My Quiet Apocalypse

I was out walking my dog when the end of the world landed a few roads away. I didn't see where it had come from and, back then, I didn't know the reasons behind it. But it landed shortly after 8pm on a lazy Sunday. Seeing the distant glow, my dog whimpered. When the noise followed very shortly afterwards, he bounded away, howling in fear, or perhaps pain. I didn't chase after him because the sight and the noise had arrested my attention. I could see a distant volcano of embers showering my town and engulfing it in orange haze. I wandered, feeling strangely ethereal, towards the glow.

As I approached the pandemonium, I saw a man lying on the floor, holding his stomach tightly, trying to contain his own entrails. I gave him my coat to press against his abdomen but he fell down dead shortly after. I picked up my coat and dusted off the mess and put it back on. I walked on.

Fire rained down from my girlfriend's flat but I didn't feel it when it scorched my skin. I walked in, brushing past a red-faced screaming woman holding a blistered baby. We made eye-contact but I looked away. My girlfriend's floor had disappeared and only fire and debris remained so I walked away from the building. I couldn't see the woman, but the baby was lying in the doorway, grasping at the embers as they cascaded around it.

Someone pushed past me and knocked me to the ground. I stood up and brushed myself down, wetting my fingers in the blood of the dead man on my jacket. I tried to wipe my hand off on a nearby car, but it was hot and dusty, so I wiped it on my jeans instead. I saw people taking bottles of wine from a battered off-licence and took one from a small boy as he ran from the shop, past me. He shouted something at me but it was impossible to hear or see what he'd said, so I turned away.

My head felt hazy, and my vision began to seem blurry. I almost tripped over a corpse in the middle of the road. A thick dust descended and made it more difficult to see. Someone ran into me, screaming, red-eyed, wild. I pushed him over, feeling sluggishly aggressive. I stumbled for a few more minutes through the jungle of maddened creatures. I seemed to be going against the flow, but I found my way to the safety of a brick wall, and then a doorway, and I leant against it, coughing. Feeling ever more sluggish, I crouched down, wheezing heavily. And then I sat down and went to sleep.

Last and First Men

From Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, written in 1930, a description of Americans in a fictionalised history of the ages:

For the best of America was too weak to withstand the worst. Americans had indeed contributed amply to human thought. They had helped emancipate philosophy from ancient fetters. They had serviced science by lavish and rigorous research. In astronomy, favoured by their costly instruments and clear atmosphere, they had done much to reveal the dispositions of ther stars and galaxies. In literature, though often they behaved as barbarians, they had also conceived new modes of expression, and moods of thought not easily appreciated in Europe... Their best minds faced old problems of theory and of valuation with a fresh innocence and courage, so that fogs of superstition were cleared away whenever these choice Americans were present. But these best were after all a minority in a huge wilderness of opinionated self-deceivers, in whom, surprisingly, an outworn religious dogma was championed with the intolerant optimism of youth. For this was essentiallty a race of bright, but arrested, adolescents.

Pity Poor David Cameron

In the wake of the riots, there has been a false dichotomy presented amongst various commentators as to how we can or should proceed. EITHER we can pepper the looters with live ammunition and make their corpses homeless OR give them an unconditional discharge and their own radio show.

At the centre of this rather flimsy pretext is a rather elegant philosophical debate about determinism.

In the Red Dwarf episode "The Inquisitor", Rimmer, when asked to justify his existence, says, "What else could I have been? My father was a half-crazed military failure, my mother was a bitch-queen from hell. My brothers had all the looks and talent. What did I have? Unmanageable hair and ingrowing toenails. Yes, I admit it. I'm nothing. But, from what I started with, nothing is up."

A similar argument is heard referring to the recent rioters (who are, for the sake of the argument, assumed to be disaffected, poor youths with a lack of parental influence): what else could they have been, it's easy for us to say, we're very white and middle class, don't know what it's like on the street, they need their voice heard etc.

This is, of course, a valid argument. People are products of their genetics and their environment. The former they have no control over, and the latter they have little control over. The problem is that, if we follow the argument to its full extent, can we ever punish anyone? If someone comes from a broken and abusive home and in term becomes abusive, is that their fault? They can't help it, shirley. And so on, and so forth. The problem is knowing where to draw the line of personal responsibility.

(Arguably, this is also a problem with religion - if people go to Heaven for believing, what of the people who didn't have the advantage of a Christian upbringing? It's not their fault, but they're still more likely to be punished for eternity.)

The person I really pity is David Cameron. Wealthy, aristocratic family, privileged upbringing, Eton, Oxford, married to a woman from a wealthy, aristocratic family. And those genetics! Not only white, he also has the chubby baby-like cheeks of the aristocracy. I ask you, with this start in life, what else could he have been but a Tory?

What about George Osborne? Multi-million pound trust fund, privileged upbringing, middle name Gideon, a sneering face incapable of showing compassion? What else could he have been?

We should show empathy and intelligence in understanding how people's start in life can influence their behaviour and ask what we can do to promote equality in light of this. But we must be consistent. When these people dismantle or even destroy our country, we must realise that they haven't always had the same opportunities and experiences that we have. And neither have the rioters.

P.S. Overheard in a restaurant last night - news of _______'s riots filtering through to a family from that city. Children's response was concern that they would no longer be able to buy their jeans from a certain burned-out shop. The atmosphere became slightly tense and awkward after I angrily (and rather pompously) suggested that I felt a lot more concern for the people who would lose their £5.93-an-hour jobs in that shop.

Kaiser Chiefs: A Brief Study of Lyrical Mediocrity.

This study is almost so brief that it may as well be left to the title to say it, but I'll expand a little.

The Kaiser Chiefs, along with The Killers and suchlike, were one of the new indie bands everyone liked when I was about 15. Indie had nothing to make me like it. It was popular and bland, and thus beyond redemption. It stood out in no category. Musically? Below average. Passion? Below average. Lyrics? Below average. And yet I decided I liked the Kaiser Chiefs enough to refrain from turning off their music where possible.

It is possible, if not likely, that I professed to like them purely to increase my credibility should I ever make the dubious claim that I'm a tolerant person with regards to music.

Anyway, they were, for the album I had, mostly harmless. 


And then I heard their single "Ruby". The first two categories remained unchanged, but lyrically, they had gone from "below average" to "psychotically poor". For those who haven't heard this delight, the chorus goes something like:

Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby
And do ya, do ya, do ya, do ya
Know what ya doing, doing to me?
Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby

Well, they still sold well, so I'm told, so clearly my opinion is less commercially-viable than your average music fan's. But what annoyed me even more than Ruby was a different song I happened to hear, called "The Angry Mob". Why did it annoy me more? Because it crossed over from the vapid and unimportant to the vapid and "political". 

Maybe I'm just a snob. I mean, In and of itself The Angry Mob isn't so vapid (of course, it's not so worthy that it deserves a proper lyrical synopsis here. Suffice to say that it doesn't like Daily Mail readers). It ends with the repeated chanting of: 

We are the angry mob
We read the papers everyday day
We like who like
We hate who we hate
But we're also easily swayed

And, in many ways, this is a fair and accurate summary of the right-wing paper-readers they speak about. So maybe I'm wrong to criticise it. It's bland and inoffensive (and harmless), just like the band itself, you could argue. The problem is that, as recently shown at Glastonbury, many people appear to regard this as the pinnacle of lyrical excellence. Wondering around near the back of The Other Stage, I saw people chanting this with such devotion and such wonderment. There's no way that this is because of its hypnotic music quality. It has none. Perhaps people are simply caught up in the moment of seeing an act they've seen on TV before. However, when criticising the lyrics, I was informed by an intelligent and astute friend, that I was wrong in my choice of target.

Regardless of what people actually thought of the lyrics (and, as indie fans, there's a good chance they weren't thinking at all), the problem is that people will see that this group is popular, hear their lyrics, and place an unnaturally large emphasis on the worth of what the Kaiser Chiefs have to say to them. However, people sometimes forget that indie, as a genre, is devoid of any lasting political significance.

I'm not a snob and I appreciate and empathise with what I assume the Kaiser Chiefs' views are. However, reaching such a wide audience, they have a responsibility - when using political lyrics - to be outstanding, to show real intellectual worth, and make people really think. With such simplistic and monotonous lyrics, they waste this opportunity. They appeal to the lowest-political-common-denominator. With laziness like that, they may as well write papers for the angry mob themselves.

Demo Lition and the student protest movement

I cannot help but think that Wednesday marked the start of something. Despite the hilariously poor organisation of Leeds University Union, who seemed to have seriously misjudged the length of the M1, we managed to arrive before the biggest demonstration in a decade had quite finished. Whilst we were initially disappointed to have missed marching down Whitehall with the rest, it was soon apparent that the main events were yet to transpire.

We arrived at Millbank to scenes reminiscent of something you might see at your average festival; thousands shouting and dancing in time to make-shift drums and hastily rigged speakers blaring out dub step, whilst the unmistakable aroma of pot drifted lazily through the air. Despite the media’s characterisation of those who took Millbank, these were not ‘hardened anarchists’, these were excitable and angry attendees of what was turning out to be a massive free rave, in the centre of the government quarter of London. Most hilariously of all, one side of the occupied square was taken up by a massive ‘goldfish bowl’ style Pizza Express, the diners inside doing their best to politely ignore the noise, flares, chanting and squads of riot police that were literally surrounding them on all three sides. If this had indeed been a ‘riot’ as the papers keep odiously describing it, those massive modern windows would have been smashed and the pizzas looted. However, the only aggression was directed specifically against the Tory HQ. Rioters are indiscriminate, out of control with violence. The violence on Wednesday was spontaneous, and perhaps intimidating to some, but it was targeted and it was undertaken only because many felt it was just. I agree with them.

It was an odd position to be in, on Millbank for those tumultuous hours. We were part of a crowd that was clearly much better educated and more thoughtful than the average mob, and it adopted clear delineations of what was acceptable; there was universal cheering when protestors first took the roof and unveiled ‘Cut Fees’ banners, but the mood quickly turned against them when a fire extinguisher was thrown off into the crowd below. Cue immediate boos and chants of ‘stop throwing shit’. People around me expressed genuine fear that a police officer might have gotten hurt; these same protestors had been chanting ‘fuck the police’ only moments before. I don’t think I’ve ever known a crowd which simultaneously understands the dichotomy of the police as symbols of the state monopoly on power (a legitimate target for protestors) and the police as individuals who are ultimately just trying to feed their families, and who are just as affected by Osborne’s spending cuts as anybody else. Remarkable scenes therefore, of students helping injured police officers whilst others continued to throw sticks at the ones still fighting. It struck me that in a way, all of us there were victims of the same process. The police had been let down; there were far too few of them and they had not been adequately prepared by their superiors, many looked genuinely scared. It was a stark contrast to the G20 protests of 2009, where the police had stepped over the line and an innocent man was killed. Now it looked as if the police might suffer fatalities. What the dickhead who threw the fire extinguisher thought that would achieve for the student movement I have no idea.

At the same time, the occupation of Millbank was genuinely thrilling – what did it mean if ordinary kids were able to so easily take over the headquarters of the ruling party of one of the world’s great powers? Imagine the repercussions if this had happened in Burma, or China, or Russia. Can we seriously doubt that the dozens of protestors who made it onto the roof would have found themselves quietly executed?

My personal take on the events is that whilst I’m probably not the type to fight my way past police lines and start vandalising Tory offices myself, I found myself not unsympathetic to those who did. This wasn’t just mindless violence, of the type you see on any given Friday or Saturday night, this was the righteous expression of rage by a demographic that feels utterly betrayed. Who could have imagined this time last year that 50,000 university students would be marching down Whitehall chanting ‘Fuck the Lib Dems’? I imagine the Labour party is beside itself with glee. The occupation of Millbank made the tuition fees issue international news, something which the original NUS plan of a peaceful march of 15,000 would never have achieved.

The demonstration deserves not our contempt, but joy at the apparent re-awakening of student politics. Apathy has reigned for far too long. The left turned in on itself during the Labour years, it seems that there is now a clear-cut enemy once again. Considering the damage the Tories are doing to the lives of millions and to the health of society in general, they can take a few broken windows. If it feels like the 80s again, it’s because it is like the 80s again. The Cameron government are using the deficit as cover to embark on a programme of cuts that Thatcher could only have dreamed of. Long may the cries of “they say cut back, we say fight back” continue.

Choosing Newspapers

I recently ended my turbulent love affair with The Economist after 4 or 5 years. It began with such bliss. A trip to scout out the University of Sussex, an exciting front cover with a picture of a bulldog on it. Its calm, collected, monolithic style which made you think that, if only people did everything as The Economist said it should be done, the world would be perfect.

Later on, I grew to love its quirks, like its obligatory use of the phrase "mildly Islamic" when referring to any accommodating leader in a Muslim-dominated country (notably Erdogan in Turkey), or the way it put a picture of a withered, old woman with a shawl above every article about the Roma or other travelling people.

However, The Economist has no moral dimension. For example, as someone who tends to lean to the left-wing, I find the way it absolves Murdoch's, Bush's, and Berlusconi's more heinous offences by use of such a passive and balanced voice to be deeply unsettling. As Stefan Stern in The Guardian wrote, "its writers rarely see a political or economic problem that cannot be solved by the trusted three-card trick of privatisation, deregulation and liberalisation." Beyond that, The Economist reveals itself to be limited and distant.

Of course, it might also be argued that my problem with The Economist simply stems from me not being able to cope with its views being more right-wing than mine, and there's probably something in that.

The trouble is that left-wing sources often make me feel uncomfortable for being too left. I have a healthy disregard for the Tories and the right-wing in general, and yet I feel uncomfortable with a column which assumes Tory guilt at every turn. I've been trialling The New Statesman as a replacement for The Economist but it feels to be an easy let-off for the left instead.

I guess the problem is my inherent contrarianism (a word? Probably not). What I really need is a newspaper which criticises everyone all the time, for everything. That would make me a lot happier. Of course, a more conventional solution might be to read lots of different news sources and build an aggregated view based on a careful and reasoned analysis of many different contributors' thoughts and opinions.

The former solution seems easier though...

Against Their Own Interests.

Warning: Lazy Generalisations Ahead.

Why do people so consistently support those who won't support their interests? The answer is, of course, that everyone is a moron. Take, for example, poor Southern whites rallying against the USA's healthcare bill when it would benefit them. Or, for that matter, their support of the Republican Party at all, considering its links with the wealthy business elites. Another example is The Sun, the shameless Murdoch publication which supports the party of the rich, tax-cutting Etonians, despite its readership of low-earners and white-van men (see what I mean about the generalisations?) who would be most likely to benefit from a less evil state.

This doesn't always happen in other publications, which match their readership more. For example, The Guardian and The Independent are liberal-ish, left-ish, generally intellectual papers, designed for mid-level earners who embrace a slightly more social view of capitalism. The Telegraph is designed for the more stuffy Tory-voting rich, who are a little confused by the complexities of modern life and long for the good old days. The Daily Mail is designed for their hate-filled moron counterparts.

I suppose in many ways, Murdoch is to be congratulated for making his readership consistently and unquestioningly lap up the bile he spews out in his publications (picture all those white-van men, lapping bile. It helps). It should be viewed as a triumph of stupidity over everything else. Still, it's not the world's most complex business strategy, is it? It basically amounts to slapping breasts alongside the propaganda to distract the idiots. What a visionary.

Thomas Paine

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his own enemy from repression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

- On the Propriety of Bringing Louis XVI to Trial.

If only the various global revolutions and counter-revolutions had heeded Paine's advice. Damn you, France!

V for Vendetta

'People should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people'.

So says V in V for Vendetta.