Opinion: The Scumbags Puppetshow.

Ok... I thought I'd got the hang of this blogging lark. Keep it light, dispassionate... amusing if possible. Thus armed I have proceeded to blog virtually fuck all. Seems what I needed is some out and out rage.

Today the News of the World Apologists have been out in force. It was previously reported that deleted voicemails may have given the parents of a murdered schoolgirl 'false' hope. This was blamed on a Private Investigator working on behalf of the News of the World. The previous information was provided by the police, and has since been amended. Now they no longer believe that he deleted those particular voicemails.

Ok... that is the premise. It is not known who deleted those voicemails, it is still believed highly probable that later voicemails were deleted by the P.I, Mulcaire, and the fact that he hacked the phone on their instruction is no longer a matter of any doubt.

So why the Crowing? Why the sickening screams of 'Poor Me' by apologists for the sick rag?

I am not in the industry. I am one of those members of the public that the tabloids always claimed to be 'serving'. I don't know how they work, I am learning now, thanks to the Leveson inquiry. The fact that it wasn't a particular set of voicemails that were deleted is not the issue to me. The fact that they hacked the phone in the first place is.

Now people are oozing out of the woodwork to say that if we'd have known that then, nobody would have wanted the News of the World to close. (To be honest, I don't think most people did... they actually wanted Rebekah Brooks to go.. but she didn't, she decided to close the paper as a, thankfully shortlived, stay of her own execution)

In my opinion this is a ludicrously simplistic view, and more than a little bit insulting to the other victims... Sara Payne? Victims of Terrorist attacks? Was nobody bothered about them? Not according to the apologists... we became a mob over that one incident, and hounded a respectable newspaper to death, over a few voicemails that they never deleted anyway...

No, this view isn't true... people are angry with the all of the hacking. They are angry with the way the management dealt with the hacking. They are angry with the way the media are covering the hacking. They are livid that the 'opinion comics' are telling them what they were 'angry about in the first place'...

Ok.. I understand, not everyone cares about hacking. But I do. I see Tabloids as a blight on the already tarnished reputation of our species. Opinion rags that celebrate idiocy whilst belittling science (Coverage of MMR being a fine example of this) that pursue political narratives under the cloak of impartial news coverage, that feign disgust over artworks whilst leering over young girls (Not 'people'.. almost exclusively female their targets... remember the amazing spectre of an attack piece on Chris Morris's Brass Eye Special, opposite a shot of 13 and 11 year old princess's in bikinis)... That cultivate an audience ignorance, whilst pretending they are responding to it...

I said earlier that most people didn't want the News of The World to close. This is true. I did though. I hate Tabloids. I hate the fact that they claim to be 'News'... They are gossip mags, nothing more and I hope to see them all close soon. If you want a gossip mag, there are plenty there that don't pretend to understand the economic impact of immigration, or European legislation... there are plenty that don't campaign to 'Out' Paedophiles whilst showing titillating pictures of young singing stars... there are plenty that don't straight out 'Make up' stories and then justify them by saying 'people want to read it'... If you want to print fiction... do it... printing fiction isn't unheard of, but tying your fictions to a living, breathing human is vile.

Apologies for this... it is a rant, not well thought out.. but I am genuinely furious. On Twitter I called Tabloids the Scumbags Puppetshow. The argument is that the audience want this kind of stuff so that justifies it, or that those on stage are doing 'bad' stuff and that justifies it... but with the increasing doubt over whether any of it is true it renders it all an illusion. In reality there's someone behind the curtains, pulling the strings and we are only just getting to see how much power they wield in this relationship.

They are the Scumbags, and I hope their whole industry fails.

Opinion: The Beeb and the Royal British Legion

Ok.. Where were you all... Last night?
All those commentators/reporters/hack who will shriek for a politician to be hung from a lampost via a rectal hook for not sporting a poppy from the first second they come on sale... those people who take pride in the forces to a fetishistic level... where were the howls of delight about the BBC putting The Royal British Legion against the might of the X Factor?

I knew which one I wanted to watch. I never watch the X Factor... even if I had I would have watched the Royal British Legion.. Why?... well as somebody with political views that are... shall we say... 'Out of step'... with both mainstreams, my freedom of thoughts, speech and action are even more important to me.  I also feel immense proud for my brother, who serves in the air-force and my elder relatives, who sacrificed a lot for my freedoms (Which of course include the freedom to challenge the political mindset of the men who sent them to war).

My Granddad would be happy to know I'm wearing a poppy, and although a 'Famous Commentator' has said his Granddad would be appalled, I'm less inclined to worry about that as I have and never will meet him.

I watched the Royal British Legion, and I read the Twitter feed as it went. I was proud and I was moved. It was the kind of thing TV was made for. All the while I could read other people's tweets about how the X Factor had 'Broken' and feel slightly sad for them. Reading Twitter there seemed to be no particular generational or political line.. some were watching one, some the other.

Now... If the BBC weren't there... would there have been that choice?
There were no phone lines that you could make money from, promotion seemed to be brutally restricted to the Royal British Legion Itself, anyone attempting to place adverts within would have found them looking ludicrously inappropriate. Would this even have worked on a commercial station?

The BBC put the British Legion against the Xfactor... I don't know how the numbers totted up... Who 'Won' in that respect... What I do know is that I didn't hear any of those aforementioned commentators backing up the BBC.. not one... Not one of those people who would have liked to see Russell Brand and Wossy kicked from the White Cliffs of Dover in a coffin full of glass actually swallowed it back and said "Well actually, this is what the BBC does very well".

I love the BBC. I feel it is one of our countries greatest cultural achievements, but it is under constant threat from commercial interests disguised (Poorly) as news outlets.

Last night they did exactly what all those pundits said it should be doing, and what was their response?
A silence a lot longer than two Minutes...

Opinion: Winterval Retrospectively Cancelled... PC Gone Mad.

Happy Day. The 'usually flawless' Daily Mail has today announced that the most famous Anti-PC fairytail is in fact a load of utter Bumwash. Winterval was never going to replace Christmas, not even to Placate those tricky Muslamics.

Cards on the table time. I like political correctness. I like having an agreed idea of what it is and isn't 'polite' to say, even if it can be a bit clumsy sometimes. I like that it isn't ok for a Government employee to use racist, sexist, homophobic or transgender baiting language with impunity.

I'm also a passionate advocator of free speech. Is this a contradiction? No... Of course not... Political Correctness doesn't sew up your lips, it can't stop you...All rules can be transgressed. All it does is formalise that some people aren't comfortable with what you might want to say. It makes you think about consequence... About context... About whether the words you say are actually communicating what you intend.

So... Back to Winterval. I've been arguing this with people for over ten years now. I know people who were living there at the time. I knew it was bunk. Whenever I got into the discussion about 'PC gone Mad' this came up, enshrined in the cloak of utter Factiness... "THEY BANNED CHRISTMAS!"

When I explained that they actually didn't I got eye rolls, I got called a naive lefty (I have no political allegiance as it happens) and mostly I got told I was wrong. It was national news, and I was just one person who disagreed.

And now it has been retracted, over a decade too late and with much less fanfare than it was announced... I feel my job is to make sure this gets out as much as possible... This story has done real damage, hitting a hot button for people usually untouched by Religious differences, driving a wedge between the mainly secular public and all those who 'wanted to steal Christmas'... Except they didn't... Of course they didn't... It was a desperate fantasy to sell newspapers and hammer home a terrified, neophobe worldview... a fantasy that has taken far too long to unravel but has finally disintegrated utterly... As I said at the start, Happy Day... I think it's time to celebrate...

Anyone wanna pull a Winterval cracker with me?

To finish, a quick and unconnected Theresa May Joke:
Will you let me in your country? The official guidelines won't... But Theresa May....
Arf.

Opinion: Why Miss Jones?

It's straight out of Rising Damp... Miss Jones, desperate to have a baby, fluttering around relationships and counting off her dwindling supply of ova... Then it gets X-Rated... she decides to simply have sex with someone who doesn't actually want to procreate with her, something he makes abundantly clear by using a condom,  a condom she promptly stole (Somehow) and... delicately... applied the resultant mess to the... appropriate place.

Ok... It's only Liz Jones doing what she appears to do best... throw out a wee bit of controversy and wait for the Anti-Trolling to hit overdrive... The DM gets a nice spike in hits from people who would never usually go to their site and any news can get snuck passed the Media savvy whilst they are all making jokes on Twitter (As I was)

Of course... like most of Liz Jones's work, it's almost certainly not 'True' in it's specifics. Most Condoms contain spermicide, most gentlemen would question where you were going with the used condom... (What an amazing piece of excuse wrangling you'd have to come up with for that one) and of course if you left it for even a few minutes to cool down, all of the wrigglies you are attempting to harvest will be dead...  She knows this of course... it' never meant to be taken as statements of facts.. and if it were there may even be some legal implication... I'm sure there is provision in law for theft of genetic material.

Now I enjoy the rare (Very Rare) guffaw at her hyperbolic style, her almost total disregard for facts, people's feelings, or even her own descent in to parody... it's as if she's a pen name for a 'lefties' parody of Nadine Dorries. Sometimes though, also like Dorries, she can be a distraction and decoy from some real news. In fact I would say that it was largely her job, why else throw out lines like: "Speaking as a feminist" and then follow it with a line about disliking "Mumsy" types. Blimey.. that's really supporting women there... all those 'Mumsy' types who have children out of love, not to 'Get something' out of a relationship. So you read... You Rage

But that's the point... she throws it out.. it rattles our cages and people bite. At the time of writing she has been trending ALL day (8ish Hours) she has her own, masterful Konnolsky spoof entry and she's made my Twitter feed resemble a thesaurus entry for the word 'Semen'. In that time I've read jokes, rage some terribly crass 'Appearance led' insults and even the odd well meaning attempt to defend a serious point perceived in her rorschach tumble of words, something about how 'some women' are driven to do this or that because of societies expectation of them to have children... a potentially interesting point.. But not what her article is about. No it's about us... The reaction. The Howls and the Protest and the Jokes... even the utterly terrible ones about her appearance.

So... I guess in that respect she won.

Haunted Forest by Spenface
For Halloween I have created my first album since 2008 (Supershopper/Boxes). There are 11 tracks, all based around a short story that I may or may not release at a later date. Hope you Enjoy.