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.

I don’t like Christmas (Bah, humbug etc.), in a way that, admittedly, has become a rather self-indulgent and juvenile yearly exercise in the killing of other people’s joy. The fact is that most people, it seems, are capable of finding fun in something I simply can’t. This one, I’m afraid, is going to be even rantier than usual. I apologise for nothing. I am, for today, Scrooge McGrumpus. You have been warned.

I just can’t see the fun the in it. The tinsel is tacky, the shops are all rammed. Everything around Christmas seems to acquire a thin plastic sheen of upbeat salesmanship. You are expected to enjoy yourself, and I’m afraid that this species of enforced jollity, whereby everyone is expected to voluntarily pretend that the world’s a great big happy funhouse, is the one thing guaranteed to prevent me from enjoying anything. But I’m not a lost cause here – far from it. I want to find something about Christmas that I can genuinely like, that I can engage with little enough reservation to actually enjoy myself. It’s just hugely difficult – so, on with the inevitable list of hate (this is, I believe, at least 80% of the reason for the existence of blogs, after all).

For a start, I’m not a Christian, so for me this is just some midwinter festival – which would be fine were it not for the ‘traditions’ that get in the way of it just being a big party. I hate the tackiness of the decorations (actually, where I live they’re not that bad, but I remember small-town decorations, and everything else is polluted by that memory), especially in and around people’s homes. If you really liked it looking like that, you’d have decorated it that way in the first place. I’m not five any more – shiny things do not impress me. I hate the idiocy of Christmas trees, which was a daft idea when (and, let’s be honest, if) the pagans did it, and was made even dafter when it was inexplicably linked to Christmas by the 16^th century Germans. I don’t like the fact that we’re obliged to buy things for people when they’re at their most expensive, and all at once, and when we have little idea about what to buy them – the net result of this situation being that everyone gets expensive rubbish. I’d prefer to buy things for people when I see something they’d like (which I do try to do, by the way). I also hate Christmas cards. They’re utterly pointless, about the most insincere thing to ever to exist outside of politics, and a huge waste of resources. I hate Christmas films – they’re sentimental rubbish. I hate Christmas songs – their sentimental rubbish as well. The only worthwhile Christmas tune I can think of is ‘Fairytale of New York’ by The Pogues – which is hardly a celebration of the season. Having said that, I do like ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, which is a Christmas movie, and this brings us neatly to what I’d like to talk about.

‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ is a great movie, but it’s a fairytale. And not just because it has an angel in it. The idea of brotherhood and community that is explored in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ has never existed, even in 1940’s small-town America. It’s also, (and not co-incidentally), a very left-wing film. If you haven’t seen it, do. It’s really uplifting. It’s what I’d like Christmas to be. But Christmas isn’t like that.

The ideal Christmas is some kind of synthesis between Charles Dickens definition of Christmas spirit (from which, in Britain at least, we also take the primary aesthetic), and 1940’s American moral mythology. From its Christian heritage we get ideas regarding reward for the virtuous, peace and goodwill to all men. All very good and wholesome, and some of this still goes on, but is practiced only in the tiniest way by a hard-core fraternity of faithful and generally super-annuated true-believers. They are a dying breed. I’d like to see more of the charitable works (who could argue with that?), and if you are going to have a festival of peace, I’m up for that too. Lets all do some voluntary work for Amnesty for Christmas. But nobody does.

What we have now is all the trimmings designed to conjure this, but none of the virtuous intent. It’s the dream of a child – all glitz and romance, but lacking substance. Our rituals and spells are summoning an empty vessel. Carol singers demand money with musical menaces, singing praises to the birth of a messiah they don’t believe in, or even know very much about. Children focus utterly on avaricious selfishness. The rest of us, in accordance with a tradition we have very little understanding of, stuff ourselves to groaning capacity with food so rich that we are expected to feel sick for hours. Then we watch television and eat again. By the end of the day you can almost always guarantee that you’ve had a row with somebody, and everybody wonders why they’re not enjoying themselves as much as their supposed to. So you get pissed instead. People build up the day in their minds, decorate their houses for little reason at all, spend hundred of pounds and then fail to enjoy themselves. It’s disgusting, it’s awful, it’s a destructive pattern, and I want no part of it.  

Christmas is for children, though, right? Well, it’s true that most of us as children were fascinated by the sparking lights, enchanted by the myths and stories, and excited at the prospect of presents. It’s easy to sell an idea to a child, and the constant reinforcements from films and television make it real enough. Of course, the older you get, the more these memories blur into one huge collage of moments, as much fantasy as actuality. Quite a lot of people in England vividly remember it snowing at Christmas, for example, but if you’re under forty, it’s extremely unlikely that you’ve ever seen a white Christmas unless you were on holiday. If you have children of your own, or you are part of a family with a lot of young children, you might still be able to get some pleasure through the enjoyment they are having. Yet it can’t be all about children. People of all ages seem to get enthusiastic about Christmas, and many of the traditions involved are quite complex and very adult. Almost everything outside of the presents and glitter is a complete mystery to children, and they’d never even notice if it was gone. Even if the primary focus for Christmas were children, that’s no reason for us to continue with the rest of it.

Yet there may be a reason for all the nonsense. Positive aspects to seemingly mindless nostalgia. A friend explained this to me the other day. It’s not appropriate to repeat any of the specific reasons that my friend brought up here, I feel. Suffice to say that the claim was two-fold – that the process of joining in with Christmas helped to evoke memories of happier times spent before, and gives a context in which new happy memories can be framed, and then remembered. Secondly, joining in with an act that is traditional within your country, regardless of its inherent ridiculousness (and, perhaps, because of it) helps you to connect to those around you, making you feel part of something greater –connecting you to both your current community, and the history you all share.

Let’s deal with these in reverse order. Connecting to any notion of the past that you don’t understand and appreciate is nonsensical. If you are getting any sense of connection to history, it’s a false chimera of a thing. I say this because little of what we do actually has any historical quality to it at all. Turkeys didn’t even exist in England until the 18^th century. Most of the seemingly traditional elements of Christmas were established very, very recently indeed, often under the reign of Queen Victoria. They then spread to the US, who popularised this ‘traditional’ Christmas into a world-wide phenomenon with their usual capitalist gusto. Santa, the jolly old fellow with a big white beard and red trousers was likely invented by an American illustrator called Thomas Nast in the late nineteenth century – by which time, people were already complaining that it was largely a commercial enterprise. It was then constantly re-interpreted and represented throughout the early twentieth century from a kaleidoscopic number of sources to produce a product you might very well call the ‘modern Christmas’ some time in the mid twentieth century.

You can’t connect to the past beyond – at most – a couple of generations unless you know your traditions. If, like me, you’re a Brit, you should probably go out and get yourself a wild boar and some cuttings from bushes, hang them up, then beat yourself into unconsciousness for being a filthy ignorant pagan. Fantasy is of no use – you might as well try to connect to the traditions of Middle-Earth.

As for joining in with mass culture and feeling like you belong, that’s more possible. Group activities do make us feel like we belong, but in the case of Christmas, what we do is not collective. Truly behaving like a group means interaction – group declarations and such. It’s an activity that you become involved with. Church services are a good example of this, but if you don’t believe, what are you doing there? Christmas, though, is now essentially passive. We purchase our way into an inauthentic group experience, taking no active part in it. Often, we barely even see anyone outside of our own families. Simply because we all do the same thing in isolation does not imply a collective experience. Rather, it is a series of particular, isolated, similar experiences. It’s a sad echo of community. Simply placing a tree into the corner of your room just like everyone else does cannot connect you to everyone else any more than it connects you to the union of foresters.

But the first point holds more promise. Recreating the surroundings you were in for an experience you enjoyed long ago will help to crystallise it in your brain. Making time to be with your family can be important and rewarding (depending on your family, of course), and adhering to certain particular traditions can certainly do this. Future experiences can also be placed into this context, and thus can the passage of time be marked, and good times enjoyed over and again. Still, this only works if you embrace a sense of control over you’re the traditions you observe. You can’t have a Victorian Christmas – you’re not a Victorian. You can’t have the Christmases of your childhood – you’re not a child. You have to embrace the change, not fight it.

We must be careful not to fall into a nostalgic desire for re-creation. You need to make new memories, and have new experiences. Trying to live out a fantasy over and again is of no use, even within the context of a personalised series of specific traditions. Every time anything is done, it is necessarily different. Even if everything else does not change (and that’s nearly impossible in itself), you will have changed.

There’s a lesson here to be learned from movies – good versus bad sequels. Sometimes it’s fun to watch the same film again, but no matter how good it is, if you watch it over and over again, it will become stale and diminished. It’s much, much better to watch a good sequel. Take the themes and explore them again, but make it new, give it a different story. It’s also no good trying to do a re-make – they are almost always inferior to the original. Good re-makes explore the same themes in different contexts – they don’t just try to remake the film shot-for shot, and thereby resemble good sequels better than bad ones. Don’t try to re-create or exploit simply for the sake of nostalgia. It will always be an inferior experience to the rose-tinted definitions of the original. If you do any of these things, you are setting yourself up for a fall, and are likely to create something about as worthwhile as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ (for those who haven’t seen this travesty – just don’t; seriously, just don’t). It’ll ruin what came before. And there’s another danger. Making something seem stale and repetitive means that you run the danger of coming to define the formerly good experience by the latterly dingy ones. Also, if you try to make a good sequel, it doesn’t matter if it’s not quite as good as the original – as long as it’s a good experience in its own right. You don’t expect it to have to be as good or better, just thematically connected, and good in and of itself. It helps you to measure each experience on its own merits.

So here’s the method – take the themes you like, the things that interest or please you, and run. Take all the good bits and throw the rest away. Be savage, and be inventive.

We can gain something massively positive from this – we can evoke any ideas we want. We are not limited to what we inherit. It is the duty of each of us to celebrate what we want, rather than what we’re told, in full knowledge of what we’re doing. And change is fundamental to this process. There is no value to be had in merely re-creating – everything will become refined into hollow blandness by degrees with every iteration.

Reinvent the winter festival – we can even keep the name ‘Christmas’ if we want – but do something for a reason. Stop being passive and accepting – if you are going to do something, putting your hard-earned money, your time, your will and your effort into it, then make sure that such a huge investment is made into something that you really want. It’s what it means to be human, not just some beast dumbly repeating the training it’s been given – when you come to understand something, you can take what you want from it, throw the rest aside and then re-create.  

So what could we do? We could have public festivals – that’d be good. We could all take three weeks off and do some voluntary work. That’d really bring the community together. We could even celebrate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (signed 10th December 1948) – how’s that for peace on earth and goodwill to all men? I like those themes, but you get to pick your own. Maybe you’d like to concentrate on good, solid family time. Why not go on holiday together instead of hanging around your house? If you see it as a party, go to (or, even better, organise) a huge celebration with wall-to-wall hedonism and violent happiness. It is time to take charge of our traditions. They are ours, after all.

Well, I suppose I should be talking about the terrorist atrocities in Mumbai today; but I’m not going to. I don’t think that there’s anything useful I can say. Like everybody else, I can’t get hold of all the information I’d need to make a truly insightful opinion, but it’s not just that. What could anyone say that we don’t all already feel?

So, Mumbai taken away, I’m innocently flicking about the television this morning, wondering if I should write about the silly reaction to snow that my country displays despite the fact that less than a century before it used to snow for about ten percent of each year. Still, I needed a little anger today to write, and the soft quiet that snow brings to my little city, the sense of peace and solidity somewhat neuters and bad feelings I might have towards it, even if those feelings come from other’s reactions. 

Then the huge magic glass of frustration that sits in my living room dutifully delivered up a nice fresh packet of the excrement of humanity. A program about the nature of cool (not very interesting), but the segment… well, it made me wish that I had something to pray to.

‘It’s a good career to go into’, says mum of six-year-old Oliver. And what ‘career’ can a six year old have? Aggressive marketing. He tries to get his friends to buy things from Nintendo by talking about Nintendo products in school assemblies, in class presentations using PowerPoint and such, but mostly just by talking up to the products to other children. Did I mention that Nintendo use these ‘people’? I use ‘people’ in the loosest possible sense here, to include the lowest form of reptilian monstrosity that your imagination can summon. Oliver’s mother (who’s eleven-year-old daughter Amy also works for this group of utter contemptible money cultists) is not a bad parent per se; by any measurable means she provides for her children, and doubtless dotes upon them. But, for the record, I’d take her kids into care. ‘They are part of an elite community’, she brags. Now, there’s thinking that your kids are special when they’re not, there’s thanking that they are more popular and significant than they actually are, and then there’s that tosh. Then, way, way after that and much further down the road to damnation, there’s allowing them to be used as a corporate mouthpiece.

‘Dubit’, the devils doorknockers in question, recruits ‘Cool kids’, then companies (like Nintendo) give them some free examples to give away to the cool kids, who in turn agree to promote them to the rest of the kids, who then badger their parents to buy them. Wow. Do you remember when you thought you’d finally become so cynical that nothing could really be so low as to be unexpectedly awful? Well, you live and you learn eh? They recruit from 5. 5-year-olds. I’d just like to say that again. 5-year olds. You can’t tie your own shoelaces yet, but you can still shift product for Nintendo.

‘[Oliver]’s really into Nintendo’, says the not-very-cool-but clearly-thinks-she-is and frankly a middle-class demi-chav-with-a-degree twenty-something representative of Dubit, as if it justifies anything at all. Of course he is, you soul-destroying cretin, he’s six. He’d like a shiny penny too if you waved it in front of his face.

‘If the company is happy to give things away for children to sell, then I can’t see why they shouldn’t’, says their Mum, or at least something very close to that that I can’t be arsed to watch again, for I fear I might vomit. Because you are that child’s ethical conscience, maybe?

Currently they’re promoting that ‘Animal Crossing’ thing. Amy’s ‘bigging it up’ in chatrooms like a dutiful little drone. Of course, she likes it too. And doubtless next week she’ll be into something else. Plus, she got it for free. She has no concept at all of how much it costs in real terms. The ‘pester power’ she generates will earn the company (Nintendo, Nintendo, Nintendo) a ridiculous amount of revenue, but just because something is effective doesn’t mean that you should do it. We can all think of morally bankrupt things that would work but that we shouldn’t do. We could place chips in people’s heads to help them make the ‘right’ choices (actually, with the DS lifestyle coach, Nintendo are already heading there). Or men could effectively neuter the power of women in the world, as they did for so long to their own benefit, by pouring cutesy associations with vacuous pink fluffy things with puppies and kittens upon them and the idea of femininity itself until nobody can take women any more seriously than they would a ten-year-old (Nintendo). Or we could force people to replace the interaction they have with their friends into avatars of our own design over which they have little influence in order… hold on…

Anyway, the hatred I have for all aspects of Nintendo’s impact upon the world aside, I am reserving the finest, most acidic and smelliest of my bile for Dubit. I find this part of their company’s mission statement particularly interesting: ‘We are responsible, we care for your customer, we keep young people at the centre of your campaign, and we enjoy our work. We like to think we make the future a brighter one for our youth.’ In response, and in order: No, no, well duh, and you have to be joking, surely. Making the future brighter for our youth is most certainly not going to be achieved by making five-year-olds into salesmen. Hell, making anyone into a salesman is essentially an act Amnesty should campaign against (as anyone who’s ever stepped into a mobile phone shop or estate agent’s can testify), let alone a child.

I also like “*No teenagers were harmed in the making of this site.” The fact that people might very well suspect that to the point that you have to declare it is a fair indication of what you’re up to, people. Also, is that an admittance that encouraging a five-year-old see all of his interactions with his friends as a chance for promotion is maybe a bit damaging?

Here’s some more about their ‘ethos’ (of all things), quoted in its entirety, actually:

“Dubit have young people’s best interests at heart. Through caring for the youth market, in both the approach and the campaign outcomes, Dubit create a long-lasting relationship and understanding between the client and the young person.

We want to change marketing for the better. We must treat young people as intelligent, valuable individuals: not as stereotypes or inferior customers.”

By turning them into salesmen, then. Moving on to their real concerns in the very next sentence:

“We are not social workers – this is good commercial sense. Caring for the young consumer through taking the time to understand them and provide positive experiences for them cements a brand as a partner in the young mind. This is customer care for the future.”

Or brand brainwashing at its very best, take your pick.

“To understand more about our approach to young people, and how we want brighter futures for our youth, speak to Ian, on 0113-2501101. Or email him at ian@dubit.co.uk. He’s an enthusiast.”

            Go on. Tell him what you think. I’m sure he’d love to hear.

There’s tons of this kind of horrify PR-speak on their site. Have a look for yourself: http://www.dubitlimited.com/

These people epitomise everything that is wrong about a culture that exists seemingly solely to quantify everything into pounds, shillings and pence alone. Direct marketing by corporations through children is an act so despicable that it should make us all feel ashamed to share a planet with it, let alone a culture. How the people who do this can stand to catch sight of their own reflections without trying to claw their own eyes out is beyond me. Even being vaguely involved in something like this should make you want to open a vein and spray the last of your life into a pattern reading ‘no more five-year-old corporate sales monkeys’. With this going on with the tacit approval of everyone, what hope to we have for the future – we may be very good a making money by any means, but we are truly bankrupt, my friends, truly bankrupt.

The show itself goes on to discuss cool by talking to some of the most pathetic, image-obsessed people I’ve ever had the misfortune to see. Queuing up round the block for limited edition trainers, anyone? Get out more (somewhere other than a bloody shoe-shop you vacuous idiot). Never mind that they’re made in sweatshops.

Oh, in case you were wondering, the insight that the filmmaker has to offer at the end of all this is ‘cool people don’t care what’s cool’. Well thanks. Congratulations on telling me something I knew that before the program started, (and I’m betting he did too) whilst simultaneously invalidating the premise of your entire project and essentially telling every member of the audience that you’ve just wasted their time.

As a final thought, I’d just like to tell you that ‘Dubit’ keeps its offices in Leeds. I’m not in anyway trying to encourage you to harass them in any way. Here, just for reference, then, are their contact details:

The Half Roundhouse
Roundhouse Business Park
Wellington Road
Leeds
LS12 1DR

Tel: 0113 3947920

email: enquiry@dubit.co.uk

Go nuts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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