shall all be known by our words.

First Impressions and Why I don't like them.

As I an aspiring writer, I don't believe the first page should be written first - it should be written last, and I'm never to sure about first impressions anyway. As one of my many unpublished protagonists says

" I don’t believe in first impressions. I never have. You always learn more about a person on the second visit than you do on the first. Then you learn even more on the third, then the forth.
Sometime after that a law of diminishing returns kicks in."

None of which helps me start a blog. So here is what I will write about
Books I read.. and occasionally write
The occasional film and play I see
The heroes and idiots I read about, and occasionally meet

(All starting tonight with a play about the Bronte sisters but i'll have to be nice because one friend is in the cast and another directs.)

Otherwise it will be the most interesting set of notes on life you will ever read by a Leeds based It person of 'worker-rank' who delivers and discusses for the Liberal Democrat Party and can get a bit excited should Gillingham FC ever win a match