Lookalike

Politics, as well we all know, is little these days but showbiz for ugly people. Charles Clarke (pictured) is in politics.

On my walk up to the gym earlier, I noticed a slightly pathetic old bloke on his mobile phone in a doorway on Deansgate, slightly outside the security zone of the Labour Party conference, which seems to be going on forever. He had a passing resemblance to Charles Clarke. He seemed somewhat flustered and irritated, as if his cab to the airport hadn’t turned up.

Upon very slightly closer inspection, I realised that it actually was Charles Clarke. He also had a trolley dolly bag, thus suggesting there was decent chance that he was irritated precisely because his minicab to the airport hadn’t turned up. Meanwhile, a couple of hundred metres away, it was obvious that something big was going on. I later found that Bill Clinton was in town. The media were falling over each other to get pictures. After all, there aren’t enough pictures of Bill Clinton in the world, so getting more today would be a matter demanding immediate attention.

Meanwhile, the man who until recently held the third most powerful job in Britain was huddled in a doorway with nobody except me showing even a passing interest.

That’s showbiz, Charles.

Labour go home!

My fair city of Manchester is currently playing host to the Labour party conference. Everybody seems to think that this is a great honour for the city and generally a Good Thing. Everybody, that is, apart from those of us who actually live here.

For the last two nights, a helicopter has hovered over my flat for much of the night. I presume that this is somehow to protect Tony Blair, who is staying in a hotel a couple of hundred metres from my flat. It’s bloody irritating, let me tell you. I also can’t help but wonder if it’s just to make the whole thing seem more important: sort of making the Prime Minister more prime ministerial.

The city is absolutely swarming with police in luminous jackets; major streets are blocked off with large metal barriers that are designed to allow people to walk or cycle through, but would be heavy enough to stop a truck packed with explosives in its tracks. There’s something a tad uncomfortable about living just outside the perimeter of a probable terrorist target.

Yesterday along with many others, I had my photograph taken on the street by several policemen with large cameras. There’s something menacing about being photographed by a policeman wearing a jacket marked “evidence gathering” in big bold letters. The evidence they were gathering was that I was walking from A to B as best I could. My suspicious behaviour was to be near the protected zone without seemingly good reason (living next door presumably not being good enough reason). I have never sneered at another human as much as I sneered at that policeman. Should I ever actually do anything like become a serial killer, the photo will make a suitable illustration for the background behind the newsreader, since I would surely look very sinister and aggressive. Not because I’m sinister and aggressive, but I do not like having my photo taken for purported “evidence” when all I’m doing is walking to work. It’s plain wrong and Big Brother very truly IS watching you. He doesn’t quite know why, but he’s still watching you and taking photos which will no doubt be scrutinised and neatly filed.

Went out to restaurant Choice last night with Mum and Dad, for the first time in ages. Choice is one of Manchester’s more upmarket restaurants and it’s a bit of a favourite of mine. Sadly, it later became packed with Labour party delegates; a number of whom were predictably awful. One guy in particular fancied himself as a bit of a ringleader and he saw it as his right and duty to fill the place with his boorish presence. Scouser, unsurprisingly. My recent personal dealings with scouse union leaders have sadly done nothing to improve my mental picture of both union leaders and scousers, as the men in question (who I obviously can’t name) are crooks. It’s a shame, the ordinary union members they represent deserve much better. Several of the diners continued to wear their ID badges around their neck, presumably as some badge of honour because they were important enough to get in and we weren’t. I suspect that they thought it exuded some sort of mayoral aura. It actually looked more like a “Jim fixed it for me” badge of the type that Jimmy Saville used to give out to kids in the 1970s than a chain of office. Pillocks. I couldn’t resist saying to one of them on the way back from the toilet, in a manner of affected helpfulness “Sorry love, you know you’ve forgotten you’re still wearing your badge?” She chose to ignore me and that made it all the funnier for me.

I really do wish that they’d all just go back home.

News about news

From a quick scoop of the news today, it seems that the following things are happening:

1. The UN troops’ mandate in Darfur has been extended. This presumably means that we won’t have the same date for the resumption of genocide as we’d previously been expecting on 31 October. It’s that big a story: genocide would certainly have re-started when the UN troops left. Now it might not do. But it probably will.
2. There’s a national strike today in the NHS, for the first time in 18 years.
3. An undisclosed person has been arrested in connection with the cash for peerages scandal. This is where Tony Blair is alleged to have given peerages (together with their capacity to vote over laws than govern us) in return for cash. That’s an issue of Watergate proportions.
4. The new rulers of Thailand are announcing plans to stand down, thus restoring democracy. There was a military coup there a few days ago.

The hands-down winner in TV coverage though is the fact that Richard Hammond, who is a minor celebrity in the UK and unknown everywhere else, has been seriously injured in the process of trying to break the UK land speed record in a car strapped to a jet engine.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Richard Hammond. He seems like a nice guy and he’s a good presenter. I very much hope that he recovers. But a man being injured in the course of an endeavour like this is neither a surprise nor an event of national, let alone global, significance. Being in injured in the process of this is within the same range of predictability as Steve Irwin eventually carking it. It should not be the top of the bill in news bulletins.

One might say that this has something to do with celebrity. The death or near-death of a celebrity is newsworthy by virtue of them being a celebrity, one might argue. Sure, it’s newsworthy, but it’s shocking that even on the BBC it displaces much bigger stories such as those above. I also note that when a journalist, cameraman or sound man is killed in the line of news coverage of a war, it’s always a big story. For sure, it’s very sad. Once more though, it’s not altogether a surprise. It’s just that the news media celebrate their own in an irksomely self-indulgent way.

If anybody is thinking “What about Jill Dando?” the difference is that Jill Dando was murdered.

I wish Richard Hammond the best, I really do. As I said, he’s a nice guy and he’s also cute. He’s also my age, which I think is cause for hope!

A disappointment

After many years of opportunistic experimentation, I have recently reluctantly concluded that one simply cannot rely on “The Force”. Well, either that or I’m not very good at it. This may mean either that I am not, against my inner self-belief, a natural Jedi; or it might even mean that the Force does not exist. I’m indifferent to which is true as I firmly believe anything that I’m not good at is stupid.

On my 20 mile motorway journey to work this morning, there were two car crashes that brought the motorway to a complete standstill. This was making me embarrassingly late for a meeting I’d set up. I was becoming ever more agitated, stressed and upset at how my Tom Tom traffic info satnav had not warned me to take another route. In slight disgust, I switched off said device, which sticks out on a stalk from a sucker on the windscreen. The manner of this somewhat reminded me of Luke Skywalker choosing to switch off the kit in the last few seconds of his run on the Death Star. Admittedly there were differences: he was travelling at dizzying speed, I was at a standstill; he was in an X-wing fighter where I was in a Skoda Octavia estate; the Death Star was not part of suburban Merseyside. No amount of attempting to use the Force cleared the way through the traffic for me. It’s more than a slight disappointment and, frankly, inconvenience.

If you happen to also read the blog of Timorous Beastie, you'll see this one there too. I have the curiously pleasing honour of being TB's "guest blogger". Woo hoo! Perhaps I am a Jedi after all?

Paris Hilton

I’m beginning to sound more and more like a Daily Mail reader and this troubles me somewhat. I suppose it’s just a function of age.

I had two experiences of people being fantastically rude on buses in London last week. In one case, there were three teenage girls shouting explicit sexual comments to each other and also to younger men getting off the bus. Here is one particular exchange aimed at a lad of about 20 who had just stood up to climb down the stairs:

“You want to cum over my tits? You want to squeeze my tits?” (Much hateful cackling)

There was worse stuff than this as well, but I’ll spare you.

“You want a shag right now?”

The lad looked back at them very blankly and said “I carry one in my back pocket. But I don’t think so.”

I was impressed by this response, which caused a pause from the girls. They were not used to being chastened it seemed. After a merciful and all-too-brief pause, their chief slattern hammered on the window and screeched at their victim (now on the street below):

“Use it on your mum! Use it on your fucking mum!” Shrieks, cackles and whooping followed.

For the next ten minutes or so, they brayed “Use it on your mum!” with ever louder shrieking, cackling and whooping. This was a new catchphrase.

There was a mother of two young children several rows in front of them, who kept staring at them. Her understandable disapproval only fuelled them though, in the manner that warm seas fuel hurricanes. I felt embarrassed to be English.

What seems sad to me about this sort of situation is that there is no longer a societal mechanism to stop it. Mild disapproval of the sort the mother was giving just fuels it further. I desperately wanted to slap the loudest one over the back of the head and shout in her face, as I really believe only extreme shock would have any effect at shutting them up. Sadly though, this would result in me being charged with battery, so there’s nothing that can be done.

An irony is that one of the oft-used phrases favoured by such people is the word “respect”. They don’t seem to notice that to get respect, one has to give it. I’m in no way advocating a return to staid days of the 1950s where being gay was not to be spoken of and having a child out of marriage was a sentence to social isolation. That sort of repression is its own form of disrespect for others’ rights to self-determination. But one doesn’t have to be a genius to work out that it’s possible to respect the freedoms of others without having to allow teenage whores to scream this sort of abuse at strangers.

It’s with some surprise that I notice loutish sexual behaviour these days generally comes from girls. Hen nights in Manchester can normally be identified from the inflatable phallus they carry in front of them as if it had some ceremonial function, like a mace. Hen nights are frequently truly horrid spectacles, but I’ll save that for another rantlet. I’ve simply not noticed young men being so sexually aggressive, especially in groups. Young women seem to have affected the role of sexual predator and I wonder why? Is it not possible to have the sexes treated equally without women adopting the worst perceived behaviour of men? I wonder how it would be seen if the bus scenario had been a group of lads shouting this sort of abuse at a girl? Or a group of gay lads shouting it at straight lads? The final scenario, I feel sure, would have elicited a response from others.

After due consideration, I have decided that the blame lies with Paris Hilton. Well to be fair, the kind of vacuous interpretation of “girl power” that she epitomises. Mind you, I’m happy to blame her personally too. Teenagers’ natural instinct is to push boundaries as far as they can; it’s part of growing up. But that process of boundary extension is now done with no mechanism for society to say “ahem, too far”. It’s also done with role models who tell teenage girls that sexual power, personal wealth and a don’t give a damn for others manner is all that matters. I suggest that we’re failing teenage girls by providing them with a role model who is just a pointless bint.

A very polite “rude awakening”

Two blog entries in one day! Cripes, that’s getting a bit carried away, I know. At this moment though, I’m inspired by something, so I’m writing this now before I forget.

I’ve just seen “An Inconvenient Truth”, by Al Gore. You must, I really mean must, see this film. I’m no environmentalist by instinct, but this film has just made me stop in my tracks. I wanted to chat about it with the other people in the cinema (depressingly, all six of them), but we were all English and hadn’t been introduced by some third party, so we satisfied ourselves with worried glances and polite half-smiles. It’s pretty obviously a campaign speech by the former VP and good luck to him for that, but it’s scholarly without being smug; it’s factual without being dull. It will influence my own consumer behaviour. I’ll still be a hypocrite though: I’m still going to Dubai and I won’t be switching my aircon off. In all seriousness though, I will use it as little as I feel I comfortably can. One of the things that the film did well was convince me that it’s possible to have a position on climate change somewhere between denial and “what can I do anyway” despair.

I’m still going to continue flying for reasons that I’ll save for another blog (basically I think that the benefits justify the environmental cost) but I think I’ll stop buying air freighted out-of-season foods so much. I’ll also try to take public transport more. I will berate friends for driving their kids short distances to school, which I see generally as a real social as well as environmental menace. I’ll start to re-use my carrier bags. I’ll stop criticising the Conservative Party for their faintly ludicrous new logo.

Actually, no I won’t go that far. The Tories’ new logo is just silly.

If I were American, I’d vote for Gore in the Democratic primaries. He might be trotting off well rehearsed comments about this film being a campaign rather than a candidacy, but it’s well-made political spin that seems to me to be largely about testing the temperature of the water before launching into a battle for nomination against Hillary Clinton. I hope that he wins theat nomination. Although La Clinton’s a bit of a hero to me, she has all but zero chances of defeating the Republicans; too much of America just irrationally hates her. Gore has a much greater chance of success, given how dignified he was in 2000 and how much America now seems to appreciate what a dreadful mistake it made. I hope and believe that a dark period in American history will come to a close in 2008 when the neocons no longer defile the White House with their presence.

It’s occurred to me before that children growing up now may come to wonder how my generation grew up under the constant nagging threat of nuclear annihilation. The answer was simple: we felt that there was nothing we could do about it individually, so denial was the only option to avoid going mad. The same seems to be true now with global warming, which I now honestly believe to be a bigger threat to our own society than terrorism, bird flu and all the other threats we hear so much of all added together.

I’ve never much liked Al Gore before, but now I think he’s a bit of a hero. I also believe that he’s a bit luke-warm about wanting the presidency. That alone is a good reason to give it to him. People who desperately want power are rarely good at exercising it.

Benny's in trouble!

So, it seems that Benny 16 has upset the muslim world. I never could have imagined I’d say this, but I feel sorry for the guy. He made a comment in a long, dreary academic speech and the more twitchy elements of the muslim world is, with tiresome predictability, burning effigies. There now seems to be a debate raging about whether Benny should apologise.

I simply do not understand how we live in a society where we are expected to accept that quiet zones on trains are places where one can still use a phone, library silent areas are places where endless girlie wittering can take place and yet we tolerate attacks on freedom of speech. I’m no fan of Benny 16, but even if he has horrid inappropriate views, I’d rather he says them outright so we can keep an eye on him.

I’ve briefly read a transcript of the speech and it seemed to me that he meant no harm: at least not on this occasion. The bit that caused so much trouble was a quote of a debate hundreds of years ago. It’s as if I were to quote a line from Mao’s Little Red Book would mean that I were a communist.

I expect that most muslims wince when they hear stuff like this. It does their traditions no favours at all. If their faith is nearly as strong as they profess, this sort of stuff should wash over them. I’m no fan of the Pope nor his views but it’s his right to express his (frequently shit) opinions and to expect that these will be accurately reported. As always, the greatest indignation comes from those who have not troubled themselves to find out the facts first.

The Pope is the dominant figure in Christianity. Christianity and Islam are essentially rivals for the same market. They both believe in the same God and most of the Old Testament. Jesus is a prophet in Islam, but not believed to be God’s son. They are two of the three religions of the Abrahamic tradition. In spiritual terms, they are Coca Cola and Pepsi. How can we expect him to express what he believes to be an absolute truth without upsetting his rivals?

I’m not a follower of any particular religion and all this unedifying nonsense does not make it more likely that I will become one anytime soon.

The Pope may have done something unwise or at least unhelpful. We mustn’t though allow our rightful wish not to offend to stifle freedom. It is the Pope’s right to sell his product; it is the right of Danish magazines to publish badly drawn and unfunny pictures of the Prophet Mohammed; it is Muslims’ right to say it’s nonsense to believe Jesus was the son of God; it’s the Pope’s right to say that I am intrinsically evil because I’m gay. It’s my right to say damn the lot of them.

Essentially, give the old bigot a break. For once, he’s not in the wrong.

The Queen

I have just seen the new film "The Queen".

The film deals with the events in Buckingham Palace and Downing Street around the time of the death of Pincess Diana. If you possibly can, go to see it. It's a beautifully balanced film. It portrays a well-meaning but isolated woman, struggling to make sense of things that make no sense to her. I'm sure that much will be written in the future about what happened to Britain in the summer of 1997. For what it's worth, here's my take on it.
In 1997, there was a sense of rebirth about Britiain and the landslide Labour victory in May seemed like a powerful break with the past. Many people still couldn't quite believe that a deeply unpopular and tired Conservative government had won in 1992, so the landslide when it came was a tonic. Our brutal system of overnight transfer of power in Britain made it seem all the more like a revolution.

Britpop was topping the charts worldwide, memories of the property crash and recession of the early nineties were fading. There was a new confidence and things once more began to seem to make sense. For the many people who had experienced negative equity (ie where their home was worth a lot less than the loan they'd taken to buy it), a release from financial enslavement was a cause for celebration. The economy was booming and there was a palpable sense of optimism.

The youthful new prime minister symbolised the new era of informality. As a nation, we'd chosen to ignore the intrinsic vaccuousness of "New Labour" because we bought enthusiastically into the idea of "New Britain".

Then suddenly a violent reality check hit us. Diana was suddenly dead. She'd suffered indignity and sidelining by the House of Windsor as we suffered recession and a government that didn't seem to much care. The party to celebrate the new Britain had been abruptly ended by a principal player dropping dead on the dance floor.

Even at the time, many thought the public reaction was crazy. I was one of them, yet I joined in the craziness. However irrational and exaggerated the reaction to the death of a stranger was, it was sincere. We had suddenly become aware that there was, in fact, such as thing as society; we had things in common. One thing we had in common was shock at the loss of this potent symbol of unhappiness broken free to a happier life. It didn't matter that we knew Diana was a basket case. Symbols don't need to be sane or convincing role models, they just need to be pretty. We were further united by indignation at the apparent indifference of our Queen and her closest circle. Those whom we had paid well to serve as our figureheads had first made Diana's life miserable and were now showing no sympathy for our shock. We resented the apparent "stiff upper lip" that Princes William and Harry were required to show. We didn't do stiff upper lip anymore, we did group therapy and roadside floral tributes to car crash victims. This was New Britain, remember?

Tony Blair showed a deftness of touch that made him the most popular prime minister ever. (No, I've no idea what went wrong since either). All the "people's princess" stuff was mawkish and faintly embarrassing, but it's what we wanted.
Had the royal family handled the situation better, the acres of floral tributes outside the palaces would have been greatly less. Each bouquet was prima facie a tribute, but it was also a very quiet protest. Diana's brother, a toff who almost all of Britain would normally revile, briefly became a public hero for delivering a cleverly crafted funeral tribute that plunged the knife squarely between the shoulders of the old establishment right in front of them.
It was a very quiet revolution, but it surely was a revolution of sorts. This country survives with no single codified constitution because the holders of power have always known when to cede a bit of power and change their ways. With no formal regime break in our history, we've never needed a written constitution. Very occasionally, our glacial speed of constitutional evolution is too slow and something like the Diana effect happens. It's unlikely that it will happen again in my lifetime, I expect.

Without saying it out loud, there was a new unity of understanding amongst we British "subjects". Although we may technically be serfs, we only bowed to our head of state if she had the good grace to bow to us on demand. If she failed to do that, a seismic event would follow. 25% of Britain's population suddenly wanted an immediate end to monarchy. Personal empathy, respect and sympathy for its long-standing and long-suffering incumbent disguised a much deeper long-term republican sentiment, I feel. We wanted an end to monarchy, but we didn't blame thQueen for not knowing what to do; we blamed her advisors.
When the Queen was pressured by Downing Street to give a tribute on live television the evening before the funeral to Diana that she surely at best half-believed, she must have been bewildered. It is a tribute to her that she had the wisdom to take advice and do as she was told. When she bowed to Diana's passing coffin the next day, she knew it to be a symbolic gesture. She was really bowing to her people. Had Tsar Nicolas II had the same wisdom, European history might well be very different.

How little sense this must have made to her! Here was a woman who had been sheltered all her life, but who had still spent her formative years in wartime. Not a "war on terror" or such similar modern fabrication and politically expedient fantasy, but a real war, where millions of people died and where anxiety and deprivation were universal. How could she possibly understand the outpouring of grief for one woman from so many people who had never met her? How could so many war victims be forgotten and yet the reaction to the loss of a woman who had never known hardship, but had known much of nights on the piss away from her sons be so powerful?

The answer, I feel, is that Diana was not the cause of all this; she was merely the catalyst that created a chain reaction.

You may wonder if I cried watching the funeral? You bet I did; lots. It may seem foolish now and in my defence I'd flown in the previous day from Boston and jet lag always makes me curiously emotional. At the time though it made perfect sense. I expect that it still makes little sense to the Queen and I respect her no less for that.

Man bites dog it aint

The quality of the journalism around Steve Irwin's death is summed up by the irksome phrase "tragic death". How little slapdash carelessness do we have to painfully suffer when listening to such word statements? Do we not suspect that the excessive surfeit of too much broadcast news means it’s necessary to bolster, fill and generally pad out their bulletin reports with stories that are, well, not stories. The mediocrity is insufferable. Irwin’s death became a world story, where a proportionate report would have made page five of the Queensland Gazette.

Any person whose lack of commonsense allows him to use one arm to hold his baby and the other to prod a crocodile will surely sooner or later be involuntarily removed from the gene pool. Hardly a surprise then that a stingray mistook his friendly prodding as aggression, doing what stingrays are well known to be apt to do? With due respect to one of Timorous Beastie’s previous reviewers, I would contend that a stingray is not familiar with commuter jostling. I’ve taken many trains and have never had to give up my seat for a stingray. I’d argue that the comparison is not especially helpful.

It's sad that he died, but there are many people who died last week who had always given stingrays a sensibly wide berth, but they also gave fame a wide berth so the world doesn’t care.

If in any doubt, I feel we should avoid prodding and aggravating animals, especially if they can easily kill you on a whim. If somebody fails to do that, the tragedy is their innate stupidity, not the inevitability of the consequence of that stupidity.

This was originally posted by me as a comment on Timorous Beastie's blog. Sorry if you've seen it twice.

A hotel that I simply must visit

Inspired by the example of the Timorous Beastie, I am looking into booking myself a holiday. There comes a time every now and again when I realise that I don’t just want a holiday, I actually need one in order to ever have a hope of not looking like a giant panda in a flouncy shirt.

After a fairly short amount of thought, the front runner destination is Dubai. Looking ont’internet, it also seems to be remarkably good value. The major hotel chains all seem to offer suitably soulless but comfortable offerings at a reasonable price. The Marriott website promises this of one of their entry level rooms:

“Expressive yet functional, classically styled with touches of whimsy in warm, vibrant colors”.

Now who could resist that? I like a bit of whimsy, me. I think I’ll go just so that I can tell you if it’s true.

London? I'm, like, SO over it!

When I moved to Manchester, I was somewhat surprised how much I liked it. Having just completed a long weekend in London (here to teach law stuff to analysts at Lazards bank), I am distinctly surprised just how much I don’t much like it.

I am writing this in the first class lounge of Virgin Trains at Euston station. As a matter of passing curiosity, I am sitting next to Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, who is wearing dark glasses and seems to be trying to be noticed, whilst also pretending that he just wishes we’d all just leave him alone. In fact, everybody is just leaving him alone and I suspect that he’s finding that irritating, as he’s talking ever more loudly to the Sloane who is accompanying him. If, dear blogee, you are quietly thinking that one of the great things about London is that it’s easy to get a minor frisson of pleasure from seeing slebs such as him, I’d respectfully point out that he’s at Euston station. Hence he is on the way to somewhere else and it will be just as easy to see him in the north somewhere in a couple of hours.

This lounge is oddly typical of London, in that it can only be reached after navigating three flights of stairs. I don’t find it altogether unusual to travel with a suitcase. Did nobody think through the fact that it might be good to site a lounge on the ground floor, or at least provide a lift? It also lacks air conditioning and is generally pretty unpleasant, but what can one do when waiting for a train?

My daily commute to Green Park was a simple affair by London standards, but I’d quite forgotten how unpleasant it invariably is. It’s easy to forget just how much strangers hate you when your Oyster card produces the response of “SEEK ASSISTANCE” from the ticket barrier. It’s pretty bloody hard to turn around and get out of the trap that is thus set for you, even if the tutting people behind got out of the way; which they don’t. I'm embarrassed to say that I would probably have done the same when I lived here.

I also struggled yesterday to find a single photocopy shop that was open. I know for a fact in Manchester that hobs reprographics would be open. So overall, Manchester continues to offer almost all that London does, but without the utter pain in the arse. Truly this conclusion surprises me.

I left my suitcase at the hotel this morning and have just had a quarrelsome exchange with a member of staff who refused to let me have it back, as apparently I’d lost the ticket. No amount of reassuring him that I’d not been given any such ticket would change his manner. Top tip mate, it doesn’t matter how many times you drop the word “sir” into an exchange with a fellow human, if you’re being argumentative and a prick, saying sir does not stop you from being an argumentative prick. I described the contents, opened it using the combination that I obviously knew and showed him how uncannily closely my description matched the actual contents. I then just walked off and trusted that he probably wouldn’t call the police.

Time to stop whining. I’ll be pleased to get home. I could do with the lie in as well. I never, ever would have imagined that I’d be pleased to get on a train to Manchester and eagerly look forward to getting “home”.

To stop whining further, I must point out that the quiet zone compartment of the Virgin train from London to Manchester is a very civilised place indeed. That is where you find me finishing this rant. With my free G&Ts going down nicely and the knowledge that I shall be in Manchester in a couple of hours, life once more in the world seems good.