Rob the Gob

A while ago, somebody I know told me that they were thinking of getting into scrap books, as a kind of business. Not wanting to take the piss too much, (although, admittedly, that was hard), and wanting to at least manage to find out some more about the peculiar statement she’d just made, I dutifully came up with jocular conversational bits and bobs on theme. Trying to find out exactly how one would make money, I asked her how she could charge for things cut out of newspapers and such, and was acidly informed that scrap books had ‘moved on’. And I was trying so hard too. Given this, you shouldn’t be surprised that Piracy has moved on a bit too. The ships are bigger, they’re made from metal now, apparently (what will they think of next?) and the personal arms of choice have shifted from cutlass and flintlock to machete and AK-47. Yet, like scrap books, I suppose, the principles have remained constant even if the whistles and bells have changed.

            So, you can now have a choice of two different costumes for your pirate fancy dress party. There may not be too many platted beards, parrots or pieces of eight on show, but history does have something to teach us, and there are a surprising number of parallels. Take one valuable thing, stick it on a ship, and sail it passed some poor people with access to basic weapons. There used to be these really huge European empires that kept everyone that wasn’t directly related to those in charge in conditions dogs used to point and laugh at. They went to places that had a large quantity of the stuff they valued – in the olden days it was a very dense and unutterably pointless metal called ‘Gold’, whereas now it’s an exquisitely useful black liquid stuff. Then they shipped vast amounts of this wealth about in ships to get it to the place they wanted to. Unsurprisingly, some of the poor people they sail passed look out to sea and think ‘hmm… you know, if I had that rather than that rich bloke over the sea, then me, my family and everyone else I’ve ever met could have a place to live, something to eat and maybe even a PS3. Hell, If I kept it all to myself, maybe I could go somewhere or do something that meant that I didn’t have to carry this AK all the time like it’s my packed lunch.’ ‘Dave? Where’s that boat of yours?’

Basically there are people in the world who, as usual, have a shedload more stuff than everyone else, and pirates are a product of this. As in the past, they have a certain charismatic appeal despite being generally pretty awful people because, as before, it’s equally difficult to like the people their stealing from. As usual, there will be some who do it just for the worst kind of cruelty-based poops and laughs, and others who don’t. Having a fearsome reputation can get you a long way in the Piracy game. Still, no need to feed people their own balls this time, eh lads? Most of them won’t do particularly good things with the money they acquire – they’ll just use it to get better houses and equipment and weapons and then exert even more power and influence… erm… but then… actually that sounds like exactly what they guys who own the boats will do as well. So really, the situation is pretty funny as far as I’m concerned – the new multinational empires of wealth are feeling the piratical thorn in their sides just like the governmental empires of old once did.

I’m not sure I’d find any of this as funny if my job was driving tankers passed the coast of Somalia. But it’s not, so there. On the other hand, I do have some sympathy for the crew. Ok, the people who own the boats themselves and the cargos they contain are likely to be under direct contract to one Mr Lou C. Fur, but the blokes who might get posted back to their relatives in bits are just workaday guys like the rest of the world – almost everyone works for somebody truly despicable at some point in their lives; considering that most of the world is in the hands of the most corrupt and unpleasant, you’d be doing a remarkable dodge if you didn’t. Indeed, as being an utter bastard seems to be the prime requisite for success in almost any capacity, picking between the bastards who make the money out of the oil and the bastards who stole it seems like a fairly pointless exercise. Just for the record, they aren’t currently in the habit of posting bits of dead guys here and there, in fact the latest crew are reported to be ‘fine’, indeed, asking about football scores – although there are more than 300 currently held by pirates from some fifteen captured ships and sixty-five attacks, and they can’t all be happy little rabbits. As usual, those who directly suffer are essentially innocent. I don’t like it any more than you do, but even more poor buggers would be suffering, no doubt, if those that want to be in charge of everything were allowed to act unopposed. You’d better believe it. Throw away your all your Primark, Nike, Unilever or any other brand label you care to name – and start with anything you’ve ever bought from Tesco’s – before you start casting stones about your glasshouse.     

According to the UN, something must be done, and I guess that my amusement won’t prevent it. Maybe they’re worried that too many poor people with access to basic weapons might get the same idea, and that consequently their Porsche Cayenne’s will grind to a halt twenty miles from their homes in the middle of winter (20 miles being about as far as you can get in a Porsche Cayenne before it burns through an oil tanker’s worth of petrol).  Apparently, the United States is also worried Somali pirates may forge ties with terrorist groups, but, of course, they have no evidence. Well, lack of evidence has never stopped them from doing anything before, but, then again, any direct action taken might accidentally hurt some Saudis, and we can’t have that. If the US does take action against the Somali pirates, I expect that action to be the invasion of Iran. The UN itself has decided to ‘tighten their action on Somalia’. How they plan to do this is beyond me – Somalia essentially doesn’t exist in any sense beyond the lines we draw on maps. There are some warlords, some pirates, a load of kids with guns, a load of injured people, sick people, refugees and some bricks and stuff that might one day be put back into an order that resembles a country, but nothing you can ‘tighten’ on.

So, if something really must be done, what to do? Well, in the olden days, most of those in charge used brutal tactics, capital punishment and military muscle to fell the pirates. It’s just about feasible that those who love the black slimy stuff the most are willing to further add to the woes of the Somali’s by bombing it back beyond the stone age, which presumably would involve replacing all the people with Homo Erectus. Given that we don’t want to do this, let’s look back to history once more. In the ‘golden age’ of piracy, one plucky little nation that was feeling the pinch of being massively inferior in both military might and wealth dealt with some pirate by giving them jobs, and, therefore, some measure of protection. Thus did Britannia come to rule the waves. So, here’s my plan – and listen up all you struggling nations. You can’t upset people unofficially any more, because information’s too good, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it covertly. The Brits used a kind of ‘plausible deniability’ system in the golden age of piracy, where  we aided and gave support to utter bastards, and gave them the letters of mark they needed to be not found swinging from any yard arms, then denied any knowledge of their previous wrongdoings when accused of consorting with pirates. It was easier all round, but don’t think the rest of the world didn’t know exactly what was really going on. Still, we might need to modify the tactics a bit. So: give the pirate somewhere nice to live instead. You will have an instant navy, and all you need is: to have no extradition treaties with the right countries, a banking system willing to take money that’s been gained from ransoming oil tankers, somewhere to live that’s nicer than Somalia (so, like, anywhere that isn’t Somalia), and the ability to turn a blind eye to the odd time one of your ramshackle ships drops your flag and pinches somebody’s shipment of BMW’s.   

A-ha me hearties, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.

This morning there was news regarding the fall in the rate of inflation. Good news, you’d think, but apparently not. ‘This could herald a period of deflation’, we are told. After a brief consideration of the possibilities of this (at first innocuous-sounding) process, anyone realises that there would be serious negative consequences. Non-the-less, I get the impression that the only reason it was interpreted in that way was due to the strong desire of everyone to see a series of essentially minor events as a global catastrophe. We crave disaster, though we simultaneously fear it – every single thing that is ever reported on is sensationalised to a degree.  The head of Barclay’s Bank isn’t getting his bonus this year (putting him millions out of pocket – shame). Most people are cheering this, I’d think, but we are also soberly told that such things are portents of horrors to come. I can think of nothing that would diffuse this media generated tension better than showing it for the ridiculous nature of what it is – and the best way to do this is disaster fiction! Show how bad it could really get – bells, whistles and explosions, and everyone will feel twenty times better about it. It’d be cathartic. In short, by revelling in some things that really we should be respectfully scared of, we can move a long way towards understanding it. Play is how we learn, kids.        I’ve recently attended a comics conference (actually it had a more pretentious title than that, but non-the-less, that’s what it was). I was struck (but really, really not surprised) by how many of the stories involve total global catastrophe, but how nothing reflected the consequences of any financial crisis past or present. It’s a dull apocalypse, that’s for sure, and the comics industry avoids heavy material like an acrophobic agoraphobe with a chronic fear of elastic and Australians avoids bungee jumping. There are publications that deal will serious issues (‘Maus’ and ‘Palestine’ spring to mind), but who on earth could write something about this crisis? It’s just DULL. Occasionally you see something in wider fiction set during the era of the great depression. There are many fine novels, for example, and a few films. There are even TV programs about the appalling consequences of Thatcherism that are lurking about my brain (‘gizajob’), but to my knowledge there’s very little speculative fiction written about future financial crises. It’s just not a very sexy topic. It seems fine to set a narrative within a financially difficult period as a kind of historical analysis, but nobody’s very interested before they happen. Except for news broadcasters – and if they had their way we’ll all have shot ourselves in the face with despair long ago. So, could this be changed? Could there actually be a decent Disaster movie, book or comic made out of a financial crisis?

            There’s a certain delight to be found in the mongering of doom, even just in the internal monologue. I was truly convinced that I’d be killed by nuclear fire as a boy. It didn’t help me to act responsibly to be constantly expecting to be told that my life was only going to last for another four minutes.  I remember watching a program about meteor strikes and being terrified not that a big ‘Dino-killer’ would strike but that a Tunguska- sized impact almost anywhere in the northern hemisphere would ‘accidentally’ start a global thermonuclear exchange. Actually, that wasn’t as unlikely as it sounds. Lots of the films made at that time reflected this common conception of the way the world would end – essentially in a giant fireball. The only real escape  from thoughts of this kind came not from avoiding them, but from embracing them. Catharsis is a wonderful thing. Post-apocalyptic stuff obsessed me, books about comet impacts, films about the consequences of  the inevitable Armageddon. This persisted in the common consciousness (and my own) just long enough to produce films like ‘Deep Impact’ (black president anyone?) and Armageddon, and even the quite recent TV series ‘Jericho’. These semi-realistic disaster movies were mother’s milk to huge sections of society, and really are the model for the perfect disaster story: Firstly, you can buy the possibility. Secondly, there are clear and rather spectacular events to goggle wide-eyed at. How many times have you seen New York destroyed by a tidal wave? Never boring, was it? Thirdly, there are fundamental changes to human life, long-term stuff that we’ll have to deal with, and many, many opportunities for spectacular heroism. Fourthly, and most importantly, it’s something that we don’t understand the full consequences off and that frightens us because of that.   

            The ‘fun’, ‘sexy’ topics for doom-mongering in the media have shifted a little in the last few years. Eighteen-year-olds today were born after the fall of the Berlin wall, and it’s certainly been a while since the people who were filled with Cold War paranoia sat firmly in the centre of target demographics for disaster movies and conspiracy theories. A few themes have stayed for writers to play with – disease for example. Remember SARS? That was due to kill everyone a few years ago, then Bird Flu came along. These things were actually deadly, but the possibility of them becoming the new black (as in ‘Black Death’ in this case – thank you, ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be here all week) was slight. The fact is that we accept casualty figures in different ways for different things. A disease is only to be considered seriously when it’s killed a few million in a few weeks. MRSA is actually a far more serious problem than either of them, AIDS kills huge swathes of people each year, but if you want to consider real threats to humanity, you should really consider the classics. Small Pox, Malaria and Cholera, for example, may be under control in the west, but this is not universally true. Further, they are subject to constant mutation, making them possibly more threatening than any of things we actually hear about. Large populations in concentrated areas and the high international mobility of people makes for perfect proliferation of an infection. So, it has all the potential – it’s possible, it’s has dire consequences, the possibility for heroism, and though it isn’t as spectacular as a whopping great explosion, it can be hugely bloody to make up for it. And it it just remote enough from us (here in the west at least), to fulfil the forth criteria – it’s something that requires our examination. Consequently disease has remained a common theme. ‘Outbreak’, for example, link further back to ‘The Andromeda Strain’, even certain Zombie movies (although Zombie movies tend to concentrate their efforts more on metaphor than anything else, Zombies are often characterised as victims of a plague). These movies and stories tend to be quite good fun for all their grimness, not so much cautionary tales as romps with the lurgee.

            Likewise ecological disaster movies have become a new genre. In the fifties there were stories and films about heating (‘Drowned world’, ‘the day the earth caught fire’) and right up th the seventies and eighties seventies there were a few stories about a coming ice age. Now it’s flooding and global warming, or even back to ice ages again with things like ‘The Day after Tomorrow’). These are great disaster stories – there’s enough established evidence for it to be believable (well, maybe not ‘Godzilla’ – which is, believe it or not, an example of the genre – but generally), it’s spectacular, has serious consequences (just ask the residents of The Maldives, who are looking to buy a new homeland in the next few years, if anyone has a huge chunk of land for sale – Denmark, I’m look at you), and the chance for heroism, and it really does require examination. What these have in common is an examination of man against nature, and the desire we have to bring the causes and consequences of enormous systems down to a pint that we can understand.. I’d imagine stories like this are actually the foundation of religion…. Anyway, on with the show.     

            Some things seem promisingly to fit into this category, but don’t. Alien invasion has always held some possibility– they are disaster movies of a sort, but they don’t generally have much to say regarding the understanding of an established threat. Mostly the aliens can bee seen as other peoples with other cultures (unsurprising, then, that the genre has it’s origins in 19^th century Britain and 1950’s America), which help a little to understand these things, and the main thrust of the stories are actually an examination of the self and the self-as-nation. Very good in its own way, but not really the same as a film that helps you come to terms with the possibility of a big rock landing on your house. I’m sorry, but there really isn’t anything realistic about ‘Independence Day’. Better are films like ‘The Terminator’, where the larger plot focuses on the disasters created by homebrew technology. Still it doesn’t really reflect an already existent threat, so doesn’t really qualify, and as before, we’re really examining what it means to be a human being in most of these narratives, and they always have that annoying ‘cautionary tale’ aspect.

            But then we have ‘case C’, a few things that can’t really be used very well for generating disaster movies. Terrorism is quite high in the public consciousness, and consequently, ‘Big Bang’ disaster stories have tended to move down a little to ‘Quite Big Bang’ themes. The ridiculous ‘24’ is a good example here. Realistically, if terrorists were anything like as organised as everyone pretends they are, you’d be sitting alone right now in a wrecked house looking at a blank screen. The media portrayal of ‘Al-Qaeda’, for example, is hopeless over the top. Yes, there probably is an international terrorist network, yes it is trying to recruit people, and yes, we  all know why, but they’re not actually so much like the villains from James Bond movies as they are like nutters in sheds. I’m not stupid enough to think that they should be discounted as a direct threat (erm… 9/11 anyone?), but the hysteria that results in Brazillian men being shot seven times in the head (SEVEN TIMES!) in tube stations for no reason at all, or people falsely accused of making Ricin being punished for years and years with no evidence, is equally ridiculous and somewhat reminiscent of MacCarthyist commie paranoia. Fiction around this tends to be set around the detection of terrorism more than anything else. As such it does as much to encourage it as diffuse the tensions. It’s unspectacular, immediate and obsessed with realism. Essentaily most examples are quite sour – the subject matter just doesn’t lend itself well to fun, people take it too seriously, its too close. Quite right too, I suppose, given the nature of it. If it is considered less seriously, it is oftern ridiculed. In terms of possibility, though, there is some potential here. It could be made spectacular (see ‘24’), although this can come off as crass (see ‘24’ again). It’s possible, only too much, perhaps. The forth criteria, however, is where this falls flat. We know it all too well, and the motivations behind it. Political agendas, regardless of who’s side your on, aren’t too difficult to understand, particularly when they are formed from the right-wing culturally conservative and very bloody simple side of things. Likewise we can dismiss the rise of violent crime as a useful theme. Of itself, it doesn’t really require explanation and exploration – the interests lie in the very human considerations of cause and motivation. 

            So, what about a Global financial collapse? A, B, or C? Well – let’s check the criteria: Firstly, you can buy the possibility It’s happened, it’s happening. The second one’s not so easy. Grimy streets and poor people going hungry might play your heartstrings like an expert harpist, but it’s never going to be able to compete with a lovely big mushroom cloud now, is it? We can get some decent riots out of it for sure, though, city streets on fire, that kind of thing. The problem is always going to be the grinding factor of poverty. It’s bloody miserable being poor, that’s the truth, you feel defeated, pointless and worthless. On the other hand, being sick’s not much fun either, so in essence, we should do what epidemic-type disaster fiction does – make it happen suddenly, catastrophically and globally with lots of violence and blood and guts. That should help. Thirdly, there are fundamental changes to human life, long-term stuff that we’ll have to deal with – I’d suggest technological collapse here coupled with a limited energy crisis (limited because we don’t want this to become Mad Max; it has to be actually about financial crisis). Take away the streetlights and watch the cities go feral after dark. Opportunities for heroism are a little thinner on the ground, though. Urban and social decay can lead to vigilantism, but we’re not trying to make Batman here, we need a disaster theme. I think saving the world be re-floating all the global stock markets is going to make for a crap plot, and stockbrokers are essentially all arseholes anyway, the vast majority of whom, everyone knows, deserve all they get, even if what they get is a sandwich made from their own face. I shall return to this in a moment (possibilities for heroism, not face sandwiches). Fourthly, though it very much is something that we don’t understand. Nobody on earth understands it. That’s what causes the problems.

Essentially the current global crisis was started when dodgy mortgage trading in America made everyone re-examine the sorts of investments that were being made and whether-or-not there was any real money in any of it. Of course, there’s no real money in any of it. There never is. Money, my friends, is just a silly invention we made up to help our lives go along a little easier. Remember that – because essentially money has no value other than what we give it in a way that isn’t true of hardly anything else we take seriously. Money is treated as if it has primary value – like it’s a measurable property of an object. ‘This CD is ten centimetres across, three millimetres thick, weighs seventeen grams and is worth ten pounds.’ Rubbish. It’s worth only what you can pursued people to pay for it. It has no inherent monetary value. Nothing does. We Invented money – we merely quantified extension and mass. The chances are though that you are rarely allowed to realise this. We are so familiar with attaching monetary values to things that we feel that it seems natural. It isn’t, it’s just old.   

            The same is true of all monetary values. Deals, speculations, stocks and shares and everything else is all just a silly game when it comes right down to it. Money is nothing, an ethereal thing based on confidence, and hence the latest collapse. Those who’s opinions matter to the markets simply stopped believing that certain investments and products were worth what people had valued them at and immediately – because monetary value just is a matter of belief – they weren’t any more. Simple as that – it’s confidence. Passing round a big bag of Coke might have been more effective than pumping billions of quid into the markets. Getting that point across to people is really hard, though, even though there isn’t really anyone in the industry who would deny it. It’s because we’re so invested in the system at the grass-roots level. We NEED this to be more than just a game, because our next meal is dependant on it. Disaster fiction, though, would be a great way of explaining this to people. May be then they wouldn’t think that banking was such a great career, who knows, it could have many positive effects, but this is an aside.  Essentially it should be possible to make a decent piece of disaster fiction around a financial crisis, if we can only think of something heroic to do.

            So here’s the problem. You can stop nukes from going off. You can cope with their after effects (sort of). You can hit Zombies in the head, you can race to find a cure before it’s too late. You can trek over a glacier or rescue your attractive sidekick from some awful flood. You can escape the tidal wave, you can outrun the swarm of bees and you can strangle an alien with your bare hands when it comes down to it, but what the hell can you do that’s heroic in a financial crisis? You can knuckle down, look after your friends and stand by your family. That’s heroic, but it’s boring too; it won’t require the services of a square jaw and it’ll never get your attractive sidekick into a feverish state of lust.        

            So what am I to do if I want my lovely financial crisis disaster story? Heroism in its most direct and Bruce-Willisy form is a vital component. I’ll have to have a think about this. If, in the meantime, you can think of anything, answer below.

I’ve started writing this at about 11.05 in the eleventh day of the eleventh month 90 years after the signing of the Armistice Treaty that ended the First World War. It is a day to remember all those lost to warfare, but especially, I think, those lost in the first world war. I do not have the space here, nor the inclination today, to write a serious piece upon war. It will, perhaps, be enough to state the following three things:

I am proud to have personally known a veteran of that war – my grandfather – and appalled and astonished by the things that happened to him. He was a lot braver and a lot tougher than I will ever be.

The first world war is so utterly unlike the second that it is, perhaps, unfortunate that they are so closely classified together. Before the second world war, ‘WW1’ was the ‘great war’ and ‘the war to end all wars.’ Sadly this latter moniker was a less than accurate prophesy. It may very well be the case that there was little reason at all for the horrors of the first world war, a war somewhat cuttingly described in ‘Blackadder Goes Forth’ (a fine and touching commentary for all it’s toilet jokes) as ‘A war that would be a damn sight simpler if we’d just stayed in England and shot fifty thousand of our men a week.’ From an anglocentric perspective, the same cannot be said for the second world war. It is more awful because of this, perhaps, but it must be said that whatever the truth regarding the necessity, or lack thereof, of the first world war, this in no way diminishes the sacrifice and heroism displayed by the men on the ground who had, by various means, the situation thrust upon them.

I hate war. It is the most awful thing that is commonly done.

            What I do wish to write about is a rather smaller thing. The poppy itself. This came to mind due to a long-standing debate between two of my friends regard one’s adoption of the white poppy, a symbol of a hope for peace, and the others adherence the wearing of the traditional red. The fine details of their particular debate is not the issue, but the broad strokes run something like this: The one position maintains that the best way to respect those fallen in battle is to hope for peace, that their sacrifice means that no-one else will suffer the same fate. The other maintains that this is a personal politicisation of remembrance day, and that the first argument, though well meaning, is in some way disrespecting the fallen by abducting the service and turning it to own end. The wearing of the white poppy, it cannot be denied, is a political statement, and the second argument would make the claim that such campaigns, however well-meant, are out of place during acts of remembrance.

            I have sympathy for both these ideas, and a peculiar habit of my own. In my adult life I have always bought the poppy, donating a few pounds to Royal British Legion. I then never wear the poppy. I do this for the following reason – the common misconception that wearing a poppy in some way implies support or accepted justification for warfare. It does not, but I would never want anyone to think that I do hold those opinions. I would rather have those who understand the real meaning of the poppy look down upon me for the ignorance I display by not wearing one, despite the fact that I do, in fact, side with them. I must confess that, despite the fact that it has been around since the 1930’s, I was completely unaware of the existence of the white poppy until this year, which gives a little more personal meat to the debate – for it is now possible that I might wear one. The British Legion, it is worth noting, care not which you wear (in fact, they also claim that they don’t care if, as I, you don’t wear one at all).

I do not attend the ceremonies, as I refuse to ridicule the entire affair by being an atheist pretending to pray, pretending that he believes that the ‘souls’ (itself a nonsense) of the dead still somehow exist and declaring things to a god I honestly believe is a nonsense inherited from our ignorant past. I choose not to remember by group-chanting nonsense – it’s my choice. Such ceremonies are for those who do believe, and I have no place there. Every year I do observe the two minute’s silence. It is a fine tradition – it shows respect, but more importantly, it brings about a moment of contemplation, everyone giving two minutes of themselves over to the consideration of those lost to war.          

Every year I am left with the same question as everyone else – what happens during those two minutes? Few of us often give time over to contemplation. The modern world is very immediate and involving, and our petty concerns fill us to the brim. It is in these two minutes that we find perspective upon our lives. We can see, perhaps, and albeit briefly, the small things that do not matter, the larger things that do. Sadness fill us too, but not a destructive, self-seving pity. It is a positive, understanding sadness – perhaps an insight into the wounds of our shared mortality, a sympathy for the suffering of others, or the simple recognition of a tragedy. Fundamentally, it is a sadness that effects us all, binds us together and links us forever with those who have gone before.

            The poppy itself is a symbol of respect. I am sure that we do not need to recount the reason why it became the symbol it is, but it is a fine symbol, and I would proudly bear it were it not for the ignorance of my peers. I refuse, point blank (ironically), to show support for any kind of militaristic agenda, whether that be based upon ignorance or not. It is perfect possible that I give away many political and cultural signals that I am not aware of, some of which I do not even understand. Judgements of character made upon hair length and clothing, for a start, have always been something of a small mystery to me. Social cliques exist only to extend these judgements, right, wrong or otherwise, but although I have little time for them, once I am aware of their existence, to act as if I did not would be idiotic pride.

            I deny the second argument. The wearing of a poppy of any kind is fundamentally a political act, for it carries its own gentle agenda. To wear one is to attempt to compel others to join in remembering those that have been lost to war – a noble agenda, certainly, but an agenda non-the-less. The agenda thrust upon the red poppy by ignorance is something I want to avoid. The white poppy neatly circumvents this; however, it also symbolises some things that I have reservations about.

            I am fortunate in many ways. I have never been in any danger of starving to death, for a start. More pertinently, I have also lived through a period in history where I have not been conscripted (nor forced by circumstance) to take part in a war. The quick review of history in my mind tells me that this is a pretty rare thing for boys born to working class families such as myself. Quite a few of my friends joined the army, but they volunteered, and though there were certainly pressure put upon them, this is a discussion for a different time. I hope, now, that I will never have to go to war. It terrifies me. Regardless of how you paint it, almost every society that has every existed has periodically killed a vast percentage of its young men (which is not to say that women are exempt, or play no part in war, but I’m speaking from a specific perspective here)  – specifically those between the ages of 14 and 30. I hope that I’ve got away with it. This period in any man’s life still boasts the highest mortality rate (what with suicides, deaths by violence and accidents drunken, bravado-related or otherwise; 15-25 is statistically the worse, I believe), but I see no reason to organise something to help with this. I want every boy to be as lucky as me.    

            I want peace. Clearly people have a terrible capacity for cruelty and violence. I do not believe, however, that simple pacifism is the answer to this, nor that surrendering all capacity to wage war would be of any use. Violence, like it or not, is part of the human situation. I believe that certain military actions (generally peace-keeping) can be justified. I simply wish to urge all peoples to avoid war – especially wars of the kind that the First World War is the archetype. If the white poppy is of any help in overcoming the ignorance of others, and helps to show the world that there are those who, like me, recognise the sacrifice and honor of men killed by war, then it is a great thing. Yet again, though, the ignorance of others holds me back from adopting it. To a large number of people, the wearing of a white poppy would symbolise simple pacifism, which I do not wish to represent.

In short, if either of the symbols were understood, they would suffice. As they are not, I cannot whole-heartedly agree with wearing of either. I would not criticise those who do wear either, perhaps they are simply a little braver than I. I find myself supporting the first argument, and denying the second, but with reservations on both sides. The wearing of a poppy is political act – it is up to you to decide which you wear, and simply adhering to the traditional red without recognising that you are incapable of entirely divorcing yourself from the implications it has, both directly and indirectly, is no use to anyone. Yet the second argument hits home in a different way. The poppy is there also for our non-political consideration. It is a political object, but it is also more. It is a thing that reminds us to spend two minutes a year in solemn remembrance. Red or white will suffice for this. Choosing to wear on not to wear either is not a matter of respect for the event of remembrance. It is up to you to decide on a different basis – whether-or-not you believe that displaying your political convictions is more important than how they are interpreted. It is a decision that only matters before or after the two most important minutes of the entire process, but if I do decide to wear one in the future, I think it will be white. The mistakes that people will make in what it symbolises are closer to my intention.

This year’s poppy, or last year’s poppy, or the year before that’s, sits in a pen-pot upon my table. Another, date of purchase unknown, sits in my car. At some point they will be tidied away. I remember buying each one, but not which is which. I ignore them for months at a time. I did not ignore them this morning. Ninety years after the signing of the Armistice Treaty that ended the First World War, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, I sat in quite contemplation and considered those who had fallen in war. I thought of the carnage and suffering of the trenches. I thought of my grandfather and the millions like him. As the last post played to bring me back to the world a slightly better man, I remembered a little thing from long ago that reminded me of the debate between my friends and the utter irrelevance of it.      

            Once, as a small child, I asked about world war three. I wondered when it had been fought. It was an easy mistake to make, WW3 was term commonly uttered during the eighties with an inevitability that threatened to place it into history one way or another. My parents, who lived through the Second World War as children, replied with a certain dark amusement. ‘It hasn’t yet, with any luck, it never will.’

            Amen.

Originally posted Nov 5th 2008:

There’s only one thing worth talking about today. Well, that’s not quite true, as the world ticks on with all its horrors in tow – the Congo, Iraq (still), Russia deploying missiles near Poland, ever-increasing financial gloom – but all of it seems to be somehow diminished today. The reason is one man, Barack Obama, president elect, and the thing that is making me look at the rest of the world through the wrong end of a telescope is hope.  

Hope is s fickle thing, especially as it rarely fulfilled, and my inherent cynicism wants it gone. It is all the more potent, though, due to the hard contrast placed upon last night’s events by the last eight years under Bush. I’m uncomfortable with hope, it’s too pleasant to be true. It’s a little like being drunk – everything is very immediate, and you can’t see things how they really are. Things still fall apart around you but you’re too intoxicated to notice. So it’s time to sober-up.

Imagine a room, anywhere in the U.S., suspended polystyrene tile ceiling, one door, no windows, two chairs. The slender, immaculately suited president elect sits alone, happy to have won, sad for his grandmother, patiently waiting for something, unsure about what it is. Something’s gnawing away at his gut, just made tolerable by the numbing euphoria coursing through him.

Another man enters, conservative suit, strong physique, one of those things in his ears that seem to be monopolised by television presenters and the secret service. He sits in the chair opposite. ‘Mr President Elect. We need to have a few words.’

He removes his earpiece, as Barack Obama leans back, feigning relaxation and gestures for him to continue with an open-handed gesture.

‘Firstly let me tell you that thee are no aliens on cold storage in Area 51. Roswell was just an experimental aircraft we didn’t want anyone to know about, and aliens do not visit hick towns in Alabama to stick probes into the backsides of American citizens.’

Obama smiles, ‘I didn’t think that…’

The other man is not smiling as he interrupts. ‘It is not my place to assume what you are thinking, Mr Obama, sir, but to simply tell you how things are.’

Obama’s face falls. He’s wondering if it was the first thing Bush wanted to know about. He snaps suddenly to his senses. ‘What exactly is this about, Mr…’

‘Wiseman, sir, Mr Wiseman.’ Obama’s eyebrows raise, showing doubt. Wiseman continues. ‘And I’m here to brief you on what is possible and what is not. Do not take this as a joke, sir’, he says, noting Obama’s building amusement. ‘You must listen.’

Obama nods. ‘Pray continue.’

For the next four hours, Wiseman explains to him how he can’t upset big business, nor raise taxes significantly, how he might have to take proposition 8 with good grace, how wars for resources must continue. He will explain that there simply isn’t the money to help poorer nations. He will explain the need for continued military development, of the difficulties, both financial and political, of switching to alternative energy. At some point he will mention assassination.  

‘Liberals rarely shoot anyone sir. Not true of cultural conservatives. Your ‘Guns and God’ comments won’t help here.’

‘Are you telling me that I am going to be shot because I’m black?’

The man shrugs. ‘Maybe – it is certainly a factor – but you don’t have to be black to be shot, sir. Kennedy couldn’t have been whiter if he’d been albino. The Muslim government of Iran are cultural conservatives, not just the farmers of Virginia. And not just you, sir.’

‘Seriously?’

Wiseman sighs. ‘I’m just saying, sir, that you might want to think a little about how much you want to push the abortion thing.’

He will explain the only way that he can effect change of any kind will be by tiny and seemingly insignificant degrees that might one day add up to something. Anything else will doubtless cause a massive increase in the economic downturn and a huge amount of resentment from the grass roots that need his help to the big businesses that really drive the country. Obama sighs. He can see his dreams dissolving before him, suddenly revealed for the ghostly chimeras they always were.

I don’t think that it actually happens like this. But he will have been told. Maybe months ago, maybe years, probably in hundreds of tiny little statements by hundreds of tiny men, rather than one big, imposing one.

If you want to hope, then, hope this. Hope that he means it. Hope that he has the courage and strength of character to risk quite literally everything for the principles he appears to have. Hope that the job itself doesn’t consume the man he appears to be. Hope that the American people can build up a head of steam and actually change their culture and society to make it less radically self-interested, less aggressive, more cooperative and more sympathetic on the world stage.

Hope, essentially, that we have judged him well. He is a charismatic man. It means he’s won, which is good. It also means he might have won had he not meant a single word of it. Last night, caught up in it all, I had a little weep. The last time that happened in a similar context, the Labour party had just smashed the Tories to smithereens at the polls, ending the rule of a right-wing government that had been in power for almost all of my life and had all but destroyed the less wealthy to feed ever more money to those who were already bloated beyond measure with cash, had fostered a selfish, money-grabbing culture, suffered urban decay and then decreased civil liberties, citing the very terrorism and antisocial behaviour that they had stirred-up as justification.

I had cried because I had hoped that this would change.   

Originally published October 24th 2008

I am not an expert on celebrities by any means, primarily because they’re dull. Why, then, you might wonder, have I picked ‘Kerry Katona On This Morning’ as the subject of my second post. Firstly, it’s in the news today, but more primarily, Kerry is symbolic of something that interests me a great deal – in as much as I find it appalling - and that is celebrity culture as a whole.

Just in case you don’t know (and why should you, really, you should have better things to do), Kerry appeared in ‘This Morning’ drunk as an nineteenth century lord on his way from whites to the Hellfire Club. The resulting interview is less exciting than you might expect. She’s certainly less entertaining than Oliver Reed was (I think, though, that Olly actually was a nineteenth century lord who got lost on his way from Whites to the Hellfire Club and ended up somehow on Parkinson). The point is not, however, that I want her to be more outrageous and entertaining, because I really couldn’t care. If I want to be entertained, I can watch a film or put on an album. They’re, like, you know, like, good, and stuff. What I’m more interested in is this – what is Kerry, and can that explain her?

Here is everything I know about Kerry Katona. She used to be in some awful teeny girl band years and years ago that, as I was older than ten at the time, I considered so beneath my notice that I can’t remember the name. She then got married, I seem to recall, to some Irish boy-band clone made in an underground lab by that bloke from x-factor. This made her famous in the heat magazine sense – as in, she’s famous, but not for doing anything. This fame might have been a passing thing, but people got involved with her story. Her manager (who you should probably picture with horns) would have had her court the press a while to cash in. Then there ws some kind of breakup, maybe some children involved, I’m not sure. She became a drug user, I don’t know which, but I’d guess cocaine, and people followed that story too. She started doing Iceland adverts (at which point, it has to be said, I first found out who she was, I’ve picked up the rest of this by cultural osmosis after she started to try and flog me unidentifiable bits of pre-fried fatty meat in breadcrumbs) and is now doing some sort of reality television thing. Oh yeah, and she was in that rubbish jungle program when they make you eat maggots and kangaroo balls and stuff. I’d bet that she’s done some lad’s mag shoots too; it’s the way of things. I think there might be some sex tape thing too, but in order to find out if that’s real or not, I’d have to watch it, and the thought makes me feel a bit ill. I’ve still never recovered from seeing John Leslie’s willy, and when compared to Kerry, that rather plain and homely Abi Titmuss girl is Claudia Schiffer, Cindy Crawford, Cleopatra and all other beautiful women who’s names begin with ‘C’ all rolled into one on a bed of mixed leaves with a balsamic dressing. Oh, and she’s had loads of kids, (which, given the population of the world, makes me want to embark on a rant that will have to wait for a different time).

Kerry clearly can’t cope. People in the public eye tend to develop cocaine and alcohol habits for a reason. People in ‘real life’ often succumb to the same thing for the same reasons too. They feel like they can’t cope, and the pressures upon them to do this and that are too much for them to bear. The do not consider themselves equal to the task, and so will use anything that will make them feel equal to the task. Cocaine is the best example of this, as it simply makes you feel like you are great -equal to any task, in fact. Alcohol tends to be more conciliatory, a way to hide your psyche from the world, but this is an aside. In essence, Kerry’s drug addiction is a symptom of her inability to cope with the attention of the press. This is a problem, because essentially, that’s her job.

Kerry is just famous for being Kerry. Where Oliver Reed could have just, at least in theory, disappeared into his craft, or George Best could have concentrated on football and simply been so dull in their everyday lives that the lenses of the cameras sopped pointing their way. Of course they didn’t do that, but they could have done and still carried on their careers. But for Kerry, having the cameras pointing at her is what she does. It’s all she does. She appears in magazines, she appears in This Morning, she makes reality TV, and they (which is to say, ultimately, ‘we’) pay her for it – to live her life in the spotlight. So intense is his glare that she’s more famous than people we send to space.

The horribly sick thing about this situation is that the very reason she holds our attention is that she withers under it. Watching her constantly fail to keep it together is what keeps us watching. You might say that Kerry brings a lot of this upon herself, and you’d be right. George Best or Oliver Reed were famous after the event – they didn’t really bring it all upon themselves, at least at the start. Kerry has made a career out of flogging herself as a product and trying to draw as much attention as possible. Jordan is probably the best example of this – Kerry is a bit of an amateur at it compared to that girl, but still. It’s possibly the single most worthless way to make money that I can think of. Kerry, Jordan, Jade bloody Goodie, any of those idiots from ‘Big Brother’, in fact, that horrible mixture of pig intestines and plastic that is Tara-Palmer Thompkinson, they all do this. The miracle, for them, I suppose is that we let them. They are all unutterably worthless individuals who should be ignored. I’m sure that some of them perhaps have talents and skills that might be developed (even Jade, who has the intellect of a gerbil coupled to the craven viciousness of a dingo and the social grace of a squaddie on a tequila-bender, might make a good cleaner or checkout girl). Tara Twiddly-Tooposhtobereal can play the piano, my mum tells me. Good. Do that instead of doing nothing and expecting me to be interested. If you don’t want to do anything, that’s fine too, but at least have the good grace to do it in private. The thing is, though, they won’t, because we validate them all the time. Jade couldn’t even get out of the system by demonstrating that she is a horrible bully and a racist on national television. What do they have to do to make us dismiss them? Be dull for awhile, don’t do interviews, don’t get pissed and flash your genital s at a row of cameras or release a sex tape – that should do it. They won’t do that, though, whilst we keep throwing big chunks of cash at them for carrying on. Worse than this, though, they are our playthings, to be abused at our whim as a cat might toy with a mouse, or Kerry herself might taunt a fishfinger. 

 It’s become a bit of a national sport to take the piss out of Kerry. Adverts on E4 ridicule her intellect, even her womb was the target of Frankie Boyle recently. It’s was pretty funny, actually, and I encourage Frankie Boyle and all other comedians to carry on. In fact. I don’t know why we don’t take the piss out of the Heat magazine set constantly, twenty-four hours a day. I am fairly confident that most of these people are as dumb as a bag of lobotomised spanners (has anybody heard peter Andre talk? Ye gods, nobody’s home, the lights aren’t on, and the mail’s been piling up for thirty years… ). In many ways, these people are famous because they’re stupid. Just look at the guy who won Big Brother the other year – Brian. Essentially he won because the British public found his stupidity entertaining. And people say the Romans were cruel. I have been told that he is ‘nice’ too, but in that tone that people use when describing the nature of their pets. In the face of this ludicrous situation, who can blame us for a little cruelty? So why do they put up with it? Why not just retreat from the world?

Fame is addictive, they tell me. I can appreciate this a little, but really all fame is lest we forget, is a situation where more people know you than you know. It has massively negative consequences. Your life is not your own, and you are a target, not just for contempt, jealousy and ridicule, but every obsessive fan and madman in the world. The adulation of your ‘fans’ is an empty reward, for they do not know you. In order to keep them onside you have to constantly lie about your life, manipulate your image and hide your real feelings and intentions behind a mask of PR spin. I’d imagine it’d be awful. Yet it is the only thing that our society seems to value. (Apart from money, that is, but in a way that’s just a way of measuring what we value, and the can of worms that continuing this discussion will present will have to be opened the another day). Being famous is the primary goal that children have. We are constantly in contact with the media nowadays. Media is a way of presenting the world to you, and the information it delivers is manipulated both consciously and unconsciously. It is informed by culture, and sympathetic to it, but also defines it. In a feedback loop – a circle that might at some times be virtuous or vicious – the media both responds to what we value and then comes to define it. Because of the way this system has operate in recent years, Kerry and the rest of her pathetic, greedy sorority are honestly led to believe that what they do is in some way important.

I am not saying that this circle should be broken (to be honest, I don’t think that it could be, in any but the most extreme circumstances), but I am saying that it is, in essence, to blame, and that some of this blame must fall to each of us. People are simple, really, in a much as their value judgements are based upon what they are told is valuable. Fortunately, we also do have a self-conscious faculty, too, though, a critical faculty. Only by means of this does culture make any advancements. We need to decide for ourselves if the circle we’ve created with regard to fame is vicious or virtuous. Kerry Katona, for all her inherent awfulness, is really just a silly girl caught in the middle of the circle. You might laugh, but I honestly think that this system might kill her. I’d say the circle was vicious, you’ll have to decide for yourself. I will say this, though. If you buy heat magazine, you should really rethink your life.