At times, when the world is a dumpster fire, it can feel like focusing on something that isn't the dumpster fire is a little bit like insisting there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
Two competing drives: one to not be dragged down by the soul-sucking quagmire of shit that is the bad news, one to not turn away from it and let it slide.
Not an easy balancing act.
I am of course a huge proponent of the fact that we contain multitudes. That it is possible to be aware of and think about multiple things at once. Like when a news story pops up, and the immediate response is "They're just using X to distract you from Y", well - they may be hoping that is what will happen, but fact is, most people don't forget X just because they are absorbing Y.
But while we can think about multiple things at once, it's hard to write a piece that covers a multitude of situations that are occurring, and not feel like there might be something else that one is missing.
The exam results, for one.
Where the Coronavirus pandemic has absolutely shit-showed the education system for a while - like really knocked the crap out of it - kids haven't been able to take their exams. Given that our system as it exists doesn't take very much into account in terms of delays, the government decided in its wisdom to let the Office of Qualifications (Ofqual) throw together an algorithm to sort out who deserved what grade.
Ofqual were offered assistance by the Royal Society of Statistics - the kind of people that would be quite good at analysing and utilising significant swathes of data - but wouldn't accept the assistance unless the RSS signed a Non Disclosure Agreement.
And thus, over a third of A Level students awaiting their grades to get them into University found that they had been marked down - substantially in a lot of cases - from every prediction that they had been given, and thus, denied their shot at higher education because the computer said no.
Notably, there was a significant statistical trend toward these downgraded marks happening in low-income areas.
The government dismissed any concerns as to their short-selling literally hundreds of thousands of teenagers, because why would they give a fuck? Everyone in Eton got the grades they wanted.
Lets face it, the system wasn't great in the first place, but to fuck it up this badly and then just wash your hands of it is a disgrace.
At the same time as our government fails our youth, some people are angry that we haven't sent out the navy to blow up innocent people in the channel, legally seeking asylum.
This, of course, is very useful to certain members of the government. There's a certain hard core of people in this country that have zero empathy toward foreigners of any kind, and if the government can be seen to be hating refugees as much as they do, then they can rely on the support of that hard core. The fact that they can just suspend their feelings toward the people, actual people, desperately trying to find somewhere safe to live, desperate enough that they would take an unsafe boat across the Channel to a country that seems to hate them, is indicative of a deeper problem.
The landslide of shit isn't constrained to this side of the Atlantic, obviously. Protests against racial injustice continue, and while a hundred tiny platitudes are made by people that aren't being asked to make them, the actual changes demanded aren't being made.
Then there is the ongoing war against an actual democratic election.
It is, of course, just like Donald Trump to torpedo a lifeline service for millions of people - even a significant percentage of his voter base - because it is a means by which people can vote. When your tactic to win the election is to prevent people from voting, you know that you've messed up.
It's working, though. The US Postal Service has had its Postmaster General replaced with an individual that seems to be determined to run it into the ground, and by their direction, postboxes in Blue-voting neighbourhoods in Red states are being removed, and the entire service is being slowed down by various measures.
And he ADMITTED it, that this was his plan... because, well... what can anyone do about it?
There were more fraudulent signatures on the paperwork that got Kanye West registered on voter forms than there were fraudulent votes in the entire 2016 election, but... you know.
If you are seeing a common thread behind this landslide of shit, you are right to.
Also the ice caps are melting because of us and a virus is killing us because a significant chunk of the population don't like masks and don't think it's real.
So... picking out one of those for a deep dive feels like I am ignoring the others. And picking out none of them feels like I am ignoring the entire world.
What a shit time to be a thinker.
And I've been looking for the little bright moments in amongst this torrent of fecal matter, and they are... few and far between. And often they only exist because the shitty situation necessitated them in the first place. But they DO exist.
The government - and not just the government - are so hostile to the presence of refugees on our shores that when celebrities and individuals express sympathy towards them, they're immediately attacked for it. Told they are Virtue Signalling - something I have spoken about before. That they are just trying to look good without doing anything about it. "Have you housed any refugees, Gary?" he was asked by a galaxy-brain Twitter user. "Not yet," he replied - accompanied by his paperwork for actually doing that very thing.
Despite the carnage of an overwhelmingly undergraded A Level crop this year, Oxford University College is honouring all of the offers that it made, regardless of the probably fallacious results sent out by Ofqual.
Ben Shapiro, right-wing munchkin, is getting his ass royally roasted after deciding to take a swing at successful hip hop musicians. It seems he doesn't believe that vaginas can self-lubricate, if sufficiently stimulated. I suppose the abstinence method of sex education has its flaws. His poor wife.
We're still here, life still carries on, and with every day that we have, we can try and make things better. Not just for ourselves, either.
I suppose that is the takeaway.
Yes, there is a war in Ba Sing Se - but there's cabbages, too.
If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.
The explosions in the Beirut docks probably haven't escaped anyone's attention.
They came at a time of economic crisis and surging poverty in the Lebanon - not that things have been terribly easy at most points in my father's homeland. There's good days and bad years. Surrounded by aggressive neighbours, formerly a French colony, as a nation the Lebanese people have suffered significantly.
And now, this.
To give you an indication of scale here, both of those ships up top - the two that are out of alignment in the second picture - are at least 100m long. And you could fit one of them sideways in the diameter of the hole blown in the docks.
The sheer scale of the detonation of 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate is hard to convey properly. To picture what it would do to the surrounding area is difficult outside of wartime. In a heatwave of tremendous proportions, while the world struggles with a pandemic that various local governments seem to be actively assisting on a daily basis, a swathe of destruction visits a city of 2.2 million people.
Over 150 dead, over 6,000 injured, 3,000 families left homeless instantly.
They felt it in Cyprus, 150 miles away. It registered as a 4.5 magnitude earthquake in Jordan.
Conspiracy theories came to light immediately, of course - and not all of them are out of bounds. There are many people that claim to have seen or heard a jet in the air before and after the explosion. The Israeli government issued a statement very rapidly saying that they had nothing to do with it.
I won't jump to conclusions - especially given that the official explanation is not only totally feasible but also totally unsurprising. That the nitrate was left in the docks unsafely by a ship owned by an oligarch, that the ship was damaged, that the ammonium nitrate was moved to improper storage because there wasn't any certified storage, that the stockpile was neglected for years despite attempts of several parties to make officials aware of the danger, and that a simple small fire would do the rest.
I know it is hard to believe that something so huge and so overwhelming could happen because of a few select moments of complacency and minor accidents, but it's more easy to believe than you'd think.
If you find it hard to imagine the damage, though - well...
Here's what it looks like overlaid on London. Everything in that middle circle is flattened, totally destroyed. Everything in the wider circle is structurally damaged, and that third circle, your windows are getting blown in. Imagine the entirety of Wembley having their windows blown in by an explosion.
And if you look at this?
If you're in that big circle, you actually hear it happen. You could be standing on the beach at Dunkirk and hear it.You could hear it from Wales.
We'd find it hard enough to deal with that situation, and we're - yes, despite everything - in a much better economic situation than the Lebanon.
My heart aches for a people I've never met. I feel like I know so much about Beirut from my father's stories, from my own reading and studies of its history and its situation. It hurts, to see it so torn like this.
So I'm not going to ask for your membership to my Patreon this week. I'm going to ask you to donate to the British Red Cross' charity appeal for the Lebanon, or any other charitable cause that will help; and then I'm going to ask you to share this with someone, anyone.
Because it's what we SHOULD do. Because it is right.
The title of this blog is from a quote from Plato:
“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.”
Stirring stuff.
What's your favourite piece of music from a movie?
Sometimes the right musical accompaniment can absolutely make a scene; and sometimes they can become absolutely iconic in their own right, even removed from the cinematic context they were originally presented in. I don't know a lot of people who wouldn't know Chariots of Fire, even if they haven't seen the film - and they will probably associate it with running in slow motion, at least.
Because I can, I'm gonna throw a bunch of different bits of movie score at you (with one honorable mention that isn't TECHNICALLY score but is CLOSE), and talk about why I like them. Where possible I will link you to the scene as it happens in the movie - otherwise, we'll have a nice little chat about it.
Fair warning: there will be spoilers for the movies below. If you haven't seen them, me talking about them may well clue you in on plot elements best left secret.
So this anxiety-inducing collection of noises plays over an entire sequence of an infected member of the crew of the Covenant being brought about a shuttle, taken to the med bay, and then something awful happening to him. This awful thing explodes out of his back, kills the crewmate in the room with him, and leads the surviving crewmate to such terror that she accidentally blows up the fucking shuttle trying to kill the little bastard.
The way it all happens, the way it all pans out, is so tense - so frantic - I forgot to breathe for the entire scene. It's what horror is all about. The panic, the alarm, the wrongness. The entire thing having been okay if only the hundred things that went wrong didn't go wrong. If only the floor wasn't slippery. If only the door was tougher. If only, if only, if only.
Just before this opening sequence, all we know is that the world of Castle In The Sky - my favourite Ghibli movie - has airships, air pirates, military spies, and a girl with a necklace who would rather fall from aforementioned airship than let the necklace fall into the hands of aforementioned air pirates.
Then you are treated to this gorgeous, glorious piece of music by the master Joe Hisaishi himself, and presented with the animation above - which not only sums up the history of the world you're about to inhabit for the next hour and a half, but also tells you the plot, if you're careful enough to pay attention.
The piece is masterful. Emotive, soaring and gentle by turns, touching, epic in scope. A constantly-descending chord structure that gently reminds you that this title sequence is playing out while a girl is, literally, falling from the sky.
If any one good thing came out of the prequels, it was the music.
For two and a half movies, the watcher waits for the moment; the point wherein the Emperor seizes control of the Republic, takes over the Senate, and begins the destruction of the Jedi. We know it is coming. We all know it is coming, and god help us, we're ready for it by the time it rolls around.
And aside from a ropey moment involving Yoda (god I hate every prequel scene involving Yoda), what you witness is a total betrayal. The armed forces that the Jedi have been fighting alongside, become friends with, even been on first name terms with in several places, turning on them and cutting them down with absolute impunity.
It's more than the brutal murder of all a whole bunch of the Jedi. It's the moment that the tables turn. And front and centre is Anakin Skywalker who cements his place in this entire thing - just after helping Palpatine murder Mace Windu - by massacring all the kids in the temple. (He has past form in terms of kid-murder, it bears mention.)
That's how the piece feels. It's a fall from grace of the highest order, an act of awful brutality; this is the moment that the clouds roll in and everything goes dark. Sure, there's other bits of music from Star Wars that are more iconic and stand-out, but this is just... breathtaking.
This is technically a song in its own right (even the instrumental version of a cover of a song) but - hey, I did say there would be an honourable mention.
Cutting through the Los Angeles night, two men, one of them chasing the other, hounding him down toward an inevitable destructive conclusion. The tenacity with which these men pursue their goals, the total embrace of their lifestyle to the point of breakdown.
I love Michael Mann's film work, the way he paints the parts of a city that most people don't even think about. I love how the blasting guitars and the rhythm section is like a constant onslaught of noise; like a barrage on the senses, all things travelling towards the witness at high speed, a crash imminent.
And the scene that follows? The two of them drinking coffee together? Absolutely stellar.
The king is dead. All hail the king. Killmonger has overthrown T'Challa and become both Black Panther and king of Wakanda - and he does the next thing in the playbook of the coup... he pulls up the ladder behind him, destroying the route to power. He will be the last king, or nobody will be. He burns the herb that grants the Black Panther his power, torching it in a symbolic demolition of the traditions that make Wakanda, Wakanda.
And then he walks to the throne, in a beautiful shot that starts upside down, the world gone horribly awry, twisting slowly into focus as the new reality settles in: Killmonger is king.
The mournful singing and traditional music undercut by the sharp trap beats, the instantiation of the new over the old, interweaving but not synchronising; a harsh visitor from a different tradition. A spear point in the heart of that which once was normal.
I really like this movie - oh, and the guy that composed the score? Also did The Mandalorian.
This is what it comes down to; a last all-or-nothing scramble, not to save the world, not to save the revolution, not to protect the people you care about, but to do the thing that you believe you should be doing. To do the one right thing, that you know you can do, in that moment in time. To do the good thing, even if humanity sees you as being nothing but a tool that will do whatever it is told.
While the Vangelis-helmed score of Blade Runner was a sumptuously designed electronic ensemble, it still held together with a structure, much like the city of Los Angeles it was based in; it was broken, scattered, wired up and buzzing, but it still had edges and corners. The score of 2049 shows the world as falling apart, a degradation of those aforementioned structures, a distortion of everything that existed before; snarling angry synths and the constant, overpowering crush of oppression and mother nature alike.
Here the electronic noise of the city echoes in as if from far away; we start with the pounding pulse beats of a chase, and end up with this flowing, swelling reverberation, unstoppable as the tide as it sweeps in to wash away everything it touches. The savage subtonal growl of distortion sits below it, the violence that K and Luv inflict upon each other over the fate of Rick Deckard, beating each other half to death even as the ocean threatens to claim them both.
Moody, dark, insidious, angry. No wonder I like it so much, it reminds me of me when I first wake up in the morning.
There were so many good choices for this movie, but I had to go with this one.
Throughout the entire movie, the group move through The Shimmer, finding how it and everything within it has been changed. They, too, change. Move away from who and what they were, alter until they are not themselves, or are far enough removed that looking back on who they were is a gulf that can't be crossed again. It is about change, it is all about change.
Until an object is discovered - a being - an alien - that begins as nothing but noise and light, a concept more than anything. And it takes shape, and form, and copies that which it sees, until it has become a simulacra. While Lena (played superbly by Natalie Portman) has become a totally different entity to the person that agreed to enter The Shimmer, she finds that this being - in mere moments - becomes the person that she was all along. This bafflingly inhuman object, taking form as she watches.
There are no answers, here. There is no explanation. There is only this object, the changes wrought inside and out, and the promise that there will always be part of the universe that you will not understand.
It all comes down to this: sometimes the score makes the scene. Sometimes the score IS the scene.
Flight to the imagination, and life to everything.
If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.
I hate to remind you all - I know we spend a lot of time not thinking about it - but Donald Trump is the president of the United States.
We couldn't believe it when it happened, we are still in a position of disbelief each day, and when it comes down to it, I think we'll write off these past four years as some kind of mass hallucination. Maybe.
I'm not going to dig into his policies. I don't feel the need to. You know where I stand on the topic, as a human being with a degree of empathy.
However - it seems that the populace have become aware of this man's con artistry and general awfulness. He is polling terribly. Almost every poll for the entire US has him behind Joe Biden - who, lets be clear, I am not super stoked about getting the job either, but if we're picking an STI, I'll take the one that itches the least.
I am aware that the popular vote isn't what actually decides the US electoral process, which is its own problem. Which just adds an air of uncertainty to the whole thing, that accompanies another level of uncertainty - mass vote manipulation. A large swathe of US citizens, by various means, having the ability to vote taken away from them. The attempted dissolution of the postal vote / US Postal Service, the mass incarcerations and criminal charges following protests, the closing of polling stations in areas that classically don't vote a certain way.
Can all of that overcome the damage Trump has done to himself?
And if it doesn't - and if he loses - if the electoral colleges do what they didn't do four years ago...
...what happens then?
Well, he's implied - indirectly, in a kind of Schrodinger's Idea kind of fashion - that he might not accept the result. For a variety of reasons.
I say Schrodinger's Idea because - well, you've all known someone like this. Someone that will float something that most people around them won't gel with, without seeming to be very invested in the notion. Just a joke, they'll say. Just trolling. Just being funny. Just to see who bites, and who doesn't - to see how much resistance there is. It's a classic abuser technique, as it happens.
This happens a lot in politics. An idea will be "leaked" and the backlash measured. This happens because the idea is potentially socially costly to the people fronting it up, often because the idea will (if executed) be harmful or detrimental to a significant swathe of society as a whole. It's a case of trying to see if they can make it fly, if they can convince the populace of the merits of the notion (real or imaginary) rather than have them focus on the flaws.
Look at Brexit; the idea was floated as a "Just A Thought" concept back in 2013, when David Cameron started making noises about renegotiating our EU membership. He wasn't idly speculating in the pub with his mates, he was seeing what we said and did about it. There wasn't an immediate uproar against it, and the anti-EU sentiment had been stoked gently and quietly for decades, so that's as much license as he and his needed.
So what happens if Donnie goes through with it? What happens if he barricades himself in the Oval Office and plugs his fingers in his ears?
Fact is, we aren't sure.
If the army, or the national guard, or the secret service, or even the FBI or CIA, have protocols for this kind of thing - they haven't been made public. I would like to believe that they DO have a protocol for this kind of thing. As anathemaic as it might seem for the democratically elected head of state to refuse to leave when the state elects someone else, coups are a semi-regular occurrence worldwide, so it can't be that alien a concept. Especially given that the CIA funds so many of them.
What really matters, though, is what the rest of the executive decides to do.
There's a lot of people in the White House that are only there because they're friends with this dude. There's a lot of folks that have benefited hugely from his being in power, because you can get away with absolutely egregious shit when the entire population is standing in slack-jawed horror at the last thing the president himself has done. I daresay that they would support his barricading, and would try and stir up their base to action - which means boogaloos and proud boys all over the place, and probably a bunch of Klan as well.
Everyone else, though? Senate, Congress? It might benefit them to just... pass on executive power to the person that won the election. Like, it doesn't matter that Donnie is in the White House right now, he's not the one in charge. He's not the President any more. He's just a guy in a room, surrounded by useless sycophants.
Technically speaking, the US military wouldn't have to obey his orders any more; and given how he has treated them at various turns, I don't think that there is a significant ground swell of Trumpism amongst the upper echelons of the Pentagon. So I would predict that the army would go along with the status quo, and refuse to assist the former President - though I doubt they would do anything direct to try and remove him. How bad would that look? US army invading their own White House?
If removal happens, I think it would be the secret service that would be the ones to do it. They are beholden to the office, not the man; and all of a sudden there is an intruder in the White House, which is a big deal. He needs to be removed without delay.
And if he does go down this route, and if he does refuse to leave, I guarantee you there will be no dignified end-of-movie resolution to the affair. Just another long, sad, dejected walk out to the car - potentially in cuffs.
...honestly gives me warm fuzzies just thinking about it.
If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.
Before we get into this I'd like to draw people's attention to the fact that:
1) The Black Lives Matter protests are still ongoing and will continue to do so until real results have been achieved that aren't simple corporate and governmental virtue signalling, and
2) Unmarked federal agents in military kit are literally snatching people off the streets in various places in the US with no justification and no guarantee of freedom or fair treatment.
Stay involved, stay informed.
Now, to business.
I'm going to open with this screenshot of Rishi Sunak, our Chancellor of the Exchequer, espousing some of his virtue.
Specifically I am going to point out this particular sentence.
And where's the harm in that, one might think? The nobility of work. Everyone loves a bit of hard work, right? It's noble to go in and put in your however many hours. You go in, you do your time, you shed your sweat, you get your pay, you go home, and you feel proud over nobly doing your duty.
Nobility. An interesting choice of words.
I've talked about work ethic before, and it relates to this - that there is a universally accepted ethically good attitude towards work, and how I am a bit of a hypocrite for having a work ethic but also having the thoughts we're going to discuss.
See, there's this... thing about work. As in both the concept of employment, and also the notion of undertaking physical labour. There's a thing about it being above reproach, about the notion of working being total and universal, and about how hard work is the be-all and end-all of human existence. It's a uniquely Conservative worldview.
Who here remembers this song from Dumbo?
Still not sold on how deeply this notion is embedded in our culture? How many stories do we get told by our older family members about how hard they used to have it, and how that was better for whatever reason? It's like the suffering brought about by worse conditions has a virtue applied to it. Imagine the attitudes of your older friends or relatives when they talk about people on benefits or receiving governmental help or charity, who haven't worked for it, who are expecting "something for nothing".
Ah but I get ahead of myself. First, let me delve back in time. WAY back.
Ever since we've had social groups and individuals in those social groups capable of performing different tasks, division of labour has existed. It's a very basic concept - someone has to go and stab the mammoth, someone has to stay home and watch the kids. The alternative is just not worth any numerical advantage it might offer, as any parent that has had to take their kids shopping when they're in a bad mood can tell you.
As social groups grew, as our tools got better, as we started to shift away from hunter-gatherer existence to arable and pastoral existence some 11,000 years ago, it became clear that less time needed to be spent stabbing the aforementioned mammoth. It took less effort to nurture the crops, guard them and prepare them for eating, than it did to go and bring the food home. So there was time to do other things. There was time for leisure, to have more children, to raise and teach them, to make things that weren't strictly needed for survival, such as art and music. We had, by dint of our growing brain pans and our tool use, earned free time.
We had also earned mercy. Margaret Mead - cultural anthropologist of renown - pointed out that, in her eyes, the beginning of actual civilization was a 15,000 year old human femur that had broken and healed. That broken femur was a concrete example of humans helping someone else without immediate reward, someone that couldn't care for themselves. This would have been even easier once crops became widespread. If one isn't constantly chasing one's next meal, one has time to recover from an injury that could easily prevent them from catching that meal and starving to death.
In truth, we owe as much of who we are as a species to the fact that we had time to NOT work for our survival than the things that we did TO survive.
And then along comes...
That's it, hierarchy. Or, specifically illustrated here, The Divine Right Of Kings.
The moment that we start having people in charge, people who lead and have others that follow - we see resource start to trickle upwards. The leader gets the biggest hut, in the most basic example - does he go out and get the mud and sticks himself? Probably not. Does he take from a mutually gathered pool of mud and sticks? Probably. Does that mean he gains more from the labours of others than they do? Definitely. (Is he definitely a he? You didn't even notice I was doing that, did you? Question everything, my friends!)
Humans have a base minimum resource need to exist. If you have eight humans, and one of them doesn't want to put in the work to meet that resource need, that human needs to convince the other seven that they need to do more than THEY need to as a minimum - so that the one can benefit from the excess. And if that human also wants a big hut, well, then you have to convince them to do even more work. Just hope that nobody notices that they work that much harder each day and have less to show for it.
Thus, we come across the origin of selling work as a noble virtue. Peep a couple of these bible quotes.
So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him? (Ecclesiastes 3:22)
Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense. (Proverbs 12:11)
And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house. (Luke 10:7)
And I believe we have all heard variations on the phrase, the devil makes work for idle hands, which is believed to have originated in a letter sent in the 4th century by the theologian Jerome: Do something, so that the Devil may always find you busy.
Having actual slaves, actual indentured people who are literally forced to perform labour for a leader (or collective of leaders), was a practice so common that I barely need to touch on it. It's a practice that continues today, even right now as we speak, though it is dressed up as prison labour. That said, one can't have an entire population that are literally enslaved - one needs a significant percentage of their people to not believe they need to be freed, so it is good for them to see that the key to a good life is to put in work, all day, every day, under the circumstances provided.
Oh hi, Feudalism. A big old pyramid scheme, with the king at the top, the nobility in the middle, and the peasant class at the bottom. There's your nobility of work.
Oh hi, Victorian workhouses.
Springing up in the 17th century as a means of providing something for poor people without upsetting the pockets of not-poor people, the workhouse was where you went if you didn't have any money. Because it is a sin to offer a hand of help to people that aren't making themselves useful.
Herein we find where this ethic becomes useful: because if you lionise the worker, and you enshrine as holy the notion that one has to work for their supper (even while those higher in society don't do so), then you can very easily adjust your thinking into believing that those that do not - or cannot - work, don't deserve any help. It allows one to demonise the concept of "something for nothing". Describing monetary or fiscal assistance to those of the lower classes as "handouts", while describing such a thing to businesses as "stimulus".
It is a weapon that can be aimed at any number of individuals that certain more conservative states might decide need to be the enemy of the day. Refugees, for example. Immigrants. Local disenfranchised populations. Teenagers. Protesters. The homeless. So on. Also, it is used to dismiss individuals who are opposed to being charged for things they feel they should not be charged for, for whatever reason. Tuition fees in the United States are a good example; most arguments that they should be forgiven or eased are met with some derivative of "you can't have something for nothing", often accompanied by a "back in my day". The word Scrounger gets used a lot, too, as a pejorative. This specific point of view can get shored up very easily by television programmes that demonise and villainise those who rely on benefits or external support - just one wing of the Right Wing Propaganda Block of programming that goes out daily on British TV.
What we can also do, at this point, is we can imply that it is only through hard work that one can gain wealth - and thus by the simple facts already established, we arrive at wealth being a virtue in and of itself, which makes it even easier to demonise those that don't have any. You're seen as a better person if you have plenty of cash, because it is implied that you worked for it, which is an inherently good thing to do. If you don't have cash, you are seen as a worse person, because you obviously haven't worked.
Let alone the hundreds, nay, thousands of reasons why effort put in doesn't equal reward gained - or the hundreds, nay, thousands of reasons why one can work hard and put in their virtuous noble labour and still end up bankrupt and homeless. If one is poor, if one is having difficulties, they can just work their way out of it - even if they can't. To the purveyors of this particular mindset, every problem that a person has should be overcome by them "just working harder".
That is the narrative. Right there. We justify our existence through our work, so those who do not or cannot can be dismissed, and so we do not have to provide assistance for anyone. We reject and deny and condemn those who want or expect "something for nothing", because everyone has to work, everyone has to contribute, and pay no attention to those carving off massive shares of what profits we make to keep themselves comfortable.
Except that phrase I keep using. Something For Nothing.
That concept is treated as a closed system, totally independent of any other factor. That this individual, regardless of their personal circumstances, wants - and perhaps expects - to receive some kind of benefit, for no effort or repayment. That's how it is phrased, and most people who will use the term in the context of wanting to deny others any kind of help or support will mean it that way.
This of course ignores how these benefits or fiscal forgivenesses are funded, and that is through tax - billions and billions of pounds worth of tax every year. This tax is used on a wide, wide variety of things - but it includes such things as benefits. Your tax money isn't ring-fenced; road tax on vehicles isn't solely used for maintenance of highways, National Insurance contributions aren't solely used for the NHS. It all goes into one single large fund, which is used to pay for everything that society needs - or so the plan goes.
So if you have had a job for a long time, and lived in a local council, and have bought things in local shops, and have a car that you drive, then you have paid a lot of tax; and if you are unable to work for a period of time, that means that, if you ask for some fiscal support to not - you know - starve, then you have already contributed to the fund that would actually support you.
What about someone who comes to this country from somewhere else? A refugee for example? They haven't done any work. Thus, if they expect any help, they are asking for Something For Nothing! They can't have it, because they haven't worked, and work is good, and work is noble, and not working isn't noble! (Or at least, so we would be led to believe.)
Well here's the thing; the third highest contributing tax to the national income is Value Added Tax, which is applied to the sales of damn near everything.
I have probably discussed this before, but just living in this country, even if you are having your housing provided by the state, means you still contribute to the economy - multiple times over. You walk into a shop and buy a £2 bottle of fruit juice - 40p of that goes straight to the treasury, and the profit the shop has made on the fruit juice is added to their total profits, which also get taxed as corporation tax. The people that made the juice? Yep, they pay taxes on their profits too, as do the people that made the bottles, the labels, and everyone else. Turns out that just about everyone pays tax, if they don't subsist on lichen and sunlight.
Even if they were given that £2 by the government - the government gets so much of it back so quickly that the actual cost to the government is so much less than the actual sum of money handed over. Anything that doesn't end up back in the tax coffers either goes into bank savings - which thanks to the eighties can be gambled on the stock market, for good or ill - or cycled through an endless churn of businesses that ends up stoking the economy as a whole.
But none of that matters, of course; because work as a virtue - and thus wealth as a virtue - is an ideology, projected into the world by those that have the money, and picked up by those that want the money and to not feel guilty about it. Be good, be obedient. Do your work. Make the money for the owners. That makes you a good person. This educational film will show you why.
The constant march of work-worship has its costs, of course. The arts suffer constantly, due to their not being seen as worthwhile unless one can make a profit from them. Even actual documented evidence that shows that working a four-day week improves productivity by 40% - more than accounting for the extra day workers don't spend at their desks - gets roundly rubbished and ignored.
So when Rishi Sunak says he believes he believes in the nobility of work, he is echoing something that his fellow Conservative politician Iain Duncan-Smith said, which is: Work makes you free.
Right.
Even if it can be proved that an objectively kinder, objectively more merciful system and methodology is actually better for the economy and the individual alike - while people that believe in the "nobility of work" are in charge, it is not something we shall ever see.
Remember: Rishi Sunak and Iain Duncan Smith alike both voted to end free school meals for children, despite their own meals being paid for by the taxpayer.
Just something to think about.
If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.
That's right, due to it being my birthday next Tuesday it's another round of Readers Request, so let me just get something out of the way.
There we go. Okay. Let's get to it.
Of all the Dr Whos and companions which are your favourites individually and the best pairing. - My favourite doctor is a hard choice, but I think I'd end up going with David Tennant - on the understanding that I haven't watched the most recent doctor - and my favourite companion is, was, and always WILL be Ace. Best combination? Tennant and Martha. Any day.
And why is it bonnie Langford? - Sorry...
Did you get any nice participation prizes for managing a whole year of meeting the minimum requirements for being not dead? - I got a Redemptor Dreadnought that I am looking forward to having anxiety over painting... and then actually painting, obviously.
Is Rasta Nav real? - Jah bless.
What was your best birthday gift ever? - This. I was on left of stage way up in the nosebleeds but it was mindblowing. The travel back was a bit of a lark, but...
Best Weird Al parody - I dunno about the BEST one - but my FAVOURITE one is this one:
Where were Voyager 1 and 2 when you were born and how far have they gone since then? What perspective does this knowledge give? - Buckle in for this one, folks.
When I was born, Voyager 1 was almost two years travel out from its encounter with Titan, and was well into its Extended Mission. Eight years from that point, it would take the last picture of the solar system needed for the System Family Portrait, below.
Voyager 2 was almost a year's travel beyond Saturn after its close encounter, and three and a half years away from its encounter with Uranus.
They are both travelling at different average speeds, so they have both travelled a different distance since I was born; Voyager 1 has travelled 20,386,209,600 kilometers (at around 17km/s), and Voyager 2 has travelled 18,587,426,400 kilometers (at 15.5km/s). Those are some big numbers. For comparison - that's around 136 and 124 AU respectively; that's 136 (or 124) times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Simply a massive distance.
What perspective does this give me? ...well. ...we're very, very small, in terms of the universe. Perhaps we could ease up on the ego for a while, give everyone else a break.
What song caught you off guard in a moment? Not necessarily a song that made you remember a person, but say out in the world you suddenly heard a song and went 'wait what?' - The Disturbed cover of Sound Of Silence. I was listening to the album the day it came out; the rest of the album is just... okay, you know? Mediocre. Just listening away while I was doing something else. Then this song comes on and I am pole-axed for the entire runtime. Just absolutely blown away. I listened to it on repeat for the rest of the day - I must have listened to it at least two dozen times the day it was released. Just absolutely kicked my ass.
Favorite doughnut from Krispy Kreme? - Simple chocolate ring.
If limitations of covid/ space/ time etc weren’t existing - how/where/when would you spend your birthday? - So. If we also assume that my health was okay, aka no limb and joint failure and no lung issues - get a few rooms in a nice hotel in a city somewhere. A hotel with a nice hotel bar. Perhaps close to the beach. Spend a week just eating local food, occasionally buying funky things. Sounds like a ball.
What is your zombie apocalypse plan - Go jack a car. Drive it to Co-Op, ram-raid the doors, get into the back. Load as many canned goods, bottles of water etc as I can into one of their trucks. Drive the truck down to the harbour. Steal someone's boat. Boat out into the middle of the solent, not over a sand bank. Drop anchor. Wait. Zombies can't swim.
If you could learn one art/craft/making-skill, what would it be. - I would love to be able to play music. Guitar perhaps? I know I know cliche but... failing that, drawing cartoon-style.
If you could have any animal in the world as a tame pet (and assuming space/supplies etc weren't a concern), what would it be. - One of THESE bad boys
If you could institute one policy that every government in the world has to follow, what would it be. - Universal Basic Income funded by enhanced corporate and capital gains tax - and if those taxes are avoided or not paid, then your company gets nationalised, immediately. Time to start giving something back.
Are criminality and deviance the same? When does something cease to be deviant and become criminal? - Criminality is a breach of legality; deviance is a diversion from accepted standards. It bears mention that something being morally wrong is also separate and distinct from both of these factors. A deviance should be considered criminal if it is, well, against the law. If it's a deviance that nobody even thought to make illegal - well, how many people does it hurt? How much potential for damage does it have? Is it harmful to society as a whole? That's the questions you gotta ask.
Should scientists be looking for genetic explanations for criminality/sexuality etc? If not, why not? - Well... what if they find that there is one? ...can you trust that information in the hands of today's governments and corporations? Given that it is relatively easy to get genetic material from someone. Ask not how this technology would be used by the most benevolent ruler - ask how it would be used by the most greedy, autocratic, self-interested power-monger you can imagine. If they can determine behind closed doors that someone has a predilection toward criminality, then they will be able to justify doing something about it, or not, as they see fit. Which just means another tool with which to punish and persecute and oppress people. But of course, any Eton graduate's children wouldn't be subject to such scrutiny, surely? And thus the system becomes not only pointless, but dangerous. And in terms of sexuality - imagine Russia (and its current massively homophobic/traditionalist authoritarian attitude) mandating that every child be checked for genetic sexuality. Given how they treat anyone that isn't heterosexual, would it be ethical for that information to be in their hands? We all know what governments are capable of doing. That's also assuming that either of these genetic tests are 1) 100% accurate and 2) overriding of nurture or life experience. Nobody is born a criminal.
Should politicians be held criminally accountable for actions that they take within their roles? If not why not. - Yes. Absolutely. If that would make them afraid of doing things which could lead to people dying, or getting hurt, or committing fraud - GOOD. They're MEANT to be accountable. That's why we elect them. Not that you'd think it, given how much this current crop of bastards can get away with before even thinking about resignation; and I am pretty sure our local MP could literally stab someone in the street and still pick up a 70% share of the vote, because he has a blue rosette. They should also explicitly be viable targets for class action suits.
What is your favourite smell? - New book.
Which is your favourite emotional state/emotion? - Uuuuh... that's... a tough one. I guess... belonging, combined with happiness and satisfaction? I think.
This video of Jonathan Frakes asking you things -
No, no, happy, at least 15%, no, not very, no money whatsoever as long as I had a comfortable bed, no, yes his name is Tom, sorta, only that the 49ers lose whenever I watch them, no, no, no, no, they sure have the income for it, no, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, I think this question really dates this video because no, YES WHENEVER I SEE IT
What franchise did you have high hopes for, only for you to become disappointed as time went on? - God so many, but let's say that the biggest two were the Alien vs Predator movies and the Michael Bay Transformers movies. The rage I could vomit into the cosmos over those, I swear to god. How do you fuck up just about every single aspect of five whole movies and still make money?
What franchise/thing would you like revived (toys/cartoons/films etc) - Centurions, Jayce & the Wheeled Warriors, Swat Kats, Visionaries, the second run of Thundercats, the Patlabor anime, Animorphs, the Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade, a movie or TV series based on the Rising Stars comic by J Michael Straczynski, Squats in Warhammer 40,000, jeez all sorts...
Interesting bits of Steam Punk that you've come across? - I'm not massively into steam punk stuff myself; now if you ask me, the really cool shit is diesel punk. I think steam punk got very popular very quickly, which immediately 1) dilutes the initial ethos into something you can sell literally everywhere and 2) means that everything gets a steam punk iteration, which... kind of undermines the entire thing. Besides - Victorian values are icky, even if they do result in big rolling cities that eat other cities.
Top 5 things you've enjoyed about Doctor Who - Daleks in general. The special weapons Dalek from Remembrance Of The Daleks, the first episode I ever saw. Some of the music. Some actual wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff. And this speech:
Well folks. That's it. That's this week. Thank you for coming along for the ride. Next week, we're back on it.
If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.
Anyone ever seen a dog, when it is told it can't do or have something?
You ever seen them do the thing where they look a bit guilty... but don't back off, don't go off to do something else, they just kind of... linger? Just wait about?
If they're told to not eat something, have you ever seen them just... sniff at it? Just look at it? Oh, not EATING it, oh no no no! Good dog, told NOT to eat. Not eating. No. But... looking is fine, right? Sniffing fine, right? Yes, that's just fine.
Have you ever watched as they try and do the thing that they were about to do? Just... maybe a bit sideways, maybe slowly, as if hoping that you won't notice, if you do it slowly enough?
Perhaps you have seen one of the braver canines pause when told no, take a moment, and then just do the thing anyway, because the five-second time period in which you meant the thing that you said has passed now?
I love dogs.
You ever noticed how kids do the same thing?
In a boring place like a waiting room or something, where they have to spend periods of time just being still and relatively quiet, and being considerate of other people, and in an environment that is so not-kid-friendly it hurts?
(Most kids anyway. When I was a kid I loved to just sit quietly, especially if I had a book. That explains a lot.)
So a child, who is understandably bored and antsy and not looking forward to having to see a doctor, is asked to stay still. Now they don't know how long this is for - waiting times in a doctors office are a mystery anyway, and a lot of children have the same timekeeping capacity as dogs. There are three times: The Past, The Next Five Seconds, and An Infinite Period Of Time Impossible To Imagine.
So the child becomes still. ...for a while.
How long until there is looking around and exhaling? Until there is leg-kicking? Until there is wriggling and shifting? How long until the kid is up on their knees on the seat, looking around, and complaining about being chastised because they haven't GONE anywhere, they're still HERE, they haven't even DONE anything...
But chastised all the same, the child becomes still, if sulky.
Until the cycle begins again.
Another thing that kids do - when told to not go upstairs, they will agree, but then maybe sit near the stairs, or on the stairs, and look up the stairs, and then sit a little bit up the stairs, and then have another look up the stairs, but they aren't UPstairs so - and then they're just upstairs because every step prior to that one was fine.
That's just kids, though. Right?
Now - and I apologise for this - picture our government.
Yep, that's them, right there. They look like the equivalent of Bulk & Skull from a UK variant of Power Rangers.
Now imagine that a massive pandemic starts spreading across the world, that you had months of warning about, and that your plan to deal with involves not helping anyone, not following the proposed pandemic measures from an exercise conducted in 2016, and instead just letting people die because it's more economical.
Yep.
Now obviously the general public heard about this and were outraged, so the government backpedalled on it immediately - and even claimed later that there was no herd immunity plan at all, despite there being clear evidence that there was, as reported here.
So measures are put in place - begrudgingly, and slowly, leading to a significant quantity of preventable infections and deaths. Doing what a lot of other countries did, sort of. The messaging coming out of the government was fairly limp, but what do you expect, they aren't very capable.
Some other countries enjoy success. Notably, countries that went in hard and fast on the lockdowns, and didn't faff around for ages saying "well maybe stay at home if you want but everything is fine".
Buuuuut...
...then what if we open just a little bit?
What if some of our advisers and MPs just... go and... you know? Go off and do things? Not EVERYONE obviously just some people?
What if we open just a little bit more, and change all of our signage from "red iconography stay home stay home STAY HOME" to "green iconography wishy washy be alert maybe"?
What if we open yet more, before we've even tabulated the figures from what happened the last time we relaxed lockdown?
What if we shift the onus of responsibility from the government onto the British public, so that it is the people's fault if anything goes wrong?
What if, after all of this, and after all of the half-assed messaging about staying home and wearing masks and social distancing, we then open pubs at 6am on 4th July - but INSIST that everyone will socially distance and wear masks and be safe and definitely do all the stuff they were told to because drunk people are famously good at following instructions? Just like reopening schools, filled with schoolkids who - also - are famously good at following instructions?
Just hoping that you wouldn't notice?
Because they haven't SAID "herd immunity", they're just doing everything NEAR herd immunity, and it's not THEIR fault that the public are doing what the public are doing, and they haven't even DONE anything...
Yeah, that's where we're at.
Setting a stopwatch for two weeks again. And if you've been to the pub, please don't take it personal if I don't want to hang out.
If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.
