Brockup by Brassholes.

 BR the once noble acronym of British Rail has of late become the chosen prefix of the Union Jack and bovver boots of the EDL or “Britain First” as Pres.., sorry I can’t type it, as chubby hands Trump would put it. I’m amazed after Brexit it hasn’t spawned a wider use. “Oi brunt you brocksucker you can kiss my brass you brastard,” or “Our broverment are a load of bruckers and brankers are all brembezzlers.” Anyway this morning Bramber Brudd announced she would be looking at continuing the open door of EU brimmigration into the UK where such brimmigrants would benefit our economy. Hold on, didn’t Brexers vote leave to stop all that? Is there a picture emerging here? We, well they to be honest voted leave but leaving is proving to be the mother of all shit pies right. We want to continue with the customs union and free trade agreement and now we’re opening the door to the previous EU policy of free transfer of labour. And what did Teresa May keep repeating? “Brexit means Brexit.” Now why would she say such a thing? I mean who in their right mind would say “Potato means potato”? No what she was really saying was “Brexit means Remain.” We will negotiate a great deal for the UK that we will call Brexit but will actually take the form of remaining in the EU. Everyone’s happy, the stock market will leap up, we won’t need to pay alimony and Polish plumbers will persist in plying their profession. And what will we call it? Bremain. And best of all; you can bruck off chubby hands Trump.

The Epidemic of Porn.

Most people have a limited definition of porn, which is a shame. A recent FB post exposed the debilitating effects of pornography particularly on young teen males. Not the prudish ghost of Mary Whitehouse but the evidence of numerous scientific studies. But I’d like to claim it as a more universal phenomenon: The phenomenon of replacing real life with mind-only stimulation. By this definition we live in epidemic times and like sexual porn it can have a corrosive influence on many aspects of our lives. Advertising is porn, Facebook etc is porn, TV and smart phones churn out porn endlessly, even politics is porn in that it exists as mind-only political machinations rather than the real life experience of the rest of us. In the media, commerce, finance and governance porn corrodes the link between cognition and reality. What better example could there be of erectile dysfunction than our present government’s recent record? In the interests of science I Googled ‘Overcoming porn addiction’ (at the risk of being branded by internet algorithms and inundated by ads for all sort of new things) and got http://www.uncommonhelp.me/articles/overcome-porn-addiction/  Pretty useful advice for everything that falls within my expanded definition, and a perfect confirmation of my theory. All I’ve got to do now is convince the Conservative front bench they’re all wankers in need of a spell in rehab. 

The Internet’s Flooded.

It’s been raining since 6am necessitating me and Britney to remain in bed till 11. And now at 11.30 after 15 minutes of trying to get the little bar chart to lose its exclamation mark my pop3 server has not responded and do I want to wait? Obviously the internet has been flooded. I know this because it was the first answer that came to mind. Am I to be marooned on the desert island of my own vicinity? This realisation assumes biblical proportions. My aunty in Kurdistan, ebay’s amazing deals, Amazon’s quick deliveries, the stock levels of my local Screwfix, all unavailable to me. Ironically I very very slowly get an ad for Dryrod Damp Proofing Rods- 10 pack- £27.00 by Safeguard Europe Ltd. Well it’s a bit bloody late now, and no use to me seeing as our local DIY shop has probably never heard of them. The realisations keep flooding in. No Facebook to keep abreast of cat fails, no YouTube or Vivo vids, no Wikipedia to find scant knowledge of everything. And no internet banking, so as our local branches have closed that’s a five-hour walk to the town centre. I’m beginning to hyperventilate. But then in the midst of this gloom I begin to see a Disney silver lining lighting the sky from the east. Pictures of my old life back, people chatting in shops, promenading down sunny streets listening to brass bands or, feeling no implanted impulsive need for a wider television, having the time to learn piano. And as this glorious outcome reaches its crescendo emails begin to flood in again. It’s all been a dream. The internet is back on, hooray I’m saved! I’ve regained my foothold on that old familiar treadmill. So where was I. Ah yes, John Lewis have a new range of swan feather pillows from Indonesia, motorcycle boots that will protect your lower leg in the event of a crash providing a perfect transplant for some other unfortunate, Julian and Nigel are pictured drinking in Costa del Sol, elephants can hear a thunderstorm from 500 miles away, cats do make trajectory mistakes while dogs work on sympathy, and my bank is advertising it will give me back a small percentage of what it’s already taken if I shop at Waitrose. And now it’s 1.20pm, my arse is sore and I haven’t done a bloody thing. 

Free Money.

Apparently there have been numerous experiments giving away free money, a minimum weekly payment like an unearned wage with a surprisingly wide ranging of benefits. It seems a ridiculous idea yet we gave away free education and most people would agree it worked far better than our current fee-paying debt-incurring system. Giving free birthday presents is still seen as a great idea too. Even surfs and slaves were given their necessities for free after their long hours in the field but that’s stretching it a bit. But today we are paid a wage for work. It’s a tight merciless link, no work, no pay though our necessities remain. This engenders a feeling that we only have value in the work we do, and in turn that as a human being we don’t. This creates a fundamental juxtaposition between value and wealth so that individuals of wealth are valued more than those without. We even value ourselves in these terms thinking ourselves valueless if we lose it like the bankers in the great depression. This runs deep in our psychology. Sure we can value friends as people irrespective of wealth but only because we know them. All this sets up a chain of values. We value having expensive things because they are a product of our wealth. We value buying things, throwing things away and buying new ones all because we value ourselves on the work we do. We value ourselves on long hours, on our position even on the stress we undergo. And all this myriad of secondary self-valuations leads to a stressful inefficient and wasteful lifestyle. It’s most likely this is why experiments with ‘free money’ are so successful, and why in the long run they, counter intuitively, boost the economy, are less wasteful and promote happiness and human growth. It’s because we should value ourselves for the quality of ourselves as people not for the size of our wallet. It’s not centralised communism or greedy capitalism, it’s the natural way EVERYTHING ELSE works. Even in the jungle everything’s free.  

Male Fear.

Detectorists is a gentle drama about two metal detector guys, not the most spectacular hobby in the world, and tenderly exposes a barely conscious fear at the heart of masculinity. Two hundred years of industrialisation have somehow left us in no mans land, our allegiance split between family and employer, between some unholy pragmatism and a connection with the sublime. Our employee status has taken on the facile nature of a video game, enthralling but disconnected, yet in some hidden subconscious corner there’s a yearning to connect. This visceral conflict is our fear. OK we’re used to acceptable fears, bravado, rutting like stags in some financial competition or ski jumping and the like, but these only provoke stress that in itself evidences our deeper visceral conflict. Cricketers love the game but become depressed playing it; how can that be? Some like Trump are totally absorbed into their own video game have no need of air or the earth so long as they wins the next round but even they are driven by this same fear. But how can we admit to it, ‘to be or not to be’? Now there’s a question and yet another problem. Female kind has not been subject to this bread-winner conflict. They haven’t the same history of being conflicted in this respect and now appear the braver sex. We men have a fear we’re barely aware of that we can’t afford to accept that viscerally conflicts us AND we’re out-gunned by our women who have remained more connected. Of course they have a proclivity for blowing smoke up their own arse but that’s not the point here. What are WE going to do about it? What does ‘to be’ really mean? Obviously parlance has moved on since Shakespeare’s day but I suggest it might in todays speak be ‘fuck you’. When faced with monetary seduction, power plays even one’s own ego to refer to one’s inner sense of right and say ‘Fuck you, this is not a game.’ It’ll be hard at first; speaking your truth will feel unbelievably risky, well it is for me, but slowly a healing will occur. The boat may wobble but it won’t sink. The world needs men to reconnect with our own visceral honesty, to lose the fear we’ve been burdened with for two hundred years. It really doesn’t turn on the next deal, the next paycheck, the next win. It turns on the dance moves of your spirit.

In Defence of the Council.

It is necessary but hugely difficult to provide low rent social housing in such a wealthy area. Low wage workers are needed locally who can’t afford to travel far to work. There’s a huge lobby behind ‘green’ energy efficient buildings so cladding heat-leaking concrete buildings is a no-brainer. The lower cost cladding though more flammable has been used widely without catastrophic results. The tenants know far less about buildings and building regulations than our own in-house departments and external contractors. Their scare mongering is from a small number of electrical surges due to the water supply pumps but everything has passed the relevant regulations. Then the unforeseen happens. The original fire-safe building worked by each flat being a concrete walled fire-containing unit, a fire in one could not travel outside it, hence no need for a sprinkler system and the fire service instruction to stay put. They can only reach ten stories from the outside so they must gain access to the upper floors internally to deal with a fire there. Similarly though windows blow out in a single flat fire this would not normally breach the fire containment built into the building. But the cladding did. A fire in one flat popped the window and set fire to the cladding, which popped the window in the flat above and set fire to it, the next and the next: A terrible catastrophe that has caused huge anger at a rich uncaring landlord and sympathy for the poor perished tenants. One mistake caused by a change in building philosophy over time. Individually both are valid and safe, but mixed they’re not. There are occurrences that individually or collectively bring us to our senses and break some complacent dream. It’s never easy but it’s in the learning not emotion that we make progress. 

Is Terrorism Working?

Terrorism is the use of violence and fear to coerce people towards religious or political goals. That’s clear enough and describes the bombers actions in Manchester exactly. But as well as the brutality there’s something fundamentally wrong in the logic of terrorism that I’d like any terrorist reading this to consider. Imagine putting a little petrol in a saucer and lighting it. There will be a quick burst of flame and nothing else will happen. It might even be frightening for a moment but it will never achieve any lasting power. Imagine a lion chasing a herd of wildebeest. It separates a weak one and terrifies it till it becomes a meal or escapes. The rest of the herd will in moments continue grazing. In Manchester one or two hundred were terrified and the rest of us 65 million were relieved we weren’t involved. So each act of terrorism produces 0.0001% terror and a 99.999% reaction of relief, plus a 100% angry reaction against whatever it is you’re trying to achieve. Maybe I’m missing something but are terrorist acts achieving what terrorists want? If you want something you try to figure out what actions to take to obtain it. That seems logical to me. You seem to want recognition for your faith and heroism but achieve worldwide condemnation even amongst those who share your faith. So what is your achievement even if you’re prepared to die to achieve it? It’s difficult to truly consider this question. We all make automatic assumptions that if faulty lead to what we don’t want that are hard to realise and admit to. We all, that’s everybody, find ways to justify our results rather than find our faulty assumptions and so make the same mistakes time and time again. You won’t like this but it’s easy to be a part of the small minority that know the truth against the vast majority that are misguided. Easy because in your isolation you can assume the truth and assume yourself as the brave courageous hero. Yet that vast majority you condemn are struggling with a far more complex truth that isn’t easy and thoughts of themselves that aren’t easy, and are in truth, however messy, unsure, confused and mixed up, the greater heroes. So is terrorism working? You decide.