Facebook zombie apocalypse

I had a minor spat with someone (two people actually, on the same day) about Facebook. I loathe the bloody thing… Not because I object to people communicating, or because I’m a killjoy. And it’s not because I hate computers (I don’t, otherwise why would I use a blog?)

No. What I despise is the way Facebucket has inveigled its way into popular culture. People talk about it in public as though it’s a cure for cancer, or a peak human achievement. I don’t think it connects people either: I actually see it as a profound form of social disconnection.

But oh and woe! If you dare to suggest it’s a popularist fad started by an over-hyped far right geekoid you will be verbally assaulted. Yelled at even. I don’t like that, but I find it hard to button my lip where this is concerned.

Saying, ‘Facebook is crap!’ attracts some serious snorts from its many apologists. Here’s a selection of snortoids:

‘It’s a very valuable tool.’ (A tool?! Like a spanner or a rock? I think not. Tools are used to make things, but Facebook will more than likely make you stay at home and develop a fatter arse, or encourage you to tap away on your Crackberry in public like a demented woodpecker.)

‘It’s quicker than writing a letter.’ (Eating a pot noodle is quicker than cooking dinner, but you wouldn’t want to live on it. Ah, there’s the rub. It’s about speed isn’t it? You can’t be bothered to communicate with people if it actually interrupts your important schedule. Sounds like a great recipe for friendship).

‘It keeps me in touch with my friends!’ (I suppose it does. And Just all these friends are on Facebook too aren’t they? If – like me – you won’t use it, then I can’t be your friend. I’m simply not worthy. Well hey! I’ll walk around with a sign on my back saying ‘Kick the Luddite’ from now on.

Such comments suggest that software must act as an intermediary between people, and that no other form of initial contact is possible. You have but one friendship group, and just one channel to connect you all. ‘One ring to rule them all, one ring to bind them…’ Does this remind you of anything, Gollum?

It’s as though someone has added something to the world’s water supply to switch off peoples’ critical faculties. I’m pretty sure that a fair wadge of academics use Farcebook, so do students, rocket scientists and prize turnip growers. All are individuals with different cultural beliefs and assumptions. And many of them are probably on Facebook…

…or are they? A high percentage of the world’s population (roughly 1.5 billion people) doesn’t even have electricity , let alone an Internet connection. Facebook is therefore an artifact of developed nations where people are more comfortable with anonymity.

Highly developed societies have some serious social problems to contend with. Overwork, exploitation, lack of ‘me time’ for individuals. Facebook is an apparent solution to all this, offering a quick fix. Like a pot noodle.

Instead of writing to people, visiting them or (here’s a revolutionary idea) getting to know them in person – we have a ‘software solution’, cooked up by someone who is (ironically) celebrated as a socially adept luminary. Well, my thesis is that he’s a pillock, but I bet his missus loves him.

Who would have thought it? Years ago I imagined that by 2011 we would have moved on a bit as a species. Instead we seem to be shifting towards a more dictatorial culture where it’s unusual to not do certain things. Like use Facebook. It’s a zombie apocalypse, and I wish everyone would get wise to it.

An unexpected party

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a similar experience, but you may have been there yourself. Suddenly you find yourself thinking about someone you haven’t seen for ages, and you’re not sure why but it kind of makes sense. After all, you used to know that person slightly, and you wonder if they’re okay, or what’s changed in their lives.

Then you forget about them again and go for a walk. In my case a walk through Birmingham’s unfeasibly crowded Christmas market, dedicated to the memory of Jesus and his love of commercial enterprise. Temples? Moneylenders? But I digress.

Anyhow, I was thinking about this young man who runs a local live music event. I haven’t been going as I don’t think it attracts a particularly friendly crowd. The music’s great though, which is the main draw, so I suppose I can’t complain.

Imagine my surprise when D. popped up from amongst the throng of sheeply shoppers, clutching a leaflet in his pale fist. ‘Haven’t seen you for ages!’ he cooed, while thrusting said leaflet into my mitts.

Apparently his event has been supplanted after a bit of political backstabbing on the local scene, and he’s been forced to move it somewhere else. He invited me to try it out, thereby derailing a shopping trip (which I didn’t want to bother with anyway), and really making my evening.

It really was a very nice evening. A bit of indie orientated folk(ish) stuff, followed by some very infectious jazz singing / playing. A far cry from a rock club (for example) but fun to enage with. I’ll be back!

Guitar fun

This blog has been quiet for an age so I’ve decided to refresh it a bit. Whatever I mean by ‘refresh’ remains to be seen, but amazingly it still gets a few visitors!

I’ve been playing a lot more guitar these days; partly prompted by a performance I’m giving soon. Fortunately, I’m only doing one song for some people (who shall remain nameless), as the prospect of standing up in front of 20+ people and giving them an hour of my time bothers me a bit. Odd really, as I could probably keep going for ages in a less formal setting.

Someone I know slightly said, ‘You remind me of Nick Drake.’ I’m nothing like him, apart from a bit of performance anxiety. I also use fewer exotic tunings than he did. Mind you, he was hugely talented and deserves to be more widely heard.

Guitars are really beautiful and satisfying to play… assuming you have a good one. I’ve spent years thumping away on poorly made mass produced models, but now I have a decent instrument which is a constant source of pleasure.

There is something almost sensual about shutting out the world and sitting down for a long practise session. It’s quite a meditative experience… and anyway, it’s fun!

There’s a downside to all this though: playing guitar hurts your fingers. Eventually the tyro guitarist develops hard pads on his fingertips, but before this you experience a lot of discomfort. A mate of mine recently called this, ‘the bleeding stage.’

I think it was Shakespeare who said, ‘All the world’s a bleedin’ stage.’ This isn’t well known, so keep it to yourself.

Good (guitar) wood brings responsibility though. It’s not enough to pick one up and play it every day. You have to nurture it like a big expensive baby. Guitars pick up dirt and grease from your fingers, which has to be cleaned off. Strings need replacing about once a month (assuming you play regularly), and your guitar sometimes needs a good rub-down with a soft cloth… and maybe a dollop of specialised cleaner.

As if that’s not enough, your big (expensive: about the price of a second-hand car) baby guitar needs to live in a case, or else it’s liable to loose a lot of moisture. It’s wood, after all. I won’t go into the finer details of all this because I’m still learning about them myself, but it’s a far cry from the way I treated my first steel strung instrument: chucking it in the back of the car and dropping it at regular intervals!

Anyway, there’s a point to this ramble. If you don’t play an instrument, have you thought of taking one up? It’s worth the effort, and it’s better than watching the telly or sitting in a traffic jam.

The Rise of the Brylcreem Warrior

Tory boy and notable dick-head (hence the picture above) Wavey Dave Cameron carries on apace with his big society delusion, dragging us siren-like to a mass watery doom.

I’ll give him his due. The Brylcreem Warrior always has a smile glued to his fatuous face during his very public vapourings about localism and the rising tide of ‘entrepreneurs’ who are supposed to sail the Good Ship Britannia towards a safe harbour. There’s nothing safe about his shenanigans though.

‘Why?’ you may ask with an ugly sneer smeared across your lips, as you advance towards me, coalition manifesto in hand as though to batter me to death with that tome of the party faithful.

‘Simple’, say I, retreating slightly before your withering gaze. ‘There’s no-one left to deliver Deluded Dave’s perfectly potty vision’. Even a swift straw poll will reveal that local services are dying out faster than fleas on a dead feline. Virtually nothing has been left untouched, as the voluntary organisations, who will supposedly step in – like the hero in a cheezoid Hollywood movie – lose their grant funding and lay off their staff in droves.

Oh, go ahead and volunteer then, but don’t expect to actually get paid for your trouble. Not a bean will you get, because this year heralds a tsunami of public sector job cuts. ‘So what, I don’t work for the public sector. And anyway, they’re a bunch of greedy bastards chugging along on the gravy train.’

Wrong fool. They deliver the local services (‘localism’ in action!) which we all depend on. Are you old, and did you depend on Supporting People grant funding to pay for your meals on wheels? Bad news I’m afraid; that particular pot of money is no longer protected. To use the parlance of the public sector it’s been ‘un-ringfenced’. It will now be used to deliver essential LOCAL services – or should I say, ‘More essential than looking after all those inconvenient oldies who clutter up our country. Hell – they haven’t got long left, so why even think about them?’

All right then. Are you a young person trying to get a start in life. Too bad! Your LOCAL (there’s a clue there isn’t there) Connexions service has already been axed by Dave the Tory Tyrant and his band of thieving brigands. You’ll be okay though, because these days you should apparently ‘take responsibility for yourself’ and do your own donkey work. No-one could accuse this lot of shirking when it comes to unfeeling idiocy. Whatever happened to cooperation as a way of getting things done?

Are you a small organisation trying to deliver local services to your members, thereby generating the ‘green shoots’ of economic recovery we sometimes hear about? Too bad. Who do you think will supply your grant funding now? The public sector. Sorry! Its pockets are empty. The private sector? Nope – they are laying people off and pulling up their proverbial drawbridges. Localism is a canard – where else can services be delivered if not locally? In dream land obviously.

Some people view the public, private and charitable (third-sector) as completely separate, and the coalition often implies that local authorities should look to the private sector for greater efficiencies. This overlooks one simple fact: these sectors are not independent, they are completely interdependent. Local government is quite complex, but historically, it has been very good at working in partnership with both private and voluntary organisations. The coalition’s massive round of public sector cuts is tearing apart private contractors, and forcing charities to withdraw funding from people who really need it.

Localism and the ‘big society’ is akin to chopping your friend’s legs off and saying, ‘Go for a walk pal’. It’s an  irrational idea used to mask the real agenda: the removal of the Welfare State. I support the idea of distinctive local services, and I even agree that the third sector should play a much stronger role in society. Third sector organisations must be supported and enabled, but instead they are being quietly pruned to death through an act of ideological vandalism.

Don’t believe me? I can prove it. This site contains data showing that so far cuts to the voluntary sector total almost £49,000,000 – and that’s just the start. In case you are thinking, ‘What’s this got to do with a blog about bohemian life?’ I would say, ‘Loads’. Those small distinctive organisations help to prop up creative projects around the country. Without them we might as well sell out and get jobs in call centres, because at this rate there won’t be much left of our local services.

Fight the coalition’s cuts!

Here in the UK our Coalition Government has published their controversial Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), which I’ve had the dubious pleasure of reading.

Never in the history of UK democracy have so few written so much blinkered bollocks for the benefit of so many. David Cameron and his condom-headed cohorts are trying to brainwash us into thinking that the round of cuts announced in the review is ‘fair’. Apparently, ‘We’re all in this together.’ His ideas are ‘radical’. I beg to differ!

Thinking people everywhere will resist the coalition’s cuts every step of the way. There are few liberals in government at the moment – but plenty of crypto fascists and power grubbing careerists with their faces deep in the trough of iniquity.

You might wonder what place an entry like this has on Boho Musings, but conservatism is largely the enemy of creativity. For example, the Spending Review is intent on cutting arts projects all over the country.

To add some figures to this vituperative rant, the Arts Council of England will make cuts of about £350 million over the next four years. This is an outline figure, but it will cripple creativity, while stifling  intellectual and cultural growth for decades to come.

These days everything is run by accountants, and while I think it’s sensible to factor money into important projects, I see these cuts as retrograde. They are designed to hurt the very people whom we should be encouraging during the global recession.

This short piece can’t begin to discuss on the sheer scale of the CSR without losing its focus. In any case, few people would want to read about it here, but unlike Nick (not-really-a-Liberal) Clegg, I have examined my conscience and found a sickening void at the heart of Government. It’s between his ears.

Folk me up

I’ve wanted to write something about folk music for some time, and there have been many brave attempts, followed by a lot of spectacular deletions. You see, it’s my passion and I want to do it justice.

Well scrub that! I can’t write objectively about something I love so much, so this is the blog equivalent of bungee jumping in the dark: I have no idea what I’m about to write. Folk music as a subject attracts academic discussions, cosy chats in the back rooms of pubs and heated debates about ‘what folk music really is.’ All I can hope to do is touch the surface in a piece like this; no conclusions will be drawn… as far as I can tell.

I first heard folk songs from my dad, without knowing what they were. He used to be a jazz musician, and somewhere in the flock-lined depths of his musty old banjo case he kept a yellowing loose sheaf of songs, complete with chords. In between expertly vamping out tunes like ‘California Here I Come’, he would sing ‘The Raggle Taggle Gypsies’ and ‘The Fox’. Simple but wonderful songs; just right for a child with a fertile imagination.

I had no idea that these were part of a folk tradition: my five-year-old self couldn’t even spell ‘tradition’! I quickly recognised that songs can tell a story and whisk you away to a parallel universe peopled with talking animals, strange gods and beastly angels.

I could walk through the enchanted forest and gaze at the bright wonders locked within – as long as I didn’t stray too far from the path. There be dragons! When I grew up I forgot about the magical kingdom and mutated into a bored, pizza-faced teen.

Once again, my wonderful father intervened and came back from town clutching a handful of (very worn) Joan Baez singles. ‘I think you might enjoy these,’ he said. So I played them and I did! Joan’s singing and guitar playing lit up my world with songs of the sea, loves lost and found – strange buried treasures of the luminous spirit.

There is a folk song for every human emotion and situation because it represents our collective experience. A song can start out as a personal statement, but once other people hear and sing it, that experience becomes a shared one: something we can all relate to and use in our everyday lives. I have found that folk music contains a great deal of distilled wisdom. Perhaps some of it will rub off one day.

Early collectors believed they were gathering songs for posterity, and treated them like museum pieces. ‘If I don’t record these soon they will vanish forever’. They were wrong, because while they were busy collecting, the next generation of singers and performers were already emerging, reworking old themes into new songs and singing old ones in different ways.

The tradition is dynamic and manages to reinvent itself across different generations. This is sometimes called the ‘folk process’ – songs can and should be changed to suit the singer.

Samuel Pepys collected traditional songs, and so did the rural English poet, John Clare. William Blake sang them to his friends, and indeed most people know one or two, even if they think otherwise.

The truth is, there isn’t one musical form which can be described as ‘folk’. Songs can be rooted in an industrial or rural tradition. There are work songs, sea songs, songs about unemployment. Some songs belong to the Romantic movement, while others are brand new and completely focused on current events. Folk music is both old and new, and therein lies my fascination.

Let’s not forget that the tradition is crammed full of tunes too; there are 1000s of them! One blog entry isn’t enough, so I’ll revisit this subject later…

Unkind cuts: Why we should protest

I never intended to use this blog as a political soapbox, but I can’t help writing about the things I see happening around me, and after all, what use is a socialist who ignores social issues?

Here in the UK, our coalition Government has been aptly christened the ‘ConDems’ by the media, and those bright enough to see them coming from miles away.

They have only been in power for a few months, but already the coalition has set in motion negative events which will resonate throughout British society for decades to come.

This is a government without scruples, with no feeling for natural justice and without a clue. We are witnessing the wholesale destruction of our welfare state; and what is there to replace it? Nothing!

The ConDems argue that an abstract idea called the ‘Big Society’ will plug any gaps left by the ‘deletion’ of local services. They call this ‘localism’ – I call it a tragedy.

I don’t use that word lightly. It is both a tragedy and a travesty, because genuine public life is coming to an end in England, and it’s happening now. Every socially useful institution I can think of is being axed, and those services which remain are being castrated.

But that’s not the real tragedy – what churns my spirit is that there is nothing tangible to replace the essential public services we are losing. There is a very human side to this. The ConDems can’t understand that if you remove a day centre for the elderly from a community, some lonely old person completely loses contact with the outside world.

This is a Government which promised to protect the vulnerable. They lied, and they will go on twisting the truth because that is the nature of neo-cons: they actually believe their own delusions.

The ConDems are unable to grasp that our world is in fact a concrete reality, where the withdrawal of services can mean isolation, poverty and a premature grave.

I’m not exaggerating either: the slashing of state benefits and local services will mean homelessness for many – lives stripped of meaning and joy. This is as nakedly evil as walking up to a complete stranger in the street and throwing acid in their face.

During a so-called ‘emergency’ Budget called earlier this year, the ConDems pledged to cut welfare spending by £11 billion. Recently, Chancellor George Osborne vowed to cull another £4 billion from the same purse.

I live in a neighbourhood which can ill afford such reductions. There is genuine poverty and social exclusion here, and it grieves me to know that innocent people will suffer as a direct result of this entirely unnecessary act of social vandalism.

I am already seeing more people out on the street – begging has long been a problem, but it’s actually getting worse. Hardly surprising when so many people are being cast aside by this cold, uncaring and worthless Government. And they haven’t even started yet.

It is utterly shocking that so-called liberals have allowed themselves to be hypnotised by the promise of power; and frankly insane that the British public appears not to understand what is happening on the ground.

I know that given the global financial crisis we are facing, some cuts in public spending were inevitable. I also know what Bertrand Russell once said, “All movements go too far”, though it seems this one has wasted no time in weaving its misguided wickedness.

The answer is to organise! The ConDems must be opposed at every line end. This is not a plea for New Labour to return, but it is an appeal to everyone reading this to do something about it. We should all ensure that we are in a union, write to our MPs and – where practical – attend demonstrations. I would not rule out civil disobedience if it comes to that.

October 20 will see Osborne the Fool announce even more public spending cuts, and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) is organising a mass protest in London the day before his spending review.

A further public protest is planned for March 2011. Please attend if possible, and let your voice be heard. What we do not defend, we stand to lose forever.

There is no localism or ‘Big Society’, unless you see these poorly defined ideas as a neo-con ruse to hide the fact that our government is keen to avoid direct decision making in these times of economic strife.

The ConDems’ spending cuts are a smokescreen for patching up the dreadful mistakes of modern capitalism, and there can be no excuse for this attack on ordinary people. Governments are supposed to serve people, not destroy their lives with pseudo philosophical nonsense.

Make no mistake, the poor will suffer and rich people will not. This is a lesson which we must learn today, because these changes will affect YOU.

Tomorrow will probably be too little, and much too late.

What is passion?

What is passion? I admit to being uncertain while feeling as though I am in the grip of it. I believed in so many things when I was younger: the endless possibilities of truth, love and positive, life-enhancing change.

I thought that as I aged I might somehow grow colder… Not in the sense of becoming distant; more like ‘simmering down’. Perhaps I would relax into the mellow zone and learn to mow lawns.

This has not happened. The things which used to matter to me have become even more important, and I feel like I’m on fire. They burn inside me with indignation, and sometimes even anger. I felt the same in my twenties, but I lacked focus.

I realise that zeal can be dangerous, intoxicating and volatile. I have also grasped what is for me, another fundamental truth: people do not understand passion when they see it.

At the extreme risk of sounding cynical, I would say that passion is out of fashion. Indifference is in. Speak to your average Jack or Jill in the street, and try to discover their point of view – many people seem to have none, simply accepting the status quo.

If passion can seem annoying and heated, indifference is the death of the spirit.

It’s hard to find someone who cares much any more here in England. It is very easy to make the right noises, but a life well lived is not about mere words – words must turn into actions or all is vapour. There is a saying I remember from long ago, ‘What are words but wind?’

But here I am again, straying from my point. What is passion? How can one be on fire with such an ill-defined emotion? Some would call it sublimated sex, others would ascribe it to a type of temporary madness. But I know it’s an all consuming force.

We are not talking about a passing fancy for horse racing, or a crazy desire to take up origami. Passion should be seen as fundamental, driving us forwards to some barely perceived goal.

Before I wrote this piece I went looking for some interesting quotes, and I was surprised by what I found. For example Balzac said, ‘Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.’

It is a power buried deep in the psyche, struggling to burst free. It is the antithesis of indifference, and believe me… It’s not easy to live with in such difficult times as these.

The chess loser

I’m the worst chess player in the world. No, really I am. To lose against me would be like tripping over a flea: well nigh impossible.

The fact is, I quite enjoy a few rounds of chess, and I know all the rules. I can even understand the difference between a ‘pin’ and a ‘skewer’ and I usually open well, developing my pieces and attacking the centre of the board. But still I lose, and lose again. And again.

This does nothing for my ego, because my main opponent is currently a mobile phone. It has an onboard chess programme which I can’t beat for toffee. It knows a thing or two, ‘Phone’. I might start dating it soon.

I’ve begun to ascribe human foibles to this silicon instrument of humiliation. On a good day, I can back it into a corner and get it slightly worried. But mostly it creams me. Effortlessly. Phone even gives the impression of learning from its mistakes as it takes me down. If I attack it a certain way, it adapts. I’m sure it doesn’t have a brain. But I do, and that’s the problem.

I’m no longer certain that human beings are better than the machines which serve them. You see, all a chess computer does is play chess. Or not. Human beings rampage across the planet, tearing it to pieces. Apart from the Buddhists of course: they seem to have things sorted. Do Buddhists play chess? I have no idea.

This reminds me that chess is essentially a war game, and I’m not really geared up for that psychologically. I once played a completely passive game against Phone, letting it take my pieces and refusing to defend myself. It beat me, but seemed somehow confused. ‘I know how to lose,’ said I to Phone, ‘But all you can do is win.’ It’s cold comfort, but I hope to learn from my mistakes one day.

Playing chess reminds me that I’m horribly fallible, and that I don’t have all the answers. The fact that my opponent isn’t a person enhances this feeling. If I can’t see the next move, what can I see? What else am I missing? I have no idea.

Young white and dead

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but young, white dead people are hot news at the moment.

It may have something to do with boosting newspaper circulation figures, but you know the drill.

Someone in their early 20s goes backpacking abroad and has an accident; or a crazed bowie-knife wielding random murders them.

Something bothers me about all this. It’s not the deaths, tragic though they are. I find it hard to mourn for strangers while endless news bombards my senses. No, it’s the peculiar bias such stories seem to have.

The victims are almost always young, white and middle class. If they are single women in the prime of life, so much the better for the journos’ raddled sensibilities. It helps if they have recently graduated: plenty of scope for saying, ‘She had everything to look forward to.’

And she did…. But I can’t help noticing the absence of young black people in these stories. You could be forgiven for thinking that tragedy never strikes if you belong to another ethnic group. I have often wondered why this is.

Then it struck me. The victims whom the ‘meejah’ focus on remind tabloid readers of their own nearest and dearest. If you regularly read the Daily Depress, it’s likely you have a son or daughter resembling the dear departed – so you will swallow hard and think, ‘Christ! That could have been our Emily!’

You can then scamper back to the womb-like safety of your semi, in the sure knowledge that the Reaper’s lust for souls has been sated… for now. While you’re about it, you might want to install an extra lock on the door, and reflect on what a terrible place the world has become.

All this demise and doom hints at a deeper meaning – an almost ritualistic sense of loss. Consider the Princess of Wales, and the very public grief her death inflicted on us. The media probably helped to kill her; but as we consume more and more news we create a dangerous hunger in ourselves. We want to be comforted as well as informed, but somehow we just end up feeling ever more terrified.

The truth is that nothing is risk free or guaranteed, and we hate to admit that in the end we are all food for worms. And on that cheery note, thanks for reading!

We’re all going down the pub!

I admit it – I’m obsessed with pubs. The reasons for this are uncomplicated. I was brought up in a rural backwater where you had three options: stay at home, go for a walk or visit your ‘local’.

Pubs carry a whole rag-bag of associations for me. I go there when I want to be sociable, or even when I wish to be left alone. They inspire quiet contemplation, and the gourmet delights of deliciously complex real ales.

Good beer may sometimes be bitter, but it can also taste of coffee, toffee and malt. A decent stout might remind you of rum and raisin ice cream, and be as silky-smooth as a midnight cat.

You can sit outside in high summer and smell the roses. Pubs are woven into the complex social and economic history of our nation. Sometimes this history is unwritten… or at least, widely unread!

The ancient town of Horncastle nestles gently at the foot of the Lincolnshire Wolds; a beautiful area, which is all the better for being about as obscure as raspberry-flavoured pony nuts.

Many years ago, Horncastle hosted the largest horse fair in Europe, and this was reflected in the town’s large number of pubs. There are far fewer now, but one of them was owned by a Mr Daft. ‘Daft’s Tap’ was a notorious local brothel as well as a house of booze.

This duel roll was not uncommon, and in the 19th Century the White Swan in Birmingham city was both a pub and a butcher’s shop. You would roll out of the factory doors at close of day, buy your meat and get piddled, all in one go.

There’s nothing particularly glamorous about any of this, but now British pubs are closing faster than you can say ‘ale’. I can’t keep up with the data, but in the UK there are around 52,000 pubs, with 28 closing every single week. By the time you read this, those figures will already be defunct.

It is as though the fabric of social society is being unravelled by the clumsy hands of… Whom? Us, I suspect. Towns are swamped with cheap supermarket swill. Good beer can be hard to find when the world is awash with the cheap pig’s piss that people call lager.

Jovial conversation – or even civilised debate – has given way to android-like acceptance. Why go out when you can gaze at a screen all day? Why talk to your friends and neighbours when you can text them… or simply ignore them altogether?

It’s true that some pubs are deeply inhospitable, or that the punters can be annoying to the point where you could cheerfully strangle them. It’s also true that an excellent pub can introduce you to new friends and remind you that you are truly alive. Try one soon, before it’s too late.

An apology

Dear reader

Sorry that this blog has been dormant for so long. I have had very little time to update it over the first half of 2010. I also managed to ‘lose’ my password; though the truth is I was being really stupid… I could have tried harder to remember it!

I actually considered pulling the plug on my blog at one stage, because I do enough cyberlollygagging already. Then I realised I want to write some more…

I will try to post a few entries each month, but inevitably I will sometimes fall short of this. I hope I still have plenty to say to the world, though a blog is just a tiny vessel, bobbing about on the vast ocean of cyberspace.

I’ve done some redecorating, and after messing around with several different blog themes, I’ve settled on this one. It’s fairly bright as I don’t want to depress anyone who happens to pass this way.

Love – John

The Big Society swindle

I have to do a lot of reading and writing these days… and far too many advanced Google searches. This is, I’m told, to feed that old oxymoron ‘business intelligence’. Mostly it’s because of David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ with its focus on ‘localism’.

Cameron’s idea is to decentralise power back to local authorities, and even further down to community groups. To do this, he’s steadily dismantling old local government structures. ‘Quangos are bad’, and many of these are going too.

I have a life-long interest in politics, though I now see it as a crude and rather primitive beast. After all, it isn’t about what’s good or reasonable – only what people believe is good or reasonable. These are two different things. The fact that people don’t know the difference, and are prepared to argue to the death about it, explains why we have such complex political structures. We are highly evolved apes, and we like to squabble over our bananas.

The Big Society apparently supports mutualism: for example, housing co-ops, community banks, workers co-operatives and the like. Cameron says it’s about smaller, less intrusive government. Sounds okay… until you look more closely.

We are in the middle of a global economic crisis, and perhaps we should ask ourselves, ‘Would these ideas be touted if things were different?’ The state will always try to save itself, even if this means sacrificing its own citizens on the altar. What’s the welfare of a few million people, compared to the wellbeing of a few bloated, corn-fed state brigands?

Statist governments want to distance themselves from responsibility, devolving this to local authorities. Then when things inevitably go wrong, because there’s no money being pumped through the economy to deliver essential services, local government can take the blame. We can take the blame too for not doing enough. And David Cameron can walk away with an oily smile and an extra quiff in his hair.

Don’t get me wrong. I love co-ops, and I love the idea of local activism. But if the ConDems are serious about it, why don’t they go the whole hog and abolish themselves too? Could it be because they have imported state controlled libertarianism from America? Or is it because they are simply power hungry?

I believe so. The Big Society is a Big Brand Name, and it really means, ‘You are free to do exactly as you are told’. We are free because our governments have granted us permission. How nice of them… Who put those bastards in charge anyway? Ah yes… it was us. It always comes back to that, doesn’t it?

The real Big Society wouldn’t have a brand name. We would indeed form co-operative groups for the good of us all, and we would be in charge of our own lives. The state would have nothing to do with this process. Who needs to be granted permission to be free? Why do so many people fail to connect? Because that’s how modern capitalism works.

As long as we see ourselves as alone – and treat each other this way – struggling through the world towards some foggy, unreachable goal, we will remain powerless. Do not be divided. Unite, unite, unite!

Touchy feely, nice! (Not really)

A casual friend drew attention to the idea of hyperempathy (there doesn’t seem to be a standard way to write it: perhaps it needs a hyphen?). The idea is that certain people and organisations sense everything about you and respond accordingly. It’s as if, in an emotional sense, they have X-Ray eyes. They want to see your soul.

Imagine a government so sensitive to the needs of each individual that it has a need to ‘care’ for all of them – every minute of every day. ‘Are you in work, are you ill are you..?’ It sounds a bit claustrophobic to me!

‘How’s your love life?’ – You would be justified in saying, ‘Mind your own!’

But isn’t this part of everyone’s experience? Governments really do seem to have got into bed with us, demanding a constant supply of feedback and information. In return all they want is our compliance. ‘We cater to your every need, so fall into line and be grateful!’

Hyperempathy is also present in certain people, and I read a paper suggesting that it’s a key characteristic of narscissm. If someone is extremely self regarding they may (ironically) be highly attuned to the inner lives of other people.

I once knew someone like this: he would offer dazzling personal insights – but in return he wanted to live in my pocket and he was never off the phone asking for ‘a face to face.’ So that’s what you call conversation is it?

It was all about him and his designer drugs, his women his mental landscape, his small intestine. In the end, he wore me into the ground; he was empathic to the point of neurosis: never missed a trick.

In these days of self help books and cod psychology, almost everyone has read enough to know about (for example) the role of the subconscience mind – but hyperempathy is a strange and timid beastie which doesn’t exactly loom large on anyone’s radar.

There are hyperempathic organisations which want to feel your every need and emotion. They are ‘there for you’ like an omnipresent episode of Neighbours. But in fact they are vampiric and they want to feast on your bank account. And you thought *you* were a consumer! Organisations also consume…

As you will have noticed this isn’t an academic paper or a serious analysis, but beware! The hyperempathics are out there, and they want to feel your pain. You might not get a chance to feel it yourself or take ownership of your emotions.

Climate change

Today is Blog Action Day on climate change, with the idea that the world’s bloggers (an ugly word!) should write about this important issue.

I’m more than happy to join in as discussions on climate change quickly divide people into 2 camps: those who think it’s complete nonsense, and people who accept that human beings are having a dramatic impact on global temperatures. Oh! I forgot the 3rd. lot: the ones who don’t give a buggers.

I belong to the first second(!!) group, because I’ve been interested in this subject since the mid-80s when it was a fringe issue, likely to get you branded as a fruitcake or an extremist. It seemed obvious back then that something was happening, but few people seemed willing to accept it. Now the issue has gone mainstream – good!

I hasten to add that I’m not a scientist and I have no hard evidence to back up this piece: that would take too long. I have certainly read up on the subject and feel very strongly that humanity is having an adverse effect on the planet, creating significant increases in global temperatures. The polar ice caps are melting, and somehow I find the suggestion that, ‘It would have happened anyway’ rather stupid.

My understanding is that climate change doesn’t always lead to uniformly distributed rises in global temperatures: some areas become hotter, while others may actually cool down. It seems that the overall effect is to create far less predictable global weather patterns. For example, unexpected droughts, anticyclones and flooding are more likely to occur in different regions.

Whenever I read articles written by climate change deniers I suspect that either:

1. they’ve not read any well researched – and unbiased – scientific evidence and understood key messages from this.
2. They have an underlying political agenda (usually right wing) to their view. Just to clarify, I’m a leftist so feel free to say, ‘Yeah, well you would say that wouldn’t you?’. Yes I would! But at least I’ve come clean and you can understand my perspective.
3. They don’t want to face the grim reality of the situation, so they shut down mentally and retreat into a fantasy world.

We’re all individually responsible for changing our behaviour to reduce humanity’s impact on the environment, and the addage ‘think globally, act locally’ seems like a good place to start.

I’m trying to reduce my impact on the environment. I don’t run a car or own a TV (though obviously I have a computer!) and I use low energy lightbulbs at home. I need to recycle more stuff – that’s my weak point because my neighbours are doing more on that front than me.

Please at least consider the possibility that if we don’t face up to the realities of climate change and act NOW, our future on this planet – and the wellbeing of the whole biosphere – is at risk. It’s up to us.

Rise like a dandelion

I recently had a conversation with a complete stranger on a train. This is a common experience for me as I spend a lot of time commuting between two major towns in the UK; something which can by turns be exhausting, joyful, frustrating and sociable.

I don’t know his name yet, but let’s call him Joe. He described himself as, ‘a square peg in a round hole’ working in the IT industry ‘on a dying mainframe system’. None-the-less, Joe seemed content enough with his life. This is what he said:

‘These days people have become very fragmented and atomised, but at the same time they are fiercely individualistic and will defend their right to believe whatever they want – sometimes to the death. You aren’t alone in your feelings about this.’

‘I don’t fit in well with the people I work with though. They’re all the right type for that place, but not me. I just carry on as best as I can to get by.’

That’s a paraphrase: my memory is good – but not perfect. In any case, I agree with Joe. He has a mortgage (nearly paid for) a partner (‘She might as well be my wife, but we aren’t married’) and a suitcase full of experiences. Had he been, ‘the right type’ we would never have had that conversation, because such people are rarely interesting or even mildly engaging. That’s the whole point of this article.

Speaking for myself, I rent a medium sized flat in a large city. My flat is located in a red light district: not half as bad as you might think because at least the rent is low. On the other hand, the neighbourhood tends to colour people’s view of me.

‘It’s a dodgy area!’ So therefore – QED, I must also be dodgy; an amateur poet and bedsit musician with a second class honours degree. But who cares? My entire personal history is disregarded – replaced with urban shorthand: you are where you live. You are what you own. You are a commodity; or worse still, an accessory to be bolted onto someone’s life and removed when deemed expedient.

I can’t afford a mortgage (that requires a double income) and I do indeed live in a place with no sense of community. I used to know my neighbours, but not now: the good ones have moved away. I share a small block of flats with four other people, and if I pass them in the corridor they occasionally acknowledge my presence, but I don’t know their names. Not long ago one of them actually grunted at me. I wonder if he realised what kind of signal that sends out?

Although I’m not a Marxist, Karl Marx wrote about alienation, and here I am experiencing it at first hand. It’s not an abstract intellectual concept after all, because for me this means a gradual stripping away of personal identity and spontaneity; the growing realisation that if you were to stand in a large crowd with a basket of stones (or sponge balls if you’re feeling gentle) you could pelt them around all day without hitting someone with a social conscience. Did I say all day? All year! Do I hear any bids for an entire lifetime?

Community has been replaced with naked self interest and greed. There are genuine communities out there, but they seem to exist in isolated pockets around the globe, and I have no idea what it is like to actively enjoy living somewhere over a prolonged period. A strong sense of self is very much linked to shared values and a feeling of belonging; but for me, this is largely missing. I don’t blame myself for this because it’s a side effect of global capitalism.

I know I’m not alone. This year I became involved in a project to set up a brand new housing project called the ‘ Dandelion Housing Co-op‘. This article is not really an advert for our nascent organisation (though publicity is useful) but a group of us are planning to live together.

There are many similar projects dotted around the UK [this is a UK-centric article] because not everyone wants to live in glorious isolation with a mortgage and a divorce/broken heart/mental illness/pet iguana for company. You name it: most of these things are a direct consequence of our modern age. Our decision to disconnect with authenticity.

Cooperatives like ours depend on issues of loan stock (low interest loans issued over pre-determined periods) and grant funding to get started. So far so good: we have a bank account, but not much money. We have a business plan, and we have a small measure of hope.

Many of us are holding out for a better life somewhere other than a dystopian jungle full of fast-food, cheap thrills and apparently empty people. We might succeed, we might fail but we are unlikely to stop trying until we find a place to make a stand and live more balanced lives.

Joe and me stood together, shuddering on a chilly Autumnal railway platform talking; half listening to the animated laughter of a small group of Chinese girls. We shared a half hour journey and nattered about this and that, amused by the fact that two so-called veteran commuters had managed to get on the wrong train, heading rapidly away from our true destination. A metaphor for modern life perhaps? Hell – I might even learn his real name one day.

Drink absinthe!

Absinthe is a very misunderstood drink, and although terrible hangovers are a real possibility, a lot of the real trouble comes from the way it’s commonly served.

It should never be drunk neat, and it should be served in a proper absinthe glass. Ice cold water should be slowly trickled into the drink through a slotted absinthe spoon; and a sugar cube perched on the spoon is essential, so it can dissolve into the booze.

Absinthe is an herbal liquor, and unless the right amount of very cold water is added to it, the drink’s herbal essences will not be released. I’ve seen people in British bars drink it neat, but in the 19th. Century the only people to do this were in the final stages of alcoholism…

There is a myth (which has been perpetuated through films) that you are supposed to dunk a sugar cube in the absinthe on a spoon, then ignite the thing and stand back going ‘Oooooo, how cool is that?!’ Not so. Here is some gratuitous advertising for you, for which I might eventually receive a free bottle of the ‘green fairy’!

Absinthe

If you enjoy an occasional glass of absinthe you will not go mad, you will completely fail to cut your ear off like Van Gogh, and (wait for it… another myth coming up) it doesn’t contain neurotoxic substances. If you overdo any alcoholic drink you’re going to suffer ill effects, so please… keep it real and have a good time.

How to live a ludic life

So what does it mean, this funny little word? Ludic has its roots in the Latin word ludus meaning playful, and it hints at the possibility of living life in a less serious manner. I’m not an expert in this subject (who is?) but I thought it would make an interesting ramble; especially as I have a finely tuned sense of the absurd.

A quick trawl through the (occasionally accurate!) annals of Wikipedia suggests that ludic ideas are linked to anarchism, though I’m inclined to be cautious about this because just about every interesting idea out there claims to belong to a branch of anarchism – including the Internet itself.

After all, the Net can be seen as a creative project put together by a group of largely unpaid enthusiasts. Of course this paradigm cannot be applied universally: the chances are your ISP pays its staff.

So how does one live ludically? I think the first thing is to destructure your life; or at least try to be less reliant on routines. All of us can fall into the trap of repeating ourselves, and once spontaneity is lost life becomes dull.

Children are naturally playful and communal, but as we grow up we are strongly encouraged (and brutalised if we don’t) to conform to a rigidly hierarchical system where we are often measured against spurious benchmarks of ‘excellence’. Petty bureaucratic bores love such metrics, and it is arguably very hard to completely dispense with them.

The next step is to mentally focus on the more surreal aspects of life. Someone once told me that every single day contains a surreal event, but we are often too busy to notice. More about that later.

For example, last week I was out walking when I saw an abandoned car by the road. The front bumper was a wreck, the windscreen was crazed over and the passenger-side airbag was inflated. The car belonged to a driving school and it was easy to imagine a very pissed off instructor standing by the side of the road with a red face and an extremely embarrassed pupil. ‘How was your day?’

Welcome as they are this is not just about belly laughs; it’s more a question of changing your focus slightly. Of shifting it sideways and taking a walk in Surreal Park.

Most people (myself included) are much too busy. Kick your shoes off, open a bottle of wine and cast your worries to the wind. The world can wait for a while. I don’t think it’s wise to put off your responsibilities forever, but postponing them can be as good as a two week holiday. After all, why worry?

So how can we learn to be more playful? The clue’s in the word: by playing! Surely playfulness is a form of creativity, but my idea of ludic living is about a more disciplined form of play. When was the last time you made something? Why not fly a kite, read a book or go to the cinema? Can you write short stories or poems? Can you paint, draw or invent a narrative? Or make a film!

If these things are beyond your reach then try this: buy a bottle of bubbles and take them with you wherever you go. Blow them when you feel like having fun.

To summarise:

• destructure your life as far as possible (I’m not suggesting chaos)
• focus on the surreal/more interesting aspects of life
• try to be less busy
• find as many creative outlets as you can

Please feel free to comment on these ideas and add some of your own. Off on a tangent, my spellchecker does not recognise the word ludic. Perhaps we need to expand our collective vocabularly if we are to have any hope of living better lives in our crazy mixed up world?

Do umbrellas go to Heaven when they die?

I can’t decide, but I do know its been raining for a whole week and all I seem to do is go outside, walk, get wet and dry out again. It really saps your enthusiasm and drains your will.

Some time ago I estimated that in a single week I walk for about 10 hours. This isn’t for my health, I have buses and trains to catch – then I have to do it again in reverse to return home. As you can imagine, umbrellas are important to someone who spends a lot of time on the hoof.

Ah yes, umbrellas. I remember a time when I thought an umbrella was just a piece of cloth stretched over a metal frame, but that’s just for beginners. At first I thought I could get by with a cheap one, but then the wind blew too strongly and snapped my cheap piece of kit like a cheese straw. So I went upmarket and spent some silly money on a brolly with a fibreglass frame; guaranteed not to break in a gale.

This was my Excalibur. Something I began to see as more than just an umbrella: it was a tool! Holding it up against the wind felt like sailing, even though I was only trudging along and killing time. You can feel your muscles working and the umbrella responds against the wind like a kite, flexing and twisting in your grip.

Sadly I left it in the pub. Most of my umbrellas fall prey to loss, but in the end I replace them and carry on like before. There is something sad about a broken umbrella lying in the street, a testiment to our wasteful ‘just in time’ consumer society. You can’t beat a good bit of kit, and a brolly looks stylish, but do they go to Heaven when they die?

Urban regeneration: is it cultural vandalism?

I have good reasons for asking this, because several years ago I moved to a very large city. Back then it was a mish-mash of concrete and urban sprawl, and it felt dark and vaguely threatening. Then the developers moved in with their skyscraper cranes, steel girders and eyes glittering with holy zeal. ‘Let us regenerate’, and they did and they saw that it was good.

Unfortunately for many of us, it was less than good: it was destructive and pig-headed. At first I was pleased to see the new restaurants and the space age department stores. I even liked some of the shoppers; though I can’t understand people who wear sunglasses over their hair like UV protective Alice bands.

Then the Dark Side became apparent. I like to hang around rock venues, and often these are small city centre pubs with basement stages. They charge £4 on the door, and you can turn up to hear a handful of unsigned bands at the weekend. They are full of leather clad music fiends, and – believe it or not – some of them are actually friendly. Occasionally I look like one of them, despite being ‘middle-aged’. Who wants to be a stereotype? Lots of people!

But the Noveau Urban Re-generators hate these places because they take up valuable ‘real estate’. Why have a rock pub when you can bulldozer it into the dirt and build a faceless department store on the ruins instead? After all, what people want is a nice clean happy environment, uncluttered by hairy bohos like me. This isn’t just vapouring, I’ve watched it happen.

One by one I’ve seen valuable venues close down, either through the will of the regen. vandals or because a gang of local yuppies signed a petition. ‘We don’t like the noise of culture’ would be shorthand for their views. These are people who install themselves in town centres while the dust is still settling on their new build apartments. Suddenly – because they paid upwards of £150,000 for a brick and plaster box which will fall to bits in 20 years anyway – they become horribly vocal.

I’ve watched two valued venues close down in just a handful of years, and there are more on the way. A friend recently showed me a converted church on Cardiff Bay called The Point: it went bust because people complained about the noise. The venue was forced to foot the bill for sound-proofing, but this proved too much of a financial strain. In my own city, Ronnie Scotts shut down: it’s now a strip club. Another city centre club had to close because of complaints from the pin stripe brigade.

A few years ago this would have been unthinkable. People actually wanted to go to live music venues to socialise, but now music (much like masturbation) has become a solo experience. Of course people still travel to festivals in the Summer, but that’s just in between iPod and MySpace sessions. Music is always at its best when experienced with other people, so I continually wonder, ‘What the Hell went wrong’?

Another reason for hating urban regeneration is that – as predicted by Naomi Klein in ‘No Logo’ – it has led to private space masquerading as public space. When I walk through my city I have security guards peering at me, guarding those valuable pizza restaurants against hairy folk rockers like me. After all, I might get stroppy and say, ‘Good morning’ or something.

Urban yuppies are incompatible with grassroots culture. They stunt the development of our major towns and cities because they are anti-creative, anti-intellectual and self obsessed. They are heeded by local authorities on a disproportionate scale to their personal worth and intelligence, and they should be quitely ignored for the fools they really are.