The drugs don't work...

A funny thing happened to me a few years ago. I lost my voice. "Hilarious", I hear you say, "You've really hit on something with this biting social satire"... Yeah? Bite me!... No. I don't mean I lost my voice in the 'suck on a Fisherman's Friend' type way, I mean I simply had nothing to say. For me this was both unexpected and a little bit scary, I seldom keep my opinions to myself and I certainly don't come across as shy and retiring. But, nevertheless, lose my voice is what I did.

Since I last put virtual pen to virtual paper there have been a few changes in my life, mainly concerning work. I was working in the public sector before I caught this strange form of finger laryngitis. The job was frustrating, often dull, and generally felt like a waste of life, but I could go to the pub occasionally and have a right good bitch and moan for a few hours, have a laugh about what a moaning old fart I was and then go home and pour vitriol out into the Internet and feel better about life by passing my take of hate out on people I didn't know... Happy times...

Then one day it stopped.

There was no warning. I certainly didn't stop having a moan, but it was unformed and undirected. I had no reason to write it down and, if I had, there was no reason for anyone to want to read it. My words were just gripes. My thoughts were just whinges. I had lost my voice in all but sound.

The job was consuming more of my energy and the office politics became real politics, I had less time to expel my bile on the page and, as a result, life became about work. So, I made the decision to change my job and that was when the sore throat became a serious and full blown medical complaint. I ignored my instincts and took a job I didn't want, doing work I didn't believe in for a company I didn't respect with people I didn't like. The reason I took it was for an increased salary but even before I took the job, I suspected it would be shit. I saw the money and thought "how bad can it be?". I soon found out.

It would be difficult for me to say how much I hated the job without writing it in smeared excrement on the wall of a padded room. I threatened to post a turd to my boss and I would have done it if I could have gotten the stamp to stick. I spent every hour in life in my office achieving the sum total of fuck all. My family and friends were neglected and I was boring myself with my own fuckwittery.

Then it went downhill. I became ill because of it. I collapsed in the office, I collapsed on the train and I collapsed in the shower. No warning, the lights just switched off and I would wake up in a heap. It happened about a dozen times and I was scared. The doctor's didn't have a clue what was causing it, but suspected it was probably my heart. I confess I have never taken very good are of myself - I am obese, drink too much and never get any exercise, and as for sleep, I have generally considered that cheating - but there was a learned professional telling me I was killing myself with stress at the ripe old age of 37. Well done, what a dick!

I then learned an interesting life lesson. I'm generally very good at my job, I work hard and I am generally respected by my peers, but I had become difficult to employ. I had made the mistake of choosing to leave 3 jobs within a 5 year period and that makes employers nervous. I had interviews, but there were few people interested in taking a gamble on a flight risk employee with a (potentially) dodgy heart during a recession.

However, I persevered - I'm nothing if not a stubborn bastard - and I succeeded in landing a new job, admittedly for a lot less money, but there appeared to be the potential that I might not kill myself or anyone else in the new role. As soon as I took it a weird thing happened. It was as though I'd just had a full packet of Strepsils. My voice came back. Suddenly there were a million things to say if I chose to. It was as though someone had taken lifted the gauze from my eyes and and pointed back at the old bile and hate filled arsehole that I was previously and said "go forth and spill your bile into the emptiness of the Internet, it can't all be about pornography so you may as well amuse yourself writing stuff that no-one will ever read unless you tag your posts with 'teen', 'anal' 'fucking', and 'Justin Bieber'...".

So, there we have it. It's been a long time, but hopefully my dry spell is over. So, is there anything new in the world to get sufficiently annoyed about that I feel the need to throw words at a page? Oh yes! I just hope my poor vocal chords can carry me through...

The campaign for racism...

Around 1,000 people set off on a march against racism in Glasgow today and yesterday. Their cause was vocally supported by a plethora of politicos - Alex Salmond, Gordon Brown, Jim Murphy, Annabel Goldie, Tavish Scott, Patrick Harvie and Grahame Smith (to name a few) - all eager to ensure that they are not branded with the politically suicidal ‘R-word’.

Racism is, of course, deplorable and must be dealt with in any free-thinking society, not just to benefit any specific minority (ethnic or otherwise) but for the good of the whole populace. However, a lot of white middle-class people are actively publicising how ‘not-racist’ they are, without really understanding what the racism they are so adamantly against is.

When I speak of a lack of understanding, I include myself in this group. I don’t feel like a racist, but I have a sneaky suspicion that I might be, and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to tell. I am vehemently against discriminating against any person because of heritable characteristics, culture, religion, background, place of birth or any other taxonomic concept of race, but I find casual racism is rarely a simple case of black and white.

When the media create a new celebrity racist, I find myself often wondering if racism is really the underlying cause. The whole furore surrounding some of the more notable wacky racists (like Jade Goody, Carol Thatcher and Anton du Beke) left me feeling, well...nothing. I found it difficult to believe that they were being genuinely racist, more ill educated, ill informed, and ill mannered than jackboot wearing xenophobes...

While alive, Saint Jade Goody was way down at the ore-ish end of the animal-vegetable-mineral scale and, as such, her comments can quite easily be considered stupid and ignorant, but racist? I’m not so sure... Carol Thatcher is a product of a different generation, many kids of a certain age grew-up with Robertson’s jams and had ‘Golliwog’ toys and, despite the term having been a racial slur for about 60-years, I don’t really believe that many people of a similar vantage and vintage think of a ‘Golly’ without their brain adding a silent letter ‘wog’ at the end. Most chose to keep it safely tucked away in their heads, but the white moral outrage smacks a bit of ‘the lady doth protest too much, methinks’, either that or an excuse to tar Carol with the same ‘evil-bitch’ brush as her mummy. As for Anton du Beke, his problem is even easier to understand – he’s a cunt.

No matter what progress is made towards societal harmony, terms of abuse will never go away. You will always have people pointing out obvious differences and using it to insult and hurt, whether it’s paki and nigger, muzzie and yid, or even specky and fatty. I believe the terms themselves are not important, it’s the intent behind it that causes the wounds. But, of course, the words then take on a life of their own and signify all the hate, spite and fear of the original intent. Simply pointing a difference is not a slur, but the inference that this makes them inferior is.

The problem now is knowing when a seemingly innocuous word could be misconstrued. I don’t mean the big, scary, obvious ones, but the more everyday words that can get confused in the context.

My social group (friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances, etc) includes a wonderfully diverse bunch of people, with equally diverse backgrounds, cultures, religions and skin colour. Those who chose to spend time with me tend (by necessity or otherwise) to have a bit of a sense of humour, and, if you have read any of my blogs before, you will probably realise that this can tend towards the...black.

I have thoroughly enjoyed watching colleagues torture themselves while trying to describe someone they don’t know to a black co-worker, describing their sex, age, height, build, hair colour, facial features, clothing and so on, desperately wanting to point out the big black guy without at any point mentioning that the subject of their mental gymnastics is in fact a ‘big black guy’:


White guy: “Someone was looking for you while you were away from your desk”
Black guy: “Who was it?”
White guy: “I don’t know their name”
Black guy: “Can you describe them?”
White guy: Thought: “AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! Why the fuck did I open my mouth?”
White guy: “It was a guy, I’ve seen you talking to him before”
Black guy: “What does he look like?”
White guy: Thought: “fuck, Fuck, FUCK!!!”
White guy: “He’s tall and quite big built”
Black guy: “...no, don’t know who you mean...”
White guy: “He’s got a mustache”
Black guy: “...nope, still don’t know...”
White guy: “Black curly hair, brown eyes...”
White guy: Thought: “Shit! I said black! Was that racist? Oh, please don’t let him think I’m racist”
Black guy: “...did they have any distinguishing features that might help?”
White guy: Thought: “If I say the big black guy with the foot-long afro he’ll think I’m a racist, what the hell else can I point out?”
White guy: “Nah. Sorry, mate. Hopefully, he’ll come back again later...”

Being a not particularly PC kind of guy, I admit I like to say things amongst the people who know me that will create an effect, whether it’s casual swearing, sarcasm or generally being offensive, my puerile little brain enjoys the ‘laugh followed by tut’ or ‘teeth sucking’ that invariably follows.

I call an esteemed co-conspirator a nigger and in return he calls me a honky,(actually while he does often call me a honky, he more usually just calls me a cunt, but we both know that it’s meant with a great pulsating affection). There is a back story to all this that can be enjoyed fully here, but suffice to say, I would never think about using a racial slur towards anyone else, and I would be beyond anger if I ever heard anyone else calling him this, or any other, racial epithet. The context, the history, and crucially, the intent is important. We have a shorthand that is mutually agreed, and anyway, he’s my nigger...

(...wait’s for the tutting and tooth sucking.... yup, there it is...! Nice!)

I don’t believe that there is an excuse for racism other than ignorance, but between consenting adults of any creed, colour or ethnicity, casual racism can be socially and if the parties are happy with the shorthand, and the intent is to bond rather than to hurt, it can even be a good thing.

While we shy away from recognising that there are obvious differences between people, we also shy away from accepting and celebrating the important similarities. We are missing out on an opportunity to enjoy having a great multicultural society. We are not all the same, but who wants a homogeneous McCulture? These same differences can make for a stronger, healthier society.

We seem to focus more on educating people against using the words themselves, and less on educating people not to feel the intent. If we work towards removing the hate and harm behind the words, perhaps we can get back to black being just a colour.

Things that make you go hmm...

I nearly pissed myself on Wednesday night watching the last few minutes of ‘The One Show’ on BBC1. Jamie Cullum was asked to play a song dedicated to a viewer’s mum, who had had a tough time going through chemo treatment for cancer, and “for all the other brave people in the UK going through this treatment”. A lovely sentiment, I thought, but the choice of song...

Cole Porter’s “I’ve got you under my skin”.

Perfect!

It’s been a long time, baby...

Yes. I’ve been away for a long time.
Yes. I do have an excuse.
No. I can’t be arsed telling you.

Get over it, I’m back...

Let them eat swan...

The BBC recently told us that the British monarchy cost every man, woman and child in the UK £0.69 per year. This figure was meant to show us just how little our monarchy costs, and that this was amazingly good value. Just think of all the hand waving and ribbon cutting we get for our money.

But this isn’t the whole story, is it?

Firstly, this figure includes every man, woman and child in the UK. If we restrict the numbers to just us taxpayers, it then shoots up to £1.33 each. “But that’s still a tiny amount of money”, the monarchists cry. True, but it’s a whole lot of tiny amounts of money. If my underfunded education taught me anything about arithmetic, when you multiply a small number by a big number you end up with, approximately, a shit-load.

The total cost of the Queen and the civil list to the taxpayer was £41.5m in 2008, but it’s not enough - the Queen wants more! To show us that she’s ‘one of us’ and that, like her subjects, she’s not immune to the credit crunch, she apparently had to dip into her £330m reserve (excluding the £10 billion Royal Collection) and cough up another £6m just to balance her books last year. That’s either a major cocaine habit, ma’am, or one will need to consider shopping at Lidl.

And £41.5m is still not the whole picture. This number doesn’t include the cost of military or police security. It’s their duty, “for Queen and country”, so it apparently doesn’t count.

If you ask anyone currently being treated for MRSA they caught in an NHS hospital, the parent of any child who didn’t get a place in their closest school, any student going through the education system, or any pensioner trying to heat their home on their meagre winter fuel allowance this winter, I’m sure they could think of a couple of things that they might consider more worthy investments of £41.5m before they wonder who will fund the royal train, the royal garden parties and state banquets.

If we decide to look further afield than the UK, according to the adverts £2 a month could make a real difference imagine; help a eliminate avoidable blindness, or could help families in Africa feed themselves or could help to provide clean water to some of the poorest people in the world. Just think of the difference we could make to the world for the sacrifice of having to come up with a new picture for the £5 note.

Actually, there’s an idea. If we, as a nation, decide we will spend our £0.69 a year each on something more useful than an insanely privileged few, the Queen could feed her family through modelling. No, really! She could license her image to the Royal (or Federal) Mint, or Royal (Federal) Mail. If she got desperate enough, I’m sure Nuts or Loaded would pay a fortune for a couple ‘off the shoulder’ shots – and what would Playboy pay for a centrefold...

...actually, maybe that’s not the best idea, but it would certainly modernise the Royal family more than a stint on ‘It’s a Royal Knockout’.

This year for my £0.69 I’ll have a Greggs cheese and onion pasty. The blind kids can wait until next year.

Fuck the dwarves...

As any regular reader may have grasped already, I don’t aim, or profess, to be the most Politically Correct (PC) blogger on the web. However, there are times where I veer towards a socially unacceptable viewpoint. This is one of those times.

I don’t like disabled people.

I should possibly elaborate on this. I don’t dislike all disabled people, but I know a few disabled folk who are just pains in the arse so I can’t say I like disabled people – much in the same way I can’t say I like white people, black people, Christians or Muslims – I like and dislike individual people, not groups.

I have known a fair number of people who have a disability of one form or another; deaf-mute, blind, cerebral-palsy, autism, dwarfism, schizophrenia, Welsh, etc . The only thing that unites all of these people is not disability; it’s that they have the same range of diversity as the able population.

It is ridiculous to lump people together with any generic term. I’m short and fat, but I don’t speak for all short and fat people, I am not an example of a type of human epitomised by shortness and fatness. If you like me you don’t necessarily like all short, fat people – unless that’s your fetish, in which case, each to their own...

To give an example here, I know a dwarf. He is a racist, bigoted, angry little shitbag. He’s not a lot of fun to be around, and so, I try to avoid him. I couldn’t give a shit about his height, or lack of it, I just don’t like the views he espouses every time he opens his tiny little mouth. A prick is a prick, however high he can reach.

I suppose the point I am trying to make here is that while the PC PCs are patrolling our thoughts, they are forgetting the principal point of PC-ness – people with disabilities are just people. Some are fabulous, wonderful people who enrich the lives of the people around them and, conversely, some are cunts.

Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough...

I think everyone probably has a “I remember where I was when I heard that ‘such-and-such’ had died” story. For me, it’s John Lennon. Despite being far too young to know anything about him when he died, I remember my teacher telling us that he was the guy who wrote ‘Yellow Submarine’ and for some reason that etched itself onto my infant mind.

Of course, there have been others over the intervening years. The mass hysteria surrounding Princess Diana’s death left me feeling excluded. I didn’t feel a part of the subsequent outpouring of national grief, and, to this day, I still don’t get it. I remember coming into my parents living room and hearing some reporter or other talking about a royal death and just assumed that the Queen Mother had finally snuffed it.

This week Michael Jackson joined the exclusive group of dead personalities and celebrities that give people their ‘I remember where I was’ stories. This small group have surpassed mere celebrity and became ‘Icons’. Along with the likes of JFK, Elvis Presley, James Dean, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Marilyn Monroe (amongst others), this group’s fame reached across generations and, with the aid of a tennis player scratching her arse and a guy holding a baby, kept Athena going for years. (Come to think of it, Athena only went bust after MJ became a plastic manfreak – I wonder if it’s related?)

Anyway, I digress...

It’s always rather sad when someone dies young, and despite what you may think about MJ as a human being, he was a talented musician, entertainer and showman. He touched many people (pun intended).

However. while watching the last three days of ‘Michael Jackson still dead’ updates on every news bulletin, interviews with the always relevant Uri Geller and ‘Blanket’ coverage of MJ’s family, I can’t help but wonder if there is anytihng else that could be considered newsworthy happening in the world?. I suppose the loyalist paramilitary decommissioning of weapons is, at heart, simply a local interest story and when you get really into the detail of the situation in Iran, it’s still really far away and they’re all ‘a bit dusky’ over there... !?!

I expect that the editors of the Daily Telegraph are crying their eyes out. Not because ‘the King of Pop’ is dead, but because the run they have had on the expenses scandal has finally been relegated to page five.

For the members of ‘the Icon Club’, it’s not the contributions they made to popular culture that we typically remember, it tends to be the ‘car crash’ (figuratively or literally) that really elevates their status. For every live fast, die young James Dean, there are at least a million live slow, don’t die Chesney Hawkes...

Also, we have lost out on some great and worthy icons purely because they didn’t have the forethought to die before they did something to fuck-up their blossoming iconic status.

For example, Ozzy Osbourne could have been remembered as the Prince of Darkness forever, rather than the shambling, incontinent wreck he is these days, if he’s only thought to die in the early 90’s. Cliff Richard really could have been the British Elvis, if he’d only have crammed-down a couple of pies and shat his way into the Iconosphere – but no! He had to don a purple stripey blazer and sing to the grey-hair brigade at Wimbledon. We’ll always pine for the wasted genius of John Lennon, but Paul McCartney? If you wanted to die a real Icon, you should have thought of that before you hooked-up with the one-legged, mental, gold-digger...

Anyway, goodbye Mr. Jackson. If you see her, give Ms. Fawcett my love. You are not alone...

Abide with me...

Yesterday saw another Summer Solstice pass with little incident at any of the major Pagan sacred sites. Having seen images of the 36 thousand-odd Swampy-like revellers at Stonehenge peacefully witness the overcast dawn of the longest day in the northern hemisphere, I wondered in what other circumstances would such a diverse cast of individuals get together to joyfully celebrate the religious ceremony of a small minority at their sacred place of worship.

I don’t know for sure, but I don’t expect most of the people gathered at this event were card-carrying Druids or Pagans of any sect, but they shared a moment together where the diverse belief structures, moralities and ethical frameworks didn’t matter – they just wanted to enjoy a spiritual act together, whether it belonged to their belief structure or to someone else's. (Although, I expect some of them thought they were at Glastonbury and were actually just wondering when The Prodigy were coming on).

Were their beliefs all that different?

I was born into a working-class family in the West of Scotland and, like everyone around me, my moral structure was actually a reflection of my parents, and their parents before them. So, for the young SpiderBoz, Protestant Christianity was it. I was baptised into the Church of Scotland before I had a voice to object, and was handed my chalice of guilt to carry with me until I sought escape.

I quickly grew to understand that there could be a choice of more than simply left-foot or right-foot Christianity. My friends had a wide variety of different belief structures (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islamism, Mormonism, Sikhism and so on), but to my forming mind this was simply semantics. Anyway, they still believed in ‘God’ so difference did it make?

The main thing was, irrespective of culture or religion, we had a commonality of morality. Albeit different, we had a moral framework from which to hang our ethics. For most it was based on differing theistic beliefs but we, on the whole, got on. As far as I can remember, there were no Crusades or Spanish Inquisitions, there were very few witch-burnings and nobody declared a holy war on anyone, with the exception of the Rangers-ites and Celtic-ists, but that was mostly fought in an orderly fashion on the battle pitch.

These days I don’t believe in god, but I still thank my parents for this part of my upbringing. Not because of the long, tedious hours spent in church and Sunday School on Sundays, or at bible school and Boys Brigade during the week. I thank my parents for the moral and ethical standards that they instilled in me.

More and more parents are looking to the state to provide an ethical framework in schools, while the schools are struggling their way through the increasing burden of bureaucracy with little, if any, power to enforce discipline within their walls. As I look at the news reports of children forming delinquent gangs, assaulting each other and attacking disabled people, I can’t help if morality is solely taught through post-watershed TV, the internet and the Xbox.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that religion should be adopted or taught in schools, nor am I saying that religion in itself is a good (or bad) thing. What I am saying is that people need to be shown right from wrong before they have been nurtured by society into delinquency. And, frankly, this is the parents responsibility. If you don’t feel you can provide a decent, loving, respectful, moral and ethical upbringing for a child - keep your junk in your pants.

Seriously. If you try to get an animal from the RSPCA, you have to fill in a questionnaire to assess your knowledge and suitability to look after the animal, subject yourself to an interview to ensure that will provide an acceptable level of love, patience, time and commitment, have a home visit to ensure that your house is ‘good enough’ for the pet, and they will even ensure that you have sufficient income to pay for it’s care and upkeep, too. If you want to bring a child into this world, all you need to do is down enough lager or Bacardi Breezers to convince yourselves that getting jiggy without any protection would be a fine and dandy idea. You need a license to own a gun, or to drive a car or even to own a TV, but you can drop a multitude of future ASBO recipients without even knowing the name of the other parent...

We need to get back to a state of morality. Bringing gods into the equation seems to be a recipe for high-horse ranting, politically correct wankness, or exploding backpacks. Well-intentioned Humanists seem to have gone too far down the Richard Dawkins organic, fair-trade, free-range, tie-dyed ethics route. So what does that leave us?

Well, after an entire morning of agonised soul searching I have finally found a religion I can relate to. The good book is an uplifting 2-hour long film, so you don’t have to spend years dedicated to it’s learnings, the ideology could fit easily on a postage stamp but it gives a better moral education than can be found in the ethics teachings of all the schools across the land.

Dudeism

By the middle of the first afternoon on my quest for faith, I had even taken the oath to become an ordained Dudeist priest. So, if you’re reading this from the good-ole U, S of A, and you want the Reverend SpiderBoz to officiate at your wedding (subject to legal confirmation from the local County Clerk) as long as you’re happy to pay for my travel and accommodation expenses, don’t hesitate to drop me a line...

For all the world religions, faiths, belief structures, moral frameworks, and so on. I can find few who can sum up what I have been trying to say so succinctly and eloquently:

“Life is short and complicated and nobody knows what to do about it. So don't do anything about it. Just take it easy, man. Stop worrying so much whether you'll make it into the finals. Kick back with some friends and some oat soda and whether you roll strikes or gutters, do your best to be true to yourself and others - that is to say, abide”

Amen

Ding, Dong! The witch is injured...

I had a very brief flicker of doubt about my social conscience this afternoon.

I found myself strangely cheered by the thought of an 83 year-old woman falling over in her home and breaking her arm. The old woman in question has dimentia and a history of strokes, but yet the thought of her falling over and breaking her upper arm briefly brought a warm glow and a sense of peace to what was turning out to be a reasonably ordinary day of work, work and work.

“What the fuck is wrong with you!”, I hear you say.

Where could I possibly begin to answer that...

Luckily, in my mind, an imaginary someone helps me to find a possible answer; “Are you some kind of sociopath?”

Possibly... Given the evidence to date, I couldn’t in good faith rule it out...

“She’s just a defenceless and senile old woman in a state of distress. And you find that heartwarming?!?”

Yup! A little. I’m not jumping for joy, but I’m not crying for our damaged society, either.

I could say I don’t feel good about myself for it, but I’d be lying. I don’t feel anything about myself for it. But I still feel... not exactly happy... but certainly content.

“Sick cunt!”

True. But I suppose I should give a bit of context to this before the authorities are called, or you decide you have happened across some strange, niche market, fucked-up blog about geriatric cage-fighting. The old woman in question is not an elderly relative or some kindly old spinster helping out at the local Oxfam. She’s not even a neighbour with deliveries of milk spoiling outside her door while I amuse myself at the thought of her slowly wasting away alone and forgotten by the world she was once a vibrant part of thanks to the wonderful policy of ‘care in the community’.

The old woman in question is Margaret Thatcher.

The news report stated that “she had tripped and fallen at about 0800BST. An ambulance was called and she was transferred under police escort, with her special branch protection detail, to the hospital”. Most of us will never receive anywhere near that kind of special treatment in our dotage, partly thanks to the privitisation of the NHS in the 1980’s, but I presume that Baroness Maggie will be in the best of hands.

So, back to the brief concern for my social conscience. Should I feel bad for her or not? After all, “There is no such thing as 'society', there are individual men and women, and there are families."

I was in primary school when she became the first (and, to date, only) female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. My formative years were against a backdrop of New Wave and New Romantics in the charts, big hair and shoulderpads in the streets, and the A-Team and Knight Rider on the rented Rumbelows TV in the living room. My young self knew little of politics in the early 1980’s, but I knew that the bogeyman was real - and her name was ‘Maggie’, ‘The Iron Lady’ or simply ‘Thatcher’. She was the one who stole the milk and caused Santa not to visit my friend’s whose parents were forced out of work from the industry we used to have.

I grew into a teenager through her reign, to a background of social unrest, industrial strife and high unemployment. The attitude of the country was that ‘Greed is Good’ and through monetarist economic policy and economic liberalism, this was reinforced by our country’s leaders until it helped us into the economic crash of the of the late 1980's and recession of the very early 1990’s – all under the rule of that same wandered, frail and injured old lady.

Even years later, long after she had departed from power, when, as an adult, I had to pay my poll tax and student loans, I realised I was still suffering for being one of ‘Maggies children’.

It would be naive and churlish to say any of the current recession and economic crisis is due to Thatcher’s policies, we have had almost 20-years and a succession of governments to right the political wrongs, if not the memory of the fashion wrongs, of the 1980’s. But we don’t appear to be able to learn from history.

Our current Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Lord Mandelson once claimed of New Labour that “we are all Thatcherites now”, and in terms of economic policy this seems scarily accurate – history has a habit of repeating itself.

In the long term, it will be interesting to see how history remembers Margaret Thatcher. I, like many of my generation, will not remember her fondly. But now there’s an outside chance that one day in the future, once they finally stake her into her casket, I will remember a day way back in 2009 when she did something to bring a smile to my face and a warm feeling to my soul.

“To wear your heart on your sleeve isn't a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best.”

Extending the hand of antipathy and enmity across Europe...

I recently had to wipe off a mouthful tea I had just spat into the face of a close friend.

The reason for my ejaculated beverage was that, while talking about the European elections, my dampened friend had previously commented that they were completely disillusioned by all of the major political parties and that they were thinking of voting for the British National Party (BNP).

Once I had dried my friend off and apologised for any minor scalding, we then discussed their rationale in a more mannered, and ultimately drier, way. We spoke of political policies leading to the credit crunch and of the recent expenses scandal and of any number of other political SNAFUs over the last few years, we also spoke of the reactions the other parties and how this amounted to little more than white noise and bluster rather than anything substantive.

I could only concur with their assessment of the state of politics in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, but had to disagree with the conclusion that the best way forward for the British people in Europe was to vote for a legitamised state of racism, mistrust and hatred. (See Private Eye, No. 1237 “The expenses row has really put me off politics... so I’m going to vote for racism, bigotry and hatred instead”)

For the sake of our continued friendship, we agreed to disagree.

Back on my own, I felt a strange unease about this visceral reaction to my friend’s political opinion. It played on my mind, not because I had hosed-down a close friend with a mouthful of Assam, but, I thought, it was because my reaction was based on an assumption that I knew the politics of the BNP on the basis of my stereotyping of their target demographic of tattooed fuckwits with their family-pet pitbulls that grace any coverage on the news.

I consider myself a reasonably conscientious voter; I take the time to read the manifestos of the major parties, I try to at least have a passing understanding of the major issues and the stance the parties have on them, I try to understand the ‘themes’ of the party policies without simply relying on the soap-box politics of the modern media. In short, I throw down my cross from a position of, at least, a modicum of knowledge. I can consider my vote has been cast from a considered, measured and rational choice. To my understanding at least, this is the basis of a modern democracy.

In reading their manifestos, I felt I had given at least a fair crack-of-the-whip to Labour, the Scottish National Party (SNP), the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish Green Party and even the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the Jury Team. (On the day of the vote, I realised there were a few more I hadn’t looked into (No2EU, the Christian Peoples Alliance, the Socialist Labour Party, the Scottish Socialist Party and the independent candidate Duncan Robertson) but if they haven’t done enough to even slip into my consciousness – fankly, bollocks to them!

So with this in mind, and in the spirit of equity, I decided I had to have a look at the ‘manifesto’ of the BNP. To save you the bother of looking for it (seriously, don’t bother), it amounts to a series of bullet-points basically saying (and I’ll admit I’m paraphrasing a bit here), “everything is their fault, send them home”, whether they have ever been to said ‘home’ in their life is apparently of no relevance. So exactly what I thought it would be; racist, bigotted, isolationist, protectionist, lowest-common-denominator bullshit.

Unfortunately, my feeling of unease wasn’t sated by giving myself a better knowledge of the ravings of the dumbfuck community, or even by that lovely smug feeling of being right at the beginning, I still felt the same unsettled feeling deep in my bowels.

And then I got it...

It wasn’t the fact that I didn’t understand the fucktard fraternity. It wasn’t even that someone close to me had such a lapse of judgement to consider it a good idea voting for them. It was the vote itself!

Here I am spending hours reading the sales-brochure propaganda of those professional gobshite politicians (of all flavours), making sure I understand what they stand for and what good intentions will be forgotten, watered-down and/or corrupted if they get into power, and meanwhile any dumbass, mouth-breather can make their way into a polling station and scrawl an ‘X’ on a page which, en masse, will affect every aspect of the lives of single person in the country – and more importantly, to me!. Is this what democracy is all about?

I mean, for fuck’s sake, people will even pay money to phone Sky News to register a vote of “No Opinion” – if you don’t have an opinion, save 50p and don’t fucking vote, you dumb fuck....! What chance do we have when trying to get the common prole to understand (or even give a shit about) the vagaries of economic, health or environmental policy when they can’t even yack-up an opinion on whether Jordan and Peter will get back together.

I understand the concept of universal suffrage, that everyone should be entitled to have their vote counted and treated equally. As an ideology, it sounds great. But, have a look at the common voter. Look at any city centre at about 11pm on a Saturday night and ask yourself “is giving these people the right to decide on policies affecting taxes, defence, social care, health, economy, education and so on, really the best that we can come up with in the 21st century?” By treating everybody equally under the current party politics system, we are allowing all of our lives to be dictated to by people who haven’t the faintest clue what any of the parties stand for.

People vote for all different reasons; they vote for the same party their parents voted for (possibly due to some misplaced loyalty or genomic imprinting), they vote for the person who has a nice smile, they vote for a party they heard a soundbite they agreed with (irrespective of the rest of their policies), they even vote for fucking Boris Johnson because he was unintentionally funny on “Have I Got News for You”, but how many people vote from a position of knowledge and understanding?

It’s time for a change. If we are to have a democracy at all, don’t have the shambling hoards pick a name they don’t know from a list of political parties they know nothing about, preaching a gospel they don’t understand. Give people a multiple choice exam on the political issues - and make it a hard one! If they don’t get enough correct answers, they aren’t knowledgable enough to have their opinion counted.

Don’t give me any politically correct bollocks either. People are not equal. Not because of race, sex, sexuality, belief, background, education or anything else that certain political factions might want you to believe. The new underclass simply don’t care enough to find out the issues, understand the drivers for change and the repercussions, and then to make an informed choice.

If that’s you, then, like my ill informed and tea-soaked friend, in the world according to SpiderBoz, you don’t qualify for a say.

Come the revolution...



NB: When preparing my blog entries I always try to link to any site that I feel will add to the understanding of the context of my blog or that deserves recognition in it’s own right. On this occasion however, I will not link this blog to anything remotely related to the BNP as I do not want to add, even in the smallest possible way, to the legitimacy of this collective of degenerate, neanderthal scum.

My house doesn’t have a moat, so who I am I to judge...

The whole saga of MPs allowances and expenses has been going on for quite a while now and up until now I have (mostly) avoided blogging about it. I’ve avoided it mainly for health reasons. Every time I see one of their self-important, smug, shit-eating faces on the TV or read about their repeated rape of the déclassé proletariat in the news I start to feel nauseous, my heart rate raises to an uncomfortable just-eaten-a-deep-fried-Mars-bar level and I then need to sit in a darkened room for a while in case I suddenly ‘Hulk-up’!

Incidentally, when I say this sorry saga has been going on for quite a while I don’t mean since the Daily Torygraph published their first ‘scoop’ a the beginning of April this year, I remember having a laugh about it as far back as the middle of 2005, when Armando Iannucci’s fabulous ‘The Thick of It’ first made me laugh at the absurdity of corruption in the MPs allowances and expenses system.

I’m not laughing now...

I don’t actually care that they are all claiming expenses. If there is a need for something to be purchased that is reasonably required for them to be able to do their job, then that, in my mind, is OK. The fact that the growing list of embarassing items contains toilet seats (glittery or otherwise), jellied eels, a Corby trouser press and even tampons for a guy (I’m assuming the immigration minister Phil Woolas is a guy, although I haven’t personally checked inside his Ys), is all an amusing and titilating distraction from the real problem...

The real problem is the fact that the people we entrust (and pay) to govern the country think that this is acceptable behaviour. That the fact it doesn’t appear to be against the wording of the rules means that they believe they can justify procuring anything they want and we, the plebeians, foot the bill for it. The fact that it is morally bankrupt doesn’t appear to be an issue.

Whoever wrote the rule book probably didn’t think to include anthing to stop these right honourable members claiming for cleaning their moat, changing their lighbulbs or building a house for their fucking ducks. This might be because any reasonable person (never mind an honourable one) would possibly stop for a second while they are filling in their legitimate expenses claim and say to themselves; “Hold on a second... I’ve already paid this mortgage off... This could be considered taking the piss...”.

Many of these parasites have defended their overblown claims by saying they were made within the rules and were agreed with the fees office. To me, this smacks rather too much of the of the old Nuremberg defence. Frankly, we deserve better. If you’re going to try to justify your theft and deception, at least try to use your imagination.

There has also been a fair bit of commentary saying that the poor MPs are paid only a small basic salary and that any radical overhaul of the allowances system means that they would have to substantially increase MPs basic wage. This is simply a load of bollocks. MPs are paid an annual salary of £64,776– more than 2.5x the UK average salary (£24,809) or a massive 6.1x the UK minimum wage of £10,428.60 (assuming a typical 35hr working week for workers over 21). According to their own statistics, their, so called, small wage places them firmly in the top 10% of wage earners in the country, so please don’t try to make us feel sorry for you. If you want to earn the big money, go and work for RBS, it is public-sector after all.

Following the Nolan Committee's First Report on Standards in Public Life in 1994, our public servants, including MPs, are supposed to adhere to The Seven Principles of Public Life; Selflessness, Integrity, Objectivity, Accountability, Openness, Honesty, and Leadership. There are very few of our MPs who have shown any of these admirable traits recently. It would appear that these are not so much Principals, more like pointers or suggestions. Just like the serving suggestions you get on the back of a ready meal, a nice helpful alternative that no-one ever follows.

So, to any MPs who might happen across this humble blog, here’s a radical idea. You can keep your top-10%-of-wage-earners-salary; after all we want to attract at least the top 10% of intellect to the job. You can continue to claim for reasonable expenses "wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred from the purpose of performing your Parliamentary duties", but, for fuck’s sake, get someone with a bit of nous to police it. If you then want a house for your daughter, a new marble table, mock tudor beams, a 42” plasma screen TV or even hundreds of bags of horse shit – buy it from your salary like the rest of us. After all, that’s what all of us ‘little people’ do when we get paid – it’s called a job.

Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry...

I dreamed a dream...

I would like to wish Susan Boyle good luck with the TV popularity contest next week.

She has endured her fifteen minutes of fame through a rollercoaster ride of derision and condecension, but she has at least displayed a modicum of the the elusive titular talent that the good Mr. Cowell and his irrelevant stage-dressing companions have futilely tried to assure us that “Britain’s got”.

In case you’ve missed the story arc, I’ll summarise it as succinctly as I can: a fairly unremarkable older woman, who has a fairly unremarkable life and a rather less than comely appearance has a reasonably nice voice. She performed on a TV ‘talent’ show and appeared to catch out the audience and judges by showing that a middle-aged homely fat bird can sing a bit. She then took the media world by storm...

I have been vaguely fascinated by the way various ‘entertainment’ media have propagandised this non-story. I’ll grant you that the woman has a reasonably nice voice, but let’s put this into a bit of perspective here, we’re not talking Kiri Te Kanawa or Montserrat Caballé (or even Aretha Franklin or Whitney Houston or a any host of others depending on your musical preferences).

The story that the media are trying to sell us has got little to do with a human interest story, even less to do with newly discovered talent from deepest darkest West Lothian, and, unfortunately, absolutely fuck all to do with Susan Boyle.

The real story is another typical media hypocricy.

Despite the fact that the pretty people are everywhere - on film, TV and magazines, despite the fact that we have makeover shows on 24-hours a day on 500 different channels, despite the fact we are bombarded with features on how to get the perfect body/face/complection in just “5 easy steps” and we are all going to die because of our lifestyle (eating too much, not eating the right things, drinking too much, not doing enough exercise and so on) – you, yes YOU, you can still be a star! Even with the frizzy hair, pockmarked pizza face and the spare tractor tyre around your waist, if you really want it and you live your dream, YOU can still be the Next Big Thing.

Susan Boyle is no longer a real person. She’s an allegory for all of us living normal, unremarkable, unrecognised existences. All she’s there for is to fuel the media beast, to ensure that there is a continuing line of mediocre people ready willing and able to prostrate themselves in front of the great god public scrutiny for our cheap viewing pleasure and for something vacuous to digest along with the makeover shows and “Top 10 skinny celebrities”.

I really do wish her well with the contest and I hope she milks it for every single penny she can get. In real life, she’s most likely not going to be the Next Big Thing, just the last one...

Bring on the spangly green dancer...

Every year I go over to a close friend’s house to enjoy the spectacle that is the Eurovision song contest. Every year follows a similar template. My friend lives out in the countryside, so every year I pick up another friend who lives near me and we then drive over to our mutual friend’s house where we meet with a larger party of friends and we swap pleasantries for an hour or so before the main event.

Every year my friend’s wife puts on a fabulous buffet spread and we enjoy the wonderful food, have a few drinks (non-alcoholic for me of course) and generally enjoy each other’s company before subjecting ourselves to trial by Europop.

Every year my friend’s wife very thoughtfully prints out scoring sheets from the BBC Eurovision website and warns us not to start our scoring too low at the beginning, and we all laugh knowing this to be oh-so true.

We then vaguely watch the show and laugh at the funny Europeans. We discuss how the tactical voting will go and, as expected, groan when all the neighbouring countries give each other “douze points” as we predicted. We laugh at the outfits, we laugh at the songs, we laugh at the dance routines, we laugh at the token fat one (the only one who can actually sing), we laugh at the scary one, we laugh at the Germans, we laugh, we laugh, we laugh...

All very middle-class, all very jolly, all very nice and all very pleasant.

This year followed exactly the same template as every other year and I had a nice time in nice surrounds with nice company and nice food. Nice. Nice. Nice.

However, something new happened this year. This year there was a revelation, a revelation in the unlikeliest form.

Albania.

Don’t get me wrong, the song was still shit like all the rest, the singer was a forgettable Europop singer like the rest, but the act, my god, the act was a revelation!

Now, before you read on you have to see this shit...! Seriously, watch it now...! Don’t worry I’ll wait until you get back...

Did you see what I mean! The guy in the tight green sequined body suit was wonderfully bizarre. He had absolutely nothing to do with anything, he wasn't dancing, he wasn't singing, he wasn't even co-ordinated with the others, in fact, he was just truly fucking weird!. I’m not sure if he thought he was on a green screen and was meant to be moving the set around, or in fact what the fuck he was doing there, but wow! All I could think was that he should be taken on by the rest of the TV channels.

Imagine how much more palatable the evening news would be if he was fannying around behind the newsreaders and they didn’t acknowledge his presence. Who would really care that the politicians were fucking us up the ass by having us pay for them to over-legislate, over bureaucratise, have illegal wars, allow the elderly to live in poverty, under-educate the youth, demolish our economy, and cripple the NHS – all this while still making us pay to clean out their fucking moat like the good little serfs that we are.

That spangly green guy could keep us all happy.

“Look darling, our trusted politicians and public servants have unexpectedly let us down. They have stolen our hard earned cash while systematically destroying our economy, placing all of our jobs at risk and borrowing so much money that our children’s, children’s, children will still be picking up the bill”

“True dear, but that prancing little green fucker has completely distracted me from my despair and my fear for the future with his modern improvisational dance...”

Surely, it's got to be worth a try?

Social networking saves the world...

It’s funny. Despite being the vitriol filled sod that I am, I have never really had any problem with the idea of social networking. I suppose this is mostly because it used to be so easy to ignore, it seldom crossed into mainstream media and the exceptions tended towards the exceptional - the occasional celeb crying for help while being stuck in a lift (a la Stephen Fry) or someone sharing their nervous breakdown (a la too many to list).

The tide of banality appears to have turned.

Most of us started by reinventing ourselves with a brief profile on Friends Reunited, however, this was too limited in its scope. Few of us used it to do much more than cry for the nostalgia of the past with people we knew at school or college. For me, this meant having a look to see who was continuing to shine with the promise of mediocrity that was shown ‘back in the day’. But Friends United lied to me. The people on were not my friends - separated or otherwise. If they were my friends we wouldn’t have lost touch, we would have made the effort because we wanted to be BFFs. They were an accident, they were flotsam, they were convenient acquaintances due to location and access, but mostly they were not my friends.

Although a large number of social networking sites popped up at around the same time, MySpace seemed to be de rigueur for a while. Not only did I now have access to keep up with all my old not-friends, I can chose to become “friends” with new virtual people (or “friends”) I have never heard of! This was revolutionary...

I could soon chose between a whole host of service options to enable me to not really engage with my “friends” – MySpace was joined in the list by Bebo and Facebook which really took this disengagement to a new level. I could now look at photographs of the lives of my not-friends, I could listen to their music, I could contribute comments to their musings, I could wish them belated happy birthdays and coo over their children and admire their cats, and I could feel the growing pains of their virtual angst.

But by far the most important thing was that I could do all of this whilst naked in front of my computer and in the comfort of my own home. I could still be a part of a community of real people without all that pesky physical interaction where I would have to look into their eyes, laugh with them (other than LOL and LMAO), touch them, smell their body odour, read their body language, insult them, be insulted by them and generally touch lives with them.

And then, whole new level of non interaction... I can further streamline my non- communication with all of my non-friends, I can follow people without being accused of stalking, I can even have followers (praise Lord SpiderBoz), I can tell the whole virtual world my deepest, darkest thoughts – as long as it’s done in 140 characters or less. Good god, I can Tweet...!

Twitter just makes the whole process of not communicating even easier, I barely have to think and I can tell the virtual world all about what I’m not thinking... Wow! How did I cope when I had to make an effort to try to like people, or to make an effort to love or hate people, or even to leave my house.

Bring the virtual revolution on. I can’t wait to see less of the ones I love, I can’t wait to further isolate my life whilst keeping it open to the world, I can’t wait to not meet new and interesting people and not interact with the world around me. Bring it on...

Actually, no. I'm going out. I feel the need to see someone real...

...is this thing on...