Another Slime

The Playboy Politician

2009-02-25T08:42:00.000-08:00

In a display of reactionary misogyny as naked and fully exposed as their women, Nuts have responded to Gail Trimble's 15 minutes of fame (she's that Oxford student who gets lots of answers right on university challenge) by asking her to pose naked. It's a mind bogglingly visible attempt to undermine a women who seems superior in her intelligence and competitive in her attitude.

We're lucky in a way - attitudes such as these don't often reveal themselves quite this explicitly and in all of their hideous oozing glory. Continued comments about her attractiveness were nibbles, pawing, a murmur of the need to dominate powerful women from deep within the shadows of the collective unconcious, and so difficult to confront. The Nuts thing is a throat ripping all out attack. There needs to be something urgent and specific to startle these attitudes out the undergrowth, so we can see them, and shoot them down cleanly.

I think in this case it's a lot to do with that weird quiz show/pub quiz mentality. People watch stuff like this to test their own knowledge and make-believe contestanthood. No one watches quiz shows without trying to guess the answers. And obviously some people think of them as a genuine personal measure of themselves. Think of the pub quiz episode of The Office. So, as opposed to a situation where Gail is a famous scientist or businesswoman, both of which also threaten traditionally masculine spheres but would probably elicit a less extreme response from the average university challenge viewer on the street, there's a more direct threat present here - a direct and cutting comparison between Gail and viewer. In response to which, viewer demands to see Gail naked.

So, to formulate a more detailed accusation, she's not being attacked for the fact of her being an intelligent woman in the public eye, so much as the method of attack differs for the fact her being a woman and is more venomous for its ease and its well worn path of use.

And there exists a constant, constant stream of these kinds of attacks on publicly visible, authoritative or successful women - a war of attrition against them. Swiftly following her winning an Oscar, the Metro was chortling away about Hugh Hefner's comments that he'd like Kate Winslet become a playboy bunny. You think you're so big cause you won an Oscar, lets just see how big you are in a bunny outfit, is the sentiment. American feminist campaign site The Women's Media Centre, documents an endless catalogue of sexual put-downs aimed at female journalists and politicians, largely in response to political and ideological differences.

And who could forget the grotesque, heaving and unmissable Akira-monster of phallic rage against Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton during the US elections. Again grown in fertile greenhouse of public visibility and political heat, there was no hiding or suppressing the mindset that women are always at least a little bit instrumentally sexual by their very nature, and must be treated as such. Both women were either sexually worshipped or derided in view of their politics - one right wing commentator said he would vote for Sarah Palin because he could imagine her lying next to him in bed. Hilary Clinton was frequently derided for being 'ugly'. I must hastily disclaim, I realise that women play thier part in producing this kind of commentary as well, though I think that for all the forms this mindless appearance based critique can take, the pure source is a well spring of misogyny.

This is an interesting article, in Esquire no less. It's entitled 'Hilary Clinton has a sexy mouth', and though it begins by dissecting Clinton's physical features in terms of their sexual merits, it promisingly goes on to recognise the bizarre but universal nature of this attitude towards female politicians. He gently analyses his and others strange compulsion to instantly sexualise Clinton, and seems genuinely bemused, and curious.

And that, I think, is the first tentative step. Maybe these remarks are, as the Esquire article would suggest, parasitical upon legitimate opinions about public figures, rising up from the primal unconscious, unbidden but also unquestioned. A man opens his mouth to disagree with a woman's policies, and instead volunteers a remark about her tits. He knows not why. Its the clinging traces of a past system of structured interaction between the sexes which will not go quietly. The only way out is confrontation with this noisy atavism.

Animal Rights: Forcing myself to care

2009-02-17T10:52:00.000-08:00

Animal rights - the one moral issue to which I've responded to for years with a kind of theraptutic apathy. It's like a soothing balm on my over-used moral indignation.

It's not entirely true, I do care a bit - I wouldn't actively condone the beating of puppies. And I'd say I was against cruel farming methods, don't buy eggs from caged hens etc. etc. But I would say I've never engaged with the issue in the same way that someone who is against the wanton torture of old ladies couldn't be said, on that merit, to be engaged with civil liberties. It's the kind of apathy where you end up holding populist moral views that are absorbed by osmosis in lieu of any active engagement - no caged eggs etc etc. Your basic animal welfare position.

Back to what set me thinking about all of this. Today, I saw an advert for so called Peace Silk- this is Silk that lets the pupae (yes, pupae) live out its natural life, fall in love, witness a sunset, laugh, cry and so on. As opposed to the conventional silk making method in which it is 'boiled to death'. And, lets be honest, that phrase sits comfortably with no one. But - really - should I care? What are the consequences for my moral code if being anti cruelty to pupae becomes integrated within it? I've actively condoned the mass slaughter of an entire community of maggots before now, using a similar death-by-boiling method. Should I now reproach myself? It's a moral maze!

Maybe I'm being facetious. Making these distinctions maybe I risk neutering with technicality an argument that's essentially about respect for life. Though Singers argument hinges on the thing in question having an 'interest' or being capable of suffering, which is questionable I think, when it comes to Pupae. Maybe Peace Silk would gain more truck if it took PETA's fish/sea kittens approach and re-branded them baby butterflies.

I think this confused attitude is largely reflected in the state of left leaning politics - animal rights are an issue which have become dislocated from the main body of lefty activism, despite, or even because of the fact that animal rights have been discussed and worried over since the 1600's. Yes, far left publications like Schnews and Indymedia still give radical animal activism a lot of space. But the New Internationalist has not really mentioned any of God's little creatures since the early nineties. This neglect by the fringe may be because the issue of animal welfare (rather than the more radical and marginalized animal liberation) has plenty of support from the mainstream - Jamie Oliver and his pigs, Hugh Fernly-Wittingstall and his chickens - and so the whole animal thing seems like a non issue in terms of raising awareness.

It's more noteworthy that the radical animal liberation movement, as well it knows, has been abandoned by much of the Guardian-reading left, in a way that conservative speculation has somehow missed, still lumping 'greenies, animal rights nuts and climate change fascists' together in a sentence. Ugly headlines have left their mark, and it seems like a good idea for any one taking direct action to distance their cause from animal activism, lest it be smeared with granny defilement. The most recent edition of Schnews bemoans this fact, accusing the 'moderate' left of taking up the fight for civil liberties only when their own are threatened. They claim that animal rights activists have been single handedly defending themselves against authoritarian measures to suppress them for years. In fact, there's actually an awful lot of bitterness in the far left publication on the alienation of animal rights activists from other forms of left wing activism. Stage an anti war march, and every single person with a complaint against the government turns up. Animal rights rallies tend to be given a wide berth. Schnews also claims that animal libbers receive harsher treatment by the law. It's this sentiment that has lead to mistrust of Guardian Blogger Henry Porters Convention for Modern Liberty Coalition, not least because of the involvement of the hated Countryside Alliance.

Animal libbers' difficult relationship with feminism over the years might also go a small way to explaining their isolation. Women were the primary target of the anti fur campaign, and the phrase 'rich bitch! poor bitch' adorning a poster was a source of contention. Even today, one of the first things you witness on PETA's website is a pro-veggie advert featuring provocatively dressed women caressing themselves with vegetables*. Yes, its clearly meant to be funny, but there's also some Uncle Tom-ing going on in the way of the what-are-we-supposed-to-do-sex-gets-attention attitude, which has long been the excuse of the advertising industry for saturating cultural space with rigid and unhelpful sexual images of women. Veggie feminists may well be frustrated at their being forced to choose between their ethics and their dignity on this one.

So we have ourselves an outpost, whose members grow more and more resentful of the 'moderate left', whilst further becoming demonised by the mainstream. Is there any hope we might all pull together? Is there any reason to?

Having somehow brought up feminism, it seems neatly fitting at this point to come full circle and mention the arguments of feminists such as Josephine Donavan. In her view, 'theorizing animals is inevitable for feminism' because their 'oppression' is symptomatic of the kind of patriarchy that renders other creatures subservient to it. Feminists and defenders of civil liberties campaigners should by this argument promote animal rights in their quest to overthrow the arbitrary dominance over and the instrumental use of other creatures by the status quo.

To bring this entry back to me personally. In explaining my apathy, I believe I've chosen other battles**. And this is a common attitude - where these orphan issues lie so close to the boundaries of your interests that you feel obliged to explain why they've not been taken on board and cared for as one of your own - often its felt that there's no time, there's limited resources and they must ruthlessly be directed where they are needed the most. Also, giving time to animal rights might be seen as avoiding the larger problem, and treating a symptom rather than the illness as a whole.

But I think it merits examining exactly what your political beliefs entail. For instance, a large section of contemporary feminism increasingly disavows the antiporn movement, and the kind of politics that involves itself in condemning the beauty industry. Certain feminist voices will say that this kind of campaigning detracts from the 'real issue' of the glass ceiling and the pay gap. I would argue that you cannot be concerned with one without recognising the other, particularly with the recent study linking the observation of sexfully dressed women with activity in the part of the male brain that deals with 'use of tools'. And possibly it's the same attitude that campaigns for civil liberties but sneers at animal rights activism (or vice versa). Maybe civil rights campaigners should be paying more attention to what they have in common with their shovel-wielding, puppy-humping pals. They could certainly do with the legitimacy.

Oblique, fun-times-with-postmodernism post colonial theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak coined the term 'strategic essentialism' to try to untangle this very mess. Simplistically it describes a the uniting disparate minority groups against a common enemy. Though she emphasised this must be brief, political and strategic, without buying into the follies of philosophical essentialism. But then, she didn't give a shit about animals either.

So what's the lesson? Maybe I should learn to be more nuanced at recognising who is actually engaged in the same battles as me, who actually shares the same root attitude, despite expressing it in an unfamiliar way. I certainly didn't mean to write about feminism, but up it cropped. I've learned something today.

I still don't know what I think about animal rights though, but maybe gazing at these pictures of a bowl of delicious deep fried silkworm pupae, and collection of equally delicious kittens will help shed some light on the matter.

*the list of reasons it was denied airtime during the Superbowl is actually quite funny - see 'touching her breast with her hand while eating broccoli'

**By 'battles' I obviously mean 'things to sit around and complain about'

Broken Britain And Other Stories

2008-12-09T13:57:00.000-08:00

Broken Britain - a reality that many Daily Mail Columnists wake up to every day. In the last few weeks, Karen Matthews, no longer a woman but a symbol, has been packaged up and sold back to us by the tabloids as supremely indicative of this dramatic overview of British life.

And not only do we find the story here being ruthlessly exploited to sell sensational headlines, but glance around and it's there being used to promote myths about a particular underclass - single mothers and benefits claimants - in order to soften the reception of certain harsh welfare reforms

In the last fortnight, James Purnell unbelievably held her story aloft in support of his initiative to force single mothers on benefits into work. Simultaneously, we read Cameron using her to vent his black tory heart in the secure, sensationalist conservative womb of the Daily Mail. It's okay now Dave, you're safe here. Say what you like. Here's some choice prose:

'if only this were a one-off story' - translates as 'if this doesn't merit an excuse to make crude generalizations, what does?'

'Children whose toys are dad’s discarded drink bottles; whose role models are criminals, liars and layabouts; whose innocence is lost before their first milk tooth' My god, it's like the beginning of a fairy tale. When will a smug Eaton tory twat arrive on his shining horse to save us all?

The phrase 'broken Britain' (or variant 'broken society') has appeared, at a glance, around 20 times in the mail in the last few months. A good solid handful of those references can be attributed to Cameron, as he busily casts himself as the saviour of this engulfing dystopian fantasy. To quote one columnist in the full heat of moralistic self righteous ecstasy 'if this isn't a broken society, what is?' And what exactly is a broken society? Other than a vague, one size fits all term parodied by Chris Morris in the Brass Eye episode 'moral decline', designed ease confusion by doing away with detail.

It's tempting, only too tempting, whilst skimming through such manipulative gutter journalism to spend a couple of seconds making dismissive noises and have done with. Particularly when the neon-blindingly cynical wooing of a convenient symbol of the popular masses such as the mail by a slimy toff seems too open and shut even to bother with. But the persistent murmur of broken Britain isn't just a top down imposed narrative. It more cloyingly rises up the social ladder like damp in a way that's much harder to pin down or critique, emanating from such a confusing multitude. Certain obscured hand- wringers occasionally crop up and warn liberals that by ignoring the real and valid concerns of the working class, they're forcing them to join the BNP. While this remains a distasteful ploy for the forcing of the anti immigration agenda into the mainstream, and an unrealistic reduction of a vast and nebulous social group (the 'working class') a central point can be extracted. We can't dismiss popular unease - we can reject it's colonisation by the conservatives.

It isn't just the generalization of certain characters that gives rise to murky neurotic worlds of fiction such as the world of 'Broken Britain', it's the construction of the characters themselves. The face of Karen Matthews hasn't just been copied and pasted onto the face of every single mother in the country - it's also been read, distanced and de-humanized. And that's the dark centre of the broken Britain myth - a process of Othering that demonises and divides, and gives people something to struggle and define their morally superior selves against. An alien underclass, among us, but not like us. There's a parallel to be made with the character assassination of women who report being raped, particularly if the claim happens to be made against, plucking a random example from the very air, a footballer. In an analysis of attitudes of authority figures to individuals reporting rape, feminist academic Liz Kelly contends that 'practitioners draw more on the safety of cliches and long held beliefs than on evidence'. The ghost of the lying harpy walks abroad, imposing herself on every single woman who dares to lodge an accusation. She's the Karen Matthews of the rape world. But does she exist? Does it matter? She embodies a certain distancing attitude of people towards people. It's not just that one woman is being generalized onto many - this in itself doesn't lead to unjust policy making. It's that, in terms of understanding, a superficial and un-nuanced portrait of a woman is being generalized onto many.

So how should we refute these crude fictions? As a starting point, we shouldn't confuse, as Polly Toynbee seems to when she contends that majority of single mothers are in employment, fact with ideology. A significant proportion of single mothers are unemployed. Just because this particular fact operates at the heart of an ideology designed to alienate and punish the less fortunate, doesn't mean it should be abandoned to the dark side. We can't ignore this just because it makes it easier for Purnell et al. to cut back on the carrots and get out the big stick. As satisfying as it is to be able to say, actually, most single mothers have one child and are over 35 (true), we risk getting into an endless cycle of trading and manipulating stats. We should not allow ourselves to become distracted from refuting the subtext of this mythological character construction, or its implicit contention that victims of social deprivation are somehow lesser beings.

Prostituting yourself for the Good Life

2008-11-06T13:32:00.000-08:00

Watching River Cottage at dinner time. Aw, Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall is making jam. How lovely. Out he goes to collect fruit for it with some middle aged lady in some rich autumnal paradise, outside a picturesquely crumbling manor house. Its a picture of wholesome pantheism. There he is....mixing the jam. And, as if painfully self conscious that he is in fact on television, not casually completing some pleasant Sunday chores before shuffling off to read the paper, and that making jam might not be the most riveting thing to watch, he tries alarmingly to wring some kind of sexual innuendo from the situation! And directs it at the middle aged woman! 'Nothing wrong with a bit of poking and prodding in the kitchen', he mutters, followed by a comment provoked by some so called 'leather fruit' - to do with whips, and bondage. I'm not even making this up. Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall is suggesting to a middle aged woman the joys of whipping, restraining and fucking someone. Over jam. She sort of smiles half heartedly. He looks like he wants to cry. It's so awkwardly constructed, you know there's a twatty young producer somewhere gleefully orchestrating this.

What's going on? The cynicism! The implication that the average viewer cannot sustain themselves on television that's merely about cooking!

Dear Channel Four..........outraged etc, moral rupugnancy etc etc the good old days etc etc etc. Yes I know. But still.

Darwin fucks Bloggers?

2008-10-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry. It's just that I've wanted to use a ridiculously provocative title for ages now. Competing for attention online is notoriously heated. Which just so happens to be my theme.

A few days ago, Wired announced the 'Death of Blogging', and produced a torrent of sniggering anger from the online community. You can't really write a blog and ignore it - it's the shame of being insulted directly and doing nothing about it but blush and look at your shoes. So I'm preparing to join the wave of meta-activity, commenting on commenting, opinioning about opinioning, blogging about blogging.

Wired's piece bases itself on the contention that Blogging is only fun, worthwhile or even meaningful if it produces a lot of interest and is heard. 'It's impossible to get noticed', they sighed resignedly. Basically because garden variety Joe blogger is now competing with paid up so-called 'sweat shops' of blogging journo's working for online magazines like, well, Wired.

The Times Tech Central and its commentors are taking a laissez faire survival of the fittest approach, 'readers are more likely to find what they're looking for', we're told. 'Perhaps the end of rubbish blogs' triumphs a loyalist. What we are seeing now is the Internet following an apparently organic and inevitable pattern which sees those that provide the best quality service rising to the top. It's voting with your credit card all over again, except this time, the consumer votes with their mouse. Have we voted out the solitary hobbyist blogger? And is this desirable in terms of the democratic and representative ideals of Internet communication?

One Twitterer on the subject remembered a relevant article by an essayist and network theorist responding to similar rumours who pointed out that website traffic follows a Power Law Distribution: In a big social network where a lot of people get to choose from a lot of opinions, a large proportion of the traffic, and therefore a large proportion of influence will rest with a small number of the websites/blogs. This is a situation that libertarian political philosopher/tosser (RIP etc) Robert Nozick might also nod approvingly at, fitting as it does with his idea of Justice springing naturally from whatever occurs in the course of everyone making the best of whatever resources they happen to end up with. The Blogs with the most time and money deserve to hold the most sway over the online world. It looks as though the internet, the very embodiment of freedom of expression has spoken, and not with the plurality of voice that we might expect.

Not only does the worry exist that multiplicity is drowned out by the loud voice of the few, but in the scrabble to compete, pieces are getting shorter, sharper and therefore somewhat dilute of message. Books and Culture blogger Alan Jacobs finished his Blog back in 2007 on the worrying note "Right now, and for the foreseeable future, the Blogosphere is the friend of information but the enemy of thought". Wired claimed that Bloggers were moving to places such as Twitter to take advantage of its brevity. Writing complex and attention grabbing Blog articles at the volume required to compete was too exhausting, last year even seeing the deaths three prolific Bloggers, all of heart attacks.

Now, the irony of writing about the fast paced precarious burn out world of blogging on a blog that contains seven whole entries and has to my knowledge no traffic at all isn't lost on me. but then I don't want to die or anything. I never thought I might be able to politicize the personal as it were and hold myself up as on-trend. Though, while I doubt I could find anything with so much tree falling in the forest silence going for it, I have managed to find a couple of illustrative elements. The first is that I probably see this Blog as an accessible portfolio, that I can reference when I need to show anyone what my style of writing is like. It's basically something I think I might be able use when I'm fighting for writing jobs, which is typical I guess of the vicious utilitarianism apparently involved. No one writes Blogs for the joy of writing, we're told, but to be heard - communication first, joy of expression second. Secondly, and more encouragingly, I have read one Blogger sum up what I think is a fairly representative motivation, that is that his blog was for high quality communication between a small but dedicated crowd of friends and like minders. Now, my Blog currently is for nobody, but I am screwing up the courage to actually encourage people I know to visit. I think I'm happy enough for my scope to be limited to real world social microcosm, particularly as certain entries may be the end result of ongoing and co-operative discussion and debate.

Blogging, the Internet community has retaliated, is not as dead as all that. A glance at Twitter tells me not only that this is a contentious and little agreed with notion, but as if to prove it, everybody's little 140 word 'Tweet' seems to link to their Blog, where their initial aphorism goes into more detail. And this very act of information gleening (in fact most of this Twitter-researched entry) tells me that whilst Twitter is useful for the rapidity and quantity that Blogs are unable to sustain, Blogging still serves a purpose. And while it may no longer serve as a net of opinion which you can cast over the entire Internet community, your communication will always be valuable as long as it reaches somebody. Meanwhile, there are still many many ways to be heard on a large scale.

And, on an interesting side note, it's worth looking at the consequences for the Social Darwinism that seems to have seeped into the debate. Ex-banker Bernard Lietaer mentioned in his book 'The future of money' a theory of evolution which placed emphasis on cooperation between organisms and the environment rather than competition between individuals. He said this in a bid to strengthen his argument that the monetary system should be organised around principles of co-operation rather than competition. Interesting then that it is the blogs which have large numbers of people working on them, together, operating as a unit that thrive whilst the individual blogger is lost. Under a certain set of circumstances this surely is a good thing for online democracy. You will only be heard through compromise and co-operation, and it is not one voice which rises to the top, but many.

http://timesonline.typepad.com/technology/2008/10/is-blogging-dea.html
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/16-11/st_essay
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/technology/06sweat.html?pagewanted=print
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/october/13.22.html
http://ash10.com/2008/10/two-points-about-the-alleged-death-of-blogging/
http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html
http://www.timelineindex.com/content/view/1038

Watching the 42-day-dentention-bill live: an overview

2008-10-13T06:27:00.000-07:00

Apparently, you can watch these things live, but only if you're severely unemployed. So I sat down with pen, paper and popcorn...

3 minutes to go. Lord Laird has said that he would be 'staggered' if the bill goes through. 42 writers have poured their outrage into a series of angry poems and stories about the bill (why do I find that funny? Maybe I'm a Bad Person) Amnesty and a host of other NGO's have condemned it, as has Andy Hayman, former Assistant Commissioner for Special Operations at Scotland Yard.

And so begins nearly 4 hours of earnest, if repetitive debate in those sonorous, cut-glass accents. And there's some great phrases ('shabby charade' is one of the good ones). Six clear cut reasons are presented against the governments case, which re-occur frequently throughout the proceedings.

Firstly, the point is made that there has not as yet been any evidence to indicate that the police have ever run out of time whilst detaining a terrorist suspect without charge. The longest time that a suspect has so far been held is 14 days, well within the current 28 day limit.

The second point is that no other western or comparable country has extended detention beyond 12 days (Australia), the US and Canada only detaining for 1 and 2 days respectively. Later in the debate, as this point is raised time and time again, opponents dismiss the comparative argument as irrelevant, stating that it need only be argued that the bill is by its own merit humane.

The aforementioned NGO's, the DPP, and particularly Andy Hayman are gleefully paraded as examples of qualified objectors. A host of phrases accorded to Hayman are quoted directly from The Times - damning quotes such as 'bureaucratic and unworkable', and 'cumbersome'. Later a sneaky remark, delivered as a side-point is made about 'being out of the job for a while'.

It is asserted that the existing law can be made to serve the new purpose of matching what have already been acknowledged by all to be more difficult and complex times for police investigating terrorist cases. The proposal is made that more serious charges should be brought forth only when they come to light, and not on the basis of a series of maverick hunches.

Finally, the broader points are made that the bill would justify terrorist propaganda concerning the persecution of certain communities, would alienate and villify innocent sections of society and erode hard won civil liberties. The speaker finishes, with a classical and therefore weighty (if somewhat misguided) flourish by quoting from the magna carta: 'we will not delay right or justice'.

(later this leads the debate off into a brief but definately rather bizarre tangent about the sexism/racism of the magna carta)

The bumbling ex commissioner, Sir Ian Blair is quoted as asserting that (the police) have never put forward a case which demonstrates the need for detention. Another quotable classic is produced as debaters grapple with the difficulties of prediction - 'anything is possible, but is it remotely likely?'

A fairly powerful (if true) pincer-style point emerges that even if the bill were desirable, it is flawed on numerous practical levels, and therefore 'unworkable'.

Police reliability and the possible abuse of power is discussed hotly throughout the debate, supporters in the later stages take the opportunity to accuse opponents of the bill of mistrusting the police. 'why would anyone put a suspect through that, for a laugh?' one speaker muses. No one dares mention recent expositions of institutionalized police racism that have been freshly re-visited after years and years of festering.

A breathless gentleman uses the phrase 'death in computers', as if the fear of lurking zealots has driven him to a state of incoherency.

There's some similarly pointless and emotive ranting about our poor possibly blown-up children (won't somebody please think of the children?). Also, young people in 'dance halls'.

The Joint Select Committee for Human Rights delivers its unanimous and unwavering support for the contention that the bill is unnecessary, I stretch my cramping limbs, and the outcome is just as predictable as everybody thought.

The end.

I fought the law

2008-10-11T10:47:00.000-07:00

The last cover of the Sonny Curtis 50's classic by the Dead Kennedys saw the lyrics changed to 'I fought the law and I won', in recognition of 70's San Francisco Mayor-Murderer Dan White's successfully altering his charge from murder to man-slaughter. In view of the recent Kingsnorth victory, which saw protestors cleared of criminal damage after painting Gordon Brown's name on a chimney and costing the plant £35000, perhaps someone should do another re-hash in honor of the 6 lucky Greenpeace activists. (A good car game by the way is to actually try to sing the song replacing 'I' with 'Greenpeace'. The excessive emphasis on 'peace' makes it sound like piss)

I thought of Kingsnorth whilst reading through the governments 'Learning together to be safe' initiative - in its own words 'a toolkit to help schools contribute to the prevention of violent extremism'. Now, I'm sure the reasons that young people turn to violent political solutions are complex and varied, but I'm fairly sure it's not for lack of government sanctioned, bloodless and potentially bitterly ironic 'happy lessons'. Another aspect that may rile the casual reader is the mindless and repetitive use of words like 'democracy', 'freedom' and 'community' without any attempt to engage with what they actually mean, thus rending them totally impotent.

The phrase that particularly caught my eye though asserted that one of the aims of the teaching guidelines was to ensure that children were taught that 'violent solutions were criminal'. Not immoral, not emotionally backward, not simply 'bad' but 'criminal'. The implication being that criminal actions can be equated with actions being wrong in themselves. Fair enough coming from a government document you might think - a governments purpose must surely be to convince the young populace that its laws are the embodiment of right.

Except the Kingsnorth case has surely proven that this is not true.

Obviously the jury did not acquit the activists on the basis that they were right to break the law - it was found that technically they were acting within the law, that they had a 'lawful excuse' on the basis that they were attempting to prevent the greater criminal damage that a coal-fired power station would eventually cause to property, vicariously through global warming.

So why has no court case been launched against Kingsnorth? Because they, rightly or wrongly, have the law on their side. The jury in this instance asserted that, while the activists were breaking the law - and they were - they were acting morally and therefore did not deserve to be punished. The Jury stood up and questioned the morally impervious nature of the law, or rather the morally impervious nature of our duty to obey the law.

In terms of education, these progressive decisions should surely should be taken into account. Teachers should be issuing children with reasons rather than directives (the same goes for governments and citizens, respectively). And maybe a broad moral education and an amount of trust is preferable to hurling massive words such as 'criminal' and 'freedom' at small children and their educators with an an abandon that undermines the multi-faceted and changing nature of these concepts.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cleared-jury-decides-that-threat-of-global-warming-justifies-breaking-the-law-925561.html.

Adventures in The Void #1: Life on the farm

2008-10-07T11:28:00.000-07:00

So I've come looking for The Dream on some Welsh biodynamic/organic/generally ideological little farm, exchanging bodily labour for food and enlightenment. It's anywhere between 1.00pm and I guess 4pm and I’m on a train, shuttling hazily between non-descript Welsh towns. The weather is unsettling - we’re occasionally encompassed by gloom, only to rush into a bright sickly coloured sunshine which dries the arteries of rainwater streaming furiously across the windows like tears in a high wind. We do reach Swansea in the end - Cardiff’s strange, pale sister city and I pass straight through into welsh language speaking oblivion.

By the time I reach the farm I'm all jittery from having popped too many chocolate covered coffee beans on the bus. I don't really know what to expect from this nook of idealism, which has offered itself up to me via the medium of the excruciatingly named 'diggers and dreamers' website. I'm greeted by this serious looking, well spoken Gabriel Oak figure who emerges booted and capped from the farmhouse. He's on his way to get the cows in, and requests that I join him. The plot thickens.

This is 65 year old Dr of Forestry, David, and later I'm introduced to his wife, his five kids, and Luke, a guy with a learning disability who fitted into David's fierce philosophy that everyone has the right to work. They all co-habit in this strange insular environment. Close, tense, fractious and so familiar with one another, the well, well worn paths that trace their relationships are vividly observable to me as I rudely carved a space for myself in their day to day lives. Their familial history is exemplified in every small exchange.

There's not much work for me to do independently, so I spend the week trailing after David, hearing his views and ideas and opinions, his tales of this person and that person, spun with all the relish of a born conversationalist. Mainly I stand at the doorway to the cowshed, washing teats and shovelling shit, listening to him putting together his utopia, which looked something like this: Villages ordered around a central farm, from which each man woman and child would receive their food and sustenance. All needs locally and transparently provided, a kind of tribalism, though David would not hear the word 'communism' without looking disapproving and uncomfortable. David wants the means of production to be transparent to everybody. Everybody, he believes, should be aware of where their food comes from. Like a lot of people of his sex and generation, he is convinced of the merit of his ideas, and I enjoy hearing them explained with that solid conviction. He works and talks late into the night, exhausting himself. 'It's a difficult farm' he explained, and the weather wasn't helping.

Biodynamic cows, rather unnervingly, must retain their long curved horns. They lend a certain air of dignity to an animal very much in need of it, leading existences that largely consist of dribbling, humping and defecating. One of many biodynamic uses of these lovely weapons involves stuffing a cow horn full of manure and burying it for six months, before mixing with water and spraying it everywhere. (Flinging fertiliser over everywhere, incidentally, is just as scatalogically joyous as it sounds). I imagine the cows also use them to simultaneously spear the twin biodynamic evils of capitalist production methods and pernicious EU bureaucracy.

It's not quite the Utopian dream-world I've been looking for. It's lonely, the countryside is ragged and bleak, and the everyday stress of the large, stretched family is tangible. I often see Jane, David's wife, with her elbows resting on a gate, or the kitchen table, her thin head in her hands, looking close to despair. David frequently tells me that they have chosen not to be well-off. They both believe that the working week should be shorter, to allow time for personal development, and that they would like to see less emphasis placed on making money in general. And they pay for this - by working more than anyone else, and constantly worrying about money.

Also, it is difficult to gauge their sphere of influence. Their visitors book is full of fondness, with many, many 'I really learned something about myself's'. What they would really like is another family to help with the endless tasks as old age beats them into submission. I spoke to a prospective couple in another community - David and Jane had been eager apparently for them to fill the position. 'Too much milking', they had said. Which I took to mean that repetitive, isolated, back breaking tasks were not everybody's ideal utopia.

David's friends in the Welsh farming community considered him an amusing, yet baffling novelty. 'Why don't you use chemical fertilizer?', they had asked despairingly 'get some money coming in'. On the other side, for his 'progressive' friends, of which a surprising number emerged from the vast hills, organic food seemed more of a lifestyle-hobby. One party I was kindly taken to seemed to consist of one big hideous half joking competition over whose Bio Tunnel got the most airtime on Welsh speaking television.

And yet, thinking about about it, this as much The Dream as you'll find. Not perfect, but fucking determined.

Unemployment

2008-10-07T11:02:00.000-07:00

Something I wrote a while ago, on a spree of futile job hunting in Brighton....

When unemployment makes me feel like a butress of stagnant water, festering, purposeless, unsightly. Whose only prospect is to one day be absorbed back into the carbon cycle,I generally soothe myself by sitting in a dark room, in front of a bright screen, zealously trawling through site after site of so called jobs.

I apply for few, if any. I'm beginning to find it fairly pointless to do this to oneself if one has no real idea of what one is actually looking for. The motivation for such an excersise is twofold: the first reason is that if I can trick the panicky side of myself into believing in my character as laudably productive, maybe it'll fuck off for a while so I can go and watch neighbours guilt-free (this is of course an illusion. You can never watch neighbours completely guilt-free. Particularly not the 2.00pm showing).

The second reason is that it acts as a strange kind of therapy. In the same way that a big win is always around the corner in the world of recreational gambling so too is the perfect job in the act of ruderless jobseeking. I want some kind of a vision to cut through all the uncertainty. Each speck of gold in that dark mine promises to unlock the magic door in your bleak and sterile imagination, you think 'I'm sure I could do that. Why the hell not?' And the door swings open to reveal the wide lush vista of your future.

Untill, obviously, you realise that you can't be a marine biologist because you hate water, and all of its associated plants and animals, and your degree was in media studies.

It's not always a waste of time, I have to say. If you're looking for an gap filling kind of affair, if you need some money, if you've got a rough idea of your ideal job and a half decent CV (I have neither of these things). Just beware the subtle and delicate line between productive and mindless job hunting.

My number one survival Tip for this kind of endevour: never type 'graduate' into a search engine if you value the concept of hope. Particularly if you live in brighton. At first it seems harmless enough, a few inoffensive admin jobs, in your more desperate moments you even consider the 'creative!' marketing shit that comes up, although you come to your senses a little later. You scroll eagerly, naively on.

Untill, suddenly and without warning you find yourself bombarded from all sides by nothing but sleazily advertised shitty little call centre jobs. It's like exploring a strange city and getting accidently getting lost in the red light district.
Instead of the job title, it'll be some badly spelled tagline, applealing ideally to the hapless ambitious-but-lazy egocentric cretin just waiting for someone to take advantage of thier as yet incubating shrewd business skills and natural cunning. It'll be along the lines of 'r u tired of living life in the slow lane?' or 'your not greedy, just hungry for more'. Or, It'll be cunningly worded to avoid the unexplainably negative connotations of the word 'callcentre', like 'sales adviser' (may I advise you to buy shoddy insurance madam?) And probably the most transparent and undignified technique, the unexplained and all too casual use of the word 'executive' in the job title. That's pretty low. And once you have waded through this worthless quivering spewtum for HOURS, at you will feel just a little more mistrust of the world around you, at worst you will have landed yourself a job. Like I did.

So what made me apply to just such a job in the end? I actually can't remember. Probably because I was exactly the kind of lazy and appaulingly desperate drifter that jobs like that ensnare. I'd like, perversely, to think that it was a combination of all the devious devices whichever such unfortunate creature employed in making those adverts could dig up. Possibly then I would have an excuse.
.

why you shouldn't join the SWP

2008-07-09T08:52:00.000-07:00

So recently I went to the Socialist Worker's Party initiative 'Marxism Festival', and was thus constantly canvassed by members of the SWP.

And I thought, well why don't I join? I'd put myself in the far left, I'm up for trade unionists immigrants and socialism. I'm pretty sure that there's more than a few problems with capatalism. I largely agree with everything that was said.

And for a while I could articulate what was wrong, aside from the blank stares I received from the kid hustling me to join as I answered his questions about my life and views. 'My dissertation? Oh, it was, er, salman rushdie...blah blah blah. I like the way he...erm, are you into this?'

No, he wasn't into it. He was into the socialist worker party, and getting me to join. And I know that this is how politics works, people talk to you, find out what you're looking for in a political party and try to convince you that they can provide it. it's a utilitarian situation. But the single-mindedness of the whole interaction strikes me as creepy. And the SWP mixer picnic - weird. I like my sandwiches free of over-my-head smarmy references to Trotsky.

But all of this is incidental, and doesn't make up the bulk of my reasons for not allying myself to the party. The eventual reasoning that formed itself from my initial discomfort is this: The belief in communism as the eventual end solution to the problems thrown up by capatalism and the perfect expression of a functional socialist society.

As a practical solution, the SWP is alienating. In terms of the left I will say you cannot fault it for diversity - it's not just for middle class students with too much time on thier hands and a head full of utopian images, as is often what lefty movements get branded with being. These people are old and young and from every walk of life, often with very direct experiences of being let down by the real world as it stands. But they have united under such a specific set of terms that it seems unlikely that they will ever influence mainstream society enough to bring everyone under thier banner. I may have this wrong, but the general impression I recieved was 'communism or bust'.

I think it's fair to say that people need to undergo change gradually, and for reasons that make sense to them. You cannot call for the dismantling of capatalism and expect a reaction from most people that isn't laden with an instinctive defensiveness and resistance. Every problem in society needs to be carefully and individually examined. If strict codes of ethics were enforced through social cues and norms in every area of life, which prioritised equality, community and support, we would end up with a society which reflected that.

The problem aspects of the system we currently have need to be isolated and individually dealt with, and if one of those aspects just so happens to be essential to capatalism as we currently define it, then so be it: down with capatalism. This change has to be slow, transparent and focus on aspects that make universal sense - socialism needs the popular and democratic support essential to progress.

Baby Capatalism

2008-06-10T12:20:00.000-07:00

Discaimer: This is a work induced rant, and quite possibly just a rationalisation of my frustrations working in a yuppy baby shop.

Come into my place of employment. Push past the pink things, the £50 Ralph Lauren romper suits, the £30 Dior plastic baby bottles. Step over the high tech £85 baby carriers and wipe the baby sick from your shoe. See it? The new 'Vibe' Travel System (read Buggy). It's the very latest model by the trendiest manafacturer. It's fire apple red. Its £500. It looks like a space ship. You have to book one six months in advance. It's the perfect thing to offset the way society makes you feel now that you are pregnant: ugly and useless, because it oozes the opposite. It says beauty and praticality.

You are now wittnessing one of the most wearying and jaded manifestations of consumerism. The vulnerability experienced by pregnant women, the lack of support they recieve, thier bordem and isolation is exploited to the extreme by the rapidly swelling designer baby products industry (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/main.jhtml?xml=/education/2008/03/15/fababyconcie.xml.) As with all consumption of goods, we are taught that we can buy our way out of our anxieties, and the wheels of the economy don't go rusty. I write this because, aside from the fact that I have to face this appallingness on a daily basis, I do think that focusing in on this particular industry is useful in realising how consumer culture works primarily by exploiting insecurity.

Moreover, a lot of first time parents are fairly clueless about how to proceed, and seem to lack a direct and accessible source of advice and support. Here, baby shops step gleefully into the breach - one person's emotional needs are another person's financial opportunities.

If I can address new parents directly: If you've just given birth, well done. If you come into my shop, or any 'top end of the market' baby shop you're pretty silly. If you buy something, you're an idiot. If you were the people who came in yesterday and bought an £800 designer pushchair made entirely of leather, you WILL be the first against the wall when the reveloution comes.