I can't avoid Hilary Clinton. There she is, in every bookstore, leering unsettlingly out at me from the special displays where Thomas Piketty's book used to sit. As much as I don't want to think about it - and good god, I'm not going to read the fucking thing - I have some thoughts on her book.
Specifically, the title.
Hard Choices. Oh my.
It has already long-since occurred to many of us who notice such things that the rhetoric of hard choices, tough decisions, or some variation on words or theme, serves only the purpose of lowering expectations, and, generally, of signalling a rightwards orientation. It was a favourite rhetorical trick of Tony Blair's, and it has now become a standard of David Cameron's. The point of the hard choice is to signal to the public that, while there are many things the speaker wishes to do - really, honestly, earnestly - in a better world, that unfortunately, things being what they are, with the need to engage with the grim realities of the world, so on and such forth, those priorities will simply have to change. It's not what we wanted. It was a hard choice.
Observers may well notice that so many of these things which are described as hard choices actually bear a strong resemblance to the long-held convictions and ambitions of the speaker or writer. Cuts in the UK are routinely described as difficult decisions; the Opposition are constantly invited to demonstrate that they are ready and willing to make those hard choices, ie. to throw their ostensible constituency under the bus in the name of the market. All our parties - as they are in the US - are broadly aligned around the same program, with only distinctions in tone and emphasis to be made. We can make the point - and many do - that there aren't very many choices, and they never seem especially hard. The point is the signalling. Politicians are on your side! They wish they could help! But, you know, the world, bad things, terrible threats.
This is useful because it suppresses debate and reinforces the idea that we live in a post-ideological age. There are no arguments to be had, no competing ideologies, no politics; only hard choices. You can believe what you like, but the world works in this one way, and you have to compromise, to accept that reality, to get power (this is compromise not in the sense of reaching an agreement with another side, so much as the sense that a wall with a hole in it is "compromised"). Once you've got that power, you can't use it, except in narrowly prescribed lines. The hard choice is the rallying call of a technocratic political elite that is almost farcically insular and homogenous; it ensures that the few radicals who do somehow get into the system are shunted to the sidelines as unrepresentative mavericks; dangerous intrusions of the dread ideology into a politics-free politics.
Anyway. What's interesting to me, then, is that Hilary Clinton is leading the charge for hard choices by slapping it on the front of her book. Obviously this is a reaction to Barack Obama. The Audacity of Hope turned out to be a millstone around his neck as he turned out to offer neither hope nor audacity; "hope and change" turned out to be the most empty of slogans as Obama turned out to be an aimless, pointless mediocrity rather than an inspirational figure of charisma and unity. The Democrats have governed on a platform of doing the bare-minimum to maintain party discipline and loyalty among their voting base, not by offering much of concrete worth to their constituents so much as stoking up the threat of the Republicans. Meanwhile the real ideological battle is not being fought; as witness endless "liberal" Facebook memes trumpeting Obama's competence in terms dictated by the enemies of most Democrat voters: in terms of managing the structural deficit, bailing out industry, and killing military targets. Clinton's book, then, surely signals nothing more than a realignment of Democrat party messaging with their intentions.
Obama offered the world and delivered next-to-nothing; Clinton is also offering next-to-nothing, but she at least is making sure you know it from the off.
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Thursday, 10 July 2014
Wednesday, 11 June 2014
Feature, Not a Bug
(Source: http://www.videogamer.com/pc/assassins_creed_unity/news/no_female_leads_in_assassins_creed_unity_unfortunate_but_a_reality_of_game_development_ubi.html)
So, the first thing to note on l'affaire Ubisoft is that it came about because a journalist actually bothered to ask a games developer just why they hell they still aren't putting a playable female protagonist into their multimillion-selling flagship series. That alone is fairly staggering; you're a games journalist, man, you're not supposed to ever ask difficult questions, let alone call someone on their obvious bullshit! The piece is, of course, currently rocketing its way across the channels and byways of the internet, giving lie to the oft-repeated claim that these questions aren't asked because people aren't interested in this sort of thing. We are, of course. Especially when it's a question-and-answer which cuts to the heart of the problems with representation in the games industry.
A female character was, we are told, on a "features list" for a long time, but simply had to be cancelled owing to the unfortunate exigencies of developing games to tight budgets and schedules. They'd have had to do different animations. Costumes. This would have doubled the dev time on those things, so unfortunately, the lady got canned. Sorry! And besides, they're doing history, and women were all in cupboards or something back then...?
All of this is nonsense, and it's hardly worth spending time on debunking. Ubisoft are a big company; the Assassins' Creed franchise sells millions of copies every year; the biggest expense as far as I'm aware wouldn't have been costumes or animations at all (there's female characters in the multiplayer mode) but rather in voice-acting, and so it's possibly telling they don't mention it.
No, the core of the problem here is that a woman was not conceived of as a credible focus for the story Ubisoft was trying to tell from the get-go. Despite their protestations to the contrary, it's clear that they started off with a male character to tell a man's story. The female counterpart was never a core part of the experience but a feature to be jettisoned. The woman is peripheral from the start: she is not integral to the experience except as an ancilliary character in the orbit of a man, deployed to chide, harden or propel the male character's adventure. Men get to be free-running sexy assassins; women get to be rescued.
It's not like Ubisoft are exactly alone here, although the Assassins' Creed, Watch_Dogs and Far Cry releases are all prominent offenders in perpetuating the utterly ubiquitous bestubbled-meaninglessly-angry-loner-male protagonist known and reviled as Doomguy. It is, as I said at the top, a problem the games industry has: because it's still male-run, male-driven, and creating for a notional audience of awkward teen boys (despite the large and ever-increasing numbers of women who play games), it is an industry utterly accustomed to putting a man at the centre of things and viewing women as a peripheral, an added extra: a feature.
When you're relegating half the world's population and a good section of your own audience to the level of a gun -with-some-flames-on-it DLC, something's badly wrong.
The maddening thing is that there are examples out there - good, successful ones - of how to do this sort of thing, and have been for years. I'll glance briefly at two here - Mass Effect and Dark Souls.
Mass Effect, as well as offering a broad palette of character customisation in terms of name, appearance and background, was constructed around a character-driven narrative that could be altered (within limits) at the player's discretion. If the character was male or female, the world subtly shifted around them, as it did with many of the choices the player could make. This kind of agency reached its zenith in the third instalment, where the character could choose to pursue a relationship with basically any of the main supporting cast. Want a chaste, do-gooder male space marine with stubble? Go ahead, you boring fuck! Want a remorseless black lesbian space-racist? Knock yourself out! Whatever you choose, you get to be the hero or heroine of your own story - and the gender choice, from the perspective of running around blasting fuck out of galactic bastards, is entirely arbitrary. It is still a masculine story and structure (ultraviolence in space; the loner against those who doubt him) - it's just that the game developers cared enough to give the player some level of control over it.
Dark Souls offers the character customisation but does something quite different with the narrative: which is to say, Dark Souls doesn't actually have much of a narrative as such, and as a result the player is given remarkably free reign to put his or her interpretation on it and, indeed, to construct their own character's story as they traverse the world. The silent protagonist is a perfect cypher for whatever the player wants them to be (with the stricture that the player has to want them to be a mouldering undead who batters monsters with a club).
There are plenty of other examples out there, of course, which just makes it all doubly maddening. Nintendo's ever-more-androgynous Link and the prospect of a Zelda game where you get to play as Zelda (!) are tantalising glimpses of progress, even if the company will have to do more than that to atone for its shameful handling of the Tomodachi Life fiasco. People who self-identify as "gamers" are constantly anxious that people aren't taking the medium seriously enough. There's something of a point there. But I expect that the Ubisoft news story will be met with the usual calls from the gamer grognards that attempting to have this discussion is somehow "injecting politics" into something that's meant to be fun, oblivious as ever to the fact that this sort of thing means games aren't fun for a lot of people. Until game-players, developers, producers, journalists - in short, the industry - get a grip on its problems with women, minorities, and all the wondrous variety that is human expression and experience, then games don't deserve to be taken seriously.
So, the first thing to note on l'affaire Ubisoft is that it came about because a journalist actually bothered to ask a games developer just why they hell they still aren't putting a playable female protagonist into their multimillion-selling flagship series. That alone is fairly staggering; you're a games journalist, man, you're not supposed to ever ask difficult questions, let alone call someone on their obvious bullshit! The piece is, of course, currently rocketing its way across the channels and byways of the internet, giving lie to the oft-repeated claim that these questions aren't asked because people aren't interested in this sort of thing. We are, of course. Especially when it's a question-and-answer which cuts to the heart of the problems with representation in the games industry.
A female character was, we are told, on a "features list" for a long time, but simply had to be cancelled owing to the unfortunate exigencies of developing games to tight budgets and schedules. They'd have had to do different animations. Costumes. This would have doubled the dev time on those things, so unfortunately, the lady got canned. Sorry! And besides, they're doing history, and women were all in cupboards or something back then...?
All of this is nonsense, and it's hardly worth spending time on debunking. Ubisoft are a big company; the Assassins' Creed franchise sells millions of copies every year; the biggest expense as far as I'm aware wouldn't have been costumes or animations at all (there's female characters in the multiplayer mode) but rather in voice-acting, and so it's possibly telling they don't mention it.
No, the core of the problem here is that a woman was not conceived of as a credible focus for the story Ubisoft was trying to tell from the get-go. Despite their protestations to the contrary, it's clear that they started off with a male character to tell a man's story. The female counterpart was never a core part of the experience but a feature to be jettisoned. The woman is peripheral from the start: she is not integral to the experience except as an ancilliary character in the orbit of a man, deployed to chide, harden or propel the male character's adventure. Men get to be free-running sexy assassins; women get to be rescued.
It's not like Ubisoft are exactly alone here, although the Assassins' Creed, Watch_Dogs and Far Cry releases are all prominent offenders in perpetuating the utterly ubiquitous bestubbled-meaninglessly-angry-loner-male protagonist known and reviled as Doomguy. It is, as I said at the top, a problem the games industry has: because it's still male-run, male-driven, and creating for a notional audience of awkward teen boys (despite the large and ever-increasing numbers of women who play games), it is an industry utterly accustomed to putting a man at the centre of things and viewing women as a peripheral, an added extra: a feature.
When you're relegating half the world's population and a good section of your own audience to the level of a gun -with-some-flames-on-it DLC, something's badly wrong.
The maddening thing is that there are examples out there - good, successful ones - of how to do this sort of thing, and have been for years. I'll glance briefly at two here - Mass Effect and Dark Souls.
Mass Effect, as well as offering a broad palette of character customisation in terms of name, appearance and background, was constructed around a character-driven narrative that could be altered (within limits) at the player's discretion. If the character was male or female, the world subtly shifted around them, as it did with many of the choices the player could make. This kind of agency reached its zenith in the third instalment, where the character could choose to pursue a relationship with basically any of the main supporting cast. Want a chaste, do-gooder male space marine with stubble? Go ahead, you boring fuck! Want a remorseless black lesbian space-racist? Knock yourself out! Whatever you choose, you get to be the hero or heroine of your own story - and the gender choice, from the perspective of running around blasting fuck out of galactic bastards, is entirely arbitrary. It is still a masculine story and structure (ultraviolence in space; the loner against those who doubt him) - it's just that the game developers cared enough to give the player some level of control over it.
Dark Souls offers the character customisation but does something quite different with the narrative: which is to say, Dark Souls doesn't actually have much of a narrative as such, and as a result the player is given remarkably free reign to put his or her interpretation on it and, indeed, to construct their own character's story as they traverse the world. The silent protagonist is a perfect cypher for whatever the player wants them to be (with the stricture that the player has to want them to be a mouldering undead who batters monsters with a club).
There are plenty of other examples out there, of course, which just makes it all doubly maddening. Nintendo's ever-more-androgynous Link and the prospect of a Zelda game where you get to play as Zelda (!) are tantalising glimpses of progress, even if the company will have to do more than that to atone for its shameful handling of the Tomodachi Life fiasco. People who self-identify as "gamers" are constantly anxious that people aren't taking the medium seriously enough. There's something of a point there. But I expect that the Ubisoft news story will be met with the usual calls from the gamer grognards that attempting to have this discussion is somehow "injecting politics" into something that's meant to be fun, oblivious as ever to the fact that this sort of thing means games aren't fun for a lot of people. Until game-players, developers, producers, journalists - in short, the industry - get a grip on its problems with women, minorities, and all the wondrous variety that is human expression and experience, then games don't deserve to be taken seriously.
Sunday, 25 May 2014
Misogyny Kills
We live in a society that hates women.
Cards on the table before I get into this: I'm a white, middle class heterosexual man who attended what I'm obliged to refer to as an Elite University. I'm about as privileged as it gets without actually being rich. As such, there's plenty about women's experience of this world that I don't feel I'm equipped to speak to, or at least that I don't feel it's my place to do so. I don't want to talk over anyone, I don't want to prejudice my voice over others. I don't think my Real Important Words have an inherent right to be heard over other people's real, lived, day-to-day experience. But as I see it, unless men are coming to grips with this vale of tears we call the world and our own place and role within the generation of human misery, nothing's going to change. So.
In light of this: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/25/elliot-rodger-suspect-california-mass-murder-shooting-stabbing
We live in a society that hates women, and I take it as evidence of the very most compelling kind that when a young, privileged white man takes it upon himself to say: "I hate women, the women who have rejected me, who have not provided the sex and affection that the owe me, as a man, and that I will now make them pay - indeed, "bring them to their knees" - with horrific violence," and then acts upon it in a murderous rampage, that a lot of people react by trying to show sympathy with him - oh, he's so lonely! - or to ignore his own explanations for his own violence by resorting to store-brand justifications like nebulously defined mental illness, or, perhaps, violent movies, or in some other way reaching for an excuse or justification which does nothing to understand the root causes of why these things happen and has everything to do with trying to turn an atrocity into an argument for your own personal bugbear.
Misogyny is so much the flesh and bones of our society that we can't - won't - even acknowledge it when things like this happen.
Using the mental illness explanation is lazy, and, worse, it tars people who genuinely do suffer from mental illness and distress as violent and dangerous. Most people who become ill (and very many people will experience some mental illness in their life) are not violent and do not hurt anyone. But so long as words like psycho and the association with killings goes on, people will continue to be victimised and afraid of seeking help.
What is more, as far as I'm aware, this young man showed no signs of being disturbed as such. We know - we know - that people don't actually have to be mentally damaged, disturbed, or ill, to commit atrocities. We know this because of the evidence of the World Wars, among other sources. The Einsatzgruppen who lined up Eastern European Jews and shot them, band by small band, in their hundreds until they filled a mass grave, were not mentally ill. They simply did not believe that their victims were fully human, and so they were able to rationalise away their death. This young man did not believe that the women he killed were fully human. They were a kind of sub-species; a sub-species that owed him. We know this because he said as much, over and over again, in his video and on the forums where he shared his poisonous little ideology with the friends and supporters of that ideology.
And a lot of people - a lot of people - believe the sorts of things this young man did. Not just within the pathetic "Men's Rights" community, but in society at large. Masculinity is defined in opposition to femininity as its superior. A man is held to be reasonable, powerful, right, where a woman is judged to be irrational, weak, and not worth listening to. Our daily lives are full of actions and activities that are gendered and policed along gendered lines. You don't have to look very hard to find this dynamic playing out in every strata of our society. It manifests in the casual cruelties of catcalling and shaming to denial of work or workplace rights, and up to the most vile and inhumane of acts imaginable. It's everywhere to the extent that to claim you can't see it is an active act of un-seeing - of refusing to acknowledge reality.
Misogyny is intrinsic to the society we live in; by which I mean that hatred and oppression of women is not merely an incidental part of our quasi-democratic capitalist society that could be safely and comfortably excised, but rather that it is crucial for our current social setup to continue. Consider the ways that domestic work has been - and still is - considered women's work; consider how crucial this unpaid, unheralded labour is to maintaining a capitalist workforce. Consider that acquisitiveness, ambition, ruthlessness, and all the wonderful entrepreneurial traits that "lean-in" feminism, which is not actually feminism, is asking women to adopt, are defined as male traits. Consider that Margaret Thatcher knew that power is a thing that is gendered male, and adjusted her behaviour and speech to be as masculine as possible. Consider how hard it is - still - to get authorities to believe a woman who has been abused. Consider the tone of all the arguments that are used against her.
If you're a man thinking: "I'm not like that! I'm a nice guy! I share domestic labour! I don't benefit from this!": well, good for you, but unfortunately, you do benefit from it, and you probably have more internalised misogyny than you realise. As a small example, how many times have people you know and love resorted to arguing that "women are crazy", even in jest? You may, however, also realise that the same systems which hurt, degrade and oppress women also have deleterious consequences for men; that the same gendered social roles are used to drive male behaviour and crush male dreams in other ways: in the prison-industrial complexes or the expectations of male violence. In which case, congratulations! You're on the first step to realising that our society, currently constituted, is the problem. You can do some reading on this; there's plenty of literature out there.
I call myself an anarchist these days because more than anything I believe that the only society truly worth living in is one founded on respect, equality, and above all, consent in all our relationships, whether at work, in love, wherever. There is no excuse for treating people as if they are not fully people. Furthermore I do not believe there are any excuses for justifying, explaining away or otherwise ignoring the systems and ideologies which cause us to hate and to hurt one another. Misogyny kills; misogyny oppresses; misogyny is a fact of our society as sure as racism, homophobia, and all the other systems and ideas that keep us from living as equals. Our world may be a vale of tears, but it doesn't have to be: we all have a duty to share our world peaceably with others, to accord everyone the respect and dignity they deserve, to see to it that everyone can live their life to the fullest, and to fight to stamp out injustice wherever we find it - especially if we are the beneficiaries, unwitting or otherwise, of that injustice.
Cards on the table before I get into this: I'm a white, middle class heterosexual man who attended what I'm obliged to refer to as an Elite University. I'm about as privileged as it gets without actually being rich. As such, there's plenty about women's experience of this world that I don't feel I'm equipped to speak to, or at least that I don't feel it's my place to do so. I don't want to talk over anyone, I don't want to prejudice my voice over others. I don't think my Real Important Words have an inherent right to be heard over other people's real, lived, day-to-day experience. But as I see it, unless men are coming to grips with this vale of tears we call the world and our own place and role within the generation of human misery, nothing's going to change. So.
In light of this: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/25/elliot-rodger-suspect-california-mass-murder-shooting-stabbing
We live in a society that hates women, and I take it as evidence of the very most compelling kind that when a young, privileged white man takes it upon himself to say: "I hate women, the women who have rejected me, who have not provided the sex and affection that the owe me, as a man, and that I will now make them pay - indeed, "bring them to their knees" - with horrific violence," and then acts upon it in a murderous rampage, that a lot of people react by trying to show sympathy with him - oh, he's so lonely! - or to ignore his own explanations for his own violence by resorting to store-brand justifications like nebulously defined mental illness, or, perhaps, violent movies, or in some other way reaching for an excuse or justification which does nothing to understand the root causes of why these things happen and has everything to do with trying to turn an atrocity into an argument for your own personal bugbear.
Misogyny is so much the flesh and bones of our society that we can't - won't - even acknowledge it when things like this happen.
Using the mental illness explanation is lazy, and, worse, it tars people who genuinely do suffer from mental illness and distress as violent and dangerous. Most people who become ill (and very many people will experience some mental illness in their life) are not violent and do not hurt anyone. But so long as words like psycho and the association with killings goes on, people will continue to be victimised and afraid of seeking help.
What is more, as far as I'm aware, this young man showed no signs of being disturbed as such. We know - we know - that people don't actually have to be mentally damaged, disturbed, or ill, to commit atrocities. We know this because of the evidence of the World Wars, among other sources. The Einsatzgruppen who lined up Eastern European Jews and shot them, band by small band, in their hundreds until they filled a mass grave, were not mentally ill. They simply did not believe that their victims were fully human, and so they were able to rationalise away their death. This young man did not believe that the women he killed were fully human. They were a kind of sub-species; a sub-species that owed him. We know this because he said as much, over and over again, in his video and on the forums where he shared his poisonous little ideology with the friends and supporters of that ideology.
And a lot of people - a lot of people - believe the sorts of things this young man did. Not just within the pathetic "Men's Rights" community, but in society at large. Masculinity is defined in opposition to femininity as its superior. A man is held to be reasonable, powerful, right, where a woman is judged to be irrational, weak, and not worth listening to. Our daily lives are full of actions and activities that are gendered and policed along gendered lines. You don't have to look very hard to find this dynamic playing out in every strata of our society. It manifests in the casual cruelties of catcalling and shaming to denial of work or workplace rights, and up to the most vile and inhumane of acts imaginable. It's everywhere to the extent that to claim you can't see it is an active act of un-seeing - of refusing to acknowledge reality.
Misogyny is intrinsic to the society we live in; by which I mean that hatred and oppression of women is not merely an incidental part of our quasi-democratic capitalist society that could be safely and comfortably excised, but rather that it is crucial for our current social setup to continue. Consider the ways that domestic work has been - and still is - considered women's work; consider how crucial this unpaid, unheralded labour is to maintaining a capitalist workforce. Consider that acquisitiveness, ambition, ruthlessness, and all the wonderful entrepreneurial traits that "lean-in" feminism, which is not actually feminism, is asking women to adopt, are defined as male traits. Consider that Margaret Thatcher knew that power is a thing that is gendered male, and adjusted her behaviour and speech to be as masculine as possible. Consider how hard it is - still - to get authorities to believe a woman who has been abused. Consider the tone of all the arguments that are used against her.
If you're a man thinking: "I'm not like that! I'm a nice guy! I share domestic labour! I don't benefit from this!": well, good for you, but unfortunately, you do benefit from it, and you probably have more internalised misogyny than you realise. As a small example, how many times have people you know and love resorted to arguing that "women are crazy", even in jest? You may, however, also realise that the same systems which hurt, degrade and oppress women also have deleterious consequences for men; that the same gendered social roles are used to drive male behaviour and crush male dreams in other ways: in the prison-industrial complexes or the expectations of male violence. In which case, congratulations! You're on the first step to realising that our society, currently constituted, is the problem. You can do some reading on this; there's plenty of literature out there.
I call myself an anarchist these days because more than anything I believe that the only society truly worth living in is one founded on respect, equality, and above all, consent in all our relationships, whether at work, in love, wherever. There is no excuse for treating people as if they are not fully people. Furthermore I do not believe there are any excuses for justifying, explaining away or otherwise ignoring the systems and ideologies which cause us to hate and to hurt one another. Misogyny kills; misogyny oppresses; misogyny is a fact of our society as sure as racism, homophobia, and all the other systems and ideas that keep us from living as equals. Our world may be a vale of tears, but it doesn't have to be: we all have a duty to share our world peaceably with others, to accord everyone the respect and dignity they deserve, to see to it that everyone can live their life to the fullest, and to fight to stamp out injustice wherever we find it - especially if we are the beneficiaries, unwitting or otherwise, of that injustice.
Thursday, 17 April 2014
Damascene Ad Absurdum
The Prime Minister is a sweaty man who reeks of advertising. His one discernible quality is that he never seems quite comfortable in any situation he finds himself in. Suits don't fit him. Casual clothing looks ridiculous. His holiday pictures all look forced and unnatural. He is a scarcely credible leadership figure. The ghost of a moustache on his lip makes him look like nothing so much as a provincial bank manager, always worrying that someone will find out about the petty cash. His greatest fear is that he has gone through life assuming that he is the perfect man for the job he now occupies, but that the reverse is true. The reverse is true; he now simply hopes that nobody notices.
The Prime Minister wants to talk to you about Religion.
He wants to come across as sincere - sharing his faith, in a friendly, honest manner with you - but this is a problem for the Prime Minister. He cannot be sincere. He cannot even fake sincerity, like some of his predecessors. The Prime Minister's version of "sincere" consists of fixing you with an unsettling stare while lowering his head, like a charging bull, and hectoring you. He reduces himself to a shiny, sweat-slick forehead and shaking jowls. There is no invention in the words, no craft to what he does.
The Prime Minister always comes across as a crap advertising man, which is what he is.
He wants to talk to you about Religion because the man he is most afraid of in politics has been talking about Religion also. The man the Prime Minister is most afraid of went so far as to use the term "Judeo-Christian heritage", which is as sure a mark as exists that the opinion thus expressed may be safely ignored, for the speaker knows not the fuck of which he speaks. But the Prime Minister is concerned. He fears that the man he fears most has opened a Religion gap, and that members of his own party will continue to desert him if he doesn't close the distance.
So the Prime Minister talks about Religion. There are problems with this. As already noted, the Prime Minister cannot be sincere. His timing is all wrong. His delivery is poor. The message is muddled. Worst of all, in this case, the Prime Minister isn't very religious, and this is obvious. And having never before made an issue of his alleged faith - having serially played it down, even - he now looks like an opportunist, forever tugged around by whatever the zeitgeist seems to be that day - which is exactly what he is, and what he does. The reason he fears the man he fears most in politics so much is that the man he fears, despite exercising no real power and little direct political influence, is actually good at this game. The man he fears is good at politics, although his policies and positions are self-contradictory, idiotic and spiteful. He is forever stealing a march on the Prime Minister, dragging him around in his wake. He does this to make the Prime Minister look like a weak, silly nonentity, which he is.
The Prime Minister will keep talking about Religion until the man he fears most in politics decides that this has been jolly good fun, but that he'd like to make the Prime Minister twist in another direction, and go charging off after another talking point.
The Prime Minister will continue to tie himself in knots. Sweating, leering.
The Prime Minister wants to talk to you about Religion.
He wants to come across as sincere - sharing his faith, in a friendly, honest manner with you - but this is a problem for the Prime Minister. He cannot be sincere. He cannot even fake sincerity, like some of his predecessors. The Prime Minister's version of "sincere" consists of fixing you with an unsettling stare while lowering his head, like a charging bull, and hectoring you. He reduces himself to a shiny, sweat-slick forehead and shaking jowls. There is no invention in the words, no craft to what he does.
The Prime Minister always comes across as a crap advertising man, which is what he is.
He wants to talk to you about Religion because the man he is most afraid of in politics has been talking about Religion also. The man the Prime Minister is most afraid of went so far as to use the term "Judeo-Christian heritage", which is as sure a mark as exists that the opinion thus expressed may be safely ignored, for the speaker knows not the fuck of which he speaks. But the Prime Minister is concerned. He fears that the man he fears most has opened a Religion gap, and that members of his own party will continue to desert him if he doesn't close the distance.
So the Prime Minister talks about Religion. There are problems with this. As already noted, the Prime Minister cannot be sincere. His timing is all wrong. His delivery is poor. The message is muddled. Worst of all, in this case, the Prime Minister isn't very religious, and this is obvious. And having never before made an issue of his alleged faith - having serially played it down, even - he now looks like an opportunist, forever tugged around by whatever the zeitgeist seems to be that day - which is exactly what he is, and what he does. The reason he fears the man he fears most in politics so much is that the man he fears, despite exercising no real power and little direct political influence, is actually good at this game. The man he fears is good at politics, although his policies and positions are self-contradictory, idiotic and spiteful. He is forever stealing a march on the Prime Minister, dragging him around in his wake. He does this to make the Prime Minister look like a weak, silly nonentity, which he is.
The Prime Minister will keep talking about Religion until the man he fears most in politics decides that this has been jolly good fun, but that he'd like to make the Prime Minister twist in another direction, and go charging off after another talking point.
The Prime Minister will continue to tie himself in knots. Sweating, leering.
Thursday, 10 April 2014
The Pirates! In An Adventure With Expenses
The ship pitched and rolled in the roiling seas. Maria gulped as she was prodded down the gangplank at sword-point.
"It's not personal," said Gideon, one of her self-appointed executioners, "you've brought disrepute to the whole band, and we simply can't have that in these tough times."
Maria shuffled a little further along, whimpering, at a couple of too-enthusiastic jabs from the cutlass. She could see the edge, now. The sea was cold, cruel, churning - were those sharks?
"We told you, Maria! We can't have pirates in the band!" said Michael, absently loading and checking his brace of flintlock pistols. "I mean, honestly, Maria - piracy? What were you thinking?"
The crowd, gathered to watch the spectacle, agreed lustily.
"Yes, everyone hates pirates!" said the man who called himself Grant, feeding his parrot a biscuit, "and they especially hate conmen!"
"Piracy is immoral and wrong," said Jeremy, shifting his eyepatch from one eye to the other.
"So you have to walk the plank! The plank! A watery grave for you! A-ha!" yelled Wee Mad Iain, doing a cartwheel and soiling himself vigorously. The rest of the crowd shuffled aside from him.
Maria had reached the end of the plank, now. All that was left was the plunge. Frantic, she cast about for friendly faces in the crowd, but there were none. Never before had she seen such a rum band of coves, rogues and looters, she thought. But maybe there was a final chance. Maybe the captain...?
"I support you unreservedly!" called a voice from somewhere, far away from the thronging crowd. "Now be a dear and fuck off into the drink, won't you?"
Well, thanks a lot, thought Maria as she jumped.
---
The ship had sailed on. Maria was paddling comfortably. The water was lovely, as it happened, warm, calm, and not at all fatal. The boys had even been good enough to throw down a chest laden with drinks, sandwiches, and not a little cash after her. And any minute now...
"Wotcher!" said a friendly dolphin.
"Um, hello," replied Maria, "are you my ride?"
"I am!" said the dolphin, "hang on to my back and we'll have you at Paradise Island in a jiffy. The boys told me to tell you they'd probably swing by in a couple of months, and to enjoy the facilities as much as you like in the meantime."
"Yippee!" said Maria, who very much enjoyed using things provided for her as much as she liked, and grabbed on to the dolphin.
"It's not personal," said Gideon, one of her self-appointed executioners, "you've brought disrepute to the whole band, and we simply can't have that in these tough times."
Maria shuffled a little further along, whimpering, at a couple of too-enthusiastic jabs from the cutlass. She could see the edge, now. The sea was cold, cruel, churning - were those sharks?
"We told you, Maria! We can't have pirates in the band!" said Michael, absently loading and checking his brace of flintlock pistols. "I mean, honestly, Maria - piracy? What were you thinking?"
The crowd, gathered to watch the spectacle, agreed lustily.
"Yes, everyone hates pirates!" said the man who called himself Grant, feeding his parrot a biscuit, "and they especially hate conmen!"
"Piracy is immoral and wrong," said Jeremy, shifting his eyepatch from one eye to the other.
"So you have to walk the plank! The plank! A watery grave for you! A-ha!" yelled Wee Mad Iain, doing a cartwheel and soiling himself vigorously. The rest of the crowd shuffled aside from him.
Maria had reached the end of the plank, now. All that was left was the plunge. Frantic, she cast about for friendly faces in the crowd, but there were none. Never before had she seen such a rum band of coves, rogues and looters, she thought. But maybe there was a final chance. Maybe the captain...?
"I support you unreservedly!" called a voice from somewhere, far away from the thronging crowd. "Now be a dear and fuck off into the drink, won't you?"
Well, thanks a lot, thought Maria as she jumped.
---
The ship had sailed on. Maria was paddling comfortably. The water was lovely, as it happened, warm, calm, and not at all fatal. The boys had even been good enough to throw down a chest laden with drinks, sandwiches, and not a little cash after her. And any minute now...
"Wotcher!" said a friendly dolphin.
"Um, hello," replied Maria, "are you my ride?"
"I am!" said the dolphin, "hang on to my back and we'll have you at Paradise Island in a jiffy. The boys told me to tell you they'd probably swing by in a couple of months, and to enjoy the facilities as much as you like in the meantime."
"Yippee!" said Maria, who very much enjoyed using things provided for her as much as she liked, and grabbed on to the dolphin.
Monday, 7 April 2014
These Stern-Faced Men of Budget
The time to Budget is upon us, and gathered around this august Budgeting table are our heroes, the serious-minded Men of Budget. Long have they slaved through the night, stiff-necked and perspiration soaked, to produce the latest of our Great Nation's Budgets.
Budgeting is very important.
"Right," calls the Chief Budgeteer, "this is a fine Budget that we have made, but it is lacking in the Common Touch, in Eyecatching Initiatives to win the hearts of the Hardworking People, the People who Work so Hard, all day at their Work, Working - Hard - that we may Budget for them. What shall we do for the Hardworking People, who are not the Workshy Scroungers?"
There is silence. Time passes. Eventually, a hand is feebly raised. The Chief Budgeteer, master of this Budget, nods that the hand's owner may give voice.
"Well... we could give them something they like."
There are nods. More voices are raised.
"Yes. Something they like. They. Them."
"Them. Yes."
"Those."
"Indeed, those. Them."
"But what do they like?"
The moment's enthusiasm passes as Great Minds bend to the answering of this question. What, indeed, do Hardworking People - neither Feckless nor Workshy, Indolent nor Scrounger - like to do?
"Um. They like drinking. Getting drunk. You know."
Nod.
"But not, obviously, not on anything good. Beer. Yeah. Beer. They like beer."
"Yes, they like beer!"
"Those! Beer! Them, they!"
"Beer!"
The Chief Budgeteer, the sternest and wisest of the Men of Budget, nods his head approvingly.
"So shall this be done. A reduction in the cost of beer. Not enough that anyone will notice - a penny per pint, say - but this is indeed an Eyecatching Initiative. What else?"
"Uh... gambling. They like gambling!"
"Beer and gambling! Yes!"
"They like beer! Those are people who gamble!"
"Drunks and gamblers! Drunks and gamblers!"
"But not all gambling. Good, honest, British gambling. Bingo. Yeah, Bingo. Good, demotic, salt-of-the-earth gambling. Like your nan does. Not that evil, wicked, modern gambling."
There are more nods and murmurs of assent. A small smile cracks the face of the Chief Budgeteer, the Master of Budget. These are wise men he has assembled.
Budgeting is very important.
"Right," calls the Chief Budgeteer, "this is a fine Budget that we have made, but it is lacking in the Common Touch, in Eyecatching Initiatives to win the hearts of the Hardworking People, the People who Work so Hard, all day at their Work, Working - Hard - that we may Budget for them. What shall we do for the Hardworking People, who are not the Workshy Scroungers?"
There is silence. Time passes. Eventually, a hand is feebly raised. The Chief Budgeteer, master of this Budget, nods that the hand's owner may give voice.
"Well... we could give them something they like."
There are nods. More voices are raised.
"Yes. Something they like. They. Them."
"Them. Yes."
"Those."
"Indeed, those. Them."
"But what do they like?"
The moment's enthusiasm passes as Great Minds bend to the answering of this question. What, indeed, do Hardworking People - neither Feckless nor Workshy, Indolent nor Scrounger - like to do?
"Um. They like drinking. Getting drunk. You know."
Nod.
"But not, obviously, not on anything good. Beer. Yeah. Beer. They like beer."
"Yes, they like beer!"
"Those! Beer! Them, they!"
"Beer!"
The Chief Budgeteer, the sternest and wisest of the Men of Budget, nods his head approvingly.
"So shall this be done. A reduction in the cost of beer. Not enough that anyone will notice - a penny per pint, say - but this is indeed an Eyecatching Initiative. What else?"
"Uh... gambling. They like gambling!"
"Beer and gambling! Yes!"
"They like beer! Those are people who gamble!"
"Drunks and gamblers! Drunks and gamblers!"
"But not all gambling. Good, honest, British gambling. Bingo. Yeah, Bingo. Good, demotic, salt-of-the-earth gambling. Like your nan does. Not that evil, wicked, modern gambling."
There are more nods and murmurs of assent. A small smile cracks the face of the Chief Budgeteer, the Master of Budget. These are wise men he has assembled.
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