7,000,000,000 (It’s a Small World After All)

My local cemetary is being extended. I was taking a walk around town the other day and saw a few workmen extending the stone-corniced boundaries into the neighbouring horse-paddock that it shares its borders with. How strange, I thought, to have to be extending the burial space for such a sleepy peripheral hamlet. I pondered what would have been the last time they had to expand the extremities of the churchyard to accomodate the swelling numbers of the local deceased demographic. And when you consider that, relative to fifty years ago, more people will (thoughtfully) decide to opt for cremation and take up but a few cubic inches of his fellow neighbours environs; to justify a cemetary extension must preclude a forecast for a large number of bodies to become available over the coming years. It was the first time that my local area had stimulated me to think of the idiosyncrasies of human population growth. Luckily for my townspeople the sum total fallout from this instance is felt mainly by a few horses who have a few less hecters to canter round. However, in the week (or month, or quarter; depending on error analysis) that the global population hits 7,000,000,000 we would be foolish to ignore the far moregrave situations that population growth poses for us as a species in the years to come.

So what’s the big deal about 7 billion people being on the planet? We seemed to be doing OK at 6.5 billion, so what’s all the fuss about? Well, it’s not necessarily the fact that the Earth cannot support the lives of seven billion humans; however the nature of population growth dictates that in the not-too-distant future, portions of the world whereby humans breed at the fastest rate may no longer be able to sustain such a population. Population growth is a funny old thing; and by ‘funny’ I mean ‘shit-your-pants terrifying.’ Take this stock example of a pond; and a lovely pond, no less. As with most ponds, this particular lovely pond is home to algae, which reproduces on it’s surface. Luckily there is so little algae that all the lovely aquatic critters can flourish in the shallow depths below. However, if the algae population doubles by the day then the pond’s surface soon starts to become overrun. By the twentieth day, the algae has covered 1/4 of the pond’s surface. No biggie. However, as the population doubles each day by the twenty-first day; half the pond is covered. things look a little concerning for the critters now and just one mere day later THE WHOLE LOVELY POND IS COVERED AND EVERYTHING DIES! ‘Whoa’ you’re thinking, ‘that crept up fast.’ Correct; exponential growth comes fast and will strike you and your critters down where you stand.

It’s all well and lovely talking about ponds; but what does this mean for humanity? If we take the current global population as being 7 billion, and the current population growth rate, globally, as being 1.2% per year; it follows that it will take a mere 58 years before the current Earth’s human population doubles to 14 billion. Can this amount of people be supported by the Earth’s resources? Probably yes, but it certainly cannot be sustained. It also seems a foregone conclusion that the vast majority of these future peoples will be growing up in abject poverty. Add into the equation that the most densely populated areas of the globe will become even more densely populated, thus increasing the devastation caused by disease. These areas will also be the hardest hit by food scarcity, meaning that already existing famines will worsen and new areas of famine are likely to develop. Furthermore these areas are also likely to be situated on the cheapest, and therefore most geologically unstable landmasses; which means that the devastation caused by natural disasters will eclipse anything that we have yet seen. In short, within 58 years, that is to say within my lifetime (hopefully), we will be facing an untold humanitarian disaster that no amount of relief aid will be able to alleviate.

With that apocolyptic vision in mind (and I don’t intend to scaremonger, I just maintain that these are unavoidable consequences if something is not done to retard the population growth rate) you would think that the perils of overpopulation would affect more attention. In fact it is an issue that seems to recieve little coverage compared to some of it’s more noteworthy contemporaries such as climate change and the state of the economy. Perhaps tackling overpopulation it just isn’t as glamorous as taking on the mantle of the trodden-on masses and fighting the corporations. Or perhaps it just isn’t as intuitively wholesome as trying to save things which instantiate some kind of natural beauty. Essentially, to try and do something about population growth, you’re going to have to tell people not to bang; which isn’t going to go down well. In fact your only friends will likely be asexuals. Good job that all mine are (I assume.)

But what are the real issues behind overpopulation? Essentially, at the heart of it, there is too much procreation going on. But does this therefore make overpopulation an issue concerning sexual education? To an extent,  yes. As I mentioned before, it’s hard to tell people not to bang, especially when sexual activity is one of the very few pleasures that one can enjoy completely gratis! Moreover, even the ‘educational’ groups that do push abstinence (until you and a partner sign on the dotted line with a particular sect/cult/whatever) at the expense of sexual education only suceed in creating awkward, sexually naive adults that are far more likely to accidentally spawn than their promiscuous counterparts. So the type of education that must be at the heart of tackling overpopulation is frank and practical advice concerning contraception.

However, maintaining that sexual education is the main weapon in combatting overpopulation presupposes that the primary cause of overpopulation is biological ignorance. Sadly I do not believe this to be the case. Thorough practical advice concerning contraception may well prevent unwanted births around the globe, but it can do nothing for people who have a vested interest in procreation. Furthermore, when this interest is an economically imperative interest to the individual, we have a far greater problem on our hands.

What do we mean by economically imperative? Forget the seemingly clinical language, we are essentially talking about survival. In the least economically developed echelons of societies around the world, such as agricultural and peasant societies, it is an economical benefit to have as many offspring as a family can bear. The nature of the work of these families will be to provide sustenance for their kin. This could be from farming the land and producing harvest, to scavenging for food remnants or valuable goods or the landfills of large urban conurbations. The more children that a family can bear, the more labour can be employed to assist with the acquiring food and resource. In the built-up urban areas, the competition for such resource is greater, and with greater competition comes a greater need for labour. As these communities exist in what we may reasonably describe as economic poverty, the standard of living is such that infant mortality rates are incredibly high; therefore the greater number of offspring born will offset the fact that the chances of a child dying in infancy is relatively great.

And so we can see the horrific bind; the more desperate the families situation is, the greater the economic necessity to bear offspring. Therefore more and more people are being born into desperate situations, with a vested interest in producing numerous children themselves. Even more alarming is the fact that people in this situation make up the vast majority of the worlds population, living in already overcrowded areas, forced to live on progressively more unstable and unsafe environments. Disease thrives on population density, unsanitary conditions and dearth of healthcare. Natural distaters are most likely to strike in the unstable areas that no one deemed safe to inhabit when people had the luxury of choosing where on Earth they would rather settle. When neighbouring people are forced into intimate confines with one another, in a closed environment of limited resource, warfare seems to be an eventuality rather than a worst-case-scenario. Looking at nothing more than the numbers, the ratios, and some basic facts about human population and resource we can see that we are speeding headlong into a humanitarian disaster of untold proportions.

So what can be done? Well, if the solution to the problem of sexual ignorance was education, the solution to economic depravity is development. A mark of the developed portions of global society is that a child is no longer an economic benefit, but has now become an economic drain. Children take up a considerable portion of the money, resource and time that we have come to take for granted in a developed society. Therefore the more children you have, the less you will have of your money, resource and time. Hence you can see that in more economically developed countries, there is a trend for having smaller families, with a far lower birth rate.

Essentially, to lower this birth rate, you must ensure that the standard of living for every global citizen is such that having a large family is economically draining. Written within a concise sentence as such belittles the magnitude of this task. I have no idea if this would even be possible in an environment of limitless resource on an increased time-frame. I do, however, have my doubts as to whether this can be achieved in time to avoid the afore-mentioned humanitarian disaster.

For many decades the view has been taken that the problem of scarcity of resource and overpopulation will be solved by our continued development of technology. However, this seems equivalent to imploring a person who has been diagnosed with a malignant tumour not to worry becausee there isa chance that someone could discover a cure before they die. It’s wishful thinking at best. With every natural disaster, famine, military conflict, the humanitarian toll rises and I have yet to see the miracle technological cure to put my mind at ease that worse is not to follow. Necessarily at some point in human history the birth rate will fall and death rate will rise to the point that population growth will hit 0. It seems unlikely at the moment that we can raise the standard of living across the globe such that this growth rate will be reached on our own terms.

It has been seriously suggested that a solution to our problem is to relocate people to various colonies on other planets or moons. Many people find this an acceptable solution. But here’s the catch; to keep the population growth at a steady rate, rather than exponential, we would need to send away around 70,000,000 people per year. This would require a vessel that could transport 1,000,000 people safely, making 70 trips per year. With our current technology; the amount of fuel used up and emitted on these trips would ensure that the Earth’s environment would be ruptured beyond repair within a couple of years at most. Good job.

So let’s leave the Sci-fi to one side. Sure, nobody likes to believe that we, as a species, are on the brink of impending danger, but to bury your head in the sand, or buy into comforting fantasies is not helpful. Firstly, we need to make sure that this problem is acknowledged and that the danger is recognised. Secondly, we need to take on the challenge, even if it proves to be futile. We need to make every attempt to assist countries in their development, and to continue to develop ways that we may be able to support a population of our size, sustainably. We need to continue to promote sexual education and banish dogma that prevents this. We may even need to consider and debate our own procreative powers.

Whether you are scavenging for recyclable plastic on a landfill, or trying to save up money for your children’s holiday it can be hard to think of a cause that is bigger than your own immediate world. But even if you feel that nothing can be done, that the situation is lost, that what will be will be; well, the least you can do is brace yourself.

Happy New Year

(Now here’s a video surmising the issue in a more concise and well-thought-out- manner.)

The Worst Crime In The World…

It is alleged that sometime in the not-too-distant past, in the distant land of Japan, a most terrible and gruesome murder occurred. A young woman was supposedly kidnapped by an older man, and held against her will in the bowels of his home. The aggressor then supposedly amputated every one of his victims limbs before wiring her jaw shut. Following this gruesome ordeal the young lady was then repeatedly raped before being dumped in a dustbin and set on fire; thus burning her (barely) alive. OK, so I don’t believe this story for one second, but let’s suspend our disbelief for a second and imagine that not only is it true, but the details have recently been reported and released to the world. The international media would disseminate the news and people around the world would hold a morbid curiosity in the story, accompanied by a sense of mild horror and futile sympathy for the deceased. A fitting response to an horrific crime. However there is a crime that our Japanese villain could have committed that would have truly caused a stir, whipping the national press and public into an insatiable frenzy. A crime far more severe than dismemberment, rape and murder. A crime reviled and fetishised in equal measures across the nation. The crime of sexual infidelity.

If we are to believe the recent and escalating furore; the sexual antics of a bunch of people we don’t know or particularly care about, is the most important thing that ever happened. Moreover these antics are at the heart of the debate over the legitimacy of superinjunctions; which is depressing beyond belief.

Essentially, the attempt to raise the issue to a highbrow plane posits the debate as a pitted battle between the individual’s right to privacy and the responsibility of the media to disclose information within the public interest. It should be; but it’s not. If the general public and national media were interested in this debate, more would have been made of the Wikileaks affair, which passed by without too much general interest. David Hemmings; the MP that dropped the Giggs-bomb in parliament today, came out with some guff along the lines that ‘someone had to speak out’ against these rich celebrities that could threaten legal action against the common man and whose ‘indiscretions’ should be made available to the public as a matter of urgency. He’s obviously been shedding a tear for poor Imogen Thomas who hasn’t been able to cash in on her heartwrenching story nearly as much as she would have, had the full details been exposed. I tend to side with the Speaker of the House of Commons who basically ruled that Hemmings’ outburst was ‘stone cold’ and implied that he was a wack little attention seeker.

It seems that there’s a general misconception operating with regards to public knowledge and the availability thereof: what is interesting to the general public is not often (if barely ever) in the general public’s interest to know. In one sense we have interest as a general will to know something, and on the other hand, interest as in something to which you owe your wellbeing and security. Fuckin’ homonyms, innit? It would be within our interest to disclose details of internal police investigations; to ensure that fraudulence and corruption are not occurring. It is not in the public interest to find out that someone you’ve never met had relations with someone else you’ve never met which in turn caused emotional distress to another person you’ve never met.

What’s worse is the fact that people who have already committed fairly serious crimes are having their deeds overshadowed by this petty gossip. Case in point; Sir Fred Goodwin; responsible for grave economic damage; damage that has affected untold people. It is now revealed that he is also none other than a ‘love rat.’ Now I would consider being a ‘love rat’ almost insignificant to being a feckless gambler of other people’s economic security but maybe I’m just old-fashioned; certain sections of the media certainly went to town on his infidelities. Imagine if they discovered that Saddam Hussein, aside from being a mass murderer by proxy, also fingered his best friend’s girlfriend in a Basra nightclub. We’d probably dig up his rotting remains and hang him all over again; the bastard!

So the point of all this isn’t really to pick through the issues surrounding the principles of injunctions. (For one thing; social networking has this week proven injunctions on national media to be pretty worthless; I hope for the sake of all the as-yet-unamed ‘celebs’ that they came with a money-back guarantee.) Conversely, the real sad issue is that few will make a fuss over unmasking the holders of superinjunctions unless it concerns some trivial gossip or other bullshit that’s really no one’s damn business.

We all know people who have been on both sides of infidelity, and it’s cool to care about your nearest and dearest. At least you will have the facts of a situation, some context, and maybe even a vested reason to stick your beak in. But Newspapers need you to be interested in other people’s superficial shit; because it’s easy to report (read: speculate) on, and it sells rags.

And so the Newspapers this morning triumphantly  blare out the name of some guy that cheated on his wife as though it were the biggest potatoes in the universe; smugly flaunting the fact that their muzzle has been released. And well might they be smug; they’ve won – not in any battle of noble journalistic integrity but merely the right to cash in on peddling softcore filth stories to masses of desperate voyeurs whose only interest outside of their own lives is in the  hidden locations of various noteworthy penises. Congratulations everyone.

Now please leave me alone; forever.

War Is Over (Happy Xmas??)

Only twenty-four hours ago Osama Bin-Laden was living the very boring, very ordinary existence you would expect of any  secretive, globally nefarious criminal mastermind; housed  discretely in the homely little Hamlet of Abbottabad, Pakistan. He’d feed the chickens, go for a walk in the countryside and occasionally check the comments people had posted on his old Youtube broadcasts. Twenty-four hours later, at this moment in time, via the introduction on certain metal projectiles to certain vital organs, the Notorious OBL now rests up-above; chillin’ out, maxin’ and relaxin’ all cool; with his netherworldly penis lodged scrotum-deep in one of many soon-to-be-ex-virgin afterlife sex slaves. Some people waved their flags and were happy, some people waved their fists and were sad. Everyone agreed that the death of Osama was big potatoes; a defining moment in modern history. So what’s changed?

Probably not much; is the mundane but truthful answer. Is this the end to acts of terror across the globe? Definitely not. It seems tenuous to claim that Bin Laden’s most recent role in al-Qaeda was more than just an iconic figurehead; someone to look up to; the faded portrait inside the old pocketwatch of the suicide bomber that would wink at him heartwarmingly in encouragement as he attempted to fashion his pocketwatch into a detonation device. And how many times has Bin Laden been mentioned in Western media over the last four years? All intelligence regarding al-Qaeda, as it is at this moment, suggests that it exists as a group of autonomous cliques; well equipped to plan and execute its own deeds without a thumbs-up from the bearded-one (well, the bearded-one.) With various cells functioning as thus; all that remains is for another egomaniac from the ranks to step up and fill the vacant ‘supreme cunt’ position.

To be fair; this was the disclaimer that was doled out with every press-release from any global politician: The death of Osama Bin Laden will not mean an end to global terror attacks. Moreover, many politicians warned about possible backlash attacks from Al-Qaeda cells. However, outwith this buzz-killer nearly all politicians claimed that with the assassination, ‘justice had been done.’ What the fuss!?

Am I the only person to vehemently disagree with this sentiment. In what sense has justice been done? This seems wrong on so many levels it’s hard to know where to begin. OK, so the premise is that by assassinating Osama Bin Laden, retribution has been made for anyone touched by the tragedies of any of the major attacks that he commanded. Firstly, what does this say about International Law. Basically; there is none. If someone chooses to play outside the rules; there is no institution that can hope to bring about legitimate justice for a global crime. All you can do is hope to pop ‘em off at some juncture. It doesn’t even seem such a huge price to pay; at best he feels great, hangin’ with his virgins, at worst he feels nothing; seems to me like he was wiped out before he could even begin to face proper justice, whereby he would have to face up to all of his crimes in the eyes of the law.

Secondly, ‘any person that believes in peace and democracy’ were told to be ‘celebrating’ the news (of someone getting all shot-up) Sounds like a weird thing for peace-lovers to do but fuck it; if you’ve got any leftover sarnies and bunting lying around from the Royal Wedding, go for it. I guess there really is no bad excuse for a party.

They certainly partied outside the Whitehouse; all beaming grins, dancing and euphoric chanting. The person that had been responsible for killing a lot of people had been killed. Everything bad was now good. I guess it’s true what they say; an eye for an eye and the world will soon be ‘Fuckin’ Brilliant!’

As regular as clockwork the mandatory conspiracy theories began appearing just after the news broke. Why did the US forces dispose of the body in the sea? Well, the press-release stated:

“…the body was buried at sea to conform with Islamic practice of a burial within 24 hours and to prevent any grave becoming a shrine.”

Bloody hell, that must have been a nail-biting journey. I do hope they made it in time; heaven forbid what would happen if the grave became a shrine. It will also be interesting to see how many followers of Bin Laden fight back their frustrations as a result: ‘Damn, I was well looking forward to it becoming a shrine; no hero-worship for me now, LOL’ Apparently the helicopter they used to transport the body would have transformed into a pumpkin if it wasn’t returned by midnight.

Another point that was raised by other sceptics was how the US managed to fly the length of Pakistan unchallenged to give the body its proper send-off. I for one like to think that rather than fly, they flushed him like an expired goldfish and let the majesty of the sewage system perform its own burial-at-sea.

Due to a combination of factors mentioned above, and more besides, the death of Osama Bin Laden is going to be blown well out of proportion. And why not, I suppose; the death of a celebrity is always a hot talking point; especially a celebrity known for his rotten attitudes, intentions and deeds. A good story can’t end without the villain perishing, and a sense of balance being restored to the world; many people have now got that ending. But for anyone that chooses not to see life as an infantile  storybook; it must be clear that the expiry of Osama Bin Laden, in global terms, is a fairly incidental matter, a mere punctuation mark in a long and arduous road to peace and reconciliation.

Brick Hard Truths

Here I am. Suspended in mid-air. As if retarded by some unseen force, time has slowed almost to a standstill. Meters beneath me an ocean of clear azure stretches out infinitely; the rippling waters shimmering with the reflection of the brash, untamed sun. Behind me the land slowly recedes at the pace of a funeral procession; the creaking planks of the pier and rank, garish colours of the jump-ramp edging ever further away. The fresh, salty breeze presses the skin of my face and undulates the flat spines on my water-skis. Everything’s silent. As I look down at the body of water beneath me, a shadow forms under the surface. It grows steadily darker to the point where not even the reflections can be seen dancing; before the surface is broken all at once by an immense grey protrusion. I watch in horror as, slowly, a disgusting, guerning face emerges; the black-marble, expressionless eyes, the strong homogenous-grey snout and the mouth; gaping wide, couching within it rows of serrated yellow daggers stretching infinitely back. The shark has launched herself with all her might from the secure womb of its aquatic environment; her sole intention to bring to an end my existence. Suddenly, I hear the people on the motorboat call out. The children watching from the pierside scream. I look back again at the land receding ever-faster away now; and I ask myself. How did I come to be here? How did I end up jumping the shark…

Just as a general recap, or for those of you who are unaware; ‘Jumping the Shark’ is a cultural term meaning:

“Jumping the shark is a widely used idiom, first employed to describe a moment in the evolution of a television show, characterized by absurdity, when a particular show abandons its core premises and begins a decline in quality that is beyond recovery.”

And furthermore:

“The usage of “jump the shark” has subsequently broadened beyond television, indicating the moment in its evolution, characterized by absurdity, when a brand, design, or creative effort moves beyond the essential qualities that initially defined its success, beyond relevance or recovery.”

Cheers Wikipedia.

So why the sudden fear of having reached a peak that you can never recover from? I suppose today I was struck by a spontaneous moment of self-realisation: that for the past months I have not been engaging in any creative pursuits that I find worthwhile. All the more frightening was the apparent ignorance of this situation that I had been harbouring over the course of these months. The ease of which I have let my extra-curricular life erode is a shock to me.

Having looked back by chance on a few previous pieces of work it caused me to think back to all the work I had ever created; assembled in a linear fashion  by order of chronology. The resulting imagine was a shock to me. It’s a sad realisation to discover that your, 11-year old self and the work that he created, can put your current self to shame. The calibre of ideas, the enthusiasm and energy are pretty much unparalleled in anything I’ve done with my life since. After my primary school days; it seems to be a slow and steady decline in quality and frequency of work. It’s not that I think anything I’ve done recently is exceptionally bad, it’s mainly the fact that I’ve done eff all recently.

I have often debated that age old question: do you get dumber with age? Is it just a natural occurrence? Perhaps I’m merely blossoming as a homo-sapien and fulfilling my ergon to the fullest of its potential. If it is indeed true I think David Lynch’s 2003 animated series ‘Dumbland’ elucidates the argument quite well. Note because it contains any discussion of the nature of ‘dumb’ but because it’s objectively shittter than all of his chronologically previous work including ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’ (sorry Dumbland; I still think you’re great really.)

A good friend of mine once told me; ‘You gotta get stupid sometime.’ (He’s Italian so I assume that it’s a direct translation of a Latin motto) Anyway, I must have taken his advice on board because since that moment I feel a marked reduction in my creative output as well as my level of general knowledge and subsequently my caliber as a person. Whilst I do agree that becoming stupid does bring its own quasi-liberations, it can also snare you within the grip of flaccid complacency. Perhaps my friend was really telling me that you gotta get stupid sometime, but only on certain occasions. Or perhaps it was a lesson in taking advice from someone who was explicitly claiming to be stupid at the point they were giving the advice.

Either way I have felt stupid. And in a stupor. So stupid and in a stupor that I didn’t even wonder whether the two words had a common meaning attached to the prefix ‘stu,’ (something I am now curious about). I think you can get to a point whereby your motivations drop so significantly that you cannot even muster the power of introspection to alert you to some impending existential crisis. Apathy is not a feeling; it is precisely a lack of a feeling and it’s hard to start a steam train running with no fire in the engine, eh? Any inclination to even pose the question of whether I wanted to embark on something greater than lounging around watching BBC3 (don’t even like it) and sporadically masturbating were extinguished before they could even become the seed of a notion of a genuine idea in my mind. To say that I was vegetating would be an insult to the varied and complex bio-organisms that are vegetables.

Yet in this backwards state of mental limbo you can still feel a pervading sense of unrest. A vague miserableness that you can’t attach to any concrete cause. A distant frustration that’s no more potent than a watered-down, tepid cup of Bovril. If you were willing to grasp those mental faculties again and look within you could easily tell that this state of lukewarm dissatisfaction was a result of choosing base comfort over the effort of doing something you find worthwhile. For every idea that crosses your mind there are a thousand put-offs and excuses. And the classics come into play; ‘I’m too busy at work; it’s draining; I don’t have time; I’m just giving myself a rest.’ Fuck you buddy; you were able to work around that shit three months ago; what happened? Oh, that’s right; your quality as a person degraded somewhat.

It is only looking back now that I can feel shame for all the wasted opportunities that I allowed to pass me by. I was living like a Scotsman, with no desire to know anything outside of what I was having for my supper that evening. Shame on me for sitting by and letting the Royal Wedding happen without commenting on how creepy I find people that invest so much attention into the private lives of others unkown to them. Shame on me for watching Charlie Sheen apparently break down without poking fun at him, and then replace my jibes with a strange respect as I watched him rant most eloquently to his detractors. And moreover a great shame on me for watching the Political struggles in the Middle-East unfold without sending my genuine respects to people who are out there at this moment embroiled in a life-or-death struggle with institutions who aim to suppress the fundamental elements of their existence. It is said that there are no bored people; only boring people. That’s quite a sweeping statement, but it sadly resonates with my recent experiences; I was as boring as I was bored.

Procrastination can be a terrible thing. In small doses it allows you a slight relent from your efforts and trials; but if allowed to consume the areas of your life that you most cherish it becomes a monster that can threaten those ambitions and dreams you once held so strongly. Essentially, I gotta get back on it. I know fulwell, grateful as I am, that anything I write on here will only be read by a handful of of people; I’m not writing for the sake of reputation or fame in itself. Ultimately I need to get back writing for my own sanity. To get back in touch with issues outside of my own bedroom and workplace. To get that sense of progression back. We all work hard to cultivate a personality or identity that we can stand up to; yet it is easy to slip into the habit of letting our vacuous words paper over the cracks of these images We tell people incessantly what we’re planning on doing, without moving so much as a pinkie towards actually achieving those goals. And once you fall into these habits, whilst your veneer may be upheld from the outside, within yourself, at some point, you have to recognise there’s nothing going on. And at that point you make a choice; to keep on keeping up the pretence, to embrace procrastination, maybe even try more wholeheartedly to deceive yourself; or you choose to do something about it. Simple, innit?

6000 years of human evolution and development have endowed us with eyes to see with, ears to hear with, teeth to bite with, nails to claw with, a larynx to crow with and feet upon which you can wear the sickest boots to stomp with. Most fantastically we have been blessed with an incredible brain which can beautifully synthesise all of the above; an organ that’s wasted on merely conjuring excuses, half-truths, white lies whilst being fed on a diet of cack Facebook posts. So I’m coming out right now and apologising to my brain; I didn’t mean to put you on the shelf, from now on I’ll nourish you, use you to the fullest potential – shit, I’ll take you to a 5* hotel and smooth you over from dusk til dawn just by way of apology.

So here I am again. Suspended over that clear blue sea. I’m looking down at that shark, right into her beady little eyes. But I know what I’m'a do now. Rather than hang in the air like some dumbstruck marionette I’m going to force myself down, blazing towards the sea like some spastic magic Pokemon on a beam of pure energy. And I’ll bypass that shark, right under her smooth, white undercarriage, right down beneath her, into the sea. I’m gonna go under the shark. That shark’s gonna jump me!

And there you have it; probably the tritest, most ridiculous visual metaphor I could have written as a conclusion. But y’know what? At least it’s there; written down. And if you don’t like it? Well, you and me can have a fuckin’ scrap. You just call me out anytime and I’ll give you a time and a place because,finally,  after these last few months…

…I know where I am again.

(OK  that was the tritest.)

Eyyyyyyyyyy

Get up, Shut Up; Shut Up About Your Rights

“I know my rights.”

If Carlsberg made vacuous, overused statements that come to prominence in the late 20th century to be spouted by anyone having a tantrum at not getting their own way; well… you’ve seen the adverts, right?

We all love to sing, dance and shout about our rights nowadays; it’s a growing trend that seems to have no indication of relent. But what do we actually know about our rights? Am I correct in thinking that the majority of the population has, in their precious free time, taken on the task of understanding the social and political implications of rights-based theories in order to get a discernible grasp of the social contract that protects them? Surely this can’t be a case of people-in-general mouthing off  without having a Scooby-effing-Doo about what they’re saying; can it?

Of course it can. For most people, ‘rights’ is just a word; and in a way, it is. However it is a word that comes tied to a variety of concepts, arguments, theories and implications, something to be used carefully, with consideration. In this society we sling ‘rights’  like it’s going out of fashion (certainly not the case.) We pass ‘rights’ around and use it like it was a fresh young fag in an Eton prefect dormitory. We ream ‘rights.’ The reason we do this is because we are harboring a gross misconception. When we say: “I have a right to x,” what we really mean is: “I want x.” Having a right is not the same thing as being able to throw a  tantrum because you didn’t get what you want. Rights are part of a system that takes into account the wellbeing of every member of a society. ‘What you want’ just relates to your own wellbeing.

And so that morbidly obese man will claim he has a right to only be charged a single fare, despite taking up two seats on the bus. Nope, I’m afraid you just want to be charged less. The snotty teenage girl tells the doctor about her right to get breast enhancement surgery on the NHS. We all want a firmer pair of titties, sure, but to say we have a right to a couple of bags of silicon gel each? Not so sure.

So if a double seat and a pair of fake fat-pockets do not equal a right, what does? Well, what do we mean by ‘right?’ In the sense of ‘our rights’ as we speak of them it seems that we are talking about human rights. A human right inviolably grants us some specific thing in virtue of us being a human being. So every human being, past, present and future, has these rights irregardless of circumstance or situation. That’s the basic principle of a human right.

However there are two categories of rights; negative and positive. A negative right  is a right is often categorised, rightly or wrongly, as granting us ‘freedom from‘ a certain infringing circumstance. We have a negative right to liberty; freedom from being imprisoned against our will, a negative right to security; freedom from being physically attacked and a negative right to life; the freedom from being killed.

Conversely; a positive right is categorised as ‘freedom to’ certain basic amenities. Freedom to education, freedom to clean water, freedom to healthcare would all be categorised as positive rights. Both negative and positive rights, when agreed upon, act as social trump cards; seemingly insurmountable, inviolable tickets to everything that allows us to flourish as human being.

But that is the theory; in practice issues get a little murkier. For instance, with rights come responsibility; if I have a right not to have my life taken from me, then someone must have a responsibility to protect me from being murdered, or at least punish those who attempt to do so. Therefore with regards to negative rights; we must rely on social institutions to uphold these, usually through a legal or penal system. With positive rights; if I have a right to clean drinking water, then it is someone’s responsibility to give that to me were I to need it. Therefore positive rights have a lot more limiting factors as they rely on availability and distribution of resources. If resource scarecity affects whether an agent/agency can uphold their responsiblity it seems doubtful than we can claim that positive rights are ‘iniversal’ in practice.

Moreover, with negative rights; although they may seem inviolable at first, there are plenty of examples where we overrule people’s human rights to protect others. If I were to be struck down with a deadly virus, that threatened to spread across the UK; I would be placed immediately in quarantine, thus removing my right to liberty. It would also be without my consent as I would be no doubt in the throes of fever or unconscious. Yet no one would be up in arms about a breach of my rights were it to happen.

So then, if we cannot explicitly claim that there are concrete rights to liberty for all humans, and if positive rights such as right to nourishment and clean water can be denied by lack of resources then how would you ever argue that young people in the UK have a right to a University Education?

Yep; out with the rights, in with the wrongs. The student protests in London; two classic examples of protests where ridiculous antics and mindless aggro masked some pretty flawed and selfish arguments espoused by some genrally well off kids with a bit of time on their hands.

Sure; the violence will always grab the headlines, obviously, as the general media have no real interest in reporting a protest that doesn’t end in people with grubby coats and comically awful hair lobbing fire extinguishers at police (in some photos it appears that the mob of the press taking happy snaps of the carnage actually outweighs the protestors and police put together.) And scenes of the mindless antics from both the protestors and police make us feel like the world we live in is a little bit more excitingly than it probably is. However, the main issue of the protest seemed to get lost amid the somewhat excitingly staged chaos. People used the violence as a front to support or reject the students’ arguments without actually looking at the arguments themselves; they simply claimed the violence either ‘undermined the message’ or ‘brought much need attention to the issues.’

But very little was actually said about the message itself; essentially supporters were claiming that residents in the UK have a right to free, or at least heavily subsidised, university education. They were arguing that by raising the cap on tuition fees to £9000 per year; the government were infringing on this right. But is there really such a right?

As we mentioned before, with every right comes a subsequent responsibility. In an ideal world universities would be run on the power of pure hope and imagination, but, alas, it costs a lot-o’- money to provide university courses; therefore if we have a right to a subsidised university education then someone outwith ourselves has a responsibility to pay for this. By increasing the amount each student pays themselves affords universities funding from the people who will actually use them. Of course, if students had to pay £9000 a year up-front then this would mean that hardly anybody would be able to enrol on courses, making the proposal entirely redundant, but this is not the case. Rather than pay a proportion of fees up front, students are not required to pay their fees until they are earning at least £21,000 p/a, meaning that no one person is immediately disqualified from attending university based on lack of funding. What is does mean is that school children will have to seriously think twice about whether university is the right option for them.

This is a matter which, I think, few 6th form students really entertain. Due to the fact that school performances are based on the number of students pushed through to university education, no one really puts it to children that a further three years of academia may not be for them. There is a certain assumption amongst young people that university necessarily follows schooling, and anything less is a failure.

If we take a leaf out of the book of the Ancient Greeks; Universities were stablished to be elite institutions of learning; training centres for the next generation of influential pioneers, the key to social, technological and cultural advancements. At the moment the university system has been diluted from this ideal; huge swathes of young people going through the motions with very little particular interest in what they are studying and what implications it could have in wider society. A standard university degree is of significantly less value than it was thirty years ago, and often merely serves as a gateway to find employment in a sector where employment could have been gained by way of an enterprise training scheme or apprenticeship upon leaving school.

For all the passion that students have displayed over the course of the two London protests, in the name of ‘fair society,’ I can’t see past a petulant middle-class selfishness displayed; a collective foot-stamping tantrum aimed at getting another ’20 from daddy’s wallet. Let’s face it, there is a big gulf between the ideal of the university student and the reality, and it seems that the protestor’s arguments and calls for sympathy are grounded in an entirely naive perception of the student body. I mean, if the student body were an actual body it would be some horrifcally contorted creation; a small amount of grey matter sitting atop an engorged brimming colon in a sack of skin being led around by a gigantic unwashed dong.

At this point I should mention: I don’t want to buy into this ‘bloody bloody students’ man-on-the-street mentality; I loathe to judge anyone based on the fact they belong to some loosely defined social set. Sorry, I meant ‘love to judge…,’ but in this case I don’t want to. I was a student once and there are no need for crass stereotypes, but similarly, we shouldn’t assume that all students are the upstanding, browbeaten social punchbags some would have you believe. Nor do I want to bring politics into this; people have already poisoned this issue with BS pseudo-politics (how could you be for fee hikes and not be a Tory?) All I want to do is speak from experience.

I could roughly generalise the students that I encountered into a few groups. You had the people that attended to study a subject they had an interested in, but were not academic enough to see it through. Harsh on these guys, but you need to be academic to go through University; I’m not being elitist, it’s about what fits each person best; a decent skills based course is of more value if you are more attuned to acquire skills rather than accrue knowledge (Lord knows I was bereft of skills by the time I graduated.) Then you had a very large group of students that attend for ‘the university experience,’ taking on a fairly low-intensity course and spending most time indulging in a fairly indulgent snail-paced hedonism, taking infrequent breaks to rush work for deadlines and scrape through a passable degree (NB – this is a LOT of students) Aside from these there are two other rough groups; people that had no interest in uni or uni life and drop out at the first hurdle and students that went to university based on the love of a subject or a drive to achieve a specific career. In my opinion this last class of people are the only group that should be attending university.

So when people say that this uplift in tuition fees is ‘robbing a generation of children of an opportunity to fulfill their dreams,’ it’s true. It just happens that most people’s’ dreams are to spend three years of comfortable existence before deciding what direction to take their existence. It’s an extended three-year party, or at least soiree, diluted with a minimal workload and the best thing is that you don’t have to pay an unreasonable amount. Kerching.

Let me ask you one question: is the threat of greater debt going to put off the budding scientist from achieving his academic goal? No, because she knows there is a well-paid career for exemplary professionals waiting for her. Is it going to put off the prospective media studies student whose life ambition is to drink beer from the bumcrack of a stranger in a student union initiation? Probably, because to date imbibing alcohol from anal crevices is probably not lucrative enough to alleviate 28 G’s of debt. I’m not having a pop at arts based degrees here either; they just happen to be more diluted by indifferent ‘floaters’ than other degrees. If fewer people took on arts degrees as an easy option based on higher fees, there would be more funds for arts courses, and the standard of education and training for the really dedicated artisans would be significantly higher.

I don’t have many regrets about the course I chose at university, or my motivation for attending university (I was under the assumption that the workload would be harder than school. [Laugh Out Loud]) However, if someone had taken me aside as a teenager and got me to really think, and I mean really think, about how my university career would relate to my future, how I should be looking to contribute towards society, then maybe I would have chosen a more noble path, a prudential path for both myslf and wider society.

And that’s the point at the end of the day; universities are there to try to progress society, not to indulge swathes of meandering middle-class youngsters. Going back to what we was said in the beginning of this article; rights do not equate to the unconditional granting of wants. Student protestors can make their cause seem very noble by slinging the word ‘right,’ but they’re no better than the fatboy on the bus; they want to be able to swan into an institution for specialised learning, without paying a penny or being required to undertake any specific amount of work, and they want someone else to make it happen. That doesn’t sound noble. It sounds wank. At some point everyone has to realise that maybe, just maybe, what they want might not fit into what is best for everyone around them, and we may just have to make compromises at some junctures in our life. After all there is no harm or shame in taking on a vocational course, going onto an apprenticeship scheme, finding entry level work after school, funding a party lifestyle with your own money or just killing yourself (jokez)

So let’s recap: Raising tuition fees will not prevent anyone from attending university as fees don’t have to be paid up front. Schoolkids will be more likely to either select a course they are interested in or one that leads to a socially viable professional career, or find an alternative path to university that best suits their interests and abilites, meaning universities will be populated with eager, intrepid learners. The university funding will be spread more healthily if less students are attending, meaning a better standard of learning within the institutions. People from low-income backgrounds will be eligible for more bursaries and grants to encourage exceptional students from every sector of society to attend university. If you do not have a clearly defined right to liberty or clean drinking water then you probs do not have a right to free university education.

Try throwing a fire-extinguisher at that lot you sad, attention-seeking young-Noddy-Holder-looking douchebag.

The world's most cool baddass student ever

Mo’ Pictures, Mo’ Problems

Sometimes people can be proper shit. Point in question: The Danish Cartoon Scandal that occurred in 2005 and has continued to rear its ugly head sporadically ever since. A Danish newspaper publishes various satirical cartoons of the Islamic prophet Mohammed; riots, protests, burnt embassies and five deaths ensue. This event has quite rightly become a bone of contention between Islamic and ‘Western’ thinkers; concerning free-speech, rights of religion, freedom from offence and other topics. However the real ugly side of this tug-of-war debate has been played out by ‘non-thinkers’ from both sides. 

Firstly, take the response to the images being published within certain countries in the Islamic world. The ludicrous assumption made by many seemed to be that inciting violence, rioting and disregard to diplomatic immunity were a just reaction to the printing of fairly tame satirical imagery. 

People seemed to be confused as to what they were fighting against. Many were claiming that it was the offensive nature of the images that justified the violent reaction. Yet we were also told that it was a punishable offense in itself to depict an image of the prophet Mohammed. Despite the fact that there was no clear line of argument here; both reasons have foundations in a fundamental assertion that a non-believers failure to adhere to the religious code of the Islamic religion justifies the threat, and application, of violence. 

All well and bad; except a little research will show that nowhere in the Qur’an or the hadith (a collection of the teachings of Mohammed) are depictions of Mohammed prohibited from being drawn. 

I’ll reveal my sources here; two very interesting webpages dedicated to compiling information about Islamic art and depictions of Mohammed: 

Depictions of Mohammed – http://www.religionfacts.com/islam/things/depictions-of-muhammad-in-islamic-art.htm#summary 

Mohammed Image Archive – http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/ 

So anyway; it turns out that the prohibition of (a certain sect, mainly Sunni) muslims from viewing certain images comes from a prohibition on idolatry. From the teachings of the Qur’an (and the Bible, and the Torah) worshipping idols is forbidden. In the hadith this is extended to a prohibition on the viewing of any images that depict a living being; for fear that muslims may worship those images, rather than Allah. Moreover the hadith applies only to muslims, does not require any Muslims to take action against the creators of such images. 

And it doesn’t stop there. Medieval depictions of Mohammed were commonplace in Islamic nations such as Persia. Here’s one to prove it (if you are offended by depictions of Mohammed, avert your eyes now): 

A medieval depiction of Mohammed

So with a little bit of research we can dispel any propagated myths that there has been a universal and absolute prohibition on depicting Mohammed. This mish-mash of twisted, concentrated, out-of-context garbage that was used to justify violence against fellow humans is simply divisive propaganda spread by pan-jihadists that aim to fear every nation on the Earth into adopting Islamic religion and culture. We can’t let these people be the voice of a religion that numbers in the millions worldwide, or let our in-built tendency toward cultural relativism prevent us from asking questions of people that hide their violence and aggression behind the thin veil of religion that protects them. 

But that’s only half the story. Following the response to the Danish cartoon scandal, a counter-response has now arisen, mobilised by the internet; an emplorement for as many people as possible to draw pictures of Mohammed; in order to show extremists that threats of violence will not silence the freedom of expression. 

Brilliant, I thought, what a good way to show people that pictures, in themselves, cannot rationally be deemed offensive. Yet, to my dismay, all I witnessed were hordes of crass, vulgar depictions of Mohammed emerging online. To my mind, this is a huge own goal for anyone that wants to defend free speech and free expression. 

People took the opportunity with glee, to draw the most offensive pictures that they could imagine. Things got so bad that the creator of the Facebook ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed Day’ Molly Norris, severed all ties with the group. 

These supposed bastions of rationality and protectors of the First amendment do not seem to realise that just because we are free to say anything, does not mean that what we say cannot be offensive. The wave of crass pictures was in no way an attempt to engage people over a serious matter. It aimed to divide; nothing more – to separate people into two groups; one that holds the higher principles, and one credulous, irrational group that get teary-eyed if they see a picture of their precious prophet with a nob up his butt (ROFL…) There was a whole lot of prejudice, divisiveness, pomposity and tribalism on display; and very little genuine discussion of the key issues at hand. 

The mark of great satire is that its offensiveness to a group of people is derived from highlighting a hypocrisy or absurdity in their beliefs or actions. Most of the pictures of Mohammed fell a long way short of this standard; they were just dumb. Dumb in their content and dumb in their contribution towards the cause that they allegedly supported. 

If we wish to change the views of a group of people we would do well to engage them, rather than push them away. If we treat people with ridicule and contempt, there is little chance that they will succumb to our arguments, no matter how watertight they are. I’m not just talking about irrational people here either. Much-lauded (deservedly so) evolutionary biologist and atheist poster-boy Richard Dawkins was depicted in a somewhat-recent episode of South Park; buggering the transsexual teacher (Mr)Mrs Garrison. When asked about the show he replied that he wasn’t too happy about being depicted in such a way, but his main problem was that the show did not have a point. In fact the show did have a point. Despite the fact Dawkins was, overall, depicted as mild-mannered and reasonable, his views were taken on by an outspoken, moronic character that twisted them into something foolish. If you want proof of this in real life just look at the most outspoken, obtuse posters on the RDF blog. Basically the episode argued that really arrogant, obnoxious atheists that dont have a full grasp of their subject are prone to be dickheads. However, even the mind of Richard Dawkins couldn’t see past the offense caused to him, to find the intellectual and satirical value in the show. And that’s Dawkins… what hope do feeble-minded people have in finding reason in the words of an offensive aggressor. 

The mass drawing of Mohammed movement could have been really important in engaging muslims that were offended/confused by the Danish cartoon scandal; if it had been done sensibly. It was the perfect time for people to draw a normal, inoffensive depiction of the prophet, and ask of the Islamic world ‘is this really offensive, and if so, why?’ It would have been the perfect way to highlight the  absurdity behind the views of the offended, if they reacted violently to such an image. It may have even provoked, god/allah/etc forbid, a debate between people. Y’know; debate. It involves reason, argumentation and collaboration, rather than violence, aggression, prejudice, hatred, stubbornness; you get the picture. 

So this whole affair has thrown up a lot of shitty behaviour from a lot of people. At some point the shouting has to stop and the talking must begin. For what it’s worth I still belive that we should strive to defend free speech and free expression. We shouldn’t crumble in the face of fear, to the demands of people that tell us they cannot be touched. But we shouldn’t let our animosity towards these people prevent us from engaging with people that don’t share our position. 

Free-speech does not entail that all speech is OK; it means we have a responsibility to work out these boundaries, together, through reasoned discussion and debate. 

By the way, for my part, I have attempted to make a recreation of the medieval depiction of Mohammed using Microsoft Paint. My only apology is for the lack of artistic ability it displays. For anybody that is prohibited from viewing depictions of Mohammed; I guess this is the end. (of the article, not of any friendship; actual or hypothetical) 

Thanks for reading. 

My awesome picture of Mohammed

Hold Fire!

I was bored the other evening. Contrary to any previous TV-related articles, I don’t spend that much time channel surfing these days. But I did the other night; because I was bored. To my surprise, a number of channels seemed to be airing the same program; some washed-out looking buddy comedy about two mavericks, diametrically opposed in their respective worldviews, forced to put their differences aside to fight forces of evil.

One was a fusty old Etonian, up-tight and stuck in his ways. The other was a streetwise upstart wisecracker who was a bit less fusty and came from the ‘Hood of Chilfont St. Giles. I only caught the end of the episode; from what I can gather the two characters had got off on the wrong foot; the fusty Etonian claiming that his sidekick was a threat to national security, which often prompted him to reel out his catchphrase ‘Dammit Nick you’re gonna get us both killed!’ Despite their initial differences they eventually decided to work together to defeat some old haggard-looking mobster that had apparantly planned to destroy the economy with a bomb in a plan he referred to as ‘Boom ’n’ Bust.’ However, his plan was defeated and the finale was just a massive celebration scene that was totally ripped off from Star Wars.

The next day I woke up and everyone was raging. They hated the show so much. But I didn’t; I thought it was quite cool – and I’m'a tell you why…

Ham(mer) Time!

Nick and Dave – OK; so it wasn’t really a staged TV show but you could have mistaken the aftermath for a pantomime. The amount of vitriol that was directed at the actuality of a coalition government was pretty staggerring. Of course it wasn’t the usual suspects; i.e Murdoch’s rabble, that was spreading the hate and hysteria; the echoes of angry shouts were ringing mainly from the depths of the internet.

My social networking landscape was saturated by hoardes of shrieking masses claiming that the ‘ConDemNation’ (pretty clever, kudos) is somehow going to put a knife in the heart of our civil liberties. I don’t mind, and I understand, a bit of moaning when you don’t get what you want. But homies, please…

I know a lot of people don’t like David Cameron. I, myself, have increasingly come to think of him as slimy and insincere. A lot of people don’t like the Conservative policies; I myself disagree with their manifesto on a fair few issues; particularly regarding inheritance tax and education. People who shared these qualms would obviously rue a conservative government, but the fact of the matter remains that we do not have a conservative government. I do not see how the difference between a Tory government, and a Tory/Lib Dem coalition is in some way superficial.

Call me naive (don’t, actually; I’d be pretty offended) but I find it quite exciting that we now have a government comprised of MPs from two not-quite-radically-but-still-pretty-opposed parties. In the event of a Tory majority I would have feared that a certain section of the mass media might be able to exercise more power within the political sphere; in a coalition government I can’t see that happening. Any policy that might have seemed extreme, unfair or biased in the conservative manifesto will surely be tempered by the LibDem presence. A government where reason and compromise are the propulsive forces behind policy-making; does that not, even in theory, sound like a good thing?

I’ve never really had an overly-heightened interest in politics really; but I’ve been pretty engrossed in this election and can’t really see what all the hub-bub is about? It seems like the main gripe is that David Cameron is now Prime Minister. Many of those now baying for some kind of sanction to be taken against him, or for his resignation, also demanded electoral reform with a plea to democracy. In which kind of democracy would the leader whose party won the majority of votes in the election not occupy the position of PM, I wonder. Many people that identified and challenged the hysterical scaremongering of various biased sources now find themselves the orators of such knee-jerk, unfounded reactions that, if adopted by the majority, would cause widescale panic.

I’m not claiming to know whether this coalition will work out for the best, ultimately; but I’m not giving up hope on the basis of a few ad-hominem grudges that I hold against David Cameron, and a few bad, homophobic apples in the fruit bowl. As with any inaugural period, the new government will be closely, and rightly, scrutinised, to ensure that they are making good on their policies and promises.

Whilst a lot of people were stamping their feet and gnashing their teeth in the days following the election, I was actually impressed by the manner in which the parties went about finding a reasonable solution to the hung parliament scenario.

If this is a window into the kind of level-headedness uder which the coalition government will operate, then I think that’s a pretty positive sign. So for the time being I think we should relax a little, ease our fingers off the triggers for a while, and hope that our already fairly decent nation gets a bit more decent in the months to come.

Hungland

Day one in Hungland…

I wake up. Shafts of dull sunlight limp in through the blinds, obscured by a cloud of floating black ash from some volcano that makes planes full of UKIP men fall from the sky. I roll over and feel cold steel. My shotgun. No need to use this baby yet, but I feel safe with it nearby. If  nothing else, those sweet, sweet cartridges, filled with lead, are my golden ticket; first class, out of Hungland.

I stumble downstairs past the withered corpse of my flatmate, still draped in her custom-made Lib Dem yellow tee. She expried the second that Evan Harris got ousted. Another body notched for Dr. Death. In the kitchen I make myself some breakfast. Tofu. That’s all we eat these days. Doctors say anything other than homogenised bean curd would  knock us down, stone-dead: a sensory overload against our bland, dullened palletes. I fucking hate tofu.

Step outside. Yeah, breathe in that spring air with a healthy dose of toxic smog. Not much doing out here, just a few desperate ploiticians sifting through the rank wholsale decay, trying to pick up those last few seats. Makes no difference now; we’ve already been hung. A little further down the road I see a group of BNP fanatics dancing in the street; watching a youtube clip of some guy in a suit kicking an asian rudeboy’s head with a boot. They try to give the video five stars; but find that the five-star rating system of youtube has been changed to a simple like-dislike dichotemy. In a display of collective rage they dismember and devour the weakest member of the group; a tubby phillibusterer with only one eye to go around. I keep walking.

In a dark underpass I come across a guy sleeping rough and begging for change. His name’s Clegg. Weeping gently into a KFC cup as he asks me if I’ve ever been with a famous TV star, before giving me a proposition: sex for votes. I’d never met the man before but somehow he knew my name, which struck a chord with me. I certainly wasn’t going to exploit this tragic figure so I just ask for a bit of head, rather than sex. Upon finishing I toss him a few votes which he scrabbles up like some kind of  insect. As I walk on he yells something about getting enough votes to be able to afford another seat for his underpass. I guess he’s still waiting…

Living in Hungland you get used to these scenes. It’s like a really vile but incredibly boring movie being played over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. In the beginning they said it would be OK. Everyone could work together, hand in hand, building rainbows into the future. Cute. But despite what Kermit the fucking Frog thinks, rainbows are merely illusions, just like the vision of a prosperous Britain that we were promised. Right from the off the politicians diagreed. Parties fought parties, politicians fought within their own parties. So bad it was that within the first hour of hung parliament every politician fundamentally disagreed with their own principles and policies. Now all they do is sit still in deathly silence, locked in a perpetual stare-off. They don’t eat or sleep. they don’t think or feel. They just stare. One day they’ll all just drop dead without any consequence.

This wave of apathetic disagreement soon spread from The Commons to the common. Any sense of solidaritythat  should have united us against this dystopian wasteland was washed away, along with the moral fabric of society. Mrs. O’Malley’s youngest died of the lurgee. She could have been saved were it not for the bickering. With no one in charge, no one to make assertions, we cannot live. All we do now is exist; feeding of the last of our town’s resources like a layer of limescale; indifferent and inconsequential.

Well, almost all of us. Some of us saw this coming. Some of us have fought of this virus of spineless apathy that the hung parliament has spread through this country. Some of us have a plan. Some of us are on a mission. A mission to find the one man that could have saved us from this; saved us from ourselves. The one man that warned us.

I turn up the street. Never seen central London look this dead. A row of burnt out cars guide me along my path. Relative silence fills this panorama of decay. In the distance I hear the gruff voice of a mentalist screaming out at anyone that will listen. ‘Bigot! Bigot! Bigot!’

It starts to rain a bit; the most annoying type of weather. Fuck it. I try to shelter in the doorway of one of the towering fortresses alligning the pavement, which is strewn with the broken windows of these once noble giants. As I hunch in the shadows I hear the sound of scattered debris. I turn to find a stray servant-bot pottering around. The camp automaton chirps around the lobby, picking up wreckage and packing it into a bin liner. I watch the robot a little longer. He looks familiar. C3-PO? No… he’s too pink. Like he’s made out of ham. Hmm. C3-PO made out of Ham… Wait!

‘You!’ I storm into the lobby, shotgun erect. ‘Don’t move.’ The robot freezes, stuttering and flustered. I convince the trembling bag of bolts that I won’t harm him. I just want one thing from him.

‘Where is your master!?’

‘I err, I’d like to answer that…’ stutters the drone.

‘Then answer! Where’s your fucking master!?’ I cock my shotgun.

‘OK! OK! I’ll start again. He’s upstairs, 6th floor.’

I thank the smooth-faced humanoid kindly before blowing  his stretched plastic face into a thousand pieces. A gushing jet of slimy oil fires out from the neck hole just above his pretty blue tie; disgusting. Fucking dope couldn’t even win by a majority…

I creep up the once-lavish staircase that runs through the spine of the tower. Sixth floor. I’ve arrived. Could be that I find nobody. Could be that british society continues to drift our into a grey sea of social and moral obscuirty. I put these thoughts out of mind as I lean up against the wood-panel wall that lines the outside of the grand office. I’m here. This could be my destiny. A floorboard creaks and I hear a voice from inside;

‘Cameronbot? Is that you.’

A wry smile passes my lips for a second. He’s here. An almighty crash rings out as I smash though the office door wielding my shotgun high and proud. The old, hangdog man opposite me shrinks back into his plush leather chair.

‘What the bleedin’ ‘ell is going on!?’ yells the irate Australian.

‘Mr. Murdoch, I’m afraid your precious robot won’t be running again…’ I put my gun down.

‘Wh-who are you?’ stammers the media mogul.

I smile. ‘I’m the only friend you have left in the world.’

‘What about the hoardes of international corporations and politicians that I have paid to gain a global stranglehold of power?’

‘Apart from them.’ I reply, before taking the old man’s hand.

 ’Come on Rupert. We have work to do…’

Coming up in Day 2 of Hungland: Our Hero and Murdoch attempt to build a timemachine to travel back and prevent Hung Parliament, but will their plans be scuppered after Caroline Lucas uses her mythical powers to unleash a wave of imaginary climate change on the nation? Tune in to find out…

Hungland 2010

Hungland is a licensed trademark of Big Society Productions

Hiatus

The author of these articles is currently undergoing routine life maintainance. Normal service will resume at a later date.

Notes From A Corporate Shitstorm

”This company aims to be the world’s largest cheese exporters by the year 2015.”

Yesterday morning I witnessed the birthday celebration of a warehouse operative, 50 that day, who had been with the company since he was sixteen. The head of operatives put on a slideshow of humerous photos and he was presented with a cake. Amongst the banter and piss-taking he addressed the gathered numbers with a pretty touching speech about how he was ‘made-up’ at the kindness shown to him by he fellow workers. He thanked everyone for making his job a pleasure and joked that he would see us all gathered back here for his sixtieth.

That afternoon; same room, same crowd; I witnessed the very same warehouse operative’s heart break as we were told that the whole branch was to be closed for good. Brick hard times indeed.

You really don’t expect, after working somewhere for three weeks, be be in the middle of the most dramatic periof in a workplace’s history. It feels illegitimate; the news was of no real consequence to a temp like me, I feel more like a journalist, solemnly documenting the protracted death of an organism, composed of decent working people.

It was a bolt from the blue, nobody had seen it coming so soon. It’s not as if this branch was not performing; in the last year supply levels hit 99.98% with service levels not far behind, making healthy profits all the year round. This was a decision based on simple maths; why have three departments in Britain when you can have one. Relocating operations down south will ultimately cut costs for the French conglomerate as a whole. It’s truly sad to see people, that live and breathe their work, cut out in the name of syngery. People have the option of moving South to relocate, but it’s just not a fasesible choice for most.

In the days of small, family business, if a worker was loyal, then her security was protected by the employers. Your trade was not just your livlihood, it established your role in your immediate environment, the way in which you related to those around you. The more layers of bureacracy you put in between the worker and the executives that make decisions in a company, the more dilute these principles and governance become with regards to the workforce; especially if that workforce is located in another country. It’s a sad fact, but it is understandable; that’s the worst part, there really is no one to blame. I defy the notion that all executives have some malicious misanthropic streak in them that drives them to accumulate wealth relishing the expense of human dignity that follows in its wake. The simple fact is that there is not, nor should there be, any law to uphold principles in business. It’s merely a choice that owners make, on how to run their business. If good governance comes at a price to efficiency, wel… efficiency rarely loses out. It is just a sign of a decent group of people if they establish a business that genuinely holds good governance as paramount, and acts upon well thought out, considerate principles.

A large conglomerate can’t take into account the individual trials and tribulations of all of it’s employees, they are too numerous, and as such it is easy to see people’s labour as a commodity; something that increases wealth or produces burden. As companys get bigger, merge, add more layers of management like an expanding bureaucratic onion, it will dimish the level of security even the most stalwart employee can have. No one person is truly safe.

This is the way that it goes. It’s sad, but it’s business at the end of the day, and you have to know what you’re getting yourself into when you get involved. But it’s not impossible to run a large, profit making, business that takes good care of it’s employees. It might be hard, but it’s not improssible.

It would be refreshing to have, just once, a conglomerate announce that, by 2015, it aimed to be the most principled, well governed cheese exporter in the world.