The Riots

I apologise for the rambling nature of this but it's just a number of the thoughts I've had over the last few turbulent days.

The first day when the riots were in London alone I barely noticed. London's a funny place and shit like that happens there. I paid slightly more notice than when it happens in Ulster because it does seem to be part of the culture of that region.

The second day was when it really hit home. This was the day when the country truly did seem to become a lawless, anarchist state. There was a lot of criticism of the Police. Which seemed unfair because it was obvious to anyone with sense and without an agenda that there was no way the police could cope with all the hotspots at once.

I was as furious as everybody else at what i was seeing. People who didn't give a hoot about the community in which they lived taking what they wanted and setting it alight. Particularly as they were attacking small businesses. Which showed the absurdity of those who were trying to claim it was a political riot up. This anger lasted through the night and most of the next day until I heard a woman on Fivelive her name is Camila_Batmanghelidjh. 

She gave a different point of view on the riots and what was happening. She made no effort to excuse the behaviour of the criminals involved the previous night. She just tried to offer an explanation that there is a generation of young men who simply have no hope. Their families who should be their safety net are often the people who put them in most danger and the services that are there are not interested. So you have people with no hope, no networks. And people without hope have nothing to lose and someone with nothing to lose is a dangerous thing.

This is when the rational side of my brain began to re-awaken. I was still angry about the lawlessness that I was seeing. But I also began to see that this anger was pointless if I didn't at least try to understand what was really happening. It goes without saying that she got a barrage of stick from the audience calling her a bleeding heart. I don't know what it is that stops people from understanding that looking for explanations as to what happens is not the same as offering excuses. Surely what separates us from animals is our ability to wonder. it's a bit of a shame if we don't use this capacity.

By this time the true villain of the piece had arrived back to save us all. Our prime minister. There has never been a more sickening sight than watching this jumped up gobshite puffing out his chest and letting us all know how bad he is and how he's gonna set things straight. He has gone out of his way to portray himself as the hero of the hour. Making outrageous claims about how he personally did this and ordered that. Sir Hugh Orde has made it clear that the politicians jetting in made not a jot of difference to the way Police organised their response.

So whose version should we believe ? Sir Hugh Orde. Former Chief Constable of the Northern Ireland Police force. A man who dealt with riots year in and year out for...well years. Or an empty shirt like Cameron...well quite. But worse was to come. Parliament was recalled so all the other strutting peacocks could puff out their chests and fight to be the most comically self righteous. It was a sickening display.

This whole spectacle was made all the worse by the utter spinelessness of Ed Milliband who just tried to out tough cameron. Sod actually saying 'maybe we should think why this is happening'. No if cameron wants to give them two years I think we should give them five years. I really cannot find the words to summon up my utter contempt for the Labour party. At least you know where you are with the Tories. They're eveil and they don't pretend to be anything else.

Today we have reached a new low. With the pathetic Eric Pickles telling us that yobs will be evicted from social housing. He just says they'll have to find private housing and telling them it's their fault. That might just avoid being brain numbingly stupid if you're evicting a single bloke. But in many cases you are going to evicting families. What happens to those children ? It strikes me if you don't want to raise another generation of angry young people making them homeless for the sins of their parents isn't a good starting place.

Now obviously I don't live on the kind of estate where such people live. So it could be argued I don't know what I am talking about. I admit this is a possibility. But the truth is these people will need to go somewhere. Its all very well saying they will have to get private housing but where is that going to be ? Clue it's not going to be in Eric pickles' neighborhood. Its going to be on exactly the same estates where they lost their tenancy. For all that such measures feel right they defy logic.

I feel at the end of this protracted monologue I should have answers. But I don't have any really. The truth is from my job i know there are some people who are beyond helping. All the input in the world will not help them get their life on track. But good services, designed by people who know the area they are working with, do help. They don't help everybody and they won't, in themselves, prevent a riot. What they do give is opportunities for the people who have aspirations within demonised communities.

Those services need to be supported. The government will say there is no money. Which is bullshit because they seem to be able to find money to prop up a broken fiscal system whenever it is needed. Just not the broken society Dave is so fond of talking of.

If you have the time I thoroughly recommend reading this and this they are brilliant

Citizen Kane

So it comes to me as it does all film fans my time write a review on Citizen Kane. I watched it again last night. With the added thrill of seeing it with someone who has never seen it before so did not know about the glorious pay off of the final scene.

Of course up until that point, at first viewing, it's not impossible to think 'well a good script, good acting and the use of light is good, but the best film ever ? Really ?' Once you have seen it once and you realise what the film is about it really is the gift that keeps on giving. It's a film that deserves many repeated viewings. Last night was about the seventh time I have seen it and I noticed a few things last night that I had not noticed before. Little nuances in conversation that had escaped me the first few times.

Is it the best film ever ? Its difficult to argue that looked on from a historical perspective it changed cinema in a way few other films ever have since. Much as I love the technical innovations (do you know it was about the first film that featured rooms where you could see the ceiling) that came from Kane my true love of the film comes from the three things Hitchcock said you needed to make a great film. A good script, a good script and a good script. The acting is also marvellous from the youthful Orson Welles to the wonderfully aged Joseph Cotton.

Be nice to yourself and see it.

Why I love Baking

Public Sector Myths

There seems to be a lot of misinformation in the media at the moment about life in the public sector so I thought I would take 5 minutes to answer a few of these.

1. Public Sector Pensions are Non Contributory - Not true. Don't know the exact figure but I am guessing we pay about 3% of our wages. I've no doubt that our pensions may be better than in the private sector but it seems to me we have this argument the wrong way around.

Shouldn't we be talking about how to make private sector pensions better. The notion of governments trying to improve the lives of the people who elect them seems to be gone forever. Which is a bit of a shame I think. Anyway on to myth number 2.

2. Public Sector Workers don't pay Council/Income tax - It seems incredible somebody would think that but it has been said to me in the past. Let's be clear. We do, exactly as everybody else does.

3. The Public Sector is Inefficient/workers are Lazy etc. - The truth is in all large organisations there is inefficiency. Increasingly the public sector is run on a pretty ruthless business model complete with call centres and vehicle trackers.

I've no doubt there are cushy areas of the organisations. But again this is true of big organisations as a whole. I guarantee there are corners of ICI and Monsanto where the employees are on a good screw. All I am saying is in both cases this is the exception and by no means the rule.

The final myth comes in the way public sector workers are portrayed as being 'other' than people in the private sector. We aren't. It's mostly a matter of accident which of us work in the public sector and which the private.

We're ordinary people the same as everyone else. Not radical left wing militants. Just people going to work, paying taxes and trying to get on with our lives. 

We're also not the people who caused the deficit, despite all the government propaganda blaming us. We accept we have a role in bringing it down. And a pay freeze for a few years is a price I'm willing to pay. we can only bend so far before we say enough. That's what we're doing now.

Five People I'm Happy to be Sharing the Planet With

This post is a result of a Facebook update where i said that David Simon is one of the premiere artists in this world. I then went on to say that Danny Baker was a genius and I am glad I am alive at the same time as him and this set me to thinking which five people I am glad to be alive at the same moment as them. So here is my list.

David Simon

For those who don't know him David Simon is the creator of The Wire. In my opinion, and many other people's, the greatest TV show ever. This itself would secure him a place on my list. But to add to this I have started watching Treme. A drama about post Katrina New Orleans. It is not overstating it to say that Treme is almost as good as The Wire.

I also admire him for the statement he made following the arrest of Felicia 'Snoop' Pearson, the brilliant but troubled star of The Wire. The statement here proves what an exceptional man he is.

Danny Baker


People saying 'the word genius is banded about too much' has become a cliche in it's own right but in Danny's case it is true. His wonderful style of broadcasting is a gift few are touched with. He mixes the wonderfully absurd with a depth of knowledge and understanding of what is funny that is simply breathtaking every week. I've included one of his finest moments here but just put Danny baker into Youtube, take your pick and you'll get a winner every time.



Stephen Fry


Where to begin. The most articulate, witty raconteur of his generation. He is one of the people who whenever I see he is on something I think 'brilliant'. He is always interesting and challenging and wonderful. The wonderful thing about being alive at the same time as him is to hear his comments on things that drive me to distraction hence the clip here of him calling out the journalists on the expenses brouhaha



Shane Warne

I adore cricket. There have been many great batsmen in the times I've watched cricket. I've seen Brian Lara, Viv Richards, Sachin Tendulkar and Andy Moles in that time. I've also seen Curtley Ambrose, Allan Donald and Tim Munton. But as good as these players were none of them could compare with the genius of Shane Warne. He did things that I did not know could exist in cricket before he came along. He was also good value off the field to.

My Dad

He's brilliant.

I love Reddit

Reddit is a really cool site where all the cool stuff on the internet is gathered. Every day there are at least a dozen things on there that make me laugh out loud. Perhaps my favourite ones are the rage comics. Examples of which are below.

Incidentally the caption for the last image in the last comic is 'Seriously?'

Anyway if you like them there are tons more here

Hypocrite

I was getting a little fed up the other day about a radio phone in where people were taking delight in public sector workers losing their jobs. I thought that it was downright unpleasant of people to take joy in another's misfortune.

Then two days later Cheryl Cole got dropped from the American X-Factor and  laughed like a drain. Of course Cheryl is hardly going to lose her house but relatively speaking it's no doubt a big blow to her and I am a hypocrite for enjoy ing it. That's all.

Death of a Thousand Cuts

This week the country has mainly been getting it's knickers in a twist over what football player Imogen Thomas had been shagging. It was Ryan Giggs. Now let's be clear Ryan has been a prat for cheating on his wife. But that is basically him and his wife's business and none of mine or anybody elses really. He has been a colossal prat in the fact that he took out a super injunction. Which has blown a story that would have lasted a week into the stratosphere.

I'm sure with hindsight he realises this. My only hope is he does not sell out further and give his side of the story to the papers. My guess is he won't. he's never really sought the limelight. He didn't sell his wedding to the highest bidder for magazine money and his media profile has always been pretty low. If he does do this and just ignores the papers then it's a shoo in that this story will disappear pretty quickly as the press are like small children, easily distracted.

The truly delicious part of this whole story has been the mounting frustration of the tabloid media who had been prevented from naming Giggs as we all merrily discussed it on the Internet. This has what all their outrage has been about. This story has proved, once again, how totally irrelevant they are. With Twitter, Facebook and Google we don't need papers any longer. The fun could have lasted even longer were it not for rent a quote gobshite MP John Hemming cowardly revealing Giggs name in the house of commons where he was exempt from prosecution. Quite the man of principle.

I'd be interested to know what the age demographic on buying newspapers is. I suspect the average age of people who buy newspapers is going up year on year. I honestly cannot see how they are going to survive another twenty years. They are already trying to outdo each other now competing to be most vile and hysterically scaremongering. Is that going to continue ? One would hope there would come a point where the British public would say enough. Here's hoping it's not a slow death and they go quickly.

I'm Irrationally Irritated by Gay Men

It's not there problem it's mine. I just can't understand why in the 21st century anybody gives a shit about this. I mean what kind of moronic knuckle dragging fuckwit gives a shit about this any more ? Where do I take this irritation ? 

It should be to the myopic idiots who haven't evolved enough to realise who a person falls in love with is nobody's business but their own or were unfortunate enough to be brought up by parents filled with the irrational fear of homosexuality that they couldn't help but pass on to their offspring.

It should be them I'm angry at for sustaining this as an issue when most of us are way past giving a shit. But I can't hate them. I think all I can do is pity them. So I find myself getting irritated that Gay men and lesbians are identified as separate, when I feel no need to identify myself as heterosexual. I absolutely understand the reason for doing this. It is great that Gay and Lesbian people live in a society where they can express pride in their sexuality. 

Incidentally what set me off thinking of this was an Oprah show on Mike Sisco

Ypu can read more  here and the link to the shows are here and here 

The Multi Layered Jim Davidson

I've been sitting on this post for the last couple of weeks.  I was pissed of the other week by this twitter user. He reports on the vagaries of the press. How they lie and distort etc. For the record he does a very good job of it.

He posted a tweet suggesting that anybody who reads the Daily Star must have the intelligence of a slug. I took umbrage and replied that my dad reads the Star and he's no idiot. I received a pretty dismissive response. But I didn't know where to go with the blog so I just put it to one side.


Then I listened to Jim Davidson yesterday on Fivelive with Richard Bacon. I was going to turn off but decided to give him a hearing. I was quietly impressed. He said that people have a perception of him and he realises there is nothing he can do about that. People assume he is racist and homophobic and he said really there is little he can do to change that perception of him because people had made their mind up before they got to know him.


He said he regretted doing Chalky White, the crude stereotypical Jamaican he did in the 70s. He refused to apologise for it. But again his reasoning was sound. It was the 70s and essentially he knew no better. He was being told to do it and nobody around him considered what he was doing at all out of the ordinary. 


He did make the regular rant about political correctness but was open to the notion that it was what Richard Bacon described as institutionalised politeness. And again made a good point in saying that if somebody is so ignorant to call a black person a nigger then telling them they should call them black is an exercise in futility. Only generational change is going to affect that. A good friend of mine put it right years ago when he said 'My dad is less racist than his dad, I'm less racist than him, and my son will be less racist than me.' but I digress.


He was happy to say that he was going to mock 'fat women on the dole' and frankly he could not care less if they objected. As the interview neared its end I think I could feel the mask slipping slightly as he became irritated by the constant questioning of his ideologies.


It sounds like I am Jim Davidson's cheerleader and I'm not at all. I just think listening to him is a good lesson in how wrong it is to prejudge a person. He probably isn't the nicest person you are ever going to meet but he is also nowhere near as one dimensional as we would have been led to believe. Nobody is really.


And that is why I took umbrage at the suggestion that Daily Star readers are morons, or that anybody who likes Jim Davidson or Chubby Brown is a misogynist racist. This is only one aspect of the person. Sitting here I can think of a dozen people who I know would love Chubby Brown or read the Star or the Mail. But that doesn't define them. 


When we (left and centre left types) dismiss people in this manner we do run the risk of being as bigoted and myopic as the people we are rushing to condemn.

Butterfly Effect

I was reflecting on one of the many butterfly effect moments today of my life today. I am on a course at the moment with other social workers and as usual we were whining. We discussed reorganisations and I remembered that in one of these reorganisations I was one of two workers in the borough given my third choice of team to go to. And thanks heavens I was.


Due to that I met my very good friends Lorraine Thompson, Emily Rouse, Becky Thompson, The boy Dave etc. But most importantly I met Angela Fletcher. I say this not to denigrate my colleagues mentioned previously. But Angela introduced me to Phoenix Theatre Company. 


Without Angela I would not know the redoubtable Michael, Emma and Sean, the elfish sprites Hannah and Jodie  and the truly, truly unique Jessica Hackett (if you've never met her your life thus far has been but a rehearsal). I would probably never have wrote Sleeping Beauty as I would have had no-one to write it for. 


And the thing is I would not have really felt the poorer because I would never have known. I would have walked past them in the street having no idea that I was missing out on some of the best people in the world. I don't grieve now for the people I never met or the paths my life would have taken if I had been sent to West Bromwich as I had asked. How can I ?


It makes my head ache a little thinking about all this. In the time I have wrote this I have thought about other such butterfly moments that came and went without me realising it. 

Books

Quick round up of books I have read recently.


Songbird


I think Sebastien Faulks is close to be my favourite author ever. In a quick space of time I have read three of his books and they have all been brilliant. Songbird is supposedly his masterpiece. I liked it a lot. The story was cleverly constructed jumping forwards and backwards in time; between the pre war idyll, the hell of the war and the nearer present day where the suffering of the trenches has already become ancient history.


The relentless day to day horrific reality is brought home perfectly. However much you read it it is still completely unimaginable the horror of knowing the certain death that awaited you on the blow of a whistle. It also beautifully tells us the story of what witnessing such carnage does to a man. 


I was particularly moved by the scene where one of the soldiers returns to England and is staggered to find how normal life is there. How he wishes for bombs to come and kill them all. Having said all this as much as I enjoyed it I like Engleby more.


The News Where You Are


This is the second book by Catherine O'Flynn. Her first book was What was Lost which I truly enjoyed, a good story with great internal dialogue from people out shopping at a shopping centre. It had a good storyline and kept me guessing all the way.


The News Where You Are is a less surprising in terms of the fact I worked out where it was going fairly early. However the journey was superb. Once again she has populated the story with interesting, instantly likeable characters. It is also a book about decay and death which appeal to a maudlin fucker like me.


The final thing I love about the book is the fact it is set in Birmingham ! So few books/films/tv shows are its a delight to find one that is. And she clearly loves and 'gets' Birmingham in a way only Brummies can.


Notes on a Scandal


Loved the film and on a lot of reflection I decide that I like the film slightly more. The Cate Blanchett character is less worldly in the novel and she fails to break free of Barbara's clutches in the book, becoming dependent on her in the end. The ending fits the books characters perfectly. 


Ultimately the film wins out in my affection simply for the performance of Judi Dench. What an actress that woman is.


The Invisible Man


A great classic book and well worth the read. I love the writing of this era with HG Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle, whose  Lost World I also read recently. They are well worth the investment in time.

Why Channel 4 is the new Daily Mail

Stephen Fry wrote in one of his newspaper columns years ago that the Daily mail was the very worse of the papers. Because while the Sun may be more offensive at times at least it was honest about what it was. A tabloid; where as the Mail left room to pretend it was a serious paper. It seems to me that the same thing has happened with Channel 4. They have become a channel for barely disguised freak shows. Five do this also but at least they know they are trash.

I wrote previously here about my deep and abiding love for Big Brother. So I am not somebody queueing up to slag them off on that score. The programme that has provoked my ire is Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.

The producers of the show would have you believe that this is a show whose aim is to promote a better understanding of the Traveller community. That's a phrase you hear a lot on the programme, 'The Travelling Community' as though they are one homogeneous bunch who all strictly adhere to the same norms and behaviours. Bollocks. I'm part of the English community but I have my own views on things. I imagine Travellers are exactly the same.

What the show really does promote is the chance for us to voyeurs on the lives of the people. You can almost hear the producers giggling in the background in evident delight at the next curious , you our eyes, thing that one of the participants does. They should drop the pretence and get Dave Lamb (to those who don't know the acerbic commentator of Come Dine With Me) to narrate it.

And the poor taste does not end there for Channel 4. There is the show about the exploration of modern myths about self image. This is another shitfest involving putting shallow, fame hungry young women with people with facial disfigurements. Again this is presented as some kind of hard hitting exploration of the vacuousness of our society and its obsession with beauty. When what it really is is a chance to watch pretty girls feel uncomfortable around people with facial disfigurements. I just hope they drop the final pretence and in the last scene have the people who are disfigured stand around the pretty girl chanting 'one of us, one of us, one of us...'

Science

I have been thinking a great deal about Science of late. I got an audio book from the Library recently called 'Why e=mc2 (and why we should care)' by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. It's a wonderful book. Unfortunately though I only truly enjoyed the first two and a half of the six discs. I understood, for the first time, concepts like there being no such thing as absolute motion and what the speed of light being constant really means. These are by no means minor achievements for me.

But eventually we moved on to space time and though I could understand some of the concepts I couldn't pretend that I really understood it in the way that I did in the previous chapters. I think I may have to accept that I have reached my limit of understanding of this subject. 

This is not something that depresses me really. I have enjoyed the journey to get to the point where I understand a lot more of the universe than I did. The wonderful thing about science is that it opens your eyes to the world you live in. It may sound odd but at times when I feel low I look around and remind myself that everything I see and cannot see is made of atoms. The air, the trees, my fingernails, the bus and for reasons I can't truly fathom this remarkable fact seems to cheer me up. Just how wonderful the world is I guess. Science opens that knowledge up to me in a way I think few other things can.

So what if I don't understand space time. Science is hard but worth the journey. I love the quote from Niels Bohr which goes 'that a person who wasn't outraged on first hearing about quantum theory didn't understand what had been said to them.' Its nice to know that Science has the power to confuse bewilder and inspire even Nobel Prize winners.

Anyway enough science. I have final rehearsals for a panto tonight and need to apply some Newtonian laws to some custard pies into the faces of my fellow actors.

Black Swan

When I first started writing this blog I had decided I would write pieces about all the films I saw. But I thought fuck that. An earlier entry was about a run of the mill Chris Rock film. So I decided to focus on films that genuinely moved me.

The Black Swan certainly falls in that category. The story itself is fairly formulaic. It is of an obsessive dancer trying to achieve perfection and slowly being driven mad in the process. Nut that is all I would say was clichéd about it. The camera work was a little annoying at first but I quickly got used to it and the grainy film quality enhanced it perfectly.

It has a great supporting cast with Vincent Cassel as the sleazy but brilliant director and Barbara Hershey as the stifling mom. But overall this is undoubtedly Portman's film. As I sit here and think about it there were no scenes where she was absent. Quite honestly she is fantastic. She displays her characters subtle descent into  madness brilliantly without resorting to ticks and tricks often employed. You can see her genuine confusion about whether she is becoming mad and it is gripping.

It is simply a wonderful film and if you miss it you are missing out.

Dinosaurs

The press have been getting themselves into overdrive this week again and have managed to royally fuck it up again. Even when they get outraged for the right reasons they still end up making things worse.

I am referring to the situation with Richard Keys and Andy Gray. Last weekend they were caught on mic making some very sexist remarks about women and in particular their role in football. Quite frankly they made the pair of them look like complete fucking idiots, buffoons even.

They then compounded things by taking too long to apologise. The press smelt blood and when The Sun joined in the attack they must have known they were done for as no Murdoch paper is going to break ranks and attack another part of that empire without getting the green light first.

This is a classic example of the press running away with themselves in their own merry way. Not bothering to think about the consequences just wanting to get their man.

The outrage they were so busy trying to whip up was supposedly to do with offence they caused women. What bollocks. As if the Sun or the Daily Mail ever gave a shit about that particular cause. The Sun will still continue to sexualise young women on a daily basis as will the Mail with its mock outrage about Christina Aguilera’s X-Factor appearance while publishing all the titillating photos.

And what of Keys and Gray ? Many will say sod them but I can’t help but have a degree of sympathy for them. They were idiots but was the degree of outrage directed at them justified ? Of course not. They were expressing views that too many men in this country feel are perfectly ok. I find this pretty reprehensible but I hardly think that placing these two on the sacrificial alter is going to help address any of those issues.

They spent the first half of the week looking like fools, then moral pariahs and where are they now. I suspect the role they fulfil now is that of martyrs to the cause of PC gone mad. And it’s a role that the Daily Mail will have absolutely no problem unblushingly exploiting the next time they want to write a hateful piece about uppity women demanding to be treated fairly.

Lesson not Learnt

So Ireland is screwed. Greece is already screwed and next on the list is one of Portugal, Spain or Italy. I'm not entirely sure that we're totally out of the woods either. What I find difficult to understand, amongst many things in this business, is how when we know why this is happening we aren't stopping it.

Greedy people are destabilising countries on purpose to...well I'm not sure why they are doing it beyond the fact they make money from it. And we (ordinary non bastard type people) seem to sit back and wait while they do it and then pour more money into the huge black hole they create. So why aren't every one of these people in jail ? They should be shouldn't they. They are ruining millions of people's lives and we just stand back shrug our shoulders and say that's the market for you. Well fuck that. In the words of Howard Beale It's time to get mad God damn it !

Why can't we let the banks fail. Seriously why can't we. What's the worse that can happen. The argument that is peddled out is 'that would ruin our whole financial system.' quite honestly it looks pretty fucked from here anyway. We've allowed a situation to occur where the majority are held to ransom by a tiny few who make fortunes.

I don't see where this will all end. With blood on the streets is my guess. The speculators will not stop and I can't see how the rest of Europe will stand back while another country is driven to the wall and ordinary people are expected to pick up the tab again.

The Letter

This is the letter I wrote

Every time I read the letters page of your newspaper there is a letter from someone decrying modern life. Well there is a lot to be said for the modern world. We live in a world where most infectious diseases have been wiped out, certainly in Western countries. There used to be fears of too many people congregating for fear of Polio, not any more. We also live in world where people are not left to starve. Of course there are people who abuse the benefits system but that is the price we pay for having a safety net in case ill fortune befalls us.


We live in a world of unparalleled technology. I can carry my entire record collection in an iPod the size of a wallet. I can communicate with anybody in the world from my living room, or on the bus or anywhere. And although we can bemoan the lack of community there is now there are plenty of online communities for people to enjoy. We dismiss this sense of a virtual community at our peril. A close friend made online is still a close friend.

I am not about to dismiss the idea that we have lost a sense of community. We probably have. But this is not through choice. Society has become more mobile and people have had to move around to find work. The same families don’t live on the same street forever anymore. I was 6 in 1977 and I remember with golden fondness the street party we had that day.

That was the last hurrah for that. I had no wish to become political but the fact is two years later Thatcher came to power and brought her there is no such thing as society philosophy with her. Maybe that sense of togetherness would have gone anyway. She certainly accelerated it.

But there is no point in looking back. There are examples everywhere if you seek them of people working together to make life more colourful. I am a member of an Amateur Theatre company, one of many in this area alone. My daughter goes to Rainbows and I see there the work of the guide and scouting movement. There are countless other examples of good young people and their parents trying to make a better tomorrow. By all means let’s look with fondness on our pasts. But let’s do it without decrying the world we live in now.

The Last Hurrah

I have had a letter published in the Halesowen News. I am currently in Halesowen Library so have no access to it but I will put it on here later. What I wanted to talk about here was a part in in where I refer to the Silver Jubilee of 1977.

I was 6 in 1977 and obviously had no idea of what really was going on in the world. I had no idea there was a band called the Sex Pistols or that they had released God Save the Queen. What I do remember very fondly from that time was the street party we had. I lived in a cluster of three streets and ours was the central one. The street was closed for the day and everybody, and I am sure I am hardly exaggerating when I say that, came out and joined in. My brothers and I went to the party as an RNLI crew and my older brother as The Man with no Name (Clint Eastwood).

In the morning and afternoon there were loads of kids games and we all sat down together and eat. And then all the adults got drunk and danced on the evening. And  I stayed up till 11 o'clock. It truly was a golden day. And I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that just thinking about it makes me a bit wobbly and brings tears to my eyes.

Its very easy to get sentimental about the past. The 70's were not a perfect decade by any means. But it does seem to me that it was the last days of what we, certainly the white working class, could call community. Its easy to blame Thatcher for this. She certainly went out of her way to destroy any sense of community that did exist by selling off council homes and destroying our industrial base. But I guess these things may have come to pass anyway. I'll never forgive her the callous way in which she did it and will be lighting a cigar the day the old bitch finally croaks it. Not an admirable thought or one that does me credit but its the way I feel.

What we have lost is that sense of community that we had that day. As I said in the letter communities are out there. Look at the Guide and Scouting movement, football clubs or any of the other community activities that are out there. But that sense of everybody dropping things and coming together to spontaneously to just celebrate has been lost.

Unless we win the World Cup of course..(hysterical laughter).

Bye Bye Big Brother

Well Big Brother has come to an end and I know in a few weeks I will have forgotten all about it. But at the moment it is pretty raw. People who don’t watch the show will be raising their eyebrows. Those who love the show will understand. So I thought I would do my retrospective now.

Favourite Housemate

No competition here. It was the Slickman Victor. I loved him before Ultimate Big Brother and I was glad that they put him in as recognition of the devotion he has amongst BB fanatics. I loved him because he was the first person who really was up front about it being a game and saying he was here to ‘take these suckers out.’

A word for the Ultimate BB winner Brian. I like the guy. He is funny and charming and really impossible to dislike. His only flaw for me was he made the shows he was in too predictable. Because nobody stood a chance against him. That’s not his fault but as a viewer I found it more difficult to enjoy series when we knew who would win a week in. I found it difficult to enjoy Pete (BB7) for exactly the same reason.

Honourable mentions go to Alex (BB3), The Tickle (BB4), Kitten (BB5), Makosi (BB6), Aisleyne & Glyn (BB7), Rex (BB9), Freddy, Marcus, Noirin (BB10) and Ben (BB11)

Favourite Series

I liked all the series but for my favourite the list begins and ends with one series. It has to be BB5. It was the one that saved the programme after the sedate (not boring) BB4. It had three of the true heavyweight housemates in Nadia, Victor and Michelle. And it had Kitten, Ahmed, Marco and Emma besides. This was when the BB producers really began to get the idea of how to manipulate the housemates more cannily. Whenever they began to get along they threw something else in to stir them up. My only beef with it was that it became clear fairly quickly that Nadia was going to win.

I also loved BB10. It had a great set of storylines that ran through it. Mainly around two housemates. Freddy and Noirin. Everyone fell out with Freddy, everybody fell in love with Noirin. The Freddy storyline encapsulated one of my favourite BB trends. Where somebody is disliked by the cool crowd; they put him up week after week and then he picks them off as the cool kids realise he is popular. The tension was sustained throughout the series and it was really only in the last week where it was obvious that Sophie was going to win.

I have a great affection for BB1 and liked the fact that BB6 was really the only time I genuinely did not know who was going to win it when Davina called out the winners name.

Worse Housemate

There were lots of housemates I really disliked at times but it must be said in almost all these cases that ended the second they left the house. The reason I disliked them was mainly because they were opposed to housemates I liked.

The housemate I truly loathed was Siavash. He showed some promise but about 7 weeks in he turned into a complete prick. Refusing to nominate and making out he was some kind of fucking martyr for doing so. I have never been able to tolerate housemates who complain they hate nominating. That is why they are there. For crying out loud, and Siavash was the worse culprit ever at this.

Honourable mentions: Bea (BB10), Dale, Jennifer, Becca (BB9), Lea, Sezar, Mikey (BB7), Maxwell, Saskia (BB6), Emma (BB5), Jonny, PJ (BB3) Stuart and Elizabeth (BB2) and Darren (for changing his noms when Mel overheard them) (BB1)

Forces of Nature

Many housemates tell us all the stuff they are going to do on their VTs then disappear without trace when they get in the house (see Bubble BB2, Bonnie BB7 or Jo ‘the cougar’ BB11). Then there are the wildcards. People who genuinely are a little unusual/unhinged.

The undisputed King of this genre was Nikki (BB7). I can remember watching her and thinking this is an act. But as the show continued it became clear it wasn’t. She is actually like that. Then we had Makosi (BB6). A woman so conniving that she was prepared to suggest she did not realise a man had his fingers and not his penis inside her. We also had Science (BB6) the proverbial man who could start an argument with a mirror. Marcus (BB10) a man of such breathtaking self confidence/delusion he probably believes he could shit gold if he wanted to.

Romance

I don’t care that they split up there has only been one romance in the BB house and that was the first. Helen and Paul. Nuff said.

Davina

There were times I wished I had a volume control but I always forgived her because I knew she was a fan.

Beefs

My final part is just a chance for me to offload about some of the things that have aggravated me about Big Brother over the years.

Nadia and the fags - I realise that they had to give her the fags to stop her walking and Nadia was the star attraction that year, but as a purist it skewed the competition and I thought it was unfair on other housemates who were missing things as well.

BB7 and evicted housemates - It shouldn't have happened simple as that. They were voted out. Your fault you put somebody unbeatable like Pete in. Spice it up some other way.

BB11 and the final few days - What were the producers thinking have a vote to evict after giving Josie a pass to the final. If Sam and Corin had stayed we would have had an actual fight for the winner not a procession.