Thoughts on the Future and Other Issues

I'm writing this today without access to the internet. I mean, my phone can access the internet, but only to tell me why my home broadband is down. Ok, so it's something of a first-world problem I'll grant you, but bear with me because I have somewhere to go with this. Also, I should note, I am not particularly angry but I don't have a blog called, “I'm in a thoughtful mood right now,” so this'll have to do.

Also, my internet is back. Hmm...to continue or to give up? Shakespeare would have known what to do, but then again he didn't have the distractions of the internet to contend with so it's really no surprise that he got so much stuff done.

My girlfriend recently introduced me to Netflix. I had long avoided this service for a reason that could best be characterised by an instinctive mistrust of it. A gut feeling if you will. And it's not a fear of the New. I have a smartphone now, and while I loath its presence it has come in handy more than a handful of times. No, it's not that. Now I would never personally admit to having illegally downloaded episodes of TV shows from file-sharing sites, but from what I understand it's more or less possible to watch any episode of any TV show from pretty much any era within a day of its release. It's possible to watch American shows that aren't on over here. It's possible to watch whole series that are no longer on the air. From what I understand, its benefits far outweigh its drawbacks. Netflix, on some level, promises to be something in between 'real TV' and illegal file-sharing. You can watch what they have on their service, and you can watch it immediately and without commercials. This last part is absolutely key to why I don't own a television. I hate commercials. Or adverts, as they ought to be known. For some reason I've lapsed into speaking, or at least writing, in American. I'm also splitting my infinitives, but that's a game of 'spot the poor grammar' that we can save for later.

So what's my problem? Why can't I get on board with Netflix? Well problem the first is that I do not like the user interface, or UI as I believe it is known. I don't like how items are bunched together in groups that I have to navigate through. I don't like scrolling through endless lists of things when I have no idea what is even on the list. If I don't know what I'm looking for, I'm almost certainly not going to find it like that. If you search for something that you know you want, then there arises the problem that I have with looking through someone's iPod at a party. They've plugged it into the speakers because they think their taste in music is superior, but they don't have anything I like and when I do find an artist that I like they only have one track because it's from some bullshit compilation, or worse, a mix album. Netflix is like that guy (almost always a guy). Also, I haven't been to a party in a long time.

Now, I believe that something like Netflix is almost certainly the Future of Television. People are already used to on-demand services and fewer and fewer of us are watching TV as it is aired. We like to save up a whole season and 'binge-watch' it. We've even been warned about how, much as with the other types of binge (drink, drugs, etc), this could be bad for us. But the trend shows no sign of abating. But the problem is that Netflix does not have most of my shows. And nor will it any time soon. And there arises a further problem once we unpack why this might be. We come back to commercials. Ad money pays for TV shows. Apart from the BBC which is publicly funded, at least for the time being, and networks in America such as HBO and Showtime which are funded by subscription. HBO won't let Netflix have their shows because they already have an on-demand service (that we can't watch in the UK) that is part of their subscription package. Lose that, lose their subscribers; lose them, no more HBO. And no more HBO would mean no more GoT. So no, let's not go there.

And what of commercials? Netflix does not interrupt its shows with five minutes of mind-numbing ads every ten minutes (have you seen TV in America? It's fucking insane!) so there is no ad revenue to be gained from it. Netflix makes its own shows now, too, but not enough for it to really qualify as a network and since people binge-watch its shows, any exposure of advertised product would be utterly impossible to quantify. You have a 24-episode season of a popular show on a mainstream network and you get, in an hour of TV, fifteen minutes of ad time. That's the same hour, every week. You can target your ads to key demographics because people know who watches what. Ad agencies have that information so they can buy the right slots for the right advertisers and everyone is happy. People who watch daytime TV get to find out about new brands of adult nappies or how to turn their gold into cash; children get to find out about new accessories for their toys, and everyone (by which I mean no-one) is happy.

So, how does this fit into Netflix and the Future of Television? I don't know. It's a fucking doozie. TV networks are beholden to their advertisers, so they need to keep people watching at the correct times on the correct days of the week. As it stands, this is the only way for advertisers to flog their wares to the target demographics. It wouldn't work on Netflix because there are no ads on Netflix. As soon as they start putting ads in Netflix, people will stop watching or subscribe to ever increasing levels of 'Premium' in order to avoid them. So Netflix is not the answer, because it's ultimately more like a subscription service, a la HBO, than it is anything else. And what of illegal downloading? Will Netflix make this a thing of the past? Unlikely. I'm sure it's swayed a few people away, lured them with House of Cards and other such fancies, but it lacks the extensive back-catalogue and the go-anywhere reach of the file-sharing sites. And file-sharing doesn't impact on advertisers because their shows go out, laden with ads, every week as normal. Consequently, file-sharing doesn't really impact on TV networks either. They can still churn out their derivative crap week after week, year after year because people who wear adult nappies don't know what a Pirate Bay is and wouldn't know what to do with it if they did. They're too worried about whether they just shat themselves or not. HBO's not worried, because they can probably see the big picture. If you follow illegal downloading to its natural conclusion, then everybody downloads illegally which means no one watches HBO. No one subscribes, they have no money; they have no money, there's not GoT. So illegal downloading isn't the answer either because it results in a paradox that will destroy us all and everything we love.

So what is the future of television? Notice how I removed the caps? I don't know. So the best advice I can give is from a piece of grafiti that I saw once:

Stop watching, start living.

Cyclists

As of now, this moment, right here, let it be known that I am declaring it: OPEN SEASON on CYCLISTS.

...and here's why: I have reached my limit on the sheer number of total cunts who have in some way pissed me off with their discourteous attitude to their fellow road users. I have fucking news for you, asshole, THE HIGHWAY CODE APPLIES TO YOU, TOO! The Highway Code applies to cyclists. I'll tell you what, why don't I break it down for you? Why don't I give you a list? Some selected highlights from the past year, perhaps? And you can tell me, after you've taken this into consideration, whether or not you think I'm wrong to take up arms against this menace.

1 - ON THE ROAD

So last Winter, I think it was this year so either January or February, I had cause to stop by the Co-op on Great Western Road on my way somewhere. It was the evening, so it was dark, and it was raining quite heavily. I got into my car and prepared to join the flow of traffic. There was rain on my driver's side window. There was rain on my wingmirror. There was condensation on my rear view mirror. It was fucking unpleasant. I had my lights on and I was indicating right as a warning to traffic that I was intending to pull out. A break in the traffic. Wing mirror: checked, for all the good it was. Blind spot: checked, again for what good it did me. So as I am pulling out, by some quirk of good fortune, I look back over my shoulder again. In that split second I see a person on a bicycle. No lights, no helmet, ignoring the fact that I was pulling out, oblivious to the danger inherant in their approach to road safety. I managed to stop in time. They kept going as if nothing had happened. The car infront of mine also attempted to pull out and the same thing happened. The cyclist did not even slow down. No lights, no helmet, no regard whatsoever for their own safety or that of other road users.

More recently, once again on Great Western Road. It was night-time again and this time I was turning from Great Western Road onto Belmont Street. The road was wet and shimmering, but it was not raining. The traffic broke and I started to turn onto Belmont Street from the feeder lane. As I was almost through the junction, a man on a bicycle crossed my path. No lights. No helmet. Riding on the pavement along Great Western Road, crossing Belmont Street, without slowing down to look. Had he slowed down he would have seen a car, already turning into the street. Headlights on, indicator signaling intent. But he didn't. He didn't look. He just kept on going, regardless of the consequences.

More recently still, once again on Great Western Road. This was the other day. Early evening; it was still light. No rain. Driving up the road heading west, beyond Byres Road/Queen Margaret Drive, alongside the Botanic Gardens. I was in the lane nearest the pavement with traffic in both lanes moving freely. I passed a woman cycling on the road. No helmet. I gave her the proper distance when passing and went on my way. At the next cross-street, I was stopped at the lights. There was a queue of maybe two or three cars ahead of me, cars signalling to turn right were queued in the centre lane. The woman on the bike emerges, cycling at a leisurely pace up the middle of the two lines of cars. As she was about level with my window, the lights turned green and we began to move off. I had assumed that her intention was to turn right as she had moved to the centre of the road. However, as we moved off she carried on straight and by this point was veering in front of me, moving back over to her correct position on the road. The courteous driver that I am, I waited patiently for her to return to the side and then passed her once more, again leaving the proper distance. At the next set of lights, I observed in my mirror, she repeated the manoever. Fortunately for me, this time the nightmare remained behind me and I did not have to go through the ordeal of dealing with this moron for a third time.

2 - Parks and footpaths

As I'm sure many of you know, every day Sara and I walk our dog on the Kelvin Walkway. We are but two of innumerable dog owners who use this area of park land to exercise our beloved dogs. Every single day, every time we walk there, we are confronted by a seemingly endless stream of cyclists who also use the walkway to get to and from work, or merely for leisure purposes. A sign at the entrance to the Kelvin Walkway clearly states that the speed limit for vehicles - including cyclists - is 5mph. FIVE MILES PER HOUR. Five. Now, I hear what you're saying: "five miles an hour is ludicrously slow". "That's barely faster than walking pace". "If I wanted to travel that slow, I'd just fucking walk"...

AND THAT'S THE FUCKING POINT! 

The Kelvin Walkway is not a cycle path. It is a 'mixed use footpath'. Now, here's the deal. I don't give a shit how fast you ride your bike along the Kelvin Walkway, just as long as you slow the fuck down when you're riding past people with dogs and, I don't know, small children. All I ask is that you treat us with a tiny bit of common fucking courtesy. And you know what? Some of them do. You see, when I see a cyclist approaching and I'm out with Ciara, I bring her close to heel and have her sit in front of me, usually focussed on a treat. After they're all passed, she gets the treat and we move on. And in, I would say, 10% of those instances, we receive some kind of gesture of acknowledgement from the passing cyclist that we have INCONVENIENCED OURSELVES FOR THEIR BENEFIT. In the other 90% of instances, we receive no such acknowledgement. No nod. No thank you. No much obliged. Not the faintest hint of recognition. And you know what? I don't even care about that. I'm fine with that. Just don't run over my dog. Don't you mother fucking dare even come close to running over my dog. Because when I'm down there and you're whizzing by at 10, 15, 20mph and you don't slow down when you go past me and you don't offer up a glimmer of acknowledgement that I stopped MY WALK so that you could carry on about your day... if you so much as ruffle a hair on my dog's back I will kill you. That is how stressful you fucking people make it down there. I can't tell you how many dogs I personally know that have been hit or run over by cyclists on the Kelvin Walkway. We treat you with courtesy and respect, and you throw it back in our faces.

Which brings me to today. To this morning. To the reason why I'm so fucking angry at cyclists right now. Today, Glasgow Uni organised a charity bike ride. Don't feel bad if you missed it, the signs they put up were smaller than A4 size and they afixed them at knee height to one signpost. Here's a tip: there's a reason why signs are posted higher up... IT'S SO PEOPLE WILL FUCKING SEE THEM! Glasgow University, the brains trust, Russell Group, centre for excellence in research and teaching... Glasgow fucking Uni put signs up at knee-high. Those stupid mother fuckers. So today, on my morning walk with the dog, I had to contend not with one or two cyclists, but with a whole sodding peloton streaming down a MIXED-USE PUBLIC FOOTPATH with no warning that they would be there and with no supervision to make sure that they obeyed the rules of the path that they were using. Don't worry. I got a contact email, address and phone number for the person responsible for organising this and they are next on my contact list. I just had to vent a little bit first. Of the vast number of cyclists who rode past me today,  would say their average speed was about 15mph. One guy on a racing bike rode past us at nearly 30. And when I asked the volunteer what measures they were taking to ensure the safety of the other users - both canine and human - she said that the riders had been told of the speed limit. And then she pointed to the sign. Knee-high on a signpost. Nigh on invisible in a light green against the grass in the background. Text compressed onto a sheet smaller than A4. That was the sign to warn ME that THEY were going to using OUR footpath that day. I was also told that there were police along the route who were there to make sure the riders stuck to the speed limit. There were no fucking police.

Fact is, cyclists already treat the Kelvin Walkway like it's their own personal velodrome. Today, it's like they had official confirmation that the sole right of way was theirs and damn the consequences. I counted about fifteen dogs while I was out and a greater number of small children. Both dogs and small children have two things in common: they're unpredicable at times, and they don't understand the concept of a bicycle travelling towards them silently and unrelentingly at nigh on 30mph. They don't have the first clue what that might mean. So I put it to you, dear, dear readers of my blog: Am I Wrong? Because I've got half a mind to go down there with a radar gun and a baseball bat and anyone I catch speeding on a bicycle - I won't even enforce the 5mph, I'll give them 10... - I will cave their fucking skull in. Fair deal? I fucking think so.

Ten ways to live longer or die trying...

Look at Bruce Willis. Or should I say John McClane? Look at that poor fool, he just keeps on living. They're making him do another Die Hard film. A sixth Die Hard film. What the fuck is that about? If John McClane were a real person and he read the Guardian, I'm sure he would have read with some interest the article with which I became disgruntled earlier on today. Ten ways to live longer... He would have asked, at least in my mind he would have asked, where is the companion piece, 'Ten ways to die?'

But I'll come back to that train of thought later on. Firstly, what pissed me off so much about the original piece? Was it how eye-meltingly obvious many of the points were? No. That was to be expected. It was actually how monumentally offensive the overall tone of the piece ended up being. Basically, and I'm summarising here, if you want to live to a grand old age first of all don't live in Britain. Don't have had the misfortune to have been born here and if you did, at least have had the benefit of being raised elsewhere. If you do insist upon being British and living your paltry life here, don't live outside London. Don't smoke, don't drink, don't eat fatty food. Exercise. Etc. Etc. Also don't be stressed. Don't be stressed about the fact that you work too hard in a job that pays peanuts, or worse, that you're currently unemployed at perhaps the worst moment to be so in living memory.

Don't live in the North. Don't be from the North. Exercise. Eat nuts and seeds. Eat nuts and seeds like a bird. You fucking bird. You unemployed London bird. You fucking pigeon. Move to Japan. It's fucking great in Japan. Everyone's old. And happy, everyone's happy in Japan. And Spain. Fucking Spain. It's great, they have olive oil and tapas and it's sunny and people sleep during the day. Go to Spain. Fuck off to Spain. Who is this advice even for? What was the point? Why waste that paper on this crap. Maybe it will be ironically used to wrap up a fish supper.

There exists a tiny number of people who are not already either following all of that advice and, consequently, do not need it, or are too far gone down the road of being Northern or eating chips, drinking beer and smoking fags. They exist. Honest. But they're probably too busy having opportunities to stop and read some guff in the Guardian. So, I conclude, it was for me. It was a warning. I need to stop and think about how I'm living my life. I need to quit smoking and do more exercise. I need to eat less fatty food and eat more nuts and seeds. I need to move to Japan. Or Spain. Or London. Either way, I need to move South. I need to run to the train station and get on any train going South and not get off until I'm living ten years longer.

Oh fuck. Oh fucking hell. Wait a minute here. If I'm going to live ten years longer, I'm going to have to start planning for my retirement. Or am I? If this was twenty years ago, forty years ago, whatever, and I was planning to live to 70+, I would need to plan for my retirement. But this is now, and I'm probably going to have to work until I die, even if I live to 70. So what is the fucking point? The only good thing about living longer is the possibility of taking it easy, moving to the country, enjoying grandchildren occasionally coming to visit in the Summer holidays. But I won't have that. I'll be in a cubicle, nine to five, trying to do data entry with arthritis. Trying to remember the name of my boss who's thirty years younger than me. Trying to remember where it all went wrong.

You know where it all went wrong? I gave up smoking. I ate healthier even though it made me a twat. I exercised even though everyone looks stupid when they exercise. I even moved to Japan for a while, but had to leave because everyone was speaking Japanese. I lived in Spain, but had to leave because it's shit. It's nice for a holiday, but overall, it's shit. Tapas is shit. It's too hot and it's just shit. So I moved to London. You know what happens in London? Industrialised misery. Twelve million of the angriest twats you'll ever meet all crammed into a space that most dormice would find a bit too cosy. And they're all competing with eachother for housing, jobs, food, mates. It's like living in a really badly thought out zoo.

So I ended up back in Britain. Back up North. Working til I die. I have no friends because I had to give up everything that made me a likeable human being. I became an absolute ball-acheing twat and for what? The joy of working an extra few years in some (literally) dead-end job. Fuck you Guardian. I'll take my fags and my beer and my food. I'll enjoy the years I actually have. I'm not going to mortgage the best years of my life so that the worst years can last a bit longer.

On the future of the Halt Bar...

My attention was grabbed today by an online petition to save the Halt Bar on Woodlands Road (as if you didn't know where it is...). I was unaware, prior to this, that the Halt was under threat in any way. But the more I have thought about the situation, the angrier I have become.

The thought of turning an existing pub into a 'gastro-pub' is not, in and of itself, a bad idea. Some pubs should serve food. That should be an option open to patrons. I do not object to the concept of a 'gastro-pub'. What I do object to, however, is turning a good pub into a 'gastro-pub'. Allow me to illustrate with a comparison between the Hogshead/Primary/Old Schoolhouse and Uisge Beatha/Dram!

When I first came to Glasgow, the Hogshead was a generic food-pub option that was handy if not particularly memorable. If you were hungry, but wanted a pint also, it was good to have that option available. The place had no real distinctive character, the interior is spacious and the atmosphere is pretty much non-existent. That's fine. In its various subsequent incarnations, the overall vibe of the place hasn't changed. I would not miss it if it closed tomorrow. I can't imagine many people shedding a tear over its passing.

Uisge Beatha on the other hand, instantly became one of my favourite places to go drinking in Glasgow and retained its place in my top-five for all the time I lived here until it underwent its recent evolution from pub to 'gastro-pub'. I remember walking home from town having done some Christmas shopping and I saw the 'new' Uisge Beatha and I was almost overcome with revulsion. I went inside to see if it could possibly be as bad as it looked and it was a thousand times worse. A man outside, a patron, who appeared to be American was loudly extolling the virtues of this place for all to hear. I was sickened by his display. The list of things wrong with Dram! is substantial and it's far from necessary to go into it in depth here. Suffice to say, they turned a real pub with real character into a faceless, homogenised, corporate shadow of its former self. Like when a good friend joins a cult, it's a sad, sad time.

What bothers me more than anything about this shift away from real pubs is how short-sighted it is. Yes, 'gastro-pubs' are in at the moment. People who work in marketing will tell you that it's easier to make more money running one of these enterprises than it is a traditional pub. I will tell those marketing types to FUCK OFF. I will urge like-minded people, right-thinking people, to also tell them to FUCK OFF. If I want to eat and drink in the same place I'll go to any one of the hundreds of existing establishments already dotted around the West-end. If I want to share my drinking space with a shower of arseholes, I'm sure I can find a place (Dram!) where I can do that too. But soon, the marketing types will realise, once all the pubs are 'gastro' that some people want to just go to a cool place and drink. And then they'll realise that it's a hell of a lot easier to put the 'gastro' into a pub than it is to take it out and we'll all be fucked.

Make a stand now, or say goodbye to real pubs. It's as simple as that.

Panic on the streets of London...

I read in the fashion section of the G2 the other day that polka dots are back in. It seems, much like the Pale Horse, the polka dot brings with it hell, or at least the 1980s. Maybe these two events are unrelated.

Ok, so London. Riots. We've been here before. Let's examine the evidence.

1 - Tory government? Check.
2 - Economic recession? Check.
3 - Polka dots? Check.
4 - Need I go on?

Ok, so it seems we're back at this old chestnut. People have no confidence in their government. The vast majority of people are facing up to a future that is at best uncertain and at worst really fucking bleak. Unemployment is severe, we are in a recession, and the message is austerity. Add to that a Metropolitan Police Force that, in addition to several very public fuck-ups and a poor track record for handling protest both peaceful and otherwise, has recently been implicated at the heart of a massive corruption case regarding our old friends at the News of the World, and we have a cocktail most potent.

So who is Mark Duggan? Gangster or peace-loving father of four? Both? Neither? Well, he's dead. Did he shoot first? Hard to tell. Things seem to hinge on this mysterious bullet that was lodged in a police car radio. Early investigations, reported in the Guardian, suggest that the bullet is police issue. Oh dear. But he had a gun right? He shot first? For the sake of the credibility of the Met, I hope so. But I don't really. I'm not a fan of the trigger-happy keystone cops operation that seems to be running out of Scotland Yard these days. They shoot innocent people. They beat up innocent people to the point of near death. They get away with it. They sell information to News International. No, I don't like the Met. But no one can deny, it's been a pretty bad few years for them.

Who else? Well pretty much everybody is on holiday. The prime minister is on holiday, the home secretary is on holiday and the mayor of London, the quite incomprehensible Boris Johnson, is on holiday... You'd think the people of London would at least wait until everyone was home from their vacations before starting the party, but no. Theresa May is coming home. The other two, it looks like, are staying away. Who can blame them? Perhaps the most alarming piece of soundbitery that has been shat out during this whole ordeal is that the mayor of London was advised to stay away, lest his return send the message that the rioters have won. I might not have all rhe details here, but I'm pretty sure that this is not just a "we miss Boris" riot, or a "come home Boris" riot, or even a "let's ruin Boris's holiday" riot...this is a proper riot. Fuelled by tension, heated by mistrust of the authorities and who knows, maybe that mistrust is entirely justified.

I think people are angry. I believe that their anger may well be justified. I do not think that these events are indicative, as members of the government have suggested, of base criminality. I think that it would be a grave mistake to dismiss them as such. People are angry, I say burn the whole stinking metropolis to the ground starting with New Scotland Yard.

The nuts are taking over the nuthouse...

I am, for the most part, a reasonable man. I like to think that, up to a point, people should be free to have their beliefs, no matter how strange they may seem. I believe that there's even place for dangerous beliefs in a rational and civilised society. We need them. We need them to keep us honest, as it were. We need them to maintain the balance between sanity and insanity. In an ideal world, insane people would have total freedom to believe whatever nonsense they like, and to do so in a benign way that has little impact on the functioning of society. We do not live in this world. Yes, this makes me angry, but more than that, it makes me feel disappointed. I've expressed similar disappointment in the human race before, but the feeling is starting to overwhelm me. The events in Norway at the end of last week should give us all a cause to reflect on the kind of world we have made for ourselves. I'd like to think that for the majority of people, this kind of quiet contemplation can lead to a new resolve to prevent these kind of things happening in the future. For that to have any hope of happening, there are a few nutters that need to be taken care of first.

1. Glenn Beck.

Oh Glenn, where do we begin? Devising a strategy for attacking Glenn Beck is a challenge. Very few people have ever been quite so vile in quite so many ways. I'll take the cherry-picking approach, thank you.

'Glenn Beck likens Norwegian dead to Hitler Youth'.

Oh Glenn...who else hear the words 'Summer Camp' and automatically jumps to the Hitler Youth? Who? Really, I'm genuinely interested. Who? Ok, so it was a politically orientated Summer Camp. It was organised by that great enemy to civilisation, the Left. But was it in any way similar to the Hitler Youth? No. Not in any way. But Glenn...you made the connection. I wonder why... Maybe it's because you just wish you could have grown up in 1930s Germany. And I sympathise, Glenn, I really do. There are plenty of times in the past that I kinda wish I could go back to and relive my own youth in a different circumstance. San Fransisco in the late 60s perhaps. Chicago in the early days of House music. Paris...the list goes on. For you Glenn, maybe Germany in the 1930s. You probably feel unappreciated in your time. Even Fox, who will give the name 'news' to pretty much any shit that comes out of a right wing arsehole, gave you the boot. You're reduced to radio, like that other shit-spewing arsehole Rush Limbaugh. You're a voice in the ear now; like a wasp. Like an irritating buzzing wasp just flying around getting angrier and angrier going more and more insane. Someday you'll get fired from your radio show and then you'll really be fucked. You've even managed to piss off the Tea Party Movement (henceforth TPM) and they're pretty fucking out there. And how come they're pissed at you? Even after you held a rally for them, supported their brand of insanity publicly and privately...how did you fuck that up? Well, you said that those Norwegian kids who were brutally and senselessly murdered by an individual who aside from the fact that he was born in Norway instead of America is pretty much Glenn Beck v.2.0, reminded you of the Nazi Youth. And your TPM also happen to have similar ultra-right wing Conservative hyper-Christian indoctrination camps of their own. So what happened was, you accidentally drew attention not only to the now obvious fact that you're a truly hideous human being, but also to the fact that your beloved TPM is pretty much doing the exact thing you accused the Norwegians of doing.

Well fucking done Glenn Beck.

2. Melanie Phillips.

Yeah, she's the English Glenn Beck. She's like what you would end up with if you managed to accumulate and distill all the hate and bile in the world and then fuse that with a human embryo and have it be born and then give it a pen and tell it get writing, because hate speech just doesn't write itself (that is it didn't until the News of the World phone-hack random story generator machine was invented). This woman hates gay people. She hates Arabs. She hates the NHS. She hates Barack Obama. If she weren't so prominent, she'd be a humourous parody of the political and social Right, but sadly, she is a newspaper columnist and author. People who for whatever reason don't know any better actually buy into the toxic crap that seeps out the moral wound that is her, figurative, mouth. She is like gangrene. A flesh eating bacterial infection in British print journalism. She even hates the Archbishop of Canterbury. The only people she likes are Jews. Now, obviously there's nothing wrong with liking Jewish people. Unless they're twats, in which case, it's perfectly fine not to like them. So allow me to rephrase. She doesn't so much like Jewish people as reserve the most poisonous of her toxic comment, the most bitter of her hatred, for anyone (and I mean anyone

I've singled out these two people because they fucking deserve it. They have no concept of the fact that the work that they are doing is acting to bring about hatred, war, suffering, injustice, intolerance, violence, abuse and just all the general non-specific shit of humanity. They don't seem to care that in a room full of reasonable people talking quietly amongst themselves, they're the ones naked, screaming, rubbing themselves in their own shit and scrawling "THE END IS NIGH" and "REPENT" on the walls. It reminds me of the scene towards the end of David Fincher's Se7en. Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey are all in the car driving to the scene of the film's climax. Brad Pitt asks Kevin Spacey if, in a moment of clarity, he ever stops to notice just how crazy he actually is. To me, that is the voice of the sane Left. We're just amazed at how insane the Right actually is. And yes, sometimes it is horrifying. It's horrifying when Melanie Phillips spits hateful bile over the corpse of Steven Gately. It's horrifying when Glenn Beck spits hateful bile over the corpses of innocent Norwegian children. It's horrifying Sarah Palin incited the attempted assassination of a fellow politician. You know, the list goes on.

In my brighter moments, when the world and everything in it takes a break from weighing me down, I can just about make out a glimmer of hope somewhere on the horizon. I can imagine, if I try really hard, a future where the sane people win and the Glenn Becks and the Melanie Phillipses of this world are given a pleasant space with a soap box in it and they're allowed to shout their madness for all the passers-by to ignore. And no one shoots innocent children and no one commits heinous genocide. And then, the clouds erase that hope and reality comes crushing down and I realise that the Right will win. Insanity will always triumph over sanity becasue where we sit and debate and discuss they just go out and do. And what do they do? They blow shit up. They shoot people. They don't even care who they're shooting, or who they're blowing up because other insane people are allowed to occupy prominent positions in the media so that they can turn whatever's going on into a rallying cry in support of it, but also, paradoxically, in condemnation of it. It's all a bit confusing, but they don't mind, because they're mad.

What the fuck is up with Disney?

In the Guardian Film and Music section today, there was a piece about someone called Selena Gomez. I freely admit to having no knowledge, prior to reading that article, as to who she is or what she does. I discovered that she is the most recent creation to have rolled off the production line at Disney. And it really is a production line. Hilary Duff, Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers all came before her. Right now, in a lab somewhere, there's a foetus developing in a jar that in nine or ten years will star in a breakout role in a Disney film and then go on to recording contracts with Disney's record label, a TV show on the Disney Channel, made-for-TV movies, straight-to-video releases, and then, aged sixteen or some such, that child will be embroiled in a scandal and will be jettisoned like spent fuel from the Disney ship of dreams.

This does not bode well for Selena Gomez. Sure, it's all good now. Riding the wave of global celebrity. Well, sanitised celebrity anyway. So sex, no drugs, no rock and sure as shit no roll. A sell-out tour, legions of adoring (if barely pubescent) fans, platinum albums, a movie career, a hit TV show. For a regular human being, that is one not synthesised in Disney's secret lab, this kind of success in the entertainment industry is unheard of, impossible, the stuff of dreams and peyote hallucinations. But not for Selena Gomez. For her, this is the reality into which she was born (in a manner of speaking). Say what you like about Disney (and, be sure, I am about to) they plan ahead. Gomez is a 1992 vintage. She has, it might be argued, been aged that bit longer than normally would be the case. Perhaps this is due to the persistent success of her predecessors. Perhaps the formula was deemed to have required adjustment. Who knows? Well whoever does, they're not telling anybody about it.

So...what's my point here? Where am I going with this? Well, a lot has been written lately about News International and massive corruption, phone-hacking, political conspiracy, monopolisation of the media and so on, and I'm not going to add to that here. That dead horse has been flogged quite enough for the time being. But Disney...now there's a whole other kettle of fish. What concerns me is that I would, one day, weather permitting, like to have a child. I believe it to be a wonderful adventure and I look forward to passing on whatever wisdom or otherwise I might have gained from my own life etc, etc. But I worry. Yes, I worry that if my child was abducted and murdered that a newspaper would hack into her phone and then use that to fill me with hope that she was still alive and then print the story of my 'new hope' and so on...yes, I worry about that. But more than that, I worry that my child will fall victim to a corporation far more devious and insidious than News International...I worry that they would fall under the control of Disney.

Because you see, Selena Gomez, the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, they're not harmless entertainment for so-called 'tweenage' girls. They're marketing tools. They're machines for extracting money from parents and turning innocent children into mindless zombies. They do this through their music, TV shows, films, advertising endorsements, magazine interviews, live concerts, shows and public appearances. The article I read began with the story of three young girls who had skipped school to wait outside a London hotel for the appearance of Selena Gomez. This is what I'm talking about. This is not harmless. This is very fucking dangerous and no one seems to give a shit. It's like we've already given up on this generation. They're already lost to the power of Disney. And what kind of message are they getting from their adoptive corporate parents? Well I'm glad you asked, because this is where it gets a lot worse.

Once a child has been absorbed into the collective consciousness that is Disney, they become susceptible to the kind of messages that are encoded in all the products, songs, movies and TV shows. Their belief structure, the belief structure that as a parent, you may well have worked hard on helping them to develop, becomes Disney's belief structure. If my child came home wearing a Promise Ring, spouting that hateful nonsense, I would cry. I would scream out the name of the Beast. I would lament the loss of my child's free spirit. I would do everything in my power to undo that spell. But it's worse, because many parents see it as harmless. Some parents even see it as being a good thing. They encourage it. They buy them tickets to mass occult gatherings like Jonas Brothers concerts. They drive them there, and leave them. They willingly sacrifice their own children to the false gods of children's entertainment. Now I am no fan of organised religion, but wouldn't it be less damaging for a child to hear this crap coming out of the mouth of a Sunday School teacher, someone they're practically pre-programmed to ignore, someone boring and old who probably likes kids a little bit too much...

OK, so maybe I'm advocating handing your child over to a possible sex offender rather than take them to a Jonas Brothers concert...but I think I'm on to something here, so I'm going to run with it. To the modern child, a slightly touchy-feely priest is no figure of authority. A healthy mistrust of religion and the people who practise it is something that I would plan to instill in my own children, although allowing one of them to be molested might be going a bit far. But that's easy. Getting your child to mistrust Disney is surely much harder. The closest thing to a theme park that the Catholic Church possesses is the Vatican City aka Dullsville. The youngest priests are close to a hundred years old. The best looking ones, merely life-size puppets made out of old ball sacks. They're no competition for Jonas Brothers. Where are the friendly, down to earth, sixteen year old girl priests who seem like they live next door even though they inhabit a maximum security compound outside of Los Angeles? You get passed the collection plate in a Church, how much to you give? A pound? A few dollars? How much to you have to spend to satisfy the hunger of Disney? A tenner for a CD, twenty for a DVD, forty for tickets, not to mention the holidays to theme parks. You're talking hundreds, if not thousands of pounds. And all for a moral guardian no more suitable to the needs of a child than a paedophile.


Also, did I mention Walt Disney was an anti-Semite?