Yesterday afternoon (depending on where you are, I suppose), Barack Obama announced that there would be regulations placed upon banks whereby the riskier investment activity would be more tightly controlled, and would have to be separated from the  more vital and socially supportive activity of banks. Furthermore, bank sizes will be controlled so that the collapse of a single institution can’t collapse the world economy. Uncontroversial, you’d think – except that a lot of people have made a lot of money with the way things currently are. And still are. The stock markets reacted predictably, and a lot of people stated to complain. Especially bankers.

There are many social structures that we have created to facilitate human interaction. One of these is banking. At the most basic level, banks exist to enable those with money to lend it to those without, with the hope that they will use that money to flourish, and so be able to repay the lent sum with interest, thereby making more money for the person who had it in the first place. Everyone’s a winner, right?

Well, fairly obviously, given the events over the passed two years, no.

Let’s put this plainly. Some time ago, the governments (and, therefore, the people) in almost every country in the developed world, were held to ransom by a small group of people so intent on making money that they were prepared to risk the financial provisions we all make to provide for us when we can no provide for ourselves. Not only that, but the places we live and companies we work for. So far do the tendrils of this industry extend that, if allowed to collapse, it’ll take everything with it, through the developed world and beyond. Because we’re all involved. These are the same companies that lend us money for our houses in Wolverhampton and Wyoming. These are the companies that have our savings, traded across the globe. They own everything we do, and have connected it to everything else.

Given that, you’d think they’d try to act responsibly, but no. In fact, this structure has a form almost opposed to stability. These ‘masters of the universe’ (self named – and if you ever needed proof that these institutions were being run by the kind of egoistic megalomaniacs you should be ashamed to share a genome with, there it is) see it as their duty to take control of as much as possible and then take the biggest risks possible in order to generate the biggest profits possible.

Are they doing this for you? No. they are doing it because it makes them money. Huge amounts. Steady, sustainable growth is completely possible, but undesirable. Sudden, rapid growth, which enables you to gobble up everything around you, makes you more money and sod everyone else. They use this structure to be savage.

And how do they justify this abhorrent behaviour? They tell you that it is natural. They appeal to principals such as ‘survival of the fittest’, and use terms like ‘dog-eat-dog’ to try and paint the global financial system as some sort of savage environment. And it is. But only because that’s how they behave. In and of itself, it is nothing. It has no existence independent of us.

So then they appeal to human nature. We know, at base, human beings can be vicious, savage, self-interested things. But we also know that we have the capacity to love, to be artistic, to care for their neighbours, to create nothing but beauty. Human beings can be Adolf Hitler and Attila the Hun, but they can also be Mother Theresa or Buddha if they are allowed to be. And civilisation is surely a collection of structures that allow this; structures that help our better aspects to flourish. We could all be savages beating each other to death with rocks and eating what remains, but we have institutions and cultures precisely to allow us to be better than that, to find our capacities for caring, our sense of community. The point of civilisation is that we don’t have to be that heartless, brutal thing. And whether your weapon is a rock, a policy or a laptop displaying current share prices, if you act without heart, if you are that radically senseless thing, you are as much of a brute as the BNP thug in footy shirt or the sweary teenage muggers you look down your nose at. Being rich and well educated doesn’t automatically make you a better person.

Why, then, should we allow the brutish, uncaring attitude to so dominate one of our most important social structures? Well, we shouldn’t, it’s as simple as that, and that’s why it needs to be regulated. That is embracing the idea of community – controlling the actions of the vicious and selfish to benefit the whole. This is also human behaviour and just as ‘natural’ for being precisely that.

When we let the banks bully us, that is a bad system. When we let a system turn us upon each other, that is a bad structure. It should be restructured, or removed. Sometimes we have to recognise that certain social structures are bad and need to be revised. They do not exist independently or spontaneous, like some creature adapted to its environment, and they are not shaped by forces beyond our control. These are our structures, and we can change them and remove them as we feel like it. If something is against the very notion of social utility, if it is acting against the very purpose of civilisation, then it needs to be changed.

It is often said that the banks have made a huge amount of money for Britain. In the most basic analysis, they have. More specifically, however, they have made a huge amount of money for a very small number of people. The ‘trickle-down’ economic model (Thatcher’s failed approach) would have you believe that this, in turn, should slowly make everyone richer, as these few rich people will buy more goods and services, all of which will flourish, thereby employing more people, increasing wages for the upper echelons, who then in turn spend more money and so on and so on. Also, they pay more tax, right? So we should be able to pay for better public services? No, because, largely, it doesn’t work like that.

The rich pay so little tax that it’s laughable. Indeed, there is a whole minor industry – tax accountants – who exist solely to make sure that they pay as little as possible. Quite a lot of them use international banking to avoid paying tax on their savings. Many of the companies that trade in this country aren’t even registered here, and pay us no tax at all. And even the money they spend, like it or not, is very commonly spent in ways that can’t possibly benefit the community as a whole. Expensive foreign cars? Nope. Buying property abroad? No. Buying a property as an investment to let, or outright for one of their children? No. Like buying a second home in Cornwall, all that does is drive up house prices, stopping anyone as modest as say, a teacher or a nurse from being able to do anything but rent… from someone who just bought an investment property… Going on fancy holidays is generally only good for the airline companies and occasionally a travel agent. I’m all for spreading the wealth to exotic countries, but in this context, it can hardly be used support the argument that it’s significantly benefiting ours.

In short, then, we aren’t getting much for the damage that these people do. The argument for higher taxation is there, but people always say ‘well, then the talent will take itself abroad!’ So what? Let them go. Many of the companies and people are already registered outside the UK anyway. In our current economic model, we have extreme wealth and extreme poverty. The average standard of living in comparably developed countries with higher levels of taxation is almost always higher than ours. Our low-tax low-regulation Reagan-Thatcher model has attracted talent only in the sense that it’s attracted people who have a talent to be brutish, savage and exploitative. If you want to attract actual ‘talent’, sponsor investment programs into alternative fuel technologies like the Danes do. The current structure of banking is a bad structure that does not benefit our society as a whole, all it does in its current form is ensure that a few of the richest people in the world continue to get substantially richer.

So, broadly, I support the ideas that Barack Obama has put forth. The idea that we should try our best to ensure that important things like you and your wife’s pensions are protected from the potentially volatile investment markets is a no-brainer. But I think there’s something else here that we’re not discussing.

The savings that we put aside for our old age should not be used primarily to benefit one small section of society. That kind of thing is not what banks are for, it’s what governments should do, and this Anglo-American ‘everything must be floated on the stock market’ attitude places us at the mercy of the savage. We should separate the provisions for our old age entirely from this game of rich ungentlemanly gentlemen. We need to come up with some alternative to our current pension schemes. We haven’t always done it this way. Why we should ever think that we could trust banking institutions with something so vital is beyond me. Despite, theoretically being partially owned by almost everyone, they are almost impossible to hold to account. The idea that we should connect something so vital to something so volatile is ludicrous. It’s our world, not just theirs. It’s a bad and foolish structure that doesn’t help us. Let’s change it.

The Iraq inquiry, the snow and the forthcoming election campaign – what do these three things have in common, apart from all being very popular things to blog about? They are all examples of the consequence of our demand that politicians lie to us. ‘Our demand?’ I hear you cry (ok, only in my head), ‘but surely what we want is honesty from our politicians!’ No it isn’t, or if it is, you are one of a very rare breed. Or perhaps you are lying to yourself. It’s not unlikely, most people do all the time. Especially about this.

I haven’t blogged for a while, since Africa, in fact, and though many things have happened since then that may have briefly woken me from my blogmatic slumbers (yep, that’s a Kant joke), such as Nick ‘Fat-Hitler’ Griffin being on Question Time, but I’ve been rather busy. I’ve driven up and to and beyond the Arctic Circle for a start, which brings me back to the weather.

In this country (and many others), people tend to whinge and moan about things that are their own fault (or nobodies fault), blaming everyone and anyone else they can. Part of this is that terrible inheritance from primitive culture that fiddles away with our neurons – ‘but what have we done to deserve this?’ as if everything is some sort of divinely-allotted reward or punishment for virtue or lack thereof rather than the simple series of basically random events that it is. [Once and for all let us lay this to rest. Whether you believe in the Christian-Freudian-father-god, the spirits of the earth or karma, people are not rewarded and punished on the basis of their behaviour by anything other than our rules. We know this, because Donald Trump, Simon Cowell, Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher and every other conniving two-faced selfish manipulative horror of a person that exploits everyone else around them, providing they don’t break the law too much, have a pretty nice life full of money, respect and satisfaction, whereas selfless care workers, heroic veterans and charity workers tend to work without reward of any kind from society or life in general, and very little respect. Both groups have the same chance of ending up dying of cancer, and due to their inability to protect themselves from the world with a money buffer, the nice people tend to get raped, stabbed, burgled and mugged more often. Virtue, if it has any reward, is simple peace of mind, knowing that instead of exploiting and shattering the dreams of hopeful people for your own end, you’re helping them. But the bastards sleep well at night too. Generally next to a supermodel.]

However, the focus of these strange opinions we so often voice as far as this little rant is concerned is the lies we know we are telling, and those we are inviting others to tell us. Here’s one: ‘Why weren’t the government better prepared for the winter weather?’

Because they shouldn’t be.

We know this. Most reasonable people know that, given the limited budgets of councils and government as a whole, things must be prioritised on the basis of likelihood. At least half of the people who go on and on asking the question ‘why weren’t we better prepared for the winter weather?’ already know the answer. Because buying, transporting, collecting and storing the huge amount of grit, diggers trucks and snowploughs that only might be necessary means that you can’t spend the same huge wedge of cash on a new fire engine, fifty units of blood, a policeman and a nurse. In fact, it would be utterly irresponsible for the government as a whole or your local council to have spent that money preparing for this winter. The next point made by the Great-British man-in-the-street-alliance is usually ‘well, they cope with it well enough in Scandinavia don’t they? And they have a decent health service.’

Yes they do, on both counts. Because they have higher taxes. Which the  Great-British man-in-the-street-alliance is unwilling to pay. But also, they have a predictable winter. They use their ploughs and gritters and such every year without fail for months. Vast parts of the country would be entirely shut off for weeks at a time without them. Of course they are prepared, and yet even they sometimes get caught out, too.  We need them only for a few days once every few years, and the consequences of incapacity are a hundred times less serious, because it usually goes away pretty quickly of its own accord. It’s just not the same return for the same investment. So we invest less, and put the money into more useful things.

Now, as a consequence of this, we should think, when some little village gets snowed in ‘ah well, hard luck, but I guess that MRI machine will more likely be of use still anyway.’ But we don’t, and we know we won’t. We might just think ‘ah well, I guess someone might have seen this coming, but given that they didn’t I guess I should probably not drive for the next couple of days, or if I do, take it really steady’, but in the vast majority of cases, we’re not even that realistic. Oh no. Mostly we expect this: ‘It is the government’s job to perfectly predicts and cope with everything that happens so that I can get on with my life in an uninterrupted way as if nothing at all happened.’  Which is insanely unrealistic. But it’s what most of us, at our core, seem to be demanding.

Little wonder then, that any politician of any grade in any position of power will always tell you that they are prepared for every eventuality. They know they’re not, we do too, but we conspire to make them say that they are. Likewise, any opposition politician can make grand political capital by stating the bloody obvious all the time – that things are going to happen which those that are in power aren’t prepared for. This little web of lies is informed by the democratic system itself; in order to attract votes, you have to be seen to be better than the other guy – in this case, in terms of competence, (although in some contexts, such as attracting votes for the BNP, ‘better’ can equal something as awful as ‘more racist’ or ‘anti-gay’ in the eyes of some).

Essentially, we are inviting, if not demanding, that people lie to us, and lying brings us nicely around to the Iraq enquiry and Tony Blair’s impending testimony. Of course he was lying. It was about using terrorism as an excuse to secure future oil supplies and demonstrate the might of the world’s biggest superpower. It was a bad plan, but then, as it was dreamed up by right-wing extreme-capitalist religious fundamentalists, we probably shouldn’t be surprised. If he’d sat down and said to the country, ‘Look, you’re not going to like this. I don’t, really, but I’ve thought about this a great deal and the Americans have this plan to secure our oil supplies for the next few decades and try to bring some measure of stability to a region that hasn’t seen much recently, at first by establishing a military presence in the area, and later by placing a friendly power in the region. We hope that in the long term we can make up for the damage we cause by improvements to infrastructure and institutions, but you should understand that this is not guaranteed. What we do know is that if the current situation continues, things will never improve, and will like become drastically worse, and, unfortunately, we can see no simple or pleasant solutions. Ours isn’t an ideal solution, and it isn’t without risk. In fact, it might make things worse, but on balance, I’ve decided that it’s best if we support them. It’s going to be unpleasant, and lots of people are going to die, including some of our soldiers, but we really think it’s worth doing. I’ve set up a website so you can see more information about the history of the region, and previous mistakes that governments of the past have made to lead us to this unfortunate set of circumstances. Please go and look at it.’ I still wouldn’t have agreed with him, but I’d have appreciated it. But no. Because we ask our government to protect us from thinking about things like this, what we got was a big fat pack (or dossier, if you prefer) of easy to swallow lies. Such is the nature of this institution of lies that we even end up lying to the U.N. Not clever.

The forthcoming election campaign will be a continuing and massive festival of conveniently avoided truths, spin and outright falsehood right up to election day. At which point it will continue, but (probably) with the cast reversed. Everyone present will lie day on day about how they will use your tax money better and cut budgets without cutting frontline serves by eliminating ‘waste’ (that only tall tale is one of their favourites – as if they weren’t just replacing a couple of dozen guys at the top capable of changing nothing but a few broad-stroke policies but were somehow going to change every institution right down to replacing individual bin men – as everyone actually knows, institutions of a given size are wasteful to a given degree and when you tighten up one area, it just means something else goes slack, especially when the same people are working there, managed by the same people utilising much the same resources for exactly the same purpose). We might as well all just scream ‘lie to me, please lie to me’, or rename the election Britain’s ‘best comforting bullshitters contest’. Who do we thing is the most comforting and charismatic liar? Who’s going to make us feel better? It’s pathetic, quite frankly, and we’re exactly the people who are being pathetic about it. Because there are important decisions to be made, ones that are going to be made one way or another (and not always the same by each party), and when we are more concerned with who’s going to make us feel better about what we know is really going on but don’t want to listen to, those decisions are inevitably going to result in the deaths of innocents, the persecution of people, the exploitation of populations home and abroad, the destruction of our natural environment. The sad fact is that we might as well best sticking our fingers in our ears, screwing up our eyes and singing.

Part of this is that we really couldn’t have referendums for everything, because you can’t boil complex situations down to simple choices very easily. For example, ‘Would you rather pay a lot more for petrol over then next few years and have us throw lots of tax money at fuel research and then make you buy a new car in a few years, or would you like us to make it really expensive to own a car and massively improve public transport, or would you prefer it if we made your lives cheaper and easier but killed a few hundred thousand people in a different country? Tick A B or C.’ Perhaps that’s only a question that could have been asked in America. Let’s try this instead. ‘Would you like keep up good relations with the world’s most powerful country and kill a few hundred thousand people in the Middle East, or would you like to upset them and risk ruining relations (this might have some serious economic side effects resulting in your recently-graduated daughter being unable to pursue a career in finance)?’ Or, ‘Would you like us to ensure that we can cope with a freakish snowfall, or would you like some more ambulances?’ ‘Would you like us to prepare to cope with every possible freak flood event or would you like five new hospitals?’ ‘Would you like us to put air conditioning in everyone’s home in case we have a freak heat wave again, or would you like a police force?’ Nope, none of them a quite right. ‘Would you like us to ban imports from countries that exploit their people in might-as-well-be-slave-labour conditions and take a shot in the pension fund and cheap clothes departments or don’t you care enough for us to bother?’ Better, but still not right.

Even if we had someone better than me formulating the questions, the British and the Americans – and indeed, I suspect, all of the world’s – populations are nowhere near educated enough or well-informed enough as a whole to be allowed such direct access to democracy. We’d have capital punishment back within twenty-four hours and a crippled economy within the week. This is why we empower people to lead us, so that they can dedicate all their time to becoming suitably well-educated and well-informed to do it. However, if we have to rely on people to lead us, that doesn’t mean we can’t have honesty. What I resent is the relationship with have with the truth behind the decisions they make. They lead to the kind of silly bloody lies that have resulted in things like Iraq. All we need is to be told the actual reasons for the decisions they make, and eventually we’d come to understand (and, of course, for the opposition to say what they’d have done instead of making cheap political capital out of everything). Then, if we felt that they were being too bastardly, we could vote them out, and at least we’d know what we were responsible for.

You might say, I suppose, that in these new, more honest circumstances, any party that did lie would instantly get in. No it wouldn’t, because after a while we’d know. They’d be the one’s obviously lying. Most of us know that NOW, let alone of they were the only people offering free ten pound notes.

However, we are the ones that need to do something to demand this honesty. Firstly, and primarily, we need to stop demanding unrealistic things from our leaders. We need to stop pretending that we don’t know what we know. If we are going to get decent answers, we need to ask decent questions? We know there are cuts in services coming. We know that if we want to maintain things we need to be taxed. We know that there’s no magic ‘waste-saving’ solutions. We know that sometimes we go to war for resources, we know that sometimes it is in this countries best interests to support the Americans, and sometimes it isn’t. I realise that this isn’t going to change quickly. So let’s start small, work our way up, let them know that we know and stop conspiring to ask our leaders to lie to us. So, first and foremost, can we please stop being so unrealistic about the bloody weather?

I started to climb Kilimanjaro, and I didn’t get to the top, which essentially means that I went for a four day hike at 4000m for no good reason at all. Ho-hum. I was effected somewhat by altitude sickness (of the vomiting variety, largely), and though I felt I could have reached the top, I chose to turn back. Part of me feels like a failure – the pathetic macho part of me, of course. The part of me that is currently insisting that I point out that I felt entirely capable of reaching the top. Indeed, apart from the altitude sickness, I didn’t find it particularly difficult at all. Still, I decided not to climb to the summit, and here’s why.

Boring background first. The company we had paid to take us to the top had sub-contracted to a local tour company. They, in turn, had then hired some local guides. They had only used them a couple of times before, but as they had been successful, they employed them again. A cheerful chap from the sub-contractors introduced me to our rather quiet guides – two young men who I shall name from now on only by reference to a variety of incompetent comedy duos. The reasons I have for doing so will quickly become apparent.

After a long and rather uncomfortable journey in a van where nobody talked to us (save for the single word ‘permit’, and an invitation to purchase chocolate that – having been told that it was provided – we confusedly refused, thereby condemning us to scavenge our own up later on the mountain) as various unexplained errands were run about town and people were picked up and dropped off. I thought for a while that we were in one of the many taxi-bus hybrids that patrol Africa’s cities, but no. Eventually we arrived at the mountain, and the lads piled out and began arranging things while we were abandoned with little explanation to sit for an hour or so on a bench. Then, suddenly, we were off, at a steady uphill stroll, somewhat cheered to be finally on the move. We tried to engage our guides in conversation, and failed – they simply smiled enigmatically and muttered something unrelated to the topic. At first I thought it was just social awkwardness, a lack of familiarity. It wasn’t.

The boss (who wouldn’t be coming) had assured us that if we wanted to split up because we walked at different paces, we could, and that one guide would accompany each of us. This did not happen. As I walked on ahead, Laurel and Hardy stayed behind with my girlfriend. In some ways I was grateful as it gave me some much-needed time alone. I had no particular reason to worry, and after I waited for them to catch up, my girlfriend seemed happy enough. They were chirpily chattering to each other in Kiswahili, and I thought nothing of it – after all, it was just the first day, the path was easy to follow, and I couldn’t possibly have gotten into much trouble. Weirdly we were served a pleasant hot lunch at a table by the side of the path (a situation that made me feel very uncomfortable indeed, but perhaps charmed some), and, once again, though we tried, we failed to engage any of our companions in conversation. As we walked along, they told us a few facts, then repeated themselves over and again, despite our questions. I started to wonder if they knew anything at all about the mountain. Soon, however, I started to suspect that they simply didn’t understand me. Eventually we just fell quiet, and I wandered off to enjoy the forested slopes, and I had a pleasant afternoon’s climb. We even saw some local wildlife in the form of monkeys. Which I pointed out. Perhaps we should have guessed from the oddness of this first day, but sometimes it takes time to bond with people, and, truth be told (and despite all our warnings), it was pretty easy work.

You should understand that climbing Kilimanjaro, for most people, is like getting straight ‘A’-grades at GCSE at some posh private school. It sounds impressive at first, but when you take into account how favourable the circumstances have been made, it doesn’t tell you very much at all about how much work you did or talent you have. There’s so much support that really the result was damn near inevitable anyway, and all you did was turn up and do as you’re told – easily hard enough work to make it feel like an achievement – but if you don’t get the expected result it points to some problem you have that couldn’t be solved even with the judicious application of the best experts in the game motivated with big wads of cash. Some groups carried their own toilet tents. It’s really not the kind of respect you deserve if you do it by yourself, carrying most of your own gear and maybe getting a couple of porters mostly just to point you in the right direction (or, to carry on this analogy, you went to a crap school and still managed to do well despite having to look after your younger sister’s kids while you revised).

Where this similarity ends is with the possible consequences of failure. Bad teaching at some inner-city comprehensive school means that you end up with no qualifications. Having bad guides when you’re wandering about at the better part of six kilometres straight up in the air can mean serious illness, long-term damage and even death. It’s unlikely, but not so much that you can afford to ignore it.

As day two led me through steadily thinning trees and up onto the moorlands, I started to become suspicious of our group. Breakfast was… well, it was unpleasant and heavy, but they told us that we should eat up because we were going to walk right through to the next camp before lunch (later we would find out that they were doing this largely just to make their own lives easier – you need to eat along the way because you need the fuel, and everything hits you harder when you’re running on empty). So a steep climb was accompanied first by indigestion and later by fatigue with a spot of fun in between. We became increasingly suspicious that our guides didn’t understand what we were saying to them after it took us twenty minutes to explain that we wanted some boiled water for tea. I slept badly, only getting a couple of hours. When I awoke and told my guides they seemed mystified, although it is a common effect of altitude. At this point we should have telephoned (yep, they work all the way to the top) and asked for new guides – ones we could talk to – but we didn’t. I regret this now, and wish I’d have acted, but then, they say hindsight is 20-20. On the other hand, I’m not sure I trust the opinions of people who would look at the world through the perspective given to them by an arsehole. Which is the same reason that you should never trust anyone who respects the opinion of David Cameron.

The next day I cheerfully hiked off my tiredness, climbing up to the lava tower, way passed four kilometres. Breakfast was bad, but lunch was foul. My girlfriend got altitude sickness quite badly and felt awful. Fortunately, we climbed down a little to camp, through weird terrain so like a Star-Trek set that I kept thinking that a wobbly jelly-monster would lurch out at me. I felt quite well up to the afternoon (well enough, in fact, to draft a text message to send from the summit), and cared for my distraught girlfriend, but then the altitude started to get to my gut. Vomiting is not an uncommon thing for me, but it’s exhausting when you are having difficulty catching your breath. I lay down for a while, but I couldn’t face the food on offer. Our guides said and did virtually nothing. The night was horrible, and I was sick the next morning also. They tried to insist I ate, which I couldn’t, and tried to feed me lemons. They also fussed about me, massaging my kidneys and slapping me on the back whilst I was being sick. I was too weak to tell them to fuck off. In between times, they fussed about me in way that made me feel uncomfortable, but couldn’t explain anything to me. I’d have insisted on leaving if it hadn’t been for three things.

Firstly, they found another guide who could speak to me and explain that I could probably get better by taking some diamox. He was a more regular guide for the company we were with, and a godsend. On the language thing – it might appear for those not familiar with Tanzania that I’m displaying typical British snobbery at expecting my guides to have understood, if not spoken reasonable English, but in Tanzania it’s not difficult to find people who speak good English. It’s an official language of the country, and most people speak it to some level. A lot of people speak it very well indeed, as you’d expect – just as you’d expect a Peruvian to speak Spanish or a Brazilian to speak Portuguese. Even the street-touts spoke it far better than our guides (who would get even simple things – for a guide – like ‘camp bed’ and ‘water bottle’ mixed up, and, more worryingly, times and distances). Almost all guides we met spoke excellent English (it’s part of the job, after all). That our guides were unable or unwilling to speak it was really distressing. The ‘third man’, a kind of guide-in-training and general assistant to us couldn’t seem to say anything other that ‘hot water is ok’ and ‘dinner is ok’. We simply couldn’t communicate. But this new guide could, and he told me that he’d advise our guides as to what to do. I’m sure he did – he honestly seemed like a good guy to me. I’m also equally sure that they took no notice at all.

Secondly, I was told that it was a short, easy day, and that it would be easier to descend, should I feel the need, from where we were going rather than where we were. I don’t know if this was true, but it certainly wasn’t an easy day with no food inside me. And thirdly, my girlfriend was feeling better, and she knew how disappointed and ashamed I’d be if I turned back. It’s true that I did not want to fail, and I steeled myself, retrieved some dextrose tablets, and set my jaw.

So we set off up ‘breakfast wall’, (actually called the Great Barranco wall, not that our guides ever mentioned this). It was a long day for me, but only, I feel, because I hadn’t eaten. Towards the end I was cheered when one of our guides pointed to the camp not far off. It looked to be less that couple of kilometres, a half hour walk until rest and lunch. They didn’t, however, tell us of the huge steep-sided valley in between, and seemed confused when I was depressed by its discovery. At the bottom of the valley I got decidedly ratty and started ranting about how pissed off I was with them and how I simply wanted to follow the valley back down the mountain. Not only did they ignore me, they had no idea what I was saying. We climbed up to the camp and I overheard them trying to talk to my harassed girlfriend, telling her that I couldn’t continue if I didn’t eat. The state of the food did not improve, and I had to eat outside because of the stench, forcing as much down as I could. We’d been told that there would be a specific program of food designed to complement each day’s activity. We had even paid a premium to have food of improved quality. What we received was the same foul menu relentlessly for each meal. None-the-less, I managed to beg some toast and fruit out o them, and ate as best I could. Meanwhile, my body was bringing itself to terms with the altitude, and I got my first decent nights sleep. In the morning, I felt better, and considered my options.

I felt easily well enough to continue, and my stomach (despite their best efforts), had settled. The terrain was not giving me much difficulty, and I had only a short way to go that day. And I really didn’t want to turn round simply because the people around me were unpleasant and unprofessional. We struck onwards and upwards, and rapidly reached our next camp. The guy who had given me advice the previous morning even sought me out on the trail. We sat down and he gave me some advice regarding what I should take over the next few hours, and on the summit assault later that night as Tweedledum and Tweedledee sat about staring into space.

We bought some Mars Bars at three dollars each from a man at the next camp and settled down for some much needed rest. Not that this seemed to interest our porters or guides, who played music and ran about like noisy children. Dinner was a another unpalatable horror, and Noddy and Bigears came in to brief us on our midnight summit assault. They asked us about our kit, and shook their heads and sighed when we didn’t have several things they a) hadn’t checked for and b) weren’t on the kit list anyway. They then advised us to take a different drug schedule to that which the other (nicer and wiser) man had advised. In fact, despite being present when he’d advised me, they seemed completely ignorant of the conversation taking place at all. This led to something of an argument as they tired to get authoritative with us. We decided we’d lie. Able top talk openly in English with no fear of being understood (at least without formulating twelve different sentences to the same effect every time), this deception was not difficult to accomplish. They told us to meet them at 11.00 at the mess tent where there’d be tea and biscuits and such, and we dutifully retreated to our tent for rest. Rest which was then made impossible once more by the noisy activity of the rest of the party, up till around ten when we had to rise to pack and get dressed. And I was starting to feel sick again.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. My oxygen and sleep-deprived brain was starting to reduce me to an emotional wreck. I became horribly paranoid, ratty and easily upset. When we’d packed, dressed and got up dutifully for eleven, we found the camp deserted. They eventually roused themselves twenty minutes later. By that time we were both very cross, and I was starting to vomit again. Once more they sprung into action with their painful manipulation of my guts and back-slapping, then asked us if we were ready to go.

I was in two minds, and neither of them were thinking clearly. On the one hand I felt dreadful, and I was exhausted and upset, but on the other, I’d come this far, and I really wanted to reach the top. I also did not doubt that I could. We had a long time to do it, and though the cold was going to be bitter, the terrain did not seem too harsh. Even if it had been like doing three of our previous hikes in a row, I’d have been able to do it, nothing so far (except for the altitude) had really tested me at all. My girlfriend was also in two minds, and tried to talk to the guides to build her confidence – it was an exercise in futility as they seemingly had no idea why she was upset. None-the-less, she could see that, despite my discomfort, I was determined to go, and we were just about to set off when another bout of vomiting took me, and she started to insist that I stopped and came back to bed. Grumpy in one part, but relieved in another, I crawled into bed, the assault abandoned. I rested for a while, and felt better, and then (of course) started to become upset once more, regretting my voluntary failure. It was at this point that my girlfriend revealed to me the actual reason she’d not wanted to go up. It was something that my weakened mind had not considered.

Angered by their ineptitude, particularly with reference to how they handled my sickness, she’d started to consider what might happen if we became sicker as we climbed. There are many possible consequences to altitude sickness, none of them pretty. When we’d booked the trip, we’d been told that we’d be guided by experts trained to pick up on the signs. Morecambe and Wise had displayed no expertise. Even if they had it, it was impossible to describe symptoms to them. I had been about to place our fate into the hands of two men hardly qualified in either of our opinions to take us to the top of a flight of stairs, let alone Kilimanjaro.

Unwilling to spend a moment longer with the chuckle brothers than we had to, we hiked back down the entire mountain the next morning (some three or so times the distance we’d have covered to the summit, albeit with descending altitude on our side). We scrapped bitterly with them at points as they seemed unable to give us any accurate indication of how far away things were. They fussed about it, trying to be attentive, even tying our shoelaces for us, trying to secure their tips, but they only succeeded in irritating me further. The ride back was tense to say the least. We slid into our hotel bed sheets somewhat relieved to be comfortable, but mostly annoyed.

We did not really know what to expect when we talked to their boss the next day. However, he soon told us his position. ‘There is a problem with these guides. I know because the porters would not talk to me. I had to take each of them aside individually, and they all said different things. Sop you tell me.’ So we did – everything I’ve described here and more – much more, in fact, but I am tired and depressed by thinking about it, and I really can’t be bothered to list it all here. He told us he would fired them, suggested we ask the company for our money back and offered us a free trip up the mountain with a different bunch if we could ever afford to get back to Tanzania, to prove to us that this was not the standard his company provided. As he was so thoroughly upset by it all, and seemed so genuine, I have not mentioned any names here. Should our refund not be forthcoming, I shall.

I will try to sum up the trip next week, and make further musings upon my experiences and impressions of Africa, providing something suitably important and interesting doesn’t happen in the meantime. Maybe I’ll post twice. Listen, though – if you even fancy climbing that mountain, don’t let this put you off. Most of the teams seemed very expert, and you will make it. The sense of failure and defeat that haunts me now is just a hangover from my more masculine inclinations. The schoolboy that failed at sports became an adult that has always fought through all the physical trials his feeble flesh tipped towards failure with grim determination, swearing that he would not let the taunts that still echo in his ears ever return. This man feels a little diminished by this experience, but I’m not going to be pathetic about it either. There are lessons to be learned. I shall learn them and move on.

As I first began to write this, a big bull Elephant wandered into our camp on the rim of the Ngorongoro crater and drank it’s bellyful of water from the tank that supposedly fed the kitchen. Slightly nervously we crowded around snapping pictures, hoping it didn’t kill us all in a fit of pique or some elephantine equivalent. Presently it rejoined its little group. There were two others, and so I abandoned writing this and went off to watch them. They tolerated our presence for a while until one couple got too close and one of them reared up, raised its trunk and prepared to charge. We fled – I fancy enough adrenaline was in my system so that if there is a record set for the 100m cross-country dishevelled dash, I gave it a fair go. Later that night came the incident with the bush pig, but all in good time…

I am in Africa, and not for the first time this week, part of me had be reminded by that elephant of what I really am – a fragile, little monkey with a disproportionately massive head and fewer natural defences than almost anything I can lay my eyes upon. I am now safely ensconced in a hotel, beer in hand, and have just gone toe-to-something-indescribable with a huge insect. Had I not been armed, I suspect it might have won.

I’d though that on Safari, save for a few close encounters, we’d largely be scanning the horizon with binoculars to patiently watch Africa’s most famous residents, but it wasn’t like that at all. The first few shots I took of distant elephants, barely five minutes after entering the park were essentially rendered pointless less than an hour later as they blocked the road in front of us, as unconcerned by our presence as a powerful six-tonne beast with no natural predators should be. Our week-long safari started in Tarangire National Park, and was no disappointment. This first day alone, the number of elephants we espied amongst the baobab trees must have numbered in the hundreds. The numerous pictures I took are only a tiny catalogue of the many things we encountered there, and there were lots of firsts for me – zebra, wildebeest, elephants, giraffe, ostrich, impala, to name just a few – but three moments really stick in my mind. Firstly when, surrounded by elephants, they started to signal to each other. Two breeding herds were getting a little close to each other, and the tremendous bass rumble and trumpeting that occurred was astonishing. The noise, up close, is felt as well as heard, as a shaking of the air in your chest, rather like the pumping from a bass speaker at an outdoor concert.

Secondly, the sighting of my first lion. Distantly, it lounged on a tree branch. Our driver, a charming, deep-voiced and very knowledgeable man, told us that such was rare in this park. It’s not that there aren’t very many lions, there are, but the grass is long, and so, like the things they hunt, you rarely see them regardless of how close you are.

Thirdly, as we dashed back through the park in our specially prepared Toyota Landcruiser (there are nearly as many of these as there are elephants around these parts), we turned a blind corner and nearly ran into a herd of elephants. A warning rumble and we were face to face with a large bull elephant, its trunk looped protectively over its bared tusks, prepared to charge should its warning message not be understood. It had turned with a speed that belied its size. Just for a moment I thought it might attack. Two tonnes of steel is nothing to one of these. Fortunately, it decided we had been told and turned away without turning us into a sculpture of meat and scrap metal (possibly entitled ‘know your place’).

Lake Manyara, a small, beautiful park with a central soda lake at the edge of the colossal wall of the rift valley (look that up if you don’t know what it is) awaited us the next day, home to a large colony of flamingos, baboons, monkeys, more elephants and huge, hideous Marabu storks (that also populated our campsite) that I found quite appealing in their horridness. Hippos, too. Actually, I saw a lot of hippos over the course of the next few days. I strongly dislike them – they are ugly and fat, like bloated, sunburnt American tourists with no dental plan. But they are not ugly in an honest, appealing way like warthogs or vultures, there’s just something rather revolting about them. And they’re nasty buggers too. And they smell really bad. And they swim and frolic in their own faeces. Anyway, such was the profusion and density of wildlife that we started to make a game of spotting things. Giraffe were the favourite of the day, and my girlfriend won that game by a huge margin. In the evening, I got talking to a South African man, who immediately engaged in a game of competitive tourism (not the card game that, I have to say, is coming along quite well, but the mundane, bragging variety). Of course, we’d come at the wrong time of year and were going to the wrong places, and could have done it so much better and cheaper a different way. He was a nice enough man really, but I couldn’t help but note that, for all his knowledge and expertise, he was also on safari in the same place at the same time I was. I prepared myself for the drive to the Serengeti the next day, and enjoyed the protection of the campsite – something that would be lacking from here on in.

This whole area is defined by the volcanism associated with the rift valley. Kilimanjaro is a volcano, Ngorongoro (which we would pass the following day) is a caldera. The Serengeti is a vast plain defined by the ash-fall that made its surface a concrete plain that trees find hard to penetrate, meaning that only grass and scrub-bushes can cling to its thin soil. This strange environment has enabled the weird species that inhabit it to proliferate and find their huge and numerous forms. It also allowed one type of specialised primate to develop, one that would come to dominate the entire planet. The hominids.

On the way to the Serengeti, we pass along the crater rim of Ngorongoro. It is covered in cloud, and we seem to climb forever through the mist, the temperature decreasing from ‘staggeringly hot’ to ‘quite cool’ in proportion to the altitude. Through forest we emerge into a landscape that increasingly reminds me of home – or the Yorkshire Moors at least. Our guide and cook shiver, but I’m beginning to feel more at home. We stop for a toilet break (rough roads – ‘the African Massage’, as my guide puts it – play merry havoc with full bladder), and I comment on this. ‘It’s just like home,’ I say, insightfully, ‘only we have fewer Zebra.’ In that strange way that people have of becoming very rapidly familiar with their surroundings, I confess that I’d ceased to take much notice of them. As we descend through the cloud cover, we catch first sight of the crater – it’s as if someone in the far future has decided to create a huge walled-in wildlife theme park on the Jurassic park model. I can’t see any of the animals, but a youth periodically spent in the tender care of David Attenborough’s documentaries has filled me with the capacity to recognise the environment for what it is. There will be more of it.

‘Quite cool’ rapidly turns back into ‘scorching’ as we approach the Serengeti. We take a much-needed lunch in Olduvai Gorge (or, as it is actually called ‘Oldupai’ Gorge – it is named for the fibrous plant that grows there, and the word was misheard as ‘Olduvai’ by a German who discovered a hominid skull there in the 1930’s). By this point, I am half man, half dust, and I attend a brief lecture and spend some time wondering around the museum that details the work of the Leakeys and their invaluable contribution to the knowledge of the origins of man. Look this up too if you don’t know about it. It will be time well spent, and it is a whopping great nail to bind down the coffin lid upon the mouldering corpse of creationism. There’s a sign that reads ‘welcome home’.

The Serengeti (properly pronounced ‘Seerengeti’, I’m reliably informed) is exactly as billed – apparently endless, plains rolling to the horizon, a vast and easily accessible photosynthesis cell. We have missed the vast herds of wildebeest, they have already migrated north. But along the Seronera river, life remains. The cats, highly territorial, never move, else they must fight for new territory, and it is better to be patient. Some prey does not migrate – too old, or simply disinclined (apparently this is less uncommon than you might think).

We spend the bulk of three days prowling around for wildlife, although the first and last days have something of a mad dash quality to them. In fact, such is the pace of the first day that I sleep like a tranquilised leopard the first night (I pick the leopard because I’d image they give them a big dose, as they are well known for violence, and they sleep a lot anyway), which is probably for the best, because our campsite is right in the middle of the Serengeti – not a fence to be seen anywhere. Wildlife of all kinds can just wander in as and when it feels like it. Midnight dashes for the toilet are something of a risk. We are told that we should check for the reflections of eyes in the dark. Small herbivores and monkeys are alright, as are jackals, but not hyenas, and big herbivores can be a bit grumpy. And, to quote, ‘Don’t go out if you think it’s any kind of cat, and if it’s an elephant, don’t go out, and don’t flash it’s eyes, as they have very poor eyesight and it might get confused and upset and wreck the whole camp’. We have a few nervous moments in the first night, but don’t see or hear much, perhaps due to being largely comatose.

Competitive tourist South African was right, we do see ‘a shitload of lions’. From cubs to lazy, magnificent males and the desperate charge of a huntress (she missed the warthog she chased). All the usual suspects were present – I have particular fondness for the various vultures we saw (they are one of the ‘five uglies’ – wildebeest, vultures, warthogs, Maribu storks and hyenas – I am a big fan of all). We also see six cheetah, five all at once (a chance, on the basis of the survival probabilities to near-adulthood of cheetah kittens according to the park authority figures, of sixteen-thousand-to-one that they were there at all, let alone that we saw them), and one on the final day that we were privileged enough to see hunt (due to a tip-off by a gooseberry giraffe that loomed over the field and stared at the cheetah, the gazelle it was after sauntered off). We also saw the elusive leopard up close (lazing in a tree). Our guide had only see one twice before, and then at a distance. And on the second day, I saw my long-lost crocodile.

Now let’s talk about hyenas. I quite like them from a distance. They romp about with their staggering gait like the hunchback inbred cousins of the animal kingdom, their preposterously powerful jaws making mincemeat of flesh and bone alike; mostly things that have been killed by something else, but also things that are too weak to defend themselves. You know, things that are easy to kill. Like the injured. Or the old. Or the young. You know, relatively defenceless things. Like small lions. Or me.

So, the second night comes around, and I’m excited from the day’s activities, and well-rested from the night before. So I don’t really feel all that sleepy. And, eventually, both of us are going to need a piss. And I can hear them, the hyenas. Their whooping cries are close, either side of the camp. We are also aware of some kind of large animal roaming the camp (turns out that a herd of buffalo wandered through, and had it just been them, I might not have been as terrified as I was…), and the sounds of the rest of the camp’s human residents diminishes to frightened whispers fairly rapidly. Myself and my girlfriend, bladders fit to explode, cower in our tent for a while. The sounds of the hyenas have briefly abated, and we nervously poke our heads out of the tent. Nothing is immediately evident to torchlight nor moonlight, and we dash to the toilet. There is an eerie quiet about, and something is wrong, but we tell ourselves we’re being paranoid. Non-the-less, some odd terror grips us on the mad dash back to the tent – interrupted by me tripping over a guy rope and colliding with a tent and the floor – is informed by something horrible on the edge of our senses. Though only a graze, I’m bleeding – tiny drops of liquid, but also, more frighteningly, scent. I feel like I am being watched, judged, and very quietly pursued. In the dark of the tent, our breathing is quick and shallow. We hear the whooping of the hyenas moments later, closer now, and think that must be it, and that, after all, we were being paranoid and foolish. Then I hear the growl.

It is low and deep, and phenomenally loud in that choking darkness, and horribly close; just a few feet from the tent. It was completely, definingly predatory. Whether it was hyena, leopard or lion I will probably never know, but it was there, and it was utterly terrifying. Sleep was no longer a possibility, but I have to say that I have rarely felt more desperately, vulnerably alive than I did that night.

We wandered once again into the dark for an early-morning game drive, all our movements nervous dashes between symbolically protected areas. To ward off the fear we made up a song, to the tune of ‘by the rivers of Babylon’:

By the Seronera river,

Where we laid down,

Yeah, we wept,

When we were eaten by lions.

Although I strongly suspect hyenas. We also heard their ‘laughing’ at a range too close to share their apparent amusement. There were several other verses to the song equally dripping with gallows humour. Our guide, normally pretty blasé about the wildlife, was also fairly spooked. He didn’t seem at all surprised by our tale, and it was a chill while in Landcruiser before our collective mood lifted. The cheetah helped.

We set out that evening for the Ngorongoro crater. By night the camp is so cold we must sleep in jumpers and hats. In the morning we descend into the glorious crater. Clouds have simply rolled in and sit, boiling at the mountainous limits of the crater, pouring through the forests that cling to the improbable slopes. A huge soda lake occupies the centre, bone-white. It is unearthly, vast, beautiful, and awe-inspiring. Huge herds of wildebeest and other herbivores roam the basin, stalked by packs of lions and the odd cheetah. We, however, are in pursuit of a rhino.

We scan the horizon for rhino, but it’s chilly and windy, and they tend to hide amidst the grass (as implausible as that sounds) in such weather. We watch wildebeest flee lions, and watch lions pad in slow pursuit, or laze the day away. The highlight of the day comes when we see a more successful group devour a zebra they’ve brought down. Though their blood-splattered faces rooting about in the corpse of another creature might seem grotesque to some, I found it rather beautiful. Alas, no rhino. We rescale the crater rim, however, thoroughly satisfied with our week, and I sit down to write my account. An elephant invades the camp, and we return to the beginning of this entry. Another visited again later, testing the foolhardiness of some drunken Americans, one of whose life was probably saved by the shouted warnings of a guide. And so we come to the bush pig.

I’m afraid that it’s another midnight piss-run story. Much of Africa’s life takes place after dark. After the elephant invasion, we’re pretty sure that there’s wildlife about. We can hear it moving about, but it’s unlikely to be anything particularly nasty at this altitude. My girlfriend nips out for a piss, and spots an aardvark and a few bush pigs raiding the bins (at the time we think they’re warthogs, but it turns out that, though physically very similar, they differ in habitat and habit). Some time later, it’s my turn, and I can hear them snuffling about the camp, searching for leftovers. I know they’re close. As I open the tent flap, I startle one right outside the tent. It hurtles across the camp. It’s big, and it has tusks, but seems suitably wary of me, so I nip off to perform the duties of necessity and return, chasing the big, plump, betusked shadow about the camp with my torch. Seemingly it follows me back.. I dose off, and the rest of this was related to me in the morning.

Evidently bored for a while with the pursuit of edible human detritus, the bush pig lays down. On the side of our tent – we have a large windbreaking flysheet that it seems to find amenable. In her half, conscious state, my girlfriend feels it’s warmth through the tent wall, and moves up against it to ease off the chill, dragging me with her so that she is warmed between two plump, hairy beasts. Happily we abide for a while, divided by canvass until the bush pig regains its enthusiasm for foraging and heads out of the lee of our tent. And so our journey, bar another jittery passage by Landcruiser came to a close. Our guide seemed amused by the bush pig story. Apparently they can be quite nasty.

From this bar we can see Kilimanjaro. It is suitably huge and imposing. I’m excited by the prospect of climbing it, but I am also fearful that I won’t make it. To try and fail would be a shame, but not to try at all would be shameful. I wish I was fitter, and that I didn’t drink so much. I wish I hadn’t injured my foot descending into an earthwork in Uganda for a piss a few weeks ago. I wish I wasn’t a smoker – I’ll need the lung capacity. I wish recent cooking hadn’t given me some weird bowel disorder. Again. If I get to the top, it will be a triumph of shear bloody-mindedness over the limits of my flesh. Here’s to that, and one of the most exciting weeks of my life. Cheers.

Apologies, but this is a long one. I haven’t had the opportunity to update in a while.

A warren of crumbling 19^th century buildings bakes beneath the tropical sun, reminiscent of the scruffier parts of Venice, sans canal. Touts carrying everything from cashew nuts and ‘spice boats’ (bags of local spices arranged into the shape of a dhow) to football shirts and sunglasses vie for your attention as you skip between patches of bright sun and deep shadow. Shop owners cheerfully invite you too look at their wares, ‘guides’ constantly harass you, trying to pick up commissions from hotels, veiled girls giggle and scurry about, boys chase motorbike tyres, men sit about chewing the fat or shifting an seemingly endless amount of freight through the narrow street, and anonymous women trudge between places to mysterious purpose. All dodge the tooting scooters and ringing bicycles that dive recklessly through the narrow gaps and sharp, blind turns. This is Stonetown, and you need to contact your bank manager.

Everything here is expensive. Think England for price, but not quality. It seems that most of the mzeungu (white people) are either wealthy enough to be unconcerned, assembled into organised gangs of schoolchildren and super-annunated schoolchildren, or blinking backpackers as bewildered and impoverished as I. There are many tours to go on which will cost lots of money I don’t have, expensive restaurants and coffee houses, the odd bar, a port, and stretch of sand overlooking the bright blue sea (in the twilight, a group of boys incongruously practice Caipuera – not sure of the spell here – each night). Behind, like a hive that’s humming is felt rather than heard, are the shops and markets of the local population, accessible but dismissive of my pale conspicuousness.

Our introduction is not the best – the hotels are mostly full, and it takes us a hour or so carrying our bags through the heat to find one. Trying to find a cash machine that will accept our cards is another three-hour trial hiking beneath the blazing sun, but eventually, with a little assistance, we prevail. So we seek refreshment both alcoholic and more solid.

If there is one place I could recommend in Stonetown, it is the ‘Silk Route’, a curry house and bar that I attended on my first day (recommended by a fellow traveller), and where I sit now, writing this, the day before I leave. They mix a good daiquiri, and serve the most amazing curry I have ever tasted (which puts it pretty high on my list of all-time meals). Zanzibar’s strange history, with influences from Africa, colonial Europe, the Middle East and India, is reflected in all aspects of its culture, from the style of the buildings (weirdly piled upon one another are courtyard houses, colonial townhouses, villas, palaces and strange negotiations between all three) through the people and their beliefs, to the food, – and it all comes together in seafood and spice. Pick the right restaurant, and you will be treated to one of the finest combination of flavours it is possible to taste.

However – the hotels know what they can charge. The bars and restaurants know what they can charge. And in Stonetown, you cannot easily go native. We quietly tire of the constant pressure upon out wallets, and, failing to be able to afford the myriad tours that would otherwise occupy our time (to be frank, they have an uncomfortable feel anyway – programmed events that reek of awkwardly packaged, shabby and inauthentic ‘fun’), we are introduced by a man who attaches himself to us for a while (hoping to be paid, of course – he will eventually be disappointed with the meagre funds I have available to pay for unsolicited guides) to another man who hires us a car. His name is, apparently, ‘Ali Keys’ and according to his sign, he is ‘not as disreputable as he looks’. This oddly comic slogan warms me to a man whose strange cynical enthusiasm borders on insanity – Ali Keys would be well cast as the lead in a version of ‘Only Fools and Horses’ set in Stonetown. He hires me a car at a suspiciously cheap rate, and I insist on seeing it. It is a vast petrol-powered SUV that looks like it has crashed into – and possibly flattened – several hundred less robust objects, and has done more than two hundred thousand miles in the process. Fortunately, the four-wheel-drive system seems intact, the doors lock, the engine sounds good and there is tread on the tires; and it is a Toyota – and is therefore indestructible. We arrange a rendezvous for the following morning, and our real holiday here can begin.

The thirsty monster hauls us and our backpacks up to Kendwa at the north of the island, and as dilapidated town gives way to villages, tall palms and people who live by means other than ours, we relax. We find a lagoon where there is a turtle sanctuary, and we feed, pet and swim with these friendly, somewhat alien beasts. The eldest, nearly ready for release, is twenty-eight. His shell is as big across as the bonnet of a city car, but I am assured that the older ones can be twice that. The man who looks after them tries to discuss football with me, but he knows more about the English leagues than I do, so he begins to tell me jokes. My favourite was, ‘Do you know why turtles live for a hundred years? They don’t smoke, they don’t drink alcohol, and they only have sex once every forty years’. When they do, apparently, though, it lasts for a week. He also shows me a pair of pythons, only two meters long (he tells me that they will grow to six). One has recently had its dinner – we know because there are two rat-shaped lumps in it.

We hired a tiny, scruffy room near the beach, which is cheap and still not worth the money, and explore. We book a trip to go snorkelling at Mnemba nature reserve, and go off to explore. The water is an impossible blue, the ground coral sands white as good paper, but as Kendwa beach gives way to Nungwi, I am reminded of what I am. Piles of stinking Eurotrash in tans and shorts languish about hotel fronts, the strange palm-roofed faux-beachhouses they inhabit are an artifice too far. Like lizards they suck in the heat to toast bodies already ruined by excess and narcissism. Their breath seems to conjure bungalows with white walls and volleyball, pizzas and beverages to make them fat. The locals, many of them Rasta’s, fight off this strange incarnation of Babylon with unceasing reggae.

Some of the other locals (many of them flirty cheerful Maasai, who are sometimes artists selling their pictures and carvings, or more commonly, distributing a mass-produced equivalent) have surrounded the beachfront with shops, and though they are polite enough, I can’t help but feel crowded by their avaricious eyes and the hideousness of the white folks they attend.

At one point, away from the tourist’s areas, lost, driving amongst labyrinth of village streets, I hear mighty hammer blows ricocheting across the beach. A short walk away, there are groups of men building Dhows. They look at us grumpily from the corners of their eyes as I watch them work. One moment…

These men build boats by eye and feel. Not just small ones, either. The tools are basic, comprising a few chisels, the odd saw, hand-drills, hammers and large iron nails. Having found a suitable piece of wood to build the main ‘keel’ of the ship, they then find other pieces suitable for the rest of the frame, and the hull and so on. Each piece is measured by eye, cut at and chipped into shape and fitted according to the skill of the maker and nothing more. No plans are made nor measurements taken other than in the mind of the craftsman and the tradition he has inherited. It is a prodigious skill not easily acquired. Most ‘apprentices’ study – unpaid, mind you – for many years under a master boat-builder before they are presented with their own set of tools. It is a process of I admire immensely, a type of human activity, of artistry, long lost to us in the world of computer-aided design and precision manufacture. And it is not just some cute quirky thing I wish to patronise from three feet behind my Japanese fuel-injection system now romanticised into my Pentium-power box of wonder. These boats can last eighty years. Not so long ago, they used to make examples that weighed in at two hundred tonnes, unloaded. The skills they possess are wonderful.

Glorious sunset gives way to drinks and bed, and the morning brings a chill wind and rain for our nautical excursion. We are aboard the boat for an hour and a half before we reach our destination, and I weather the journey well, but some combination of the rolling of a Dhow sat in the choppy water and the ludicrous pantomime actions required to squeeze my portly body into a wetsuit do my stomach harm. By the time I’m in the water, and I have involuntarily swallowed a mouthful of the Indian Ocean, I am feeling like someone has tricked me into drinking a glass of oil and then repeatedly punched me in the gut. The reef is fascinating, but I am glad to return to the boat and whilst the others eat their lunch, I lie down and settle myself while everyone but me (I’m not sure why) shivers. We are lucky enough to see some dolphins, which cheers up everyone. The afternoon goes better. The profusion of sealife is astonishing, myriad scintillating colours and strange forms. Our guide points out moray eels, parrot fish, lionfish, angelfish. I spy giant clams, racing flatfish, schools of iridescent peculiar things hiding amidst the folds of coral, urchins, long, thin things that appear to swim backwards (just a disguise) and starfish of scarlet and blue – some are as big as me – and countless other examples of wondrous strangeness. The journey back is easier, and though we are disappointed not to have seen any octopus, rays or sharks, the day is declared a success. Next time we have the opportunity, we swear we will dive. We’ve done it before, but as I am far from being at home in the water, we are not yet qualified, and regardless, we couldn’t afford it here. The prices are ludicrous.

We swap sides of the island for the evening, and find a very agreeable place to stay for the evening. The next day brings the desire for the road, monkeys and mangrove. We see Colobus and Black monkeys (the former, we walk amongst and are surrounded by – they are disinterested by us, much more interested in eating, general frolicking and all other manner of monkey business; the second I only catch sight of from the car), and I nearly run over a giant elephant shrew (apparently, I was very lucky – to see it, not nearly run over it). Then we enter the mangrove swaps. I am at once stuck by a familiarity and comfortable discomfort I have only felt once before, in the jungles of the Amazon. It is peculiar, for I have no reason to be at home in such aggressive, unwelcoming environments, but I do. The mangrove has its own peculiarities. A profusion of crab species seem to occupy the niches that ground-dwelling insects occupy in more conventional arboreal environments, and there are only a few (four, actually) species of tree, their long, tough buttress roots providing an opportunity for me to demonstrate my own primate heritage. I must further examine my need for these densely packed, teeming, aggressive and thoroughly woody regions of the earth. For now, perhaps it will suffice to say that I left the mangrove with some regret, and we rejoined the road, heading to the southernmost point of the island.

Civilisation reasserted itself with the glee of capitalism as we were chased through Kizimkazi by people offering to chase down schools of dolphins on my behalf. I would honestly rather they left them alone. Encountering dolphins as I did, spontaneously, appeals to me far more than paying someone to chase them about with a motorboat. We don’t stop, for fear of being buried under a tidal wave of cheery dolphin-botherers, and carry on down a long path to the sea. What we find there – an exclusive resort for the rich – is a hideously pristine complex of infinity pools and beach houses bigger than the average British home. They charge us extortionate amounts for some refreshments, and we barely escape with our integrity intact.

We soon reassert it, however, with the help of some Rastafarians. Jambiani, Paje and Bwejuu on the eat coast have beaches that are common to my sight only from calendars. Long stretches of cobalt blue and aquamarine out to the horizon and white sand are interrupted only by fishing boats and the occasional beach hut. These are the places less frequented by bloated white tourists, and those who are present are in conspicuous. Local boys play an endless, boundless game of football upon the beach. It is unearthly, like someone has photoshopped the world. We stay in a place called Kimte, a inexpensive hotel run by Rastafarians. They are friendly, jovial lads who are fans of Paul Simon and UB40 in addition to the more expected reggae. A campfire and a very chilled evening later, we retire, and awake to watch the sun rise over the perfectly presented Indian Ocean. The best breakfast served on the island later, we plunge once more towards Stonetown where, quite clearly, we will run out of money.

I made up a game last night called ‘competitive tourism’. It is a card game where the object is to accrue bragging rights on the basis of where you have been and what you have done. I made it by ripping up a cheap notebook. It was a cheap evening’s entertainment – imagination and humour are free. Now, I’m sitting in the Silk Route, and I’ve just had another exquisite meal and a Hemmingway-load. Tomorrow we leave for Arusha, to go on Safari and poke a lion in the eye (ok, maybe I’m not actually going to do that).

My final days in Uganda are marked primarily by contrast – most notably between myself and where I am. Jinja, a town at the head of the river Nile at lake Victoria, is nothing like the camp I stay in. This is a little preserve for the rich, (generally) white, and adventurous on the outskirts of town. Upon our arrival we get with the program of activities. Quad bikes and a guide are hired and a large groups of us zoom about the countryside for a few hours creating a vast cloud of red dust in our wake. The villages we pass through are poor in a way that my mind associates with relief appeals. Those tired images from the Television is some of it, but there is something buzzing in my brain, an alarm bell fed by memories of the bill-boards by larger roads – images of strapping young men holding aloft branded cement or the endless mobile telephone advert featuring glamorous, pale women. They are conspicuous by their absence here. The children all wave and excitedly gather round. The adults, not so much, and I think I know why. I feel like a cross between a hooligan burning through a council estate in a stolen moped, a patronising minor celebrity and (I am dressing in overalls and a goggles) a sort of earth-bound Biggles. We are astonishingly filthy upon our return, and joyful as it is, when I book the white-water rafting for the following day, a certain melancholy is descending on me.

A bungee jump in the morning soon wakes me up and I’m soon white-water rafting. It is an astonishingly beautiful setting, the water is a high as the river guides have ever seen, and we charge through the headwaters of the mighty Nile. The scale is astonishing- we are like ants clinging to a stick in a rough mountain stream. Despite many grade five rapids over the course of the day, I emerge unscathed. In the quieter areas we swim, and my girlfriend and I grin at each other say ‘we’re swimming in the Nile!’.

The next morning, my girlfriend has a morning bungee with a ten-year-old girl who is too light to jump solo. We say goodbye to the friends we have made on the truck – we were very lucky, and I hope that we see many of them again – and settle down in the bar to snooze a useless day away. It has been two weeks since I had more than five hours sleep. In the quiet, the melancholy fills me once again. Hidden beyond the bar are the lines of tiny, scruffy buildings each desperately crying for cash with constantly fading flashes of colour. Behind each of those, a hillside dotted with struggling farms teaming with poorly-fed children. The roads are lined with bill-boards, some proclaiming aid projects, others crowded with unsubtle adverts like ‘you are not a man unless you own a house – get a mortgage with [random bank]’.

As a rainstorm turns everything into noise and water, I chat to a Ugandan man about racism in England and America. His brother lives in Leeds. The conversation drifts about as he describes his shameful treatment by the Methodist church and a racist policeman he met from Alabama as afternoon bungee is rained off. It is the morning of the next day before I plummet riverwards twice more, forwards and them backwards into the swollen, swirling Nile. It’s a hell of a good way to wake yourself up. I find the staff at the adventure camp mostly likable, but they are apart, as am I. With people treating the world as an adventure playground, just because we can. We trying dutifully to help, our activities feeding money into the local economy, supporting projects, but we are all tourists. Better than rulers, I suppose. After a long delay (TIA), we return to Kampala.

Kampala by day or night is hideous up close. For the most part the people seem nice enough (they don’t hassle me at all, as it happens), but the places itself is like a constant, failing war against entropy. A sea of typical single-story tin-roofed dwellings crests into a few towers towards the centre, and a few of the newer buildings stand proud. A friend I made in a bar in Jinja has offered to take me out tonight and show me the nightlife. I have to be up at five to catch my plane, but, truth be told, I just don’t want to go out here. It’s horrible. There are a few nice restaurants and bars – Kampala has its prosperous people and western wallets just like any big city, but it’s all really quite charmless. Nicer places are guarded by men with guns, and sometimes metal detectors (which, being white, I am simply waved passed) on the door. It’s an odd way to be reassured. Last night we walked through the city streets to find our hotel – not in the bad part of town, but not in the nice part either – and I caught the real smell of it here. You can tart up one or two places, and I could haunt only these, I suppose, but the real life in this city is a grubby, dirty thing of gutters, stinking traffic fumes, desperation and aspiration. Cracked, close streets and already-decayed modern buildings hide malls which are warrens of tiny cabins full of glittering things to buy – mobile telephones arranged like jewels, fancy clothes behind a fading façade, ‘ethnic’ items for the tourists. Postcards that do not show the beggars with crippled legs. Outside squats a woman selling bananas, she looks defeated. A young man wanders around with a pile of silk ties in his hand, ready to sell to anyone who crosses his path. Another has a pile of socks under his arm. A glamorously dressed woman guides her heels between piles of mouldering refuse, and it all clicks into place. A monument to Ugandan independence bears a sign reading ‘no loiterers’. The guns that guard the places that are sanitised for my eyes and assumed necessity for the protection of the wealthy locals (and the banks) are old, relics of civil war, perhaps. I have no wish to see only the parts of this city that they guard, and I have no desire to look upon the rest of it any longer. I am glad to have experienced this place, but I have no wish to stay.

And some of this is because it feels so much like home. The city is dirty and hot, the accents strange (I wonder how we can share a language and yet I seem so unintelligible to them – strangely I can understand them with relative ease, but they sometimes look at me like I’m speaking Martian), and perhaps it is just the common language, or the food (everything with chips; burgers, pizzas, kebabs, even toasties) but this place really feels like the dirty edge of England. It is the attitude and mood of the people. It is the businessman in the café. His sunglasses cost more than everything I am wearing. This, in turn is more that the worth of the shop half a mile away. It is the hugely expensive four-by-four he drives. It is the apple Mac in the desk in front of him. It is his wife, that woman in high heels, spotless, glamorous, dark skin against beautiful modern fabrics. Fashionably slim, not hungry.

In China, I could not integrate because I am white, and it is the same here. My mere appearance makes of me, by turns a celebrity, a source of money, a potential mark, something to look down upon, despite how easily most of them slip through my eyes. Despite the spectacular backdrops, the human world here looks like the dragging heel of Britain. I wonder what they look like to the wealthy Americans, and to the rich English (the vast majority of the white folks you meet) – people who cannot understand the poor in their own countries, let alone these people. I think they just look passed them, see them, perhaps, as a problem that must be solved, or a resources, or an unfortunate side effect. Or an exhibit. Yet, I can feel that the people around me share the same fight that is waged in the trailer park, housing projects and council estates of Europe and The States, but so much worse. The disregard of the plight of your fellow man, the blind self-interest that has been engendered in these people. That is what I feel, that is what makes this feel like home. The nasty parts of home. China was heading that way – the erosion of community and the ideal of selfishness was becoming evident, but there was a strong, proud history too. In Cuba, Havana felt like this (though everywhere outside did not), but the regime, the relative prosperity and its isolation led to a distinctiveness and a certain joy. In South America, I saw a culture that had been violently crushed by Christianity, and then eroded from without. It feels more like that here, but worse. Still some of it shone through in South America. Not so here. What little remains of tradition is reduced to dances for tourists and ethnic arts; charred remains of countless waves of colonialism, war, civil war, each time chewed over by Christianity, Islam and (increasingly) Capitalism.

The needs of the people I see is primarily education and medicine. I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea that ‘we’ should swoop in like patronising angels and try to sort it all out – but ‘we’ have been coming here, patronising, exploitative or otherwise to pretend that this is anything separate from our world. Occasionally we see campaigns for birth control. More commonly we see Bibles and churches and religious schools. These people are desperate believers. A sign upon a church newspaper (I jest not) reads ‘God has a wonderful plan for you all’. It doesn’t explain what that plan is. Faith is of no use here, and neither is patronisation of any kind, especially that which might lead to passivity. There is so much ignorance and the grinding actions of basic hope. It is of no use. I wonder where the money goes – the papers are filled with constant accusations to the government of the misappropriation of aid – but not only this. There is wealth here being generated, but then dutifully siphoned into the pockets of Shell, Nokia and the rest in accordance with the unspoken law of the modern world. This situation will not change until the wealthier cultures stop insisting that the best thing is to be able to buy, and if you cannot, then you should pray. But this is not a matter of a new aid project or mission. The root cause of the inequalities and cultural dysfunctions I see here lie in our own homes. It is our society, and the way we organise things that must change. We must find some way to flourish that isn’t at someone else’s expense.

Goodbye Uganda. I may return, but for now, I am glad to have been, but I will not miss you. You are beautiful, but you make me feel ashamed.

Tomorrow, Zanzibar.

Day 1

LIONS!
Well, not yet, but they’re in the post. Or rather, I am. In fact, it’ll be at least another day before I’m anywhere near any dangerous wildlife. Right now it feels more like I’ve massively over-packed for a trip to Amsterdam.
I hate leaving; there are so many stresses and causes for anxiety. I am afraid that without me to watch it, everything will crash. I know this will go away. Those I truly love, I love for their resourcefulness and intelligence.
I distract myself will sillyness…
The London underground at rush hour is a device designed by a mad Victorian engineer for one purpose – the extraction of purest geometry. He knew that the nature of the English would mean that nobody would ever make eye contact. Wondering exactly how many points of focus for human eyes could be found within a given circular space, he caused tunnels to be dug beneath the world’s largest city (it was then), and lined them with detectors shaped like tiles (that’s what they are, honest). Realising that even the poorest and stupidest citizens wouldn’t simply go inside this device voluntarily, he placed some trains inside and advertised it as a mass transportation system. His name was Philleus Cavendish-McBastard.
The detectors capture the geometry and link it up through the sewer system to every home.
Geometry powers London, you know.
So there you are – the London underground is a way of capturing people and harnessing their internal reserves of geometry. It is only a transport system as an afterthought. Which explains a lot.
The fuss that is made of airport security in Britian is, quite frankly, shamefully ludicrous. We should be given some kind of award. I dutifully complied with the instructions, but the one thing I didn’t unpack was the bag of electronics. Enough exotic chemicals and bits of metal to blow a hole three meters wide in any aircraft ever built, and nobody blinked an eye. Take a bottle of Ribena through, though, and you might be shot.
Let me get this straight once and for all. Airport security is an exercise in propaganda. It is only there so that the government can appear to be doing something. That is all. It has never stopped you on anyone you love from being killed.
An overnight stop over in Amsterdam came to calm me, however. We didn’t really do much except wander around, but it really helped. We weren’t in Britain anymore, and it showed on my face – I think I managed a beatific smile for an hour or so. Only the accident of birth placed me in that uptight country, and I often wish my friends all lived somewhere else.

Day two

A KLM flight from Amsterdam to Entebbe, Uganda; a long time on a plane, subject to the dubious entertainments and food on offer. The entertainments were lavish, as it happened, if you like films (which do) – information has become cheap. Many films at easy disposal took me through the bulk of it. The food was terrible. Much as I admire the Dutch for their many kindnesses, efficiencies and advancements – painting a fly onto the sweet spot of urinals is the greatest achievement in toilet technology since Thomas Crapper – Their airplane food is truly abominable. And the seats; please, I and everyone else will pay ten pounds more each if we can just have ten rows of seats removed so that our legs can survive the journey. The space is actually too cramped for more to be able to work properly, which is ridiculous. Perhaps KLM or their parent company own shares in a prosthetic limb manufacturer.
On the way I get my first glimpse of Africa. It is the Sahara. Desolation as far as I can see, as if some great interplanetary beast has come during my sleep, taken our fat wet world and sent it the way of Mars. I watch it in horror as it rolls passed the plane windows, not the wonderful bleak wilderness desolation of a moor or mountain range, but something else much more fascinating and awful. The total lack of life. It’s weirdly beautiful for a while. Then, some hours later, I spot it – The Nile, an impossible river at this point. I’m looking south and all of the civilisation of Egypt is to the north of the plane. All I can see is the desert, and this incongruous, vast ribbon of water sliding its way northwards by lazy loops and inattention. Wonderful. I watch it until it disappears, hundreds of miles laid out before me. Then I see a standstorm from above. Odd orange wall of cloud burning across the ground – a spell of slow-burning embers. Eventually it blends into high-level rain, which turns to low-level mist, darkness falls, and I see no more but the screen before me. A disappointing film later, we arrive at Entebbe.
The dark continent is just that to us. A representative of the hostel we’ve booked in at is there to collect us, which is rather reassuring. Traffic hurtles crazily about our vehicle as modern-looking city centre slides passed us, glowing in the dark. From a distance, it looks rather like Leeds. Closer in, the dwellings are dilapidated, single-story things, each seemingly entirely dedicated to some tiny purpose – the continuing life of the inhabitant, whether this comes form photocopying, bicycle repair or mobile phone sales. There are an alarming number of petrol stations.
The roads are terrible, but there are roads, which is good enough for our truck, which I meet at the hotel. You see some normal saloon and compact cars in the city, but as most of the roads between places would qualify only as rally tracks in Europe, most vehicles are either robust 4×4s or large trucks. All show signs of abuse. Everything in Africa does. Our home for the next few days is a colossal rolling tribute to practical thinking. It was converted from a Mercedes thing at some point by the judicious application of a huge quantity of metal and enough welding to construct a battle ship. It is robust – it has to be, and carries lots of spares. And a sack of charcoal, two braziers, a gas hob, enough fuel to burn London, our bags, enough food to feed us all for a week, equipment to prepare it (including tables)and innumerable other bits and bob, and us. I have yet to meet any of them, and speculate upon the people in the bar.

Day three

A six am start places us in the truck with the others. It’s utterly dark outside, which gives me an excuse to glance about at the people I’m going to be travelling with. We are an odd mix of the relatively wealthy and interested. No gap years students (thankfully), but lots of teachers, all well educated. I like them all well enough – inevitably some more than others, but none of them are actually offensive. We bounce about on top of the flat bed, powered by huge bouncy leaf springs that sometimes throw us all off our seats, and our communication with the cab a button marked STOP. It is also used for GO. Even with a hangover, it’s quite good fun. For now.
Africa opens up to me the next morning by the slow light of dawn. It is orange. Soil, dust, cloud, sun. There are so many corrugated iron roofs (rust orange) that I wonder that there has been so much iron ever refined. Dust blows about us from the road, and I am again reminded of Mars. We have breakfast at the equator – a photo opportunity of a kind that makes me think of tedious hours flicking through endless albums and mumbling pleasantries in time. There is a small town, seeming supported entirely by the bloated wallets of those who stop to take pictures at the equator marker. The shops sell rubbish and call it art, but they have nice toilets, and I am British enough to appreciate that. I wonder if there is another on every road that crosses the equator. When we move on again, I see tall stalks, as high as people, rifled beaks pressed against their chests, sentinels standing guard over rubbish tips. They are utterly unlike anything I have ever seen. Yet it is not their form that is so weird, it is their mood.
Of course, it turns out that I inevitably am connected to some of these people. One knows an old teacher of mine very well. Another lives about ten minutes from my house. 50% of the people on board have studied physics at an undergraduate level. People always seem to find this amazing. It isn’t. If you add up all the people you know, and think about how much the nature of what they do has determined who they meet and where they go, and the myriad possible connections there are between such similar lives nothing is surprising. It is only a wonder that there are not more connections between us than we have fond. People crave significance where there is none. Six billion isn’t that big a number, once you start factoring out all those who can’t afford to do the things I do and all those who don’t have the inclination or opportunity, and start factoring in how many connections there are that people are prepared to find significant. Until I’m surrounded by thirteen other people who share my profession, have the same education as me, the same birthday and have the same bodyweight, I won’t even start looking. And at that point, I’m looking for somebody – not fate or god – that has arranged it.
As we approach the crater lake of Bunyoni, near Kabale, the roads cling precariously to the side of steep mountains and I begin to wake up. The land around is beautiful, volcanic undulations. The orange soil and banana trees have given way to a partially vertical patchwork of dusty crops and unconvincing terracing. England with the red turned up and vast balloons inflated just beneath the surface. The crater lake itself is so beautiful that my eyes start to hurt. We go for a paddle across the magnificent lake. It is huge, and the views are suitably spectacular, though perhaps I am too fatigued to properly appreciate it. It has been a long journey, and I am thankful we will return here in a few days. So it can better appreciate it.

Day four

From our crater-lake idyll it is a bouncy and scary ride to a campsite near the borders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Not nice places. But it’s where the gorillas live, and that’s what this section of the trip is about. On the way, across even more ridiculous roads at which we bounce and crawl across huge potholes, children wave. Some beg, some smile. Occasionally some throw stones. Mostly they ask for pens. There is some speculation as to the cause of this. I leave my speculations to myself. I strongly suspect that pens are set upon a crux of access – a fairly rare commodity where we are, virtually worthless where we come from. Something they can ask for that we can’t refuse. I am always appalled by how much people resent beggars, and how cruel they are to them. It’s as if being reminded that they are relatively wealthy and can change other peoples lives offends them.
The terrain is steep, and wooded at this height. Bamboo forests in some case, taller more majestic trees clinging ponderously upon the slops at some points, scruffier, scrubbier stuff or dusty crops in other places. The dust from vehicles paints everything by the side of the road from green to orange. Those trees might hide anything amongst their densely-packed columns. We see a volcano in the distance so vast that at first it seems to be part of the sky. We steadily climb, slamming and bumping along the paths, and each of us wonders if we will bounce off the road.
It’s my turn to help cook, and under the direct of an astronomy academic, we mange to produce a decent pair of Thai curry’s. The rest of the day is dull, and it’s a quick night’s rest in anticipation of the morning. I can’t sleep. I’m excited, but I’m mostly afraid.

Day five

Gorillas and guerrillas haunt the maintains of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This country is one of those places that you avoid like it harbours a plague. Of bullets. And another of kidnapping, and innumerable other cultural pathogens. Which it does. Unfortunately, there were no Gorilla permits for anywhere else, and I really wanted to see them. It’s a long drive, then an expensive and uncomfortable passage across the border. Then the most uncomfortable car journey of my life. It took two hours tracking the Gorillas (under expert, machine-gun toting –though very nice and capable – guidance, of course) by foot through thick vegetation – creepers as efficient as purpose-laid snares grabbing at your feet with every step is tiring. We followed trails left by an elephant. This adds a certain thrill to it. I wonder if we might stumble across it. I’d hardly credit it, were it not for the vast quantities of shit lying about the place.
Eventually we leave the elephant trails and start following the Gorillas from the last place thy nested. Spotting huge elephant poos is replaced with spotting smaller Gorilla poos and following slightly crushed vegetation. It’s very hard going, and everyone falls over a bit. The trees are not tall here, as we are too far up, and so a lot of light reaches the ground. This means that the entire place is teaming with low-level vegetation, thickly layered in piles upon the floor. It isn’t actually possible to put your feet onto the solid earth for nearly an hour. The best we can manage is to crash about through it. The local guides are substantially more graceful. How they keep from laughing astonishes me. We’re not stealthy, but this doesn’t seem to bother the Gorillas. Nor should it – a juvenile gorilla could break me in half. We are told to don masks – gorillas are so close to us genetically that many diseases can cross between the species.
We ‘creep’ around a corner (crash, bash, stumble, quietly swear, crash, crash) and there they are, just sat about. The silverbacks are huge things. I can’t quite get the scale of them into my head until I see one in the distance, fully revealed. His head is like my torso. One of the younger ones becomes curious. It wants to get close, but we can’t touch them, so, with some awareness of the comedy of it, we back away from the child, which of course, only encourages it to move towards us. Eventually it loses its nerve and runs back to mum. A adolescent female is next to get curious, and much the same thing happens again, this time with a bigger, more determined gorilla. He older ones are more used to the humans coming and looking at them, and just go about their day. We don’t annoy any of the big lads enough to make them charge us, though I am constantly preparing for them to do so (crouch down, don’t run, don’t make eye contact, change underpants later). In total, we spend an hour with them. They are playful, mostly disinterested, and always fascinating. There’s even some chest-beating.
After an hours trek back, another hour of spine-shattering discomfort in a 4×4 (somewhat ignorable due to gorilla-related euphoria), we have an hour’s wait at the border. I discuss the Gorillas with my girlfriend, and try to describe how it made me feel. She sums it up well – ‘like making first contact with a sentient alien species’. Not first contact, and not alien, I’d say. Too worryingly familiar, too disturbingly comfortable. But contact, yes. I can read things into the behaviour patterns of dogs – I can see them threaten, cower and beg, and anthropomorphise them, but I know I’m doing it. I can even attribute intentional behaviour to spiders, or even more lowly things than this with a stretch, but I know I’m doing it. I know it’s me that wants them to be thinking, that I’m pushing my own mental structures into them. Not so the Gorillas. I know they are thinking in the same exact way that I know you are; in some fundamental way, they are just the same as me.
I’m sure many things happened after that, but I really wasn’t taking much notice. I perched under a tree that had a power-point on it (strangely), for a while, and did some work. Then something strange started to happen. There was a gathering amongst the tents. As I nip to the toilet, a hushed whisper summons me to a line of chairs. The situation is explained, and I am sent to rally the troops.
The children from a local orphanage dance for us. It’s a bit chaotic, and I smile through, selfishly resenting being taken away from my work. The whole makes me feel like prince Philip – a patronising shit who doesn’t really understand what’s going on. Towards the end, one of them comes forward to explain the project. I want to do right by them, and it’s easy to pick out their cause simply because they are there in front of me. One of my companions points out how much money we spent chasing Gorillas, and she’s right, we should help these people. That’s true of most of the people we’ve passed too. People dig through their wallets and fill envelopes. I talk to my girlfriend, and she spends some time talking with the organiser. What they most desperately need is pens and paper. We decide to ship them a crate over when we get back. Hopefully we can get some of the larger producers to make a donation. I know in my hearth, though, that ten minutes walking these streets would find me ten more equally worthy causes.
Children here, they tell us, are taught in classes that can number up to two hundred. There is no state-sponsoring for pens and pencils. This explains a lot. I determine to buy an immense stack of pens at the next opportunity just to throw out the side of the truck. Something that we take for granted, so valuable here. I’m concerned about the organisations religious affiliations, but they are pro-family planning, prophylactics and see religion as belonging to communities rather than the alpha and omega (pardon the joke). They are a good organisation. They don’t have a website up yet, but here’s the email if you want to help out: orphanscare_aid@yahoo.com. Send them a pen. If you can stand to look at it, see if you can find something equally worthy. You will. Just avoid the God squad, and you can’t really go wrong. But watch that – there are a lot of dangerous and destructive things done in the name of faith in Uganda. Consider the catholic attitude to condoms in any country with a high percentage of HIV sufferers. There are innumerable other examples.
I try to get some more work done, but another travelling party arrives, and I’m compelled to rush about moving our stuff out of the way so that they can make themselves some dinner. I retreat to bed instead to consider Gorillas and orphans.

Day Six.

Another dusty, bumpy road, and we return to the crater lake. I am more relaxed, and a few of us hire a boat to go skirting about some of the islands in the lake. One of them, – ‘punishment island’ – looks like it might be afloat. This leads to conversations about floating islands, and eventually, by circuitous means, on to science fiction disaster stories, and the planet of the apes saga. We see otters and kingfishers. We retreat back to the bar, and eventually dinner, and I manage to stay partially sober.
There is more dancing. I like this more, because we can join in more easily. I hate watching dancing – it’s a kind of weird voyeurism that makes me horribly uncomfortable. Jumping around like a lunatic is much more like it. I understand that certain types of dancing are an art form – albeit one that I have, as yet failed to properly appreciate – but dancing, for me, is something better done than observed. So we dance. My girlfriend makes a Ugandan friend – one of the dancers. She’s energetic, and seems nice. Later, I make a Scandinavian friend – a Swede now living in Oslo. He seems quietly bonkers. During the course of the dancing we find out that ‘punishment island’ is a place they sent unmarried others to. The guy admits, ‘the obvious question is ‘what did we do to the men?’ Well, men, of course, were too respected to be sent there as well’.

Day seven

Long, drive, everyone grumpy. I don’t think most American and English people realise quite how horrid, cruel and selfish they are. Not all, certainly (and before anyone says it – I know, but at least I do realise it, so there). Back to Kampala. Some of us go for a Curry – very, very good it is, too. Most people just sit in the hotel. The drive had been hot, dusty, bumpy, tiring, uncomfortable and long, and a lot of other things that don’t make you chirpy. We come back, and I write this. What more do you want from me, blood? In the morning, something else will happen. In fact, I’m going somewhere else. You’ll find out about this later.

TTFN from Africa.

Today is not a good day. The country I live in has apparently distanced itself from tolerance, liberalism, progression and integration and embraced nationalism, reactionary isolationism and distrust. It has done this because the people who might have voted Labour were so disillusioned that they just didn’t vote at all. I watched the final results come in last night, mauled by it. Though I know this election does not truly represent anything but people’s disenchantment with Labour, and hope that the lack of any credible left-wing party has skewed the vote, it remains shameful that the British people are so appallingly apathetic that they’ll allow us to be represented by the BNP. I feel like I’ve just met up with an ex-girlfriend and found out that she’s dating Oswald Mosley.

The BNP are a pretty scary bunch. Chances are if you’re reading this, you already know that. The detail of their policies is truly horrifying. The campaign to protect the Christian faith against the ‘Islamisation’ of Britain (a position opposed by the very church they claim to support, incidentally) is scary enough by itself. ‘Voluntary repatriation’ sounds a lot like a precursor to ethnic cleansing. The reintroduction of corporal and capital punishment is, frankly, a return to a kind of barbarism no civilised man should crave. Their leader is an utterly despicable fascist. I could go on. That we now have two BNP MEP’s is a disgusting shame the entire country should feel. They got in, though, largely because of voter apathy, only picking up a few actual votes here and there. Despite the slight hysteria, I doubt if this is a slide towards a strictly fascist government. More worrying to me is the surge of support for UKIP.

John Stuart Mill said, ‘Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.’ You might think that only ignorant racists would vote for the BNP, or any far right movement. The simple solutions offered by the right appeal to those who don’t appreciate the complexities of situations and the far-reaching consequences of such policies, simply because they can understand them. Then there are those who, despite understanding perfectly well what the consequences of right-wing policies are, support them anyway. These people are usually motivated by personal gain, although such policies veritably sing out to those motivated by fear or hatred, and fear and hatred recognise no boundaries of education, class or intelligence. Do not think I’m merely talking about the BNP here. Fear of change and progression, and a desperate clinging to the values of a past that never existed is perhaps nowhere better represented than by UKIP. That they make reactionary nationalism palatable does not mean that they are to be identified with the racist BNP, but they are strong conservatives, they do represent the right, and their platform is informed by fear. Here is a summary of their policies I just lifted from their website, with my annotations in blue.

• UKIP will leave the political EU and trade globally and freely (do not think that this second part will happen automatically – this will require negotiation). We will re-embrace today’s fast-growing Commonwealth and we will encourage UK manufacturing so that we make things again. This, of course, is why most people vote for them. I don’t agree, but I can see why people might, given how much anti-EU bullshit is pumped into their heads by the British media. Interesting to see exactly how this works when you’re an MEP…
• We will freeze immigration for five years, speed up deportation of up to a million illegal immigrants by tripling the numbers engaged in deportations, and have ‘no home no visa’ work permits to ease the housing crisis. Reactionary right-wing policies for people who fear foreigners and want to blame them for everything. The nationalists will shake your hand gladly thanks to this.
• We will have a grammar school in every town. A system that has always promoted elitism and reinforces class divisions. We will restore standards of education and improve skills training. Student grants will replace student loans. Interesting to see how that’s funded. One way would be to cut numbers – perhaps only those who went to grammar, public or private school will go to university. Like in the 1930’s.
• We will radically reform the working of the NHS with an Insurance Fund, whilst upholding the ‘free at the point of care’ principles. I’m not sure how that would work – and neither are they, as it happens. We will bring back matrons (token) and have locally run (token), clean (every single person wants this) hospitals.
• We will give people the vote on policing priorities, go back to proper beat policing and scrap the Human Rights Act. Whoah… hold on one moment… SCRAP THE HUMAN RIGHTS ACT? Fucking hell… Moving on… We will have sentences that mean what they say. So – to summarise, policing informed by whatever people are most afraid of, draconian heavy sentencing, and no human rights. What a horrid place to live that would be.
• We will take 4.5 million people out of tax with a simple Flat Tax (with National Insurance) starting at £10,000. Which would benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. We will scrap Inheritance Tax, not just reform it and cut corporation taxes. Further benefiting the rich.
• We will say No to green taxes and wind farms. Why? Not taking climate change seriously is inviting disaster. Opposing wind farms is ridiculous. To avert a major energy crisis, we will go for new nuclear power plants on the same existing site facilities (that won’t be enough) and for clean coal (a temporary solution at best). We will reduce pollution How? and encourage recycling (we’ve been ‘encouraging’ this for as long as I can remember).
• We will make welfare simpler and fairer, introduce ‘workfare’ to get people back to work, and a new citizens pension and private pensions scheme insurance. I’d have to see the details on this before commenting, but I have no problem with it in principle. That’s one so far, with reservations.
• We will support our armed forces with more spending on equipment, military homes and medical care. Ok, but where’s this heading… We will save our threatened warships and add 25,000 more troops. Why? Do we want to deploy more troops? Declare war on somebody? How are we going to pay for this? This stinks of the worst kind of mindless national pride.
• We will be fair to England, with an English Parliament of English MPs at Westminster. So, UKIP, are we going to have a UK parliament? We will replace assembly members like MSPs with MPs. Presumably, then, UKIP is actually in favour of dissolving the UK. Interesting. And we will promote referenda at local and national levels. Thereby reconnecting democracy with mob rule.
• We will make customer satisfaction number one for rail firms – not cost cutting (hold on, does that mean rail fares will go up?) and will look seriously at reopening some rail lines that Beeching closed. Wow… I actually like that last bit. Bloody expensive, though. We will make foreign lorries pay for British roads with a ‘Britdisc’ (thereby making all imports more expensive, which will damage business – I don’t have a problem with this especially, but I think they haven’t really thought it through) – and we will stop persecuting motorists (despite the fact that we need the tax revenues form fuel duty, it is completely justifiable on the basis of our irresponsible and selfish impact on the environment, and the fuel’s running out…)
• Last, but never least, we will bring in fair prices and fair competition for our suffering farmers, (this is highly debatable, but I’ll let it pass, because here we go…) and restore traditional British fishing and territorial waters. Do you know why we have fishing quotas? Because if we didn’t do that, there would be no fish left, you idiots! Fishing quotas are already way above sustainable levels. That’s why we get a lot of our fish from many, many miles away. As to ‘territorial waters’, what are you going to do, park your shiny warships around the edge?

What you have there is a big pile of naïve policies designed to do nothing but appeal to the grumpy, simplistic right. Jeremy Clarkson’s Britain. That we’ve sent a load of people representing this dross to Europe is embarrassing.

The whole of Europe has swung to the right. Romania, Hungary and the Netherlands have all returned at least one candidate standing on an anti-immigration platform. Despite the economic crises, the left has failed to gain ground on the centre-right governments throughout the continent. Some will always cling through loyalty, but that left-wing parties can’t seize votes in a time when the right-wing economic policies (yep, New Labour has these) have clearly crippled world finances show us something else. It is, I think, that simplistic, right-wing solutions are a ‘run home to mummy’ position. It’s what people cling to when they’re afraid – even though the very approaches that these parties take caused the problems. People have been made so avaricious that they would rather grasp to protect what they have than admit that their approach was mistaken.

This tendency, however, is not definitional of all people. The problem is that those who would be brave in the face of difficult conditions have lost their focus. Some people will cling to simple, right-wing fear and hatred solutions in times of crisis, others traditionally vote for solidarity, freedom from oppression and cooperation. Yet the results are skewed to the right this time because the focus of political apathy has fallen to the left. Like a felled giant redwood. Turnouts throughout Europe were at a record low. The centre-right has edged even further ahead, but the collapse of the left’s vote is largely responsible for the huge apparent surge in right-wing parties. It is, perhaps, telling of just how unpalatable Cameron and his cronies are that even in a time when the Labour Party is disintegrating like a month-old flan, they cannot pick up a significantly larger number of votes. He struts about like a prep-school bully poking at a stumbling tramp for the amusement of his friends. But this is no great victory, its schadenfreude at best – the Tory party has picked up hardly a vote, and has won by default. And this is the danger. Whilst the good look on passively, those who can still motivate their voter-base will slip into control despite hardly attracting anyone new to their cause. The Greens have made some gains, but it is hardly a consolation.

And this is the problem. We need a new political movement, we need somebody viable on the left. It seems increasingly unlikely that this will emerge from existing party structures in this country. Labour have won the last couple of elections primarily because we feared the alternatives. Well, last night we proved that right, but I had hardly advocated voting for them on that basis. Because we fear a truly bad government is a reason, but not a good one, to vote for a crap one. If you are going to solve the problems of voter apathy, you need better motivation than that. Many people have said that we need an Obama, (in fact, one of my friends said to me that once the Americans are done with him, it might be nice if we could borrow him for a while. To be frank, if that fascist shit-golem Nick Griffin is the alternative, I’d happily declare this the 51^st state right now). Perhaps we do, but we only stand a chance of this there is more involvement with politics from the left. We have a focus for the worst tendencies of British culture – our tendency for arrogant nationalism, our stubborn conservativism, our protectionist natures, our isolationist tendencies, our xenophobia, our anger, aggression, and our fear. We need to find a group of people who represent the best things about Britain – our liberal heritage, our progressive tendencies, our tolerance and inclusiveness, our inventiveness, our willingness to explore new possibilities, our sense of fairness and our bravery. We need this soon.

I can tell you now, I am not staying here if last night is where we are heading.

“Ladies and gentlemen – it’s time for Celebrity parliamentary clean-out! Esther Rantzen, Joanna Lumley and Jamie Oliver head up an all-star celebrity task force to clean out the House of Commons. Hosted by Ant and Dec.”

Regardless of whether-or-not this should be important, the recent expenses scandal (well-engineered by the Telegraph , it has to be said), has really worked the media up into a turgid frenzy, and they in turn have whipped-up the public in a predictable feedback-loop of irritation. MP’s and party leaders have been squirming, unsure of what to do. The speaker’s gone, but he won’t be the last. Brown seems paralysed as usual. David Cameron is calling for a general election, thinking to capitalise on the currently horrific poll results of Labour, however, he’s grandstanding, knowing that he can try once again to appear to be the moral agent in this with impunity, as Brown will not call an election over this. He’d be stupid to, and Cameron knows it. He’s trying very hard to appear to be the outstanding leader here, but despite his valiant efforts to seem ‘really cross’ about expenses, his own house (very literally) is hardly in order. He already owned a house in his Oxford constituency, and another one (worth about two million pounds) in London outright, but fancied another. So – and despite his own considerable wealth and the six-figure income his wife has – he thought it prudent to use the ‘second home’ mortgage allowance to pay for a lovely sprawling pile in Oxfordshire worth three-quarters of a million quid. These mortgage payments – rather conveniently – came to almost exactly the maximum allowed by the regulation (£22,000) at £21,293.86. George Osborne did something similar. And plenty of the other Tory MP’s have been caught with their noses in the trough. Or moat.

What would happen if an election were called today? This scandal surely means that people would be unlikely to want to vote for the two major parties as they stand, but might vote against the current government simply to punish them. This would be Cameron’s ideal hope and is why he wants a ‘snap election’, but I feel he might be disappointed with the change (a word he repeats so often, trying to identify himself with Obama, that I strongly suspect he’s had it tattooed onto the inside of his eyelids to remind him) we might get if there is any period of time at all for any others to prepare. The Lib Dems – despite Vince Cable’s notable integrity – haven’t been squeaky-clean themselves, but might be able to capitalise if Nick Clegg continues to take the initiative. I’d say that the other, smaller political groups are the ones more likely to benefit right now. The Greens might pick up a fair few votes. A few days ago I had a leaflet posted through my door informing me that ‘People like you voting BNP’. Well, apart from the poor English (it’s also intended as a poster, you see, but the missing ‘are’ would have made it work both ways, cretins), I can assure you that they are wrong – people who are anything like me would rather smear jam on their genitals and place them in a wasp’s nest than vote for the BNP. Sadly, they might also do better, however, as the ‘simple solutions’ offered by the right tend to appeal to people who would rather think the world is simpler than it is. Likewise UKIP and the others. But still, the smaller parties are not, I think, going to be the biggest change. Rather, I think we might see a huge surge in the numbers of independent candidates. Especially ‘celebrity’ candidates.

Of course, it would have been nice if we’d seen a bit more enthusiasm for independent candidates when both major parties decided it was a good idea to bomb part of the Middle East into vaguely radioactive dust so that the Americans could secure more control over oil. Having killed lots of people unnecessarily and spent billions, it’s only when the public find out that they have been ripped off for – what, a few quid each, so that people can have nice things like plasma TV’s? – that people really get upset. But then, it always seems that way.

Martin Bell, (although, perhaps really he shared the campaign credits with whoever made that famous suit) set the precedent for this when he ran against the disturbingly strange, sleazy and mentally challenged Tory Neil Hamilton in 1997. There have been a number of other independents elected since, though usually they were less well known (the possible exceptions here being that rather odd but well know fellow George Galloway, and the UKIP MEP success of Robert Kilroy Silk). Though Martin Bell was aided massively (and motivated) by the particular situation and notoriety of Neil Hamilton and his (frankly frightening) wife Christine, the fact that he was well known almost guaranteed his success. His victory showed that fame can be used to get you a seat. As Blair showed the same year, even just associating with the famous can score you votes, and he dutifully courted various stars who dutifully responded with various amounts of enthusiasm and confusion. The reverse-engineered version of this tactic was more recently used by bonkers buffoon Boris Johnson and the Conservatives to win the London Mayoral race, thereby proving that being well known (even if you are well known for being an arse) is more important than possessing qualities such as integrity, ability and sanity.

Who then, might, we get this time?

I’d love for Joanna Lumley to stand for Cameron’s supposedly safe seat. With her recent (and rather wonderful) championing of the Ghurkhas, she’d be unbeatable. Esther Rantzen (of TV’s ‘That’s Life!’ – a sort of comedy version of ‘Watchdog’ for those too young to remember it) may stand against Labour MP Margaret Moran (she who claimed £22,500 treating dry rot at her ‘second home’ – only 100 miles from her constituency) in Luton South. Lynn Faulds-Wood (who presents ‘Watchdog’, which, for those of you who are too old, is a not-funny version of ‘That’s Life!’) is thinking of standing – seemingly against anyone who deserves it. I’d suggest Gordon Brown’s seat in Dunfermline East. Interestingly, she might stand as a Lib Dem.

Which opens up another possibility. This situation seems destined to end in a cull of one type or another. A lot of new candidates are going to have to be selected. The trouble is that people don’t really know anything about their MP’s, they are used, primarily, to voting for parties. This is one of the problems faced by The Jury Team, as well as other minor parties and less-well-known independents. The personal qualities of the individual candidates are only now becoming conspicuous to the public. Parties might well de-select their currently corruption-encumbered candidates and choose to replace them with celebrities, minor, local or other wise. In order to prove that they are determined to clean up their act, they might choose to select people who are known, at least locally, for their integrity. The trouble there being that very few people take much notice of what goes on locally. Bigger name candidates, though, would be the ultimate prize, and might also battle the voter apathy that has plagued recent years. Could this be the new retirement dream of choice for celebs?

It is perhaps inevitable that, with our culture’s recent obsession with celebrities, that they should become intimately entangled with politics. Time for fear-mongering and irony – for though celebrities tend to be pretty left-liberal and cuddly, it’s really not universally true, and they also tend to be self-serving, arrogant and egotistical. Not exactly what you’d want in charge (though often what you get anyway). I’m not having a go at Esther, but let’s just think where this might go. Jamie Oliver as Minister for food, spitting, and mockney? He’d almost certainly win any seat he stood for, despite being a complete arse (see ’Boris Johnson’ above). Speaking of which, there are numerous sites devoted to the idea of making Jeremy Clarkson Prime Minister. He could almost certainly win if he picks the right seat. If he chats up the Tories, they might make him Transport Minister, and then the world will end.

Still, it could get worse. What celebrities might the BNP pick up? Jim Davidson? There are certain seats he might still win. More seriously, someone who appears to stand for ‘common sense’ and has a familiar face can win almost any seat, regardless of their actual ability, mostly because you don’t have to win a majority to get into power, and turnouts tend to be so small that smallish groups can have a large impact Lorrain Kelly or Fern Cotton could be your representative if they could convince a few students that it was funny and a fair proportion of stay-at-home mothers that they understood them. Soap stars have massive exposure, and can play to the appeal of their characters to bolster their support. Plus they feel ‘real’ because their characters are ‘normal’, despite the fact that they may be Silvia Young kids who have been in no other business for their whole lives.

With career politicians who’ll say anything and crusty old buggers who think they were born to rule, it’s difficult not to support almost any change in Parliament. People feel removed from their leaders, and getting people re-engaged with politics is imperative, even if this necessitates a vast re-arrangement of the system of government. I’d prefer it, however, if this focus was shifted away from personalities and onto issues, rather than increasing the focus on the characters involved. And remember, if I’ve thought of this, some sneaky bugger in Westminster will have. A few celebrity candidates can keep people on their toes, and can often bring one particular agenda right to the heart of government when it might have otherwise been ignored. But if there are lots, it might start to feel less like an election and more like the X Factor. I’m not sure that I want the cabinet to be formed by the cast of ‘grumpy old men/women’, regardless of how much it already looks like it is.

Of course, we haven’t had the House of Lords clearout yet. If there was ever anything that needed reforming from the ground up, it’s the Lords. I’ve heard some very clever ideas about what to do with the Lords one time or another, (and some damned idiotic ones about keeping it). For example – how’s about a minority of ‘citizen lords’ selected to serve for a year in much the same way that jury service operates? Alternatively (or complementarily), we could have appointed Lords that cycle every general election, but done on the basis of proportional representation (thereby giving us two democratically elected houses for the bargain price of one election). I might write upon this again. However, just for now, and purely for the sake of comedy, let me suggest this – the Lords is a better place for the moral conservatism and ‘common sense’ candidates to serve. One of our checks and balances that prevent misguided legislation from passing unchallenged into law. And it might well be quite good fun to collect our retired celebs together – after all, it has been a centuries-long traditional venue for weird-looking old busybodies to gather together and moan. And that will at least prevent someone from becoming Prime Minister just because we know what they look like.

Mind you, if he fancies running, I’d probably vote for Stephen Fry.

Here’s an interesting little site, courtesy of Stephen Fry on Twitter: http://votematch.co.uk

We all face a huge problem with political prejudice, not all of it our own, and I am no exception. Everyone carries around with them a little veil that covers their eyes and ears and subtly changes the information around them so that it appears to be in accordance with their expectations. With class loyalties, family traditions, and the pressure to conform with, whatever social group currently surrounds you, all coupled to the lack of any real social mobility, it’s a wonder that anyone ever manages to change their minds at all. Still, it gets worse. The information we receive upon which we are supposed to make these judgements is filtered, re-interpreted and spun by the media that presents information only in accordance with whatever agenda dominates the particular publication. Sometimes, such as in the case of European regulation, the ‘news’ reported is just absolute lies designed to press an agenda (phantom banana and cucumber straightness regulations spring to mind). Further, any achievement any government or institution makes are hardly ever reported despite all their efforts to the contrary, because good news sells less papers / grabs less viewers / attracts fewer subscribers than bad. Add to that the fact that governments themselves try to ‘spin’ the information they release, cover up more than is ever discovered by the journalists, make up statistics and information seemingly at will, and try to make moral decisions conform to the desires of lobby groups and business, and you might just get an idea of how unlikely it is that anything inside your head has any direct referent in the ‘facts’. Indeed, you might well be forgiven for thinking that there aren’t any facts at all, and that it’s all the same no matter who you vote for, because it’s just spin all the way down.

I’ve commented before on my opinions on the new generations of career politicians. It really is almost impossible to believe that it’s not all just bluff and rubbish, an abstract game of words and money. News reports focus on moral issues and sell better when their subjects are highly emotive – often beyond reason – all the time behaving as if it’s their duty to do this. My own relationship with The News was changed fundamentally by ‘The Day Today’ and ‘Brass Eye’ (if you haven’t seen them, look them up now rather than reading the rest of this – it’s a better use of your time), and I thought this might wake us all up. As always, though, we quickly forget, and a similar function is now being performed by Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe (likewise, if you haven’t seen them, look them up now rather than reading the rest of this – it’s also a better use of your time), albeit in a rather more direct manner. The recent ‘Expenses’ scandal is a case in point. Obsessive media attention on this issue has reached such a height that it’s even produced this bizarre load of cobblers from New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/05/science-tells-us-the-mps-must.html Ultimately, when Mervyn King gets to invent £125 Bn when he ‘thinks it’s necessary’ by simply ‘assuming it’s there’, some Tory idiot getting the public to pay to have the hedge around his helipad clipped hardly seems important (incidentally, I was told by a barman in my local that I am not allowed to spend even a mere £5 that I suggested we just ‘assumed was there’). Noteworthy, certainly, but the public are only so angry about it because, unlike MP’s, most of us plebs don’t have expense accounts to abuse. Did we really think that they didn’t take advantage of their expense accounts? I’m only shocked that someone didn’t try and bill us for hookers. The most reasoned voice I’ve heard on this, in fact, is Stephen Fry himself (despite how much those of you who follow him on Twitter know he regrets saying anything at all) – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8045869.stm, although I would like to point out that, if you’re an MP, as opposed to a journalist or entertainer, you surely must expect that the public would spit like a home-made incendiary if they ever found out charge them for the horse manure you put on your roses or to clean your moat (MOAT?), so you might be less cheeky. The real problem is not the hypocrisy of journalists but the unrealistic expectations both they and the MP’s themselves instil in the public consciousness by claiming that politicians are not just political leaders but moral leaders too.

And what was that he mentioned there? Ah yes, that brings me back to…

Votematch can’t get round all of this, but it cuts through some of the higher-impacted excrement. Those who take a very keen interest in politics and scrutinise the policies are unlikely to be overly surprised by the results, but almost everyone will find out something they weren’t aware of previously. I found out about an independent I hadn’t even known was running in my area. By forcing people to consider the individual issues rather than party loyalties, it lets you see which of the policies you agree/disagree with each party on, and consequently which might be actually be pursued if you vote for them. And fundamentally, at the core, it is these policies that we use to shape our world. Of course, it cannot prevent political prejudice from re-asserting itself long before you reach that polling booth. It can only increase the chances that you realise just what types of prejudice are making that mark upon the paper.

Time was, you see, that you could just set about protesters with riot gear to your heart’s content. Gas them, fire rubber bullets at them, charge with batons, shoot them down with water cannons, and generally beat them to a pulp as and when you felt like it. Then things changed. Perhaps it’s the change in the weather – everything seems hotter nowadays. Perhaps it’s the change of venue – those slick-looking glass towers are just more appealing to look upon than some dingy terraced street. But finally people are noticing police brutality. Is it the high-visibility jackets? I don’t think so. I think it’s four things, some of which are quite dark.

Firstly, the people we were used to seeing being beaten to a bloody pulp were the ‘right kind’ of people to beat. Specifically they were poor, rough-looking people. Miners, for example. The same papers who printed headlines criticising the police in their handling of the recent countryside march read ‘Scum miners’ etc when the size-ten-police-issue boot was on the other foot. Proto-commies and the poor are the kind of people that the police were somehow just allowed to beat. Rugger-buggers from Rugby are not. If you go to university, or own a horse, and you pronounce the letter H correctly, somehow it’s assumed that you get some kind of invisible protection from the Police. And if you ever found anything to protest about, they’d just politely tell you to tone it down a bit. The scenes from miner’s protests where it looked like some medieval battle - the king’s cavalry and infantry were being deployed to quell some peasant uprising – played to all those strong British images. In any circumstance from the war to the late eighties, the police could just blame ‘the rioters’ for starting it, regardless of what had actually happened, and half the population would collectively say ‘you know, I think the police have a very difficult job, and it’s easy to blame them when really whose to say what it’s like on the ground?’ regardless of whether this was right or wrong. Even when the poll tax protests turned nasty, it all seemed like it was the right way round – though surely there could be no clearer case of an unfair shift in taxation policy in recent years – because the interests of the rich were, it seemed being protected by the police from the poor. To paraphrase and bastardise Graham Green, those being beaten were still part of the beatable classes. Whether-or-not blame could clearly be established on either side, the working assumption held by large parts of the British public’s mind was that the rough-looking protestors were more likely to have instigated violence than the police, and this informed public perception and the media reports. When it turned out that half of the protesters against motorway expansion were undergraduates, however, people started to think about it a bit. Still, they thought, ‘they look like a bunch of dirty hippies, don’t they? The police still have a very difficult job, and we don’t know exactly what it was like on the ground…’ As outrage built about the Iraq war, people started to see that protesting against government policy was not just for the poor. No longer did they have a government that specifically protected the interests of the rich, but was capable of pleasing or displeasing almost anyone (except, perhaps, big business). Then we had the countryside alliance. And they didn’t look like poor people at all, even with a baton in their face. This was the countryside set. And now G20 has arrived, and everyone is at least capable of looking at the police in the same way, even if they don’t. The perspective of a man being beaten to the ground for no reason at all.

And, secondly, protestors were easier to blame too, because the cameras used to be deployed during or after the event. The ‘first blow’ was rarely caught, and the cameras and reporters stood on the outside. Now, the cameras are everywhere, in and amongst the crowd. Someone saw the first blow land. And it settles arguments without prejudice. It doesn’t eliminate misinformation or the possibility of error, but it helps an awful lot, as do information exchange systems offered by the internet. It’s more difficult for the police to close ranks and protects their own – likewise the protesters. In response, the police have tried to get back some anonymity. But a picture tells a thousand words, and eventually the pressure builds. I was once told about a riot that had happened at a festival – according to the man who I spoke to everything had gone wrong, there were no bands to play and everybody was restless. In came the police to move everyone off-site. They were feeling pretty worked up, but everyone was behaving themselves, it being a bit rowdy. Then, in his words, ‘One of the coppers just maced this kid for no reason’. Word got round and everything just kicked off.’ I didn’t know whether-or-not to believe him. If there’d been a video he could have shown me, though, that might have settled it once and for all.

Thirdly, we have more information. Public perception of the police themselves has gone through a sea-change in my lifetime. Guilford four; Birmingham six; that didn’t help. But more, as police corruption and bully-boy tactics have come more to light, we’ve started to see them for what they are – they’re just people. They are no more or less noble than the rest of us, and just as fallible. Further, as more and more people found that they wanted to do slightly criminal things (mostly drug-related, but often also politically related), they started to see police as people who could be an enemy, a force specifically designed to repress certain aspects of freedom. A necessary evil, as it were, with little or no place in any ideal society. The police could implement laws you agreed with, and protect you, but they could also pursue agendas you disagreed with, sometimes to the point of hitting you. This was easier to accept for some, not so easy for others. As the population became more educated, which always helps to grey moral issues, and started to be able to appreciate the roots of social problems, the police now seemed more like an emergency task force, or a pack of trained attack dogs, something that needed to be controlled and monitored. Not only that, but the police themselves had no particular moral authority of their own. Individual policemen were less likely to know the ins-and-outs of a given situation than the protestors, and both sides knew it. They started to look like they didn’t know whether-or-not what they were doing was right, but doing it anyway because they were ordered too. Which felt less like a collection of friendly helpful Bobbies, and more like a troop of soldiers.

And lastly, they lost faith in those that command the police and their intensions. If the British people could have believed that, regardless of the shortcomings of the police, if the people in charge of the police knew what was best – if the attack dog was under the control of a kind master – then everything could be ok. But nobody did. It was apparent under Thatcher that the government and the police hierarchy’s first loyalties were to themselves and their friends, and last to the British people. The corruption did nothing but grow for the next few years, and though a brief blip of trust arose once more with the advent of Blair, people lost faith in the people in power. So now, the police look like the private army of some corrupt minority who happen to be in charge. A scary thought, not helped by the masks, stab-proof vests and uniforms. And then, as if we needed to utterly destroy the reputation of the police further by means of their organisation and deployment, we have terrorism policy. When the police shoot innocent men in the head for no reason at all in the name of protecting us from terrorism, things start to look mightily shaky indeed

But that is not what they are. The police really are necessary, and, as an institution, they are not a pack of attack dogs. A decent, accountable police service is a necessity because we don’t live in an ideal society. But protest, and the freedom to protest without fear of violent repression from your own government is also a necessity because we do not live in an ideal society. The fact the police ranks are filled with aggressive young men trained to assume that any group of protesters is a riot in waiting is a sad indictment of the current state of the police service, but it is not their only function, it is not definitive of their role and it is not the only possibility for the institution. Neither are they defined by petty target-driven convictions, anti-terrorist over-reaction or the convenient framing of groups of Irishmen. Some of them still solve murders, and pursue rapists and try to solve a whole multitude of offences as best they can. And they still come round your house when there are a load of arseholes on your front lawn threatening to set fire to your car (thanks, guys). It is how we use the police, how we organise them, and what powers we give them that counts. But more, it is what we do not allow them to do that is most important. And when we see pictures of police beating someone to the ground, or smacking them in the face, our first thought should always be ‘that could be me’. And if we think ‘the police have a very difficult job’ it shouldn’t be because we want to excuse them for something, but because we are recognising a fact. Police should have a difficult job – they have the responsibility of protecting us, the citizens, and that is difficult. And if we suspect them of protecting something else – the interests of, say, the government – against the citizens, then we need to check that, and come down hard on it.

Evo Morales, much to the consternation of the Americans is determined to assert the rights of the indigenous peoples of Bolivia. His country’s mineral wealth and largely unexploited resources have long been eyed by the international business community with hand-rubbing glee. But they’re not going to get at them so easily, because Mr Morales is (gasp… shock! Horror!) a socialist.

He believes that Bolivia’s resources should benefit Bolivia. Despite the appallingly naïve trash you made have gleaned from the latest James Bond movie, or the opinions of international business, this is no disaster. I was lucky enough to be in Bolivia a few months after he won. It hummed with excitement and hope. And it needs hope. Hope and money. Lots of money. And they might just get it.

It seems that an otherwise useless-seeming stretch of salt-flat is just brimming over with Lithium. ‘So what?’, you might ask.

Well, engineers have recently developed fast-charging, lightweight batteries that might power everything from cars to mobile phones. Tech that means that the energy lost in translation between generation and hydrogen manufacture might not be lost. Technology that ties in well with KTM’s new electric dirtbike. The Tesla roadster. A billion gadgets here there and everywhere are going to require lithium ion batteries.

Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. Evo Morales is willing to let foreign companies come in to utilise the resource, but not in the standard way that global business is expecting. The history of Bolivia, and South America in general for that matter, is little but a lesson in exploitation. To this day the products of the labour (usually subject to horrendous conditions) and resources of much of South America line no pockets but those that exist between Armani suit cloth and white flesh. Not this time. Morales insists that if the companies looking to invest in the exploitation of the Lithium are going to get their hands on it, Bolivia must benefit. If you are going to use it to make batteries, he wants you to make them in Bolivia. If you are going to use it to build cars, Morales wants the cars to be made in Bolivia. For jobs, you see, and investment, and development, and to improve the standard of living of the people, instead of just letting the claws sink into the earth and the people and just tear away.

In other words, he’s doing what we’d do. I applaud him (with a nod towards the ever-present spectre of disappointment that hovers in my peripheral vision whenever I think anything positive about those who desire power).

The French car manufacturer talking to him yesterday told him that Bolivia was the new Saudi Arabia. Maybe., but we should never forget that whereas Bolivia is a democratic republic with a socialist president, Saudi Arabia is a monarchy saturated by religion. I know which one I’d pick to give all our money to this time.

After the last post’s rather serious rantiness, I feel it is my duty to amuse once more. It’s G20 time again, and the protestors are out once more, with just as much to complain about as usual, plus a whole lot more. Firstly, my favourite are the anti-tax haven protestors. Quite rightly they point out that vast amounts of tax are being avoided by the rich, at least £250 Billion a year, in fact. Probably more, if we’re honest. That would be enough to fund… well, just about anything, really. And we are not talking about taking money here, just taxing earned money from interest payments. If you then add in the amount dodged in everyday life (far, far more money than benefit fraud accounts for), and you have a nice, neat solution to the credit crunch. Don’t increase tax, just make sure that people pay the tax they should.

In Australia (and thanks to Richard for this one), an deservedly eminent judge (and I mean that – seemingly an actually great man) has got caught for being a bad boy. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7967982.stm. What should have been a £36 traffic fine has ruined his life and reputation as he tried to lie his way out of it. And then to cover the lie, he lied a bit more. Then dug and dug and dug and dug… We all lie. Most of us lie a lot, here and there, sometimes just for the fun and thrill of it. Even the most preaching moralists amongst us are careful to phrase things to their own benefit, or fail to tell the whole truth with fair regularity. Which is way the amusement this story generates has a bitter aftertaste. Truth be told, the whole truth is rarely told, and if it were, our lives would be revealed for the vulgar public fictions and comforting self-deceptions they always are.

Thousands of lives could be saved by a ‘magic bullet’ pill. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/the-polypill-medicines-magic-bullet-1658027.html This little cocktail of drugs could save thousands of lives a year, halving strokes and heart attack rates. And it’ll be cheap – very cheap. And that’s the problem. All 5 of the components of the ‘polypill’ (a betablocker to regulate the heart, a couple of blood pressure drugs, an ACE inhibitor to relax arterial muscles, and good old aspirin to stop clots forming) are long past patent expiration; therefore, these polypills aren’t profitable for the drug companies to manufacture. Money is the only reason these companies do anything – we have arranged it this way. Do not think for one minute that they care about peoples health. A lesson here, perhaps? Cue a huge campaign to have it produced and administered, then some sort of hideous panic when cancer rates go up, and people panic and stop taking it regardless of evidence. The next thing revealed to give you cancer? Chemotherapy, probably.

I think I might publish a study that proves that dream catchers give you cancer.

Talking about taking on the big boys, which I wasn’t check this out: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/spotify-declares-war-on-itunes-1658029.html. Spotify is something that was recommended to me recently by a friend, and… yep, as usual, I’ve played with it until I knew how to iuse it, then promptly forgot about it until today. I am well aware, however, that it is very good idea. Check it out, and screw iTunes – screw them and their proprietorial attitude towards the information and equipment you own. Don’t tell me they’re any better than Microsoft – they’re just better at convincing you that they are cool. And relax.

And finally:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/30/cow_fart_armageddon_thwarted_by_fish_oil/. Nice. I’ll have the guilt-free steak, please. To go with my carbon-offset magic tree petrol, my green car insurance and my carbon-compensated holiday. You know, if I try hard enough to ignore the fact that every single thing I do helps to bring on the inevitable ecological apocalypse regardless of my efforts, I might not feel very guilty at all.

Next time – look forward to why we are all doomed again, and why you don’t ‘deserve’ anything.

We are getting used to being watched. Indeed, it is held up as being desirable. Being famous for nothing but being constantly watched – and being constantly watched is all it means to be famous now – reached it high zenith this week as Jade Goody, possibly the greatest example of this, died, a strange hero. From the moment she wandered confusedly onto the screen in Big Brother to the point of death, without ever having a chance to fade into obscurity, she has summed up out obsession with recognition and fame. Plucked for no reason at all from the seething mass of us, her very limitations became her greatest assets, for if she could be revered, any of us could. A James Dean for the age of indiscriminate fame – ‘Club 27’s most puzzling, and most arbitrarily selected, member. My, my, hey, hey, etc. I hear there’s going to be film.

I’m not entirely sure that Jade enjoyed her fame, and I know that I would find that life unutterably intolerable. I fancy, in fact, that she sat uncomfortably beneath that lens, less a performer caught in a spotlight than an ant beneath a magnifying glass. It is those of us who recognise how awful Jades situation was that often blasted her cruelly. As usual, some are now hypocrites, praising her, others have fallen into silence, fearful to speak in the face of suffering and death. But death is inevitable, and we should recognise that always – speak about people only if you have the bravery to say those things as they die. Do not let death have that power. In both of these cases, the critics have been blinded to the point. Jade‘s situation was not of her own making. You can like or dislike someone without wishing death and suffering on them, and you can hate a situation, hate a symbol, without hating the person. Especially if, like Jade, you have little control over it.

I never liked Jade as a person, from what little I knew of her. It does not matter. Even if I had adored her, I would have hated the role she played. A role not so much chosen, as it was accidentally acquired, and then made purposefully difficult for her to give up. By turns revolting and fascinating, dull and then compelling, sanitised and manipulated, and then sometimes utterly raw. But like all cultural phenomena, Jade was part of something much bigger. The story of our everyday lives becoming entertainment for others. She was one more thing that made us feel that there was nothing unusual about being constantly watched. That, in fact, we should be.

Myspace smelled a little like nothing but a chance for self-aggrandisement, a web-page designed for nothing more than a 24-7 promotion for me, me, me. It was the kind of thing I rolled my eyes at. How could I possibly be interested in what you are listening to right now, and how much you like statues of gothic fairies and Marvel’s Phoenix Saga? Many of my friends refused to join in. They couldn’t see the point. Some people got careers out of it, and then they started to see. Myspace was more than just narcissism, it could also be a rolling CV of self. It still seemed a little too Lilly Allen for some though.

But with  Facebook, it was all somehow more acceptable and less vulgar. Awfully this was because, in many cases, you had to be on Facebook for work reasons, or because you studied at a certain institution that used it for communication. Universal adaptation meant that it wasn’t just for  chavs,  narcissists, paedophiles, desperate social climbers and the trendy crowd. The horror I feel every time an image is tagged to me (internal narrative – ‘Oh god, how pissed was I? Who took this without my permission? What was I doing at the time? How long is going to take me to live this one down? Is this image going to haunt me forever?’) is thus massively overwhelmed by the fact that you are made to feel as if you are missing out if you don’t interact with it. If I’m honest, I think Facebook has actually cost me more in heartache than it’s brought me in joy. I am not the only one. Several of my friends have complained to me that Facebook is something they felt is forced upon them, and makes them horribly paranoid. You are not forced to interact with it, it is true, but it is damned difficult to avoid.

Then we have Twitter. Newer, less serious. Be ‘connected’ to people you actually have no connection with at all. Feel like you are part of their lives by monitoring their movements from moment to moment. I am so addicted to the News, believe it or not, that I can’t resist Twitter. It comes from constantly fretting about nuclear war as a child, I think. Most people realise, however, that the idea behind it is awful, it’s how it has been used and developed that makes it tolerable.

But it is stranger and deeper than we realise. Public displays of everyday life have changed and eroded our notions regarding privacy and personal growth. These networking sites (remember how much you hated the first person who told you they’d gone to university to ‘network’? At first I didn’t even know what they meant, then, when I found out, I wanted to mince them down to feed to people who would have valued the chance at a decent education for itself. What awful people. I still hate that term ‘networking’ – and it truly is the genealogical root of the thoughts that form Facebook, Myspace and Twitter), are not tools for us to use. They are the visible parts of a system that drives our actions for its own ends, a symptom of a malaise by which our existences are run by abstracted mechanisms. Mechanism that give us cause to do things in the way that religions or political and personal beliefs used to. At some point we stopped seeing travelling, partying and existing as ends in themselves, but as things to do to collect experiences, butterfly-like, and capture them in these giant electronic pinboards; as if life doesn’t happen, or even exist, unless it is recorded.

In this system, experiences are like exams, they exist only so that we can be seen to have done them. It is a system with universal available access points that you carry everywhere with you labelled ‘Blackberry’ or ‘Google’. Friends are hollow things, each merely a  nexus for possible career development.

This system is the most awful existence you can imagine. It is a pauper‘s version of Jade Goody‘s life where we cannot each afford Max Clifford to organise it for us, but must do it ourselves, constantly terrified that we’re going to slip up and bring it all crashing down.

Also very much in the news this week – Google  Street  View. Remarkable to me not for it’s disregard for privacy, but for its utter, total, and all-consuming pointlessness. Incredibly expensive and wasteful of time, and degrading and invasive as far as millions of people are concerned and… erm.. what does it do? Why would you want to use it? It has long been the case that you could look at places of interest around the world through Google Maps for years. Why do you want to look at council houses in Swansea? I think that it ‘ s just to attain a sense of completeness. All of the world must be pictured and recorded, integrated into one hugely efficient, hyper-real mechanism. A meaning machine. A reality engine.

A few weeks ago we had Google Latitude. Opt in, for now. I’m sure, a few years ago, Google Street  View would have had to be opt-in. I’m not sure that this will end until you can get a live camera giving you feed from any angle on any person at any time. Laugh and roll your eyes if you want to – then think about how easily we’ve come to accept photographs of us being distributed to all of our friends by others. Now the ownership of these can be contested by Facebook. Goggle  Street  View can already, I’m sure, be integrated with a GPS mapping service. I’m going to adopt the burkha.

But now this narcissistic information-vomiting festival has reached the start of it’s inevitable consequences. Now there are proposals to let the government use Facebook to monitor us for ‘suspicious behaviour’.

If you have nothing to hide, what are you worried about, right? These are counter-terrorism measures, after all. A prison officer was sacked recently for having criminal friends on Facebook… surely a good thing? Not in my opinion, no.

Firstly, I have enjoyed the anonymity I was born into. I hate this new feeling I have that everyone is watching me all the time. It’s like living in a village, and I’d hoped we’d never have to revert to that’s state. Secondly, I value freedom of speech. More than almost anything, actually. And part of freedom of speech is the ability to call Christian’s fascists if I want to, or scream ‘death to the west’ at the top of my lungs if I like. Or protest. Or politically agitate. Or be a member of the horrid BNP if I like, and make speeches on their behalf if I want to. Unless you’ve actually hurt somebody, I don’t see any reason why you should be monitored. I’d like to live in a free country if I can (which means that fairly soon, I’m going to have to move), without being monitored for no good reason. All that information being stacked up can only have one possible use – to be made to topple onto your head the second you make a mistake.

I am proud to say that almost everything I do or say is potentially suspicious. Anything worth doing or saying is. If you do something, and it isn’t at least potentially suspicious from the perspective of society or government, you are wasting your time. Break out your pinstripe grey suit, umbrella and bowler hat. Buy a four-by-four, have six children, get your wife the twin-set and pearls and go skiing once a year, because you, sir, yes you, are yet another of middle England’s fascist footsoldiers.  If you can’t see why your constant strangulation of this planet and it’s people to wring the last drop of resources and money into your greedy little mouth makes you a greater criminal than any teenage mugger; if you honestly think that you are moral simply because you blindly do as you are expected to; if you think that the protection of the wealth of the rich means that ever other person must be dehumanised to the point where we can bomb them for little more reason than to get us cheaper petrol; if you think that you know what is right for everybody, and that those that disagree or want to live differently should be punished; if you quietly shake your head with discomfort and disappointment whenever you see a man with long hair or a woman with a shaved head (just so long as they aren’t looking); and if you just want everyone to be nice – nice, and quiet… go ahead.  If all of these things are true, then go ahead – in full and certain knowledge of what you are, tell me that only those who have something to hide fear this legislation.

Welcome to your future. It will be very quiet, and you will be afraid to say anything, thankful that your lives are so dull and uninspiring that nobody would ever want to watch you. Let’s hope the rest of them don’t find out about what happened that night you got really pissed, eh?

What we all did to Jade, and what we continue to do to ourselves voluntarily from moment to moment, is effecting us all in terms of what we are prepared to accept. Unfortunately for you, you can’t afford Max Clifford. People at large are only going to here about what you do when it’s awful. When you make that mistake. Already people are afraid to step ‘out of line’ where once they roamed freely and without worry. They are afraid to fight for their rights, to go on protests, even just to write or publish material like this. They are afraid, for god’s sake, to join already existing unions, fearing that they will be seen as ‘troublemakers’ by their employers. (these, lest we forget, being the institutions that got us holidays, fair pay and decent working conditions and a whole host of other things we now consider normal. I could write for hours on that one). People are (rightly or wrongly) afraid to publish and say what they think, afraid to protest, afraid to reveal anything real of themselves. They tortured innocent people in Guantalomo Bay. And most of us knew, and did nothing. Why? Is there part of us that knows that if it can happen to them, it might happen to us? This is not more freedom that these structures are providing. It is a symptom and a cause of isolation and paranoia.

You need to fear your government, because they are no longer afraid of us. If it told you that there was a small group of people who had the power to do anything at all they liked to you or anyone else, and that it was in their interest to convince you to agree with everything they said, you might rightly think that I was paranoid. Unless, of course, you already knew that I was describing the government. Of course you should be suspicious of them. It is your duty as a citizen to monitor and critique those who think they are fit to rule us. You wouldn’t let them read your mail, so why let them read you email? Yes, your address is a matter of record, as is your phone number, so anyone can, in theory, send a letter to you or telephone you. But you’d want the contents of those communications to be private, wouldn’t you? Would you if they said it was to prevent terrorism and organised crime? Who the hell do they think they are, and how stupid do they think we are?

ITS UP TO US. I think now that most Facebook users have heard of someone who has left their account. We all could. There’s a petition too, both on Facebook itself and on the ten downing street page. Go sign it. It is this quietness that we have that will take away our lives and nothing more.

Why might Lars Ulrich, the drummer of Metallica, think that
I own half of Yorkshire? Well… because I told him I did as a joke, and I don’t
know whether-or-not he knew I was joking. Which singular strangeness only begins
to describe the weirdness of yesterday in the vaguest of terms. As narrative
cliché would have it, it all started with a phonecall.

My friend had won some tickets to a Metallica gig in an
online competition, and was told to get himself to the venue a three of hours
later. The venue being in Newcastle, two hour’s drive away. If he got there by
five, we got to meet the band. Not knowing anyone else who has ever liked
Metallica that can get there in time, and not fancying the drive much himself
anyway, he asked me if I’d like to go. I haven’t really listened much to
Metallica since my teens, but big bombastic rock bands like that are always
excellent live, so I said yes, showered, shaved and jumped in the car.

It’s only really at this point that it starts to occur to me
what’s about to happen. Metallica are the foundation rock upon which the brooding
and expansive church of modern metal is founded. They are unlike any other band
in the world, a huge institution, really. Whether you like Metal or not – I still
like to dip my ears in to the heavy stuff now and again, a flirtatious relationship
that will doubtless annoy the more evangelical types of all persuasions, but I
care not – Metallica are a group that command a certain level of respect. Some
of the lyrics are a bit daft, and the whole thing has a rather indulgently
juvenile and unashamedly male feel to it, and this puts some people off, but in
many ways this is one of its greatest strengths. Metal, and rock music in
general, has had a tendency to disappear into tail-swallowing pretension for as
long as it has existed. When it doesn’t, it has tended to be so silly and
shallow that it can be easily dismissed into amusing cliché. Metallica has trod
this fine line for years, with varying degrees of success, but they have never
entirely toppled one way or another. They can do an album with an orchestra and
get away with it somehow, yet still jump about singing a song about
difficulties falling asleep. The reason they can get away with it is two-fold.
Firstly, in terms of musicianship, they write tight riffs with clear, driving
themes, (and play them impeccably – they really are very serious about it).
These are peppered with interesting rhythmic breaks and compelling solos, and
accented well by Hetfield’s voice; but at the core it is this strong rhythmic
work, that keeps you engaged. Secondly, it is the sheer joy of it. They put on
a fantastic show, know how to deal with a crowd, and how to motivate and focus
their fans without having to just distract them. It’s impossible not to want to
join in. Their stage presence is awesome, and you watch the band, not the
lightshow. It’s music to join in with rather than just listen to. You move and
mosh with it, pump your hands in the air, chant, scream and sing along with it.
If you ever put the album on and sit their quietly trying to analyse the music,
you’re missing the point. Get caveman – those energetic, darkly aggressive
revelry bits that come drifting up to the surface when you hear heavy rock –
those are part of you too. Those feelings are not intrinsically bad. You don’t
have to do it all the time, but let yourself be in that way now and again.
That’s what Metallica is for.

We meet a little group of people who are going to meet the
band outside – they’re all seriously hardcore fans. My friend looks like a
part-timer by comparison. I’m only just stealthy enough to pass, and decide
early on to keep my gob shut lest my lack of obsession expose me as someone who
doesn’t have ‘Metallica’ tattooed upon every neuron (and is thereby undeserving
of such honour). A helpful guy runs off to get us programs, so that we can have
something to sign. We’re taken to a room full of odd-looking cases – it turns
out to be the Metallica laundry room, and the things that look like amp cases
actually contain washing machines. We are told a few rules by a man I can only
assume is the Metallica tour manger. He’s so efficient, direct, authoritative
and firm that I feel like a private soldier trying to follow the instructions
of a five-star general. Most of which involve standing still and waiting. It’s
good that he covers that so thoroughly, because there is going to be a lot of
it. Some of the people in the room are clearly massive Metallica fanboys, quivering,
one seeming excited right from the core – a deep excitement that only normally
manifests momentarily in children. They want this moment to make them feel
fulfilled. Others more serious-minded enthusiasts, feeling deeply honoured to
meet their heroes, one guy has picture from a gig that Metallica played in the
eighties in Newcastle, that he had attended. I feel like a fake, and have to
keep reminding myself that ‘earning’ experiences like this is a ridiculous lie
that fans tell themselves. It wouldn’t stop them hating me, though, even though
I have actually seen Metallica before, and enjoyed them, the mere fact that I’m
capable of bringing my critical faculty to bear upon the band would be enough
to find my corpse in the Tyne in the morning, flesh mostly gnawed away from the
bone.

We patiently await the whim of the band’s dispositions. I’m
closes to the door that they emerge from. It’s all quite awkward from my
perspective, and I think from theirs too. The new boy of the band Rob Trujillo,
comes out first. He’s immensely likable, and seems pretty relaxed, but I really
don’t know what to say to him beyond ‘alright man, how are you doing?’ The
whole thing just feels a bit awkward. James Hetfield’s next – he is a big lad,
likeable, if a little intimidating. I exchange a few more awkward words. Some
of the others ask him a bout tattoos and such. I know enough about him to only
ask awkward questions, and so refrain once again. He leaves and eventually Kirk
Hammett turns up, we exchange a few more strained words where I accidentally
answer a question wrongly and from that point neither of us knows what to say.
Kirk seems the least comfortable with the whole thing. I can’t say as I blame
him. It’s one of the oddest situations you can put two people in, and the assumed
disparity between us informs our interaction. I know his first name. They
recognise the futility of even asking for mine. I am one of the little people,
they are walking gods of rock, shinning stars which I should feel grateful to
simply behold. This is the assumption of the situation, not, I feel, either of
the people involved; this is the way it has been arranged, and there’s nothing
that my self-respect, nor their humility, could possibly do overcome that.

Then I turn to see Lars Ulrich has popped his head through
the door. He decides to amuse himself, me and the others by engaging me in a
jokey manner. He immediately breaks into character as a Metallica fan, and asks
me. ‘Is this where I come to see the band? Are they here?’ I do my best to play
along and reply. ‘Yeah, Kirk’s in here.’

Staying in character he says ‘Oh, is he the drummer? I want
to see the singer. Has he been here yet?’

I giggle, pleased to have been invited into a joke, and cock
my head. ‘Sorry, mate, you’ve missed him. He was here a while ago, but he’s
gone now.’

‘Oh damn it…’, and so it goes on. Eventually he breaks
character and enters, but the banter continues. ‘So, this is like, the oldest
building in England right?’, he says, now playing the idiot American character.
I’m not quite quick enough to keep up and mumble something I can’t remember.

‘So, is this your backyard?’, he asks me. I don’t realise
that this is just his way of asking me if I’m from Newcastle, and think he’s
still making jokes.

So I reply, ‘No, but I do own half of Yorkshire.’

Had he been American, I’d have probably never made the joke,
worried about the fact that he wouldn’t get it, but he’s Danish. He must have
got that I wasn’t being serious, surely? We have a little conversation about
the inaccuracies in the film ‘Braveheart’, and then he asks me if my ancestors
we the ones who helped to defend the walls against Wallis, and I laugh it off
saying that I have no idea about my family that far back. It is only at this
point that I realise that he might have taken my ‘owning half of Yorkshire’
comment seriously. Lars moves onto my friend, and I’m left to ponder. He gives
everyone a fair turn, is very likable and amusing, and then goes off to do his
thing.

And then the girl in charge told us something else we hadn’t
known. The tickets we’d won gave us one more special privileges. There were
four of us that would get to ‘walk the band out’. By which they meant that we’d
walk them from this oddly custodial little antechamber to the edge of the stage
through a kind of tunnel of fans held back by barriers. We were told to go off
and watch the support acts for a while (as this is Metallica, of course, one of
the ‘support acts’ is Machine Head – a band that can fill large venues all by
themselves), then present ourselves at the backstage door at half-passed eight.
I wonder for a moment if I should give my place to one of the hardcore fans,
then consider how unusual an experience this is going to be for me and dismiss
the notion as ridiculous. Nobody should pass up something like this. Play the
cards that are dealt you.

It was certainly the oddest thing to happen to me for quite
some time. We arrived backstage at the appointed time and spend the next twenty
minutes dodging crew as they move huge quantities of equipment about with a
mixture of muscle, shouting and controlled aggression. We then await the band. Again
Lars is the one to try and put us at our ease. The others are all game-face.
Kirk does a few press-ups. James some kind of meditative prayer. We are handed
torches, and are told the rules once again, of which there are few. We still
don’t know exactly what we are about to do. I keep thinking – does Lars think I
actually own half of Yorkshire? The band goes into a huddle, crouched down,
dedicate the gig and focus. It’s an oddly private thing, and I feel like a
terrible voyeur. Then we’re off.

We are mixed in with the band and security, trotting along,
and then suddenly all is screaming and flashing lights. Hands from the crowd
reach out and grasp at me. They want to make contact with Metallica, but can’t
and I am a confusing proxy they can reach, not the right thing, but in the
right place. It’s exhilarating, strange, and more than a little frightening. It’s
briefness and intensity, it is stamped upon me like a series of still
photographs. I really don’t understand how, doing that every night, the band
are as sane as they are.

Then we watch the first three tunes from within the barriers
before the pyro effects mean that they have to dump us back out into the crowd.
It was intense, it was joyful, and I appreciated it greatly. The rest of the
gig passes as these things do. A mixture of wonderfully teenage manly
excitement and the Nuremburg Rally. I owe my friend a debt of thanks, and the
price of a programme. I also owe the Metallica boys, and their management team
and everyone else a thank-you too, for letting me see a brief snapshot of the
madness. And perhaps, just maybe, I owe Lars an explanation.

For me it all started with that falling statue of Sadam Hussein during the most recent Gulf War. I, along with millions of others watched them pull that statue over. I watched as the crowd turned nasty when they idiotically tried to tie the stars and stripes over his face, but then the fun came. It topped over and the Iraqis jumped on it and started hitting it with their shoes.  Classic footage. I was told by those that know that its an old Arab tradition. I thought at the time that we in the west should adopt it. And seemingly, we have.

Then Muntadar al-Zaidi threw his shoes at Bush during a press conference in Iraq. I loved that. I mean, I really loved that. Only a shame that Bush is so good a dodging stuff – still, the point is made by the throw, not the impact (sorry, idiotic right-wing Americans – throwing shoes in not attempted murder unless they have grenades in them. You’d only kill someone by throwing a shoe at them by accident – a really very freakish accident). If you’d like to relive that rather wonderful moment, here’s a link – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7782884.stm.

Now Wen Jiabao (Chinese premier, in case you don’t know) has suffered a similar fate whilst giving a speech at Cambridge. Despite the annoying (and rather embarrassing, internationally) stereotypically Cambridge ‘privileged-brats-messing-about-in-a-cap-and–gown’ flavour to it all (link – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7866636.stm), I thoroughly approve.

Yes, it’s the latest (well, if you live where I do) and most wonderful way to show that you despise someone – throw your shoes at them! In England we have a couple of traditions regarding flour and eggs, and custard pies. We’re not the only one who like that last one – the Belgians like it too. Remember Brian Keegan and Remy Belvaux? No? I bet you remember when they smacked Bill Gates with a custard pie, though (if not, here’s a link – http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MSyAZO2v8kY). I bet you remember John ‘Pie Bulimia’ Prescott take those eggs to the face too. Relive that here – http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JhCc2f53v0w. I still like all these, and I wouldn’t want them to stop. Pies are especially good. After being briefly embarrassed by you, your victim can eat your projectile to help them feel better. There really is something more overtly political about shoe-throwing, though, and it’s not just the Arab tradition. It conjures ideas regarding placing of someone beneath you, in the dirt of the ground, amongst the debris and filth of the street. They are common objects too, sudden impositions of everyday reality hurtling towards those that would set themselves apart – and the more expensive their suit and haircut, the better these contrasts seem.

Throwing non-lethal projectiles is really a very good form of protest. How much did you enjoy it the last time you saw some pompous arse get walloped in the chops with a snowball? I hope it was mid-sentence – that’s the best moment. It gets the point across, but better than that, it also makes your opponent look foolish – by the way that they choose to handle it. A ‘Big Johnny P’ punch to the face reaction told us a lot about the man. More than anything else, it’s the humanising of them that’s important. These are just people. Like you. They are not Gods or Superheroes, nor do they have any more right to tell you what to do and how to be than anyone else. And it shows that your side of the argument has a sense of humour. It’s a punchline. Spiritually similar in delivery as a bomb to Bahgdad, but with nobody actually getting hurt. And the sillier and less harmful it is, (and the worse and more disproportionate the reaction), the better all this is demonstrated.

This ties in rather well with the weather, I’d say. What better non-lethal weapon than the snowball? And with our ludicrously pathetic (actually, rather shameful) lack of coping with the weather, we have some time on our hands. So – stop whining about the weather like you don’t have a lovely comfy centrally-heated home. I have a much better way for you to spend your time.

Are you at a loose end today? Are you ‘snowed in’ ? (If you live in London, this probably translate to you as ‘has more than a millimetre of snow settled yet?’ – I think The City of London has a total of one snowplough and three kilos of salt to share amongst you all). Well… you’re not working now, are you? Get a pair of gloves on. Put a nice warm coat on. Think of someone you don’t like very much who lives within walking distance. Preferably someone in the public eye. A politician, ideally. Or a banker – they seems like the best target at the moment. Pop stars… no… CELEBRITY CHEFS. They really are a very annoying bunch (message to celebrity chefs: You just cook quite well. You are not Jesus). Go and find them. They’ll turn up for work, I’ll bet you. Pelt them with snowballs. Take some pictures while you do it, then get the video up on You Tube or some equivalent asap. Fantastic. Now – I realise not all of us a going to succeed, but if enough of us try, then we’ll get all the most annoying one. You know: David Cameron. Gordon Ramsey, Jim Davidson, Boris Johnson, Peter Mandelson (oh, doesn’t he just make you want to claw your own eyes out every time you accidentally catch sight him?), Jeremy Clarkson… that idiot ‘Howard’ who sings chirpy little songs about finance on behalf of the Halifax; you know the type.

So let’s start a tradition. Every time it snows, these smug buggers will suffer. And you’ll feel better too. Eventually they might realise that they aren’t all they think they are. Or not. Either way, you’ll feel better, and you’ll be giving people all over the world a good laugh too. And the worst that can happen is that you’ll have gone for a walk. If you get bored, why not start a snowball fight in the middle of town?

Oh, and when the snow melts and you all have to go back to work, don’t worry if the opportunity to throw something just falls on your lap. Most of us, most of the time, have a pair of shoes at our disposal.

Apologies for the lateness of this post. Tech problems and general business.

Today Israel tries to enter talks to start bringing an end to the awfulness in Gaza, whilst a UN compound it has shelled (probably with ‘white phosphorus’ rounds that are banned by international convention from being used anywhere near civilian populations, or, indeed, in and built-up areas at all) burns. In light of this, it seems foolish to talk about anything else. Yet I am.

I intended to write apiece about the possible opening of British courts to television. For the record, I think that turning peoples lives into entertainment is appalling, and can only lead to the persecution and destruction of people innocent and guilty alike. A court system has to be totally anonymous to have any kind of integrity at all. Sensationalism has no place in making fair judgements. It can only lead to people being judged twice – once in court, and then again in the court of public opinion. It’s awful that this happens already to a greater or lesser degree by means of the tabloids. Televised trails can only make this worse.

But something else has happened today that’s made me sit up a little and smile the kind of grin that only a cynicism fathered by constant disappointment can produce. There are many ways to understand politics – lots of competing theories and trends, some of which are simultaneously good ways of analysing things, sometimes bad. Here’s one way of looking at it that I think might be useful. It is, sadly, not the only way to lead yourself to the same conclusion.

During the eighties, you got the feeling in the UK that one side of parliament (the Conservatives) was populated by people who had gone into politics as a career because they thought they ought to be in charge, whilst the other (Labour) was largely made up of people who’d got into politics because they feared what would happen if they didn’t. Ex trade-unionists and socialist firebrands mixed with genuinely concerned, principled men (and a few rum buggers, doubtless). Sure, they became jaded, and some of them certainly didn’t seem equal to the task, but you at least got the impression that they gave a damn. But the conservatives, with their arrogant swagger and two-faced morality (perhaps because of it) were the party that consistently won. The people didn’t want integrity, concern and principal. They wanted authority and professionalism. They wanted their politicians to appear slick, and didn’t seem to care that much that they were almost the definition of corruption and self interest.

Enter Tony Blair, spin, and the career politician. The heritage of Maggie and her despicable, slimy little gang of opportunist and liars was this: That people had steadily being joining the Labour party for much the same reason that people had long been joined the Tory party. They were graduates who’d decided to have a ‘career’ in politics, in much the same way that they might have gone into banking or law. People who no longer saw success in terms of pursuing policies that they truly thought was worthy and necessary, but in terms of promotion and the raw success of the party they ‘worked for’ in terms of votes and majorities. A steady trickle for a couple of decades became a flood in the late eighties and early nineties. And because of the way the party was restructuring itself to make itself more electable (i.e. more like the Tory party) meant that people like this were promoted. They didn’t care about anything in particular – they didn’t even care what they said in public. New Labour Inc soon had its board. Soon, in comparison, even the Tories seemed to be a species less professional. So successful was this, in fact, that now the Tories have been forced to restructure to copy Labour, and are now being led by possibly the two most insincere men in England.

But the upshot of all this is that we now have nobody worth voting for. There seems to be an absolute absence of any kind of integrity at all in the houses of parliament. Perhaps always was an illusion, to a greater or lesser extent. I don’t think principal ever been spread as awfully thin across the seat s of the commons as it is now, though. I am left with wondering whether-or-not it’s better to have principals I disagree with rather than no principals at all. Not a pleasant place to be, and it takes away all of the plesure I might get from hearing people say the right things when I strongly suspect that they are saying them for the wrong reasons. I suspect that even they no longer know whether-or not they believe what they are saying. It has ceased to matter. The career is all. Whenever I hear one of the members of the house issue a statement of dubious sincerity, it seems to simply add yet more mass to the weight of my disgust. Like today.

Let’s imagine for a minute that you are one of these ambitious career politician in the UK. You know that your government is essentially only ever going to follow the policies laid out by the American administration with regard to foreign affairs. After suffering under the yoke of the policies of a Texan imbecile and his hawkish cronies for a decade, it looks as though the incoming president might finally be bringing the odd principal to the table. An opportunity to discredit the decisions made by your leader, curry favour with public opinion (that saw the ‘War on Terror’ as a ludicrous and counter-productive exercise from the start) and identify yourself with the higher moral good.

I think, if you were, you might very well say something like this:

From The Guardian:

“The foreign secretary, David Miliband today argues that the use of the “war on terror” as a western rallying cry since the September 11 attacks has been a mistake that may have caused “more harm than good”.

In an article in today’s Guardian, five days before the Bush administration leaves the White House, Miliband delivers a comprehensive critique of its defining mission, saying the war on terror was misconceived and that the west cannot “kill its way” out of the threats it faces.

British officials quietly stopped using the phrase “war on terror” in 2006, but this is the first time it has been comprehensively discarded in the most outspoken remarks on US counterterrorism strategy to date by a British minister.

In remarks that were also made in a speech today in Mumbai, in one of the hotels that was a target of terrorist attacks in November, the foreign secretary says the concept of a war on terror is “misleading and mistaken”.

“Historians will judge whether it has done more harm than good,” Miliband says, adding that, in his opinion, the whole strategy has been dangerously counterproductive, helping otherwise disparate groups find common cause against the west.

“The more we lump terrorist groups together and draw the battle lines as a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists or good and evil, the more we play into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common,” Miliband argues, in a clear reference to the signature rhetoric of the Bush era. “We should expose their claim to a compelling and overarching explanation and narrative as the lie that it is.”

“Terrorism is a deadly tactic, not an institution or an ideology,” he says.

He argues that “the war on terror implied a belief that the correct response to the terrorist threat was primarily a military one – to track down and kill a hardcore of extremists”. But he quotes an American commander, General David Petraeus, saying the western coalition in Iraq “could not kill its way out of the problems of insurgency and civil strife”.

Instead of trying to build western solidarity against a shared enemy, Miliband argues it should be constructed instead on the “idea of who we are and the values we share”.

He goes on to say that “democracies must respond to terrorism by championing the rule of law, not subordinating. It is an argument he links directly with the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. “That is surely the lesson of Guantánamo and it is why we welcome president-elect Obama’s clear commitment to close it.”

After the Al Qaida attacks of 11 September 2001, the Bush administration presented the threat of a global terrorist onslaught as justification for pre-emptive military action, long-term detention without trial and severe interrogation techniques widely denounced by human rights groups as torture. The incoming Obama administration is expected to avoid using the term “war on terror” and adopt a more multilateral and less military-focused approach to global threats.

British officials are signalling, in increasingly public ways, that they cannot wait for the new team to take office next Tuesday, and wave goodbye to an eight-year administration with which they felt increasingly ill at ease, particularly following the departure of Tony Blair in 2007.

Miliband said last night that the incoming administration’s proposed use of “smart power” meshed with his arguments. “The new administration has a set of values that fit very well with the values and priorities I am talking about,” he said during a visit to Amethi, northern India.

Asked whether he had not left it late in the Bush era to make his criticism, the foreign secretary said British officials had stopped thinking in terms of a single war on terror more than two years ago, and had been putting a “more comprehensive approach” into practice.

British officials said the timing of the speech was dictated more by the Mumbai attacks than Bush’s departure, but added that the transition in Washington meant the language could be less cautious than it might otherwise have been.

UK-US relations have been particular sour in recent days after Washington reneged on a pledge to back a largely British-drafted UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The White House over-ruled US diplomats after a demand from the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert.”

Prince Harry’s racist remark about a Pakistani member of his army platoon has prompted widespread criticism.

The prince issued an apology after the News of the World published a video diary in which he calls one of his then Sandhurst colleagues a “Paki”.

Oh my. Wow. Really? Well, yes, It’s on video.

Cabinet minister John Denham said it was “offensive”, while the Ramadhan Foundation called the prince a “thug”.

Indeed he is. Now the question I have is this – if you did that, would your friends ever forgive you? Even if you told them it was a joke (not that merely finding it funny makes it that much better)? How long before you forgive the prince, then? Well, lets see, shall we, maybe he’s got a good excuse…

St James’s Palace said he had used the term “Paki” as a nickname about a friend and without any malice.

Oh really? Presumably, then, he’s referred to as ‘Cracker’, then and he has two other friends called ‘Nig-nog’ and ‘Raghead’ – toether they are ‘platoon ironic racism? Pull the other one – it has bells on it.

The prince filmed parts of the video and in another clip, he is heard calling another cadet a “raghead”.

I stand corrected. Clearly ‘Raghead’ is indeed a close personal friend. As are ‘Wog’, ‘Dago’ and ‘Wop’.

He had to apologise in 2005 for wearing a swastika armband to a party, which offended many Jewish people.

In all fairness, that was just poor taste. I doubt if he was actually being anti-semetic there. It really isn’t the same. ‘Paki’ and ‘Raghead’, however, might be better qualified to answer that question than me, though.

‘Unfortunate timing’

when, exactly, would it have been a good time to call people ‘Paki’ and ‘Raghead’? The 50’s, perhaps? When it was all just jolly good fun? Oh no, it wasn’t jolly good fun even then, was it? It was racism.

The video obtained by the News of the World shows Harry while still an officer cadet at Sandhurst military academy.

Erm… bad timing?

He was filmed in front of other cadets at an airport departure lounge as they waited for a flight to Cyprus to go on manoeuvres.

Erm… bad timing?

The newspaper said the prince, who is third in line to the throne, had called the soldier “our little Paki friend”.

Oh, I see… You mean it was bad timing that he was being filmed whilst he was being racist… I see

BBC royal correspondent Daniela Relph said this was an extremely embarrassing episode for the prince and the Royal Family.

She said the emergence of the three-year-old video was “unfortunate timing” for Harry, whose image had greatly improved since he served in Afghanistan last year.

Oh, sorry, I see now. You mean that it was bad timing that the palace had been given hope of people not finding out that he’s gives people racist nicknames. That means that the spin butlers have wasted their time. I’m sure they will be most put out. They’re quite busy enough already with Prince Philip.

“That was a real step up for him, a real sense of maturity that people could see,” she said.

Absolutely. Now he’s killed a few ‘Ragheads’, I’m sure he’s much more mature. Killing people for no other reason than they are told to do it does that to a guy – really makes them grow up. After all, that’s what the army is for isn’t it, to provide an environment where the ignorant and privileged children of hereditary rulers can boss a few proles around and shoot the odd native in some foreign climb so they can become men. This still true, right?

She added that as a member of the Royal Family, Prince Harry was held to a certain standard, and everything he said and did was scrutinised “regardless of whether it was banter among colleagues or something that was being used by lots of other people he was working with”.

Or when the news of the world have a fucking camera crew following you around…

Ok, Jokes are jokes, and best kept private if the reason that they’re funny is that they’re inappropriate. Some kind of minor infraction or inappropriate comment, if simply caught by accident might be forgiven as simply bad taste, like the armband. Giving a person the nick-name ‘Paki’ or ‘Raghead’ because of their skin colour… erm… how can I put this? Oh yes. It’s racist abuse.

‘Absolutely disgusting’

Politicians and Muslim groups are among those to have condemned the prince’s remarks.

The BNP are quoted as saying ‘Go on, my son’.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said the words would have caused “considerable offence”, while Tory leader David Cameron said it was “a completely unacceptable thing to say”.

Erm… Is Cameron here implying that it’s OK to think these things but not vocalise them… presumably not. On the other hand, he did go to the same school as Harry. Maybe that’s what they’re taught there. After all, how would we know? The ruling classes even have their own school, you see. 9am – racism and dog-walking. 10am. Rugby. 11am, rifle training. 12, lunch. With the queen.

Aki Nawaz, musician and political activist, said: “It’s absolutely disgusting and I think he should be dismissed from the MoD. We don’t accept these things, we’ve had to live with this for 40 years.”

Too bloody right. We all know that the army is hugely racist. This will never change if things like this are not pursued. Just because he’s the prince doesn’t mean he should get away with it. He’s just a bloody person, and behaviour like this should not be indulged just because he’s a toff. In fact, he has less of any excuse – nobody else on earth has the educational advantages he’s had – he is not some barely-literate poorly-schooled grunt. He’s an officer – it is his job to lead and set an example to his men. If he cannot do that job, he should be sacked just like anyone else should be of us should be.

What a twat.

I’ve been away, (hence the lack of posts), but, as usual, the world has wobbled, in slack and appalling chaos beneath me. I’d thought that, initially, I’d have blogged today about awful and inappropriate Christmas mutterings of the pope. It seemed then that calling for a return to the pointless and poorly-reasoned castigation of homosexuality by the world’s most influential religious leader would be the most awful thing that happened over the period of my holiday (so, lets have ago at people who don’t do the supposedly ‘natural’ thing and breed, then, shall we? Let’s start with Catholic priests, then). Little did I imagine that the tinderbox in the Holy Land would be sparked once more on the tail fires of a rocket. 

I am like anyone on the outside of it, unable to fully appreciate the motivations behind either side. It’s easy to criticise. The open contempt written upon the faces of European leaders as Tzipi Livni spoke yesterday summed up most of our feelings, I fear. We should be disappointed in all concerned.

Barack Obama, who will soon be representing the biggest supporter of Israel, the US, has remained cautiously quiet. I can’t say as I blame him – he has to deal with this when he’s in power, and defining his policies and opinions in advance of his influence will bring with it impossible expectations and a lack of flexibility. One thing that he has said in the past may well sum up a large proportion of pro-Israeli thinking, however -Visiting the Israeli town of Sderot in July, he suggested that he too would respond if rockets were being fired at his house. I heard this opinion echoed several times yesterday by various US spokespersons, one even going so far as to comment on what America’s response might be if the rockets were being shot from Canada. Ye gods. His name escapes me. That’s probably for the best.

All situations like this are unique, and ceasefires must be negotiated, but I assume that Tony Blair has been given the job, despite the obvious disadvantages he has, due to his supposed successes in Ireland and his clout with the US. Successful resolution of the conflict in Ireland (and, despite some of the remaining problems, let me simply state right now that anyone who tells you that it is not a success should think about the state Belfast was in during the eighties), however, was largely based upon an unwillingness in British Governments to escalate the conflict. I am not claiming here that the two situations are utterly alike. That would be idiotic, but I feel it might illustrate a point. The point is about dehumanisation and the identification of ‘the other’.    

It is, of course, entirely possible – if highly unlikely – that the UK could have bombed Eire into the stone age in response to bombings on the mainland. Thankfully, it didn’t (although ten quid says that Dennis Thatcher suggested it – he was well known as being one of the few people capable of occupying the slim sliver of space to the right of Margaret). The situation in Northern Ireland was probably too integrated, and international condemnation would have been too serious, it would have ruined ties with America, the British population would have hated it (sadly, of course, probably not as much as you might imagine – we could rename the bulk of the UK’s population as “string ‘em up Britain” with fair accuracy), finding targets would have been difficult… there are countless pragmatic reasons why it would not have been a good policy, but I like to think that the main reason it wasn’t done was because it was just obviously the wrong thing to do. It felt wrong because Irish people cannot be dehumanised in the eyes of most Brits (despite our rather chequered past) – they are not ‘the others’, they are not ‘the enemy’ – they are of ‘us’.

Eire just isn’t seen as a valid target for military action any more. Few people living in the 20^th century would ever have considered it so. Bombing Dublin or Limerick would feel like bombing Leeds or Bradford just because the ‘7/7’ terrorists were supposedly from there.  The situation with Hamas makes this politically very different, but the reasons why Israel shouldn’t respond in the way it does are essentially the same. Bombing the Palestinians – bombing anyone for that matter – should feel like what it is. It should feel like killing people, no matter how mad you are at them. And it should feel like that to us, too. What is happening in Gaza right now is a terrible amount of suffering is being inflicted on one group of people by another. You might argue that Hamas should consider the same thing, and you’d be right. But at some point one side or the other has to be the bigger party. If Israel wants to assert its moral superiority here, then let it do so. For sure it has the right to do something about the rocket attacks, but it must always consider exactly what that thing to do must be. Everyone has to live with the consequences of their actions. And at the moment, the action is the killing of many, many people, most of whom are in no position to defend themselves.

As for Obama suggesting that he too would ‘respond’ to rockets fired at his house, I hope that this means that he feels personal sympathy with the victims of rocket attacks in Israel, and not that this means he supports heavy military responses to terrorist strikes. Recognising the humanity of your opponents, and refusing to set them up as a dehumanised, enemy ‘other’, would, in my opinion, lead to treating terrorism as a criminal act rather than an act of war. ‘Wars on terror’ are a sick joke at best and an ill-told lie in the case of Iraq. And they have killed too many people already.

Whilst I’ve been writing this, the Israeli’s have, apparently, destroyed a UN-run school in Gaza, where civilians were sheltering. The moral high ground must look very distant from where they are now.

Just a quicky today – just enough to make you paranoid.

The police officer leans in through the window. You are not even sure why you’ve been stopped. ‘Scuse me citizen – may I have your hidentity card please?’

‘No. I am not required to carry it, so I don’t’.

‘Well sir, that’s a little suspicious if you hasks me. Looks to me like you ave somefink to ide. I is placin you hunder harrest hunder the hanti-terrorism laws of two-fowsund-hand…’

‘What?’

‘you is not required to say henifink, but if yer doesn’t, den everyone will fink you is a villain hanyway. Give me your ‘and, citizen.’

‘What on earth for?’

‘Genetic sample, citizen. Now that you is hunder harrest, failure to supply a hofficer with a genetic sample is a criminal hoffese with a mandatory sentence of…

‘Oh, very well. Here’s my hand.’

‘Fank you, sir. Just a little prick.’

The officer places the needle into a handheld computer. A moment passes as the sample is read.

‘Well now, citizen, I is hafraid that you his potentially a very naughty boy…’

The European court of human rights have ruled that holding the DNA of people who have not been convicted of any offence is inappropriate. Which might stave off gene plod for a moment or three. Nobody seems to be bothered about the rest, though. I am. The argument for holding genetic samples is fairly clear in the most serious offences. But how important can it be for fraudsters, burglars and the like? Or shoplifters? Drunk and disorderly? Jaywalking? I’d argue that only the most serious crimes warrant being placed onto the ‘so very criminal that they might very well have done anything, better check just in case’ list. Jacqui Smith has said today that it’s inappropriate to keep samples from people under ten. How very generous. Ten years old? My god! They’re keeping samples from scrumpers! Obviously destined for lives as criminal masterminds…

Civil liberties have been eroded in recent years with a speed and depth that quite frankly makes me want to laugh out loud at the sheer audacity of it. How on earth have they got away with all this? It seems like everyone I talk to knows that they have been brought in on feeble pretexts and are absolutely useless for solving the combating the ‘crimes’ and activities they are designed to cope with. We have more cameras per person than any country on earth. We are monitored for simply protesting. They want to track the movement s of our cars. We voluntary carry little devices that let them monitor our positions. Every electronic transaction we ever make is logged. Under RIPA powers, your council can place you under surveillance if someone complains that your music is too loud. It’s enough to make you paranoid.

Let’s assume, however, that the government we currently has just has our best interests at heart. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt for a moment. Now that there are all these powers and rights and information databases, who’s to say what a subsequent government might do? Imagine what Stalin or Hilter might have done with such information. Imagine what the BNP might do.

I was reassured by one thing though, today. That ‘partner tracker’ thing on the television is a joke. For now.

‘Ah, I sees, Mr Burton, that your genetic profile hindicates a predisposition towards rebelliousness hand depression, and a hincreased tendency to become henraged. Well now, I’d be positively derelict in my duties if I didn’t take you to the station himidiately hand lock you hup for the protection hof heveryone. I’m sorry citizen, but hit looks like the labour camps for you.’

‘But… but I didn’t do anything!’

‘Not yet, citizen, not yet, but, statistically speaking, you will.’

It’s too late, he’s got his Tazer out, and his partner has opened the door and cuffed you.

‘Oh yes, sir, and for your hinformation, you have done somefink criminal.

‘One hof your tail lights his out.’   

Such hammers fall silently, and from a great height.