Cleaning up the London protestors

Good god this has been a long time coming. Finally, after years of protests, riots, and petitioning (most of them nonsense) it's finally happened. Boris Johnson, and the wider Tory Government has taken notice of the plight of the nation's protestors. Most of them are, plainly, disgusting.

"Soap dodging on this scale hasn't been seen since the middle ages." A spokesperson for the mayor's office announced, echoing the voice of the people of Highgate, Hampstead, and Blackheath. "We've heard the voice of the people, and the people are desperate. These uprising's of the unclean need to be addressed, and today we're showing that we're listening, and we're acting."

Government cut backs have already impacted on the scheme with confirmation the protestors would still be required to bring their own soap. But the general consensus seems to be that even without soap in the water, the principal alone should see London move up the list of the worlds cleanest cities.

Personally over the years I've grown thoroughly fed up with seeing legions of angry people shouting about pretty much everything, without even having bothered to take a shower before heading to the streets. Finally this means that we can protect people's right to protest, and help the homeless, simultaneously.

38 Degrees of separation

I can’t bloody stand 38 Degrees. Not the idea that is. The idea that people can do something that isn’t setting fire to stuff to raise legitimate issues for consideration by the powers that be is, well, quite good really. What I can’t bloody stand is how it’s actually used. You know, in the real world. Where people live. And by people, I mean idiots.

PETITION ALL THE THINGS!

Literally, all of them. Don’t like something? Start a petition. Have a hair brained scheme that you rehashed from an episode of Pinky and the Brain that you watched during a depressing, Special Brew fuelled, YouTube evening? Start a petition. Sick of writing angry letters to the Daily Mail to complain that you’re, curiously, not in charge of everything, and that other people have the nerve to disagree with you? Start a petition.

38 Degrees has basically turned into Twitter with signatures and frankly it’s making us look like a bunch of morons.

My current favourite is this stunningly clever idea that Michael Gove should spend a term teaching. 

Let’s break this little gem down shall we.

Michael Gove, a politician, a man with no discernible capacity to do his own job, let alone someone else’s, should, according to about 100,000 people, spend a term teaching. Should he? Really, should he? Michael Gove is, quite clearly, a dribbling moron who’d struggle with the responsibility of looking after an Ice Cream in an Igloo, let alone the education policy of a nation. And you want him to be in direct charge of actually teaching Children? Not the hypothetical way that he comes up with policies, but in an actual standing in front of a class of eager young minds imparting wisdom and helping them develop their critical thinking way.

You bloody don’t. You don’t want him anywhere near where Children might “learn” from him. What you actually want is for him to get fired for being an inept window licking moron with the intellectual capacity of a Cat Flap and be consigned to a footnote in the county’s more embarrassing history books. But, instead of that, almost 100,000 people have decided he should spend a term teaching in order to be able to do his job properly.For people who like lists (or keep reading BuzzFeed), here’s some numbered points….

1. Michael Gove is, sadly, an MP. A man with an existing job. A full time job. A job that were he not doing it full time you’d also been complaining about. A job that he won’t be doing at all if he’s teaching in a school.
2. What type of school? Or do you just mean the one that specifically applies to your child, and your own specific needs. Because having the Minister in charge of Education focussed solely on your own little niche is of literally no use to anyone.
3. Michael Gove is not a teacher. Which means that he's never had ANY teacher training. Which, to my mind at least, means that teaching isn't really something he should be doing. But don’t let that little technicality get in the way of your irate shouty genius.
4. By creating or signing this spurious nonsense, what you’ve actually done is legitimise those in charge to completely ignore online petitions entirely. After all, if it’s famous for complaining about things they plainly don’t understand, are making ill informed petitions consisting largely of plainly unworkable ideas, why would anyone who wasn’t taught by Michael Gove want to listen to it?

So there you have it. Well done you. You've successfully turned what could have been a powerful tool of the people into an easily dismissed haven for those who didn't watch enough Sesame Street as kids. Thanks for that. Here's a round of applause for you....

I really am very sorry.

By virtue of some unlikely circumstance, I recently spent a curiously prolonged period of time with someone who, among many other things, can be most accurately described as 'American'. As an Englishman, this inevitably led to an avalanche of culture clashes, casual imperialism, and pointing out that, at least from an administrative level, the US is still technically a British colony, and it might be an idea for them to remember that once in a while.

But more than anything else it led to apologising. Constantly.

At this point you're probably thinking: 'Good! Bloody Americans, it's about time they started acknowledging a few things.' You would of course be completely wrong.

You see, as any good English person will tell you, it's entirely reasonable to compose a sentence that's comprised of 70% apologetic terms. 80% if you're being polite. Which you should be. Always. For an American this is frankly incomprehensible. After all, how on earth can I spend that much of my life being that upset about things that in their (savage?) mind I shouldn't even have acknowledged?

I have apologised for being in a slightly inconvenient position (for them), doing something entirely legitimate, but thus putting them through the trauma of having to work around me.

For not predicting their precise need to intake fluids, thus forcing them to actually have to ask for them in the first place.

For having the audacity to attempt to engage them in casual conversation.

For trying to be helpful (I apologised for this a lot).

And for them bumping into me. As frankly I probably shouldn't have been there in the first place.

This was met with a constant procession of confused expressions, and an awful lot of "wait, did you just apologise for that?" Which made me feel awkward. So naturally I apologised for that too.

The only thing I'm worried about is that I might have left something out. Or not apologised enough. Two thoughts that frankly keep me awake at night wondering how best to apologise for that.

One thing I'm not apologising for though is my manners. Which are clearly impeccable. I'm sorry, but I'm just not prepared to call that into question.

The best things about the British summer

As a few people have seen fit to point out, it's summer in the UK at the moment, and for a change we mean that literally, and aren't just optimistically attaching a badge to the 3 months between Spring and First Winter.

So, in commemoration of this once in a lifetime event (there are now an entire generation of children who never had a proper summer when they were at school. Seriously nature, what's up with that?), here's the best things about exactly that.

1. A whole new kind of complaining

We British are a curious type, a nation that comes together over the common understanding that literally none of our infrastructure was designed to work in the environment it's in. For years we've sat there, quietly tutting away at train companies who get caught out by snow in Winter, leaves falling in Autumn, and the concept of rain falling anywhere in the country. But now, now we have something new. It's now too hot for them to run the trains!

We're still complaining, it's still because of the weather, but it's from a DIFFERENT KIND OF WEATHER! Do you have any idea how exciting this is? Do you? I doubt it. I doubt it very much.

2. British summer fashion

We have none. We never have done, and likely never will do. Which is quite predictable really given that we've next to no use for it in the first place (excuses for other seasons will be provided in due course). So simply setting foot outside in this weather is hilarious. Don't believe me? Have you seen Hipsters trying to work out how to ironically wear a sweater and skinny jeans in 90 degree heat?

3. Queuing for 30 minutes to spend £5 on an Ice Cream

It's just like normal queuing; which is amazing, obviously. It's also just like paying massively over inflated prices for everything, as usual (we only do that to see the look on the faces of tourists, just in case you were wondering. And yes, that includes northerners in London). BUT it's in the SUN. Everything's better in the sun.

4. British Beer was designed for exactly these circumstances

You know the moment, the moment where you've been sat in the park with your friends, having a picnic, maybe a couple of drinks, and you reach over to grab another Beer. Grab that can, hear that reassuring hiss as you pull on the ring pull, that moment of expectation as you put the can to your mouth for that first glorious, cold, refreshing taste. Only to discover that rather than the amber of the Gods, what you're now drinking is horrifically warm, and likely the product of building a brewery next to an animal refuge with particularly lax security.

Not with British Beer. We thought ahead. It's meant to be warm. It's literally impossible for it to be ruined by the heat. Amazing.

5. Doing anything is an extreme sport

There is one simple over riding fact of living in Britain. At literally any given moment it could absolutely pour down with rain. We know this, and 9 out of 12 months a year we're completely prepared for it. But in summer? No chance. If you've not attended a BBQ in Britain and had to spend 20 minutes sprinting around the garden trying to get the food covered, find the Dog, and get the garden furniture back in the shed before everything is ruined you've not lived.

6. Confusing Australians

There's nothing quite as magical as seeing the look on an Australian's face when you talk to them about a heatwave in the UK. The only other way to get a similar reaction is to start a conversation speaking Klingon, and finish it by urinating on their shoes.

7. Ordering flavoured Cider without having your sexuality being silently assessed by the bar staff

The fact of the matter is, unless you're ordering a Strongbow (and seriously, why the hell would you?), there's no way for a man to order a Cider without immediately putting his sexual orientation up for debate in the process. In summer however it's simply accepted that you've just order a pint of cold, that comes complete with blocks of extreme cold to make it colder. Essentially announcing yourself as the Ranulph Feinnes of the beverage world. Manly.

Just pants.

Aren't bookstores great! They're full of books. Proper books. Books that make you feel like the intellectual you always hoped everyone else would mistake you for. Books that people will see upon walking into your flat and suddenly be overcome with the thought that they like to have sex with people who like books. So, as someone who recently purged a vast array of DVDs specifically to create more space on his bookshelf to fill with said books, I just pointed myself in the direction of the Plaza's glorious Waterstones store to do just that. (The book buying bit, not the casual sex with other bibliophiles bit. This isn't about to turn into some kind of book based dogging. Mr Cameron would never approve of that)

Which is when it happened. The boundless joy of nosing through the shelves in the kind of chaos free oasis that, in central London, only a bookstore can provide came crashing down like a, well fine, I can't think of a good enough metaphor for once, but trust me, it hit the ground hard.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have just witnessed something that should simply never have been allowed to be. Something that was not only terrifying, but that as a man I have literally no frame of reference point over how to deal with.

While happily nosey through a collection of, inevitably alluring, fantasy books, I casually turned my head and saw, well, frankly there's no good way of putting this. In fact it's so far from being right that I'm going to devote an entire paragraph to the sentence to describe it.

Three teenage girls, wearing jeans, with their knickers on over the top of their Jeans!

Seriously fashion, what the actual fuck was that? Normally at this point I'd love to share a photo with you as evidence, but as I'm not a complete moron, I realised pretty much instantaneously that attempting to photograph this monstrosity had somewhere between slim and no chance of not landing me with a lengthly jail term. So you're going to have to take my word for it. But there it was. 3 teenagers going about their, largely unfathomable, lives, wearing some very large pants, over some reasonably baggy Jeans. Just, just stop for a second, and picture that.

I know fashion's had it's fair share of train wrecks over the years. Shell-suits were liable to spontaneously engulf their owner in flames. Emo hair was the equivalent to voluntary cataracts on one side of your face. Skinny Jeans was fashion's least subtle effort to sterilise the male population. And I was once a Goth. But this, this just defies explanation. It's bad enough that many men under the age of 30 have seemingly gotten so bored with getting dressed that they give up half way through pulling their trousers up, but at least they've remembered the basic order in which to apply clothing!

I've literally spent the past 45 minutes trying to comprehend why a person would do this. My best idea was simply that it was a bet. They were all young enough to be on some school trip. So it might have been a joke. Some glorious youthful hijinks that they'll have a good chuckle about later.

Then I came back to the office and saw this on Twitter:

No fashion. No. Even Superman's gotten past this now.

*NB Tweet stolen from the excellent @peachesanscream who you should probably follow.

Film Review: The Worlds End

I'll get this clear from the outset. I bloody love Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. If I were starting life with a brochure of people to pick my mates from, they'd be top of my shopping list. I imagine I love Edgar Wright too, but for some reason I don't tend to make that association between him and the films so there we go.

Equally, I bloody loved Shaun of the Dead, Spaced, Hot Fuzz and Paul (told you I didn't make the Edgar Wright association), in all of their hilarious, often quite mental, glory. So I had high hopes for The Worlds End. How could they possibly get it wrong? It's basically a take on combining the best bits of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, ageing the characters to a sensible degree, and rocking on with the concept.

Which is why it sucked when I discovered that it had all gone a bit wrong really.

The first half of the film is reiterating the same point over and over again, Gary King (Pegg) has never grown up, lives in the past, and desperately wants to reclaim his long lost youth in some desperate final act of rebellion. All of his mates have grown up, become everything that every teenage boy swears they'll never be, are now basically annoyed with him, but decide to come along come along anyway. Now rinse and repeat that concept until we're a few pubs into the crawl that provides the crux of the setting.

The problem is, that while there are some genuinely hilarious moments, you spend the entire first half of the movie constantly expecting it to get going, and it never really does. The tragic life of Gary King is played up over and over again, to the point at which you start to wonder if there was really any point to any of the rest of the cast not called Nick Frost. So by the time the Alien Robots finally show up you're almost longing for a distraction. It does get better at that point, and it REALLY makes an effort to come across all Shaun of the Fuzz, but there's still something that's not quite there. You see, we've seen this film. I know I said at the outset that taking the best bits of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead could only ever be a good thing, and I stand by that. But what they've turned out at the end of it is really an exercise in taking the good bits, and making them quite, well, mediocre really.

The Robot vs Human fights scenes are brilliantly shot, but lack the charm of their SotD counterparts (something that can probably be explained by actually having a special effects budget on this one). While the 'all to perfect' town is so perfect that it completely lacks in any of the character that Sandford mustered in Hot Fuzz.

The final scenes get better, and get back to what we know they're capable of producing, but the very end of the film just seemed to me to show how cool a film they could have made, if they'd not wanted to do a very British pub crawl first.

A few people gave up and walked out on this when I was watching, and it's certainly not bad enough for that. Hell, it's worth a watch and I certainly don't regret giving it one. It's just a classic case of the whole not being as good as the sum of its parts.

David Cameron on Porn

Dear David Cameron,

It's a nice idea isn't it; a perfect world where our children are protected from anything that we might consider to be bad for them. I can see it now, little Timmy merrily skipping off to school wrapped in a limitless bubble of joy and naivety. A bubble the stops all of life's little nasties from getting at him. Porn for example. You know Porn, that overly exaggerated past time of having a camera in a room while human beings do things that human beings tend to do when given half a chance, and then showing it to other people. Now, in the name of fighting the good fight you've decided that the Internet should block it by default, lock it away somewhere cold and dark, and help keep little Timmy's bubble of joy that bit stronger.

Fair enough. It's a plan that's about as intelligent as putting a Cat Flap in an Elephant house, but hey, it's a good way of making it look like you're doing something good for a change. Let's face it, there's not a Daily Mail reader in the land who won't weep tears of joy over the concept alone!

Now, I'm not here to argue the morals, and I'm not here to argue the psychological science or otherwise behind viewing such things. Hell, I'm not even here to point out what might happen if you suddenly decide that other things are now bad as well and should be locked away too. And of course, because some book dodging halfwit will inevitably assume it if I don't say so; no, I don't want to expose little Timmy to porn. No, I'm simply here to point out that you're idea is so utterly flawed at a basic level that I'm staggered you even got this far through the thought process to start with. Let me tell you why.

First up, any teenager with half a brain can use a proxy, and happily bounce themselves around anywhere else in the world online instantly bypassing the entire thing. Total effort involved? Less than it took me to write this sentence, and in an instant all your litigation and effort has come to nothing. China can't keep it's people behind their great firewall, Egypt's previous rulers had to cut off the internet entirely for the whole country to keep them quiet (and it STILL didn't work). So what chance exactly do you, a man with FAR less practical power than either of those regimes, have?

Secondly, define Porn. Sure, RavingLesbianNymphs.com is probably a pretty good place to start, so that can be on the block list, but what about say, Facebook? Or maybe Twitter? YouTube? Flickr? (I was going to say MySpace as well, but let's not let this become ridiculous) Because what exactly would it be that would stop me uploading something Porn based to one of those sites? Nothing, nothing at all. Now seeing as it doesn't take an awful lot of thought to realise that it's impossible to validate everything ever posted on the internet we can be pretty sure of one thing. It's still going to be distributed just fine.

Sure the Facebooks and Twitters of the world would take it down reasonably quickly (once they've been told about it anyway), but that's the thing about the internet, block something in one place and within 15 minutes the whole thing is back again, hosted in another country and doing exactly the same thing. Total cost to the user: fuck all. Total cost to the Government & various ISPs (or whomever else) to plough through all the legal proceedings: A lot more than fuck all.

Not to mention all the false positives that will come up from this. Sexual health clinics? Countless entirely legitimate sites that happen to discuss things around gender or sexuality? Charities? What about written porn? Slash fiction? The fucking Discovery Channel? We could even bring up that great piece of internet based folk lore and talk about the people working at Pen Island. Or are you going to fix it so we're all provided a list of things that we are allowed to look at, read, learn, watch, and things that we're not? Unlikely if you ever want to be voted for again.

Dave, let's keep it simple here. You don't really know how the internet works do you. It's a nice idea this whole protecting the children thing, and I get where you're coming from, I really do. But it won't work. It'll never work. The ISPs and search engines know it wont work, and that's why they want no part in it unless you force them by law. Now, I don't want to alarm you here Dave, but perhaps if you spent a few more minutes listening to the experts, and few less listening to irrational screaming Daily Mail types, you might just save yourself a hell of a lot of time and effort, and save the rest of the country a hell of a lot of money.

Alternatively, we could always encourage people to do some bloody parenting once in a while?