324. Boris Johnson and Donald Trump escape the consequences of their actions but Michelle Obama and Meghan Markle can’t escape racism…

… in the civilised West.

Trump and Johnson prove that with enough power, a man of even the most limited ability and entirely lacking in admirable qualities can rise above the law, above human decency and above any moral or ethical code.

Michelle Obama and Meghan Markle prove that a woman can never get high enough to avoid being targets of racism.

I’ve written extensively on the hideous Trump and odious Johnson and also on how the vile Trump family have shown in even sharper focus just how admirable the Obamas were in office. But if you missed my letter re MM  in The Independent last week which partially covers the subject – here is the text

24^th October 2019

Dear Editor,

I would describe myself as anti-royalist but as a mixed race woman living through some of the most intolerant, jingoistic times in UK history I have sympathy for Meghan Markle on a human level.

If the ignorant, rich white folk sniggering at the black minister who married her didn’t give her a clue to how things were going to go down, I don’t know what would.

She is the most beautiful royal we’ve had and yet is regularly slated for her looks. She has the most poise but is slated for her demeanour. The family she has married into makes her own look like the Waltons and yet any family dirt the press can ignite is fanned by the greedy media inferno.

There is one simple way to explain all this – it is an utterly toxic mix of snobbery and racism.

*

No funnies this week. If you want some humour check out my new comedy novel

Sex, Violence & the Wrong Mobility Scooter (UK)

Sex, Violence & the Wrong Mobility Scooter (US)

323. Is Brexit a symptom of our contact-less society?

One of the wilder ideas that occurred to me over the weekend was that Brexit is the result of losing our sense of humour and humanity. More than that it is a sign that we – here in the UK at least – have lost our ability to enjoy the company of other human beings. And I’m not talking about the false hysterical screeching and gurning that passes for ‘fun’ on the TV and the ‘look at my amazing life’ pictures on social media.

The clarion call of the fascist frog Farage is ‘reclaim our borders’ while he and his ilk do very well thank you from a world where – as far as making money is concerned – there are no borders. It belies a state of affairs that is very global for the rich and very insular for a majority. It is a world – as I’ve pointed out many times on this blog – where everything that used to be owned by the British people has been sold off and often to wealthy individuals in other countries. None of this reality seems to have bothered the wealthy public school boys who lied and wheedled to get this falsehood through. Many of the mob conned by the Leave campaign can be heard banging on about the ‘not-so-long-ago’ when ‘WE’ ruled the waves. Well not me obviously. As someone with Caribbean ascendants my lot would have been the ones they were happy to rule. I.e. the slaves of the empire that were kidnapped, starved, raped, murdered and exploited for profit.

But put all of the obvious – but studiously ignored - realities to one side. This new idea – that humans have just stopped realising how nice it is to be nice to each other, occurred to me because of something that happened at the end of last week.

I was treated to coffee and a bun by two very dear old friends of mine. We met in an Italian restaurant at 9am and were served by a friendly, efficient Italian waiter. When we left some 90 minutes later the waiter remarked to the friend who paid the bill how nice/unusual it was to have people in the café in the morning (presumably the alcohol oiled later clients were more vociferous) who talked and laughed and really seemed to be enjoying each other’s company.

It took a while to fathom what he meant. Then I realised that what passes for socialising these days often involves groups of people meeting up in places like that but with everyone permanently clutching their smart phones and not really fully engaging with the people they are actually ‘with’.

Of course, if my no-real-fun theory were in any way close to correct we might, for example, end up with some sort of faux clownish buffoon as Prime Minister…

Maybe if we still talked to each other and had real human interaction we’d remember just how little difference there really is between us. We all need oxygen, food, sleep, real contact and love. The first two are in danger and the last two rely on each other.

On the 28^th July 2015 I put up this blog post  More Less-Contact Is Making Us Horrible

And how much more horrible we seem to be…

322. Globalisation is a difficult devil; Normalisation is the devil's advocate…

Globalisation is a term thrown around so much it has lost its shape. It can even be used as a positive or a negative depending on who is doing the chucking. If you see a borderless world as one where the restraints of nationalist spite and dictates dissolve, you may rest easy in the first group and there are many things which require the co-operation of the whole globe if any good is to be done. An obvious example is our present climate disaster.

However, if you look at Globalisation as the realisation of the Capitalist wet dream where at the push of an app a small cabal with wealth that would make Midas sick – can exploit untold masses of poor people continents away, then you will fall into the latter category.

And like the monster itself – the sickness it spreads needs ever more subtle tentacles to invade our space. There is an aggressive alien presence in our midst that very much does the bidding of wholly exploitative Globalisation. We became infected with it, partly through the new breed of advertising and now it is endemic. It is so pervasive it’s hard to tell who the zombies are and who remains still human, sentient and with brain activity.

NORMALISATION is one of the successful viruses killing common sense.

Many years ago (when I was a child in the Neolithic era) much advertising was based around aspiration; keeping up with the neighbours and having a better life. Some time in the 90s it seemed to segue off the slip road of not being left behind. Early this century, the new push was Normalisation. It’s been so insidious it’s hard to pinpoint when Normalisation became the new drug of choice for rampant capitalism on a global scale.

By Normalisation I mean that things that we most certainly did not regard as normal even twenty years ago – in some cases only one decade ago – now pass as normal because they are promoted so persuasively that way.

Below is a short example list -

It is ‘normal’ for a significant number of Western children to still be in nappies full-time by their 3^rd birthday. If you are a young parent you may think this is normal but it wasn’t when my kids were little and when I was a child and the dreaded terry nappy was all harried mums could get, it was not unusual for parents (usually mothers) to aim to get their infants out of nappies starting at 12 months. However – if you look on the side of nappy packets you can see that advertisers are pushing people to think it’s normal because the kids they use to advertise nappies – or pull ups which actually hold kids back from being continent – look to me like they should be at university. The longer your kids are in nappies the more money the manufacturers make and fck the environment. But they need you to be comfortable with this retarded behaviour so it’s pushed as entirely the norm until that is what it becomes.

Plastic surgery. This was once the go to for aging Hollywood starlets. Then it came down the ladder to the Page 3 girls and IT girls and D-list celebrities. Now you can see disfigured teenagers in any city with lopsided lips that look like they’ve been punched in the mouth or middle aged women with paralysed foreheads looking like they’ve been lobotomised and some with bosoms that will be breaking down their chemical compounds decades after the body that is currently housing them is dust.

Needless to say it’s ‘normal’ for most everyone to have a mobile phone and with the exception of yours truly a smart phone and it is not unusual to see very young children in nappies in buggies entirely mesmerised by an i-pad.

It has become normal for young children almost to never leave the house unless accompanied by – or worse – organised by their parents. The obesity crisis is always blamed on food – and while I do not disagree – we ate SHITE in the 70s. Tinned, packaged, neon colours with sugar and bizarre food colours and the whole of the time I was growing up there was only ever one fat kid in my secondary school class and none at all in my primary school. We didn’t have homework and if we weren’t at school we were out playing. Just yesterday in a radio ad, a TV company was promoting mental health, They suggest the best time to 'have a chat' was in front of the TV. In reality TV is what people 'do' instead of talking or playing out or, in fact, doing anything.

A few weeks ago I heard what to me was an horrific statement by a young go-getting entrepreneur. She said “we are never not shopping”. My gut reaction was – that is bollocks. Then my head got into gear and I realised that if you count actual shopping and all the time folk spend staring at their screens either scanning for something to consume or being sent info on consumer crap they didn’t know they wanted – she may have a point. That was not normal until even five years ago. It is ‘normal’ now.

I tried not to bang on about politics this week but it cannot be avoided so I’ll say it. Not so long ago, men as openly vile and morally malformed as Trump or Boris Johnson would never have been elected. The sorts of things one had to resign for years ago - they both had under their belts possibly before they left full-time education. Now – sensible humane folk are left scratching their heads wondering just how much shit these two have to mix before we can say bye bye. Hideous as they are they are good for corporate greed and many of their fellow politicians expend energy promoting them as entirely normal human beings.

I could go on but you get it.

If corporate Globalisation is the 21s Century’s devil incarnate, Normalisation is the Devil’s advocate.

Post-gig post...

Bit knackered after the launch gig last night albeit it was low-key because you always get strung out when its your baby.
Thanks to those who bought books and a massive thank you to the incredibly talented Joss Cameron and Amy Dudley of Shian who were even better than I imagined they would be and I will be standing in line to buy Shian's new album as soon as its out.
Along with funny, cheeky, instantly adorable 'Spike' Munro, raconteur, comedy poet +++, this was exactly the line up I'd like to be on stage with and was lucky enough to be with last night.

321. Without Facebook or Twitter am I cursed...

…with context?

Not much stops me in my tracks these days when it comes to the ongoing global self-harm of modern human existence but some stuff still does. Not necessarily the big things.

Just before I set the radio to search for something decent to listen to on Monday morning I caught a snippet of the BBC morning programme and a rather belated report  about the dreadful problems in Iraq and the violent, deadly protests currently accompanying that weary country’s troubles.

But that wasn’t what left me gaping like a fish on a bank.

Both the journalist reporting the disruption and the presenter soliciting the brief news clip had THAT tone. The one many of us came to know and loath when John Humphrys filled that slot for endless years and which we hoped had walked out the door with him. that weary – tut tut tut – how else can you expect foreigners to behave - tone.

Often I second guess myself on these reactions. I try to tell myself not to let my disgust at the decades of time the BBC has had to get its house in order in terms of representing places other than London, representing people other than middle class white people and coming up to date with style and content for the 21^st century when they are funded by almost everyone in the UK. Not me. As you know, I’ve not had TV since last century.

And then it came. The confirmation that what I’d heard was not a mistake.

I know it’s difficult in a world where people are bombarded through one screen or another with an unbearable volume of ‘news’ which can one minute be about who had sex with whom on TV to children dying in un-seaworthy migrant boats to what colour you should be wearing this autumn to political corruption and human/planetary devastation - all mixed up like news pigs’ swill.

But – if like me – you are one of the non-people. I.e. you don’t exist in the world of social media you have time for context. And trust me – when you have that it feels like a curse.

So – if like me you still do context – when the next couple of lines came – and they were - 

“so much corruption and violence” (in that tut tut voice)

And

“…the failure of [Iraqi] politicians to rebuild…”

You will have been as flabbergasted as I was. Because your first thought – and this context was not presented – will have been – who wrecked Iraq in the first place?

No smug, tut-tutty tone for Britain’s huge part in the mess, the UK’s illegal (formally declared) invasion.

The only parallel I could think of is the way the BBC currently reports on the rise in measles, the fall in the uptake of vaccines and the fact that the UK has lost its measles-free status in the wake of the hysteria and false information over vaccines which those in the health service have been unable to reverse since it began with Wakefield in the 1990s.

What is not mentioned in these ‘reports’ which focus on the bogus information on social media, is that the BBC were one of the first credible news organisations to promote Wakefield’s views giving that lone, discredited individual equal weight in many, many, many interviews – against almost every credible health professional in the service entirely opposed to him. But the BBC made it seem like a 50/50 debate. The huge damage done then is not mentioned. It’s as if it’s just too convenient to suggest this is a new phenomenon started by social media.

Context is everything and – occasionally – a little honest memory is also helpful.

*

And, swerving off the greasy highway and avoiding the horrific political pile-up remember – tomorrow is the book launch party.

320. Boris Johnson ate my hamster…

OF course he didn’t but it wouldn’t matter if he had would it. 

In 1986, that tabloid front page headline relating to a TV comedian - Freddie Starr was just the kind of nonsense we'd come to expect from the gutter press. Nowadays inappropriate behaviour from those at the top of society - real, or imagined to increase newspaper sales - seems to be barely blinked at. Here, as in the US - there is a hard core of people who - if they feel they are getting their own way by supporting a certain individual, however venal - will turn a blind eye to almost anything.

If recent years have taught us nothing else it is that Britain as the meritocracy former Tory Prime Minister John Major boasted about, is long gone, if it ever existed. A Britain of fairness, one where rules apply to all and everyone equally is a lunatic’s fantasy.

What the last few months have laid naked, is that if you are from an extremely privileged background, there are almost no rules you need to obey and no amount of ineptitude, no whiff of corruption, no personal or public scandal or gaff or bigoted behaviour will prevent you rising.

It won’t matter if the police are called to your mistress’s apartment in the dead of night because it sounds like what most people associate with the screeching howling dead-of night emittances of the worst inner city slum. The list of episodes which include lying and dishonesty to sheer poor judgement that would see any ordinary person turned down for the job of toilet cleaner (no offence to those who clean toilets) is clearly no bar if you went to Eton. In fact you can even end up with a widely held reputation for being a wit and raconteur when in fact you are a bumbling, babbling, self-serving arse with a personality disorder.

Meanwhile – the list of things that are broken in the UK gets ever longer as the posh boys play out their extended 6^th form common room squabbles against a complete lack of opposition.

But we need to think about those things because when we crash out of the EU, with or without a deal, there is no cushion for those at the bottom. So – here is a brief, but by no means exhaustive inventory;

The Railways. For most of us – whether longer distance social travellers or commuters, travelling by train has become an expensive game of roulette where if we get from A to B without a delay or not on an over-crowded train we feel as if we’ve won something.

Energy Suppliers - Just ask ANY customer of Scottish Power or Npower

The ombudsman service which is meant to represent the consumer in our fight to get a decent service from the energy suppliers is a joke. Just ask anyone [me] who has tried that recently and you’ll be told that the tale is very definitely wagging the flea infested fat drooling useless dog.

The student loans service. Ask those students left penniless by the loans service in England and Wales

NHS. Talk to those on growing waiting lists or who are being non-too-subtly pushed in the direction of the private sector or who cannot afford to get basics like asthma medication.

Government infrastructure services. Major government contractors like Carillion have gone under in recent months with huge projects such as the new Liverpool hospital left expensive and incomplete and KPG the huge accounting firm who audited them and other companies that have been shown to be obviously in a corroded state – continue shamelessly.

Plus formal and informal drugs dependency is through the roof

National debt through the floor

Personal debt through the ceiling

Homelessness a national disgrace

Damage to the environment (see last week)

And yet, the country remains in paralysis because one posh boy tried to sort out his party’s factions by holding an ill-conceived – poorly thought out – badly planned referendum and now the other posh boys are playing their stupid games while the rabbits-caught-in-the-headlights we call The Opposition, look on flaccid, pointless and bemused.

But when the shit really hits the fan – and if you think where we are now is bad – remember we are just in the approach to the car crash – we’ve not yet experienced the impact, had chance to survey the wreckage or start feeling the pain or the cost of the clear up – those like Johnson and his ilk, who helped steer the vehicle we call Britain off the dual carriage way will not be harmed. They will, however, have mown down a lot of ordinary people in the process.

Of course I did not title this post 'Jeremy Corbyn ate my hamster' because the idea of that man doing anything remotely remarkable or decisive is too, too ridiculous.

*

And for the best break from it all – if you happen to be in Edinburgh next week – do come along to this.