Blog 48. Best of BGOTR, thanks and have a great summer.

Thanks to all the BGOTR bleaders for being blog readers.

Also massive thanks to Melissa Chaplin for setting up this blog for me, powering through my resistance to IT and for Elayne Chaplin her mum for filling me with cake to keep me calm while I was dragged into the 21^st century.

Thanks to Aidan and Annie for a great gig at the Chilli and for Poetry Jack and Sam Hawkins for a lovely gig at the Pride fest on Saturday to end the summer term.

BGOTR is taking a summer break but until Tuesday 3^rd September here is a list of some of the most popular posts in case you want to check out the archive.

Overall highest number of hits was for Blog 20. the blaunch

Most popular in terms of comments was Blog 4. Dinosaurs Cured my Performance Angst.

Then;

Blog 10. My One Night Stand with the Ghost of Bill Farrell

Blog 17. How to make Monopoly more interesting

Blog 23. What is Love? (The philosophy of Wile E. Coyote)

Blog 39. What is the Point of Newcastle City Council?

See you the first Tuesday in September

J

Blog 47 Smoking Causes Government Insanity

...and cold-blooded, calculating, short-term, profiteering, self-interest

According to news reports, the decision not to legislate on plain packaging for cigarettes is because a. there is ‘no evidence’ plain packaging discourages smoking and b. it may lose jobs.

Let’s run that past again.

Plain packaging is not to be compulsory because there is no evidence that it will discourage smoking. The concurrent argument is that jobs may be lost. But if making packaging less attractive doesn’t reduce smoking then jobs will not be lost so basically the government are talking bare faced contradictory shite. If a. is true, b. becomes an obsolete argument and vice versa.

You can’t have it both ways.

That’s like saying you won’t reduce the speed limit on roads in built-up areas because there is no evidence that slower driving leads to fewer fatalities but also because if you reduce the speed limit some funeral parlours may go out of business.

It’s like saying children must not be encouraged to brush their teeth because there is no evidence it reduces decay but also dentists need the money.

It’s like saying grass is pink and we’re not listening la la la la we’re bonkers and we don’t care anyway.

It is one of the most depressing cynical announcements of recent times. (Yes I know I say that often but each cynical new announcement seems to trump the last one – or maybe I’m just fickle with my loyalty to the cynicalness of announcements and any new cynical announcement that comes along just catches my eye!!!)

Clearly the result is fuelled by the tobacco lobby and vested interest. When have the Tories ever worried about whether government decisions lead to job losses? And here they are dealing with an industry that is relying right now on getting the next generation of young people addicted in order to protect profits.

It is heartless on a level that makes leaving a toddler staggering round the fast lane of the M6 look caring.

If, as I have, you’ve watched a loved one struggling for their last gasps attached to oxygen, grey before the last breath has left their body having lived with the debilitating, life disfiguring horror of cigarette addiction from early youth, this decision is punch in the face.

In despair I watch kids, some young enough to be my grandchildren, sucking away on those white sticks as if their lives depend on it. In fact it is the profits of the tobacco firms and their share-holders that rely on their highly likely miserable, premature deaths.

A simple trick is to do the common-sense-test and turn the question around. If pretty packaging had no effect, would the cigarette manufacturers bother with the extra cost of it? The half answer to this is that it is a ruse to tempt smokers from one brand to another. But even that is a tacit admission that all that design work and gold and blue and red DOES attract people. If you accept that, how far are you from being able to determine if it encourages people to smoke in the first place? Too close to call in my view.

Then take the issue back to its roots (literally). Tobacco – which kills people – is being grown on land that could be helping to feed the world. Is that an issue we can ignore?

It is estimated that half of those who take up smoking will die prematurely from related illness. No other product would even be allowed on the market with that level of mortality rating let alone in ‘come get me’ wrapping.

We don’t send children up chimneys any more. We don’t send pregnant women down mines. We don’t hang people for stealing bread (or worse, send them to Australia) isn’t it time to protect young people from the cigarette industry?

 

Blog 46 Deadly Sin no. 8?

Much as I felt a nudge to write something about the latest evidence of E. Milliband’s own special brand of being a prize twit – each time I typed his name, I felt myself drifting off and slumping over the keyboard – so instead – here is a suggestion for an 8^th Deadly Sin.

Many and varied modern activities presented themselves for examination, nomination, short listing and prize giving in my theoretical 8th Deadly Sin award scheme. It was an exhausting process of elimination. It became obvious that many modern and seemingly new sins could be shoe-horned into the existing 7. A startling number just begged to be shovelled into the gaping hole marked Greed, which I think of as a subcategory of Gluttony allied with Avarice, Acquisitiveness and Materialism.

What marked this particular chosen activity out as a contender (to rival Marlon Brando’s Terry Malloy) was not so much that it created a new category but that it seemed to combine more than half of the headline sins. Certainly Pride is involved but also Covetousness, Gluttony and Sloth. I could see no evidence of Lechery but if I could have identified Anger and Envy there might have been an opportunity for a memorable acronym.

The nomination goes to the use of bio-fuel. Broadly speaking this means taking stuff that hungry poor people could eat and making motor fuel to power our overused vehicles.

I’m not going to dish out a whole Parson’s Tale deal here on the Seven Deadly Sins. Who would dare tread on Chaucer’s toes in that way? Suffice to say, if there had been such an abomination in Chaucer’s day, the use of bio-fuel may well have got the medieval personification treatment and warranted its own tale.

The idea that we have the right to do this fulfils the requirements of the definition of Pride so we’ll put that one to the side. Let us move to Covetousness, which is at the heart of global exploitation. The Haves are not content to use their own resources but turn beady eyes on the rich assets of the Have-nots in countries too poor or under-resourced to defend, develop and use them for their own people. Let’s face it, the G8 countries would be very different places if they weren’t permanently operating with their hands in other countries’ cookie jars, slapping away the malnourished hands of indigenous populations.

At this level, Greed, as over-consumption, takes on a whole new aspect. Greed or Global Gluttony is killing them by deprivation and us in the West; not just physically but mentally, emotionally and spiritually. We know we have too much of everything but all our efforts are being put into making sure we can keep devouring at this devastating level. Think of that post-Christmas Dinner feeling. We are creating that effect with our general consumption every day.

Sloth in this context is more a kind of inertia. This may seem contradictory but imagine an obese guy at a table stuffing himself with fat burgers and he doesn’t stop – not because he can’t but because he can’t be bothered. A subtle distinction but that is where we are at. The effort of changing our behaviour seems greater to us than continuing with the deadly pursuit of over-consumption.

I’ve often wondered why dishonesty was not an original Deadly Sin (not to be confused with Original Sin – boy this could get complicated) but maybe it just goes without saying. Like it goes without saying – literally – that we cannot carry on the way we are. No one says it. (Yes – I know dishonesty is in the Ten Commandments but we’re on sins here not commandments so get off my case.)

It is somehow easier to promote the lie that we can ‘science’ our way out of the current mess. ‘Discovering’ new forms of exploitable energy is euphemism for saying we intend to carry on using at our current rate rather than bite that particular bullet, the ‘we-have-to-change’ bullet.

In the world we live in, how mad is using food for fuel?

Tomorrow, try denying your own family food for just one whole day and tell them it’s because it’s going in the petrol tank...

 

Blog 45 T.B. gave me a headache!

It must have been the effect of the juxtaposition of complete twaddle and total load of old bollocks that did it – gave me the headache.

D.E.F.R.A have been selling T.B.-infected beef for human consumption because a. it’s almost-completely-safe and b. it’s profitable. At the same time, it has been using the argument that T.B.-infected cattle are a health risk to humans as a reason for badger culling. And they don’t seem to think this is problematic. That was the news item that kicked off this week. It’s a wonder I make it to my Tuesday blog without going up in a puff of smoke.

Surely this comes in the same category as – ‘We must do something about the welfare budget’ – hence cuts to the incomes of the most vulnerable in our society, put next to the other new news that M.P.s (who’ve done so much for us of late – pointless, illegal wars, global financial meltdown, Michael Gove) must have a 10% pay increase. There is ‘nothing’ David Cameron can do about it apparently. Pay increases for M.Ps must be like the weather. His hands are tied. He is powerless against this juggernaut of pigswill.  There is no way out of this unfortunate impasse. OMG.

What else could we throw together like nuclear particles of fatuousness that would explode in a Hiroshima of utter shite?

The Olympics v poor quality sports provision in state schools and stolen playing fields.

Posturing about human rights abuses in other countries v colluding with America to abuse the human rights of our private citizens – Prism.

 

Posturing about human rights abuses in other countries v secret police squads set up to spy on lefty organisations and the victims of crime.

Public spending on palaces v spare room tax for the poor.

Maybe as a poet it is my artistic duty to welcome the opportunity to contract T.B. Perhaps I should live in an attic in the nineteenth century also and write with a quill pen. But then I think I also need to be a white bloke called Keats.

But let’s get back to badgers. If it’s all fine and dandy and ok to feed to the peasants (oh yes – did I forget to mention – beef from the infected carcases is not being sold to Claridges) why are we culling badgers? The meat from infected carcases is apparently OK for school and hospital canteens so what’s with the whole badger thing???

Oh my head!

Blog 44 Meeting Nelson Mandela

News of Nelson Mandela’s critically deteriorating health and a visit to the impressive city of Glasgow at the weekend, prompted memories of meeting the great man there in October 1993. Yes I’ve mentioned it in passing before but maybe it’s time to walk it through.

Still in the buzzing, fizzy, glowing aftermath of his release and the heightened sense of potential for the new South Africa, it felt as close to meeting a deity as I was likely to get. Most strange perhaps was that there was no sense of disappointment afterwards, no day-after-Christmas feeling. Nearly twenty years on if I think about I still feel a bit tingly.

The background to this personally and politically momentous event was that I was serving on Newcastle City Council at the time on the Race Equality subcommittee which, as I may have mentioned before, was a subcommittee of the ‘don’t be an arse’ committee. Although I’d only been a city councillor for a few years and there were more eminent and vastly more aged incumbents who might have liked to be included – as the first black woman to get elected to the city council I kinda got a free pass. I took with me my 16 month-old daughter. I did not see eye to eye with many of my fellow labour councillors on many strategic issues (hence I was the only councillor to congratulate the demonstrators who invaded the council chambers to protest about the council tax and I was under threat for many months of having the whip withdrawn because of my complaints about councillors’ expenses – waaaay before the Telegraph decided it was a cause celebre) but I never got any complaints about bringing my children to council meetings. And this was odd because there weren’t many female councillors young enough to be parenting pre-school children.

So I digress – as I always do in this blog – well it IS my blog.

Off we went on the coach to Glasgow – me with my buggy and baby and baby paraphernalia and lots of support and kind words and help from the other councillors. We arrived in Glasgow and the air was pulsating with excitement and expectation. The lucky few of us who were actually to meet him rather than just see the great man from a distance in amongst the throngs, were ushered into a hall where Mr. M was due to give one of his many addresses. And no – I am truly truly sorry I really cannot recall the content of what was said. Later we saw him again addressing a crowd outside the main chambers and he broke into an impromptu dance on the stage to the ecstatic delight of the crowd – un-statesman like – or maybe more a statesman than anything I’ve ever seen. And again later we saw him in yet another larger staged area making a more sober address. I can recall the tone of his beautiful voice, his presence, his command of the charged atmosphere, the exuberance balanced with gravitas but not the actual words which somehow seemed superfluous.

After the first encounter, Nelson Mandela was making his way through the room and a fellow councillor shoved me towards him with the idea that as I was the only person in the room with a child I might attract his attention. This ruse worked and he made a beeline for me, came right up to me, smiled, said – something – and then put his hands out to pick up my child. Oh joy. And if this had been today, about 100 people would have snapped the moment on their mobile phones. What occurred next, I have held against my daughter for the intervening two decades. The little monkey was slobbering away on a juicy pear, thoroughly enjoying herself and refused – REFUSED - to be picked up and held by Nelson Mandela. The great man laughed and smiled at the greedy wench and was moved away by fate and the people who were in charge of his itinerary.

SO

Hey ho.

I remember feeling a moment’s guilt when a while later I saw a Spitting Image cartoon of a Nelson Mandela puppet – in the loo – trying to have some privacy with people knocking on the bathroom door wanting to meet him. But I did meet him and despite the pear incident I’m so glad.

Surely, along with his more obvious and visible achievements would have to go that fact that he has managed, for the whole of his life – as he managed with me and so many others that day in 1993, not to be a disappointment.

Blog 43. Killing them Softly.

If you hum loudly and spin round in a circle with your fingers up your nose, it might seem rational. But isn’t cold logic the last thing that should be employed in trying to decide what is acceptable when slaughtering human beings?

But perhaps it is no more bizarre than dropping aid into war zones to keep folk alive so that they can carry on being – er – killed.

I’m talking about chemical weapons and how suddenly there is that global moral line in the sand. Lots of brouhaha and firm chins and sage nodding like we can all see just how reasonable it is to single out that one way of slaughtering innocent people as B>A>D. Carnage by chemicals just aint on. Does that mean that blasting body parts all over a town with high explosives IS? ‘Collateral damage’ from drone attacks we know is just fine and dandy – cos America does it (Pakistan). Rogue soldiers going on the rampage and blasting away the lives of innocent villagers is not good but it happens (Afghanistan). Not to mention horrible deaths by the deadly diseases that creep in when infrastructure is decimated or sectarian killings that erupt when political situations are destabilised by war. Torture, rape, murder we understand are the predictable side salads to almost every serious dish of conflict in history.

There are whole conferences at international level about how to conduct war and how to treat the victims but the most bizarre element is that some ways of slaughtering seem to pass muster by default and others don’t.

If you have spent time with children you will be aware that there comes an age when they start asking those slightly surreal questions –

‘If you had to eat a live slug or a dead wasp – which would it be?’

‘Would you rather be deaf or blind?’

‘Would you rather drown or suffocate?’

The answer to all is, frankly –‘neither thanks very much’

Even on the issue of chemical destruction of human lives, have we been consistent? If – let’s say – it’s Bhopal (India 1984) – then it’s more – ‘ooh shit – that was nasty but – hey ho – the company isn’t really trading any more – so – wow – well – who woulda thunk’.

Yes chemical weapons are absolutely unacceptable but do any parents want their kids dead in cross fire? No child wants to watch a parent’s life leaking away because the local hospital has been bombed. No grandparent wants to be parenting traumatised grandchildren whose father and mother have been dragged off in the night, their dismembered bodies found floating down the river the following day.

And where do the chemicals come from that make up the deadly cocktails used in such hellish weaponry? Well – like a lot of the other nasties that end up in conflicts nice and far away – they often come from U.S and European linked companies.

So, trying to see through the fog of righteous outrage that’s hovering round the global powers like mustard gas – couldn’t we just clear the air and get a bit more indignant about war in general?

Blog 42 I’m Spartacus

How not surprised are we? How utterly not shocked? The priveleged in their gilded cages dangling over the rest of us – the ones that bought us the Iraq Invasion, political sleaze and global economic meltdown, decided in their wisdom to play fast and loose with our right to privacy; circumvent the law and spy on us by exchanging private information internationally. That is the charge.

Prism is the name of one element of this unpleasant unfolding fiasco – and apt it may be as a prism breaks up light and throws it out at odd angles.

And they’re telling us its ok because they’ve managed to do it legally – which makes it worse not better because it’s more conniving. Remember tax avoidance, if you can find the right accountant, is often legal.

Imagine you are at school and a message goes round that 6^th formers will be punished if they are found to have bullied 5^th formers – so they get some lads in a neighbouring school to do it for them. Would that be acceptable?

I’ve blogged before about that sense of helplessness in the face of blatantly arrogant authority so here is a suggestion – a small simple one in keeping with the satirical tone of BGOTR.

Take the lead from that wonderful film Spartacus starring sparkly eyed, dimple chinned Kirk Douglas and featuring a rather saucy homoerotic scene with a young Tony Curtis.  Yes I’m sorry I have a secret weakness for these films – Quo Vadis with the oily but intense Robert Taylor, Ben Hur with the beautiful if somewhat misguided Charlton Heston plus a surprising cameo from John Le Mesurier of Dad’s Army fame – sorry, sorry, sorry, I know – back to the point...

In Spartacus, as you may remember, once the liberating leader was about to be uncovered, the supporters concealed his identity not by trying to hide him but by all claiming to be him with a shout (begun by T.C. I think) of,

‘I’m Spartacus.’

A phrase much over-used in comedy sets (yes I plead guilty).

So what I am suggesting is that you tweet, e-mail, facebook, phone or use any other communications medium at your disposal and encourage others to do the same (like those chain letters we used to send when we were 12!) sending the message to everyone and anyone you know,

‘I’m Spartacus’,

Let the bastards analyse that.

If your friends ask why – either explain in your own way it is a protest against people abusing hard won civil liberties or link them to this blog. If liberty and freedom are not their ‘bag’ then perhaps they should be watching something more appropriate – might I suggest,

Night of the Living Dead.

Though it may be worth pointing out that in the film Spartacus, all those who heroically claimed to be Spartacus get – er – crucified!