171. Privileged White Men keep getting it wrong & we keep listening. Why?

     

As I was pondering this conundrum last week the answer came to me via the armchair drone of Andrew Rawnsley. On a mid-week radio filler programme the topic was the abuse if migrants in Middlesbrough where the landlord (a subsidiary of G4S) had painted their doors a nice stand-out, uniform red.

Rawnsley stated with bizarre conviction that it was not the case that the landlord had deliberately made targets of these tenants. He was so sure. The only thing that mystified him, he said, was why they re-painted a white door red. Why was he so sure? Ironically it’s a conviction rooted in the most basic kind of one-dimensional ignorance. He has never been/will never be in that position, cannot conceive of being at the mercy of such an intolerable situation, has never been so powerless and cannot make the socio-cultural leap to put himself there.

Is the expensively educated Rawnsley unaware that if an action so obviously leads to injury as to be entirely foreseeable, the law treats it as intentional? The landlord knew beyond a shadow of a doubt the effect of their red door policy (it had been reported to them from numerous sources). Neither is it in dispute that they altered that policy only when the problem was brought to public attention by journalists.

It really is obvious why things keep getting so wrong. But even with the wealth of information at our fingertips and the obvious lessons from history (if we read history without an agenda) it keeps going pear shaped. From the economy to the pointless wars, to the constant mix ups over whether we are friends or enemies with Sadam / Assad / Putin yada yada yada. China is the new economic power house – oops no it isn’t.

The ruling elite are homogeneous, we know that, but they are also now more removed from everyday life than at almost any time in modern history. In the brief socially fluid era after WWII and before Thatcher there was a time when Tim bright-but-dim was counterbalanced by Trevor-poor-but-clever. Somehow Tim and his pals put a stop to Trevor (Leroy [see blog 117] and Lucy never had much of a look in). Add one more ingredient to the mix, which is the speed at which the world now turns due to technology, and there has never been a more unfortunate time to be ruled by entrenched privilege rather than merit.

The level of control is exquisite. It wasn’t long after greedy (predominantly PWM) bankers wrecked the global economy that somehow it became a bit distasteful even to refer to that little hiccup. Ill-mannered types who continued to ask why so few money men were ever brought to justice were told to stop ‘bashing the bankers’. Here here – jolly poor show etc.

Yes, the reason Privileged White Men keep on keeping getting it wrong is because they are Privileged White Men. Their rarefied upbringings and the fact that they only give credence to other people like them means that when the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes ( and he’s been naked for quite a while now) there is no one with clout to point it out. (See archive blog 21. Save the Emperor’s Genitals).

What is less easy to explain is why the rest of us – the majority – keep letting them piss on our lives.

This is the breed that employed members of the police to have sex with left wing women. Sure, tofu eating lefties who believe in natural child birth are possibly a threat to the planet but you know what – they don’t make a big secret of what they do or think. So these guys living out sordid 007 fantasies at tax payers’ expense really could have been doing something more useful.

Who kicked off the illegal invasion of Iraq? Oh yeah – two really privileged white men (something else we aren’t really supposed to talk about much. Chilcot anyone?).

Who gives contracts to G4S and BT and other incompetents? Oh yeah – a government/administration of predominantly PWM.

Who decided we could bail out bankers with public money but not protect the steel industry? Same. Why? Because bankers are like them and steel workers are not.

Which bright spark introduced early draw down pension laws BEFORE sufficient safeguards were in place? Oh yeah – Osborne.  A privileged white man. Someone who will never be reliant on a modest company pension. And so on and so forth.

Come on people

Time to grow up

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See also

Blog 35. Eton Mess, Pudding or state of the nation?

Blog 97. Viagra, Yes – effective cure for Malaria, No!

170. FUNNIEST JOKE...

My funniest joke or my worst joke - my only joke (!) was bequeathed to me by my dad and he may have been telling it since the mid 70s.

You need this joke.

If, like me, you are depressed by the government paying policemen to rape left wing women (consent is surely void as the women were being conned by the state). You may be confused because that same government (which bailed out bankers) cannot find money to support steel operators, Britain’s last substantial industry.

Despite a brief tangle with stand up comedy, joke telling per se (sorry – everyone seems to be adding ‘per se’ to their sentences at the moment) is not my forte. A fact you will become au fait with if you reach the end of this post. Ok.

I’ve been in the habit of telling this particular gag to my family at intervals of a couple or three years either because I forgot I told them or I hoped they’d forgotten it and would be merrily entertained by my stored wit. As my dad may also have said, ‘if wit were shit you’d be constipated’. But God loves a tryer apparently.

It may be that you are depressed that London already passed its 2016 pollution limits and we’re not out of January. You might also have read the news that up to 1 in 5 recycle bins ends up in landfill. I won’t mention the fact again that we are all knee deep in dog excrement most of the time. Well done local government.

You may be in denial, blocking the horrible reality that oil prices are a game that the super wealthy play with a precious global resource that we should be weaning ourselves off, having long ago lost their connection with ordinary people.

In the UK you may be catatonic with the knowledge that our PM is not a leader but a figurehead while the opposition leader is a collective manifestation of wishful thinking. In the US, you will be whistling loudly and trying to distract from the reality that your most well-meaning president finds himself vilified because he’s trying to reduce the incidents of teenagers shooting their schoolmates. And you also have the headache personified of D Trump (see three blogs down - 167) who just keeps on and on and on not shutting up.

As local services go down the drain you may wonder why local councillors get paid – at all. In the old days when they actually had direct responsibility for e.g. education, and services were not all farmed out to private companies they did not get paid.

You may be confused as to why G4S still gets government contracts despite yet more evidence (do we need more) of bad management, poor practice and the violent treatment of vulnerable people. But then why does BT still get government contracts despite being incompetent and crap?

So – for you – here is the joke my dad used to love and which I also loved when he told it. And I apologise if you are not familiar with the relevant proverb.

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#funniestjoke-browngirloutsidethering

A man went to his doctor complaining of a problem with his bottom

Dr. –What exactly seems to be the trouble?

Patient. – Whenever I fart my bottom makes a weird noise

Dr. – What kind of noise?

Patient. – “Honda Honda”

(The Dr examines the patient and pronounces the mystery solved)

Dr. – Ah yes – It’s quite obvious. The problem is caused by an abscess.

(The patient was a little sceptical)

Patient. – Why would an abscess cause such a strange noise?

Dr. – Surely you’ve heard, ‘abscess makes the fart go Honda’.

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Sorry...

Again – if you need my psychology explained try this http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/151924729X

169 Drinkers are dull as Rosie Millard proved.

I didn’t have to work far through Rosie Millard’s article in Saturday’s i (The Independent’s weekend paper) before I came across the hackneyed term ‘party pooper’ in relation to the new alcohol advice. Because of course you must be boring if, like me, you don’t drink and worse than boring if you suggest limits on people poisoning themselves on a regular basis.

Trust me – it’s drinkers who can bore you to tears. Forget the cherished urban myth. Unbelievably, mind numbingly, tediously, deadly dull is an evening with someone who needs alcohol to grow a personality. I don’t get paid for my blog but this teetotaller would be embarrassed to write something as asinine as Ms Millard’s Saturday article.

Through my 20s 30s and 40s I tired of the adults who (wile regarding themselves as whacky – good time party people) clearly could not handle the fact that I could enjoy myself without alcohol.

Now we’ve had the no-safe-level message from the people who reckon they know but who will probably be telling us something different next month. Surely the least we could hope for would newspaper articles a little less – boring - predictable.

The usual reactionary guff was trotted out and not just by RM – I simply use that as a fine example. You know the type of thing – you can live on water and lentils then get hit by a bus... Yeah – ok. Tell that to the staff in A&E on a Saturday night dealing with the body and or social breakages due to alcohol misuse.

Maybe the article was especially petulant because one of the target groups for the new information is the chattering class chugging a bottle a night. Yes – oh my goodness. The humous-eating, jogging, desperately networking, Waitrose-shopping, Boden-wearing, little-bit-of-work-on-the-face suburban comfies. Lordy.

Recently a friend told me that her son’s student bar job entailed him wandering round a club with a tray of vodka PRETENDING to be drunk and PRETENDING to be having a really really good time. The aim? To induce other youngsters to acquire the drink habit. This was his ‘job’. I’ve no doubt that those who are successfully brainwashed will, like Rosie Millard, regard people like me as ‘party poopers’ if they make it to middle age still able to enjoy life.

There are lots of things that may reduce your lifespan. I was surprised to hear that even watching television has been calculated in life shortening terms. As I haven’t had a T.V in over fifteen years (why would anyone living outside London pay a licence fee?) I’m unmoved by that stat either.  However, while some things MAY shorten our lives/damage our health, there are very few that we know WILL. Regular and/or excessive alcohol being one.

And while I abhor the fashion of fat-shaming (usually by men aimed at women – no surprise there) I’d be less averse to drunk shaming. I’d enjoy watching some brave soul lambasting the groups, drunk at 11am on the train en route to their hen/stag dos and discussing, in detail, their sexual preferences at the top of their boorish, screechy, alcohol amplified voices.

Yes it’s true that simply living shortens your life. I do not dwell on the ever changing proclamations from those who appoint themselves to tell the rest of us how to live. However, I am sick of drinkers doing that to me. The husband of a friend spent literally years trying to persuade me to take an alcoholic drink whenever I went to their house. I never once tried to persuade him not to drink...

I was married to a drinker (not an alcoholic) and the bad times due to alcohol that could have been good times were countless (check out my latest book).  Am I the party pooper? I don’t think so. Others may disagree but at least I can remember the fun I’ve had.

168. Adverse Weather Conditions & Fantasy Government

It was the train refrain of Christmas and New Year.

It was blurted out of tannoys with no shame, no sarcasm and no embarrassment. ‘Disruption due to ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS’ sputtered from public sound systems like odourless, colourless diarrhoea.

As early as 1990 it was officially stated that winters would get warmer and very much wetter due to climate change. I would argue we’ve known since the 1970s but let’s be generous and say we’ve only known for quarter of a century!

As I mentally battled with virulent notice boards crawling with orange delay and cancellation signals, I had an internal function crisis of my own. I briefly wondered if I tore out my hair, flung my rucksack at the M&S station shop window then stripped out of my clothes, the remnants of my sanity/ dignity and ran erratically round the waiting area/cum shopping opportunity screaming ‘THIS IS CAPITALISM ULTRA. DO YOU LIKE IT?’ would anyone have the energy to intervene?

Adverse Weather Conditions (AWCs soon surely – we love acronyms). Though, in effect it’s just Adverse Weather. It’s not a ‘condition’. You know what – its actually just WEATHER.

But whether it's Weather or Adverse Weather or Adverse Weather Conditions it’s not what caused the madness on the railways. Lack of investment in infrastructure and bloody poor management over decades caused the mayhem.

We’ve also known, since Thatcher started selling the country to rich people for profit, that our infrastructure has been starved of resources. You can’t dole out huge dividends to share holders while paying for the upkeep and improvement and necessary development of the things that make the country run. Duh.

Victorian viaducts (for example) should not be attended to only when they sink into the ground. They should be Maintained. Monitored. Checked. Upgraded. The railway companies could use – oh I don’t know – some of the money I’ve paid over the years in exorbitant and still rising rail fares.

With that same money and all the taxes that the British public pay each year to the rail companies (far more than when we owned the railways!) they could plan and invest in a sensible way.

All I would be able to scream by this point because of the disconnect between the fire in my brain and the cold outside would be something mundane like ‘more trains...’ and that’s if I hadn’t been rugby tackled to the ground. Let’s face it who’d want to rugby tackle an hysterical middle aged black woman suffering train related trauma and infrastructure freak out syndrome – TRT&IFOS – on January 1^st?

In the face of crumbling overworked sewer systems, potholed roads, cracked pavements, inadequate flood defenses, clogged motorways, poor (or no) housing, Cameron suggested an Infrastructure Commission. I.e. an ‘independent body’ (euphemism for we-politicians-dodge-the-blame) that would be responsible for infrastructure... Let’s just recap on what national infrastructure is. National infrastructure is what makes the country work. Now call me old fashioned but isn’t THE GOVERNMENT supposed to manage that? I mean isn’t that what running the country is? If they farm their core responsibility out to unelected bureaucrats, who is actually in charge and aren’t we just then paying politicians for their daily sound bites? It is Fantasy Government. Just a shame we can’t pay them in fantasy money. As I type I can feel the zombie apocalypse closing in.

So – I would continue my railway rampage – RaRa.

Once I had an audience I would start on Hs2 (I don’t know why I put a lower case ‘s’ there. It looks like some sort of delinquent chemical symbol). Hs2, I would rant, is about providing a train link to London so that non-oligarchs and non-Russian Mafiosi and non-Saudi Arabian friends of the elite (i.e. people who cannot afford to live in London) can commute efficiently in the future to wipe the arses of the oligarchs and Russian Mafiosi and Saudi friends of entrenched wealth.

THEN

If I hadn’t fallen over one of the coffin sized wheelie suitcases (see blog 6 Please Get a Bigger T.V.) being navigated by morons who shouldn’t be allowed on trains anyway, I would go on about how we're like third world countries where the 1% live so far above the masses they are unaffected by the lack of or failing infrastructure and simply pop up on set news pieces to say things like, ‘It’s all due to Adverse Weather Conditions’.

By this point however probably some kind person has found my mobile and phoned my partner and he will be gathering up my clothes, rucksack (telling M&S they will have to pay for their own window and, by the way, could they please use less packaging) then he’d bundle me on the bus – maybe wrapped in old newspaper – and take me to his flat. We would leave our, inevitably, dog-shit-covered shoes (yes I didn’t remove my shoes – don’t be silly) at the door and go in where he’d make me a nice cup of tea...

blog 167 Donald Trump / Katy Hopkins SCIENTIFICALLY explained.

No it’s not pretty and it is disturbing but there's an explanation and that always helps. The rabid Donald Trump, noxious Katie Hopkins and even pub fascist Nigel Farage can be explained by science. Hooray.

I am so relieved to be able to bring this to you in my last 2015 blog.

Last week I heard an interview with ‘scientist’ Alex Travis. He is part of a ground breaking (let’s hope Nobel Prize winning) team. For decades these science philanthropists have tried and tried and tried – bless 'em - to perfect IVF in dogs. I know – you’re thinking what I thought at the time - THANK HEAVENS. Because what the world is desperate for right now is IVF puppies. The globe needs IVF puppies like we needed Viagra and Botox (See blog 97 Viagra – Yes. Effective Cure for Malaria – No!) Well done Science.

But consider this -

What happened over the decades to those failed, malformed, IVF experimental, abnormal, botched, freak doggy embryos?

Yes - Trump – Hopkins – Farage...

During the interview the BBC interviewer laboriously (labradoriously?) fed Travis the usual line that this would – wouldn’t it – help us find cures for human problems – wouldn’t it. To which Mr doggy scientist stumbled an unconvincing yes. This was odd as he’d spent the rest of the time saying how doggy IVF had taken so long to perfect because it was so entirely different to the biological process in humans.

But at least now we know. And if anyone does come across Donald or Katie or Nigel don’t get too close and do call the dog wardens.

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I hope you enjoy the festive season. I'll be having a winter snooze being very tired. (I blame writing a weekly satirical blog – I think my irony is low...)

See you in January.

blog 166. OUT is the new IN

Weheeey. Get me. Ms Brown girl OUTSIDE the Ring - I’m so OUT I’m IN...

I read last week – on the internet so it must be true – that mixed race is the fastest growing ethnic minority in the UK. Mixed Race is cool.

As usual, commercial needs have trumped an institutional grasp of this situation. You can barely look at a billboard in the UK without seeing a pretty mixed race kid advertising cute clothes or whatever. And I am old enough to recall a time when if my parents saw a black face on the TV my brother and sister and I would be called into the living room to witness this strange phenomena. (See Stephen K Amos for really funny sketches on this point)

Ok so my parents were many decades ahead of their time and I am too old to give a fig about ‘cool’ now but it’s still nice to know.

In the 80s debates raged about terminology. For example did you refer to Asians separately from the ‘Black’ umbrella? In the US 'people of colour' was an acceptable term whereas 'coloured' was viewed as disparaging in the UK. It was a time when racism flourished and the politically conscious-raised simply regarded non-white as black. 

I recall a couple of years ago at a Meet the Promoters event in Newcastle trying to point out to the audience of venue key holders that many people - even in the NE - now looked like me. The entirely white, predominantly male barriers to the arts venues in the NE looked at me blankly. But it’s true. And what I love about it is that mixed race children seem to be the ultimate response to racism. Despite the endemic prejudice of our immediate history, black and white people have quietly got on with falling in love with each other.

It then occurred to me that other groups that think of themselves as outside the mainstream are possibly also more IN than they realised.

Gay men have always used the term ‘out’ when referring to admitting their sexuality. There is another implicit ‘out’ there as well. Some must realise that white hetro able bodied middle/upper class yada yada yada is the most IN club there is. So in coming out they are not only revealing their gayness they are stepping away from the benefits of that exclusive club. And it’s an odd one anyway because some in the gay community or the hetro have felt bound to ‘out’ gays who didn’t want to be out. The guy who employs my youngest daughter has a mug which says “no one knows I’m gay” which sums up the whole thing neatly.

Disabled people, like black people, don’t get to choose if the world knows about their ‘outness’ or not. And frankly neither do working people who bear the yolk of the world’s grind. And ironically some of the groups who clearly do not in any sense make up a minority in the way we mean when we discuss these bizarre human constructs – are not in a minority. Women. The afore-mentioned working people. If we could just tweak our perceptions enough we’d realise that OUT is the new IN. Minorities are the majority.  If you add up all the people outside the exclusive club of white male hetro able bodied born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-your-gob people who think the world owes them - they are so few and we are so many.

We, out here, make up the biggest club. We are so unbelievably out there – here - that we are totally in there (!). When you start to include other ‘outs’ the red heads, the ones with regional accents, the people who don’t conform to physical ideas of what is body-acceptable we are almost everyone.

In fact I think there are only about 3 people left in the IN club. Three shrivelled up apparently hetro able-bodied white guys who live in cities, have money and power, went to the right schools, married their cousins somewhere along the family tree were born with a sense of their own indispensability.

The only thing is they are behaving like they own the world and we are letting them get away with it.

Ok

So we need to have a think about that one.

Meanwhile – welcome to the new not-very-exclusive in club of not being in the club

165. Syrian air strikes & living in the Penissic era.

We’ve had the Jurassic epoch, the Triassic, Cretaceous and so on. This is most definitely the Penissic age.

It’s impossible to think of a time in history when avaricious, aggressive maleness made such a total mess of everything. They may have had the will eons ago but not the tools... so to speak.

The latest call for more bombing of Syria is so mindless, as to be explicable only as an excess of testosterone induced lunacy. There are a minimum of two very good reasons why we must not join in the Syrian bombing party -

a.     We know it won’t work (it never has before)

b.     We don’t really know why we would be doing it other than its something to do and we get to kill randomly with phallic shaped objects.

Oh and there is the issue of not hitting the correct targets – remember 40 dead working for or in the care of MSF recently? Even military types reckon bombing kills on average 80% innocent people.

Oh and there is also the horrible disgusting utterly revolting issue of rank hypocrisy. We would be bombing (trying to bomb) a group who have partly grown in viciousness and numbers thanks to previous disastrous Western interventions and who are occasionally funded by vicious regimes we still SUPPORT  and do arms deals with (cough – Saudi Arabia)

We’re overdue the Dawn of the Rise of the Fanny. Why is it not happening? We know that fiscal corruption is less likely when at least a significant minority of women are in strong positions in large companies – we need the same in international diplomacy.

Sadly, on the African continent, too many women are oppressed by poverty, lack of educational opportunities, FGM etc. In many places in the East women are hampered by a fascist interpretation of Islam. And everywhere they are stamped on by the boot of bigotry entrenched in other major religions. In the affluent West women are oppressed by – well frankly – women’s magazines, addictions to soap operas, bingo, consumerism and other embarrassing shit. 

So the testosterone fuelled dicks of the world are in the ascendancy. The global phallus just keeps rising and rising.

Interestingly if you take a good look at some of the world’s leaders as they wet dream of bombing Syria, you don’t have to readjust their features much to see the dick in them. Wherever there is mindless destruction there’s a nob. Assad is literally a walking penis with a bit of hair on top though someone did misplace the ears – they’re too low and just don’t look real.

Cameron with his tape worm Eton mouth is just a dick with the opening on the side instead of the end. Putin – say no more. No need to mention the Liberal has-been (never was) Clegg whose wife was so keen to tell us about his cojones. Lest I make you puke I won’t refer to Mrs Blair’s insistence on allusion to his bed prowess.

Months and months ago (even before I accurately predicted the UK election results) I fantasised about a world where the women politicians – Merkel, Clinton, that Welsh bird and Sturgeon, would get it on politically and start to deal with the boys. Sadly that dream came to nought. Merkel is valiantly battling, on her own, against a veritable tsunami of testosterone.

We don’t know what if anything is going to happen with Hilary in the US, The Labour Harmon – who although lacking in many ways maybe could have been something with the support of the other blonde bobs - is now politically defunct. But I still wish the women we have could form some sort of rearguard action. Couldn’t they be a 5^th column to stand up to the puerile peni?

My good friend Oonah referred to the world as being run by DICK. She does not mean someone of that name and she does not mean ‘a dick’ she means – unless I am mistaken – the whole notion of masculinity gone very very badly wrong. Out of control.

We are living in the Penissic era. And, like the Cretaceous, ultimately it will be a flop.

Last week I referred to the unholy alliance of two drug giants. On the one hand the American company that draws massive profits from the sale of Viagra. On the other the Irish pharmaceutical that makes lots of dosh from paralysing women’s faces with Botox. It is a joining of monsters for tax avoidance. This week I realise that it’s not just horrible. It is not just a grim judgement on our priorities. It is in fact a painfully accurate microcosm of the state of the world. 

The penises are drugged up on machismo and out of control. The fannies are paralysed and the goal is money, money, money, power, power, power.  Never mind the ongoing humanitarian disaster.

God (I hope she’s listening) help us.