Double negative.

2007-07-03T10:11:00.000+01:00

Tides of Bigotry
Richard Littlejohn’s return to television will see him tackling the rise of anti-Semitism in Britain – an admirable stand or just a desperate attempt to put clear water between him and the BNP?

In teaser trailers for his upcoming Channel 4 documentary, ‘The War On Britain’s Jews?‘, iconoclastic columnist Richard Littlejohn dubs anti-Semitism ‘the oldest bigotry of them all’. And when those words are spoken by a man whose biggest career asset has been bigotry, then, naturally, one sits up and listens.

And it’s not a subject matter that should be taken lightly. Most will have found the sight of graves daubed with swastikas to be deeply unsettling. And even the briefest history of anti-Semitism in Britain will send a shiver through any viewer’s spine. Recent reports will show that, whatever you make of the programme, this is a genuine concern.

But Richard Littlejohn, a man who frequently equates homosexuality with paedophilia and referred to the Palestinian people as the ‘pikeys’ of the Middle East, is not normally one to leap to the defence of minorities. Unless, of course, he has something to gain.

Littlejohn’s most notorious moment came not from something he said, but from something that was said about him – when BNP leader Nick Griffin named Littlejohn as his favourite columnist. Of course, Richard didn’t thank him for the honour, and will maintain that he has continuously opposed the BNP – referring to them as ‘knuckle-scraping scum’.

But to say Richard ‘dismissed’ the BNP as ‘knuckle-scraping scum’ is to be creative with the truth. The remark was actually in made in passing during a full-frontal anti-Palestinian rant. Indeed, scrub out the ‘knuckle-scraping’ line, and Nick would have had another column for his scrapbook.

In the run up to May’s elections, the Daily Mail hosted an online Q&A session with Richard Littlejohn. I was intrigued to see one chat-room patron ask why politicians ‘were so afraid of the BNP’. In response, Littlejohn warned that while the BNP might promise ‘action’ (on what, exactly?), underneath, they were still the same ‘violent, knuckle-scraping, anti-Semitic scum they always have been’.

Allow me to play devil’s advocate, but anti-Semitism doesn’t seem to be a priority for the modern far-right. Nick Griffin’s bile-filled blog makes no complaints about Jewish people, and judging by Iain Cobain’s shocking undercover report into the BNP, anti-Semitism is no longer a vote-winner for the BNP. While I don’t deny that sickening anti-Semitism exists under the surface, it’s hardly the first charge I’d hit the BNP with.

My guess is that those who tune in on Monday will witness Littlejohn desperately splashing and struggling, trying to establish some clear water between him and the BNP. He may succeed, or he may not. Again, I might be wrong, but I don’t think Nick will mind a little paddle anyway.

2007-06-18T10:07:00.000+01:00

Stay safe online
Social networking websites give the media unprecedented access to our personal lives – the consequences are terrifying.

You must have noticed the trend by now. If you haven’t, then just pick up a newspaper, flick to any story concerning a person aged under thirty, and it’s a safe bet you’ll find reference to the subject’s online profile. Be it MySpace or Facebook, it’s become the orthodox to line news reports with quotes and snippets from such social networking pages.

For example, take the Daily Mail’s coverage of the arrest of Rekha-Kumari Baker last week. Their report was complete with exerts from the MySpace profile of her eldest daughter, Davina. We were informed that the deceased listed Gandhi among her heroes, and stated she didn’t want children. To say the relevance of this information is dubious would be a gross understatement.

As well as this, the report is headed by a photo of Davina staring seductively into her webcam, with her school shirt frivolously unbuttoned – a picture, of course, taken from her MySpace profile. I have great trouble believing this is how Davina would have wanted to be remembered. Even more preposterous is the idea that, had the paper not found her profile, friends or relatives would have ever considered releasing such a photo.

Case study two: Big Brother exile Emily Parr. As usual, The Sun offered cash for stories involving this year’s Big Brother contestants. Unfortunately, Emily’s friends missed out on their chance to trade their gossip for cash – thanks to an intrepid, net-literate reporter.

Having scoured Emily’s personal profile, the paper printed a ‘digest’ of her MySpace blog. It told us how she would ‘hurt herself’ to get her hands on prescription morphine, and printed photos of her ‘wasted’, tying them to a blog entry bragging of the joys of cocaine.

This raises questions not only of personal privacy, but of sincere journalism. As anyone who sends e-mails knows, the biggest peril of internet communication is the impossibility of adopting a tone. To cyberspacers this is mildly annoying, often leading to IM faux-pas; to scandal-hungry newspapers, this is a gift – a chance to play with the truth. Parr’s remarks may well have been flippant and embellished – but papers are able to frame them anyway they like.

For teenagers, social networking websites are underpinned by freedom – they’re seen as a realm away from the prying eyes of paranoid adults. Clearly the reality is different. By publishing a profile we carelessly toss information and pictures into the public domain. Numbered are the days where news reporters made do with bland interviews with reserved neighbours who would insist the subject ‘was ‘quiet’ and ‘normal’. Tomorrow’s media will enjoy access to quotes which might suggest you weren’t so unremarkable – indeed with the right spin they’ll suggest anything they want them to. And the source of this information – yourself.

2007-02-25T16:51:00.000Z

Comment: The Kids Are Alright
– The news that parents are unaware what teenagers get up to isn’t surprising – neither is it anything to worry about

According to the Guardian ICM poll there’s a huge gulf between the risks taken by reckless teenagers and the expectations of their clueless parents. But why is this cause for concern? Just what is the fuss about? So the poll confirms teenagers are dabbling in drugs and drink, but surely compared to the gloomy tones of recent reports, this news should come as a relief. After all, shouldn’t what Sue Palmer calls a ‘toxic childhood’ lead to a much more troubled adolescence than this?

And anyway, where is the evidence that such youthful misadventures are a sure route to self destruction? The news, if anything, suggests the opposite. Look at the two figures who dominated last week’s headlines – Dave Cameron and Britney Spears. While one spent their teenage years puffing on pot, the other was widely celebrated as a symbol of teenage success. Years later and the former has his sights set on Number 10, while the latter is a prime candidate for mental health sectioning.

Of course it would be foolish to deny that many an adolescence is blighted with mental health problems – indeed the National Union of Students estimate that 61% of university students encounter bouts of depression. But rather than drink or drugs, they pinpoint financial worries as the cause. Even where alcohol is involved, it’s a symptom of a wider problem, rather than a cause in itself. Drink and drugs are just a distraction from the debts which have come to define the university experience.

And what’s so worrying about the news that parents are oblivious to their children’s waywardness? That too should come as a relief. Quite simply, if you’re unaware that your child takes drugs, then it’s extremely unlikely that there’s anything to worry about. If their school grades plummet, or their spending rockets, then there may well be something wrong. But how can something qualify as a ‘problem’ when it disappears so easily into the tapestry of teenage life?

That teenagers are living their lives outside of the grasp of their elders is a conclusion which should be welcomed. To be able to freely express oneself is a vital part of a healthy adolescence. This is why websites such as MySpace are so popular – they provide an escape from the adult world; online arenas where teens can express themselves without fear of censure.

Far more problems are caused when adolescence is over-monitored by adults. Take Britney Spears for example. Strip away the cameras and the cat suits, and her teenage years were defined by suffocation – barriers to her personal self-development. The same frustrations were behind the tragic suicide of chess prodigy Jessie Gilbert. Forget what any report says – the worst place to grow up is under the merciless gaze of adults.

2007-02-18T11:24:00.000Z

Comment: We’re all gangsters now
Rivalries, ruthlessness and an obsession with respect – there’s nothing new about gang culture

Tony Blair is wrong: gun culture is a metaphor for our society. And it’s a poignant one too. The more you look at gun culture, the more familiar it becomes. It's just an extension of our values. An exaggeration of our individualism. It’s like our society is peering into a fairground mirror – it sees itself in the glass, but with slightly different proportions.

Dissect any totem of gang culture, and you’ll find something held dear by the establishment. For example, take 50 Cent's raison d’être – Get rich or die trying. This, we're told, is the mantra of gang culture. Commentators say that this obsession with wealth explains why poverty-stricken children are lured into drug dealing. Or burglary. Or selling weapons.

But doesn’t the phrase fit just as well with the City of London? Does it not explain why city financers risk mental exhaustion and physical burnout? Could it not be the slogan for Dragons' Den? A programme where contestants risk devastation and humiliation, in the hope of getting rich? Or even for the financial gambles which now define the British university experience?

Social scientists have mapped a pattern: when parents’ values are handed down to their children, the children often take these values further than their parents. They say that young Muslims hold their religion dearer than their parents. And Christian children take a more literal interpretation than their elders. Well here we’re seeing the pattern once more: the offspring of eighties individualism are even more ruthless than their forefathers.

The parables of Christ tell us not to point out the splinters in our neighbour’s eye, and think instead about the log in our own. There’s a profound relevance in this teaching – and not least because the UK is one of the world’s major arms dealers (A wonderful image don’t you think? Tony Blair wagging his finger at youths selling a few guns, while behind him officials supply Saudi Arabia with cases of semi-automatics).

But also it reminds us that we ourselves are responsibly for gang culture. Children join gangs because they are afraid of the ruthless world around them. They know the odds are stacked against them, so they construct their own world – a world where they can be predators rather than prey. And until we offer these children a society worth participating it, they’ll continue to do this.

The gang-world is a monster created in our image. It has inherited our values. We were the ones who scripted the 50 Cent philosophy – that you’re either rich or you’re nothing at all. We were the ones who first looked to those around us, and saw competitors rather than neighbours. And we too care more for image than moral integrity. In short, we’re all gangsters now. We just don’t have guns.

2007-02-14T10:59:00.000Z

Comment: Where the Sun don't shine -

This isn't an anti-rape campaign - it's a disclaimer

Just in case you ever had your doubts (it would be quite reasonable to do so), The Sun opposes rape. Despite what you may think, the raunchy redtop does not condone violence against women. It does not support the spread of violence against women. And that’s why this week the paper has launched its new campaign – exposing the government’s broken promises to provide a 24 hour rape line, and calling for more Sexual Assault Referral Centres.

It’s an admirable stand – but the campaign is misleadingly dubbed ‘Stop Rape Now’. This is the first mistake. This isn't an anti-rape campaign - it's much less ambitious than that. While it may highlight the fact that 50,000 women are raped a year, it chooses not to ask why that number is so high, focusing instead on why conviction rates are so low. Isn’t there a horrible complacency about this? Are 50,000 rapes somehow inevitable? Does the problem lie with ineffective prosecutions, rather than those who choose to force women into unwilling sexual activities?

Or is the paper afraid to beckon the real rape debate – to ask why rape is so widely accepted? Is this campaign merely a smokescreen? A disclaimer – as tragically laughable as a ‘How can I be racist, some of my friends are black?’ claim. Do they not realise that they are their ilk are partly to blame for number of rapes?

After all, the fervent feminist won’t find any companionship on the other pages of The Sun. Head over to the gazette’s website and you’re offered the chance of guess the bra-sizes of British babes – ‘Have you got an eyeful for their eyefuls?’ they quip. Or you can watch the ‘My Sun’ girls strip – a perfect present for Valentine’s Day.

Meanwhile the gossip pages berate the behaviour of Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse. They lambaste ‘boozy Britney’ for dancing ‘like a stripper’. Other photos show close-ups of the scars on Amy Winehouse’s arm. There’s a snapshot of a bra-less Victoria Beckham. Does the paper not acknowledge that the rapists they berate are driven by this same scornful disregard for a woman’s integrity?

But then again this is a paper which is synonymous with insincerity. Earlier this month their front-page became a pile-driving polemic against racism. Yet the paper’s resident reactionary columnists carried on poking vicious jibes at asylum seekers and religious minorities. Their stance on rape is just as empty. While their campaign page oozes feminist zeal, the rest of their paper is drenched in objectification. This isn't about protecting women - it's about protecting The Sun.

Robert Jackman at the BBC:

on the NME Tour

on Jamie T

on the Kerrang Tour

2007-02-05T12:06:00.000Z

Comment: Integration against the odds
- The biggest barrier to Muslim integration is not radical sects – it’s our unreasonable standards

The word ‘integration’ is used a terrible lot in politics these days. It sums up the social philosophies of each of the three main parties – integration, integration, integration. Indeed the word is used so often, that every now and then I found myself scanning through the pages of the dictionary to check what it means. It’s baffling that such a coy and tentative word could spawn such fiery debates.

My first surprise on turning to the dictionary was that the definition made no allusion to Islam. This is strange: the word is used almost exclusively in the context of British Muslims. But perhaps the meaning of the word is changing too quickly for the dictionary.

After all, the past two years have seen a dramatic change in the word’s meaning. In the months after 7/7, the word carried New Jerusalem-esque significance – it forecasted an age of tolerance, reached by mutual dialogue. Now the word is used to belittle and criticise the progress made by British Islam – as an affront to the multiculturalism it was once used to promote.

This is evident in the burqini debate. An Australian company has launched an innovative design of sportswear. By combining the piety of traditional Islamic dress and the streamlined practicality of swimwear, they’ve designed a garment which Muslim women can wear as they swim. And it’s taken off – the company’s website is rich with testimonies from satisfied customers.

Outside the Muslim community the garment has its critics – and they’re making a lot of noise. Pictures of the garment can be found in vicious viral e-mails. In the blogosphere it has become the subject of scathing jokes. Other commentators try to make their cultural contempt by picking out flaws in the design – “It’s PC gone mad. Can you imagine the water resistance?”, one blogger comments.

But why this abundant cynicism? Surely the burqini represents a high point of integration? Not only is it a radical design – it’s hard to imagine ‘us’ employing such creativity and nonconformity in the name of integration – but the company is run by a devout Muslim woman. If women’s rights in Islam are a concern, then surely such independence and initiative should be celebrated?

The burqini website explains how the suit is carefully designed to facilitate movement in the water – the concern about water resistance turned out to be unfounded. But the image of a fully-clothed person struggling to wade through water is appropriate. That’s how it must feel to be a British Muslim today: the stronger you try to move forward, the stronger the resistance becomes.

The next time politicians demand integration they should pause to think about what the word means. When did we seize this cultural yardstick and use it to beat those who it was intended to guide? And when did we escape from the integration equation, and instead appoint ourselves as the fastidious referee? Integration has become a cruel paradox – it demands active steps from minorities, yet any steps they take are manipulated and used to malign them.

A particularly fashionable demand amongst politicians and commentators is that minorities should learn to speak English. The Oxford English Dictionary defines integration as a gradual process in which multiple elements are brought together – rather than one element being slammed into a wall of submission. Perhaps we should worry less about minorities’ grasp of English, and have a think about our own.

2007-02-03T17:32:00.000Z

Comment: One Angry Man
– The crime of rape needs media exposure, not vicious exploitation

With just a few weeks left until it defiles our screens, teaser trailers for The Verdict have begun. If you watch BBC Two, then chances are you’ve already seen them – they seem to intersperse every evening programme. The camera pans out to show a sombre shot of one of the celebrity jurors. They then proceed to offer a comment on rape.

Stan Collymore reminds the audience that this is not an allegation to be taken lightly – a man’s life is at stake. Patsy Palmer confesses that she has trouble believing any woman who ‘cries’ rape. She admits she doesn’t really know the reason, but she’s always suspicious of those who claim to have been raped. The comments are meant to convey ‘common’ attitudes to rape. It’s as if the fact that they’re commonly held justifies their use. If anything, the fact that these myths are so widespread should increase the determination of the programme makers to shatter them.

The programme will follow the twelve celebrity jurors as they contemplate the facts of a fictional rape case. The rape case, which involves accusations against two professional footballers, will be argued by real barristers, and presided over by a real judge. The BBC warns that it’s an ugly case involving an alleged violent attack. And there’s an appropriately ugly jury to match – main offenders being wife-beater Stan Collymore and Jeffrey Archer, a man who knows a lot about lying in court.

After reality television’s recent hearing – with Celebrity Big Brother and The Baby Borrowers both spawning worldwide debates – you’d expect more objections to this vulgar venture of reality television. If the BBC conducted a mock inquest into the death of Princess Diana or a mock law suit borne from the facts of the Hillsborough disaster, then there would be outrage.

So why can rape be used as television tool? After all, the Home Office estimates that each year 50,000 women are raped. Rape has ruined more lives than every terrorist attack and natural disaster of the last century added together. But for some reason the public lack compassion for the victims of rape. Rape remains a crime in the abstract – an assault on a hypothetical woman. An attack on the outline of an already submissive entity.

The BBC insists that the programme does not stray from their tripartite goal – to inform, educate and entertain. They claim that each of the jurors is chosen because they have characteristics or past-experiences which will affect their response to the rape. But what purpose does this fulfil? Will we really benefit from seeing whether Stan Collymore feels pity for a fellow footballer? Does it matter what Megaman’s first-hand experiences of prison bring to the experience?

There’s only one perspective which could ever be defended as being enlightening or insightful – and that’s the view of the victim. As it stands, The Verdict goes further than ignoring the thoughts and feelings of rape victims – it positively mocks them.

2007-01-19T15:41:00.000Z

Comment: It Will Only Get Worse For Jade

They say that publicity is the currency of the celebrity. Try telling that to Jade Goody. Yesterday she was scorned by the front page of every national newspaper. Carphone Warehouse dropped their sponsorship of Big Brother because of her. Over in India protestors burnt effigies of her. And now her elimination from Celebrity Big Brother seems imminent. A week in the limelight admittedly, but a dreadful one by anyone’s standards.

And it can only get worse for Jade – much worse. Which may seem strange: after all, Jade and her poisonous allies are merely the latest names penned on a long list of celebrities who have stumbled into the troublesome terrain of racism. It didn’t stall Ron Atkinson for long. And Cheryl Cole was back in the pop charts before the ink had dried. Even Kilroy got off pretty lightly with just a single bucket of manure tossed over him.

Crucially, however, Jade is the first of the celebrity-for-celebrity’s-sake celebrities to paddle in the waters of bigotry. So why will this matter? Well think of Simone Clark – no doubt better known as ‘the BNP Ballerina’. Clark was part of a production of Giselle when was exposed as a member of the vile British National Party, but this exposure didn’t stop her performing.

And nor did it stop the ballet goers. Thousands turned out to see the production. But none of the audience were condoning Clark’s racism – they were there to see her dance. Their attitude was ‘Yes, she may be prejudiced, but she’s a splendid dancer’.

Jade won’t enjoy the same loyalty. What possible excuse could one formulate? Try it: ‘Yes, she may be ignorant, but she’s a good…’ – it’s impossible. Unlike Clark, Jade is absolutely without flair or forte. That’s the characteristic of Goody and her idiotic – they’re famous for doing nothing. Indeed, not only is Jade not good at doing anything, but she’s positively famous for being bad at things – spelling, marathon running, forming sentences… - the list goes on.

Simone Clark may never shake off the name ‘the BNP Ballerina’, but Jade will be left wishing she could be as lucky. Having no talent or profession to lend its name to a suffix, Jade will simply be known simply as ‘the racist’.

So what’s the moral of the story? Well, we live in an age when it’s possible to become famous without having skill or savvy in anything. But Jade’s case will show that while you may well be able to get on television without a talent, indeed you may even win, it’s still worth having one – even if you only use it as insurance.

2007-01-15T11:36:00.000Z

Comment: The Bimbo, the Bitch and the Breasts

With the same old stereotypes onboard, is it any wonder Britain is bored of Big Brother?

It’s no secret – Britain is bored of Big Brother; ratings are in freefall. But is it any surprise? The show has become pitifully predictable. And there’s nothing more typical than the show’s female contestants. Once again, the viewer is treated to a parade of pernicious female caricatures, each engineered to enforce stereotypes and evoke the viewers’ contempt.

First of all, there’s Carole Malone; the wicked stepmother of the house. Loaded with jealousy, her bitching has become a blood-sport for Big Brother and his noxious fraternity. She’s a vindictive falcon who loves to leave the other birds with ruffled feathers and dripping wounds. Davina delights in playing the matador – “Who will suffer the wrath of your poisonous pen?” she asks with sadistic glee.

And it’s that bubbling cauldron of a column which causes me the most distress. Perhaps it’s the way that a contempt for her fellow females has seeped into her writing. Her language is barbaric – she likes to refer to make-up as ‘slap’, a knowing nod to her misogynist puppet masters. Without her ‘slap’ she describes Mel B as “a dead ringer for one of the Village People” (even ‘slapped’ she’s “a loud-mouthed yob”) while the slap-less Jocelyn Wildenstein “makes Pete Burns look like Miss World”.

Then there’s Jade Goody. When she first stepped onto the stage of celebrity the public rejoiced, keeping her in the limelight with a playful blend of irony and sympathy. There was something charming about her ignorance. We laughed with her. And we celebrated with her too – celebrated her rise from bottom-of-the-class to top-of-the-world.

Soon the atmosphere curdled. The irony became fetid and sympathy evaporated, giving way to vicious contempt. The media began to take a brutal delight in jester Jade’s humiliation, repeatedly deflating her before setting her up for another fall. The routine became so familiar, that she began to pull the strings herself – pulling out of the London Marathon before blaming her slovenly lifestyle of lager and curries.

Finally there’s the fragrant and feminine Danielle Lloyd. She’s the beauty to Malone’s beast; the princess to Jade’s Miss Piggy. But make no mistake – the peacock has mistaken her perch for a throne and her chains for jewelry. She is Big Brother’s concubine, and no doubt her ‘assets’ will be used in a desperate bid to attract ratings.

And we should be worried. Very worried. Last year the Learning Skills Council warned that 11% of girls saw themselves as ‘waiting to be discovered’ by reality television. Big Brother is seen as the easiest route to celebrity. After all, it’s become a modern morality play – a familiar story for our times. The characters may change but the roles remain the same. So girls, take your pick – the bitch, the bimbo or the breasts.

2007-01-13T21:12:00.000Z

Comment: The Penthouse Paradox
A new image for Penthouse as it sets it sights on an older audience – but one thing remains the same

She’s been the twinkle of the Daily Star, she was a prize exhibit in Zoo, and now Lauren Pope is Penthouse’s first ‘pet’ since its 2007 relaunch. And it may prove a good career move for the topless temptress –the raunchy rag has been relaunched with a more cultured audience in mind. Worldly, sophisticated and confident with his sexuality – meet the mantellectual.

But while the magazine may have been radically rebranded, Lauren certainly hasn’t. It’s a familiar façade for her. Her arms strewn suggestively across her breasts, inviting her captor to pin them down by her sides. Her lips perched in a prurient pout. Her bottom protruding towards the reader – her new owner.

But surely the scholarly urbane mantellectual will be repelled by Lauren’s easiness – her undiscriminating offer. We’re told he has confidence in his sexuality – is he not confident enough to buy a broadside without such licentious flesh on the cover? Although come to think of it, if he’s so sexually confident, what does he want with a magazine whose cover promises ‘8 ways to last longer in bed’?

Or is the magazine really aimed at the lad born before his time? A lonely bohemian who missed out on the liberation of all things lad. The man who spent his stag night in his local rather than with the prostitutes of Prague. The man who hung up his dancing-shoes long before the chain lapdancing clubs came to town. Who courted in the age when it wasn’t acceptance to buy your partner poledancing lessons for Valentine’s Day.

Such a ladult would have had a troublesome time of late. He’s too prudish for the top-shelf treats (although he’d been pressed to find much difference between their content and Penthouse’s) and feels out of rhythm with the teenage kicks of Nuts. But now thanks to Penthouse he can leer over Lauren in comfortable surroundings – in his own habitat.

Yes, peer into its page and Penthouse is exposed as familiar filth with a new camouflage. The same thrills, with different fills. For pornography is the tonic in these crude cocktails. Mix 40% pornography with splashes of Playstation and you’ve got a lads’ mag. While 40% pornography topped up with Sunday supplement makes the perfect treat for the mantellectual – serve on ice.

Smut is no longer the doting darling of the adolescent. Now new eyes scan the contours of Lauren’s body – a maiden voyage across tides of vulgarity. But if Lauren could see back from that gaudy gloss she’d see something familiar in those eyes: that same predatory focus, those same inhuman desires, that same emotional vacuum. Men are all the same, she might say. And she’d have a point. Swap gadgets for golf, trade 50 Cent for Forty Licks, and their magazines certainly look suspiciously similar.

2007-01-10T14:09:00.000Z

Comment: The Baby Borrowers backlash isn’t just foolish – it’s offensive.

Weeks into 2007 and we’re already mourning the first Parliamentary casualty – our old friend proportionality. Speechmakers have deserted rigour and reason, putting their faith instead in the random and the ridiculous. Take Gordon Brown for example, and his claim that Iraq policy is ‘in a rut’. 655,000 have died and the Chancellor describes it as ‘in a rut?! 655,000 ≠ a rut. It seems the master of numbers has fumbled his figures.

The ludicrous exaggeration is in fashion as well. And nowhere more so than amongst the cavalcade of Norfolk MPs who expressed their disproportionate disdain over BBC’s The Baby Borrowers, a reality television programme which teaches a pack of preening teenage prima donnas that a baby needs more attention than the average Tamagotchi. According to Norman Lamb the programme amounted to an ‘abuse of children’, while Beccles backbencher Richard Bacon branded the show a ‘grotesque display of human misery’.

Viewed on its own, this upheaval seems foolish, but place it in a wider context and it’s plain offensive. The trials and tribulations of parenthood are a daily reality for many teenagers – many of whom face a bitter battle with poverty. If anything The Baby Borrowers should have made us despair at the cruel expectations we placed on teenage parents, and how little the state helps them.

Over at Channel 4 a similarly impotent moral debate churns on. “You’re treating them like slaves” yelps Jade Goody. Her adversary, Ken Russell, indifferently reiterates the facts – “That’s what they are, my girl”. “But they’re real people – they’re human beings” cries Jade with desperate sincerity.

Again, Miss Goody’s emotional convictions seem rather foolish, but one cannot dispute the genuine anger behind them. So aren’t her passionate protests a little wasted in this virtual vacuum of reality television? Couldn’t Jade’s “they’re real people” battlecry be put to better use outside of this lewd laboratory of swelling egos and hidden cameras? In the real world – a world blighted with injustices like Guantanamo Bay and sweatshop labour.

Or are we so engrossed by television that we’ve forgotten that world (It was of course Orwell’s biggest error – Big Brother isn’t watching everyone; everyone is watching Big Brother). Or was this a deliberate choice? Have we forsaken reality? Have we adopted reality television as our celebrity-littered snow-globe world? Has the rule of the red button and the text-vote referendum satisfied our yearning G-d complexes?

From Big Brother to beyond, the decisions are ours – who stays? Who goes? What’s right? What’s wrong? Reality television has made everyone a judge. But it’s time to think outside of the (idiot) box. Let’s look not to Big Brother, but to the bigger picture. Let’s lament not for babies borrowed, but for perspective lost.

2007-01-09T14:00:00.000Z

Comment: Alcohol doesn’t rape women. Men do.

‘Drunken consent is still consent’, stated the judge as he dismissed the prosecution of Ryairi Dougal for rape. And at first glance it seems a sensible statement – we should be held responsible for the decisions we make after mild alcohol intake – but contrast it with the case facts (in which a security guard at Aberystwyth University took advantage of an unconscious student) and it becomes a little more sinister.

More sickening, however, was the media’s response to the case. Perhaps the words of Justice Evans were subject to a Fleet Street version of Chinese whispers, or maybe they were drowned in a sea of shorthand swirls, but when they reached the press, any mention of ‘drunken consent’ had vanished – instead the papers treated drunkenness itself as consent.

But one has to suspect that this was a deliberate manipulation; after all, this sneering misogyny is commonplace in our media. Think back to November, when an APCO report revealed that most of the victims of suspected ‘drug rapes’ had never in fact had their drinks spiked with sedatives – they were just drunk, and voluntarily drunk at that.

With that report the reactionary press exhaled a putrid sigh of relief. Columnists turned Columbo as they pieced together the evidence – this was the girls’ fault all along. ‘The truth about date rape’ screamed the headlines. The image of the drink-spiking predator was banished to the terrain of urban myth – and with him went the virginal golden-locked maiden sipping her fizzy mineral water. In reality this was a case of loud-mouthed cocktail-chugging ladettes. It was, according to the press, a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other.

But subtract the ‘drug’ from drug rape, and surely ‘rape’ remains? Or has our demented obsession with the behaviour of young women let young men escape the equation? That would explain why Nuts’ magazine, the lewd lifestyle guide pitched at adolescent men, published recipes for ‘Alcodisiacs’ – ‘cocktails guaranteed to get ladies in the mood’.

The drunken woman gets similar treatment elsewhere in the media. While tonight she’s slumped across our pavements; tomorrow she’ll be spread across our newspaper for a double-page ‘Binge Britain’ feature. If she’s already fair game for the Daily Mail, then why will the testosterone-sodden male think any different?

The words of Justice Evans have become a sickening slogan for this repugnant climate of misogyny. It’s a snide warning – break free from the straitjacket of femininity and you’re on your own. Once you’ve guzzled too many vodka and cokes we’ll hold you responsible for whatever befalls you – be it lost keys, handbag theft or rape. It’s time for a new slogan to conquer this plague – alcohol doesn’t rape women; men do.

2007-01-09T13:50:00.000Z

Review: Children Of Men

‘What will survive of us is love’, predicted the ever-morose poet Philip Larkin. Alfonso Cuarón, it seems, has different ideas about the end of it all. And with his splendid film adaptation of P.D James’s apocalyptic allegory Children Of Men, the acclaimed director offers a less fuzzy picture of the demise of mankind. Or to be more precise, the demise of Britain – the only nation which ‘soldiers on’ in a grisly age of chemical conflict and climate chaos.

And it was not just love which survived the nuclear onslaught, but the very things that we loved. Yes, while the war-scarred planet weeps, Albion-in-apocalypse spends its miserable spluttering hours in grotty boozers or at the dog races. Forget biological protection suits; the essential wear for the age of war is the British stiff upper lip.

But as the film opens with a terrifying tour of the panic-stricken capital, such emotional restraint proves impossible. Cuarón taunts us by skipping between nightmarish scenes of terrorist turmoil and shots of London landmarks. It is hideously disorientating – one minute you’re struggling to get your bearings; the next minute the whole street is engulfed in explosions.

The biggest shocks, however, come when we’re introduced to one of the film’s central characters, Kee – a foul-mouthed swelling-bellied illegal immigrant. Eight months pregnant and the surly teenager remains clueless to the parentage of the baby – ‘I don’t even remember half of the wankers’ names!’ she spits.

So how does Britain respond to this adolescent single-mother-to-be? With that all-too-familiar snooty loathing? No – it welcomes as her as a messiah. For after years of chemical conflict and reckless pollution, earth’s entire female population is now infertile. Kee is the world’s only hope. So now it’s up to spirit-swigging pen-pusher Theo Faron (Clive Owen) to smuggle the teenager from the grasp of Britain’s totalitarian government, and to the sanctuary of the mythical Human Project.

With outstanding acting, harrowing dialogue and exceptional cinematography, every moment of this hellish prophecy is depicted perfectly. It is a fantastic paradox: when it comes to global politics, Children Of Men casts a brutally bleak forecast, but when it comes to British cinema, it suggests a very rosy future indeed.

2007-01-04T14:47:00.000Z

Review: Dirty Pretty Things

With their corkscrew curls and tattered jeans, Dirty Pretty Things don’t really stand out in a university bar. But despite the camouflage they’re not hard to spot – the screaming mobs of fans are a bit of a giveaway.

To understand the hysteria one has to look to the haphazard history of the band – a journey which inevitably leads back to The Libertines. This was the band in which Dirty Pretty Things’ front-man Carl Barat partnered with Pete Doherty to produce an iconic album – rebellious and raw yet stylishly nonchalant.

But indie’s new dawn was soiled by ceaseless feuds and copious fallouts. The band ruptured, propelling Doherty and Barat into opposite directions – and straight into new bands.

But there’s one big difference between the bands. Mention Doherty’s name on campus and one can expect the sort of hostile sneer normally reserved for top up fees or coursework deadlines. After a cluster of no-shows and a stumbling shambles of a gig, Doherty is pitifully unpopular in Norwich.

Barat, on the other hand, is Norwich’s man of the moment. And tonight the packed venue delights in his presence, joining him in bass-drum driven sing-alongs and hollering their appreciation between songs.

And it’s no surprise, for every song sounds magnificent. While Doherty was in The Priory ironing out his problems, Dirty Pretty Things were busy in the shadow polishing their sound – and my goodness it shows. As the scrawny boys strum strident powerchords there’s a feeling of ecstasy in the air – this is what indie fans have longed for.

After a hectic encore Dirty Pretty Things turn to leave the stage. The fans bellow their praises and in return drummer Gary Powell tosses his drumsticks onto the dancefloor.

If this performance shows one thing, it’s how foolish it would be to write Barat et all off as the residue left behind after the breakdown of The Libertines – if anything these boys were the backbone of the band.

Yes, tonight marks a new chapter in this hackneyed saga. A tale of brit-pop’s blood brothers, countless quarrels, the bastard birth of two new bands and, finally, a happy ending – well, for one of them at least.

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk/content/articles/2006/12/15/music_review_dirty_pretty_things_20061215_feature.shtml)

2007-01-04T14:08:00.000Z

A kind of self-flaggelating rambling apology for not posting for a month

Oh dear, a whole month without blogging...

It's not like it's been a particularly quiet month. Infact it's been quite the opposite.

There's already been a revoluting age of political revenge. The disgusting and degrading killing of a US-made tyrant. The puppet may be gone, but the pupper masters remain. Within hours of the killing, violence had already broke out in regions of Iraq not known for sectarian conflict. Now the video is being banded around youtube and blogs with the sort of vengeful glee which shows that many of us have more in common with the executors of Ken Bigley than we once thought.

When it comes to horrendous hypocrisy, this was possibly knocked into second place by the BAE arms scandal. Yet another vile reminder that rather than governments controlling the arms trade - the arms trade controls government. Yes, while the invasion of Iraq was carried out on the off-chance that there may be weapons of mass distraction there, we can speak with aboslute certainty that there was weapons of mass distraction in Saudi Arabia - because we sold them to them.

Then there was the Ipswich serial killer. A thoroughoughly disgusting affair, and not least because it exposed Britain's deep-rooted misogyny towards sex workers. The press covered the story as not a murder of women, but as the murder of prostitutes. The term 'prostitute' was used as it were a gender or race of its own.

Much the same way, strangely, as Davina McCall used the word 'celebrity' on last night's inaugural offering of Celebrity Big Brother. The first half an hour was particularly surreal - Davina walking around the house and garden examining the environment where the celebrities would be living like some kind of demented David Attenbrough. 'This bench is perfect for them to sit their celebrity bottoms on...' ... 'the celebrities will be eating dinner around this table...' it was all a bit nauseating.

-------------

So, 2007. And there less than than 365 legacy-making days left, with the Queen's Speech being a depressing indicator of what's to come. But already two glimmers of optimism this week from two men who are increasing resembling Prime-Ministers-to-be. Gordon Brown has admitted that Iraq is in a mess. Showing that he is perhaps not as enarmoured as Tony Blair by the incompetent and immoral neo-con crusade in the Middle East. Meanwhile David Cameron has criticised the government for not signing a charter for victims of trafficking. So while he remains pitifully confused about the Human Rights Act, he does at least acknowledge what human rights are. Maybe that was his plan all along: to repeal the Act and replace it with a more just and ethical Act...

2006-12-06T17:13:00.000Z

Comment: The Quiet Revolution

- Of course Brown could be greener, but let's not underestimate the power of green taxes

It’s easy to dismiss the pre-budget report. When it comes to the environment the heavyweight chancellor offers light measures. The planet features, but it is prosperity which takes priority. There’s a mention of biofuels, but there’s still nothing to change the perception of Brown as the business-friendly chancellor who abandoned the landfill tax.

But let’s sample the delights of optimism for a short moment – this is the first time the green tax rhetoric has transformed into substance. Yes, the tough talk has been left diluted in translation, but the glass remains half full. And above all, it would be a mistake to underestimate the power of green taxes.

Taxes are unrivalled in their ability to alter public attitudes. The Chancellor knows this. His Tory processor Nigel Lawson certainly knew this – it was he utilised the carrot-and-stick approach to taxation to encourage a public divergence to the safer unleaded petrol. The precedent is there – but can Gordon’s budget have the same affect on the public’s behaviour?

The budget aims to use the persuasive powers of taxation to encourage responsibility towards environmentally friendly living. It is hoped that the allure of incentives can be used to promote low energy lightbulbs; the power of penalties can be used to deter those who leave televisions on standby.

Budget flights are confronted as well. Indeed the measures may result in a 7% increase in the cost of short haul air tickets. This is much needed in the age of ‘Because You’re Worth It’ – the age in which petit-bourgeois luxuries are advertised as being without complication or consequence. The economic consequences will make consumers think twice before they flippantly indulge in weekend New York shop hops or budget breaks to Benadorm.

Over at commentisfree.co.uk, Polly Toynbee demonstrates the power of green taxes by highlighting the decline in sales of 4x4 vehicles. A perception of 4 x 4s being targeted by local authorities has meant that sales have dropped 15% and second hand value has plummeted.

Of course the possibility remains that the green in Brown’s report is a mere gesture – but even this will be beneficial. It is the perception of a tax vendetta against 4x4s and budget flying (no doubt one which will be grossly exaggerated by the Daily Mail), rather than the existence of a vendetta, which will be effective.

The reactionary objection to green taxes has been that they penalise the poor. This is a dilemma which will vex each of the parties, for different reasons. Cameron’s compassionate Conservatives are terrified as being seen as the party who favoured the poor over the rich. And across the benches, John Cruddas warns that New Labour’s agenda has alienated the working class – Labour will no doubt fear that a green tax program will further this.

But while the question may trouble the parties for different reasons, the solution is the same for each of them. Yes, green taxes may be to the detriment of poor (assuming there’s some smidgen of necessity in wide screen televisions and ludicrously cheap flights) – but climate change will devastate the poor.

The quiet revolution is underway – parties of every colour propose green taxes. Of course there’s a long way to go – but for now environmentalists should concentrate on making sure this consensus does not crumble.

2006-12-06T17:02:00.000Z

Comment: Fear And Loathing On Campus

- The Department of Higher Education should forget 'extremism' and wake up to Islamophobia

For some it marks the end of their education - a final stretch of studying before they’re catapulted into the unpredictable adult world; for others it’s an academic wonderland - an intellectual Eden where debates flourish and creativity flows; for some it’s the biggest party of their lives – three years of hedonistic bliss; but for Bill Rammell, New Labour’s Higher Education Minister, university is a hotbed for extremism and a fertile breeding ground for terrorists.

That’s why his department has sent guidelines to every university in Britain on tackling ‘extremism’. The document urges universities to monitor the activities of Islamic societies and describes signs of ‘radicalisation’ in students – hints of which should be brought to the attention of the police. Universities have been dragged into the elusive war on terror – and Rammell is providing the weapons.

Students of every creed and colour are left flummoxed by this move. There’s no denying that university can be a worrying ordeal (as I write this my mind is plagued by looming essay deadlines, the exponential growth of my library fines and skyscraping student debts) but the fear of being recruited into a genocidal terrorist operation does not rank highly in most students’ worries.

But that’s a risk you take when you draft a document on senseless suspicion and uninspired guesswork. Indeed had the government have spoken to Muslim students about their experiences they would have found something much more alarming – the problem of Islamophobia at university.

Unlike ‘extremism’, the evidence of Islamophobia is clear and tangible: from the number of female students who said they feared racist remarks when they wore the hijab on campus to the Imam who was victim to a sickening racist attack at Glasgow University – the deplorable presence of Islamophobia taints many students’ experiences at university.

Although these guidelines aim to promote ‘community relations’, they make no mention of this poisonous tide of Islamophobia. One can only assume that the guidelines were concerned less with the welfare of students and more with a fear of being seen as ‘soft’ on terrorism. The guidelines are less about ‘community relations’ than ‘public relations’.

The hardships and discrimination that Islamic students face are a harrowing reality of university life. Muslim students deserve to have their concerns heard without the anxiety of being seen as ‘radical’; they must be free to speak without being dogged by paranoid patrols checking their every word for hints of ‘extremism’.

Visit any campus and the message is clear – students are more worried about Islamophobia than ‘radicalisation’. Earlier this month Bill Rammell applauded Britain’s university students as being among the brightest in the world – perhaps it’s about time that he listened to them.

2006-11-24T10:08:00.000Z

Comment: Credit where credit's due -
David is right to talk about teenage debt, but it's not us who are the tossers

Two years ago I celebrated my eighteenth birthday. Like many others I was delighted to find a letter box jammed full with cards from relatives and friends, all wishing me luck as I entered adulthood. But strangely, a lot of the cards were from friends I didn’t even know that I had.

These mysterious mates sent glossy envelopes promising fantastic gifts. They sent their best wishes along with offers of interest-free credit cards and easy to manage loans. One said that I’d been lucky enough to qualify for a special gold card. Fantastic, I thought – they certainly knew how to make me feel special on my special day.

Of course I was a little perplexed. How should I go about thanking these long lost friends? It felt so strange addressing a thank-you letter to Freedom Finance and Capital One. And should I feel rude about declining the gifts offered by Ocean Finance and Goldfish – I mean it’s the thought that counts and I’d hate to offend their feelings.

This is exactly the sort of confusion which has fuelled the teenage debt problem, and David Cameron deserves credit for confronting it. Telling teenagers what to do is a colossal task – especially for a political party. Once we’ve reached the end of our teenager years we’ve become allergic to advice, and we’ve spat out the phrase ‘don’t patronise me’ so many times it’s become a catchphrase.

We should welcome the ‘Sort It’ website. Goodness knows we could do with the help – mention ‘APR’ to most teenage borrowers and you’ll have them scouring through their text-speak dictionaries. But while Cameron’s advice may make some teenagers think twice when they’re bombarded with offers of loans, would it not be better to tackle the ‘lend now, ask questions later’ strategy of the lender firms?

It is not just teenagers who are to blame. After eighteen years of stern negotiations over pocket money, we’re suddenly pampered with generous offers from seemingly chummy banks and lenders. It’s a gesture which exploits our worst characteristics – our over-confidence and our short-sightedness. We’re so sure that we’ll earn plentiful money to pay it back, and anyway, the payment dates seem like blips on the horizon.

The companies style the cards as a rite of passage; essential equipment for the adult world. They exploit teenage insecurities and appeal to our obsession with being seen as ‘independent’. The firms pose as surrogate parents, creating the illusion of an easier way to borrow money. But as many teenagers find out, they’re much more ruthless than parents – rather than a safety net, the borrowers find themselves tumbling into a web of debt.

So credit where credit’s due for advising teenagers to suppress their 'Inner Tosser', but the website will find itself competing against a troop of companies aiming to do the opposite – and they’re armed with an arsenal of television adverts, junk mail and even birthday cards. David, if you’re looking for a twelve-step debt solution, you had best start with the lenders.

2006-11-24T09:56:00.000Z

Review: Cradle of Filth

The death metal scene has always been ferociously competitive. It’s a ghastly mire in which hundreds of morbidly named mobs compete to make more noise than the others. Traditionally it’s been those who scream the loudest who get heard. Fame is short lived, with bands quickly drowned out by the pile-driving cacophony of their competitors. Cradle of Filth, however, are the exception. For the last ten years they’ve been consistently cited as one of the giants of the genre. As ridiculous as it sounds to mention a death metal band in the same sentence as to a tacky television talent show, I’ll say it anyway; Cradle of Filth have got the X-Factor.

This is most evident in their acclaimed live show. It is during this ninety minutes that their grisly gore-driven lyrics are transformed into a lurid extraordinaire. Rock stars cum Rocky Horror; it’s a flambouyant pantomime in front of a pentagram-laden back drop. They’ve even brought props, with the finishing touches provided by stilt walkers, plastic swords and fake blood. While on paper their murderous songs may read like the musings of Charlie Manson, on stage they unfold like a Charlie Chaplin film.

Ten years since their debut album, Cradle of Filth are armed with a brutal back catalogue, and their fans delight in every debauched offering from it. The Cradle faithful throb and thrust to the militant intensity of Lord Abortion before exploding into a furious sea of fists as the relentless roaring of From The Cradle to Enslave begins.

But The Filth’s latest releases have embarked on a new direction, with a cleaner and an unashamedly epic sound. Death metal fans tend to be a stubborn breed (the uniform black t-shirts and regulation long locks of the crowd confirm this) and there’s uncertainty over how the new sound will go down. However, Cradle deliver their songs with such force and enthusiasm, that it’s impossible not to be enamoured by them.

The new direction is welcomed. From the catchy hooks of Byronic Man to the poetic sincerity of Tonight In Flames, Cradle are breathing life into the death metal scene. There’s even a cover of Heaven 17’s synth-pop hit Temptation. The fans enjoy it but one has to wonder whether it’s because they’re too old to remember the original: if they knew that the writers of the song preferred glitter and glamour to graveyards and gore then they might be so keen to bang their heads to it.

It may not show in the sombre faces of their fans, but the magic of Cradle is in their humour. ‘I don’t know what’s funnier,’ Dani quips, ‘a band who think that they’re vampires or fans who believe that they are’. It’s true, but it’s not just the fans who were fooled – Cradle of Filth have worried newspapers, school teachers and parents aplenty. But perhaps their fears would be eased if they attended a Cradle show; then they’d see it’s all just good (albeit a little camp and gory) clean fun.

2006-11-22T17:43:00.000Z

Comment: It’s not just women who should support the NUS’s action against lads’ mags…

22.00, Tuesday November 21st, Union Pub
Mission: Birdwatching

So I’ve spent two hours in the pub and there’s still no sign of any of them. No sign of Charlotte, the feisty redhead who tells me that she once had sex in the bat cave at Chester Zoo. She never did mention what she studied – I guess I won’t get the chance to ask her. And what a pity Stacey from page 32 didn’t show up – I was really looking forward to seeing that trick with the beer bottle.

A whole evening in the bar armed with Nuts magazine’s ‘Student Stunners’ pullout and no luck. Two pages of lingerie-clad enchantresses and I couldn’t spot a single one in our campus bar. And what’s more, when I took the magazine back to the newsagent he just laughed and told me they’re not meant to be taken seriously.

But while lads’ mags are defended as being ‘nothing serious’ or ‘harmless fun’, the raucous reads like to sell themselves as more than this. They style themselves as handy lifestyle guides; maps across the troublesome terrain of the teenage years. They promise to exchange the hormones and confusion of their reader for a painless life of easy sex and plentiful laughter.

That’s why last month’s Zoo offered a free dictionary of sexual terms; everything you’ve ever wanted to know about sex but were too embarrassed to ask. Lewd and tasteless, it’s unlikely anyone would find the dictionary entertaining, but more worrying is that some may mistake it for educational.

And when it comes to noxious advice, rival publication Loaded lives up to its name. The latest issue helps you work out ‘how much you pay for sex’. By tallying up the amount of Bacardi Breezers, cinema tickets and meals he buys for his partner, the misguided male can calculate how much he ‘pays per lay’. There’s even a chart telling him whether he’s getting value for money.

Like a warped rite of passage, these sordid picture books try to define the boundaries of masculinity. With their blend of gadgets, gore and girls the magazines set out the ‘desirable’ route to adulthood. The pressures on teenage boys to conform are enormous; to astray is seen as peculiar and feminine.

While it may not be men who pose on the pages of these perverse publications, there’s no doubt that males are left just as degraded and frustrated. The gaudy gazettes have immortalised a demeaning caricature of the male; imprudent, unsophisticated and unemployable.

They pose as an antidote to the confusing quagmire of adolescence, but in reality they offer a false agenda of masculinity which does nothing but deceive and humiliate their readers. Luring impressionable males with promises of easy sex, they leave them to plummet into the vast chasm between their pages and reality.

Salacious and smutty, these dirty digests may not be known for their subtlety, but read between the lines and you’ll find that the hapless and hormonal male is mocked, misled and exploited.

2006-11-22T16:18:00.000Z

Review: Amy Winehouse

It’s been three weeks since Amy Winehouse officially became known as ‘the drunken girl from the Charlotte Church show’. And it will be a long time before she outlives the infamy – her drunken bawdiness left even the alcopop queen herself blushing. But look closely at Charlotte’s face before she turns away and one cannot fail to notice a hint of sympathy in her eyes; a flash of recognition perhaps.

For there are many parallels between the two songstresses: both are praised for bringing a fresh youthful voice to a fermenting scene, both are blessed with a talent stretching well beyond their years and both are haunted by a string of alcohol controversies.

But while Charlotte’s voice was compared to that of an angel, Winehouse excels for entirely different reasons. Rather than angelic innocence, her voice is loaded with soul and experience. It’s a hearty and husky creature which ranges from smoky crooning to a guttural growl. It’s a resonant and delicious sound, and it soon engulfs the Norwich Waterfront.

At first there’s something surreal about seeing Amy live – it’s unbelievable to hear such a strong soulful voice erupting from her fragile teenage frame. But this confusion is soon conquered, and from then on it’s total indulgence.

From the melancholy Motown licks of Tears Dry On Their Own to the venomous lyrics and velvety groove of Me And Mr. Jones, every second of her performance radiates class and composure. She boasts more brass than Norah Jones and more balls than Jamie Cullum – it’s not hard to see why jazz fans hail Winehouse as a messianic figure.

Believe the hype – this is much more than everyday wine bar jazz from a girl who’d feel more at home in an off license; Amy offers talent and chutzpah in abundance. And forget her contemporaries in the pop charts – if you’re looking to make a comparison then you’d be better off looking to the classics – the likes of Edith Piaf, the Supremes and Aretha Franklin

After her antics on the Charlotte Church show, those who haven’t heard of Amy Winehouse are a small minority, and if she keeps on performing this well, then they’ll soon be extinct. If there’s one complaint about her set, it’s that it finishes too early – her dark sultry sound would have made a perfect soundtrack beyond the midnight hour.

But never one to disappoint, the cockney chanteuse returns to deliver an encore. To the delight of the audience she departs with her latest single Rehab, a semi-autobiographical number penned in response to the rumours about her drinking. ‘They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no, no’ she bellows with defiant conviction. It’s a fantastic example of the jaded jazz and unflinching sincerity which have made her such a hit. Alcoholic – she may well be, but with a voice this great she could never be anonymous.

Shortened, censored but payed for by the license-payer :)

2006-11-15T15:49:00.000Z

Comment: Why Are There So Many Wankers On Channel 4?

Tossers are aplenty on Channel 4. First up there’s slack-jawed prankster Justin Lee Collins, whose inane laughing has become a staple of their Friday night schedule. Then there’s silly suburban contortionist David Blaine, whose death defying stunts attract thousands of viewers in the vain hope that this latest one may be the one where it all goes wrong. Even their latest game show host refuses to appear in front of a camera without cosmic etchings on his hand. But this winter, as Channel 4 televises the UK’s first masturbate-a-thon, the question will be more resonant than ever – just why are there so many wankers on Channel 4?

The Masturbate-a-thon in question occurred this summer, when it invited thousands of participants to spill their sperm for sponsorship money. The event raised thousands of pounds for safe sex and HIV charities, whilst helping break down the stigma surrounding masturbation. And Channel 4 claims their televising of a documentary of the event will further spread the safe sex message. How altruistic of them you may think. And Channel 4 must feel very passionate about safe sex – they’ve commissioned a whole ’wank week’ this winter. There’s even some educational stuff: Masturbation for Girls promises to take females from clumsy fumbling to nimble finger flurries which would impress Rachmaninoff. But if Sir Jeremy Isaacs is to be believed, Channel 4 has less honourable motives.

Sir Isaacs, the founding chief executive of the fourth channel, condemns the channel for its obsession with sex. He claims that their desperate pursuit of the teenage and twenty-something audience has meant that the channel has dissolved into a carnal smutfest. The commissioners aren’t concerned whether it’s safe sex or not; they just know it’s a safe bet that it’ll bring in the viewers. Rather than challenging taboos, the channel is desperate to find new ones and exploit them. And there’s no shortage of ammunition for his argument.

Take recent exploitation extraordinaire The Holy Hottie, in which the cameras follow ex-stripper-cum-Christian Heather Veitch. Having found the Holy Spirit after a degrading few years in the bowels of America’s sex industry, Heather has started a ministry aiming to take the Bible message to girls like her. But the x-rated evangelical has another goal; to spice up Christian marriages. Now Heather spends her days preaching Christ to the lapdancers, and lapdancing to the Christians. ‘Of course G-d wants us to have fun in our marriages’ she giggles as she jiggles on the lap of a girlfriend.

Religion crops up again in G-d’s Nudists, which documents a crew of nudists who believe that covering up is sinful – we should love what the Lord gave us. It’s a shame the same can’t be said about the women who feature in Designer Vaginas, as they are quizzed by filthy Four over why they decided to have surgery to enhance their genitals. Of course it’s normally been breasts which get caught in the cosmetic surgery cyclone – and this phenomenon gets its turn in My Breasts Are Too Big.

The latter may not have raise many eyebrows – breasts are everywhere in our media. But it wasn’t always like this; instead the female body crept in on the back of a tide of lewd advertising, with breasts being used to push everything from cars to alcopops. The penis however, not enjoying the same marketing allure, was largely absent from television. This summer Channel 4 changed all that. And while breasts had slowly waded onto our screens, the penis thrust itself in front of the cameras like a screaming warhead in ‘cockumentary’ The World’s Biggest Penis. Forget Freudian ambiguities – it was pretty hard not to be conscious of this monster.

Not disturbed yet? There’s a lot worse in the appalling archives of Channel 4, like Obscene Machines. The programme charts the marriage of sex and technology, ending up in the darker realms where fantasies are more Cyberman than cybersex. One subject describes his ideal woman as an ‘attractive female…with a silvery metallic bikini and a key in her back’. He tells us that ‘technosexual’ is the ‘politically correct’ word to describe him.

Yes, it may well bring in the ratings, but is this the only way Channel 4 can do that? When it comes to television there’s no shortage of innovative ideas. Think of Big Brother – a show built on a sickeningly simple yet devastating effective formula. And MTV; originally dismissed as ‘radio on the telly’ the channel has snared the attention of teenagers worldwide. The phenomenal growth of websites such as youtube.com shows a demand for interactive entertainment which could prove a goldmine for television channels – but Channel 4 prefer to opt for the lowest common denominator.

Indeed Channel 4’s orgiastic offerings consciously aim to be pornography. Often it’s only the soundtrack with separates these documentaries from being ‘soft’ pornography. What better example than Lap Dance War, a show which follows the feud between strip club entrepreneurs in 1990s London. While the programme mainly consists of titillating footage of naked women dancing it is strangely dubbed over with footage of academics discussing the effect of Westminster Council laws on lapdancing.

Then there’s Celebrity Sex Tapes where the voice-over offers a sincere apology that they can’t show the more explicit moments of Abi Titmuss’s coke-eyed sex tape for legal reasons. Oh well, looks like the leering viewers will have to make-do with Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson. And back to Obscene Machines once more, where the programme makers choose creative camerawork rather than disappoint their viewers with clusters of blocky pixels.

Isaacs is right - Channel 4 is a channel which delights in the distasteful; twenty years since its birth, the channel is stuck in a fumbling adolescence offering crass and crude excuses for entertainment. Today they may not struggle to compile a sex-sodden schedule, but one has to wonder what’ll happen once they’ve exhausted all taboos. But as long as this sordid quest to produce the most titillating and tasteless television continues, then anyone with more sense than hormones will be left reaching for the remote control rather than the tissues.

2006-11-12T10:46:00.000Z

Comment: Flower power - Why is it a taboo to question the poppy?

Last week the leader of the British National Party walked free from court after describing Islam as a pernicious creed which glorified the rape of western women. Although the trial exposed the foul swelling underbelly of the far right and highlighted the BNP as a tumor on our democracy committing to manufacturing hate, it has been widely marked as a victory for free speech. Libertarian-Christian blogger Ben Foster notes that ‘taking away someone’s right to say something horrific is far more disgusting that anything a person or people could say’. Resonant comments indeed - and many other commentators share his sentiments. But one only has to look at the reaction to John Snow’s comments about ‘poppy fascism’ to see that Britain still struggles with accommodating free speech.

Snow commented on the pressures that news readers face to wear the poppy. With those in the public view criminalised for not wearing one, the poppy had withered into a badge of patriotic correctness rather than an individual statement of remembrance. The flower was merely camouflage donned to hide from the right wing press’s poppy witchhunt. Something which Snow has now been targeted by, merely for exercising the very freedoms which the press obsessively reminds us were at stake in the war.

But Snow is right. To even question the meaning of the poppy has become a taboo. One can only imagine that each year as schools begin their Remembrance Day events, questions like ‘But the war was 100 years ago – why do we need the poppy?’ are every year born out of childish curiosity. And these questions should no longer be shushed or silenced; if the poppy is to hold any significance to future generations this debate must be open and free rather than straitjacketed by national identity.

The immediate answers to the question ‘why do we still need the poppy’ would be that today, 100 years later, wars still rage across our planet and survivors of the world wars still deserve our respect and support. But as Deborah Orr in the Independent laments Remembrance Sunday is a sad reminder of our state’s failure to adequately care for its veterans. Even combatants of today’s wars are often left lacking emotional and financial support – rather than buying a poppy, Orr suggests to donate to the charity Combat Stress.

We should also be free to question whether the poppy is really encouraging remembrance. With such a focus on the crimson flower, there’s a danger that our memories of our war are translated into the sort of simple imagery which George Bush is so fond of. Yes, the great wars were a fight for our freedoms but they were also mass organised killings. If we remembered the true pity of war rather than the romanticised version, then perhaps we’d have less Iraqs.

With overwhelming pressure to wear a poppy, there’s a real danger that the plastic symbol will soon be wider recognised than the tragedy that it represents. We cannot allow this to happen: we must continue to remember the wars and seek the truth about them. Earlier this year the government revealed the tragic extent to which soldiers suffering from mental shock conditions were murdered by their own country. Lest we forget? The British establishment certainly hoped we would. Remembrance Sunday should be a time to express our frustration and sorrow at the world wars, and not just our thanks.

If Remembrance Sunday is to mean anything to generations to come then this reluctance to talk about the poppy must change. One is reminded of the story of the young girl buying a crucifix necklace. The young girl, having seen many others wearing the symbol on necklaces, enters a jeweler’s shop and asks for a ‘cross necklace’. The shop attendant turns to his cabinet and she adds ‘Oh – with the little man on it please’. If we refuse to talk about the poppy then it could face the same fate. While the symbol will survive the generation jump, it’s the sentiment which will die.

2006-11-09T20:01:00.000Z

Comment: Vino sans veritas – The Vice Chancellor of Reading University is right to say that students’ binge drinking can be blamed on irresponsible advertising…

(Comment for university newspaper. LCR = University nightclub)

Ever since I can remember I’ve hated coconuts. The scent of coconut milk makes me wretch. I recoil at the sight of a Bounty bar. For me, blindly reaching into a chocolate selection box is Russian roulette. I really cannot stand coconuts. But it was never really a problem. That was until I attended a Malibu sponsored LCR last year.

As if it wasn’t enough that everyone around me was swigging the rancid coco-cocktail, I was soon targeted by the Malibu salespersons, who tried to make me part with my money with the fortitude and tenacity that you’d expect from one of those beggars in Camden Town. All the time I’d been avoiding coconut, the brewers of this Bahaman beverage had been out to get me. I managed to escape, but I’d come to a chilling realisation – Malibu likes me more than I like Malibu.

But it seems I’m not alone in this observation. This month Professor Tony Downes of Reading University penned a letter to local pubs urging them to take more responsibility to stop students binge drinking. Downes condemned bars which promoted binge-drinking and slated landlords who continued to serve clearly inebriated students. If students were drinking to excess then it was because of excessive advertising.

Concern about binge drinking amongst students is nothing new; the NUS website is loaded with daunting statistics about students’ drinking habits. For a worrying number of students, excessive drinking results in financial troubles, alcohol dependency and severe health problems. The once charming matrimony of students and alcohol has morphed into something more menacing. In days gone by it fuelled our debates and enriched our play-readings – now it empties our wallets and erodes our inhibitions.

But Downes is the first person to shift the responsibility from the students to the sellers, and I think he’s right. On arriving at UEA most students are bombarded with drinks vouchers boasting two-for-one alcopops and extended happy hours. “New flatmates? Struggling to break the ice? Why not drown it?” the vouchers chummily suggest. Don’t be fooled – the drinks companies do not care about you making new friends; they’re just looking for new customers. Even the Union produced Freshers’ Handbook is dominated by drinking, with pages dedicated to drinking games and cocktail recipes.

Some argue that a ban on alcohol advertising would be the first step towards changing the public’s attitudes towards drinking. Think of smoking advertising: ten years ago smoking advertisements could be found everywhere; the evasive wit of Benson & Hedges billboards was a feature of every high street. But after the smoking ban, the idea of advertising smoking seems as ludicrous as billboards offering a hitman service.

Without glitzy advertising Britain has been able to face up to the grim reality of smoking. Companies can no longer selling smoking as glamorous. The once social smoker is now a dinner party pest – and we’re not afraid to tell him to go outside to smoke. Smoking around children is finally recognised as the inconsiderate sin that it really is.

Excess drinking is just as harmful as smoking; not that you’d guess that from the average television advert break. While the tragic consequences of smoking are shown with all the subtlety you’d expect from an armed robbery, we’re still told that drinking our bodyweight in alcopops is ‘wicked’. While our reluctance to smoke is rooted in science, our attitude to alcohol is still fuelled by slogans. And therein lies the problem – advertising: something which has a lot in common of alcohol; it’s intoxicating; it rots your mind; it robs you of rationality; it makes grown adults act like silly children. Some say ban advertising of alcohol. I say why stop there? I say ban advertising.

2006-11-06T20:26:00.000Z

Comment: Sensationalists – where are you now?

‘As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’.

Yes, it’s rivers of blood; one of the most notorious political speeches of last century. In the sensational sermon Enoch Powell presented immigration as a cultural earthquake, a devastating force which would shatter the tranquillity of British life. His speech was as a stern warning of dark days ahead - ‘All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal’ he went on to say, before closing with ‘only resolute and urgent action will avert it’.

But those famous words became Powell’s political obituary; the very next day Edward Heath fired him from the shadow cabinet. The message was clear – there was no place for this hysterical xenophobia in the Conservative Party. But although the Party may have opposed the content of the speech, they certainly liked the structure of it. Indeed many of the modern Conservative speeches can be fit around the Rivers formula. Just follow these easy steps: first, portray the subject as terrifying and apocalyptic (be it immigration, the European Union, the single currency – the examples are plentiful), then go on to say how the Conservative Party is acting as a friend to the nation by addressing the issue (‘not to speak, would be the great betrayal’) and then, finally, hit the audience with a sense of desperate urgency and a chilling ultimatum – do what we advise, or face obliteration.

It’s this formula which the party used in the 70s to paint Europe as a federal tyrant. It’s with this formula that Hague tried to bastardise the single currency. Michael Howard used this formula to turn tabloid paranoia over immigration into a political weapon. It’s true - whether they’re gunning on the right or barging onto the centre ground, one thing never changes about the Conservative Party: they’re agents of melodrama; they’re masters of the metaphor and fluent in the language of hyperbole. When they get excited their speeches don’t so much throw pragmatism out of the window as jettison it into the sun.

On that evidence one would think they’d be pretty pleased to see the publication of the Stern Report. For despite its volume the Stern Report is not of those 700 page behemoths which only the Chancellor can digest; it’s actually pretty gripping stuff. It may not have Richard and Judy’s endorsement but it’s certainly a scarier read than anything in the bestselling books list. And it doesn’t take much to twist the findings of the report into an ‘act now or perish’ Powellite situation – the findings are an ‘act now or perish’ situation. Not that you’d guess that from the insipid rhetoric of Miliband and Blair of course.

Here’s a rather Orwellian digest: According to the report the current level of carbon emissions is likely to seriously affect global food production. And 15-40% of the species on earth face extinction. Sea levels will rise and floods will permanently displace over 200 million people. Dealing with the devastation will swallow at least 20% of our global GDP. We’ll soon be witnessing economic depression akin to that which followed the great wars at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Cameron deserves credit for putting climate change firmly at the centre of the Conservative agenda but something’s still lacking. Where’s the hysterical passion? Come on Tories; you spend fifty years trying to devise an ‘act now or perish’ situation and when you find one you go quiet. You cry wolf and then when a wolf turns up you don’t even notice. Climate change could tear the very fabric of our everyday lives to shreds and ‘only resolute action and urgent action will avert it’. This time you’ve got science on your side and not just superstition. You made all that noise about saving the pound – well this time it’s about saving the planet. Rivers of blood? Oh, there will be much worse than that if the Artic Circle melts. Sensationalists – where are you now?

2006-11-01T15:44:00.000Z

Review: Lily Allen
From public school prefect to household name, on a tide of bad blogging and cocaine controversy – No, it’s not David Cameron; it’s Lily Allen.

Over the past few months Lily’s name has scarcely left the singles charts or the tabloid gossip columns, and as her first major tour arrives in Norwich, excitement is high. A quick glance around the venue shows that countless girls have adopted Lily’s trademark image; pop music’s enfant terrible has quickly built up a faithful. But most of the crowd appears more curious than convinced; curious as to whether the lady can live up to the legend, or whether her reputation has sped ahead of her.

More ladette than lady, she finally appears on stage in her distinctive frock and trainers combination. And with a mockney swagger completing the image, the crowds are content that she at least looks the part – it’s just everything else that’s lacking.

Uncharacteristically, Lily appears shy as she steps up to the mic. She nervously greets her audience and waits for her backing band to lead her into the opening song. One-thousand strong gigs still appear to faze her, but this is hardly surprising; it must be disorientating to be thrust so suddenly from the favourite page of MySpace to the giddy heights of the pop charts.

But as her set unfolds, there is very little to raise her confidence. The calypso bubbles of Everything’s Just Wonderful are flattened by the warbling bass, which also drowns out the vicious rhyming couplets of Friday Night, and new single Littlest Things is left limp and lacking emotional potency. While the text-speak fable LDN and tale of tainted love Smile get a moderate reception, her performance remains lacklustre and uninspired.

And much less can be said of her stage performance. Even as she covers songs by Keane and The Kooks, Lily does not look like she is enjoying herself. Between songs her quips come across as more crass than comic and true interaction with the audience is rare.

As she leaves the stage her swagger has deflated into a slumped shuffle. She’s pretty and she’s vacant, but it seems there’s something else missing. The camera phone paparazzi have got their snaps of the provocative princess, and her fan boys will have caught a glimpse of their bad girl wet dream, but the music fans are left feeling thoroughly unsatisfied.

Through her vindictive blog and acerbic outbursts Lily has had her say on everyone: insults have flown in the direction of Cheryl Tweedy, Kylie Minogue and even Bob Geldof. Amid all the noise, no-one has had the chance to have their say on Lily, so I’ll take my chance now; Lily Allen is pitifully overrated and dreadfully unimpressive.

Of course it’ll take much more than a dull gig to curb the tabloid’s love-to-hate fascination with Lily. But maybe it’s about time that they listened more to Lily’s music and a little less to her rants – they’ll find much less to write about.

(Shorter version for BBC website)

2006-10-24T21:54:00.000+01:00

Comment: Nothing to fear but fear itself

Britain is afraid. Brave Britannia - which stood bold and courageous in the face of terrorism - is petrified. The famous stiff upper lip is whimpering and quivering. It’s true; a report published by the Institute of Public Policy Research shows that Britain is gripped by paedophobia – an irrational fear of teenagers. But are we right to be afraid? Are teenagers the enemy within? Are they a twisted monster of our creation? Or is this report a much needed exposé of our shameful paranoia?

I must admit that sometimes I am a little afraid of teenagers; well, maybe not afraid, but worried. I’m only a few years out of my teens and already the ‘teenager’ has come to represent a world which is moving too fast for my mind. They seem to speak in a Nadsat codespeak, rich with strange words like ‘Bebo’ and textspeak; it feels like a joke I don’t get. And they’re so bloody talented and flexible. They make video hosting websites and sell them to Google for billions of dollars. Even the ringtones they make for a joke end up polluting our television screens for weeks and invading our music charts. It feels like the joke is on us.

But the IPPR report exposes a more sinister fear; when it comes to teenagers, Britons fear for their lives. 39% of those surveyed admitted that they would not confront nuisance teenagers for fear of a violent response; the words ‘guns’ and ‘knives’ featured in over half of those responses. 1.5 million of us admitted that we had considered moving house to escape from feral teenagers.

But this suspicion of teenagers is nothing new. Back in the 4th century BC, Plato was quoted as asking ‘What has happened to our young people? They disrespect their elders; they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying? What is to become of them?’, and in the centuries that have followed such sentiments have been echoed ad nauseam.

But why has this paranoia haunted us for so long? Why has no-one tackled this dangerous superstition? The media seem content to let the fear live, and why not? They’re getting plenty of viewers from it; whether it’s comedies about inarticulate pregnant adolescents or sinister shockumentaries about binge drinking teenage mafias, the viewers seem to relish paedophobia. Our government are not much better: when the shopping centre Bluewater banned hooded sweatshirts in their stores, New Labour chose not to confront the public’s fear; instead they pandered to it. Rather than dismissing the stereotypes, they endorsed them. Soon a simple garment was seen as a sign of criminal impulses and transgressive loyalties.

The fact that so many are afraid of teenagers scares me. As Edmund Burke wrote, there is ‘no passion so [that] effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear’. This explains the lunacy behind contemplating moving house and antisocial behaviour orders, and until we face our fear, things will only get crazier.

Two-thousand years after Plato’s outburst, it’s time to see sense on the issue. We have to redefine perception and reality. It’ll take real British bravery to admit that we were scared of a threat that doesn’t really exist. It will involve true courage to admit we were wrong. But don’t worry; it’s nothing to be ashamed of; just remember – even Plato made the same mistake.

2006-10-23T19:32:00.000+01:00

Comment: Cameron may be convinced that Blair has favoured young people, but I'm certainly not

David Cameron is not known for being a man of substance, but one has to wonder whether there was any evidence whatsoever beyond his claim that New Labour has favoured young people. Any examination of New Labour’s reign will show that young people have been far from favoured; instead they have been neglected, scapegoated and ostracised.

During their second term New Labour argued that ‘feral’ young people were so out of control, that to tackle them, they would have to change the criminal justice system. And they did; they dropped the word ‘justice’. They introduced anti-social behaviour orders which made it illegal for teenagers to stray into busy shopping malls or congregate in groups of more than three. For many teenagers, everyday activities now attract criminal consequences. The rule of law, it seems, belongs to a faraway age where children were seen and not heard.

And things got a lot worse during last year’s ‘hoodie debate’. A simple garment of dress was made out to be a symbol of criminal behaviour and transgressive loyalties; the result being that shopping centres banned the garment. Rather than confront the public’s paranoia, New Labour encouraged it; Ministers backed the hoodie ban and introduced a gimmicky Respect Agenda, littered with prejudices and stereotypes.

But it’s not just hoodies who deserve a hug; plenty of other young people have had a tough time under New Labour. A new system of top up fees has turned the higher education system into a twisted stockmarket. Students from poorer backgrounds have been barred from going to university and those that do make it cite a fear of being crippled by debt as being the most stressful feature of university life.

Another harrowing sign of New Labour’s reign has been the rise of young offenders receiving prison sentences. Although most young offenders have few qualifications and were unemployed before going into prison, any form of education or training has plays a pitifully small role during a young offender’s stay at a Young Offenders’ Institution. Tony Blair’s promise of ‘education, education, education’ has failed those who needed it most.

Young people deserve more than this; we deserve a government who are prepared to speak to us and not merely about us. Sadly, many young people choose not to vote in elections. This should not be read as a sign that our generation is not interested in politics; it’s a sign of despair at how young people have been treated under the Thatcher and Blair governments. Until Cameron realises this, he certainly will not be attracting the younger vote.

2006-10-20T11:04:00.000+01:00

Comment: Guns and Poses - Was DC’s meeting with an MC a mere publicity stunt?

In a way it does not matter whether David Cameron’s meeting with Rhymefest was a publicity stunt or Cameron tapping into a general social issue. Like ‘hug-a-hoodie’ and ‘general well being’ before it, any true discussion will be drowned out by the mocking and the cynicism of the press.

The meeting followed Cameron’s reiterating of the classic Republican line that violent music produces violence people. In my opinion, it is that foolish comment, and not his meeting with Rhymefest, which deserves mocking. Can he seriously make a case that hip hop music incites violence? As Mark Steel jokes, if rap music glamorises guns and violence, then what on earth are George Bush and Tony Blair listening to? And how was the 1812 Overture received – did it provoke drive-by cannonings?

And as the music of Public Enemy and NWA shows, rap music is frequently driven by politics. Public Enemy’s music was no less than a profound campaign by young black youths for recognition and civil rights; a brave stand against the stereotyping and scapegoating which they faced in eighties America. The music of both artists went on to becoming platinum selling. And think of Kanye West and his brutal honesty following the Bush Administration’s pitiful response to the New Orleans disaster; now Kanye is credited with restoring the vitality of the hip hop genre and has gone on to win a Grammy award.

All this evidence shows, teenagers give more respect to those artists which elevate their worries and despair onto the stage, than those who boast of killings and sexual conquests. Teenagers feel more of a kinship with the frustration of NWA rather than 50 Cent’s champagne and hos lifestyle. They may enjoy the music of 50 Cent and Lil Jon, but it remains just music. Enemy and NWA, however, are more representative of their views than any mainstream politicians.

But the issues which provoked Public Enemy still haunt the world today. In Britain police stop-and-search records show an unjustifiable bias against black youths and true ethnic minority representation in politics remains embarrassingly low. And while the problems remain, so does the music. Perhaps Cameron should listen to the lyrics of British grime pioneer Dizzee Rascal. Dizzee’s gritty urban poetry tackles gang violence and teenage pregnancy, but rather than presenting it on a canvas of glamour and excess, Dizzee’s imagery is bleak and harrowing.

‘Don’t tell me about royalty cos Queen Elizabeth don’t know me, so how can she control me when I live street and she lives neat?’ spits Dizzee. And he’s talking sense; the shallow badges of British identity feel like more like imperialist bondage than a comfort to many urban youths. ‘I’m a problem for Anthony Blair’ is another of the lyrics, but as the Guardian reviewer notes, it sounds less like thuggish boasting than a despairing statement of fact.

I’m optimistic that Cameron’s meeting with Rhymefest, like his earlier rendezvous with the stars of ‘Notting Hood’ based Kidulthood, is more than a publicity stunt. But if Dave really wants to tackle social problems, he should delve deeper into the genre. Dizzee’s Boy in the Corner album has been received as a manifesto for the frustrated and neglected youths of the poorer areas of London. It’s more grime than glamour, but every track raises the issue which any politician concerned with social justice should be tackling.

2006-10-18T20:10:00.000+01:00

Comment: New Labour’s populism is thinly veiled

Weeks since Jack Straw made comments regarding the niqab, the ‘veil debate’ has lost none of its gusto. One may assume that every angle of the debate has been exhausted, but on the contrary it is vital that the debate does carry on, as it is about much more than a dress code; it is a debate about the persecution of Muslims which New Labour at best ignore and at worst legitimise. It is through this debate that we must fight to safeguard true British values – those of tolerance and respect for others.

Each week is marked by a New Labour minister making another demand of British Muslim citizens. We’ve had Ruth Kelly demanding that they integrate within the community; Jack Straw is demanding that they wear fewer clothes; John Reid demanding that they monitor their own children and alert the authorities to any signs of ‘radicalism’. Add together all the comments and you’ve got what looks like a charter of rights and responsibilities (and it’s heavier on the latter) engineered by New Labour solely to be followed by Muslims – and the Tories are criticising the Muslims for creating an ‘apartheid Britain’

Many criticise the Muslim community for not distancing themselves from radical Muslims, but much less is said of the responsibility of the media and politicians to differentiate between mainstream British Islam and violent political terrorism. When mainstream Muslims do make their effects to distance themselves from fundamentalists, they’re up against a media which seems content on doing the opposite. After the Danish cartoons controversy the media repeatedly showed footage of protestors calling for those insult Islam to be silenced, yet gave no attention to the protest of mainstream Muslims a few days later; a protest in which Muslims simultaneously showed their feelings over the publishing of the cartoons but also their anger at those who had responded with threats of violence.

But rather than try end the gutter press’s Islamaphobic onslaught, New Labour use it as a vehicle to further their popularity and ratings. Jack Straw is an observant man; he observed how his public rating was low and he how the mass media was engineering hatred and fear against Muslims, and in an attempt to further his deputy leadership bid he joined the witch-hunt.

Sadly a number of liberal commentators have jumped to the defence of Jack Straw. Most of Straw’s liberal advocates build their defence on misconceptions. Yes, Straw’s comments can be defended on the basis of free speech, but while Straw should be free to field his ignorance, it must be remembered that Straw was calling for another fundamental right to be curtailed, and what’s more the right of a very small minority. Yes, the veil can be a symbol of oppression and intolerance in countries like Saudi Arabia, but if Jack Straw really cared about women’s rights he’d have raised the issue with Saudi Arabia when he was foreign secretary, rather than selling the country arms. Instead Straw is attacking women who choose to wear the veil. Can those who back up his comments not realise the hypocrisy of saying ‘Well we’re a liberal and tolerant country, so you HAVE to be liberal and tolerant too’? And what’s so tolerant about forbidding others to follow their religion?

Jack Straw’s constituency contains the largest number of Muslims in the UK. Muslims, women in particular, are a persecuted in a minority; it is Straw’s responsibility to voice their concerns and opinions in the nationwide forum of debate which is Parliament, but instead he adds fuel to their persecutors in an attempt to boost his popularity. Let’s hope the leadership contest puts an end to this spineless career-obsessed politics which has been a trademark of the New Labour premiership.

2006-10-18T10:48:00.000+01:00

Review: Marcus Brigstocke, Norwich Playhouse

Marcus Brigstocke is a funny man. Even his list of recent television appearances reads like it should be followed by a raucous punchline (Have you heard the one about the corduroy clad liberal, the racist football pundit and Esther Rantzen trying to learn French?). As he begins his 2006 Planet Corduroy tour, free from the meddling architects of reality TV and taking the controls from the panel show pilots, it’s evident just how funny the enfant terrible of Middle England really is.

Twisted though it may be, Brigstocke’s imagery is little short of visionary. Bush’s foreign policy is ‘like a kid shaking a jar of wasps and complaining when he gets stung’, Cameron has his sat-nav set to Number 10 (‘whichever way the wind blows – follow it; when the lights turn green – copy them) and the ring-wing press ‘are a xenophobic version of that Coca Cola advert with the trucks are coming over the hill’

As his show picks up pace Brigstocke shows his Chris Morris-like skill to disturb even the most liberal minded members of the audience. Determined to be the king of the liberal jungle, he delights in teasing and torturing the audience with his controversial responses to fears over immigration and terrorism. His unashamed honesty never fails to shock and intrigue - Ron Atkinson, we’re told, isn’t actually that bad a bloke, he just has ‘twatty mates’ and ‘makes racist comments in the way that generation quite often does, as it doesn't occur to them that those terms of abuse are not OK’.

Ten years on since he first shocked the comedy circuit, Brigstocke is still angry. And it’s this anger, whether he’s mocking the hypocrisies of the bourgeoisie or the idiocies of pop culture, which breeds the humour. However, his fury never disrupts the structure of his show; even when it comes to Jeremy Clarkson and ‘nob in a box’ David Blaine, his anger bubbles violently but does not overflow from the mold.

If a good comedian is one who the audience won’t allow to leave, and a bad comedian is one who the audience won’t allow to stay, then Marcus is something truly special. Marcus’s audience is not just determined to make him stay; they want much more than that. They’re demanding that he sing them a song, tell them some more stories about his summer with Ron Atkinson and even promise to stand for Parliament.

Marcus smiles – he’s heard the Parliament line before, and it’s hardly surprising; Marcus is witty, honest and courageous – virtues which are rarely found in Parliament. And like politicians, comedians are always at the mercy of their audience; something which certainly wouldn’t faze Marcus. The idea is quickly seconded by a woman shouting that he’d make a great Prime Minister. But Marcus just grins, turns around and leaves with the crowd begging for more – something which Tony Blair would certainly love to be able to do.

2006-10-17T17:59:00.000+01:00

Comment: In a contest to be ‘toughest’ on criminals, it will be young offenders who will lose the most

Two weeks ago John Reid admitted that prisons in the UK are full, and New Labour’s home office record was once again at the mercy of the right wing press. But their home office record is not the carousel of blunders that some suggest. Indeed New Labour have managed to cut the rate of serious crimes. But while this is often applauded, very few commentators have questioned why there has been a dramatic rise in the prison population. One of the particularly harrowing statistics is the sharp rise in young offenders (aged 18-20) receiving prison sentences.

Research by the Howard League for Penal Form exposes New Labour’s approach to young offenders as far from what one would expect from a socially-democratic government. Although 50% of young offenders have previously been expelled or suspended from school and 75% are unemployed, any form of education or training plays a pitifully small role in their punishment. Rather than enabling young offenders to integrate into society, their experience in a young offenders’ institution does little more than frustrate and confuse them. It seems Tony Blair’s shallow promise of ‘education, education, education’ was never open to those who need it most. And for every offender incarcerated it costs as much as £34,000 a year (double the fees for the most prestigious public schools in Britain). It’s truly shocking than a government as obsessed with market targets as New Labour has not evaluated this system for value for money - £34,000 a year, and only a one in four chance of success; I don’t think Alan Sugar would be reaching for his chequebook.

Here’s to hoping that the admission that prisons are full will not lead to the usual macho charade where the parties compete to be seen as ‘tougher’ on crime. Young offenders deserve rehabilitative training, and it will remove the burden of a new generation of prison regulars for future governments. The prison situation is not the disaster it is made out to be; each day fifty people begin their prison sentences and fifty more people leave prison – the government should concentrate on making sure that tomorrow’s arrivals are not the same fifty people.

2006-10-17T10:00:00.000+01:00

Review: Ladette to Lady (ITV, Thursday 9PM).

There’s something discomforting about the term ‘reeducation’. To my mind it conjures up images of subversive religious cults and Orwellian mind control; even Microsoft Word’s timid thesaurus levels the term with ‘brainwashing’. But with Ladette to Lady, a programme in which binge-drinking ladettes are ‘reeducated’ into morally-upright ladies, ITV have given the term far more horrifying connotations.

The idea for the programme is something you’d expect from a drunken Daily Telegraph reader. Begin with a montage of the ladettes fighting and training, send the girls to Finishing School and force them into a series of ‘character building’ exercises (watch out for one disgusting scene in which the girls are forced to pluck and disembowel birds) and then the ladies-in-training will attend an aristocratic dinner party, we’ll give them a few drinks and maybe they’ll make that jolly old faux-pas when one, you know, mentions one’s clitoral piercing at the dinner table.

Not content with this recipe of snobbish humour and self-righteousness, ITV add a sprinkling of the more sinister. In one of the more ghastly scenes, the ladies-in-training are told of their role at the dinner party. They must be ‘tantalising’ but not ‘tacky’; they must be ‘sport’ for the ‘hunters’.

And that’s the most disturbing thing about the programme. Strip away the humour and the women are merely being manipulated from prey for leering hair-gelled apes into prey for tweed-clad bourgeois hypocrites. They’re being groomed the way the boys sitting smugly at the top of our class system (well, the scum always floats to the top, doesn’t it boys?) would like them.

Like with Wife Swap, the most entertaining feature is the seismic culture clash between the ladettes and the aristocrats. I’d use the term ‘clash of civilisations’, but it’s absurd to describe either side as anything like ‘civilised’. You see I find the idea of ‘lay back and think of England’ equally offensive as the excesses of ladette culture, so for me this programme feels like that playground game where you imagine up two distressing situations and make your friend pick one. And what a dilemma it is - it’s either pole dancing and drinking your bodyweight in WKD, or it’s foot binding and chastity belts – you HAVE to choose one.

So is this merely harmless entertainment? No, it’s quite the opposite. It’s a stark reminder of the need to place ethical shackles on reality television. It’s a sadistic display of the infallibility of reality television. If such brainwashing and degrading treatment was being practiced in a Middle Eastern state then everyone would be quick to label it an appalling abuse of ‘human rights’, but since it’s all in the name of reality television, it’s just good primetime entertainment.

2006-09-27T16:05:00.000+01:00

Comment: Stones and glass houses

With Blair, Reid et al calling people ‘liars’ and criticising young Muslims for not embracing democracy is a sickening example of New Labour’s double standards

Given the media’s fascination with the Labour Party Conference you could be forgiven for forgetting that there is a world outside of the Manchester International Conference Centre. It’s all been a bit too nauseating and claustrophobic for my liking. And with the perverse obsession with petty feuds and a reluctance to mention the ‘outside world’ it’s felt more like an analysis of Big Brother than any serious political discussion.

The apparent highlight of this desperate media spectacle has been Cherie Blair branding Gordon Brown a liar. Whether she said or not, it’s always frustrating when a New Labour politician is accused of being a liar. It seems that when it comes to New Labour and lying, any sense of proportionality is catapulted out of the window. Okay, so Gordon may have told a few white lies in his speech, but they won’t cost the lives of civilians. And Prescott may not have been honest about his affair with Tracey Templeman but why should he be forced to resign when a Prime Minister who lied about going to war isn’t? Plenty of friends of mine have lied about how many women they’ve slept with, but I’m not sure I’d want to be friends with them if they lied about the legality of a war.

Indeed five years on the ‘War on Terror’ remains saturated with dishonesty (no doubt the powers that be have coined a euphemism for it). George Bush still calls the invasion of Iraq ‘liberation’ even as a cyclone of contrary evidence rages around him. With shocking reports confirming fears that torture in Iraq is more prominent after the removal of Saddam Hussein, Blair/Bush supporters continue to spread the myth that Iraq is now a safer place. This week, with a US intelligence report exposing the blundered invasion if Iraq as a catalyst for Anti-Western ideas and a ‘cause celebre’ for Jihadists, Bush continues to insist that it’s our ‘values’ that Jihadist’s are against.

This dishonest approach to the ‘War on Terror’ is not exclusive to the Bush Administration. In the weeks after the July 7th attacks Blair denied any link between the attacks and the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, again offering these apparent ‘values’ of ours as an explanation. Indeed even after the martyrdom videos showed the attackers saying the attacks were in retaliation to the suffering inflicted on their ‘brothers and sisters’ in Iraq, Blair ignored their words and continued to deny any correlation.

New Labour’s hypocrisy overflowed once more as John Reid criticised young Muslims for not engaging in ‘democracy’, while the Government continue to evade the basic rules of democracy. Opposition to the war in Iraq showed itself in one of the biggest protests in living memory yet Blair chose to ignore it. The Government are quick to respond to whispered words about their own careers or tabloid anger at ‘soft sentences’, but will not acknowledge any criticism than their security policies are criminalising minorities. With their voices ignored by New Labour, young Muslims are alienated and some resort to more dramatic ways to be heard. After all, this is a Government who are more comfortable talking about Muslims than they are talking to Muslims.

But it’s not just those who follow Islam who New Labour refuse to listen to. For no matter how loud we all scream at the television New Labour refuse to acknowledge our demands. It is impossible to puncture their narcissistic media bubble. We’re no more spectators of this orgy of egos. Yes it’s just like Big Brother. Oh, except we can’t vote them out. Well not just yet anyway.

2006-09-14T08:58:00.000+01:00

Comment: David has realised that Maggie is unpopular – so why can’t Tony?

One has to admire David Cameron’s brave step this week as he criticised Britain’s ‘slavish’ alliance with the US on foreign policy. While there’s nothing particularly daring about Cameron standing up to the Bush administration - it’s unlikely Bush will seriously acknowledge the words of the opposition leader, let alone retaliate – this speech offered more evidence that Cameron is not afraid of leaving his party’s Thatcherite past behind. This is not the first time Cameron has dared to throw off the baggage of Thatcherism. In the past few months he has condemned Thatcher’s approach to the African National Congress and flippantly toyed with the ‘No such thing as society…’ mantra – a chant of the Thatcher orthodoxy (and we’ve seen how angry Tories get about someone changing their logo, so one can only imagine for the members reacted when their catchphrase was changed).

But if David Cameron is prepared to forget Thatcher, then why isn’t Tony Blair? Left wing thinkers have complained throughout New Labour’s reign that Blair’s project is plagued with Thatcherite sympathies, but ten years on, when even the Tories have realised Maggie is unpopular, why do such sympathies remain? Why is it that when Cameron is beginning to apologise for the mistakes of Thatcherism, Blair’s team are probing the NHS in order to find something else to privatise and taunting the weakened unions?

Blair’s speech on social exclusion was equally worrying. As Alan Johnson acknowledged, a desire to combat poverty is the ideological ‘glue’ which holds the Labour Party together, but nothing in Blair’s speech suggested this. Indeed it is one of the frustrating paradoxes of New Labour that a leader chosen for his personality and passionate speeches, speaks so soullessly about combating poverty. Rather than speak honestly and sincerely about the subject, Blair opts for an apologetic canon of euphemisms. Again, when speaking about immigration, New Labour prefer to use Thatcherite buzz words about the free-market economy, rather than risk defending multiculturalism.

It seems Blair coordinates his speeches in order to placate a tyranny of Thatcherites. A Labour government pandering a Thatcherite populous is an embarrassing situation, but what is worse is that such a populous is entirely a creation of Blair’s imagination. There is abundant evidence that the public are far from the stern neo-cons that Tony fears they are.

Just look at the success of projects such as http://www.wearewhatwedo.org/. Their latest book ‘Change the World 9 to 5’ (well on the way to emulating its chart topping predecessor) suggests a very different zeitgeist. With its green living tips and shortcuts to happiness, wearewhatwedo.org suggest a new age; an age of optimism; one with a profound faith in the power of small actions to change the world, and with a philosophy which puts the environment and general well being above profit. And while Tony can be forgiven for not having the time to follow the best-seller lists, he surely cannot have missed the massive demonstrations following the Make Poverty History crusade – a project which showed the awesome public thirst to end global poverty. And how about the public’s applause following Tesco’s decision to embrace environmentally friendly policies?

The answer seems simple. With Labour’s agenda immortalising Thatcherism, and the Tories offering a more optimistic direction of government – why not vote for Cameron and his party? But this is more than an issue of party colours. An ethically thinking Conservative Party is not enough; problems such as poverty and the environment are problems which would be best handled by the passion and commitment of the Labour Party. The Labour Party is built on a genuine desire to eradicate poverty, will not be weighed down by xenophobic tight-fists such as the No Turning Back group and has a valuable alliance with progressive thinktanks and the trade union movement.

Above all, Labour is a thinking party. New Labour may have made its mistakes, but hopefully the upcoming leadership debate will give us party members a chance to steer the party back onto an ethical social democratic course. And don’t forget, as I said above – this is an age of optimism. So don’t go voting Tory just yet.

2006-09-09T10:28:00.000+01:00

Comment: Better late than never

If Brown succeeds Blair, his left wing credentials will be put to the test immediately - perhaps he can pass the test.

The public has always trusted Gordon Brown. Mention the stern-spoken Chancellor and one conjures up images of economic strength and competence. As public opinion of New Labour has been devastated by the war in Iraq and a summer of ‘sleaze’ allegations, Brown’s reputation has survived with hardly a scratch. If New Labour has become the political plane crash that some say it has, then Brown is the black box. It is unlikely therefore that Brown will slip from being the favourite to lead the Labour Party.

Brown must still be cautious however. He is far from invincible. The public may trust him, but the same cannot be said for the New Labour project. Fortunately, the public do trust Brown enough to give Labour a second chance – and he must use this to change Labour’s direction.

So what can Brown do to restore confidence in Labour and make Britain a more equal and democratic society?

There was speculation as to whether Brown would attempt to finish the process of House of Lords reform. Revitalisation of UK democracy is urgently needed but this will be a tricky project for Brown to embark on. Democratic reform of the House of Lords was a key Labour pledge in 1997 – how can Brown excuse their failure to do so after almost ten years in power? But this something Brown should not shy away from, and could even prove a chance for him to show his political strength. Brown must accept the failures of New Labour, and show confidence in Labour’s chance to achieve their goals. He must distance himself from the days of Blair’s leadership, while simultaneously offering his vision of a more democratic Britain.

When it comes to Iraq, Gordon Brown may be lucky; it is estimated that by next summer (when Brown may be Prime Minister) the Southern region of Iraq will be heading towards stability and it may be possible for the UK to withdraw all troops. But the real question will be whether he can use the ‘lucky’ situation to demonstrate his ethical left wing credentials. Will Brown withdraw the troops and distance himself from Bush’s neo-con dogma? Once again Brown will be faced with another of New Labour’s broken promises – the 1997 promise of an ethical foreign policy.

The left will primarily judge Brown on his attitudes towards social justice and tackling poverty. Brown has always been passionate about social justice since his early days in politics. He may be able to remedy one of the biggest paradoxes of New Labour: why has Tony Blair, a man elected for his personality and passionate speeches, spoken so soullessly about poverty? Brown must prioritise tackling poverty. After ten years of Labour the UK is in the top ten countries for GDP but also in the top ten for levels of child poverty. Brown must confront the reasons why New Labour has failed on child poverty and reenergise Labour’s efforts to defeat it. He must speak passionately and honestly about it – the issue is too urgent for euphemisms (‘social exclusion’) and spinspeak.

If Brown wins he will inherit a tough job. Confidence in New Labour is plummeting while the need for social justice action is growing.

There are already optimistic signs about Brown’s leadership. He already has at least one adviser considering environmental policy and has backed Harriet Harman in her call for more equality for women in the work place. The big tests, however, are still to come.

2006-09-03T16:16:00.000+01:00

Comment: Jaw jaw and not war war

Very few people were convinced when David Cameron declared an end to the age of ‘Punch and Judy politics’. David may have stopped throwing the punches, but this is far from a commitment to a new age of consensus politics. Anyway, not throwing punches was in the interests of the Conservative Party; it has freed their hands to deal with important issues such as the environment and has helped end their image of being the ‘nasty party’. And anyway, there have been no shortage of pressure groups, newspapers and interviewers to pound the punches on Labour. But this week things got even better for David; as Labour started throwing the punches at each other.

Labour’s Summer has been dominated by the supposed feud between Blair and Brown, currently being fought out in public behind the shields of Ed Balls and the sycophantic Stephen Byers. Commentators say the skirmish is between the camp who demand ‘a stable and orderly transition’ and those who demand a ‘debate over the values of New Labour’. But as John McDonnell has noted, to everyone else Labour has looked less like a governing party, and more like an episode of the Sopranos.

It is a grave mistake to let this petty infighting and obsessive inward looking politics dominate the party. The Labour Party now no longer gives off the impression of a progressive and ethical social democratic party, more of a power obsessed narcissistic elite. Labour has won three elections by proving to be an outward looking party – by understanding and exploring the problems which face every class and culture in Britain and providing social democratic solutions.

At the annual conference, Blair must take responsibility and set a clear agenda for the leadership of the party. Until the party can set a clear agenda, there will be no time to discuss policy. The leadership issues must be confined to a timetable if they are to be prevented from polluting and undermiming any serious political discussion. With Labour trapped by infighting, Cameron’s Conservatives are free to gain ground on important social democratic issues. Labour have been embarrassingly silent over the environment this summer, but even if they had spoken, it would have been relegated to the middle pages by the latest odds and speculations on the leadership contest.

Labour are deadlocked while the issue remains unsolved. When Hilary Armstrong appeared on Sunday Am this morning in an attempt to discuss the party’s latest attempts to defeat poverty of aspiration and extend opportunity were soon drowned out by Andrew Marr fishing for soundbites on the latest in the leadership feud. Blair must set the agenda for the transition if the party is to stand a chance of winning the next election.

The issue is less complex than the mooting between Balls and Byers would suggest. It’s a question of where Labour’s priorities lie; are we concerned with power squabbles and hierarchy, or are we a thinking party with an ethical and progressive agenda for Britain. Fortunately, it’s a simple question which shouldn’t trouble any serious Labour politician; unfortunately, the question has been put to Tony Blair. But as ever McDonnell’s optimism is contagious – so let’s hope for a surprise.

2006-09-02T07:38:00.000+01:00

Comment: Bang... and the dirt is gone...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5302598.stm

2006-08-17T18:43:00.000+01:00

Comment: Fools' gold

August brings with it one of the most predictable and scripted debates in politics. Each year after the A level results are released, Chris Woodhead issues a dull soundbite about A levels becoming easier and no longer representing the ‘golden standard’ that they did in the past. Inevitably a few self-assured debate-hungry students retaliate with a letter to the papers about how great they are (it seems modesty can be added to spelling, numeracy and all the other things A levels apparently fail to teach) and how Woodhead is unfair in his condemnation. After this barrage of angry letters the students go off to enjoy their summer and Woodhead totters back to the join the ‘in my day’ crowd.

The argument has never got anywhere or solved anything, but this year it just may. Perhaps Woodhead was obliviously following fashion when he used the phrase ‘not fit for purpose’ (oh come on we’ve all used it), but he has carelessly opened himself up to attack. So let’s hope someone hits Woodhead with the follow up question - just what is the purpose of A levels?

Now when one asks this question it seems that whichever possible purpose is offered, the current system of pre-university education fails to fulfill it. The orthodox theory is that A levels generate enthusiasm for a particular subject and encourage pupils to pursue an education or career in it. But with their obsession with assessment objectives and mark schemes the current A levels fail miserably to do this and are more likely to cripple any enthusiasm for a subject. I’m still scarred from my A level days to the extent when whenever I read political comments and editorials in a newspaper I find myself scanning them for obsessive objectives. It’s horrible.

Others are more optimistic that A levels have a broad educational focus. However in reality most pupils narrow their focus, concentrating on their career path or university subject. Colleges may be admirable in their attempts to combat this, but it seems that this can not be achieved. My college attempted to avoid this by making it compulsory to take the broad General Studies A level, which we prepared for within our tutor groups. However the error was that since our tutor groups were organised by which subjects we studied, they didn’t provide the random sample of students which would be needed. I found myself doing general studies which a group of fellow literature students. Rather than ‘enhancing’ our cultural learning, we just shrugged our way through art and Freud’s theories, and took any mention of the word ‘literature’ as an invitation to reignite old literary skirmishes or chat about our coursework.

When Woodhead and the traditionalists talk about ‘purpose’, they show their desire for a system which highlights creativity, intellect and flair for a subject, thus making the selection easy for universities. But by their very nature exams are painfully narrow assessments; surely expecting A levels to fill such a purpose is unreasonable. And just because A levels fail to acknowledge such talents, then why should this mean that universities should give up searching for them?

Furthermore perhaps the demand for an ‘easy’ way to find the right pupils for the course is the cause of the problem. A level exams have their purposes, but this is not one of them. University academias have an unrivaled understanding of their subject, and would surely be able to recognise the intellectual credentials and academic skills required to study the subject. Yet still too few universities choose to engage with applicants; rather than invite applicants to interviews or organising practical assessments with applicants, the universities rely on the clumsy free market in which A level marks form a currency to barter for university places.

The traditionalists are wrong to criticise A level pupils and their achievements, but perhaps they do have a point when it comes to the system as a whole. Let’s hope Woodhead sticks around for a serious debate about the future of higher education rather than rushing straight back to the ‘in my day’ crowd, after all I’m sure one of them won’t mind keeping his seat warm.

2006-08-12T11:37:00.000+01:00

Comment: Inbreds and Indigos

Lately I’ve been thinking about having a section of Double Negative for my favourite left wing politician of the week. Past honours would have gone to Jim McDonnell, after his call to arms to the left amongst the Labour ranks, George Galloway for his bold assault on US foreign policy and Sky News and to Tommy Sheridan, for his unashamed indulgence in old socialist diction (including addressing the jury as ‘brothers and sisters’). A strong contender for this week’s award would have to be Norwich North MP, Dr. Ian Gibson.

An MP who knows his constituents well is a good MP. And by accusing his Norfolk constituents of inbreeding (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4781693.stm), Gibson has shown that he really does know his constituents well. Now I’m from Norfolk myself but I still maintain that in making this statement Gibson has shown many more of the virtues of a great MP: he is committed to tell the truth, no matter how ugly it may be, he is courageous and is bold in the face of a spin obsessed media.

As well as this Gibson has made me feel better about a few things. These last few weeks I’ve been rather down after a break up with a girlfriend who was born in the same Norfolk town as I was, but Gibson has convinced me to look on the bright side. I mean our relationship was a dangerous timebomb anyway; how long before we realised we were cousins or bred a litter of diabetic monsters?

Daily Mail watch

Today the Daily Mail made it clear that they share the disgust of the viewers of Eastenders who complained after viewing a steamy sex scene between Jake and Carly. I saw this scene myself when it was first broadcast and I admit that there was something bizarre about it. It seemed that the desperate soap opera had employed director Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem For A Dream) in an attempt to boost ratings. The scene was cut together with his trademark spasmodic angles, flickering flashbacks and strobe paced cuts.

Forget complaining about the raunchiness; complain about the lack of health warnings. The pace of the scene must have sent hundreds into epileptic seizures.

However I must say that the scene was nowhere near as impressive as Aronofsky’s films, rather than creating a chaotic intense feel, it just left me feeling like I had ADHD.

And after watching My Child’s Psychic on Channel 4 I’m bloody thankful I don’t have ADHD. The shockumentary followed a series of middle class parents who believed that doctors had falsely diagnosed their children with ADHD; instead the children’s inability to concentrate came through their status as a transition mast for messages from beyond the grave. The parents were convinced that their children were indigo children (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_children)

The programme opened with a child’s deadpan voiceover announcing ‘sometimes I know things are going to happen… before they happen’. That doesn’t really make you psychic; I knew this programme was going to be pretentious shambles before I watched it, but for some reason I still watched it.

Yes, Tommy Sheridan was right; working class people can differentiate the truth from the muck, but unfortunately the same can’t be said about the middle classes.

It’s an easy way out for the parents; an excuse for every toddler tantrum, failed spelling test and wet fart their child has ever had, and it gives them a reason to promote their child as ‘special’. Oh, and it gets them on the television.

So next time I see a child fidgeting and leaping around on a bus, two theories will come to mind. The child is either an indigo psychic medium, or their parents are related.

I think I’ll go with Dr. Gibson’s explanation.

2006-08-08T15:37:00.000+01:00

Comment: More Blackpool than Barcelona

As a good spin artist knows, by manipulating a question you can influence the answer. Styling the question carefully allows one to limit the possible responses and achieve one’s desired result. John Reid’s call for a public debate on immigration is an example of this. Any study will reveal that immigration is a mere factor of something much bigger; immigration can only be fairly debated when considered in the wider context of migration. Once the parallel tide of emigration is brought into the equation then not only can the economic ramifications of immigration be understood, but our country’s paranoid scepticism towards immigrants is also explained. However, by calling for an ‘immigration debate’ rather than a ‘migration debate’, John Reid has given a head start to the xenophobes and bigots and endangered the reasoned discussion which is seriously needed.

Compared to the right wing press’s obsession with immigration, very little interest is taken in the issue of emigration. Yet emigration is a serious cause for concern. Given the press hysteria it’s almost impossible to believe that there are currently more British citizens living abroad than there are foreign nationals living in the UK. What’s more the waves of migrants from Britain tend to clump together. A recent publication from the Institute of Public Policy Research drew attention to regions of Spain popular with migrants from Britain, exposing such regions to be ‘more Blackpool than Barcelona’. British immigrants had made pitifully little effort to integrate with their host communities and very few had given a thought to sampling Spanish language or culture. Ironically, the more these regions resemble Britain, the more they attract Britons who claim to be frustrated by their homeland.

So perhaps our pessimism towards migrants integrating in our culture is a result of our own failure to integrate into the culture of others. But just because Britons make terrible migrants, why should we make terrible hosts? Or maybe us Britons are just confident that our culture is superior to that of others. But if we’re so proud of our culture than why are we not willing to share it with others, rather than acting like selfish children in a sandpit? The double standards are evident again when one asks why we continue to demand that migrants embrace British culture yet we refuse to compromise our own culture and attitudes when we ourselves migrate.

With surveys revealing that 51% of the population have considered emigrating this could be worrying, and not just for the poor Spaniards. Emigration could have serious economic consequences for Britain, particularly since emigration tends to become more attractive for Britons in their retirement age. With Britain having an aging population, this Middle England exodus could result in state pension money being spent abroad and leaving a gaping hole in the economy. So perhaps we should more grateful therefore towards immigrant workers who contribute towards filling this hole, and then some.

Unlike the malevolent caricatures created by the right wing press, immigrants in Britain are very keen to work. Statistics show that 8 out of 10 immigrants have a regular job, contributing a considerable amount to the public purse, while only 1 in 10 claim income related benefits. A second study by the Institute of Public Policy Research showed that if half a million illegal immigrants were allowed to work legally in the UK, then this would allow the Treasury to increase the Child Tax Credit by £150. Furthermore, while it would take 4.7 billion pounds to deport illegals, if we allowed them to work they would generate 1 billion pounds for the economy.

Yes, it’s time for a reasoned discussion on migration, but before it can take place politicians must concentrate less on scaremongering and more on dispelling a few of the anti-immigration myths. But if John Reid et al aren’t up for doing this quite yet, then it’s our duty to have a go. Challenging the knee-jerk xenophobia installed by the right wing press will not be easy, but it is a challenge we must not stray away from. I know it can be hard to interrupt a rant about ‘bloody Pakis’ with figures and statistics, and simple-minded thugs do get a tad confused when if one starts using polysyllabic words, so if, like me, you’re feeling a bit lazy, then Bill Clinton has equipped us with a quick, scathing and apt response - ‘it’s the economy stupid’.

2006-08-05T18:44:00.000+01:00

Comment: What are they thinking?

Yesterday I received an e-mail from the Political Editor at the local BBC. Since the BBC will be covering the Conservative Party annual conference in October, he asked if I would be interested in attending the conference and presenting a feature on it for the Politics Show. Very excited by this, I replied that I would be very interested but he curbed my enthusiasm by adding whether I could attend or not would depend on ‘security arrangements’.
“Don’t be silly”, I laughed, “They’re all so kind and huggy now – I won’t need any security”,
“No, not for you” He answered, “We’ll have to see if security will permit you to enter”.
He then explained that back in the eighties the Conservative Party conference had been a target for bombings. Well I always thought that everyone wanted to blow up Margaret Thatcher in the eighties? I thought that was just part of living in the eighties?

Anyway, it would be great to go to the conference. Maybe I’ll find out where the Conservatives stand ideologically and what they think on current issues.

After all, they were rather clear what they thought last year, and equally certain that we were thinking the same thing. Hence the key pledges in the 2005 election campaign and their smug arrogance as they asked ‘Are you thinking what we’re thinking?’

Well it seems that we weren’t thinking what they were thinking. And the 2005 election became their third consecutive defeat and a titanic blow to the Thatcherite agenda.

But tactical Cameron has a new approach. If we’re not thinking what he’s thinking, he asks, then what on earth are we thinking? And more importantly, how can he find out?

By asking us it seems, or by inviting the population of London to text in and vote in an X-Factor style search to find a Conservative candidate to challenge Ken Livingstone in the London Mayoral election. This is not only a rather good way to measure public opinion and to promote a link between ordinary people and the Conservative Party, but as Channel 4 know, a text voting system is a pretty good fundraiser (avoiding another loans fiasco).

While this may well be little more than a PR stunt, its timing is impeccable. Look at the contrast that it has created between party leaders. While Cameron is happily inviting the population of London to text their input, Blair is stubbornly ignoring public opinion on the Lebanon crisis. Despite petitions signed by more than 100 Labour backbenchers and 35,000 of the British public
(http://www.ceasefiretoday.org) and a huge protestor presence in Westminster, Tony Blair still refuses to commit himself to an immediate ceasefire.

It has taken the Tories almost a decade to acknowledge the benefits of listening rather than preaching. Let’s hope that with the lives of millions at stake, Tony Blair may realise this a little quicker.

2006-08-02T18:03:00.000+01:00

Comment: Talking about talking tough

So Dr. John Reid is in the headlines again. Many friends of mine on the left are not too keen on Dr. John, and brand him as too condemning and tabloid pleasing. Now his latest crusade (calling for police to confiscate and destroy mini-motorbikes) may well be rather illiberal, but as for the second criticism, I’m not so sure.

See Reid may well have been quick to dance to The Sun’s anti-paedophile rap (Although perhaps this is because Tony is desperate to stop Rupert being lured to one of Dave’s Notting Hill cocktail parties), but this latest outburst seems to be a little different. For correct me if I’m wrong (I haven’t been at work for a few days; which is where I tend to read The Sun), but I don’t think there’s been much tabloid demand for tough action on these mini motorbikes. Instead Reid appears to be trying to alter the relationship between the typical populist home secretary and the tyrannous tabloid. Rather than wait for the tabloid hysteria over cyber bullying or happy slapping before making a statement, Reid has decided to draw attention to the ‘problem’ first, and then wait for the reactionary rags to follow. With the desired result being that the tabloids appear to be in favour of Labour, rather than the other way around.

Come to think of it, there’s something about John Reid’s manner which remains me of tough talking chatshow bruiser Jeremy Kyle. I first watched The Jeremy Kyle Show last year after it was recommended to me by several forty-something Sun-reading female till assistants at work. There really wasn’t a lunch break which went by without them telling me how entertaining his show was, and how ‘gorgeous’ he was. Since then I’ve become addicted; every day I tune in to watch Jeremy alternately torture and comfort his guests. In today’s episode Jeremy was particularly scathing about people who choose to ‘sit around watching television all day rather than going to work’. I’m sorry Jeremy, but when daytime television is as entertaining as your show, then that's how it’s going to be.

Anyway, let's get back to the topic. Jeremy is often (about three times a week) confronted with the problem of teenage delinquents. But rather than destroying their bikes or stapling their eyelids, Jeremy shows his trademark brand of ‘tough love’. First, Jeremy forces them to face the reality of what they’ve done (normally involves lots of pointing at their Mother and shouting ‘Look what you’ve put this poor woman through!’), and he then makes them promise to stay out of trouble for the next month. If they can achieve this then he makes his own promise; to get them a training day at a Premiership football club. And he seems to get results.

This is the sort of approach Labour should be taking to anti social behaviour. If young people continue to see the state as a bike stealing enemy then they shall show the same lack of respect towards the state at their communities. John Reid needs to take the Jeremy Kyle approach. He needs to help and inspire young people; showing them the error of their ways and rewarding good behaviour.

It really shouldn’t be like this. A Labour Home Secretary should not have to learn about positive solutions to problems from a talk show host. Labour should be teaching this understanding compassionate approach to anti social behaviour; not learning the lesson from Jeremy Kyle.

Perhaps John Reid doesn’t want to risk his rugged hard talking image, but John let me assure you there’s nothing intrinsically feminine about showing a bit of compassion and understanding. In fact the women at work were always on about how attractive Jeremy was. And that’s just not some modern metrosexual phenomenon, these were working class women in their forties (they still used the word ‘coloured’ for pity’s sake!).

So let's finish by finding out if John Reid’s learnt his lesson by making a deal with him. John, if I stay out of trouble for the rest of the month, you shall get me a day’s work experience with your friends at The Sun, okay?

2006-08-01T16:11:00.000+01:00

Oh how I’m enjoying this lazy summer. After a year of intellectual struggles with the implications of Human Rights Act, the current system of Land Registration and the merits of a codified constitution, I can now debate less challenging questions. Like whether to buy a television license for my new student house or not.

Let’s have a look at some of the more compelling arguments:

Well for a start, if there’s no television in our house, there’s less chance I’ll have to suffer or hear about the revolting charade which is Love Island. Always a fan of the underdog, I decided to watch this evening’s episode (‘episode’ referring to the hourly slot, not merely Sophie’s little tantrum). It’s strange that the producers have dropped the word ‘Celebrity’ from the title, admitting that these people fall far from such a standard, yet they still refuse to admit that the sordid interaction between the contestants hardly qualifies as ‘Love’. Still they weren’t lying about the island part, so unfortunately it’s not a case for trading standards as yet.

But despite the decision to drop ‘celebrity’ from the title, the fact remains: it is quite possible to inherit the title of ‘celebrity’. Now remember when New Labour started the debate over the future of the House of Lords, it became fashionable to point out that having hereditary peers was a ludicrous. After all, imagine if this approach was taken in other job lines. Where would we be? Hereditary pilots? Hereditary doctors? A hereditary mathematics teacher? But yet we seem to have comfortably swallowed the idea of a hereditary celebrity. Could this be because celebrities are arrogant, over paid sleazy scoundrels who look strangely like normal people? But then again, doesn’t that apply to most of the House of Lords too? After all most of them have grown up in a world so far from ours, they may as well have grown up on a tropical island.

But let’s not be too harsh on Love Island. It’s not the only offender. In fact it’s not just reality programmes which have been drenched by this putrid tide of titillation. Another horror is Sugar Rush, which remains so far from ‘reality’ that its main character may as well be a walking talking stem cell. For those unfamiliar with this atrocity, think how Tipping the Velvet would have turned out if it had been scripted by Jacqueline Wilson, and then translated into textspeak.

Yes, in an age when Doctor Who writer Russell T Davies can turn a snarling space alien into an emotionally complex character, the writers behind Sugar Rush can’t even string together a lesbian character with more personality than the cover of Nuts magazine. And for a programme which appears to delight lavishly in being oh-so-risqué, Sugar Rush seems afraid to take the risk of incorporating a storyline which doesn’t involve sex. It’s like they’re scared that we’ll forget that the protagonist is a lesbian, so each storyline is lined with lashings of group sex parties, sex shops and buttplugs

Remember the TV version of Wilson’s flirty tweenage saga Girls in Love? Well Sugar Rush not only borrows the series’ lead actress Olivia Hallinan, but it seems Wilson threw in that bile prompting cringe worthy giggling teenage approach for free. And oddly, Sugar Rush seems to fit better with the title ‘Girls in Love’. But then again, nowadays love is something which happens in between advert breaks on an island, not in Brighton.

Daily Mail watch

An overview of yesterday’s edition – my Mother is still tutting and sighing her way through today’s edition. She could tut for (Middle) England

The paper is full of objections to the idea of state schools moving their curriculum focus away from the ‘British heritage’. The letters page is littered with numerous complaints over the fact that today’s children will grow up not understanding ‘British traditions’. But I thought that was the point of traditions, they’re those absurd little things we do (or don’t do), because, you know, we always have done. Like not queuing in a pub (choosing instead to form a chaotic rabble and begin the traditional macho eye contact contest).

Oh and the Mail undeservedly dedicates a double page spread to a woman who has dreamt that she is a descendant of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalen.

So it seems Karl Marx was wrong when he declared religion to be the opium of the people. Sadly Church attendances appear to be falling worldwide, yet despite possessing the literary value of a crisp packet, The Da Vinci code has sold 40 million copies already. It seems that it’s not religion which the masses crave, but religious conspiracies. And don’t the Mail just know it.

I need a holiday. What a shame I’m not the son of a celebrity.