And the public wants what the public gets

It's a long time since the Tories did anything to annoy me and when they do, it's pure rhetoric. They have started issuing fairly silly tax policies, claiming the desire to “mend our broken society”.

Which raises the question; if it is now broken, when was it ever pristine? I say pristine which implies perfection and that might be to overstate the position from which we supposedly have fallen. I guess intact is a more commonplace opposite to broken. Yet last time I looked, society was intact, is intact, as in, we're living in peace with one another, we enjoy a great deal of both freedom and security. Anyone who thinks this is a broken society, needs to get out more. Or at least, read a few history books, or I don't know, the news. Iraq; now that's a society which might be described as broken. Rwanda in the spring of 1994; that's an example of what happens when society well and truly snaps.

Not that this society is great. Not that our freedoms or security, or the degree to which we are at peace with one another are perfect – far from. Goodness knows, I see enough wrong here and I'm always going on about it. And I'm not objecting to this just because it's the Conservatives, who are unlikely to do much which would appeal to me in any case. It is because I genuinely believe exaggeration on this matter to be deeply, deeply harmful.

A broken society is a pretty hopeless society, one that very few people are going to wish to engage with. What's more, it had to have been broken by someone (society being man-made, it can only be destroyed by man). The trouble with truly broken societies is that there are usually two or more groups of people who blame one another for the breakage. In this case, not really being broken at all, anyone with the slightest prejudice can apportion the blame accordingly; it's them immigrants, working-mothers, benefit-scroungers, Muslims, lesbians, Thatcher, Blair or Yoko Ono. Or perhaps everybody else. And so people retreat. People act with cynicism and mistrust toward the people they meet because nobody can be trusted; this is a broken society. And as a result society really does a little more creaky.

I don't need to go into the rather daft but ancient idea, this kind of moral nostalgia that people were better in the past. This can be particularly bewildering coming from some generations, who pick the most inappropriate history periods as their ideal. My maternal grandmother has the nineteen-thirties, of all periods. That she may have had a happy childhood, I cannot dispute. That the rise of fascism in Europe, The Road To Wigan Pier and everything else we know about that time suggests it was a better world, I can. And indeed, talking to my Granny, who also had a happy childhood but can still tell you about hardships, injustices and abuses she was aware of which thank goodness seem unlikely to occur today.

But this moral nostalgia seems to strike members of every generation; you see it in books written all through the ages. Of course, the direction of social progress is not fixed; things go wrong, new problems arise - and sometimes new problems arise as a side effect to the solution for an old problem. However, the direction of history is fixed. We can never ever step back; any solution to a problem must be a step forward. The past might inform what that step should be, but we cannot go back there.

Fortunately, perhaps, the Tories haven't accompanied this positively destructive rhetoric with anything which would constitute a dynamic change in society; 7p extra tax on a pint of beer to tackle binge-drinking and a £20 a week tax-break for married couples to persuade unhappy couples to stay together (happy couples presumably don't need a cash incentive). 70p on ten pints is unlikely to make any difference to anyone's Saturday night and the loss of £20 a week is little compared to the existing expense of single living as weighed up against cohabitation.

Five a day

The Tesco delivery came early, before I was awake. [...] accepted it and put most of the stuff away. But when I came through to the kitchen, I found a carrier bag bulging with apples. I checked the receipt and realised that instead of ordering six apples, I had in fact ordered six kilograms of apples. Which is about eighteen pounds, or thirty-seven decently sized apples. And I'm the only one who eats apples.

"Didn't you notice?!" I demanded. "When these arrived didn't you think that this was an awful lot of apples for one person to eat in a week, especially considering all the other fruit we've got in?"

"Well yeah," he said, "but I assumed you felt a bit constipated."

Early Hours Confession #4567

I realise the guilt is becoming a problem again. I realise this because I'm awake at half one in the morning. I've had a few disturbed nights with the pain lately, but there's niggling as well. So if I use you as a Priest and confess all, maybe I'll feel better. I haven't used the blog in anything like this way for a while, but hey, it's my blog.

The main reason I feel guilty right now is that I actually did something rather nasty. I wrote an e-mail earlier this evening when I was tired, pissed off and had some steam to let off. I wrote it to a trusted friend but in it, I was really very horrible about a third party. I mocked someone in a very personal way, someone who I don't know very well at all and who hasn't done me any harm except to annoy me. And that's really my problem as opposed to theirs.

It was totally unfair. And even though my friend isn't their friend, and I trust my friend implicitly, as soon as it was sent – which I naturally did in a hurry without thinking – I began to feel panicky about it. I began to think of bizarre (read outrageous) scenarios in which the subject of my venom would come to learn of what I had written. I felt like throwing up with the horror of what I had done - really. It even occurred to me that if Al Queda were intercepting my e-mails and they turned up and threatened to publish that e-mail on-line if I didn't blow myself up in a public place, I might feel a bit conflicted. What can I say? It's late.

There's a part of me that says, that was nasty, but it was ultimately harmless nastiness; the victim will never have an inkling and your friend is unlikely to think less of you for it (my friend who probably gets tired of my usual wet fish sympathy for all humankind outlook). And if that e-mail is, as it probably is, the nastiest thing you have done to anyone in ages, then you're probably quite a nice person.

My imp, who is naturally on my shoulder throughout all this, says, “But you're not a nice person. If you were a nice person you wouldn't do such things full stop. Also, since you do feel so extremely guilty about what is currently a victimless offence (at least until the series of inevitable freak accidents which will lead to the e-mail spreading throughout the web), this renders all your niceness void. Clearly you are just nice to people in order to selfishly avoid the agony of your guilt.”

My imp is kind of clever in a stupid way. I'm very tired, so I can't work out why that's stupid. Or is it? One could argue that someone with a powerful conscience is a fake since it is ultimately selfish to act in order to avoid guilt or make oneself feel better by being nice to people. Therefore, only a person without a conscience is truly free to be good or bad. Which is interesting because when we talk about psychopathy, which is supposedly the state of not having a conscience (a highly controversial label), we assume that a psychpath always behaves badly because they have all the self-preserving instincts of human nature without the altruism which keeps such things in check for the rest of us. In theory they could chose to be good. But yet to what extent is altruism instinctive and to what extent is it learnt? And can altruism be said to be the thing gives you a conscience, what causes you to feel guilt? In any case, if a person without a conscience chose to be good, could they be said to be a nice person, or would one have to conclude that they came to their choice through a process of logic as opposed to compassion? And is compassion a more valid motive than logic? And is compassion a more valid motive than guilt? What? Shut up!

Okay well, that's probably sorted both of us out for a good night's sleep now, so I won't bother boring you with all the other things I feel guilty about which I was planning to list. Yes. Good.

I should add, for anyone who is as paranoid as I am, that the person about whom I was so shamefully horrible is extremely unlikely to be reading this. It definitely wasn't you.

When Arts & Crafts Go Bad

Recently, my creative projects appear to have taken a sinister turn. I suspect my big mistake is doing stuff when I'm not entirely conscious. And I keep producing hideous objects. Okay, so I have produced two hideous objects.

I had the idea of making a toy bat for Alex. You may remember that his grandmother is referred to as Superbat, I had been singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat to him, from Alice in Wonderland and I was getting a little nostalgic for Whitby. I thought young Alex should like a Twinkle Bat of his own.

I didn't have a pattern or anything, but I didn't for his pirate doll. Patterns? Who needs patterns?! So I sewed this during periods when really I should have been asleep. Or indeed, perhaps, when I was asleep. Because yesterday I suddenly found it was finished... and it looked like this...

Aaaaaghh!!!

I put it in black and white, because it is even worse in colour. Honestly. I'll hide it behind a link and you can look at it here... if you dare!

Look at its feet! Look at its ears! Look at the shape of it! This really is an appalling bat. This is a truly a bat gone wrong.

Only a couple of weeks ago, I decided to decorate a couple of t-shirts for Alexander using some fabric paints I was given. I don't have any experience with fabric painting, but the first attempt didn't go too badly. I can't actually remember painting on the second t-shirt, that period is rather vague and blurry, but when I had finished I looked at it and saw this....

Aaaaaghh!!!

It might not have been so bad had the paint not run. It went all splodgy. It's a terrific mess.

I must admit I did give this to Alex anyway as I felt it was probably suitable attire for playing about in the mud - an essential activity for any growing child.

It is pretty bad though.

The very worst thing I ever produced as an adult was a cross-stitch of Winnie The Pooh. I don't do or like cross-stitch, but someone gave me a kit during a spell of very ill health, so I sat in bed and attempted it. It had three arms. It had the right number of legs but one of them was coming out of Pooh's ear. Naturally nothing quite compared to that classic anecdote of Damon's, which if you haven't heard you have to listen too now - it's the top audio file on this page.

Alex did at least get two passable presents; my first attempt t-shirt and a plaque for his bedroom door.

Paris Hilton and the Iconic Blonde

I thought that would wake you up. And yeah, I really am about to write about this.

"Every decade has an iconic blond like Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana, and right now I’m that icon." - Paris Hilton.

The thing that makes Paris Hilton a little unusual in the story of our culture is that she is an American. She hasn't even been on our television screens, on our talk-shows or anything else and unlike other American celebrities, we're not familiar with her from movies or music. So she is more than usually irrelevant to the British observer as compared to our homegrown stock of those famous for being famous. And then I saw this quote, undoubtedly repeated because it was considered rather funny in its arrogance. Only I think the lady is spot on.

Clearly, Hilton isn't famous just for being an idiot. Is she even an idiot? Well, perhaps a more pertinent question would be, is she an outstanding idiot? Driving offences are serious, but sadly commonplace; I have seen at least three cousins banned from driving at some point. In fact there’s probably no legal or social misdemeanour that Paris Hilton hasn’t committed which someone I know hasn’t also done. A dalliance in amateur porn? Indulgence in drink and drugs? Horrific fashion sense? I can personally lay claim to at least one of these.

Now I really don't know much about the lady except things that have filtered into my consciousness from headlines and gossip. Research would defeat the object somewhat. However, I can see the parallels with Princess Diana and Marilyn Monroe - although I know much more about Princess Diana.

Paris Hilton is not like Princess Diana but as a figure, she is treated in a very similar way. People forget what it was like when Diana was alive, but the vast majority of press coverage about her was sensational and speculative unlike everything since which has gone on about what a super lady she was. In one of the few truly prophetic moments of my life, on the morning of her death, I said, "Elton John ought to re-release Candle in the Wind; the words are uncannily close to the truth."

Like Hilton, Diana's privileged background allowed her to be cast as a spoilt brat. She was resented for having everything a person could want and still exhibiting signs of unhappiness. She was a figure of fun and derisory comment. Like Hilton, despite being extraordinarily beautiful in the fashionable sense, she was criticised for her looks, her weight, the clothes she wore, the people she was seen with. Her sex life was a national preoccupation; not her charity work or her qualities as a mother. She undoubtedly had her genuine admirers, but most people I ever heard speak about her, during her lifetime, regarded her as a rich bimbo.

All of which would be harsh on a human being, but we're not really dealing with human beings here; we're dealing with icons and what those icons represent. And let's face it, we're dealing with misogyny. Misogyny is all about the power women have, the absolute basics of their being human, and a cultural desire to wish it away. Not just by men, but women too. Power complicates everything. And in the case of Hilton, Diana and perhaps Monroe, we're dealing with women who have significant sexual and material power. We're dealing with Helen of Troy - and just look at all the trouble that silly tart caused.

Of course, other beautiful, rich and famous women exist; actors, musicians and others whose output is far more popular, but we know relatively very little about their private lives - and some make a great success, against the odds, to keep themselves relatively private. To be an iconic blonde - and the blondeness is important but not essential - you have to give us a reason to hate you. Some weakness, some foolishness. And then you'll never be out of the papers.

Do people hate Paris Hilton? A lot of people are simply baffled by her celebrity or the interest of others in her - Mika Brzezinski's protest against headlining with the lady when there were other things going on in the world isn't hatred; I feel the same, which is why I'm trying to get to the bottom of this. But yes, things I've seen and heard suggest that some people really hate the woman, and they relish that hatred. It's culturally sanctioned misogyny; you can't talk like that about the pretty girl down the road who won't put out for you. You can say what you like about the celebritwit.

So in the UK currently we have figures such as Jordan, Jade Goody, Colleen McLoughlin; the class issue working in reverse of course because these are working-class women who are cast as uncooth, uneducated chavs.

This never happens with men. There are male celebrities who are held up as rather dim but they are usually very good at something (and that something is usually football and they're more often in the back pages of the newspaper than they are in the front). Plus male celebrities just don't get this level of attention, perhaps with the exception of Michael Jackson, who was not only very good at something, but the guy undoubtedly qualifies for outstanding idiocy above and beyond the call of celebrity.

I'm now beginning to think that depictions of Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships, might be material proof that beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder...

The Miserable Interlude: Ages 15-18

I was thinking about the story of My Teenage Angst I was telling you and how I got kind of stuck with it. This is because there is an essential but miserable interlude. The story of what happened to my sexuality when I got sick is really rather depressing. It's also displays aspects of my personality which I am rather ashamed of; a degree of vanity and self-absorption. Still, I guess it's got to be exorcised sooner or later...

When I got sick, my body changed quite dramatically in addition to the fact that the insides were malfunctioning. I used to spend so much of my time outdoors and without that, my hair got a lot darker and my skin got a lot paler. I had liked my freckles; they made my face look more interesting and helped disguise the acne, but now they were gone. Meanwhile, the condition of my skin deteriorated. I had always had acne, but my immune system struggling as it was, I acquired patches of eczema, boils and blood blisters as well as yet more severe acne. Nice.

Then, as a side effect to medication, I put on a vast amount of weight; about four and half stone in not so many months (uh… sixty something pounds?). This was unpleasant and completely out of my control. I already had a few stretch-marks from shooting up in height, but they now appeared all over the place like great pink rents in my bluish white skin. Meanwhile, I couldn’t go shopping for my own clothes; I had to rely on my Mum to buy things which fit. That didn't help.

And of course, this body, this pale, fat, scarred, acne-covered body was also causing me hell on the inside. It hurt a lot. It didn’t work in so many and varied ways, including some rather gruesome ways which I don't want to nauseate you with. So whilst I’d long been self-conscious about this and that, I was now disgusted by my body.

Yes yes, I know. I did know that there were many people in the world far less fortunate than myself. What can I say?

Fortunately, whatever part of my brain had previously been concerned with all things romantic and sexual, simply switched off. Not the slightest crush, not the faintest romantic yearning, not so much as a tingle of sexual frustration (can that be a tingle? I don't know). But despite all the previous angst, I was more conscious about sex than I had ever been before.

I had always felt myself to be a bit of a weirdo in lots of different ways – sexuality being just one small thing. And whilst it had bothered me a lot at times, I hadn’t minded all that much; I didn’t get bullied or excluded from anything, so it wasn’t a tremendous disadvantage. With sexuality in particularly, the only times it had been a big problem was when I was in love; the agony always balanced against the ecstasy. But when I got sick my life I was excluded. Totally.

There’s something particularly isolating about becoming sick out of school. When you’re older, everyone you know is going about things in a slightly different way. I spend most of my time at home, but I know others who in a not dissimilar boat because they are working from home, temporarily unemployed, sick like me, retired or parents looking after young children and so on. It’s not all that weird to be at home. But when you’re fifteen or sixteen, your social circle generally only stretches a few years in either direction; all my peers were at different stages on the exact same path. You chose you’re A-Levels, you finished your GCSEs, you chose your university and applied to it, you finished you’re a-Levels and you went to university. Everyone was in school, five days a week, doing much the same thing, working towards the same goals.

Other people I knew had had months off school sick with glandular fever or anorexia. These girls had been very seriously ill, but they’d also been among the brightest and most conscientious students and on their return they’d be a term ahead of the rest of us. I was having very severe difficulty reading, let alone learning anything. In that big project that everyone else was engaged in – something that was supposed to determine the course of the rest of your life - I was completely stalled.

And gradually, together with my spectacular failure to get well – something I saw entirely as a personal failure, having maintained what I understood to be the positive attitude that I would overcome my illness just by thinking the right thoughts – all this became mixed and muddled in my mind until I saw it all part and parcel of the same nebulous problem. My weirdness, my difference, my illness, my ugliness. It was all the same thing. It was all me.

And sex was one manifestation. I had no sexual experience and imagined that everyone else had. This mattered; it was another example of my inadequacy as a human being (I was a kid, and a sick one; I was making all sorts of weird calculations). I felt the reason I had no sexual experience was because I was so hideously ugly and unattractive, inside and out. I didn’t consider the fact that being at home most of the time, rarely meeting new people and when I did, spending the whole time looking for cracks in the floor in the hope that the ground might open up and swallow me.

So anyway, there were almost three years of this sort of thing – although it was an accumulative effect and all the time I was living in hope that things might suddenly dramatically change. It was only really horrible towards the end of this period. Only after I gave up hope did change finally happen. Naturally, it was not at all in the way I expected.

Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.

The problem isn't religion as such, at least it isn't the preserve of religion. I guess the problem can be summarised as

Political belief in the absence of reason.

Where political means of citizens or the state.

Holding some beliefs which cannot be justified with cold logic is inevitable. There are things about our world and ourselves we don’t know for sure and then there are choices we make where our feelings are as important as anything else; our personal codes about sex, marriage and family relationships, for example, the clothes we wear, the food we eat and so on.

The problems arise when we start interfering with one another. It’s not fair to say that people shouldn’t interfere with one another at all, because we are social animals, we live in society and we have a degree of responsibility for one another. We have to make rules. But these rules have to be established on the base of reason.

God has nothing to do with reason - not because God or any other supernatural force is an unreasonable concept, but because we have no consensus on the issue and no consensus can be achieved through argument. It is a matter of faith. Even if we believed that the Bible (for example) was entirely true, people have to translate and interpret and people have never ever agreed on what exactly it is He wants us to do. For every person who argues that we must do X because it is God's will, there will be a dozen people who feel sure He wants us to do Y.

Fortunately, most people with religion don't need to do this. Most of us are capable of coming up with some ground rules for society without reference to the supernatural, even if the supernatural might underpin why it is all so very important. For the Humanist, the consequence of bad behaviour is human suffering on Earth which is a terrible thing because we each only have one life, one shot, one short period of existence and that makes it very precious. For the Theist, the consequence of bad behaviour is human suffering on Earth which is a terrible thing because it upsets God. I simplify of course, but most of the conversations we have about politics needn't mention our religious beliefs if you and I both agree that human suffering is to be avoided wherever possible. And thus, religious diversity has existed for hundreds of years in the United Kingdom and elsewhere without too many major hitches.

Unfortunately, some people do have political beliefs which are not grounded in reason. Blasphemy must be by far the silliest example which remains on our statute books and is a concept which really, really makes me cross. Honestly folks, blasphemy is complete and utter nonsense and we really ought to have scrapped it by 2007.

God might well be offended by a book, a play, a poem, or some cartoons - he might even be preoccupied by these matters when elsewhere people are busy torturing and killing their neighbours in His name, but how would we know about it? So I recall, following his reaction to that business with the goat, the Semetic God hasn’t actually issued any specific complaint. And anyway, surely claiming to know the mind of God is the biggest blasphemy there is? Surely that would be taking the Lord's name in vain?

But beyond the shakey theological basis for the concept, anybody can claim that anything is blasphemous in the context of their personal belief system. Certainly, there has never been consensus among members of a given religion where some members have cried blasphemy – indeed, the alleged blaspheme is usually a member of said religion (if you don't know that the God or supernatural force you're insulting exists, one wonders whether you can truly insult Them). And there's no reason involved; it's just mere mortals getting cross and supposing that their God is as petty and insecure as they are. Which is a casual dismissal for something which has led and continues to lead to people torturing and killing one another and for some people living in liberal democracies fearing for their lives.

Like I say, it is not exclusive to religion; the expression of descent in totalitarian states is criminalised in a very similar way, using very similar language, since the leader or the ruling party tends to take on divine status. And it's not that I believe in dismissing or insulting people for the sake of it. What I object to is treating one particular set of people special protection from being offended under the law. I also object to the Race and Religious Hatred Bill for similar reasons.

So, did you want to see some blasphemy? I must say I'm always fascinated by controversial works simply because these are pieces of art which have been felt to have extraordinary power. Unfortunately, this awesome power is often wasted on me; I don't usually get it. I can see shocking, but that's not power. If all the Devil needed to do was shock people he'd just need to stop all the zips working in the House of Commons. I'll start with the worst offending item.

The only 'blasphemous' poem I know of in English is The Love That Dares Not Speak Its Name by James Kirkup which lead to the successful prosecution of Gay News, when it was first published in 1976 (Mary Whitehouse brought the case as a blasphemous libel). This poem is not to be confused with the 1894 poem, Two Loves by Lord Alfred Douglas, which concludes with the line "I am the love that dares not speak its name." which was quoted and analysed at the trial of Oscar Wilde.

A few years ago, The Love... was read out in public on the steps of St. Martin in the Field by a number of literary figures and activists in a protest specifically against the blasphemy law. No arrests were made, no legal action taken but the law remains. I must admit that I was rather shocked when I got round to reading the text; by its reputation I had kind of imagined something like

Jesus was gay!
Hip hip hooray!
Simon fancied Peter
And James like musical theatre.
And Andrew was a nudist,
Who had a thing for Judas!

and so on and so forth. The actual poem has far more artistic merit than that and as a result is really very shocking and extremely distasteful, if ultimately somewhat silly. One can fully understand why it upset people, so be warned. However, I would still argue that adults should be allowed to find it, read it and judge it for themselves if they want to. So here it is.

The blog Sepia Mutiny shows the paintings of Mugbool Fida Hussein, who was attacked for blasphemy within the Hindu religion; I really don't know enough about Hinduism to put this in any context, but there is a debate in the comments section which provides some insight.

On Wikipedia, you can see Piss Christ, which is... I mean, why? Sister Wendy Beckett refused to see it as blasphemous. Wikipedia also has a low-resolution image of the Jyllands-Posten Muhmmad cartoons, which resulted in much flag-burning and the death of at least 139 people in protests worldwide. I consider them offensive because they play on some of the most inflammatory racist stereotypes you can think of, but they weren't worth anybody's life.

YouTube has various extracts from Jerry Springer the Opera, which met with great controversy when it was screened on BBC television last year. I've not seen the whole thing; it doesn't have much appeal to me but I would argue for the right for others to see it if they wanted.

For other examples of blasphemy, check out your record collection. The current Pope, in his capacity as a cardinal, condemned pretty much every pop song since the Beatles (and yeah, he did mention the Beatles specifically) as being the music of the devil. I think he probably confused the music of the Beatles with some of Paul McCartney's later output.