2015 has not started the way many of us would have hoped and I'm not talking about resolutions to lay off booze that lasted three days into the working week until it was a colleague's leaving do and it would rude not to have had at least one drink or four and a round of shots. The terrible murders in France have shocked us all, but one word being banded around is perhaps something we could do without in 2015: respect. We should respect Muslim beliefs; we should respect freedom of speech. I'd suggest that a collective resolution for the new year should be to lay off the concept of respect altogether.
Think about when you use the word respect. When you say "with all due respect", what you really mean is you think the other person's opinions are ridiculous. "With respect" is another way of saying stop talking crap. Even the polite phrase "I respect your beliefs" really means I think you are mental but it would be socially unacceptable to tell you so to your face.
George Galloway's party is called Respect. This is man who took money from Saddam Hussein, allegedly for a charity foundation, which has never published accounts. When describing the sociopath who killed 100,00s of Kurds with poison gas, Galloway said he admired the dictator's courage.
Street gangs will assault or stab people over the failure to provide enough respect. Organised crime groups such as the Mafia have a habit of shooting one another for violating their peculiar code of respect. The IRA still doles out punishment beatings or knee-cappings if they feel they have been disrespected. These outfits are great source material for TV dramas and feature films, true. I'm re-watching the Sopranos which expertly plays with the viewer's emotions, making you sympathise with mob boss Tony at times. It's a tough job dealing with teenage children, an ageing mother and murdering informers. I feel his pain; I just don't respect him.
Fundamentalist Muslim groups and indeed more mainstream ones are ready to allege that their faith has been disrespected and demand that the rest of us show the proper "respect" for their beliefs. Why? Nobody has any inherent right to respect, nor does any group. Respect is something individuals earn through over their lifetime through their actions. You don't get an automatic right to respect because you believe something very strongly.
9/11 Truthers are adamant that the US government orchestrated the destruction of the Twin Towers. As long as no one ever puts one of them in a position of responsibility, that's fine. But those beliefs do not merit respect. Some of the truthers really do wear tin foil hats and live inside Faraday cages. They are to use the technical term batshit crazy.
You could argue I'm being very disrespectful comparing the religious beliefs of fundamentalist Muslims to those of conspiracy theorists. Except you cannot grant everyone or every idea respect, if they are mutually exclusive. Richard Dawkins and the Archbishop of Canterbury cannot both be right, especially as the new Archbishop actually believes in God. If you respect Dawkins's beliefs, you can't respect the Archbishop's and vice versa. The same holds true for any belief system, whether it's atheism or scientology unless you don't believe in anything at all, which is cheating.
When groups or individuals clamour for respect, it's not the same as tolerance or freedom. Doing the right thing in terms of people's beliefs in covered by the ancient philosophy expressed by Socrates, Buddha and Jesus, namely don't be a dick. Or as your grandmother might call it, good manners. Actually my grandmother is a bad example, as she was a borderline Nazi. For everyone else, with normal grandmothers who didn't think Norman Tebbit was dangerous liberal and hadn't visited Hitler's Germany in the 1930s, you get the idea. Be nice to people, don't be a dick (your own grandmother may have used a slightly different phrasing).
Anyone agitating for respect is really demanding that society change to accommodate their beliefs or behaviour. To which the correct response is, with respect, get lost. Equality legislation and laws on racial and religious discrimination have the situation pretty much covered ( though there's plenty of material for another blog). The interesting thing is that the individuals who most deserve respect in our society, those who devote their lives to the service of others are also the least likely to shout about needing respect. Odd that isn't it?
Now the observant of you may have noticed that in the opening paragraph, I used the phrase freedom of speech and implied that even that doesn't deserve respect. I was exaggerating for effect. Although someone excising their right to free speech is not entitled to respect by default. Lars von Trier can make a film where the characters remove their own genitals, I don't have to watch it and as it turns out, I haven't. You can if you want, that's the beauty of the free society.
Freedom of speech requires robust defence, not respect as if it were a local bye-law relating to parking zones or littering. Freedom should be championed, cherished and celebrated. The concept of respect is the refuge of bigots, bullies and bullshitters who want to extract concessions from the rest of us.
But what if you offend people or hurt their feelings by penning satirical cartoons, like Charlie Hebdo's team? Sadly in recent days, too many have rushed to blame the victims, as if freedom speech is a conditional principle, dependent on good behaviour. If a person believes in an Almighty deity with supreme power, then I'd argue that that deity can look after himself (or herself). Those who kill to right an alleged wrong against their faith cannot be appeased nor should they and don't above all deserve respect.
Showing posts with label Satire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Satire. Show all posts
Sunday, 11 January 2015
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
Voting Alternatives
Dear Reader
If you were a supporter of electoral reform then you must be hurting from the almighty pimpslap you received from the British electorate, which knocked you seven ways sideways or, as some commentators claim, thirty years into the future. The debate was conducted with about as much good grace as a late night punch-up in the high street, with David Cameron hitting Nick Clegg over head with a metaphorical traffic cone whilst the Lib Dem leader then hid in a mini-cab office and called the police. In this analogy, the cone represents smear tactics, Paddy Ashdown is a mini-cab and Ed Milliband is the police. Hang on, that made more sense in my head.
The British voters decided that in the middle of three wars, yes three - Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq (not over yet), the greatest economic downturn for seventy years and national debt on course to double, that changing the not-obviously-broken voting system should figure low on everyones' to do list. One tip for any future reform campaigns is beware the celebrity endorsement. Much as we may cherish and admire screen and stage work of comedians and actors, no one is really going to trust them on political issues as they quite clearly could not be left in charge of a box of pencils.
Both sides in the AV debate used and abused the word 'fair', as if it proved their respective case. There can be few words more misleading than 'fair' when used in a political debate other than perhaps 'radical'. 'Radical' should be removed from all policy documents and media is coverage as it is nearly always redundant. Using the simple Pol Pot sliding scale of radical policies, with zero being not radical at all and 10 being Year Zero, totally-bat-shit-mental-radical, most policies count as one or two out of 10, namely more of the same with a few tweaks. Be grateful that radical policies are nothing of the sort, real radicalism tends involve working in a slave labour camp with only mud soup for dinner. (If you work in a call centre in the North East, this may sound like an improvement, but for the rest of us it isn't).
'Fair' when employed in a political debate is often another way of saying that the speaker prefers one set outcomes to another, so the Liberal Democrats claimed that AV was fairer because they would get more seats. The Tories on the other hand, said that first past the post was fairer because there would be less Liberal Democrats and regardless of the Coalition most Conservatives would like to bury the Liberal Democrats at sea, before they are dead. The Lib Dems want to do the same, but in sustainably sourced coffins.
There is no commonly agreed standard of 'fairness' in elections and voting systems. They all have flaws and all produce outcomes that some resent. For those readers in favour of proportional representation then there is one image to bear in mind: a Viagra-charged Silvio Berulsconi naked in a hot tub with four women whose combined ages still don't equal his own. First past the post has numerous problems, not least that you are forced to elect someone, even when you think a random person plucked of the street would do a better job. In some cases that is clearly true, Nadine Dorries, come in your time is up, the man who stacks the trollies at Asda wants to have a go.
So this typing ape concludes that whatever your preference for voting: FPTP, AV, PR or CTDAPP (chimps throwing darts at a piece of paper), there's no such thing as fair. Life isn't, why should voting be any different?
If you were a supporter of electoral reform then you must be hurting from the almighty pimpslap you received from the British electorate, which knocked you seven ways sideways or, as some commentators claim, thirty years into the future. The debate was conducted with about as much good grace as a late night punch-up in the high street, with David Cameron hitting Nick Clegg over head with a metaphorical traffic cone whilst the Lib Dem leader then hid in a mini-cab office and called the police. In this analogy, the cone represents smear tactics, Paddy Ashdown is a mini-cab and Ed Milliband is the police. Hang on, that made more sense in my head.
The British voters decided that in the middle of three wars, yes three - Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq (not over yet), the greatest economic downturn for seventy years and national debt on course to double, that changing the not-obviously-broken voting system should figure low on everyones' to do list. One tip for any future reform campaigns is beware the celebrity endorsement. Much as we may cherish and admire screen and stage work of comedians and actors, no one is really going to trust them on political issues as they quite clearly could not be left in charge of a box of pencils.
Both sides in the AV debate used and abused the word 'fair', as if it proved their respective case. There can be few words more misleading than 'fair' when used in a political debate other than perhaps 'radical'. 'Radical' should be removed from all policy documents and media is coverage as it is nearly always redundant. Using the simple Pol Pot sliding scale of radical policies, with zero being not radical at all and 10 being Year Zero, totally-bat-shit-mental-radical, most policies count as one or two out of 10, namely more of the same with a few tweaks. Be grateful that radical policies are nothing of the sort, real radicalism tends involve working in a slave labour camp with only mud soup for dinner. (If you work in a call centre in the North East, this may sound like an improvement, but for the rest of us it isn't).
'Fair' when employed in a political debate is often another way of saying that the speaker prefers one set outcomes to another, so the Liberal Democrats claimed that AV was fairer because they would get more seats. The Tories on the other hand, said that first past the post was fairer because there would be less Liberal Democrats and regardless of the Coalition most Conservatives would like to bury the Liberal Democrats at sea, before they are dead. The Lib Dems want to do the same, but in sustainably sourced coffins.
There is no commonly agreed standard of 'fairness' in elections and voting systems. They all have flaws and all produce outcomes that some resent. For those readers in favour of proportional representation then there is one image to bear in mind: a Viagra-charged Silvio Berulsconi naked in a hot tub with four women whose combined ages still don't equal his own. First past the post has numerous problems, not least that you are forced to elect someone, even when you think a random person plucked of the street would do a better job. In some cases that is clearly true, Nadine Dorries, come in your time is up, the man who stacks the trollies at Asda wants to have a go.
So this typing ape concludes that whatever your preference for voting: FPTP, AV, PR or CTDAPP (chimps throwing darts at a piece of paper), there's no such thing as fair. Life isn't, why should voting be any different?
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
Paranoid Dreams
Dear Reader
Time to celebrate this week, you clever monkeys shot Osama Bin Laden in the head, proving that America always gets its man, even if it is ten years and one trillion dollars later. So expensive was the hunt for Bin Laden that the White House was hoping to recoup some of the money with the film rights to helmet-cam footage. They were planning a director's cut in the style of Apocalypse Now Redux. Instead of the raid taking 40 minutes, it lasts 4 hours with an interminable dinner scene involving French colonists and a CGI fat Brando spouting nonsense. Also in the pipeline was a Navy Seals blooper reel, including one hilarious mix-up where they got their famous bearded Muslims confused and almost shot Cat Stevens. But some politically-correct killjoy has now decided it would be bad taste to release a picture of man with half his head blown off, so don't order those mouse mats just yet.
Still Bin Laden has hardly reached the bottom of the Arabian Sea and the conspiracy theories have already started. It is a government cover up as Bin Laden has been dead for years, killed by the same Peugot that did for Diana, but Bush and Obama have to conceal the truth because they are working for Freemason lizards who plotting to take over the world using Kofi Annan, a black helicopter and gay rights. Some of that may be in wrong order, but much like fridge magnets you can rearrange these conspiracies any way you want. The trouble with the conspiracists is you cannot win. Even if the White House released gory pictures, a video or a statement from Al-Qaida's no. 2 saying he was sorry his boss was dead but he relished the challenge of keeping a medieval death cult relevant for the Twitter generation, there is no standard of proof that would suffice. Much like a schizophrenic on public transport babbling scary nonsense, the general principle is not to react to conspiracists as it only encourages them. In the case of the bus nutter, you may get a screwdriver in the leg anyway, but it's worth a try.
What this typing ape finds most peculiar about conspiracy theories is you find them on both sides of the political spectrum and there are not solely the preserve of the educationally challenged. They even get turned into award winning documentaries such as The Power of Nightmares, expertly produced and edited programmes which suggested that Al-Qaida was to an extent invented to serve the neo-conservative agenda. An intriguing idea as long as you ignore just one thing: reality. In particular those pesky Al-Qaida operatives, who are not RADA graduates between jobs, but go round preaching jihad and setting off bombs.
Likewise Nigel Lawson and many other people who should know better are claiming there is a conspiracy of the world's leading scientists to falsify evidence about global warming. Again, a beguiling idea until you think about it properly using all your brain rather just than reptile bit that keeps you breathing. Ignoring for a moment that he has no scientific expertise whatsoever, Lawson is seriously suggesting that leading minds of our age and all the worlds scientific institutions are engaged in the greatest fraud in human history for the sake of grant money or perhaps because they own shares in windfarms.
The diversity and range of conspiracy theories in the modern age is truly awe-inspiring. Makes you wonder if someone's behind it all. No but seriously, the bigger question is why in an era of modern communications with overwhelming volumes of evidence to the contrary do strange movements such as the 911 truthers persist. Your gorilla thinker believes you monkeys have a passionate need for magical thinking. Before science and reason, you could easily indulge those urges by burning a witch, exorcising demons or sacrificing some random animal to a grumpy deity. These days, however, irrationality is pushed to fringes of public debate, lurking in newspaper horoscopes or the pages of Psychologies magazine. Like a cartoon bruise, the irrational urges pop up elsewhere. The world is more exciting if it is run by shadowy forces and agents of global reach and power. Any humdrum office worker, who would otherwise lead a life of quiet desperation and borderline alcoholism, can thanks to conspiracy theories feel like they are part of their very own Bourne film.
If, dear reader, you still think that the government, the Met Office or the Pentagon are part of some vast conspiracy, consider one key word: government. These are the same bureaucracies that struggle to deliver your post, spend £7 billion on aircraft carriers we then have to sell and claim for duck houses on expenses. If there really was a conspiracy, someone would leave a laptop on train, get drunk and tell somebody or they would get sacked from the plot and then expose it all in a bestselling book. Let's not forget, Project Kill Bin Laden is a classic government programme, 9 years and 999 billion over budget. These guys really could not manage a conspiracy, even they could insert mind-control chips into people - they would use the wrong sort of chips, the software would be incompatible and the batteries would run flat.
Time to celebrate this week, you clever monkeys shot Osama Bin Laden in the head, proving that America always gets its man, even if it is ten years and one trillion dollars later. So expensive was the hunt for Bin Laden that the White House was hoping to recoup some of the money with the film rights to helmet-cam footage. They were planning a director's cut in the style of Apocalypse Now Redux. Instead of the raid taking 40 minutes, it lasts 4 hours with an interminable dinner scene involving French colonists and a CGI fat Brando spouting nonsense. Also in the pipeline was a Navy Seals blooper reel, including one hilarious mix-up where they got their famous bearded Muslims confused and almost shot Cat Stevens. But some politically-correct killjoy has now decided it would be bad taste to release a picture of man with half his head blown off, so don't order those mouse mats just yet.
Still Bin Laden has hardly reached the bottom of the Arabian Sea and the conspiracy theories have already started. It is a government cover up as Bin Laden has been dead for years, killed by the same Peugot that did for Diana, but Bush and Obama have to conceal the truth because they are working for Freemason lizards who plotting to take over the world using Kofi Annan, a black helicopter and gay rights. Some of that may be in wrong order, but much like fridge magnets you can rearrange these conspiracies any way you want. The trouble with the conspiracists is you cannot win. Even if the White House released gory pictures, a video or a statement from Al-Qaida's no. 2 saying he was sorry his boss was dead but he relished the challenge of keeping a medieval death cult relevant for the Twitter generation, there is no standard of proof that would suffice. Much like a schizophrenic on public transport babbling scary nonsense, the general principle is not to react to conspiracists as it only encourages them. In the case of the bus nutter, you may get a screwdriver in the leg anyway, but it's worth a try.
What this typing ape finds most peculiar about conspiracy theories is you find them on both sides of the political spectrum and there are not solely the preserve of the educationally challenged. They even get turned into award winning documentaries such as The Power of Nightmares, expertly produced and edited programmes which suggested that Al-Qaida was to an extent invented to serve the neo-conservative agenda. An intriguing idea as long as you ignore just one thing: reality. In particular those pesky Al-Qaida operatives, who are not RADA graduates between jobs, but go round preaching jihad and setting off bombs.
Likewise Nigel Lawson and many other people who should know better are claiming there is a conspiracy of the world's leading scientists to falsify evidence about global warming. Again, a beguiling idea until you think about it properly using all your brain rather just than reptile bit that keeps you breathing. Ignoring for a moment that he has no scientific expertise whatsoever, Lawson is seriously suggesting that leading minds of our age and all the worlds scientific institutions are engaged in the greatest fraud in human history for the sake of grant money or perhaps because they own shares in windfarms.
The diversity and range of conspiracy theories in the modern age is truly awe-inspiring. Makes you wonder if someone's behind it all. No but seriously, the bigger question is why in an era of modern communications with overwhelming volumes of evidence to the contrary do strange movements such as the 911 truthers persist. Your gorilla thinker believes you monkeys have a passionate need for magical thinking. Before science and reason, you could easily indulge those urges by burning a witch, exorcising demons or sacrificing some random animal to a grumpy deity. These days, however, irrationality is pushed to fringes of public debate, lurking in newspaper horoscopes or the pages of Psychologies magazine. Like a cartoon bruise, the irrational urges pop up elsewhere. The world is more exciting if it is run by shadowy forces and agents of global reach and power. Any humdrum office worker, who would otherwise lead a life of quiet desperation and borderline alcoholism, can thanks to conspiracy theories feel like they are part of their very own Bourne film.
If, dear reader, you still think that the government, the Met Office or the Pentagon are part of some vast conspiracy, consider one key word: government. These are the same bureaucracies that struggle to deliver your post, spend £7 billion on aircraft carriers we then have to sell and claim for duck houses on expenses. If there really was a conspiracy, someone would leave a laptop on train, get drunk and tell somebody or they would get sacked from the plot and then expose it all in a bestselling book. Let's not forget, Project Kill Bin Laden is a classic government programme, 9 years and 999 billion over budget. These guys really could not manage a conspiracy, even they could insert mind-control chips into people - they would use the wrong sort of chips, the software would be incompatible and the batteries would run flat.
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Parts Private
Dear Reader
If you live in a cage like me, then you may find all the fuss about privacy hard to understand. Poor apes, such as yours truly, must live their entire lives on display even when we are doing our monkey business. Think about that, next time you are on the toilet how you would feel if you had to answer nature's call in front of gallery of Japanese tourists taking pictures and Italian schoolchildren throwing sweets. And then there's the captive breeding programme where we are supposed to get it on like a furry Amsterdam sex show, whilst you video the action on a smart phone and post links to your friends via Facebook. Now you know why gorillas in zoos look so annoyed.
But then this ape got to thinking about privacy and which parts should be private, surveying your antics involving injunctions, super-injunctions and hyper-injunctions. For those not in the know, hyper-injunctions are new type of legal device like super-injunctions but they also apply to other dimensions and alternate realities. A hyper-injunction means that if you publish a story in an alternate universe where JFK wasn't shot, dolphins can talk and the sky is purple and it mentions a certain footballer by name you can still be sued.
A right to privacy is a misleading concept in these cases in the media as no genuine intrusion of privacy has taken place. If someone breaks into your home, hides in your wardrobe and takes pictures of you and your partner doing the horizontal jiggle then your privacy has definitely been invaded. Either that or it's a weird sex game. Likewise, when you get in the shower and you find a stranger there, he better be a plumber or it's time to call the police. There is a definite violation of your private realm, innuendo intended. But preventing someone talking about your love life is very different, as your privacy now extends to a gagging order on someone else. Moreover, do we really want to live in a state where someone is not free to say who we have had sex with? In the case of Katie Price, the answer is yes, because life is too short, otherwise the answer is no. Freedom of speech isn't simply the right to create erudite articles on the latest play at the Royal Court or a scintillating open-air opera, it is also the freedom to say foolish or salacious things.
Even if you try to enforce this militant version of privacy, in the digital age it's impossible to keep anything private. Google knows more about you than you do yourself, which is why thanks to my browsing history I am now on the run. Note to self, stop researching how to make your own explosives on the internet, it gives anti-terrorist officers the wrong idea and apparently being curious isn't a defence. For those of you not in hiding, everything you have ever done has been logged somewhere on CCTV, on your phone or on your browsing history. Big Brother is watching you and will Tweet his story within seconds if you're famous and you've been naughty.
An absurd parallel world exists of court orders and injunctions, then there's the real world where the name of the TV personality who's been trollope-clinching is all over the internet. Making laws over things you cannot possibly control brings the law into disrepute, you might as well injunct the Moon. Little bit of legal trivia, Mohammed Al Fayed did in fact sue for the Moon for helping Prince Philip kill his son.
Although there is one change that might make amends, even if those in the news have to accept that everything they do, especially if it involves their penis/vagina, will also be in the news. Paparazzi photographers should be classified as vermin, like crows or wood pigeons and therefore fair game if you have a shotgun license. We get to read salacious stories about celebrity indiscretions, they get to gun down paps. So from now if you are well-known, don't shoot the messenger, shoot the photographer.
If you live in a cage like me, then you may find all the fuss about privacy hard to understand. Poor apes, such as yours truly, must live their entire lives on display even when we are doing our monkey business. Think about that, next time you are on the toilet how you would feel if you had to answer nature's call in front of gallery of Japanese tourists taking pictures and Italian schoolchildren throwing sweets. And then there's the captive breeding programme where we are supposed to get it on like a furry Amsterdam sex show, whilst you video the action on a smart phone and post links to your friends via Facebook. Now you know why gorillas in zoos look so annoyed.
But then this ape got to thinking about privacy and which parts should be private, surveying your antics involving injunctions, super-injunctions and hyper-injunctions. For those not in the know, hyper-injunctions are new type of legal device like super-injunctions but they also apply to other dimensions and alternate realities. A hyper-injunction means that if you publish a story in an alternate universe where JFK wasn't shot, dolphins can talk and the sky is purple and it mentions a certain footballer by name you can still be sued.
A right to privacy is a misleading concept in these cases in the media as no genuine intrusion of privacy has taken place. If someone breaks into your home, hides in your wardrobe and takes pictures of you and your partner doing the horizontal jiggle then your privacy has definitely been invaded. Either that or it's a weird sex game. Likewise, when you get in the shower and you find a stranger there, he better be a plumber or it's time to call the police. There is a definite violation of your private realm, innuendo intended. But preventing someone talking about your love life is very different, as your privacy now extends to a gagging order on someone else. Moreover, do we really want to live in a state where someone is not free to say who we have had sex with? In the case of Katie Price, the answer is yes, because life is too short, otherwise the answer is no. Freedom of speech isn't simply the right to create erudite articles on the latest play at the Royal Court or a scintillating open-air opera, it is also the freedom to say foolish or salacious things.
Even if you try to enforce this militant version of privacy, in the digital age it's impossible to keep anything private. Google knows more about you than you do yourself, which is why thanks to my browsing history I am now on the run. Note to self, stop researching how to make your own explosives on the internet, it gives anti-terrorist officers the wrong idea and apparently being curious isn't a defence. For those of you not in hiding, everything you have ever done has been logged somewhere on CCTV, on your phone or on your browsing history. Big Brother is watching you and will Tweet his story within seconds if you're famous and you've been naughty.
An absurd parallel world exists of court orders and injunctions, then there's the real world where the name of the TV personality who's been trollope-clinching is all over the internet. Making laws over things you cannot possibly control brings the law into disrepute, you might as well injunct the Moon. Little bit of legal trivia, Mohammed Al Fayed did in fact sue for the Moon for helping Prince Philip kill his son.
Wednesday, 20 April 2011
Snow Blind
Dear Reader
Time for your second hit of Gorilla Philosophy and this week, the typing ape has gone drug crazy, so roll up that twenty pound note and snort yourself a sinusful of powdered politics that isn't cut with dogma or soundbites. The Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs, the ACMD, will be publishing a new report highlighting the dangers of cocaine. Britain is now number for cocaine use in Europe,at last back in pole position! Britannia Rules the Raves! But seriously, we give a big monkey whoop that a report is coming out. As is common knowledge, coke dealers and their clients are keen followers of government publications, indeed the consensus amongst Kentish Town street hustlers was the Vickers report into banking was a missed opportunity to separate retail and investment activities. They also wanted to know if anyone wanted to buy some crack. Warnings against coke's dangerous effects are everywhere: Tara Palmer-Tompkinson's nose, the third Oasis album, an upmarket bar in City after 10pm and everything Charlie Sheen has said or done, ever. None of these horrors stop the devotees of the naughty salt, so a spiral bound slab of bureaucratic-speak won't make a toot in hell's difference.
Cocaine is a dangerous drug not least for its extraordinary bullshit producing properties; you don't even to take it to start spouting arrogant, strident nonsense. Take for example the 'Get Tough' brigade, apparently as a result of the permissive society (possibly a lesbian gay support group in Haringey), the whole of the UK has been overtaken by coke fiends. Maybe the typing ape is being a touch unfair, but their solution to the cocaine problem would be imprison dealers, users and people who use the word coke, even if they mean a popular brand of soft drink. So throw another 100,000 people in jail and another 200,000n suspects and then what to do with them? Flogging is often mentioned, whether that's a criminal justice measure or a private fantasy, who knows. It is very hard to get inside minds so tiny. Obviously they overlook a few important points such as the facts. The police and courts generally do lock up cocaine dealers when they catch them. Contrary to tabloid hysteria, they go to prisons not five star hotels, where they sit in a cell for 23 hours a day. Fortunately the 'Get Tough' mob don't allow reality to get in the way of a good fairytale, which goes like this: Back in the 1950s, there used to a be country called England where everything was perfect, women stayed at home, there were no blacks and most importantly no drugs. So all we need to do is turn Britain into one enormous period drama, coke problem solved. You do wonder who's been taking what sometimes.
This ape has a modest proposal to reduce cocaine's harmful effects, which is to stop wasting police time interdicting a relatively harmless substance. Yes, The Shamen were right, Ebeneezer's Good. If ecstasy were more widely available, the police would no longer be breaking up street brawls on Friday evenings, it would be group hugs. Bouncers could deal with trouble using only a head massage. If people used MDMA at work, you would just have a different type of office bullshit. Instead of Powerpoint presentations about customer focus, there would be long rambles about how everything is connected, you know, like one massive brain filled with love, complete with trance soundtrack and a giant inflatable pink octopus. There would be some harmful effects - fashion decisions made under the drug's influence are questionable. White gloves for example, should incur a custodial sentence.
Ah, but isn't E the killer drug, what about Leah Betts? 100,000s of people die every year from alcohol and cigarettes, yet they are available on every street corner. Public policy on ecstasy has been hijacked by bereaved parents as if their personal tragedies made them overnight authorities on substance abuse. Following this logic if a member of your family is eaten by a shark, you become a shark expert. You don't. You get very upset, probably never watch Jaws again and might order shark's fin soup wherever possible as form of species-wide payback. What you do not become is a world authority on marine predators.
Of course relaxing the stance on one drug would never happen, because that would 'Going Soft'. We've had thirty years of the hard man approach, isn't it time for a big group hug?
Footnote:
The pairing of 'Misuse' and 'Drugs' is illogical and nonsensical. Drugs alter your mental state, that's what they do. 'Misuse' implies there is some other way you should employ the substance. Maybe you can use cocaine to grout tiles, but you probably shouldn't unless you want to have very paranoid showers where all the tiles fall out.
Time for your second hit of Gorilla Philosophy and this week, the typing ape has gone drug crazy, so roll up that twenty pound note and snort yourself a sinusful of powdered politics that isn't cut with dogma or soundbites. The Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs, the ACMD, will be publishing a new report highlighting the dangers of cocaine. Britain is now number for cocaine use in Europe,at last back in pole position! Britannia Rules the Raves! But seriously, we give a big monkey whoop that a report is coming out. As is common knowledge, coke dealers and their clients are keen followers of government publications, indeed the consensus amongst Kentish Town street hustlers was the Vickers report into banking was a missed opportunity to separate retail and investment activities. They also wanted to know if anyone wanted to buy some crack. Warnings against coke's dangerous effects are everywhere: Tara Palmer-Tompkinson's nose, the third Oasis album, an upmarket bar in City after 10pm and everything Charlie Sheen has said or done, ever. None of these horrors stop the devotees of the naughty salt, so a spiral bound slab of bureaucratic-speak won't make a toot in hell's difference.
Cocaine is a dangerous drug not least for its extraordinary bullshit producing properties; you don't even to take it to start spouting arrogant, strident nonsense. Take for example the 'Get Tough' brigade, apparently as a result of the permissive society (possibly a lesbian gay support group in Haringey), the whole of the UK has been overtaken by coke fiends. Maybe the typing ape is being a touch unfair, but their solution to the cocaine problem would be imprison dealers, users and people who use the word coke, even if they mean a popular brand of soft drink. So throw another 100,000 people in jail and another 200,000n suspects and then what to do with them? Flogging is often mentioned, whether that's a criminal justice measure or a private fantasy, who knows. It is very hard to get inside minds so tiny. Obviously they overlook a few important points such as the facts. The police and courts generally do lock up cocaine dealers when they catch them. Contrary to tabloid hysteria, they go to prisons not five star hotels, where they sit in a cell for 23 hours a day. Fortunately the 'Get Tough' mob don't allow reality to get in the way of a good fairytale, which goes like this: Back in the 1950s, there used to a be country called England where everything was perfect, women stayed at home, there were no blacks and most importantly no drugs. So all we need to do is turn Britain into one enormous period drama, coke problem solved. You do wonder who's been taking what sometimes.
This ape has a modest proposal to reduce cocaine's harmful effects, which is to stop wasting police time interdicting a relatively harmless substance. Yes, The Shamen were right, Ebeneezer's Good. If ecstasy were more widely available, the police would no longer be breaking up street brawls on Friday evenings, it would be group hugs. Bouncers could deal with trouble using only a head massage. If people used MDMA at work, you would just have a different type of office bullshit. Instead of Powerpoint presentations about customer focus, there would be long rambles about how everything is connected, you know, like one massive brain filled with love, complete with trance soundtrack and a giant inflatable pink octopus. There would be some harmful effects - fashion decisions made under the drug's influence are questionable. White gloves for example, should incur a custodial sentence.
Ah, but isn't E the killer drug, what about Leah Betts? 100,000s of people die every year from alcohol and cigarettes, yet they are available on every street corner. Public policy on ecstasy has been hijacked by bereaved parents as if their personal tragedies made them overnight authorities on substance abuse. Following this logic if a member of your family is eaten by a shark, you become a shark expert. You don't. You get very upset, probably never watch Jaws again and might order shark's fin soup wherever possible as form of species-wide payback. What you do not become is a world authority on marine predators.
Of course relaxing the stance on one drug would never happen, because that would 'Going Soft'. We've had thirty years of the hard man approach, isn't it time for a big group hug?
Footnote:
The pairing of 'Misuse' and 'Drugs' is illogical and nonsensical. Drugs alter your mental state, that's what they do. 'Misuse' implies there is some other way you should employ the substance. Maybe you can use cocaine to grout tiles, but you probably shouldn't unless you want to have very paranoid showers where all the tiles fall out.
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
Match Royale
Dear Reader
Welcome to the first article of Gorilla Philosophy, the product of an educated, part house-trained ape with typing skills. If you only skim this piece, thank you for those precious seconds squeezed in between status updates, browsing porn, shopping for vintage trainers or emailing amusing videos to your friends. The purpose of this blog is simple: to entertain and if nothing else to help stave off the gnawing existential despair that hovers over your shoulder, as you pretend to work in the office, staring blankly at the computer monitor whilst secretly wondering what would happen if you just walked out, pausing only to smash a ring binder into that smug bitch/bastard (delete as applicable) who makes your life hell. In case you are considering stationery-assisted GBH, the most likely outcome is arrest. At the very least you will struggle to get a reference for your next job, unless you are hoping to join an organised crime syndicate, in which case face-smashing is very much seen as a plus rather than a negative on the CV. (1)
So what is Gorilla Philosophy? Think of it is as a little digital corner of contrarian cussedness that strives to amuse. Even if like most of us, your every waking hour is signed away to the bank paying off a mortgage on a flat you don't really like in a part of town you chose only because it was marginally better than sleeping rough, then you can still let your mind roam free. The bank doesn't own that yet. Gorilla Philosophy will take you in its great big hairy ape hands and grope you mentally - go with the metaphor, the gorilla isn't real. Of course a genuine sexual assault by a large primate is no laughing matter, unless the assaultee is Piers Morgan, in which case the event should be celebrated by a national holiday or a public sculpture.
For its opening article, GP (that's Gorilla Philosophy for those of you too busy sending taking Polaroid effect pictures with your Iphone) , turns its furrowed, simian brows to the upcoming wedding and wonders what the fuck? No subject produces more instant mental retardation in otherwise intelligent citizens of this fine nation of ours than the Royal Family. Mention the Queen to an English person and it's like saying the codeword to a KGB sleeper agent. All normal brain function shuts down and they adopt a strange faraway gaze as if they have just taken too many magic mushrooms. Instead of rational conversation, you get dream-like phrases about Albion, tradition, charity work, the war and what if Tony Blair became President - total cognitive shutdown. Monarchy it seems is the Hannibal Lector to our frontal lobes, sawing through the skull and scooping out the thinking parts, to fry them lightly in garlic butter.
This wedding in popular discourse is a good thing, in the same way that murder is a bad thing, the goodness is intrinsic and not debatable. (2). We, the British people, are all looking forward to the wedding and stop asking inconvenient questions about why the landed gentry still owns 12 percent of the land in Britain and exercises political power. It is a good thing, now stand up when the national anthem plays. Yes, we know deep down it is an absurd anachronism that makes Britain seem like a cheesy historical attraction, complete with animatronic Shakespeare and 3D Churchill experience. But Kate Middleton is pretty girl, everyone likes a wedding and won't it be fun to see both her and Wills dressed up smartly.
Maybe this presentation of the royalist case is unreasonable, so let's not forget the crucial role of tourism in determining a political system. The Royals are good for tourists. Apparently any tradition, no matter how antiquated and obsolete, should be retained for the benefit of tourists, preferably the high spending Chinese, given that the rest of us will be paying for the banking crisis until Fred Goodwin and friends develop a conscience. (3) By this compelling logic, it is a shame that hanging, drawing and quartering no longer takes place at Tyburn, now known as Marble Arch. Think of the missed photo opportunities for visiting foreigners.
If the tourism argument doesn't quite persuade and it really shouldn't unless you have had both a stroke, a blow to the head and are drunk, then the royalists have to scrabble around elsewhere to justify keeping our political structure frozen somewhere in the 16th century. Time to bring out the charitable work that our current royal family does as if the merits or flaws of a political system should depend on the vagaries of personality rather than founding principles. Whether the Queen does a lot of a work for charity or whether she goes out every night to set fire to tramps for kicks makes no odds. Either the idea of the monarchy is defensible on its own merits as a concept or it is not. Truth is if the Windsors were poor and lived in a council flat, Harry and Wills would have been taken into care and the rest would be serving time for tax evasion, but that proves nothing about the idea of a hereditary monarchy.
And what a strange idea it is, even in a symbolic, ceremonial power to someone on the basis of their DNA - it's not even special DNA like the bit of the double helix that makes Angelina Jolie's lips quite so pouty. No we have picked a run of the mill family, with no special attributes to be our head of state and to pass that role from generation to generation as it were a family heirloom - an antique dresser or sideboard that you don't really want but you don't have the heart to get rid of it. If we were a Stone Age tribe that worshipped the Sun God and thought an eclipse was the Moon eating the Sun, then there would be no shame in rule by kings. Hell we paint ourselves blue and sacrifice pigeons to make it rain. Equally if Britain were a Disneyworld theme park it would add a extra sense of authenticity. But in theory, Britain is supposed to be meritocratic, democratic state, except of course when it comes to the head of that state when it's a birthright by blood.
The wedding throws this nonsense into focus and it's a call to action, or rather inaction. Perhaps best way to fight the upcoming surge of forelock tugging and brown nosing this wedding will induce is to ignore it, a strong dose of popular apathy may finish the monarchy off in the way no po-faced movement every could. Remember, these pair are just a regular couple who were not for accident of birth would lead regular lives. For those of you who give in to the monarchist brainwashing and you know you are, get a grip.
Notes:
1) For best results when whacking an irritating work colleague, use a laptop not a ring binder.
2) Murder is wrong 99% of the time, most of us would agree. There are notable exceptions, for example, the mobile phone designer who allowed the phones to play music via their speakers turning bus and train journeys into the upper levels of hell, is fair game.
3) This means a really long time.
Welcome to the first article of Gorilla Philosophy, the product of an educated, part house-trained ape with typing skills. If you only skim this piece, thank you for those precious seconds squeezed in between status updates, browsing porn, shopping for vintage trainers or emailing amusing videos to your friends. The purpose of this blog is simple: to entertain and if nothing else to help stave off the gnawing existential despair that hovers over your shoulder, as you pretend to work in the office, staring blankly at the computer monitor whilst secretly wondering what would happen if you just walked out, pausing only to smash a ring binder into that smug bitch/bastard (delete as applicable) who makes your life hell. In case you are considering stationery-assisted GBH, the most likely outcome is arrest. At the very least you will struggle to get a reference for your next job, unless you are hoping to join an organised crime syndicate, in which case face-smashing is very much seen as a plus rather than a negative on the CV. (1)
So what is Gorilla Philosophy? Think of it is as a little digital corner of contrarian cussedness that strives to amuse. Even if like most of us, your every waking hour is signed away to the bank paying off a mortgage on a flat you don't really like in a part of town you chose only because it was marginally better than sleeping rough, then you can still let your mind roam free. The bank doesn't own that yet. Gorilla Philosophy will take you in its great big hairy ape hands and grope you mentally - go with the metaphor, the gorilla isn't real. Of course a genuine sexual assault by a large primate is no laughing matter, unless the assaultee is Piers Morgan, in which case the event should be celebrated by a national holiday or a public sculpture.
For its opening article, GP (that's Gorilla Philosophy for those of you too busy sending taking Polaroid effect pictures with your Iphone) , turns its furrowed, simian brows to the upcoming wedding and wonders what the fuck? No subject produces more instant mental retardation in otherwise intelligent citizens of this fine nation of ours than the Royal Family. Mention the Queen to an English person and it's like saying the codeword to a KGB sleeper agent. All normal brain function shuts down and they adopt a strange faraway gaze as if they have just taken too many magic mushrooms. Instead of rational conversation, you get dream-like phrases about Albion, tradition, charity work, the war and what if Tony Blair became President - total cognitive shutdown. Monarchy it seems is the Hannibal Lector to our frontal lobes, sawing through the skull and scooping out the thinking parts, to fry them lightly in garlic butter.
This wedding in popular discourse is a good thing, in the same way that murder is a bad thing, the goodness is intrinsic and not debatable. (2). We, the British people, are all looking forward to the wedding and stop asking inconvenient questions about why the landed gentry still owns 12 percent of the land in Britain and exercises political power. It is a good thing, now stand up when the national anthem plays. Yes, we know deep down it is an absurd anachronism that makes Britain seem like a cheesy historical attraction, complete with animatronic Shakespeare and 3D Churchill experience. But Kate Middleton is pretty girl, everyone likes a wedding and won't it be fun to see both her and Wills dressed up smartly.
Maybe this presentation of the royalist case is unreasonable, so let's not forget the crucial role of tourism in determining a political system. The Royals are good for tourists. Apparently any tradition, no matter how antiquated and obsolete, should be retained for the benefit of tourists, preferably the high spending Chinese, given that the rest of us will be paying for the banking crisis until Fred Goodwin and friends develop a conscience. (3) By this compelling logic, it is a shame that hanging, drawing and quartering no longer takes place at Tyburn, now known as Marble Arch. Think of the missed photo opportunities for visiting foreigners.
If the tourism argument doesn't quite persuade and it really shouldn't unless you have had both a stroke, a blow to the head and are drunk, then the royalists have to scrabble around elsewhere to justify keeping our political structure frozen somewhere in the 16th century. Time to bring out the charitable work that our current royal family does as if the merits or flaws of a political system should depend on the vagaries of personality rather than founding principles. Whether the Queen does a lot of a work for charity or whether she goes out every night to set fire to tramps for kicks makes no odds. Either the idea of the monarchy is defensible on its own merits as a concept or it is not. Truth is if the Windsors were poor and lived in a council flat, Harry and Wills would have been taken into care and the rest would be serving time for tax evasion, but that proves nothing about the idea of a hereditary monarchy.
And what a strange idea it is, even in a symbolic, ceremonial power to someone on the basis of their DNA - it's not even special DNA like the bit of the double helix that makes Angelina Jolie's lips quite so pouty. No we have picked a run of the mill family, with no special attributes to be our head of state and to pass that role from generation to generation as it were a family heirloom - an antique dresser or sideboard that you don't really want but you don't have the heart to get rid of it. If we were a Stone Age tribe that worshipped the Sun God and thought an eclipse was the Moon eating the Sun, then there would be no shame in rule by kings. Hell we paint ourselves blue and sacrifice pigeons to make it rain. Equally if Britain were a Disneyworld theme park it would add a extra sense of authenticity. But in theory, Britain is supposed to be meritocratic, democratic state, except of course when it comes to the head of that state when it's a birthright by blood.
The wedding throws this nonsense into focus and it's a call to action, or rather inaction. Perhaps best way to fight the upcoming surge of forelock tugging and brown nosing this wedding will induce is to ignore it, a strong dose of popular apathy may finish the monarchy off in the way no po-faced movement every could. Remember, these pair are just a regular couple who were not for accident of birth would lead regular lives. For those of you who give in to the monarchist brainwashing and you know you are, get a grip.
Notes:
1) For best results when whacking an irritating work colleague, use a laptop not a ring binder.
2) Murder is wrong 99% of the time, most of us would agree. There are notable exceptions, for example, the mobile phone designer who allowed the phones to play music via their speakers turning bus and train journeys into the upper levels of hell, is fair game.
3) This means a really long time.
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