Thumbs (a glimmer)

As the ancient Chinese curse apparently has it, “may you live in interesting times”. While sounding superficially like a blessing, of course it’s nothing of the sort. When it really comes down to it, although we all talk a good game about wanting to lead exciting lives, don’t most of us just want to live out our time quietly in uninteresting times of peace and tranquillity? I suppose it all depends upon your definition of “interesting”. Some people like to do sudokus and to watch reality TV. Chacun à son gout, I suppose. Each to their own taste. 

Besides, the last five years or so have demonstrated quite nicely that we live in anything but tranquil times. Brexit. Trump. Johnson. Ukraine. Rampant inflation. Fuel poverty. Climate change. Mass migration. Wildfires. Mass extinctions. Police brutality. Race riots. Islamic State. Do I need to go on? Our certainty in the inexorable advance of liberal ideas has been suddenly badly shaken and right to abortion, the right to be gay or non-binary, the right to freedom of expression and even the right to freedom of speech all seem much less certain than they were not so very long ago. And as if all that wasn’t enough, the very foundations of British life were shaken to their core last week by the death of the Queen. Even mourning, it seems, is now a source of controversy. 

It’s a lot. 

Perhaps then it is entirely in keeping with these turbulent times that the expression “may you live in interesting times” has no equivalent in Chinese, no Chinese source has ever been produced for its origins and it is mostly likely to have sprung up sometime around the late nineteenth century. Still, a superficially authentic sounding aphorism that is widely known but turns out to be entirely apocryphal seems somehow appropriate, doesn’t it? Still, who fact checks anything these days? It's easy to be angry with the world at the moment, and much harder to take a breath and to see the beauty that is still around us. Amidst all the noise, it’s easy to forget that the majority of people are just like you and me. Decent. Kind. 

I was reminded of this at a music festival a couple of weeks ago. Festivals like this are bubbles at the best of times, but End of the Road is perhaps more cosy than most. It takes place in Larmer Tree Gardens in Dorset and is small enough to feel intimate, with stages surrounded by trees and with peacock walking around amongst the crowds. Glastonbury it is not. It’s a comforting thing to be surrounded by people who are a lot like you and probably share a lot of the same opinions, even if only for a long weekend. Just to forget about the troubles of the world for a few days to drink cider in the sunshine and watch some live music. 

On the Sunday evening, we made our way to the Garden Stage. As the name suggests, this is a natural amphitheatre surrounded by trees and gardens. It has a relatively small capacity of perhaps two or three thousand people, and when we arrived at about 7pm, it was nowhere near full and the grass around the stage was covered with people just sitting with their friends, quietly drinking wine and waiting for the next act. We sat down on the grass towards the back. After a few minutes, a man perhaps a little older than me made his way into the space just behind us and set up three little chairs, before sitting down in his own chair and settling in for the evening. The next act was a singer called Lucy Dacus, I wasn’t familiar with her music, but she’s an American singer/songwriter and basically performed on her own with an acoustic guitar. It quickly became clear as she drew me in that she was really good, my musical highlight of the festival. At some point, the man sitting behind us was joined by two girls, each maybe about twenty years old, who sat down with him in the other chairs. I didn’t spend a great deal of time thinking about it, and I certainly wasn’t about to turn around and start staring, but I thought that one of the girls was this chap’s daughter, and the other was maybe her girlfriend. As Lucy Dacus played on and I became more absorbed in her music, I realised that her lyrical content was quite intimate and confessional. At one point, she warmly addressed the crowd and asked if any of the audience were gay and here with their partners. From the crowd reaction, it seemed that a lot of people there were (I subsequently learned that Lucy Dacus herself identifies as “queer”). Now, I’m a 48-year-old man and I was at the festival with my wife, but I’d also been wearing rainbow shoelaces on my shoes and rainbow wristbands on my wrists all weekend. I think inclusion is so important and it costs me very little to signal that I’m an ally. I know that I was in a bubble at this festival and maybe even as part of this crowd, but it’s a bubble that made me feel warm and happy in an angry, uncertain world. 

As the music continued, the two girls got up from their seats and came to stand just in front of me so that they could get a better view. It was now getting dark, and at one point, they were beautifully framed by the stage lights, gently holding hands and leaning into each other. It was a beautiful sight. I glanced behind me and saw that the man in his seat had seen what I had seen and was taking the opportunity to take a photo of the two girls as they were silhouetted in the stage light, lost in the music and in each other. He caught my eye and we exchanged a smile. What a beautiful thing that this guy was at the festival with his daughter and her girlfriend and that he was gently bursting with pride about this. It was a lovely moment. 

The moment stuck in my mind too because of the song that Lucy Dacus was playing. It’s called “Thumbs” and it’s about two people (lovers?) talking about the return of an abusive father. The final verse goes like this: 

I wanna take your face between my hands and say 

“You two are connected by a pure coincidence 

 Bound to him by blood, but baby it’s all relative 

You’ve been in his fist ever since you were a kid 

But you don’t owe him shit even if he said you did 

You don’t owe him shit even if he said you did”  

It’s a powerful lyric, but at the same time, it’s almost impossibly tender. Watching the two girls in front of me together sharing that moment together, and me sharing that moment with the watching father behind me, was wonderful and filled me with renewed hope. When there’s love in the world like that, how can you not feel optimistic? However dark it seems, there’s always a glimmer of light. That was my glimmer.

the law won

I wrote to my MP again.

Ruth Edwards replaced Kenneth Clarke in this constituency in 2019 and has been notably compliant with the Government whip on every vote. She's ambitious and doesn't want to do anything to rock the boat that might jeopordise her career in Parliament. I can actually understand that. I don't agree with her on almost anything and some of her voting has been ridiculous: she talks of her love and concern for the environment and then votes to allow the dumping of raw sewage into our waterways.... but still, this is how our democracy works. She can vote as she sees fit, and my recourse is at the ballot box.

I am genuinely interested to see how she lines up to defend this latest affront to common decency.

--

Dear Ruth Edwards,

I wrote to you in May 2020 about Dominic Cummings' trip to Barnard Castle with his family. You replied on 27/05/20, telling me how you were angry when you heard about it, but that

"As I listened to his media conference on Monday afternoon, I was struck by the level of detail and explanation offered by Mr Cummings, as well as the time he took to answer questions from the media.  His performance was not polished or flowing, they were the words of a husband and father who had tried to do the best for his family in very stressful circumstances. Mr Cummings made clear that he had taken steps to remain isolated throughout his journey and once he arrived at his parent’s farm.  I can understand why he thought it best to isolate himself, his wife and child where help was available to him should he need it and where accessing that help posed the least danger to other people".

You concluded that you felt that Cummings had acted reasonably, but added:

"Like any other individual, Mr Cummings is entitled to this due process and also to equality before the law.  If he has stepped outside of those lockdown rules (which should be equally applied to everyone), then the process for investigating breaches of those rules must also be applied with the same equality."

I wrote to you again in December 2021 to express my anger at news of the Downing Street Christmas parties in 2020. Again, you expressed your shock and anger at what seemed like a flagrant disregard of the rules that we had all been following. I told you I hadn't been able to see my elderly mother with Parkinsons and you told me about the sacrifices you had made:

"We did it because we were following the rules we had asked everyone else to follow and because we believed it was the right thing to do. I know many other people also faced significant challenges of adjusting their business model to allow people to work remotely and of trying to cover both work and childcare when schools were closed.  We all missed the camaraderie and friendship from working together in person with our colleagues".

Now, on the back of the news from a couple of weeks ago about a gathering in the garden in Downing Street (a 'work meeting', we were told), it seems that there was another drinks party in the garden on 25 May 2020. The invitation to this event, sent to 100 people, makes it clear that it was a social event with alcohol. It may have been socially distanced, but it was also clearly in contravention to the guidelines that were in place at the time. Matt Hancock made a point in one of that week's press conferences that we should resist the tempation to enjoy the good weather with our friends because we all had to do the right thing. Except it's clear that not everyone seemed to be clear what that meant. Whilst thousands of people were seeing their families through the windows of care homes, or attending strictly limited funerals, or washing their shopping and worrying about whether they were allowed out for a walk with their family if they had already taken some exercise that day, it seems that other people thought it was acceptable to have a garden party with alcohol.

I wonder what the Prime Minister's excuse will be this time; I wonder how he will try to duck responsibility or shift the blame onto someone else. What seems clear to me is that you and I are both being treated as fools. We followed the rules, and even as we were being urged to follow them, they were being egregiously broken by the very people giving us the instructions. What particularly galls me is that this particular party (and who knows, there may have been others we don't yet know about) is that it took place in the days immediately before that pious defence of Dominic Cummings by the government and many Conservative MPs, including yourself. That Rose Garden press conference took place within hours of this most recently revealed party, that defence of Cummings was masterminded by people who knew the party had taken place, and still they lectured us about rules.

How do you feel now about you defence of Cummings? Do you feel you have been taken for as much of a fool by these people as I do? When did you find out about these parties? At what point will you stop trying to defend them and start to represent the outrage of your constituents? We simply cannot tolerate a government or a society where there seems to be one rule for them and another rule for everyone else. I agree entirely with what you said in May 2020, "If he has stepped outside of those lockdown rules (which should be equally applied to everyone), then the process for investigating breaches of those rules must also be applied with the same equality."

The rules should be equally applied to everybody. 

Everybody.

I look forward to hearing your views on this,


Yours sincerely,

swisslet.

draw the line...

A Facebook friend of mine posted this on their wall the other day.

She's a perfectly decent, reasonable person.  No, actually.... that's not fair because she's much more than that: she's one of the most community and family-minded people that I know who is constantly putting herself out for other people.  She'd probably be the first person to tell you that she's not a particularly deep thinker, but she's always seemed open-minded and prepared to listen to other people's points of view in case she might learn something.  She's a nice person; one of life's good eggs.

And she posts this.

This is nasty, pernicious and ignorant rubbish. It's clearly offensive - and not just in its use of exclamation marks.  I don't know if she has any relatives or friends who served in the armed forces, but this friend often posts up things about war heroes and military stuff on her Facebook wall. Just today, she posted something from the local paper about a veteran of WWII stepping back into a Lancaster bomber for the first time in 60 years. She clearly cares about these issues, but is also clearly part of a generation that seems to take it entirely for granted that France and Germany aren't constantly at each other's throats and that wars like these are passing out of living memory.

I imagine she'll proudly be wearing a poppy over the next few weeks and will see no dissonance in that show of respect with the contempt shown by the makers of this picture towards the sacrifices of those soldiers who gave their lives fighting for freedom in Europe.

Ugh.

I suppose I should no longer be shocked to see this sort of stuff.  It's been more than a year since the referendum, and our national political debate has been bumping around at about this sort of level since before the 2015 general election.  You want to know where the line is? Look behind you - we crossed it some time ago.

I think what shocks me the most is the good-hearted people - like my friend - who are taken in by this sort of garbage.  Referendums, eh?

Clearly, I'm naive, but surely some things should be way beyond the scoring of cheap, reductive political points, shouldn't they? Speaking of which, it's nearly time for my annual rant about the poppy....

just a girl...

Like many people, I've been genuinely shocked by the number of female friends in my Facebook timeline using the #MeToo hashtag to show that they have been the victims of some form of sexual assault or abuse.

In spite of my best attempts to check my privilege in at the door, I've still been somewhat shocked too by some of the articles and commentary that have followed in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal that kicked all of this off in the first place.  I just struggle with some of the generalisation: I'm a man, so perhaps it's inherently harder for me to understand, but it's difficult not to feel at least a little bit got-at when it seems like my whole gender is under suspicion.

Look at this article: Want to Treat Women Better? Here's a List to Start With.

There's a lot of common sense here (although, maybe a big part of the problem is that these things aren't commonly understood).  I realise that it's my privilege talking, but it feels as though a lot of the stuff here isn't only about gender, but is really about basic human decency:

 - Don't talk over people
 - Don't get defensive when you get called out
 - Don't make assumptions about someone's intelligence based on the way they dress
 - Be aware of your inherent power in any given situation
 - Don't send unsolicited dick pics

etc.

These are basic principles for not being an arsehole, right? (I nearly said dickhead, but the words you choose are important and it's easy to avoid the gender-specific insult and just go for a body part that we all possess instead).

Also, the last point in that list..."Don’t read a list like this and think that most of these don’t apply to you".... doesn't that read to you as just a little self-satisfied; as though the person writing this has just dropped the mic, fixed you with a glare and folded their arms?

Look.  I get it.  I really do.  I try hard not to be part of the problem.  I'm a big guy, and although you and I know that I'd get blown over in a stiff-breeze and wouldn't say boo to a goose, I noticed very early on that my physical presence sometimes intimidated.  If I was walking behind a woman at night, I quickly learned that they sometimes felt uneasy and threatened by my presence.  I knew that I had no ill-intent, but I also realised that they had no way of knowing that and the simple act of crossing the road helped to signal that I wasn't a threat.  It's only a small thing to do and I was happy to do it.  Frankly, not sending unsolicited dick pics is even easier.

I don't pretend to be a feminist, but I'm certainly not one of those guys who gets inarticulately and irrationally angry at ridiculous things like the all-girl Ghostbusters or the new prominence of female roles in the Star Wars films (the First Order is a much more equal opportunities employer than the Empire used to be, so they're not all bad).  Although I grew up without strong female influences on my life - mostly single sex schooling and no sisters - I've spent much of my adult life surrounded by the most amazing, intelligent, high-achieving women.  The idea that women are in any way inferior is just laughable.  My wife will doubtless tell you that I fall too easily into traditional gender roles at home and don't pull my weight enough with domestic chores, and she's probably right (although, I think that's essentially down to me having much lower standards than it is assuming that they're primarily a woman's jobs... but I could definitely do more).

It's just not helpful to label large, diverse groups of people with one big stereotype, is it?

That doesn't mean we don't have a problem, mind.  My Facebook friends have shown me that clearly enough over the course of this week.

think think about it....

I found myself shouting at the radio yesterday morning. I was up slightly later than normal, so when I turned the radio on in the bathroom, it was a phone-in rather than the usual breakfast news programme.  The show had obviously been on for a little while, and the debate was already well underway.  As I started to listen, I quickly gathered that the subject under discussion was Labour's shift in policy position on Britain's exit from the European Union: in a clear change of direction, the party announced on Sunday that Labour would support full participation in the EU single market and customs union during a lengthy “transitional period” that it believes could last between two and four years after the day of Britain's departure from the EU [read all about it here].

In case you hadn't noticed over the course of the fourteen months or so since the referendum, Britain's exit from the EU is a subject that continues to divide the nation.  Rarely has so much ignorance been so loudly displayed by so many people (on both sides of the debate) over such a long period of time.  Unfortunately for me, I was in the shower long enough to hear several callers give the listening audience the benefit of their opinions on the subject.

I realise that the station was actively selecting the people they put on the air and were well aware of their views and what they were likely to say, but even so, I was found it infuriating.  The callers all sounded at the older end of the station's demographic, and they all, without exception, were very firmly of the view that this change in direction seemed specifically designed to somehow sabotage the democratic will of the people to break every single possible tie to Europe.  Those Europeans have been holding us back, you see.  We've stood alone for centuries, but in the last sixty years, these people have been slowly emasculating us and robbing us of our greatness.  We need to stand alone and stand proud; people are queuing up to do trade deals with us! Obama said we would be at the back of the queue, but now Donald Trump says we will be at the front! The Ivory Coast has said what a favourable deal we could get on cocoa! We could single-handedly save the economy of Africa! (seriously... someone did actually make that point about the enormous potential of a cocoa deal with the Ivory Coast).

Ignoring the entirety of human experience for a moment, how can people be so certain in their views when they seem to know so little about the subject?

Look: I understand that more people voted to leave the EU in the referendum than voted to stay. Although I think this is an act of wilful self-harm, I'm not one of those people who thinks we should ignore the result of the vote entirely.  In fact, listening to these callers rather reinforced my view that, even if we were to stage the referendum again now, I think the leave vote would be even larger second time around.

It's just that people have read far more into the result than was on the ballot paper.

We weren't asked for our views on immigration or on the single market or the customs union or on the European Court of Justice....just on whether we wanted to be in or out of the European Union.  The fact that these are separate things is a distinction lost on most, not that this stops people sounding off about it.  Or, indeed, most of our elected politicians washing their hands of taking any real responsibility for this bloody mess.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions of course, but that doesn't mean that I have to believe that all opinions are created equal.  At least try and present a cogent, reasoned argument.  Or, come to that, present an emotional one, but don't try and dress it up with absolute nonsense. Don't talk to me about how democracy has spoken; don't tell me that my Brexit must be 'hard'  and that the people have spoken; and above all, don't trumpet your ignorance on a national radio phone-in when I'm showering. I can accept that people have different opinions to me, but try and think about them at least a little bit, eh?

You made me shout at the radio and definitely harshed my bank holiday mellow.

Ugh. What's wrong with people?

what does the fox say?

The front page on my Guardian app caught my eye yesterday and seemed to rather sum up the state of UK politics at the moment: a very unconvincing Theresa May harangued by a member of the public over her party's treatment of the disabled and, in considerably smaller print, "Corbyn vows to help underpaid and overworked nurses".

If you didn't know any better, which one of those two politicians do you think would be popular with the average person in the street?

Yes, the one who wore diamond studded shoes on the One Show whilst talking about how her marriage was "strong and stable", of course!

It's intensely depressing that this government can pretty much say and do whatever they want - bring back fox-hunting, sell the NHS, grind the bones of the poor, the sick and the disabled down into fertiliser....whatever - and they're still going to increase their majority at the general election next month.  I actually heard the former leader of the Conservative party, Michael Howard, talking on the radio the other day about how Remain voters no longer get a say, and that their opinions are worthless because they lost the debate in the referendum. I've heard otherwise rational-seeming people saying that any MPs that favour anything other than a hard Brexit should be sacked because they clearly aren't representing the will of the people.  It's baffling.

(As an aside, there's a reason why referendums - federal plebiscites - are illegal in the German constitution.  Just sayin'...)

Still, who doesn't want strong and stable leadership, eh?

[from news thump]

We live in interesting times, I'm afraid.

wanna hear you echo...

The internet is an echo chamber.

I realise I’m not saying anything new here, but it seems that pretty much everything I read now has people commenting underneath it, slinging alternative viewpoints at each other, with neither one listening to the other. I’ve just been reading an article on the bicycle helmets and whether or not they make a cyclist safer. It’s an interesting, balanced article presenting evidence on both sides of the debate. The comments are predictable.

“It’s safer”
“No it isn’t”
“Shut up”
“No, you shut up”

etc.

No one is listening to anyone (and, in some cases, aren’t even bothering to read the article they’re commenting on).

I’m as guilty of this as anyone, and I’m seldom able to walk past something on Facebook when I think I can try and talk some sense into someone using a carefully thought-out, nuanced argument. It never works. Brexit was a bit of an eye-opener when the passion of the debate revealed that my comfortable, self-selecting bubble of like-minded liberals was punctured by some friends who actually believed that leaving the EU would be a good thing. They were wrong, of course, and I tried to talk some sense into them and to question the basis of their beliefs… but I was wasting my breath. Did I listen to any of their arguments? Well, of course not. They didn’t make any sense to me, so why should I? …oh. That’s the problem in a nutshell, isn’t it?

I was listening to an MP talking on the radio yesterday in the aftermath of the attacks on Westminster. He was saying that people seem to forget that MPs from all the different parties may have diametrically opposed views politically, but they spend a lot of time together and often form friendships across party lines. Mhairi Black has spoken about how her Westminster “boyfriend” is the somewhat unlikely figure of Jacob Rees-Mogg. Those guys in my feed who supported Brexit? They're not idiots and they're still my friends.... they just hold a different view to me.

I'm just tired of all the bullshit and all the arguing and all the negative energy.  I can't keep living like this.

Whether we’re thinking about Trump or Brexit or ISIS or even cycle helmets, it’s helpful to remember, as the murdered MP Jo Cox pointed out, we have far more in common than divides us. Before you despair entirely at the state of the world, or before you roll up your sleeves to wade into a pointless online battle with an anonymous adversary, just remember that. Most people are, I think, basically decent… whatever the internet may lead you to believe.

Not very insightful and definitely a touch sanctimonious, but there you are.  Be the change you want to see in the world, and all that.

Besides, this post gives me an excuse to link to this, undeniably one of the best clips on the whole of the internet.  No arguments: R. Kelly explains Echo.

wRoNg

the inevitable heat death of the universe, in equation form

2016 was a year when it seemed easy to believe that at least half the world was batshit crazy.

How else can you possibly explain why Britain would be so keen to apparently make the entirely ridiculous and unjustifiable decision to walk off the cliff and determine that, not only were they hellbent on leaving the EU, but also that they were determined to make it the most painful, damaging exit available? How else do you explain the election of Donald Trump? I understand that Hillary Clinton is a pretty long way from being an ideal candidate, but in a two horse race you honestly thought that Donald Trump was the preferable answer? DONALD TRUMP?

These are both difficult things to understand, especially when you are encased in a lovely, liberal bubble where you surround yourself with people who largely believe the same things that you believe. I have tried to remind myself that, just because someone is on the other side of the debate to me, that doesn’t automatically make them a moron. I debated Brexit long and hard with a few ‘leavers’ before the referendum, and although I thought they were fundamentally wrong (or at the very least, seriously misguided), I never for a moment thought that they were voting with anything other than honest intentions.

We live in an increasingly polarised world, but you can't live your life thinking that people are either with you or against you. It's just not possible and you don't have the luxury of everything being that simple. Life isn't black and white, no matter how hard you might wish that it was.

I’m an atheist who thinks that the belief in an all-powerful Sky Fairy is nonsensical, if not downright delusional. And yet…and yet…. I know enough people who are warm and intelligent human beings who also believe in God to understand that you can’t always put people into neat boxes; that evidently you can believe in something I believe to be ridiculous and also be a perfectly sensible person. That’s life. My dad - a doctor - is also proof positive that a belief in God certainly isn't compatible with a belief in evolution.

Of course, in the main, the belief of these good people in God doesn’t affect me (or anyone else) negatively in any way; their belief makes them happy and that’s wonderful (and sadly, can’t really be said for everyone religious). A vote for Donald Trump or for Brexit is a little more problematic, because these things will have a tangible impact on the lives of others.

I mention all this, not as some kind of half-arsed review of 2016, but because I’ve been watching the BBC documentary on Yellowstone over the last couple of days. Following hard on the heels of Planet Earth II, this is another nature programme in the last few weeks that has laid bare the impact of climate change on the natural world. Of course, there are other sides to this debate, but the evidence of the impact of rising global temperatures is surely now overwhelming, isn’t it? The temperatures in the North Pole this winter have been THIRTY degrees higher than average. Thirty!

You can argue all you like that there isn’t sufficient evidence to definitively conclude that this is a change driven by human agency, but the balance of probabilities would suggest that it almost certainly is (as Richard Dawkins says about belief, just because I can’t definitively prove that there *isn’t* a God, doesn’t mean that it’s 50:50). Any yet, climate change denial seems likely to become US Policy – after all, Donald Trump is on record as saying that he thinks it’s a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.

I’m struggling to understand this, I really am. It seems intellectually dishonest to continue to trumpet that climate change isn’t real when the empirical evidence is growing every day and we can see the changes with our own eyes. As a historian, I’m well aware that climate has always fluctuated and that (for example) we had a medieval “warm period” when global temperatures were a couple of degrees higher on average…. but frankly, the debate about human agency –ridiculous though it is - is fundamentally irrelevant. Surely the simple fact of the matter is that we need to do something about climate change or risk mass extinctions and global catastrophe. If restricting carbon dioxide emissions will help with that, then what are we arguing about?

...it’s almost as though these people had some form of vested interest in extracting, refining, selling and burning every last bit of carbon energy remaining on this planet.

Nah, it can’t be that, can it?

These guys just honestly believe that climate change isn’t happening and we should respect that as we watch the world burn.

FACTS

This from the New Yorker today.  As brought to my attention by my friend Marissa.

2016 is pretty much this, isn't it?

Post-truth, post-facts, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

sorrow's native son...

There’s an article about the “alt-right” on the Guardian today and it introduced me to the strange and alarming concept of “the Manosphere”.

"For several years now, I’ve had a dark and fairly unusual hobby. When I’m alone and bored and the mood strikes me, I’ll open up my laptop and head for a particularly unsavoury corner of the internet. No, not the bit you’re thinking of. Somewhere far worse. That loose network of blogs, forums, subreddits and alternative media publications colloquially known as the “manosphere”. An online subculture centred around hatred, anger and resentment of feminism specifically, and women more broadly. It’s grimly fascinating and now troubling relevant. In modern parlance, this is part of the phenomenon known as the “alt-right”. More sympathetic commentators portray it as “a backlash to PC culture” and critics call it out as neofascism….On their forums I’ve read long, furious manifestos claiming that women are all sluts who “ride the cock carousel” and sleep with a series of “alpha males” until they reach the end of their sexual prime, at which point they seek out a “beta cuck” to settle down with for financial security. I’ve lurked silently on blogs dedicated to “pick-up artistry” as men argue that uppity, opinionated, feminist women – women like myself – need to be put in their place through “corrective rape”."

This is all darkly fascinating and troubling, of course, and given a sharp relevance by the appointment of Breitbart’s Steve Bannon to a senior role in Trump’s White House staff. What captures my attention is how this chimes with my own experience:

From the age of seven until the age of eighteen, I attended boarding schools that were, to all intents and purposes, single sex. Sure, there were girls, but they were in an overwhelming minority and were generally treated, at best, as being a completely different species. I don’t have any sisters and, separated from my mother for long periods of time, this meant that I spent the majority of my formative years surrounded only by other boys and with very little feminine influence. I’m pretty confident that this left me emotionally scarred to the extent that I found it difficult to form meaningful relationships with girls. I don’t want to exaggerate the impact this had on me: I’m still friends with one girl I met at school when we were both 17, and I like to think I was perfectly capable of interacting relatively normally with women… it’s just that it took me a long time (and, trust me, it felt like an absolute bloody age) to be able to get myself a proper girlfriend. Even that makes it sound like I knew what I was doing; truth be told, I met the girl who was prepared to look past my rough edges and decide that I was worth persevering with. I don’t think I really had all that much to do with it.

Would this have made me a candidate for the Manosphere? Perhaps, although I’d like to think that I focused all my anger and frustration inwardly. I never blamed anybody but myself for my inadequacies and I certainly never blamed the girls. Actually, the prevailing attitude at my school towards girls was pretty shocking. There was one guy in my year who seemed to delight in using his “power” (he was popular, confident and privileged) to seduce girls. He’d work on them for a few weeks, to the point where they thought he was “the one”, and then, once he’d got access to whatever he needed, he dropped them and never spoke to them again. He was 18 and these girls were 17. He thought this was funny, and so did many others. Lots of the boys, I’m sure, thought this was behaviour to be admired because he was getting some from these stupid girls. To be honest, I was just appalled that you could treat another human being so callously. Did I wish that I was more successful with girls? Of course, but I was damned if this was going to be the way that I went about it…. even if I had that sort of confidence, which I definitely did not.

Then, like so many people before me, I discovered the music The Smiths. It’s cliché, of course, but in my late teenage years, Morrissey seemed to be speaking directly to me and articulating the things that I felt.

And in the darkened underpass
I thought oh God, my chance has come at last
(But then a strange fear gripped me and I
Just couldn't ask)

And then I grew up. I don’t know exactly when this happened, but it wasn’t until some point in my early-20s (well, they do say that men mature more slowly than women). I’m probably definitely still emotionally crippled in lots of ways, but I finally met someone and fell in love and put a lot some of my confusion and frustrations behind me. Perhaps I’ve been lucky (I frequently tell people that I still don’t really understand why my wife ever looked at me twice, or indeed why she still seems to like me), but my life has been filled by intelligent, powerful women. In fact, depending on how you gauge these things, I would say that the women in my life have generally been more successful than the men. Some would probably think that says a lot about the weak “beta cucks” that I hang around with, but I think perhaps it just goes to show that girls are brilliant. Why be threatened by these wonderful creatures?

Why would you want to be that guy?  As Noel Gallagher once memorably said about his younger brother, don't be a man with a fork in a world of soup.

fairly local...

Missed the last couple of months of news in the UK? Need a quick catch-up? Well, you're in luck. Allow me to summarise:

Welcome to Brexit Britain. We don't bother the outside world, we don't want it bothering us.

Our future will remain ever Local.

You voted to Remain?  Well, your mind has been corrupted by colours, sounds, and shapes...

There's nothing for you here.

--

There you go.  All caught up.

it's the only thing that there's just too little of...

I've been thinking a lot about anger this week.

Well, to be honest, I've been angry quite a lot this week.  I was angry as a teenager, but I think I've actually grown up to be quite even-tempered.  It might sometimes appear to be otherwise, but I loathe conflict and will go well out of my way to avoid it.

But this week has nearly broken me.  I'm angry and ashamed at the state of my own country.  It's bad enough that a majority of people voted in the referendum to leave the EU, but what's happened since then has been just awful. Most depressing has been the rise of racism and the plummeting descent of national debate into the gutter.  This hasn't come completely out of the blue, and we had a taste of this in the last General Election, but watching people hurling abuse and hatred and suspicion at refugees and also at the people who dare to show them an ounce of compassion has been depressing in the extreme.  52% of voters in the referendum voted to leave the EU, but that doesn't make the other 48% traitors or remove their right to speak up.

Ugh. I can feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it.

But, you know what?  This is no good.

John Lydon famously said that "Anger is an energy", and maybe it is, but it's not a positive energy.  One of the best pieces of advice I've ever received is to try to worry about the things that you can control.  I find this incredibly helpful when thinking about my health in particular, but maybe that's something I might be wise to try and apply here too.  I can't change the result of the referendum.  I tried debating with people who were thinking of voting leave, and essentially nothing that I said was ever going to change their minds.  I was wasting my time. I'm not sure that anything I say now is likely to change anything either.  It might upset and annoy me that people feel this way, and I find it very hard to understand, but getting angry about it doesn't help anyone... and it definitely doesn't help me, because it just makes me feel impotent.

Buddha apparently said "holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die".

I think maybe he's right.

Why don't we try just being kind to people? I'm not asking you to be reasonable in the face of someone idiot racist calling you a traitorous bremoaner, but you can just be a little nicer to the people around you... whether that be at home, at work, on the bus or wherever.  I'm going to give it a try.  It can't hurt, can it?  I want to try and do something positive, because I'm sick and tired of all the anger and all the negativity. I can be in control of that.

...although, it's so hard because they are *such* arseholes.

stranger than fiction...

I’ve been watching the West Wing again.

Well, I say “again”, but really it’s another one of those programmes where I’ve watched a few and made a mental note to watch it all, and then never quite got around to it and didn’t want to watch the new series on TV because I was behind… I finally bit the bullet and bought the whole lot on iTunes the other day. Say what you like about Apple, but the convenience of being able to pull down a series like that, episode by episode onto your chosen device is pretty much unbeatable, in my books (if you’ve ever manually ripped a DVD into iTunes, then you’ll understand exactly why.)

It’s such an amazing programme. It’s obviously a preposterous liberal wet-dream, but with the current state of world politics as it is, I find that kind of thing remarkably comforting. Plus, of course, it’s beautifully written and performed. I doubt that President Trump’s staff in the White House would look anything much like this lot… but, then again, has any White House staff ever looked quite like this lot, with their good looks, talent and principles? Doubtful.

Of course, there’s one element of the plot that is resoundingly more significant for me now than it was when I first watched the show: the issue of President Bartlet’s multiple sclerosis. I haven’t really got far enough into the series yet (we’re just starting S2) for it to really have taken off… but already it’s there, waiting to blow up as a central issue: a major health problem that the sitting president has effectively kept totally secret from the public. I find the show’s handling of the disease fascinating (why on earth does Abbey Bartlet feel the need to disclose the MS to the anaesthetist in the hospital? Would anaesthetic work differently with relapsing-remitting MS? Does the incoming president not have to have some kind of medical on taking office, or do we rely entirely on their honesty? Please tell me that we wouldn’t just be taking Trump’s word on this)….but I also find it incredibly moving because it is now directly relevant to my personal experience. I watch Martin Sheen’s Bartlet looking tired and weighed down by his responsibilities, and I watch his wife and his chief-of-staff watching him, wondering if this is something else…. and I find it very moving because it’s so close to home. Well, not the being-leader-of-the-world thing as such… the other stuff.

This is a show that often has me welling up as they shamelessly manipulate my emotions, but now I find myself emotionally connecting with the show in a way that I hadn’t really expected. I expect they’ll get lots of the details wrong, but I’m still looking forward to seeing how sensitively they handle this as the show moves forwards. (No spoilers, thanks).

At its heart, the West Wing was just areally, really good show. It’s impossible not to look at President Bartlet and wonder if someone like that could ever actually get elected: erudite, principled, educated…. there’s one scene in the double-episode that starts the second season where Leo McGarry, trying to convince Bartlet in a flashback scene that he should stand for president, turns to his friend and says, "A good man can't get elected President - I don't believe that.”

I’d love to believe that was true, but my faith is wavering. It was a comforting thought at a time when George W. Bush was in the White House, but it seems like a ridiculous pipe dream now (Let Trump be Trump? The mind boggles)

Or perhaps my impossibly high standards for elected officials and their staff comes from a love of the West Wing.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

How much Latin do you think Trump knows?

how can we win when fools can be kings?

"Brad and Angelina are divorcing?"

Apparently the Russians have started dropping 'bunker buster' bombs on Aleppo as they wage war on behalf of Assad. They are bombs that weigh more than a tonne and can penetrate through 2m of reinforced concrete.  They're designed to destroy military installations; they're being used to decimate people's homes.

“Are we in the era of technology and civilisation?” said a resident of eastern Aleppo. “Is this Russian civilisation and democracy? The killing of children, women and elderly people?”

I know these bombs were (allegedly) dropped by Russia, but I can't help but think back to the vote 10 months ago in the House of Commons to decide if Britain should join in the bombings.

Remember Hilary Benn's much-lauded speech?

“We are here faced by fascists – not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in the chamber tonight, and the people we represent. They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy, the means by which we will make our decision tonight, in contempt. And what we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated.”

The motion was passed by 174 votes, and Jeremy Corbyn was widely criticised for his view that there wasn't a good enough case to send our planes to join the bombings.  Here's some of what he said at the time:

"In the past week I have aimed to give a lead to the growing opposition to Cameron’s bombing plans – in the country, in parliament and in the Labour party. Rejection of 14 years of disastrous wars in the wider Middle East was a key part of the platform on which I was elected Labour leader. However bumpy a ride that has been in parliament, it is essential to learn the lessons of those wars. In the light of that record of western military interventions, UK bombing of Syria risks yet more of what President Obama called “unintended consequences”. The prime minister said he wanted a consensus behind the military action he wants to take. He has achieved nothing of the kind. After Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, MPs thinking of voting for bombing should bear in mind how terrible those consequences can be."

Unintended consequences.  No kidding. Although, if you drop military hardware like that on cities, does the killing of civilians really count as an unintended consequence?

I had an argument with someone the other day who was opposed to Corbyn and his leadership of the Labour Party.  His position was that he believed it was worth surrendering 50% of his principles if that meant he could get into power and implement the other 50%; he called my position hopelessly idealistic.  My position was that, if the principles you were prepared to sacrifice included things like an opposition to the renewal of Trident and opposing the bombings in the Middle East, then - for me - you've given up something fundamentally important.  These are red-line issues for me and I can't understand why anyone would be prepared to give them up in an attempt to make themselves more electable.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not blind to Corbyn's faults.  I've worked for people like him before, and I can well understand how infuriating and difficult it must be.... but my sympathy stops when these apparently grown-up, responsible adults - elected to represent us, don't forget - can't bring themselves to see a bigger picture or work through their differences to provide meaningful leadership.  We could use a functioning Opposition at the moment, no? They've tried to get rid of Corbyn over the summer and failed spectacularly; they have no credible alternative on offer, no desire (perhaps on either side) to compromise and apparently no understanding of the way their own party is changing around them.  Apart from anything else, the behaviour of the Parliamentary Labour Party does nothing more than provide Corbyn with a handy excuse of blaming them for all of his party's (many) failings.

Someone asked me if I would be voting for Corbyn in the leadership election.  No.  I'm not a member of the Labour Party.  I've thought about joining a lot over the last couple of years, and I've had the sign-up page open on my computer several times... but I just can't get past the thought that they're all a shower of bastards and I'd be wasting my time. I don't think they want me as a member anyway.

I look at that picture of that man in the massive crater, and I think about the mess we've helped to make in the Middle East... and then I look at the pathetic arguments that are taking place in British politics at the moment, and I feel like despairing.

We deserve better, don't we?

Maybe not.

hicks don't mix with politics...

You might remember that, a little while ago (on the 1st July), I wrote to my local MP.  I didn't have all that much to say, but I felt I needed to say something to my elected representative in the wake ongoing shambles surrounding the referendum to leave the EU.

Technically, I think he's supposed to reply within a couple of weeks, but I've written to Ken before, and what he lacks in promptness, he more than makes up for in considered response.  I'd far rather have a late response from someone who clearly read my original email than one who responds quickly with a boiler-plate answer.

Anyway, here's what he had to say:

--

Dear Mr Swisslet,

Thank you very much for your recent e-mail, after the disastrous result of the referendum. I am sorry for the extended delay in replying, I received literally hundreds of e-mails after the result of the referendum. I am glad to find that you and I have identical views on Britain's membership of the European Union. I also agree with you that the referendum campaign was quite nasty and not very informative, particularly on the Leave side but sometimes on the Remain side in the national reports in the media.

The referendum is not binding. I think that MPs should vote according to their judgement of the national interest and the interest of their constituents. Unfortunately, most MPs on all sides paid lip service to the supposedly democratic nature of the exercise and vowed that they would obey the expressed will of the people.

I am in a rather exceptional position in that I am a life-long pro-European. I publicly opposed the idea of a referendum and, as you mention, my constituents voted almost 60/40 in favour of remaining. I will probably vote against an Article 50 application ending our membership, but there may be only a few eccentrics in the House of Commons in that lobby.

More significantly, none of the Brexiteers at the moment have any clear idea of what they want to do next by way of actual change to our economy, trade, migration and other arrangements with the EU. A flood of legislation and regulations will probably have to be put before Parliament over the next few years, implementing changes. I do not see how any referendum on membership can be an instruction to any MP on how to vote on these practical consequences. I will certainly do my best to try to contribute to mitigating the disaster that this decision on the 23rd June might otherwise cause.

Yours sincerely,

Kenneth Clarke

The Rt. Hon. Kenneth Clarke, CH, QC, MP

--

I've never voted for him in the 17 years or so I've lived in his constituency, but at least we clearly see eye-to-eye on this one.  It's a little dispiriting (albeit realistic) to see him accept that he would be an 'eccentric minority' voting against Article 50 in the House of Commons, but it's also comforting to see that he shares my frustration and will be doing everything he can to try to make things as good as they possibly can be.  The irony of our current position, of course, is that we're likely to ultimately end up trying to negotiate our way towards what we already had.... and we'll be bloody lucky if we get anywhere close to it this time around.

I had long conversations about Brexit on Facebook with a friend of mine before the referendum - he was in favour of voting out.  He's just come back to me today and said "I still believe this country will be bigger and better outside the EU....it's just a shame those trusted to sort it out are making a mess of things...".  I don't want to criticise him for a vote honestly cast, and I'm not one of those people who thinks we should keep having referendums until I get the result I wanted, but at the same time, it's impossible not to think of something Obi Wan Kenobi once said: "Who's the more foolish: the fool or the fool who follows him?"

They don't make'em like Ken any more, more's the pity.

there is no future in England's dreaming...

I’ve written to my MP.

Luckily for me, I have a pretty good one. I’ve never actually voted for Ken Clarke in the 17 or so years that I’ve lived in his constituency (and thus, my vote has been next to useless in our wonderful first past the post system), but he’s always been up to the mark as a constituency MP. If you have to have a Conservative MP, then it’s good to have one with positively progressive views on Europe. Ken was first elected to represent Rushcliffe in 1970, and I don’t think it’s any coincidence at all that 57% of the constituency voted to Remain in the EU Referendum – that’s a tribute to the 46 years of service by a committed Europhile MP.

From a personal point of view, I’ve felt the need to write to Ken twice: first over Blair and Bush’s Iraq war and then, more recently, on Israel’s attacks on Palestine. Both times, he took the trouble to send me detailed, point-by-point replies. The first letter was actually type-written on three sheets of paper, the second was word processed using a typewriter font. Safe to say that Ken is old school.

Why did I write to him this time? Well, over the referendum and its aftermath, of course. I didn’t really have any specific points to make, and I’m fairly sure that I share Mr. Clarke’s view on most of this anyway… but I’ve watched the events of the last few days, weeks and months with growing disbelief, and I wanted to make my feelings known to my representative.

Here’s what I wrote:

--

Dear Mr Clarke,

Whilst I was pleased to see that Rushcliffe voted to Remain part of the EU in the recent referendum (thanks in no small part, I'm sure, to all the hard work you have put into the area over the last several decades), I was - as I'm sure you were - dismayed by the national results. I was even more dismayed by the events following the referendum that showed all too clearly that the "Leave" campaign had no clear exit strategy, and that our country was plunged into a crisis of our own making with no leadership or plan to get ourselves out of it.

These are dark days, with our political leaders fighting amongst themselves as racism and intolerance seems to be on the rise. We're perhaps a little bit insulated from this in leafy West Bridgford, but I'm nonetheless extremely concerned about the future. Perhaps I'm an idealist, but I see myself as a citizen of the world and as a European first and foremost, and I have little time or patience with those Little Englanders who will seek to blame the ills of this nation on anyone but themselves. I believe we're stronger together (both as the United Kingdom and as an integral and involved part of Europe); I also believe we have a duty to reach out to those people who need our help, wherever they may come from and whatever the colour of their skin. This has been an incredibly divisive campaign, and the aftermath is shaping up to be even worse. I look to you as my representative in Parliament to do everything you can to act as a voice of reason and moderation as everything seems to be coming to pieces around us. I look at the chaos in both the Conservative party and the Labour party and I despair, and I hope I can rely on you to use your experience and your wisdom to help steer us into safer waters.

I'm aware that I'm not really asking you anything that you wouldn't naturally already be doing, but I wanted to speak up to you as my MP to let you know how I felt and to express my concern to you rather than to do nothing.

Yours sincerely….

--

I’m not sure quite what I’m expecting him to say, but I wanted to let him know how I felt all the same.

One of my friends wrote to her MEPs about this, and received the reply from one of them: “Astounding that you do not like the outcome of democracy. Brexit won, then end”. The same MEP then took to twitter and threatened to release her email and address details to her followers. Given that Janice Atkinson was thrown out of UKIP for racism and proudly has a profile picture showing her sitting alongside Marine Le Pen, perhaps this shouldn’t surprise anyone…. Quite why people vote for morons like this is another matter altogether (and this particular piece of cyber bullying is now with the police and relevant complaints authorities). Suffice it to say, I’m expecting an altogether different class of response from our Kenneth.

low down and travelling...

I've got to be honest with you.... I can't wait for this bloody referendum to be over.

I got a personally addressed flyer in the post from the "Vote Leave" campaign yesterday and it just annoyed me intensely with the very basic lies that it was telling.

That's a face he's got on there, isn't it? As my friend Ali said on Facebook, "He looks like he has piles and had to sit on a hard chair drinking grapefruit juice during a meeting where his views were ill received, and he's just been given a memo informing him his birthday party has been cancelled due to lack of attendance".  Yes.  That.

And as for what he's saying...well....DOWN WITH HUMAN RIGHTS, right?  Oh hang on, the European Convention on Human Rights has absolutely nothing to do with the EU, and a vote to leave will have literally no impact on that simple fact.  So that's just a total lie, isn't it? A simple google exposes that and other lies on this flyer, but people will believe it.

It's just absolute garbage that is either shockingly ignorant or is deliberately lying to try and influence the result of this referendum.  Either way, that's pretty poor.

It's not that the Remain side is much better either.  I watched George Osborne in an interview the other day talking about how a vote to leave the European Union would have a devastating effect on the lives of hard-working people in Britain.  Hold on... this is the same man who has clearly shown in the last six years of government that he doesn't actually give a damn about the hard-working families of this country?  Yes.  The very same man.  If you really care about the working man and about the future of the NHS, then what have you been doing since you formed a government in 2010?

It's exhausting and the level of debate has been depressingly down in the gutter.  My Facebook feed is generally a self-selecting audience of people who have more or less the same views as me, but even there I've seen some distinctly unsavoury and -- in my opinion -- deeply ill-informed opinions being shared. Maybe it's true that Obama had no business getting involved in this debate, but to share a post that was casually racist about the French, the Americans and the Germans and featured a comment with a picture of the president with the caption "Just another muslim coming to our country and telling us what to do.... well, how do you have a rational conversation with that?

It's my own fault for being unable to walk away obviously. I hope I don't lose any friends over this, although you do have to wonder what some of them are thinking... if they're thinking at all. The myth of Great British exceptionalism is clearly very much alive and well.

I'm starting to doubt that anyone, on either side of the debate, has ever actually changed their minds. I know I haven't... but to my mind, I haven't seen a single cogent argument to leave the EU that isn't based in wishful thinking.  I'm sure many people on the other side of the debate would say exactly the same thing.  ("Don't talk to me about the last 50 years of peace in Europe.  That's all in the past."  ARGGGGGGHHHHH!)

There are still two full weeks of this nonsense to go.

I'd wish it was all over, but there seems to be a very real possibility that the Great British public will vote to leave the EU in this referendum, and that is truly depressing.

american idiot...

“Are you ready for a commander-in-chief, for a commander-in-chief who will let our warriors do their job and go kick Isis ass? ....Pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, strict constitutionality. Those things that are unifying values from big cities to tiny towns, from big mountain states and the Big Apple, to the big, beautiful heartland that’s in between.”

Wow.

Looks like the Republicans are chasing the coveted idiot demographic really hard this year.

It would be funnier if it wasn't so terrifying.

David Cameron is a horrible troll who seems hell-bent on dismantling the NHS and punishing the poor and the sick... but it seems that it could be a whole lot worse.

Surely not, America? You're better than this.  Surely there's too much shouting in the world already.

true...

I saw this today and rolled my eyes.  You couldn't make this stuff up.  You absolutely believe that David Cameron is the kind of politician who, within the space of two months, could complete such a massive turnaround to the extent that he was now leading his own bombing campaign in Syria and calling the people who opposed him in Parliament as "terrorist sympathisers".

But, much though I want to believe that's true because it suits my narrative... I also studied history and I needed whether he really said that or not.

Here's what he actually said on 4th October 2015:

"Tragically, what has happened is that most of the Russian air strikes, as far as we have been able to see so far, have been in parts of Syria not controlled by Isil (IS) but controlled by other opponents to the regime.  So what is happening is that they are backing the butcher Assad, which is a terrible mistake for them and for the world; it's going to make the region more unstable, it will lead to further radicalisation and increased terrorism. And I would say to them: change direction, join us in attacking Isil but recognise that if we want to have a secure region, we need an alternative leader to Assad. He can't unite the Syrian people."

Here's the report in the BBC.

Context is everything: although he used those exact words, they are framed in a statement that is actually pretty consistent with what he was saying in Parliament yesterday.

I dislike David Cameron.  His repeated refusal to apologise for his remarks on Jeremy Corbyn as a "terrorist sympathiser" yesterday added insult to injury and further demeaned his office.  I fundamentally disagree that we have anything like a compelling case for airstrikes on Syria, and I find it insulting that Cameron thinks he can dupe us into thinking that somehow these bombings will make us safer.  These attacks surely increase the likelihood of an attack on British soil and they will certainly lead to more death and suffering and desperate refugees clamouring to escape our bombs every bit as much as they are trying to escape from Daesh.

But is it helpful to make a poster that obscures the truth?  No.  There are many good arguments against the bombings and we should use them and keep protesting the decision rather than just making stuff up to deliberately mislead people.  That's called propaganda and we're better than that.  Leave that to the other side.

Always ask questions.

"He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever." [the internet seems to assume this is a chinese proverb, but I've also seen it attributed to Mark Twain, so.... you can't be too careful, eh?]

doomed to repeat...

With his son about to vote in favour of bombing Syria, now seems like a good time to remind ourselves of a couple of quotes by the late Tony Benn.

"I was born about a quarter of a mile from where we are sitting now and I was here in London during the Blitz. And every night I went down into the shelter. 500 people killed, my brother was killed, my friends were killed. And when the Charter of the UN was read to me, I was a pilot coming home in a troop ship: ‘We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.’ That was the pledge my generation gave to the younger generation and you tore it up. And it’s a war crime that’s been committed in Iraq, because there is no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. Both kill innocent people for political reasons."

And

"If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people"

I was lucky enough to seem him speak a few times at Glastonbury, and he was an inspiration.

I don't actually bear any ill-will towards Hilary Benn: he's entitled to his own sincerely-held views and I think that Corbyn is right to allow the members of the Parliamentary Labour Party to vote with their consciences on this issue.  What I do take issue with is when the Prime Minster of this country calls the people holding a different view to his own "terrorist sympathisers".  He's refused to apologise for the remark too, and he's demeaning the office he holds with every day he continues to hold it.

Did you see that some of the bombs we might well drop onto Syria cost nearly £800,000 each, not counting the cost of getting them them to the Middle East and then into the air on a Tornado? The cost of just one of those Storm Shadow missiles would apparently provide temporary accommodation over Christmas for all of London's rough sleepers.

The cost of a two Tornado strike mission? Well, Sky News say:

"According to a Ministry of Defence report to Parliament in 2010, each Tornado flight costs £35,000 per hour. Typically, two Tornados fly each mission, lasting anywhere between four and eight hours. So let's land somewhere in the middle: a six-hour mission costs a basic £210,000. Then we have to consider the cost of the missiles. The expected payload would be four Paveway bombs, £22,000 each, and two Brimstone missiles, £105,000 per unit. So let's say that's £508,000 per aircraft in total, just a smidgen over £1m per mission. If they carry Storm Shadows at £800,000 a pop, then the cost rises considerably...."

This is austerity Britain, remember.

"If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people"

You'd think, wouldn't you?