. . . . . . . . BarJoker

We Just Borrow Them

2011-11-20T13:02:00.001Z

My baby is leaving home.

Not for another ten years - he's only eight - but today it began, the leaving.

On Saturdays I wake up early (nine, but it feels early because everyone except Small is still in bed) and creep downstairs to make breakfast for Small and me: our Saturday Toast Together. During the week everyone breakfasts separately, shoveling cereal in between getting dressed and hunting down PE kits, but Saturday breakfasts are sacred, a weekly ritual my youngest son and I have shared for years. Even if his dad gets up before I do, Small defers his breakfast until I come down to share it with him. I make us a big pile of jammy, buttery toast, and we snuggle up on the sofa and watch Spongebob while we scoff it.

Except this morning we didn't. I'd thought it would be something else that would go first - the cuddle in bed in the morning, perhaps, the hug at the school gates, the spontaneous kisses. I hadn't expected it to be this innocuous rite. And I knew it would hurt - I've been through it once already, with Tall - but I had forgotten how brutal it feels, how lonely, this casual but so necessary sloughing.

'Toast please, Mummy. But not Together, okay?' He sees my face. 'It doesn't really matter, does it? It's not important.' There seems to be something in my throat. I can't make a reply, and I bend my head to the toaster.

Unreasonably, I am angry, and I slam the plate of toast on to the table, leaving him on his own with Spongebob.

I spend all day feeling aggrieved and resentful, and do not respond when he tries to hug me.

Later, eating pizza all together on the sofa, he takes my arm and drapes it around his shoulders. 'Oh, I love being home,' he says. 'I love telly. I love the sofa. I love my family.' I kiss the top of his head, and his hair smells of cherries and autumn leaves.

Love Is The Drug

2011-11-06T18:53:00.005Z

He REALLY loves me.

Bringing a Kebab Home For: The Love of a Good Man

I believe in God. Wait, that's wrong - I believe in Love.

Sorry. Easy mistake to make, for me, anyway, because until quite recently I didn't believe in either. In fact, I was pretty convinced that both were equally pernicious man-made constructs, conceived and refined as a means of subduing and pacifying specific groups of the population - the poor and the desperate, in the first case; and women, in the second. Religion, as everyone knows, is the hard stuff, the crack cocaine for when earthly life is simply intolerable; Love is the prescription trank that gets you through another day, the mother's little helper.

You can't blame me, in the delirious rationality that followed a childhood yoked to religion, for rejecting what was plainly more of the same: happy-ever-afters, richness in poverty, selflessness and sacrifice. I had no doubt that the myth of romantic love existed only to sustain women through the drudgery of domestic lives: our happy-ever-afters were children, housework and the endless picking up of people's socks, and we were meant to accept it, for the sake of Love.

Don't get me wrong: I 'loved' my husband. (I still do, my darling.) But what I recognised as love I experienced as a complex, ever-changing mix of emotions and shared experiences: admiration, respect, familiarity, warmth, companionship, desire, joy, trauma, parenthood, and so on. To acknowledge anything more fundamental than this, a condition verily defined as emotion without reason, would be to make myself vulnerable. To admit love would be to become dependent upon it, and what self-respecting modern woman wants that?

But recently I've been talking and thinking about love more than usual, and I have discovered to my astonishment that yes, I believe. I have faith. Somehow, I have accepted that love exists, that it is a real and powerful force within human beings, and that it can be trusted.

What changed my mind? Simply the unblinking steadfastness of what my husband has always called, without needing to analyse it, 'love.' He has loved me, as Tim Lott puts it 'without pause or doubt' for 26 years, and at last I can believe that he will continue to do so.

I used to think the notion of romantic love must have been cooked up by women as a consoling, escapist fantasy; but it has men's fingerprints all over it. Not so much as a way of keeping women in their place, but as a convenient catch-all - so simple, pleasingly all-encompassing, it does away with the need to endlessly describe 'feelings.' I love you, girl. End of.

So does this mean that Jesus still has a chance at my heart? Er, no. And nor does Santa or the Faerie King. I like my men real, and preferably bearing tea.

Wedding Toast and Jam

2011-07-11T19:30:00.011+01:00

Top Boozing Tips For: A Happy Marriage

A little pome for the Dude, whose easy-going style inspired the Coen Brothers to make a movie. She is the only person in the world who NEVER gets on my nerves and she deserves all of the happily ever afters.

Toast each other, every win,
No matter how small, or fleeting.
Drink champagne (or something bubbly),
Giggle wickedly.
Remember to look up: shape the clouds, count the stars,
Salute the moon.
Most important of all: when you pour, don't wait for the fizz to settle -
Drink the bubbles.

Well, it's worked for Mr Joker and I so far (26 years and counting)...

Congratulations, Dude and Andrude!

Come On Baby, Put Your Hands On My Body

2011-06-12T12:29:00.023+01:00

Slurring with conviction about: The London Slutwalk

Lesbian mum slut over here. No? What about pensioner slut? Chubby goth slut? Hey, where did all the cameras go? Oh, there they are, look. Gorgeous underdressed model slut is hogging them, as usual.

Why on earth would women want to claim this horrible, demeaning word? It was OK to use it about ourselves when it just meant someone with lax domestic standards and questionable personal hygiene (we still have 'slattern' for that, right?) - but the word now, whether used by man or woman, conveys nothing but utter contempt. There is no sense in which it can serve women.

Yes, women should have the right to dress as they please without being accused of inciting their own rape. Women are sexual beings too and shouldn't feel they have to hide it to protect a minority of over-libidinous males from their ungovernable urges.

But, y'know, women are supposedly equal stakeholders in society. That means taking some responsibility for how cultural norms and expectations are shaped and enacted. Hello, girls? Soft-porn pop music, semi-nudity in advertising, and body fascism Barbie-style has not been imposed upon us by men single-handedly. We've allowed this to happen, to our sisters and our daughters. We buy the music, the magazines, the hooker shoes, the plastic boobs.

It's been said that rape is about power, not sex, but that's misdirection. Sex IS power in this context. But the Slutwalk women seem to be confusing female empowerment with sexual availability.

It's not empowering to encourage men to leer and ogle your body. It's COMPLICIT. How empowered do you think Nicole Scherzinger felt lowering her naked thighs on to Graham Norton's scratchy couch, her dress so short she was forced to sit ramrod-straight for forty minutes in moment-by-moment peril of actual cheek-exposure? Did it make her feel like a powerful and confident woman to be spoken to like a set extra by the two other (male) guests on the couch? I doubt whether Simon Pegg has worked a fiftieth as hard in his life as she has in hers, but on that couch he might as well have been Hugh Hefner and her, just another bunny.

The thing is, Nic, you can't set out your tits on a feathered, spangly platter and then say, hey, I'm up here, guys, please respect my intellect and abilities. The world, this world we helped make, doesn't work that way.

So that's why I'm not convinced that taking to the streets in basques and suspenders is the best way to prove that, erm, women aren't sluts. An awful lot of men were lounging around Trafalgar Square yesterday, most of them with cameras of some sort, and somehow I don't think they were there to have their consciousness raised. If we don't want to be treated like sex objects, perhaps we shouldn't dress - well, you get the picture.

Otherwise, just remember to pack the pepper spray.

Finding the F-Spot

2011-03-30T17:50:00.014+01:00

Cackling Too Loudly About: Literal Video's version of 'Total Eclipse of the Heart'

I can confirm that laughter is a tonic, no gin required. One recent Friday night, this YouTube film made me properly, thoroughly, laugh until the tears poured - and yes, all right, there may have been additional mood enhancement involved (hello? I already said it was Friday night), but it got me thinking how rare it is these days for television to find my funny-spot.

Actually, that kind of helpless writhing-about-in-comedy-ecstasy is rare whatever the stimulus, happening perhaps once or twice a year if I'm lucky. My overall chortle-zone is pretty wide, but funners need to be laser-focused to find the bull's-eye.

Problem is, so much mainstream comedy is anything but. By definition, it has to aim for the comfortable chuckle, but in doing so often misses out on the belly-laugh. Stand-up, for so long the only alternative to anodyne tv sitcom, occasionally punches the general area hard enough, but for me provocation as comedy has had its day.

Thank the great god Technor, then - and not just for the social media that enable us to find others with as weird a sense of humour as ourselves.

Comedy is no longer the preserve of the televisually-favoured and the intrepid few - now anyone with a joke inside them can find an audience, and the tools to deliver it. Hurrah for xkcd, @CherylKerl, Belgian Waffle and a zillion other talented amateurs I hope will never be 'discovered' and watered down for mass consumption.

Personally, I think that YouTube video was a one-off. Usually only my husband, who knows me VERY well, can find my F-Spot.

What makes you laugh? When was the last time you were really helpless with laughter? And, is it just me, or when something really tickles you, are you the only one laughing that hard?

End of Empire

2011-03-13T18:35:00.010Z

Calling Time On: Boardwalk Empire

My mother, a vintage-fashionista, said she was watching it for the clothes alone and oh God, they're fabulous all right. I've missed whole swathes of dialogue while concentrating on a pair of shoes or a printed silk robe. But even the most gorgeous vintage piece can't compete with nudity, violence, and sex on-screen, and I suspect my mother has probably gone back to E-Bay and Oxfam for her fashion fix.

I hope so, anyway. I can't ask her, in case she hasn't. The idea of my mother (and by extension, my father too) watching this series, with its casual placement of women as set-dressing and props, is upsetting to contemplate.

I'm angry enough that it's considered acceptable in mainstream entertainment, angrier still that I don't hear any voices speaking out against the casual misogyny exemplified and perpetuated by this show; but it makes me positively boil to think about the kick in the teeth it represents to women of my mother's generation, who fought so hard for a respect that some women now seem only too willing to forgo.

In Boardwalk Empire's world a woman is a 'gash' or a 'cooze', a whore or a mistress. Either that, or a Temperance dragon. And I'm not interested in the 'authenticity' argument either (look! real boobs!): a fully authentic treatment would incorporate the political issues of the day, and a couple of lines of dialogue dismissing women's suffrage is more a middle-finger salute than a nod.

It is simply not okay to depict women in a context which actively glamourises their exploitation, without locating that context within the modern sensibility that acknowledges the inequities and injustices of a skewed power structure. Mad Men, in contrast to BE, had Joanie and Peggy Olsen to make this point, and they were a key element of the series - without them, the show would have been just a bunch of smug guys in sharp suits banging broads and fleecing clients.

It's not enough to assume the modern viewer is capable of making their own value judgments - television is too passive a medium for that. Viewers are generally happy to take a narrative at face-value and engage with it on a level no deeper than that of its characters; and for this reason programme-makers have a responsibility to include a moral dimension in their work - to 'locate it within modern sensibility' so that a viewer can recognise when an attitude, epithet or action is inappropriate, unacceptable or downright harmful.

It's not the nudity I object to: I think we are all the richer for gazing upon the sumptuous voluptuousness that is Paz de la Huerta. But bouncing up and down on top of a naked, ageing Steve Buscemi - and bouncing - and still bouncing - still bouncing - you get the idea. Extended, distasteful, and yes, gratuitous. Plus numerous other sex scenes, over-long, overly graphic, all lacking any kind of tenderness or joy. Then there's the violence, the routine splatterment of gangster flesh; the unlikeable characters, the complete lack of story, the unoriginal set-ups and rehashed double-crosses.

The clothes (and Paz de la Huerta) apart, it's ugly, and the ugliness is unredeemed in any way. The Sopranos, to which this series has been compared, used ugliness in a similar way for viewers' entertainment; but Tony Soprano, by virtue of the glimpses into his tortured soul, was a character for whom redemption was a possibility. For Nucky Thompson and the rest of his uninspired, uninspiring crew, redemption is beside the point. There's nothing there worth saving.

Angels and Demons

2011-01-03T11:10:00.000Z

Poor Me, Pour Me Another: A timely New Year's post from the bar about the evils of drink.

No, not really. You won't catch me doing any of that sanctimonious forswearing and wagon-climbing. I love the drink, me. Love it. I credit the drink for at least one of my children, for my second career, and for more laughter, healing camaraderie and memorable experience than mere life could have delivered unsupplemented.

If it weren't for the drink, I never would have:

swum naked in satin-black waters under a full June moon
twirled and stamped oil-wristed Sevillanas at a pueblo feria with the tiniest, nimblest grandmother in Spain
made drenched, lightning-lit love on the grass during a mighty August thunderstorm
sneaked into a hotel conference room to leave rude drawings on the whiteboard for the next morning's delegates
made it to Medium on Guitar Hero
learned to jive, or danced my feet bloody in the name of rock-and-roll.

But there's a flip-side, a price to pay, and for every transcendent evening there's one that ended in surly argument, or hugging the toilet, or in Casualty. Lots of people decide, eventually, that this price isn't worth paying, and apparently this is the mature choice.

It's not that I don't want to be mature, or accept responsibility, or behave appropriately. I do, of course I do. And my children are fed, clothed, helped with their homework; my house is clean (ish) and safe; I live a rich and fulfilling, creative life. It's just that - well, virtue is so boring, isn't it?

I don't party like a maniac every week, or even every month. Sometimes, I stop after one drink, or refuse it altogether. But there are times when the effort of being a grown-up - mother, partner, colleague - is frazzling. Little holiday in a glass, where shall we go tonight?

I'm lucky, I know. My devoted drinking buddy, my co-dependent partner in wine, stops me from going completely off the rails. We look after each other, and most importantly, we forgive each other in the morning.

The idea of giving up the drink for New Year, or for Lent, or for whatever reason, conjures up a vision of an arid, joyless plain stretching to an infinite horizon, a punishment unmerited no matter what the SLQ. My resolution is not to stop drinking, but to drink better. To choose interesting drinking companions, and to listen as well as talk. To accompany food with drink, not vice versa. To drink in places where there are drinkers, but not drunks. To be a drinker, not a drunk. To dance, always to dance, and most importantly, to laugh.

Just don't ask me to set a good example. That's a resolution for another year.

Smiling with your mouth shut

2010-02-24T14:28:00.005Z

Taking It Outside over: Offensive jokes

When you spend as much time propping up the bar as I do, sooner or later you're bound to come across some joker with an attitude. Ahem. This week it was my turn to be on the receiving end, and naturally my sense of outrage and indignation knew no bounds, until I got to thinking what exactly it was that had caused me offence.

An opinion, aired in the spirit of lively debate, is one thing: if it's one I don't agree with I can argue with you, attempt to change your mind with well-deployed facts and dazzling polemic, or if it happens that your voice is louder (ahem again) I can choose not to challenge you and suggest we 'agree to disagree.' Or I can decide you're a total wingwang and storm out. But the point is, I have a choice, an easy way to save both our faces, and, if we have one, our friendship.

A joke whose humour depends on agreement with an objectionable attitude is different, however, because it doesn't offer this choice. Having listened all the way to the end to be sure that oh no, it really is as racist/sexist/obscene as I feared, I have given tacit permission to the jokester, and so by the time the leaden punchline finally clunks home, it seems a bit late to protest in any terms stronger than a groan. A joke is not an invitation to debate, it's an exercise in complicity - you can't reason with comedy.

Offence ensues. But it's not really my PC sensibilities that have been offended - these are just sounding the alarm. My affront is down to the jokester's assumption that I share his cultural prejudices, and thus his sense of humour. People don't tell jokes deliberately to offend, they just want to get a laugh - the guy thinks I'll find it funny, or he wouldn't bother telling it to me. HE THINKS I AM LIKE HIM.

Which is all very well when it's just some bloke down the pub, who doesn't know me or care what I think - but what if it's a good friend, who does? The implication is that I haven't spoken up enough often enough in the past for them to understand how I feel - that I've kept silent on points of principle for the sake of a quiet life, or to fit in with the crowd.

Gah. Damn my twisty brain. I've gone from feeling offended to feeling guilty, and now I'm the one who has to apologise.

The New C-Word

2010-01-27T13:24:00.007Z

The Veritas de Vino: Ch*vs

I thought it was funny when Julie Burchill decided she was one. I thought it condescending of the Fabian Society to suggest they were voiceless and oppressed. But when a lovable lefty accused me of being a 'patronising b*tch' for using the word 'chav', it was time to think about going PC.

Obviously, epithets say most about the people using them; but removing the c-word from my vocabulary won't remove my disdain. Call it class-hatred if you must, but it's certainly not economic poverty of which I'm scornful - it's the dismal poverty of imagination and aspiration which crams the high street with gobbing, cursing, adidas-shiny morons. If privilege means a family that loved each other and worked hard, then yes, I was privileged - but I stuffed my shoes with newspaper and bought my clothes from jumble sales, so don't tell me about how poverty restricts horizons.

I do recognise that within our society is an underclass for whom even love and work are not real choices, and that for these people opportunities to achieve are restricted; but the c-word wasn't coined to describe them. Originally, it referred to a group whose defining characteristics were ostentatiousness, ignorance, and a lack of social responsibility - think Jade Goody, Wayne Rooney, and Burberry queen Daniella Westbrook.

Even so. Words matter, and those of us who like to think we are handy with them have a duty to use them responsibly. A word used as lazy cultural shorthand is mutating into a poisonous slur, and rather than attempt to gatekeep its original meaning, we need to acknowledge its evolution and incorporate it appropriately into our discourse.

Still, I think sneering may have been ruined for me forever.

A Story Will Never Fall On Your Head

2010-01-14T14:30:00.005Z

Beer Tears for: Haiti

Watching the BBC's 'Survivors' last night brought tears to my eyes. Not because it's an especially brilliant drama; but because of the eerie timing. The dispossessed, teaming up to free victims of a collapsed building; the injured, buried alive under rubble. It was painful to realise that the very same scenes I was watching on screen, the terror, despair and grief, were being played out almost identically, for real, at the very same moment in Haiti.

Inevitably, I felt guilt - what kind of heartless voyeur was I to find entertainment in a catastrophe at the very same time it was being mirrored in reality? - and it caused me to think about the role of fiction and drama in mediating reality. Fiction provides a safe place in which to experience the horrors and the joys of human existence, the extreme emotions and unlikely behaviours that we may never encounter in our own humdrum lives. We commit ourselves to the drama and trust the conventions of story-telling to resolve its conflicts and passions in a way that is satisfying and makes sense of the journey, secure in the knowledge that there will be no consequences in our own lives.

This is 'entertainment,' and it needn't make us feel guilty. Through fiction we can explore and develop our understanding of the human condition, of the ways that our fellow planet-dwellers live their lives, and sometimes illuminate our own with insight.

But, of course, real life is not a narrative; it is messy and full of loose ends and consequences. Sometimes it is barely tolerable. For the people in Haiti today, it is filled with unspeakable horror. The danger with entertainment is not that it trivialises genuine experience, but that it tidies it; that in consuming it, we absorb an expectation of resolution that makes us complacent.

There's not going to be any ending, happy or otherwise, for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. The misery will continue for years. Of course we can continue to enjoy our stories, but let's help out in the real world too.

http://www.dec.org.uk
http://www.msf.org/
http://www.ifrc.org/
http://www.savethechildren.net/
http://www.christianaid.org.uk/
http://www.unicef.org.uk/

Love Cats Forever

2010-01-09T17:03:00.003Z

The Regular's Rant: Popular Does Not = Crap

And actually, unpopular doesn't, either. Value judgements, when it comes to artistic endeavour, are entirely subjective, and the success of a piece of work doesn't necessarily correlate with the level of effort expended by, or the talent of, its creator.
There's a school of thought that suggests any work achieving popular success is by definition appealing to the lowest common denominator, and can therefore never be considered anything other than low art, unworthy of serious consideration. Worse, that opportunities for 'real' talent are being blocked by mediocrity.

Apart from the circular nature of the argument, which ends with accusations of 'selling out' once commercial (i.e. popular) success is achieved, this creative elitism is self-defeating. Art is a broad church, spanning mass-entertainment at one end and high-end collecting at the other, but in between is a delicate eco-system in which creative worth must be balanced against commercial potential. Without X-Factor and Guitar Hero, fewer young people would develop an interest in music, whether as consumers or performers. Without Dan Brown and Katie Price, publishers couldn't afford to take a chance on new writers, and 'The Kite Runner' and 'The Time-Traveler's Wife' would never have been read. The viewing figures for 'EastEnders' justify the license fee so the BBC can continue to commission original drama; and if a bright, sentimental Jack Vettriano print cheers up a drab wall, who are any of us to sneer?

Deriding popular culture for being popular is just a form of teenage whining. It smacks of that desperation to be different, to show how special you are not by actually differentiating yourself, but by aligning with a minority whose manifesto is based on disdain for the majority.

I remember, age fourteen, going off The Cure after they released 'Love Cats;' but what's telling is that now it's the only one of their songs I still like.

Islam4UK is Not 4UK

2010-01-07T12:24:00.004Z

Exercising the Regulars: Islam4UK in Wootton Bassett.

Well, it's clever PR, isn't it. This Islamist group has a legitimate political point to make - that the deaths of Afghan civilians through British military action are being ignored - and knows from past experience that public outrage is the quickest and easiest way to maximise publicity.

The planned march with symbolic empty coffins through the streets of Wootton Bassett may not actually take place - the media attention means that it's likely to become a rallying point for extremists of both stripes - but in fact, it doesn't need to. The point has been made.

But as well as drawing attention to the terrible casualties suffered by the Afghan people, to which we do seem to have turned a callously blind eye, Islam4UK has reminded us of something else. Hardline Muslims believe they owe their loyalty first and foremost to Islam, not to their country of birth. Patriotism and respect for the armed forces are nationalistic weaknesses. By contrast, the people of Wootton Bassett, no matter what their own personal convictions on the rights and wrongs of the conflict, stand witness for the rest of us as body after body is carried through their streets - and by disrespecting them so conspicuously, Islam4UK undermines its own message.

No death should be considered more significant than any other, except by the bereaved; every body, whether British or Afghan, was once someone's husband, son, wife, daughter. The Afghan dead deserve our remembrance and respect as much as the fallen of our own country, but Islam4UK dishonours our grief, and alienates us from the people with whom it makes common cause, by spitting in the faces of the tired people of Wootton Bassett.

Disrespecting the Dead

2009-11-10T19:44:00.006Z

Is it only me that finds repugnant the release of the much-hyped Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 video game in the same week as Remembrance Sunday, Armistice Day, and the deaths of six British soldiers in Afghanistan?

Not being a fifteen-year-old-boy or an aging spod with no life, I admit I also find the game itself repugnant: the idea of selling the experience of armed combat as entertainment is actually offensive to me, and I can only wonder how the families of those who have lost loved ones in the recent conflicts, not to mention those fighting, feel about it.

But whose idea was it to schedule the 'premiere' (at a Leicester Square cinema, no doubt in order to borrow some of film's artistic legitimacy) on this particular day, in this particular week? This launch was a HUGE deal in the gaming world, and I can't believe the timing was accidental. In which case, it was surely deliberate.

Deliberate.

I've done my time in the PR trenches (see how easy it is to trivialise the wartime experience?), and I know how intently the calendar is studied for other potentially newsworthy dates that might impinge on, or eclipse, or even benefit, a planned event.

The team tasked with the launch of this game must have believed that in a week where media attention would be focused on fallen soldiers and images of war, their product could only benefit by association with the coverage. In other words, if the product launched in a wider context of wartime reminiscence, alongside pictures of uniformed servicemen, military weapons and equipment, its authenticity, and its appeal to the kind of gamer who revels in vicarious blood-bathing, could only be enhanced.

This was a conscious exploitation of respectful remembrance, a wholly cynical bid to trade off the sacrifices made by British servicemen, women and their families. For the callous marketers of this brutal game, the unanticipated deaths of six soldiers at the hands of a lone Afghan insurgent, and the political storm over a poorly-written condolence letter, was just icing on the publicity cake.

Hearts vs. Minds

2009-10-28T10:35:00.002Z

'Articulate' and 'eloquent' are often used interchangeably to mean 'convincing with words,' but there's an important difference between the two terms. To convey an idea effectively you need to be articulate; but only eloquence can achieve emotional resonance. Eloquence requires a fluency in the language of feelings, an understanding of the simple means by which one human being connects with another, and owes more to empathy than to vocabulary.

Take last Thursday's BNP-bash. To my mind, Sayeeda Warsi was by far the most articulate of the guests - yet it was Bonnie Greer who proved the most popular.

Obviously, Ms Greer, a cultural historian, had a head start by simple virtue of not being a politician; but there was an element of passion in her responses that was missing from Baroness Warsi's slick put-downs.

Passion convinces so much more deeply than mere words. Articulateness and fluency are wonderful, and admirable, in a speaker; but it is eloquence that reaches past the thinking brain into the feeling heart, and passion that's at its root. Greer's body language – her whole being radiating repulsion – combined with the specific and personal illustrations she used to repudiate Griffin's position made it abundantly clear how angry and insulted she felt; and the audience responded to her emotion.

Similarly in literature, where the most exquisitely crafted prose can still fail to raise a smile or swell a tear if it is not fully engaged with its human truths: thus is Ian McEwan relegated to the dusty canon of 'literary' fiction while Jodi Picoult's cookie-cutter tragedies fly off the supermarket shelves by the lorryload.

Griffin, devoid of both empathy and vocabulary, never stood a chance. But should a more talented spokesman for the BNP arise, we had better beware. It was Hitler's charismatic oration, his eloquence, that swept the Nazis to power on a tide of emotional resonance, the evil that was to follow concealed beneath genuine political passion.

As all speakers, writers and artists know, before the heart's truth the rational mind is dust.

The Joker Channel

2009-10-20T18:31:00.003+01:00

You're tuned into the Joker Channel. Coming up: more pithy analysis, quirky observations and unique insight from the bar.

We're all mini-broadcasters now.

Many of us still have a weakness for traditional sources of information such as television news, the national newspapers and even the good old-fashioned library; but if you also have any kind of online existence, you'll have noticed how much richer the information-gathering experience is these days. For any given news story, there'll be a discussion on the forum of like-minded people you frequent, or a contradiction by a blogger you respect, or a Facebook group flagged up by one of your friends. If you're researching, there's Wikipedia, of course, but everyone knows it's not always reliable; so you'll Google for first-hand accounts, trusted commentators, photos and background (and what fascinating detours you might make along the way!).

It really does feel as though the holy scrolls of communication have finally been seized from the tabernacles of the elite; a feat of liberation equivalent to, if not exceeding, the invention that brought the written word to the huddled masses in the first place, the printing press. There's still a bar to entry for the poorest, of course, and the age-old problem of reliability; but for the first time, ordinary people have the power to share news and information among themselves on a large scale, and the ability to combine and correlate various sources to form conclusions and reach consensus.

Witness the furore surrounding Jan Moir's hate-piece about Stephen Gately in the Daily Mail. Five years ago such a column might have generated a few letters of complaint to the PCC from Daily Mail readers; now anyone with an internet connection can read, and share around, the loathsomeness – and even better, can voice their objections almost immediately.

More importantly, in parts of the world that do not enjoy the benefits of a free press, the tools of mass communication are a force for subversion and democracy in the hands of the people: viz. the use of Twitter and Facebook to organise and report on mass protest after the recent elections in Iran.

But with the power of one-to-many communication come other considerations.

Ten years ago, for most people the only way they could make an impact on others was through the force of their presence – personal charisma, individual style – or perhaps via an impressive CV. These days there's your online presence to consider as well: your output, your remit, your profile. Younger people, the 'digital natives' who have grown up with the technology and take it for granted, are perhaps more comfortable with the hybrid personas that the combination of Facebook, blog, Twitter, Flickr, AIM, and actual meatspace interaction can produce; but we all need to realise that we are managing a broadcast brand, and work as hard at projecting the image we want online as we do offline.

This means, for example, being careful about what you post in Google-able forums if your username is your real name. It means not posting pictures of you cavorting drunk in the town fountain if colleagues or potential employers can see them on Facebook. It means taking a little time to think about your blog posts and status updates, and whether they say something about you that you wouldn't mind being repeated.

Here at the Joker Channel, we're strict about what we're allowed to post:

1. No fluff; nothing shoe- or baby-related.
2. No social network fads.
3. NO KITTENS.

It's a serious business, this broadcasting.

Shaking With The Enemy

2009-10-13T18:14:00.003+01:00

No doubt Barack Obama's stated aims in the furtherance of peace are laudable enough, but in the case of Iran I wonder if the Nobel Committee hasn't been a little premature in its evaluation of his efforts.

The Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) is a repressive regime, governing without – despite protestations of democracy – a legitimate mandate from its people. It detains without trial, tortures and puts to death its political dissidents, dismantles all attempts at free reporting, and refuses to submit to outside scrutiny.

Yet the hand of peace that Obama extends to the IRI is conditional only upon nuclear non-armament, and not upon any commitment to improve human rights in Iran. There are many who believe that to enter into dialogue with President Ahmedinejad would be to endorse an election that is still disputed, and provide legitimacy to a government that cannot claim to represent its people.

But how likely is such a dialogue? One of the regime's key ideological platforms is its resistance to all things Western, and its characterisation of itself as the last bulwark against Satan's imperialist march. For Ahmedinejad to shake Obama's extended hand would threaten the very foundation upon which his power is based.

To the contrary, with the election result still disputed and protest ongoing, Ahmedinejad and the IRI must look to consolidate and reinforce their position, and what better way than by focusing on an external enemy? Those who believe that the IRI dare not oppose the mighty forces of the West forget at their peril that martyrdom lies at the heart of Iran's religion. From the death of their beloved Shia saint Hussein to the millions of boys blasted to bits in Khomeini's name, Iran has a history of glorifying pointless deaths. And what price defying the Great Satan, if Israel can be crushed in the process?

Far from improving the prospects of peace with Iran, Obama's advances may even be making things worse.

God has no place in schools, like facts have no place in religion

2008-03-09T19:24:00.006Z

Dear Mr Buckland

Like most parents, I want my children to have access to stimulating, informative materials that will enhance their knowledge of the world around them. At home, I carefully select the books, films, plays and exhibitions that I believe will increase their understanding, and vet those that I think might be confusing or inappropriate.

I have no choice but to trust that their school is under the same obligation. If anything, runs my reasoning, the school should be even more diligent about the selection of its educational materials and experiences because, after all, learning is its prime directive.

So I am at a loss to understand why Christian Bible stories are being related to young children as if they were historical fact. I can see that, with Easter coming up, it's relevant to offer some context for the celebration – but the context should extend beyond the story of violent death and cartoonish resurrection to include the themes of springtime and renewal for which the Passion is simply a metaphor.

While the Bible has some great stories, it's not appropriate for these to be presented to small children as real-life scenarios. My four-year-old son isn't mature enough to decide his own dinner, let alone whether or not he believes in God, and yet the school considers him Christian by default, and integrates religious articles of faith into his daily education.

Young children are simply not mature enough to differentiate faith-based learning from fact-based knowledge, and it's critically important to help them make that distinction – so that in time, they will able to make their own informed, educated decisions about the relative value they want to place on each.

Since what my son calls the “God assembly,” last week, at which I believe there was a performance relating to the forthcoming Passion play to be staged in town, he has been enthusiastically re-enacting the crucifixion with his brother, happy to play either side, reassuring me that it's fine to nail to people to trees because they come back to life again. I suspect this was probably not your players' intended response, but then he is only four – not the most sophisticated of audiences, which is my point: not mature enough to make the appropriate interpretation. At least in Star Wars Qui-Gon stays dead, and his murderer is punished: a much more valuable lesson, in my opinion!

I recognise that the school is bound by certain strictures to incorporate a degree of religious practice into its daily life. However, I firmly believe that religious instruction should be confined to churches and faith schools, and should be the choice of the parents. Where religious motifs are explored in school, it should be relative to other religious and cultural values, and the difference between faith and fact should always, always, be made explicit.

Talk to the Teddy Bear

2007-12-04T13:10:00.001Z

There's a very useful technique used by some IT support departments, called “Talk to the Teddy Bear,” whereby a computer user explains his or her problem to a soft toy provided for the purpose, before bothering an actual techie with it. Very often, the solution to the problem will be discovered in the act of explaining it, and the IT support troops will not be required.

Perhaps, before adding their voices to the knee-jerk anti-Muslim rhetoric that has been provoked by the fundamentalist fireworks in Khartoum, some of the outraged commentators should undertake just such an exercise and interrogate Mohammed the Bear to discover the root cause of the problem.

Outraged of Islington: Talk about biting the hand that feeds! A country that treats foreign workers this way doesn't deserve to receive foreign aid. We should withdraw all aid from them immediately!
Mohammed the Bear: Foreign aid?
O of I: Well, we have been trying to give them humanitarian and resource aid to help with the refugees from the recent floods and the conflict in Darfur...
Mo: Trying?
O of I: The government doesn't seem to want our help actually – it's been refusing the UN force entry, and making access and transport difficult for aid workers. So I say we just leave them to it!
Mo: The government doesn't want foreign aid?
O of I: Well, it has been accused of sponsoring the Arab militias that are responsible for the alleged ethnic cleansing of black Africans in the Darfur region - I guess they might not want too much international scrutiny of their role there...
Mo: So to rid itself of interfering foreign do-gooders...?
O of I: ...A crisis is whipped up on a spurious religious pretext guaranteed to ignite passions and damage international relations....ah, I see where you're going with this...

The problem is that by joining the outcry against backward Islamists imposing nonsensical Sharia laws on our harmless schoolteachers, we are playing directly into the hands of an authoritarian regime protecting its own interests.

Inciting anti-Muslim outcry is a divisive Islamist tactic to demonstrate to the moderate majority that Islam is under attack by Western values, so that the beleaguered devotees feel that they must support the political Islamist movement in order to protect their culture and religion.

Feeding a fundamentalist frenzy among a small minority of followers both reinforces the Sudanese government's power base as arbiter of religious law in its country, and extends its international appeal to Muslims worldwide, as the resulting condemnation is interpreted as religious (rather than political) criticism.

But more importantly, by causing 'the hand that feeds' to draw back, the Sudanese government is ensuring that it can continue to pursue its political and religious agendas without interference from foreign busybodies. Oil revenues have made Sudan a wealthy nation, but while Khartoum booms, Darfur burns. Sudan's government and wealthy elites have no need of foreign aid, but four million traumatised, brutalised, orphaned and abandoned people depend on it – let us not abandon them because of a contrived furore over a teddy bear.

The Inheritors of Punk

2007-01-06T14:15:00.000Z

As Soho's webmaster I've been 'meeting' a lot of people on myspace recently who inhabit the alternative fringes of mainstream fashion, music and culture, and have been thinking about how this subculture has evolved, from the first great music revolution (rock and roll) which created teenagers as a group with their own needs, desires and language, through the hippy age of intellectual and creative experimentation, to the punk revolution which was as much cultural as it was musical.

Punk was about more than refusing to conform to society's expectations, it was about actively sticking two fingers up at them - unlike the hippies, who genuinely thought they were moving towards a better world, punk expressed anger at the state of the world as they found it and engineered social response through provocative behaviour.

What of punk's legacy though? In the 70's when punk was at its peak, there were much more rigidly defined expectations of class and gender to chafe against - then, Johnny Rotten was vilified (and admired) for swearing on tv, now no-one would even notice; then, Siouxsie Sioux's latenight S&M antics were too naughty to be printed, now there are clubs all over the country catering to nothing else. Is it even possible to be truly punk now?

Punk now seems to be much more about music and fashion than about attitudes and ideology - to be a punk these days is more about listening to particular bands and creating a personal style than about kicking against the expectations of a corrupt and decadent society.

Maybe today's punks are the ones who are still standing against the current of mainstream culture - those who refuse to add to global carbon poisoning by buying cars or travelling by plane, those who steadfastly criticise authority and the decisions of an authoritarian state, those who ignore arbitrary labels of class and status to create their own communities (much like the one I'm finding on myspace)...

Fashion and music were vital tools for the punk movement of the 70's, but they didn't define it. I think Johnny's true heirs are using them to achieve similar goals - outrage against complacency, the destruction of elitist social policies and the search for functioning, representative government.

Blunkett and the Burqa

2006-10-17T14:13:00.000+01:00

I didn't see Have I Got News for You last night, but apparently David Blunkett came in for some flak on account of his recently published diary. It seems his diary entry for 9/11 displays a disproportionate concern with the sacking of radio presenter Jimmy Young and rather less with the scale of the disaster in the US. I wonder if this was because unlike the rest of us, he wasn't rocked by those terrifying, ubiquitous images, and instead experienced the events much like he (and usually we) experience other disasters taking place in the world - at one step removed from the personal, through the writings and broadcasts of commentators. In this context I can understand how the departure of a familiar voice in his aural landscape might cause him more immediate anguish than the disaster overseas.

Blunkett's behaviour and lately his diary do seem to indicate that he inhabits a different world to the rest of us - but this seems obvious, even if it may not be politically correct to say so. His blindness prevents him from experiencing much of what most people take so much for granted that they wouldn't even realise he was missing it - 60% of communication is body language interpreted at a subconscious level, and a blind person would not perceive most of this. Communication failure could explain a lot of his recent travails.

A point to ponder: if communication is 60% body language, how can a teaching assistant expect to do her job in a primary school wearing the veil?

And further: What's the difference between obscuring facial expression with a veil or with Botox? To be explored...

don't-look-at-me girl in a look-at-me world

2006-10-16T13:53:00.001+01:00

On a trip to Sohos HQ at the weekend, I was roped into modelling some new items as the regular model wasn't around. But much as I love the clothes, I found modelling a totally humiliating experience - almost as mortifying as Dutch cap training (even worse than it sounds). The process of dressing and undressing, posing, being told how to stand, hitch up my boobs, don't stare, foot out, hip up, chest out - a mannequin at least has the dignity of fulfilling its function; I just felt utterly depersonalised.

Why on earth do so many girls aspire to this as a career? Why is being looked at so central to our existence these days? It's almost a philosophical question - if no-one's watching, is it real?

Perhaps it's due to increasing awareness of the transitory nature of life - the rapidity of change in society and in our everyday environments stimulates the urge to document every fleeting moment. Hmm, it occurs to me that blogging is just as telltale a symptom of this need to validate existence - in which case I am just as susceptible as the girls who crave the camera. If no-one's reading, is it true (or just crap)?