309. V.C.R. syndrome is making me ill…

No, it’s not a strange aversion to defunct video equipment. I have a bad case of Voting Card Revulsion…

Yesterday my polling card for the May 23^rd EU elections popped through the door, a month shy of 3 years since Britain (or rather the English and the Welsh) voted to take us out of the EU for reasons no one is clear on. I’m not sure I can bring myself to touch it. Could this situation be madder if a toad dressed in a tutu tap-danced into my living room?

The new Farage/Annunziata Brexit party have the biggest poll showing for the forthcoming EU elections here in Britain, while the Labour party still have to waste time and energy explaining the inexplicable Jeremy Corbyn .

We’ve got the arch self-promoter and racist Boris Johnson still spewing up toxic guff in The Telegraph but now with a sister in the also new Change UK party. Explanations on a postcard please as to their political profile. They recently ejected one candidate shortly after announcing his candidacy because of his racist tweets!!!

Rees Mogg, Brexit lunatic, brother of Annunziata and our faux Dickensian twonk - has still not apologised for uncritically re-tweeting a German fascist party.

The Liberals reckon it’s worth someone putting a tick next to them on the ballot even though their Leader is a dead man walking (Vince resigns in the summer) the country may have forgiven them for their part in the David Cameron coalition. I haven't.

The 10 Irish lumps of the DUP continue to claim to be implementing the will of the people by pushing for the hardest of hard Brexits even though Ireland voted more decisively than any other part of Britain to REMAIN in the EU. Also, many blame the recent violence including the death of the young Irish journalist Lyra McKee on the continuing lack of leadership on the island of Ireland, uncertainty over Brexit and the fear of a return to internal borders.

Here in Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon dangled the possibility of a second Indy Ref ahead of the SNP conference as we struggle with the combined and conflicting outcomes of both referenda. The 2014 Indy ref was sealed by fiscal scare-mongering AND the threat that an independent Scotland would not be allowed to stay in the EU!!! Now we are being dragged down the sewer by England (and Wales), the way being liberally smeared with you-know-what by the Westminster cabal of crazies.

Few media outlets seem interested in talking to Green candidates – what with the Environment being all so not-a-problem and all.

Then over the weekend more hysteria e.g. John Rentoul’s op ed piece in The Independent claiming that Theresa May has ‘killed Brexit and her Party’ so Corbyn will now get into Downing St. I’m not sure what drugs he’s on but a. you can’t kill the walking dead. b. even Corbyn’s own party clearly no longer think he is electable. Plus he keeps trying to climb aboard any passing bandwagon and landing on his face. Last week he wanted climate change declared an emergency (wow – really JC) presumably tapping into Greta Thunberg’s youth popularity – like a creepy political vampire feeding off the young.

Meanwhile, stories about the number of companies that have bailed out of the UK have dropped out of headline position and we are embroiled in a new silly situation over security and Huawei and May’s apparent decision to give the go-ahead to the Chinese telecommunications company despite global concerns about state involvement. No one but no one is asking – for example – how all their super-high-speed tech is going to work in a country with badly failing infrastructure that has shattered its global reputation. Surely, if things continue on their backward trajectory away from the future will we not plunge down into a grey 1970s world of power cuts and tinned food…

What I liked about the 1970s first time around was being a child and not understanding anything about politics…

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Oh – and –for lazy environmentalists and need-a-lie-down eco-warriors who may be too depressed to muster the energy for the book version of Casey & the Surfmen (see last week) there is a bandcamp version – read by me - for streaming and downloading - click here...

Casey & the Surfmen - audio

308. Get your face out of your phone and talk to your children or put them up for adoption.

Two encounters with young men last Friday turned out to be unfortunate – for me. The first was physically very unpleasant indeed. On quite a hefty bike, a young guy hurtled around a bend on a walk/cycle path, without a bell and knocked me down. It was so sudden and unexpected that at first – as I lay sprawled and stunned - it wasn’t clear to me what had actually happened. The man did apologise and asked if my glasses (or anything else) were broken. It took a while to get to my feet but on seeing that he was genuinely sorry I admonished him, told him to watch his speed and shooed him away so I could sort myself out. I was further down the path and in a daze before things started to hurt and I realised my elbow was bleeding (through 4 layers) both my hands were skinned and my knee was bruised and cut. By the time I got home my shoulder hurt like a devil and I discovered an ugly swelling on my calf. I assume the bike wheel got me before him and the bike frame.

Before I arrived home, walking slowly and feeling wobbly, another young man almost collided with me. He had his face in his phone and both hands tied up with same. In front of him was a small boy on a scooter and cycling slowly next to him a pretty blonde girl who chatted away to him and was completely ignored. I avoided him by stepping off the curb. He walked on oblivious of me or his children. I assume they were his. There was no one else around. And, as I said, the little girl was talking to him and looking up at him.

Of the two incidents – even though I’m as sore as hell and stiff all over have a hole in the elbow of my favourite cardigan and the knee through a pair of trousers that might have lasted a bit longer – I’d take situation no.1 any time because – at the end of the day – I do not think any lasting damage has been done. So,

GET YOUR FACE OUT OF YOUR PHONE

&

TALK TO YOUR CHILDREN

Or do them a favour and put them in care.

If you need science to tell you that constantly prioritising a mobile device or talking to your child out of the side of your mouth while your face is in that smartphone is bad for them, then try clicking on this some sciency stuff if common sense aint your thing.

And that was written before smartphones became completely ubiquitous.

Or you can just take it from this granny that if you constantly prioritise your phone over your children - you shouldn’t have had them…

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Oh – and – if the future of said children interests you and you've been cheering on Extinction Rebellion -  their street action scenario makes an uncanny appearance (spoiler alert) at the end of my environmental poetry story Casey & the Surfmen – first drafted a decade and a half ago…

307. Google & the googlings.

The numerically modest but regular readers of these posts will know that – apart from my little Googley blog here - I am not much evident in the brave new world where one does not exist unless posting selfies online every 15 minutes. I am, however, grateful to those who take a look now and again and those extras who seek me out whenever one of my current affairs letters is published in national newspapers (and occasionally the press abroad). I know – letters – how old-fashioned is that?  HOWEVER – even I got a severe case of that-was-weird when I encountered some Google younglings or googlings last week. If you haven’t ever watched The Stepford Wives you should, the original freak-you-out 1975 version with Katharine Ross. And then imagine what Stepford Children would be like because I think I met some.

As I am about to put forth another book (you know with a cover and pages and words on a page that take longer to read than 13 seconds and with no pictures) I took up a free course offer at the pop-up google ‘garage’ shop here in Edinburgh. It was a beginner’s online marketing course. I felt it might be a waste of time as I suspected everything would revolve around instagram, facebook, twitter and youtube vlogging. While I have a couple of short performance poems on you tube and a couple of Goodreads clips I am not social media ‘present’. I was very pleasantly surprised to find, however, that not all the information was irrelevant to me and I didn’t know quite as little as I thought I did. Not that that bar was particularly high. Though everyone had a chuckle when I had to admit to not owning a smartphone (see last week’s post).

The 90 minutes was well spent. The course leader managed to whip through a lot of information in that short amount of time AND answer quite a few questions AND prevent one business duo from monopolising the session. I left feeling my hour and a half had not been wasted but was keener to take advantage of the promised 30 min 1-1 session you could book if you attended one of the set courses.

That was when things started to get weird.

Firstly, I realised the following day that I’d left my specs there. I could not find a number for the shop but found an email which I used but which went unanswered (and has still not been answered). I returned to the shop in a panic. As I walked through the door I spotted the nice young woman who had done the course and several other young googlings sitting brightly at one of the stylish minimalist tables (I really liked the furniture and decor). At least four of them half rose and sent full-on beam dazzling smiles in my direction and my previous course leader inquired if I was coming to try another course. Before the single syllable ‘N’ word was completely out of my mouth ALL the beams were switched off like someone just tripped a switch. Then heads, bodies, shoulders turned away. They were like cyborgs with only two settings. I did manage to snare a young googling of Asian appearance with slightly more complex reactions and asked about my specs. She seemed confused, she asked someone else. It was as if I’d called into a vegan outlet enquiring about rare steak (I’m vegetarian but you get my drift). Maybe, I surmised, googlings never need glasses! The specs were there – thank goodness - as I cannot afford to replace them any time soon. HOWEVER, the specs case had both my name and telephone number in the lid in large clear black letters. Why had no one thought to ring/text?

The very pleasant young Asian-style earth googling – she with the delayed turn-off switch – repeated the question about registering for another course. (Maybe she was on replay!) I remembered that my original motivation for doing a first course was to get the 1-1 half hour with someone who might answer specific questions for this old Luddite. I asked about booking my precious 30 minute session and stood next to her while she opened up the availability programme, showed me what was free, took my details and booked me in there and then. While I watched. I was sure I could feel body heat and detect breathing...

Fantastic. I had my specs and I had my 30 minute session.

The next time I opened my email, while there was still no reply to my query, there was an automated message telling me my attempt to book the 30 minute 1-1 session had failed (!) but if there was a cancellation I would receive an email to that effect.

Hey ho. Just another indicator that the online world is not pour moi.

But a disturbing thought niggled me. Many times I’ve written on this blog about the dehumanising effects of IT and many folk my age worry about the future of AI and its effects on humanity. I have to say, artificial intelligence incapacitating humans was not what was freaking me out after my encounter with the googlings. It was the uncanny similarity to well oiled robots displayed by those apparently human youngsters…

306. Smartphones mainline the methamphetamine of adult-world compulsions direct to the brain and we happily give them to children…

If you are one of the neck-bent addicts then it’s likely and highly ironic that you will not have noticed how depressing it is to walk down a street and see only the tops of people’s heads, even those walking along with ‘loved’ ones.

But the addiction is strong, subtle and permanently devouring. Those of us struggling to understand how millions have been fooled by Trump and Brexit may consider, among other things, that nations permanently distracted are permanently gullible.

However, users still fall into two categories. Those who – on the whole – had some experience of life and brain development before the smartphone became ubiquitous and a new generation plugged in not long after the umbilical cord is severed.

With no smart phone or car I’m regularly on public transport. When the grey people are getting from one homeless pitch to another it can be depressing – and also difficult to breath. Equally saddening can be when young people (in the latter category mentioned above) attempt conversation. This seems to amount to telling the person next to them what they just saw online (a Kardashian got new nail-polish/ someone said or did something that a consensus agree is hilarious/the planet is dying - mwaaah) before they are sucked back in and away from real human contact.

Smartphones are gateways to pressure of all depths and colours, information both good and bad plus the rest. They are also highly addictive incapacitators. While I have little sympathy for older press barons braying for control of social media for simply doing more effectively what they tried to do for decades, I do see that the scale and reach is out of control.

Imagine if – when cars were invented – society said – oh dear – new technology – we’d better ask car manufacturers to regulate it? But, meanwhile – persons of any age can use the highways untutored and un-regarded.

There are many and varied issues here. The constant testosterone throb of consumerism, easier access to vaster and darker worlds and access to those who, by choice, inhabit those hinterlands, all served up unfiltered to the vulnerable. There is the elevation of the trivial, the worship of the mediocre and attention craving for attention’s sake that has become a 21^st century sickness. The decrease in real human interaction that many see as responsible for loss of the empathy that has taken eons for humans to acquire and which makes civilisation possible, is one of social media and the smartphones’ biggest casualties (see More less-contact is making us horrible. )

However, as adults – especially those of us who had a pre-social media life (or the decreasing percentage of us who still have no social media) we have a gauge, a measure. Many of us can hold on to notions of what is real and what is nonsense.

In the light of horrors such as apparently social media driven teen suicides and the growth of deadly white supremacist terrorism, the government is posturing, again, about legislating to control social media. Well, if they ever start dealing with, for example, the unchallenged epidemic of fraud that goes almost entirely unprosecuted in the UK, we may believe they want to do more than make macho statements.

Unfortunately, the answer is so evident, undramatic, none-consumer and non-hysteria driven it is not something politicians would ever conceive of or propose. Like alcohol, drugs, driving, marriage and smoking - smartphones should be illegal to those under 16.

If there are significant numbers of independent sentient beings left in the general populous in 20-years-time, they will be as aghast at our idiocy in letting under-16s have unfettered and constant smartphone access to the want-driven highways of the internet as we were about slavery and sending children down mines…

305. MPs verbally masturbate in their Brexistential universe while the UK lies staring at the political ceiling disgusted, detached and depressed …

…and Europe and the world watch in fascinated revulsion.

There are now factions within factions in the repulsive, self-indulgent nonsense that is Brexit. Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall since Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees Mogg flipped, leaving the nasty ERG cabal stewing in its own xenophobia?

No one knew what Brexit was and no one knows what it is but the fighting goes on. There can be no denying that it has been a full-throttle vehicle for uncovering everything that is mean and nasty about Britain. Jon Snow of Chanel 4 was criticised for his off-script observation of the ‘whiteness’ of the jingoistic (and that is being polite) crowds outside Westminster on what would have been exit day but they sure looked like a Trump rally to me.

One would assume that May’s 3^rd significant Brexit defeat would mean the end of her but the Tories are in too much of a mess to rock the boat even further right now. Far more important than the departure of Theresa May, however, is the vital leave-taking of Jeremy Corbyn.

Unless Jeremy Corbyn is the most selfish, dimmest, most disconnected leader the party has ever had (and that is possible) he must go.  His exit should be no longer than it takes him to say his goodbyes.

From day 1, I put in print on this blog and in letters published by national newspapers, that Corbyn was not leader material. I had no idea I was being optimistic until he failed to lift a finger during the referendum leaving Labour and Remain effectively leaderless in the most important decision this country has faced in generations. He was elected by default, nominated by the Blairites to make the leadership contest look fair. What the party wanted was a left-wing candidate not – despite what his ego told him – HIM.

Brexit has been a race no one has won. No one knew the rules or even what sport was being played. Nevertheless, the whistle has blown and with it the captains of the teams, ineffectual, not up to the task, confusing their players, irritating the crowd and achieving nothing but chaos must retire. I would say retire gracefully but it is far too late for that. It would also be helpful if the foolish fantasists and fops of the various fringes and factions would fuck off.

Back in the mists of time when I – along with almost no one else – predicted – on this blog that Miliband would not succeed in winning an election, I followed that by expressing hope that Labour would have the common sense to take the election of a new leader slowly and thoughtfully. It did not. It jumped out of that particular frying pan into what I would call a fire except to complete that analogy would suggest energy and light – not two things that come to mind when I think of the wet blanket that Corbyn has thrown over the party.

Once Britain returns (please god) to focusing on the things that matter and not the self-made problems of unhinged minds – Labour needs to clear out of the way that which will keep it in turmoil – another wrong leader -  Jeremy Corbyn.

The sick-making Brexit shambles stumbles on with the MPs in Parliament the only ones seeming animated – like an egotist in bed who, unaware that their partner’s lethargy and lack of interest is due to revulsion, has decided to masturbate raucously while the other lies there repulsed and depressed hoping it’s all a bad dream or – at least – will be over soon...