Actually Not Mea Culpa

... a New Year's Reflection on the Difficulty of Throwing Things Away ...



Nearly 2009, and the Christmas Holidays make me reflect anew on the difficulty I have with property management. Don't get me wrong, I like property. As somebody who slept a lot on the floors of others more provident than myself, who lived without heating and who was down to my minimum weight when financially unequal to eating enough food to keep anywhere above it, I am partial to the security of a roof over my head, to heating and to eating (particularly, I have realised, to pink and yellow food, of which more anon). Until recently, I owned a car, and I was pretty partial to that, as well. Sadly, some of the unpropertied who live nearby were partial to pissing on my wealth and status and now I don't have one any more.


I don't do very well, you will notice, at maintaining my property. I have a constant struggle to keep up with the washing up. I have a losing struggle to keep up with the gardening. And I have a Fucking Rout going on on my ass concerning the paper. There's this hole in my front door which rains paper. Catalogues, free papers, free magazines, things that fall out of free papers, updates from charitable concerns that I give to, updates from charitable concerns that feel I should give to them, demands from charitable concerns that I give to that I should give them more, demands from weird sects that have got my name from the charitable concerns who reward my donations with attempts to piss me off more than you would imagine humanly possible, and - most off-pissingly of all - suggestions that I might like 42 new credit cards (though happily there have been significantly fewer of these of late). Picture me unable to reach my front door for the drifts of rubbishy paper that swirls and eddies round the porch under the Hole In The Door, obscuring the lovingly tiled floor and needing to be disposed of.


At this point, enter the government - never good news. Because they say that getting rid of it is not somebody else's responsibility, but mine. And it cannot go off to landfill in a plastic binbag, oh no; it must be lovingly packed into mighty stack- parcels tied with string and put out for the recycling men.


Well, why? When did the possible end of the world become down to me? I didn't ask for it, I didn't want it, and I don't want to deal with it. I have enough shit to deal with what with earning enough to pay my council tax and getting up at 5am to help the police push my stolen car back up the hill so forensics can fail to find out who took it. I have lessons to prepare and a garden to neglect. I don't need the guilt and I can't find the fucking string; why does it have to make me feel so bad?

You know the answers to these questions, Mrs Crosspatch, you are thinking, and indeed I do. I have to, because nobody else will. But what I wonder about is, why does nobody try to make the litter-generators deal with their own mess, while the government - local and national - is perfectly happy to hound ME about dealing with it? Goodness - couldn't be one rule for the corporations and one for the Little People, could it?

AND AS FOR SAINSBURY'S ... well, if their values make them different, why don't they JUST STOP making and giving plastic bags. They could just switch to charging 1p a bag and USE PAPER ONES - like the US and like Sainsbury's themselves used to. Long ago, in the days when the world and I were still young. Goodness me, it's the hard life being the Only One Who Knows Best. Happy New Year.

'Tis the season ...

... to complain bitterly and without rest about the quality of TV and particularly the wickedness of phone-in shows. And so to Strictly Come Dancing. A Big Row is in train (so say) because Tom Chambers won, in spite of the fact that he wasn't the best dancer. And we say, SO WHAT?

This series of Strictly was particularly galling. In the early days, it was pleasingly naff, and the dial-up dosh used to go to Sport Aid. Now it's all got glitteringly commercial, the dancing is taken with deadly - and for a tv show, fatal - seriousness, and it has lost its Blue Peter charm.

This year there was SO MUCH NONSENSE about the dancing pig, as John Sergeant was called. He could not dance. The list of contestants who couldn't dance has been mighty, and frequently distinguished; Julian Clary couldn't, all of Holby City couldn't, all of ITV Breakfast TV couldn't. And we chortled and hooted and voted. That's how it works. This year the Fear Of The Public got so bad that the press and judges hounded somebody out, and I think this was very sad. The crapness of some of the dancers is as much part of the show as the goodness of others. Do you suppose Shakespeare spent his writing days bemoaning how he had to write slapstick dialogue for base, crude woodworkers, when all he wanted to pen was the poetry of the sublime? How one hopes not. Getting your knickers knotted over the dancing in Strictly is ignoring its pull as drama. Give us the low comedy and give it to us in sequins.

More to the point, Strictly is a fine opportunity for the public to award its favours to those it, well, favours. Did Tom Chambers win because he was more popular than the other finalists? No, he won because in the event, he had the best show dance, which actually has been the desideratum in every series so far. He got into the last two because of his popularity. And why? Because the judges had systematically kept in Lisa Snowdon week after week while the public tried desperately to kick her out. Why? Because Lisa lacks the same degree of mass appeal. She is plainly popular enough to be a model and a radio presenter - or in other words, to have successfully dodged a real hard day's work for a crap day's pay at any point in her life - but is she as popular as him? No, she's not, and why should she be? When did it get so wrong for the public to like somebody better than somebody else? Lisa Snowdon lacks Chambers' warmth, and in competition, personality is as important as dancing.

To boot, Lisa Snowdon's preservation put out two other people I enjoyed watching; Austin Healy and Cherie Lunghi. And Rachel looks lovely and dances divinely - but that's all. And who cares how well somebody does the waltz? I watch for the tangos and the American Smooths. And the Really Crap Dancing, and the sweet, patient, and funny. Stick this in your dancing preciousness pipe and smoke it.

A Thing That Isn't What It Used To Be

It's been a shocker of a summer for my mid-life crisis. In many ways, having a mid-life crisis at nearly 42 is pretty good going - suggests I'm not pegging out until 84, for a start. However, I have made no plans for it, so it's a bit of a shock.

The first sign was when a short rotund man made a sweeping reference to "middle aged women" and excepted present company, and since the other women present were in their twenties, I realised with surprise he must be speaking to me. Middle aged woman, me? It was more the objectification of it than the term, I think, which shocked me. I have become Something - a Thing which can be judged and generalised about, not myself. Well well.

And then a character in Grey's Anatomy referred to women who can no longer have children as "dried up", suggesting that they should do needlepoint. How guilty I instantly felt about my knitting and sewing. Obviously my happy relationship with manufacture of weird clothing for myself, others and dolls is a sign of my (unforgivable) infertility. The fact that I was brought up to knit and sew, as well as cook, as part of my mother's lifeskills course and have cheerfully made myself increasingly eccentric clothing throughout my adult life was suddenly indicative of - something socially unacceptable. Something socially inferior and unworthy. Some thing.

Things went downhill with Frankie Boyle describing people with pets as those who have "tried to have a relationship with a member of [their] own species". Good Godfrey Cambridge, me again. I even find the relationship with the cats - who poop before the washing machine, vom everywhere and shed like bastards while demanding to sit on my lap if I am still for more than 30 seconds - frequently trying.

And then Kevin Bishop described Madonna dressed in dance clothes as "Mutton". But she dances, what is she supposed to wear? And thus my whole crisis comes to focus on my clothes (which I must not make for myself).

What is somebody 42 supposed to wear? I have never gone in for being well dressed; I much prefer dressed up. I like to yomp about in personae - tart, horsy hellkite, landgirl, hobnail booted Victoriana - and just finding myself having to wear sensible clothes to teach has made me pretty miserable. Looking at fashion magazines just confuses me. Although impractical enough to warm my heart, the models are so toothpick skeletal that I cannot see the clothes. All I can see is malnutrition and aliens. Funnily enough, they are apparently not things.

Well well again. I have no solutions. I am a Thing, and when I decide what Thing to be I shall carry on and be that. Perhaps this is a time for supreme eccentricity. Then people will see eccentricity before they see a middle aged woman. If I am to be a Thing, think I should like that Thing rather better than the other.

Because You're Worth It

Phil Beadle is very cross. Last week on Can't Read, Can't Write, he was cross because he attended a lesson for English as an Additional Language, and found it boring. He felt the learners weren't learning anything. The woman who ran the course pointed out that they had results which suggested they did. Mr Beadle went off and smouldered.

Then he attempted to teach his adults and I became very cross. I became cross with his insistence that the school system has exclusively failed these people. Maybe it has failed some of them. But not Linda. Linda is old (46) and she is by turns truculent and weepy. Linda is the kind of person who, when she finally learns to read, complains that the world is full of words and she can't shut them out. Linda is a pain in the arse.

Phil spends the first episode dancing around Linda like a lovesick schoolboy. He gives her special learning tools - albeit pipecleaners - and tells her that her "barriers to learning" are not in her, but in the way she's taught. There are only nine people in the class, and yet Linda is getting taught on her own. In the second episode, Phil attempts to explain commas in a traditional "chalk and talk" sesh, and, rude as usual, Linda first interrupts and barracks the lesson, and then storms out to the accompaniment of Phil saying he's pissed off with "this" (which I took to be her behaviour). This viewer very much concurred.

When he visits her and eats humble pie she tells him that she lost all respect for him when he did that, as he should be the adult. It seems to have escaped Linda's notice that, at 46, (older than her teacher), she has long left behind the privileges of childhood. Being a learner does not mean you are supposed to be a social or emotional child, or a rude shithead. Still, what does it matter, as a calligrapher was despatched to help Linda at home, and a lesson of spacehoppers planned for her greater engagement.

Meanwhile, James, 28, whose mother won't help him and who has taken sick days off with stress about his failure to do his homework, is still sitting in his corner feeling confused. Because he is not a shit.

This is one of the things that pisses me off about the education system in this land; pains in the arse get more attention. Poor behaviour and vile manners are consistently rewarded. And this begs the question, well, are they worth it? I think not. Some people are just difficult and selfish, and as children they crap all over the learning of their classmates, and as adults they turn into self-righteous souls whose fault it never is. Treating them like little nuggets of gold does nobody any favours except them. Others, like James, make no trouble, and are marginalised and ignored as a result. Look who isn't learning.

I know that this is perilously close to talking about the "undeserving poor", but some people choose to be horrid, and why anybody owes them anything is beyond me. Teach the nice. The selfish should be sent off to think on their sins. Because if we have 5 million functionally illiterate people, and some are slow and some are just a pain in the arse, the odds are the slow ones are being held back, and the teacher driven to nervous breakdown, by the mouthy selfish ones (who are ALWAYS in a numerical minority, in my experience.)

And who's worth it? The utilitarian answer is surely to teach those who are willing to try and not those who aren't. Looking at Linda, it seems all they want is a wider consumer choice of grievance, and surely that they will find with or without education.


For further information - the link below deals with Euro-wide illiteracy. Quake with fear, Eurolings.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/feb/19/furthereducation.uk1

Love on a Knife Edge

This week I am besotted with Sweeney Todd - the film rather than the man, so you may relax; I shall not be going to get my legs shaved and returning legless below the knee, pursued by a short lady selling foot-burgers. ("Eat your own legs, Mrs?") Good thing too, for doubtless I would be quite unable to evade her, in my new semi-pinless state.


Anyway, it's been a long week of repeated viewings, because it's an admirable hairpiece. Of course it's pretty - it's Tim Burton - but it's also mordantly funny, with wit and a perfectly plotted tragic structure.

I myself think Mr Todd is much misunderstood; after all, he has had to put up with his own kidnapping as well as that of his nearest and dearest, false charges and imprisonment, deportation, the rape of his wife by the judge who framed him, and the fifteen year imprisonment of his daughter by said judge to boot. Obviously the whole family are quite mad, but encountering the moustache-twirling Judge Turpin would drive anybody to the edge. Much to my regret Mr Rickman did not sing in Latin about how bad he feels for letching after his ward while oggling her through a peephole in the wall, wanking and beating himself with a frayed and knotted rope - which I would have paid good money to see. (It's apparently in the original; I did not come up with that fine orchestration myself. Maybe I shall just pay good money to the New York Metropolitan Opera to see somebody else do it sometime. It's in the repertory.)


Unfairly, he metes out the same punishment to all; the innocent, the guilty of some small untruths, or the guilty as Judge Turpin, and this makes me feel a bit sad - although also shriek with demonic larffter as he does a lot of it while singing wistfully about how he misses his daughter.


And here is the true greatness of the piece; it is unreal. Some very serious things have been written about Sweeney and capitalism, social mobility and his failure to address his problems in a mature and 21st century way ("He has choices"). These rather miss the point. All very well to gloat on about how capitalism encourages people to poo on the heads of others, but it misses the point of what it does - which is tragedy. With a lot of dark comedy and sung counterpoint on the way. Really, you should see it.

This week has also been notable for its lack of Getting Out Of Bed and Getting On With It, so I am posting this just to prove to myself I'm still here. Apologies if it's rather pedestrian.

The Wrong Pants

Okay, anybody who Really Cares about sport is a bit nuts and probably a prey to their hormones (ie testosterone) because none of it actually matters one iota. Still, for the last week of June and the first of July in England, a lot of the population is nuts, and for once, including me. So I have something to say about the tennis.

I have watched Wimbledon with various levels of fervour ever since I was ten years old, when I went to tea with a girl so cool her television-making mum let her have people over with nobody else in, and we ate cucumber spread on white bread and watched tennis with the wonder of children still enraptured by the glory that was colour television, and the heady sense of adulthood that lone tea and tv inspired. I treasured the wins of Boris Becker, yawned and switched over from Pete Sampras, and fell asleep during Edberg; and for the last few years I have squeaked "Too good!" in chorus with commentators during many a Federer rally.

Federer is a funny faced little thing, with his squashy nose and hiding teeth, but I have warmed to him over the years - in spite of his tedious consistency - for two reasons. Firstly, he is invariably one of the gracious and the generous. It's hard to watch a Federer match without disquisitions on his charitable work (presumably to reclaim his reputation as he straight-set -squashes opponents on-court like so many flies). In interview he is polite and rather dull. He sets a good example for sportspeople, many of whom behave extremely badly - in some cases to the extent of sexual and physical assault. Not so Mr Roger. His recreations are mainly buying lovely new suits. Who doesn't love a man with nothing to prove?

Secondly because he is not only a brilliant placer of the ball - someone who can create beautifully unreturnable shots, exquisitely placed in the corner or on the line, who can move about and return shots that lesser players wave to as they go by, who can surprise the viewer with his ability to out-think somebody sitting on a sofa and find the time to do it - but because he moves with such elegance. He is a big teddy bear type bloke with a lot of body fur, but when he plays a backhand, he adopts a pose famous mainly in ballet (an attitude) and sculptures of Eros or Cupid. Ridiculously but truly, he is graceful.

For these reasons, I can forgive him an awful lot. And on finals day, he graciously wore white underwear, which was a relief. Nadal always does, but he is troubled by his mighty muscular beefcake bottom. He is a bull of a boy, with an arse too powerful to be comfortable in its trowsis, and the amount of time he spends picking his Nike plus fours out of his bumcrack beggars belief and sometimes holds up play. If I were Nike, I would be busy redesigning his shorts, but to be fair, his pants are serious and appear to be about the same size as your average Spanx Magic Knickers. Maybe they were magic, too, while plainly Mr F was not wearing his lucky pants. We saw them in earlier rounds, and they aren't white. Nuff said.

Which brings us to the deep disappointment of his loss yesterday. I accept that he would have to lose sometime, and there would be no other giant killer than Rafael Nadal - likewise a poster boy for good manners and charming behaviour, clearly the perfect escort for Miss Robson to the Champions' Dinner UNLIKE SAFIN WHO IS 28 DAMMIT - who could bring him down. I also accept that Rafael Nadal, who has been writing a delightful blog for the Times Online this year, in which his Home-Loving Charm has been on daily view, is probably a relatively nice person to be beaten by, and that the crowd just adore him. He is young, devoted to his family, works as hard as nails, and he deserves his victory; but I was not impressed by his fans' behaviour yesterday.

Federer actually blew the match by not challenging a couple of bad calls at psychologically key moments, and by dumping many many balls in the net, which he does not usually do. To some extent this was as much a match lost by Federer as won by Nadal. But he cannot have been assisted by the untimely shrieks of "Come on!" to Nadal in mid-stroke, or the calling of "Out!" during rallies. If the spectators can't behave, they can watch on telly.

I also didn't like the chanting of "Rafa! Rafa!" between points. For the first time, I felt the crowd at Wimbledon was ungentlemanly. I felt it a bit during Murray's matches, but frankly the Brits need all the help they can get, and since there is no prospect of them blundering into a final, it seems less important. (One hopes the will French shriek for M Gasquet at least as loudly should a re-match occur at Roland Garros.) Still - there is no need for it to turn into football. One should watch the tennis, as much as enjoying supporting the players. Especially when I (alone) am in a proper English manner supporting the underdog, without the aid of lucky pants.

Who Knows?

I am not enjoying the Three Part Finale bit of Dr Who as much as I have some of the heretofore. I wasn't even before I started fretting about the possible loss of David Tennant. I recognised its general slide in the his'n'hers episodes. The Doctor Alone episode was pretty good, but Donna's was quite a load of old poo poo. It was riddled with inconsistencies and liberal pseudo-political nonsense. It felt like Torchwooden.

And now all those Extra Characters invented for spin-offs have resurrected themselves and are running about Saturday PrimeTime like they have a right. We're all Extra Glad Owen and Tosh bought it at the end of Torchwood now. But still - have to put up with Wooden Faced Gwen and Scared Face Martha and monkey muzzled sex dwarfette Rose, whom I continue to loathe, even now she has been improved by the addition of a very big gun. She blew the head off a dalek, mind, and one feels a sneaking admiration for anybody who does that - allied to an indignant wish to know why she hasn't brought more of this fine arsenal to Arm The Whole Human Race. When she isn't atomising daleks or worrying about the end of the universe, she takes time out to scare off looters - it's all about priorities and compromise. I can't warm to her.

Fortunately, I have been happily engaged with Criminal Justice this week. I am pleased to note that some idiot high up in the legal profession is Very Upset by it, which proves that he does not have enough to do, and that the writer is doing something right. How ridiculous, to be upset by a bit of grainily lit telly. Thought Judges were clever - my mistake. Of course it's not an accurate depiction of everyday life in the legal system; it's drama. Entertainment. BBC1 at 9 o'clock for heaven's sake. Does the man think that Holby City is a transcript of a day in a hospital, or Hotel Babylon a true reflection of the hospitality industry? Ridiculous Gudgeon.

The most amusing thing about it all is Ben's runaway success with the Laydeez - more impressive with his current tootsie defending him against accusations of the last one's murder. Ben Whishaw is a very good pick for a lead, because where most of the leads one sees are so breathtakingly beautiful that it's like looking at an Armani suit - you know you'll never bring yourself to pay a four figure sum for it, and half the wonder is that you can never have it - Whishaw is more Miss Selfridge than Miss Dior, and you are pretty sure you could find one of those on the high street - or the pub - for three pints and a packet of jelly babies.

Don't know you'd want to take him home, mind.

Ennobling Stuff

Last night I was privileged to see Lord Levy expatiating on why Gordon Brown should not be PM. I can think of lots and lots of reasons, but none would co-incide with Lord Levy's. His objection to GB appears to be that he hasn't any rich friends.

It was a fascinatingly nasty thesis, and what made it even more compelling was that it had not crossed its exponent's mind that having rich friends - even if a true sine qua non for power - is not a proper basis for power in a democratic society. That Tony has left, taking his rich friends with him doesn't alter his successor's right to be PM. And Lord Levy - a man without democratic mandate of any kind - should put up or shut up. I take it that he is free to take his money away, now that he has got his title. Perhaps he is peeved that some of his mates can't buy one; this is the only interpretation I can put on his objection to the PM's "not having rich friends of his own."

Nobody outside the Labour Party gives a shit that it is £20 million in debt. Although given what GB has done to the country in terms of evil PFS buildings, it is no surprise, it just doesn't matter to anybody but the labour party. People like Wilde and Sheridan made a career out of being fabulously broke, and I personally think that the ruling party going into bankruptcy would be edge-of-the-seat stuff. Rock on, I say.

True Love

Appallingly, I have a crush on somebody called Giles. I know what you are thinking. You are thinking firstly, Bold Move, Krenzle; for all the Gileses you know are even now upping their Yurts and trundling off to Outer Mongolia as fast as their 4X4s will carry them. And secondly you are thinking, Giles Who? Nobody is called Giles. Foden? Brandreth? By all that's holy pray not. Don't be so silly; Giles Coren of course.


Of course, for he is short and kinda sorta fubsy and sports some serious facial fungus. It is all quite perfect, for I could never smooch a somebody beardy. It hurts. I had one mate at University who had very soft and furry designer stubble, but he was exceptional - and looking at Giles Coren, one just knows that his beardiness is scratchy, just like you know about suralun's. Another mate - this one female with the soft beardless skin that that so frequently implies - has a husband of a bearded type, and her face is always reddened and rough around her mouth and chin. "Chronic beard-burn," she explains.

But he bounces about being full of beans and any other nosh he can neck, having far too much energy and eating - really - like a stevedore. Also I think he is really REALLY cocky. Together with his constant limited flirtation with Sue Perkins I find that very comforting.

However, there is no need to stop at Giles Coren - not for me, at least - for it is summer now, and Wimbledon is here, with the great joy that is the international tennis circuit. WONDER at The Great British Hope's hopeless haircut, as he has a wedge at the back and an outgrown flat top at the front. GAWP at the Returning Champion's continuing passion for dark coloured underwear in defiance of the transparent combi of Wimbledon's all white dress code and sweating 2 buckets per hour. LAUGH at the ridiculous behaviour of all and sundry when they are surprised by any form of weather - newspaper hats on hot days, expressions of continuing surprise on rainy ones. I love the summer.

Another way I can tell it's summer is I'm so easily pleased. Everything is great. I like Doctor Who, I can't get over how much I enjoyed a DVD about a pig-faced girl, and indeed another about a group of Americans reading Jane Austen. Must be the Vitamin D. I am even pleased by my friend's choice of name for her new daughter*; just love the summer. Even when it rains.

* Penelope, Jane Austen Book Club, Sasha

Left Hand, Right Hand

I see there is famine in Ethiopia again. I see this largely because the tv is awash with children in dire need of food, but also because I have started receiving the emails from Concern International, which I get whenever some new crisis pitches up (about once every six weeks or so.) Sometimes I feel there is a point to giving - apparently £50 can buy a whole load of Plumpynut (yes it really is called that - hi-energy nosh for malnourished people). Clearly money well spent (unlike on the Myanmar crisis, where none of the aid was allowed in.) This makes me feel Extremely Guilty about even contemplating the purchase of, for instance, £30 worth of skincare, let alone frittering another £20 on re-rooting Sindy dolls.

However, I do not particularly favour Concern International, and this is why. In the first place, there is the issue of their paying £1000 a day for "consultancy" services. Nobody is worth that much, and I suspect that anybody who earns that much can afford to donate their time for nothing. It also smacks of imposing the Will of the Developed, which always makes me antsy. Having worked with people myself, I am aware that many of them need stuff imposed for their own or their community's good, but it still makes me nervous.

Secondly, Concern do not provide you with the biggest bang for your charitable buck. My faves are Unicef, because they send Happy Stories and pictures of Saved Children Smiling. I know this is shallow but frankly it is also what you want. Concern just carries on finding more and more things wrong with the world and it just makes me DESPERATE. I feel I should sell my house and go and live in a poor place and catch something nasty - which I don't plan on doing, so that the only net result is I feel guilty and resentful.

Resentment, I find, does not encourage generosity. It just means you sit about thinking THERE IS NOTHING TO BE DONE IT IS ALL HOPELESS.


When we come to my great question about charitable giving - how much is enough? A fixed amount? A percentage of your income? Take home or net? Enough to feed your proportion of the LDC population? More, because I am still working and there won't be much to be got from me when I'm living off Mr Brown's 2p a year pension (in a boat due to global warming. Or an upturned umbrella if I can't afford a boat.) ? Apart from more than we are currently sending, how much is enough? Is it measured by what you can afford, or what is needed, or what makes a difference?

Every time I see a Judge on television I have other thoughts about charity; namely that I would happily stump up a few quid a month to sponsor sharp but poor women with a bit of nous and a sense of justice (although The Word is, that this lack of women QCs is due to the age of the Bench, and the number of women employed as barristers 40 years ago. So maybe I should be agitating for a Compulsory Retirement Age for the old codger QCs.)

I am genuinely curious about whether anybody has any answers. Just enough to assuage my guilt would be fine, if only somebody would tell me how much that is and where it should go.

I look forward to hearing from you.

The Hireling

Many features of the final of The Apprentice are just too heart-warming to be passed over without a little gloat.

It was so very pleasing to see the dream team of Alex and Helene squabble and bicker and point fingers at each other throughout, and highly entertaining to see them ably "assisted" by Kevin. Between explaining how unjust it was that he had been dismissed so early and hadn't won it, he crept round Alex like a cut-price fight fixer, bigging him up and dissing Helene. Having chosen the cherub-faced toxic-bar for their team, there was little Alex could say. Last week Nick described him as "subtle", which I take it is Management Speak for sly and untrustworthy, so he probably didn't want to say anything anyway. That really reduces your chances of successful slyness and untrustworthiness.

After a nail-biting middle portion of show where I gloomily assumed that Glum Helene and Creepy Alex were doomed to success, for the designer had suggested a brilliant (though blatantly expensive) bottle, and it looked like this would swing it for them, hurrah! it was a total fix and the others won. I did wonder what Helene meant when she said she was glad to be working with Alex - was she looking forward to blaming him when they failed (as she did, looking satisfied for the first time in the show)? Or was it that she was too stupid to realise that she and Alex were by some margin the weaker candidates - those who had signally failed throughout to show any real ability? A woman keener on the Good Excuse than the Good Winning, I sagely concluded.

And then Alex wept in the back of the taxi. I found this made me like him for the first moment ever. Clearly still a prize prick, as soon as he cried, I decided maybe he was not all bad. He was back on form on "You're Fired" through, and I remembered I should know better. He was given a pink hairbrush that tells him how lovely his hair is, in many different phrases. The perfect gift, and I was surprised he could resist giving it a go immediately. He should just love it. And deep down, I do like the vainglorious dorks to be happy.

Viva Lucinda!

Time for all good chaps to stand up and say, hurrah that Lucinda won't be Surulun's Apprentice!

We are all too prone to wish for our favourite characters to "win" on tv contest shows, but the truth about The Apprentice is that the prize is one anybody with the full complement of marbles would pay good money to avoid.

Work in a shabby office in Brentwood? With a grumpy little scratchy faced gremlin shouting and harumphing at you? Having to wear ugly clothes and have people say horrible personal remarks to you? For a salary cut? Why would Lucinda want any such prize? Why would anybody?

This probably accounts for the overall repulsiveness of the candidates on the show. Anybody who would want to work in such conditions is clearly wanting in either imagination or common sense - and neither type is somebody you'd miss much down the pub. Or in the office, come to that. Lucinda was too polite and too clever and too amusingly dressed to be part of the gruff little gremlin's business empire. I wish her well, and couldn't combine that with wishing her Viglen. Two of the remaining candidates are quite hideous in terms of morals and manners, and they richly deserve it. They are also eye-poppingly incompetent and cannot identify good practice when they see it. Quick! to Brentwood with them!

All good people say amen.


NEVER FORGET

I just accidentally caught Take That in concert on T4. It was amazing. Gary Barlow sounds exactly like a Alex from A Clockwork Orange - it's like the character has been reincarnated as a Butlin's Redcoat. And I have never seen four people work so hard in my life. Mr Barlow is nearly not a Suet Pudding Boy any longer; though Mark Owen can still find an inch to pinch, it is on Mr Barlow's bum, where anybody should be a bit squodgy.

Jason Orange and Howard did pole-dancing, which was frankly terrifying. It explained exactly why no woman frequents such clubs, as did the remainder of the number where the ladies wore the silver jackets (though disappointingly not the trowsis) and the lads did the lap dancing. Any man opening a club for the ladies' market runs the risks of instance arrest for what looks like some sort of shape-up-and-sexually-harass to music class.

Then they all stood on a piano and made the audience sing, Gary Barlow terrifying people into acquiescence with his bizarre Malcolm McDowall channelling and Howard skipping about like a loose-limbed 6 and a half foot puppet. He's the scariest one to have on your lap.

Gutted I didn't go now.

Euro-Schmeuro: Time To Go

Today the sun for sorrow dares not show its head; rain is thrown down in skyfulls upon the grateful green and ungrateful populace of this grassy isle, and I am through with Eurovision.

Even Terry Wogan is wondering if he's through with it, and that's got to be a sign.

It is time to say something about Eastern Europe, and here it is; we have had nothing in common with them for the last millennium, and now it is time to Cut Them Loose. There are people in the UK from abroad with whom we have much in common - in particular a history of colonisation -and to these people our loyalties are due. But Eastern Europe - land of snow, pogroms and heavy embroidery - has very little common history with the UK. As its Eurovision voting shows.

I found the whole fiasco this year almost creepily all-white and largely all-shite. Apart from Bjorn giving the votes from Sweden - barely legal, nervous as a Herbert Lom in a Fritz Lang classic and blatantly liquored up, giggling "yes it's true" after delivering himself of the "dix points" score - I didn't enjoy much of it, although the French entry fascinated me. We come in for a lot of stick on the continent (apparently) for Not Taking It Seriously. Well, if having four female backing singers in false beards and taches and a singer arriving in a tiny car sucking helium out of a globe beach ball is taking it seriously we certainly have some way to go. AND YET the French got a good deal more than 14 points.

We came - for anybody who doesn't know - joint bottom with Poland and Germany, each with 14 points out of a possible 2494. We should have a Little Chat with Germany. When there are about 50 countries in a competition and we (Germany, France, Spain and the UK) pay 40% of the cost, we should be looking into whether we can get better value for money out of withdrawing and spending the money elsewhere, because paying through the nose for the Barefoot Russian narcissist is not a good return on any investment. (He's cross-eyed for crying out loud. What is it with cross-eyed men that in the first place they consider themselves sexy and in the second anybody agrees? Nobody thought Bjorn Borg was sexy. The world was a lot more sensible in the seventies.)

So - time to turn the whole thing over to Simon Cowell. Let us put Eurovision off onto some oblique rubbishy channel and invite our mates whom we fight with (ie our Euro-neighbours) to put forth their best for Westeuro Idol or The EU's Got Talent. The important thing is A Local Squabble for Local People. The French, Germans, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese all have hideously embarrassing colonial histories and a corresponding tolerance of different coloured skin and cultural diversity as part of their emergent new-world identities. Eastern Europe have the bitching of the Balkans and the Coalition of CUBR (Countries that Used to Be Russia); we should have our own CUBE (Countries that Used to Be Empires) because damn we are different.

Sod it, we should have A Song for the Western Europe and its Ex-Colonies (Russia does - and we pay for it) - think how funky that would be - it is time to line up with who we actually have something in common with.

No Tea one, Karma nil

Well, it's been a month - moreorless - and I have not been visited by the migraine goblins, so perhaps the no tea has something to be said for it. More shockingly, I have not missed it at all, partly because I have discovered liquorice tea, which I think is better than anything else anyway. It is made by UK Yogis in response to the horror of teaching Yoga in the West. Drink the tea, skip the lotus position. It has cute little "thoughts for the day" on the tags. And I think that's cute.

Meanwhile, the Karma email has been a complete sell. I have not got a job, or a boyfriend, or a social life, and I have failed my standardisation for SATs marking; to say nothing of a massive humanitarian disaster in Myanmar, which is not something I hoped for. There may be spiritual forces at work in the world, but I am not convinced they are at the beck and call of humans. If they were life would be a damn sight easier, and I would have achieved world domination/peace/justice from my seedy old armchair while watching Nancyvision.

ENDANGERED NANCYS

This week's endangered were Niamh and Ashley, and the red headed Scot got the chop - not very surprisingly, as ALW has never liked her. I like Jessie less and less as the weeks pass and I have to watch her galumphing about in nasty emerald-hued satin nighties. She no longer seems coltish to me now, she seems more like a slightly small heifer. When she dashes off stage right after being told "YOU could still be Nancy" you can feel the boards shake under the hefty hammering of her hobnailed booties. God knows what it's like having her in a small space. Will nobody rid us of this curly turbulence? quoth Kerensa the Good. And the answer is, probably not, for Andrew is desperate for her to win. I am desperate for Jodie or Rachel to win, which is of course the kiss of death.

THE APPRENTICE

Kill! Kill! This series is quite perfect because so many of them are so horrid, that it's just a statistical likelihood that somebody you loathe will get the boot on any given show. On the other hand, the number of nice candidates (Lucinda and Sara) is so limited, that two weeks could put paid to the need to watch at all. Win win really.

An A to Z of the Sad State of Us

I saw Boy A last night and now I can't get the damn thing out of my head. (Readers of a sensitive disposition stop now.)

It concerns the release after detention of a young man who was imprisoned as a child for the killing - with another boy - of another child; in this case it's a girl of about their own age, but otherwise the situation clearly parallells the killing of Jamie Bulger.

The point about Boy A is that he has grown up a decent hardworking well-intentioned lad, burdened with guilt and fear about his past, but apparently exemplary in his present. This, too, mirrors the Jamie Bulger case.

Where the film is different from most of the press on the case, is that it takes up Boy A's story - we are invited to identify with him, to see his childhood, to sympathise with his rehabilitation and attempts to make a normal life after his release. The press and the legal system notably did not take this line about the perpetrators in reality; in 2001 when the boys came up for parole, there were still numerous calls for them to be "punished" longer, for them never to be released, endless appeals about the feelings of the dead child's mother, endless demands that they should suffer, that revenge should be somehow exacted.

The film is amazing - not because of its perfect script, which actually seemed to me beautiful in scene and dialogue, but flawed in structure, but because of the compelling conviction of both the lead and the director; the viewer is lead to care about Boy A a lot more than s/he does about the vast majority of "good" characters on tv. We see him as a victim as a child and a trier as an adult, and we hope for the best for him. We hope for his salvation; I did, anyway.

The trouble with the film is that it skates over the horror of the original crime, but at the end of it that is still where one's mind returns; to the murder of a two year old which was a bloody, panicky, horrible killing, which nobody stopped, and which afterwards was too awful to accept. What breaks your heart about it is the feeling that it could so easily not have happened. It would have been so easy for somebody to say something, to stop them; it would have been so easy for his mother not to be distracted for that single moment; it would have been so easy, for so long, for them to go back, to leave him at a police station or on somebody's doorstep, and for it to have had another, better ending.

But it happened, and so did the curious response of the UK press and legal system. I call it curious because it is almost unique in the annals of the press that neither the parents of any of the parties nor the social workers were blamed. On this occasion, the two children stood alone. They were tried as adults, though clearly unable to understand much of what was going on - something I believe would be forbidden by European law now - and their identities were made known to the press, although only ten years old at the time. Both boys had a catalogue of victim survival that would make an angel weep, and a probation officer feel no surprise at all. Between them they racked up bullying, school failure, neglect, violence and sexual abuse. The Home Secretary wanted to imprison them for thirty years, in defiance of all legal precedent and guidelines of the time. And 17 years later, people still bay for blood.

And it is because we cannot be free of it. What I remember, what I always remember, is the idea of the last part of Jamie Bulger's life. Not the two years before, when he must have been an ordinary and often happy child, but the awful last afternoon, which replays and which I empathise with so strongly that I imagine his pain and confusion as my own, amplified by my adult, external sympathy, the hope that - like the car keys you just locked in the car, like the dreadful truth you just articulated, like the mistake you knew you were making - the tape will rewind and time will allow this one correction, this one time. And that little boy is gone now; there is no likelihood, in any religion in the world, nor outside of one either, that he can be suffering any longer. It is the living who are trapped in that last corridor of horrible time; it is we who re-live it; strange that we cannot forgive the people who perpetrated it, because surely they are right there as well, only worse, with memory instead of imagination. I suppose we cannot forgive them, because they did it to us; and perhaps we haven't the last quarter inch of generosity to realise truly, in our hearts, that they what they have done to us, they have done to themselves as well.

Good Karma

Somebody sent me a good karma email this week. It is full of good advice and sound wisdom, and apparently the more people you pass it on to, the better your own karma will become. She who sent it to me doesn't understand how it can possibly work, that you get better and better karma as you send it to more people. I don't know why, it makes perfect sense to me. Where it falls down a bit is that claims that all one has ever hoped for will take shape if you send it to fifteen people or more.

Whoever wrote that clearly doesn't know just how hopeful I am. I hope for many things, including an end to the guilt I have to endure when driving my car, solutions to the problem of global warming and peace in our time. And when these problems are solved - along with my more mundane and personal ones, like finding employment and a life partner who lives to clean and encourage, without wishing for payment or even excessive praise - I expect to feel a little sad that I will have saved the world and that nobody will ever know. Except you lot. So when it all starts to go right, remember this and think kindly of me.

The High Price of Tea

I have spent the last few days on a Bed of Pain. The bed itself was fine - I have laboured long and hard to make sure that I have the most comfortable bed in the world - but I was languishing in Pain on it.

I was Suffering from migraine. Or not, medical opinion varies. It was a one-sided headache which made me feel nauseous, but (on this occasion) without accompanying funny coloured lights (which was a mercy. If somebody had told me when I was eighteen that I would not enjoy free coloured lights with different coloured borders hovering around in the air, I would not have bought it. Life is a very chastening business.) Anyway, my doctor is completely unconvinced and says I suffer from tension headaches, and so I am driven to Home Remedies - depriving myself of tea, coffee, chocolate and cheese. The last three really aren't an issue - I dearly love cheese, but shouldn't eat it anyway because it is implicated in the fact that my cup size has gone up four letters in the last six years, or in other words, it maketh me porky. But tea - crumbs, tea.

My morning pick-me-up, my eleven o'clock shot, my refreshing lunch-time brew and my home-time treat. I am so dull these days I am nearly flawless - and now, my only vice, my favourite fix! to be so cruelly deprived of almost my last remaining pleasure! Two days of moaning into my pillows was enough, though, and now my new vices will be liquorice and orange teas - and possibly, later in the month, peony and other weird flavours. Four weeks without tea; can this be sustained without descent into madness? I shall have to see, for I can lose no more of my life to the misery of the migraine if it can be prevented. I have not had a cup of tea since Friday afternoon; three days down and twenty-five to go. Bye bye to tea. Hello to Rude Health.

NANCYLAND

Well, I was wrong - the Nancies had to snog somebody, but it wasn't Capn Jack. Poor guy must be all smooched out from Torchwood. They had to snog a Joseph. He was sweet and didn't mind that Keisha had been eating onions.

Finally said tarah to Tara, who sang rather craply throughout, and then opened her larynx and sang a blinder on her way out. Was she nobbled, I wonder; she was criticized for being "pop-py" - they meant that she sounded like a pop singer, not a red flower - but what she had to sing was "I Can't Live (If Living is Without You)" and "Let's Hear It for the Boy" - the definition of pop. Did she misguidedly choose these songs for herself? I think not - I smell stitch-up here; but then - that would be the all-controlling BBC, the unelected representative of The People and What's Best for Them.

This year's contenders are all excellent singers - the Irish leading the way with three of the final nine, all lookers and two about nineteen. Meanly, I find myself hoping that one of the older ones gets the role - Rachel or Francesca or Sarah, who have been living in London pounding pavements and going to auditions and living off crap jobs for five years - simply because the 17/18/19 year olds have had such an easy time of it so far. Niamh is pleased that she's cooking her own sausages and doing her own laundry - a proper achievement for a 17 year old to pique herself on, but not a life story to make you feel that she's earned a plum role in the West End. As for Jessie, a coltish copper-curl-tossing Irish colleen, it doesn't matter that she can't act for toffee and giggles like an idiot when she has to try, because ALW can barely stay in his seat for praising her. Is he harping on about her accent, which is at least as strong as Simona's? Funny that.

Dr Who was really good. Why it was called "The Fires of Pompeii" instead of "Written in Stone" is anybody's guess, but even through the dark mists of pain I enjoyed it. What splendid fun it is not to have a soupy tweeny girl in lurve with the knobbly kneed doctor, but instead the voluptuous Donna giving voice to More Estuary Indignation at every turn. She even makes him cross, which is fabulous. Loving it loving it loving it.

An End to The Torcher

Torchwood finally bowed out on Friday night - much to our collective relief, no doubt. It was, however, an enjoyable episode, with lots going on, and The Other Coat (Captain John) much in evidence. He blew up lots of bits of Cardiff, gave Jack a ring while burying him alive, and did lots of "business" - actor-speak for picking things up and faffing about with them to indicate mental state or give the audience something to look at. It was all good fun. He also strung Capn Jack up by his arms and didn't support his feet, but Capn Jack refused to be suffocated as he actually would, and continued chatting away like a good'un.

As usual, the best bit was after the show, when the BBC aired "Torchwood Confidential". It is always a tad creepy when the Beeb does its little panegyric love-ins, but TC is so far up its own bottom that it is worth watching just to listen to one's own involuntary yelps of disbelief.

There are No Women on TC. No women apparently write or produce on this show, and the men only communicate by email. Or maybe they pretend only to communicate by email to show the viewing public just how cool and techno-literate they are, because this lot are spods. Not the semi-cool geek-types whose spoddiness is generated by insane intellectual passion rather than social hopelessness, like Gareth "okay, I may be geeky but I have a black Fred Perry polo shirt, you know" Malone off the choir; no, this lot are the more oafish, not-quite-outstanding-at-anything-so-we-hang-round-in-a-gang lot who probably still deal out dirty looks and snide remarks to the true geeks. They are marked out by their love, not for their craft, but for their self-importance. The beating heart, one suspects, of BBC production.

They talk a lot about how "difficult" it is to kill off a character, but what they say doesn't ring true. They don't care about these characters, surely? If they care, why are they so cardboard? And oh good Godfrey Cambridge, there it is. The characters are cardboard because they reflect the production team. No girl would aspire to go out with one, no single individual is permitted self-knowledge by the remainder of the pack, No One Is Greater Than The Show; they are the Stalinist State perfected through the prism of the English Public School System; socio-emotionally and intellectually foetal to a man.

The girls - who front the series - put in an appearance. Apparently the tears Gwen cries in the show "are real tears". Are we supposed to be impressed by this? One is reminded of Laurence Olivier suggesting to a fellow thesp. that he "try acting". The dangers of confusing reality and fantasy are well documented, but here is one of the less publicised ones - that of making fantasy pointless. After all, the art of drama is to fake it.

MEANWHILE ... OVER ON BBC ONE

How I enjoyed Dr Who! I type this with some astonishment, as I didn't enjoy the last series to the point where I couldn't be bothered to watch it. I have intensely disliked both the last two assistants; the worst thing was that they both Loved the Doctor, and that really isn't right, especially when he is David Tennant. No working relationship can survive interplanetary breeding programmes, as evidenced by last night's ep. Happily, Catherine Tate is here, and we are all much happier now.

Catherine Tate is not a creature of heart-stopping beauty. She may have a wealth of auburn hair and eyes you could lose your soul in, but she is also a woman with an unfashionably buxom arse and the accent of true Estuary Outrage. Instead of being a show pony, she is a quick-witted funny feisty woman, who can also act. How on earth did she end up on Dr Who? Let us all praise the Powers That Be, who have sent us a lovely Goddess to use her own wit and elan to rescue us from the tedium of poorly pretended hanky-panky yearning fests that this once-classic show has been in danger of being swallowed by. If the Doctor can avoid being Tinkerbell in a cage needing all the world to believe in fairies, this series could yet be a watchable thing. Yippee!

Branded

By a concatenation of circumstances too complicated to bother with I ended up doing my shop in Tesco's yesterday. Tesco is on my list of Things To Be Avoided If Possible, but it was moderately interesting to be there.

Different supermarkets, I have noticed, do different things well. Sainsbury's, for instance, has reasonable bread (well - the Taste the Difference range) and bagels, and a lime and cannellini bean dip which makes me make Cookie Monster noises of happiness. Tesco cannot bake to save its horrid life. All its bread is dry. I always get Tesco bread home and wonder if it's yesterday's; stale is the norm. Asda bread smells too bad to take into your house. There is Something Nasty going on in the Asda bakery, and I have no desire to find its results loosening my fillings.

Yesterday it also had No Diet Baked Beans In Small Tins. It had own brand, but let's face it, Heinz have some sort of addictive chemical that others don't, and there is no point trying any other brand for baked beans, tomato soup or tomato ketchup. They don't taste the same, and it is like being a cat weaned onto Whiskas who is now being fobbed off with Go-Cat to try. I find this impressive; lots of own brands just aren't worthwhile - Kelloggs, for instance, has no superiority in branflakes or sultana bran, and you may as well buy Generic. However, when it comes to Special K, Kelloggs is somehow - better. It's lighter and less clarty. Eating Special K is just like eating cardboard however you slice it, so this is the lesser of two evils; but isn't it when there are two evils that it matters most to have that tiny margin of increased bearability?

UPDATE:
A couple of days after the No Diet Baked Beans in Tesco debacle, I wended my way to Waitrose (accompanying my sister, who is too delicate for Tesco). It was a scene of nearly sylvan delightfulness. The aisles of Waitrose are staffed by teenagers of delicate beauty and low plummy accents, the tills by women of a tad more experience but similarly RP accents. Nobody shouts or blocks your way by gathering in mighty legions of the supermarket-uniformed with loading pallets in a circle between you and the milk. Not only did it have Diet Baked Beans, it has cheaper sun dried tomatoes than Sainsbury's and sweet chestnut spread. And its own brand food tastes like food.

And the moral of this is, you should not go to Tesco, where £1 in every £8 is spent. You should support your local Waitrose. Use it or lose it. Because if they fall by the wayside, where will you be able to get a pint of milk safe in the knowledge that you will never run into anybody you know ever?

Too Late ...

Torchwood may be improving, but its credibility is being hopelessly undermined by Capn Jack's parallel universe existence as Judge John on I'd Do Anything. I am hopelessly ashamed of myself - as is so often the case when I admit to my preferred telly viewing - but already I am doomed to be drawn more and more into I'd Do Anything. It is the inevitable attraction of opposites: belonging to the humanoid sub-genus "I'd do nothing under any circumstances including probably the threat of death by encroaching natural disaster bar make a last cup of tea", I am magnetically attracted to the stories of those best described as the sub-genus "those who can be a little bit arsed" and mesmerised by "those who'd do anything".

Although loathing Andrew Lloyd Webber with a fixed and beady hardness which he has done nothing much except appear on my telly to deserve, I suffered similarly during How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria. I grew increasingly fixated on the Romanian Maria who was unsuitable but could sing circles round any of the others. Blatantly bloody scary, having survived a post-Soviet hell-dimension and escaped, she had neither the accent nor the softness to play a singing ninny-nunny-nanny type, but how could you not admire her sheer flinty determination? You weren't given much of a choice; it was a total fix for Connie from the get-go - see Krenztvs passim on anti-democracy in vote-in shows on the BBC. ALW got to choose. Sometimes he chose crapcakes candidates to make sure Connie wouldn't have any competition. One suspects that the reason the BBC promotes Comic and Sport Relief so enthusiastically is that the public phone in money which is then spent without the smallest reference to the donors, and nothing gets the BBC hot like money whose destination they choose. I'm not suggesting they embezzle it, just that they love to be the Power who picks what's worthwhile and what isn't.

I couldn't watch Joseph because it made me feel ill. I was unable to fancy ANY of them, and I didn't go much on the Judges' opinions of good singing voices either, because they all seemed to me to have trained in the Tinny and Nasal School of Song - you know, We'll Make You Sound Like a Calling Kitten OR YOUR MONEY BACK!

But Nancy and Oliver - what more heady cocktail could the BBC offer? Girls with tragic stories (and only one, disapproving Daddy between them) and big eyed boy children with perfect skin and unbroken voices (every single one with a Very Supportive Daddy); the whole thing is a festival of camp that only the hardest heart could refuse.

Over the coming weeks, the many, many sad stories of these girls' lives will be put to the test; their poverty, lack of opportunity and struggles against adversity explored, explained and subjected to the public vote, until one girl, who may or may not seem to be the best at singing, acting or dancing (but who will at some stage be called upon to smooch Capn Jack, mark my words gentle reader) will be crowned Queen of the Nancies. It's ten weeks of utter bliss.

White Nights & Secret Histories

As part of the BBC season about white Britain, there was a "re-evaluation" of Enoch Powell's famous "rivers of blood" speech last Friday. The history of the late sixties and early seventies alone made an interesting programme, its claim to "re-evaluate" the speech still more so. The speech remains one of the most mis-quoted in recent history, because like all great quotes, the man never actually said it - and this seemed to be the key point. Enoch Powell never said it. In a subsequent telly outing, he defined his terms very clearly, explaining that he did not see people as different because of their colour, but because of their culture.

The programme seemed to seek to make him directly responsible for a failed policy of multiculturalism, precisely because he had opposed and, worse, sought to open a debate about it. Apparently neither the media coverage, nor the internal politics of his party, nor the fears of the native working class at the start of an economically wobbly period were in any way to blame. Well done them, eh?

The mob loved him, and the mob in this case were Alabama via Huddersfield, but Enoch Powell had not taught them this. I suggest anybody who thinks the British Empire did not deliberately make the British people very racist indeed, by calculated campaigns of indoctrination to justify itself, consciously "stepped up" on the arrival of emigrants from the West Indies after the war, is a lazy and partial historian. Enoch Powell's language was indubitably racistand ugly, and its emotive nature actually damaged his case, because it allowed the debate to be stifled and obscured by the opposition, who seized on it to make him seem inhumane and dangerous. One should beware people who issue warnings about other people's faults; we see the faults in others we most abhor in ourselves.

Enoch Powell looked dangerous. He had the bright piercing blue eyes of an out-and-out maniac. You would not wish to be trapped in a lift with Enoch Powell and that piercing gaze. He looked like he might laser you in two with it if you disagreed with him. But his real misfortune was that he was intelligent and educated. He thought that politicians could talk about issues like grown up people, and that things could be discussed, and who knows, even retracted if they seemed to have been taken the wrong way, or to have suggested something mistaken or not-thought-through. Enoch Powell believed in freedom of speech, and that is, indeed, very dangerous - for politicians.

For the rest of us, it is important. Debates need to be had. Those who advocate violence to resolve conflict are a problem, but those who think that violence can be avoided when food and space and other good stuff are limited and population is not are idiots. History shows that sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "No! No! I can't hear you!" solves nothing. Politicians have got so mealy-mouthed and wishy washy that nobody addresses how inbred children make up a disproportionate number of those born with disabilities, and teachers are blamed for the kidnap of 13 year old girls by their parents for forced marriage.

The next offering was "The Poles Are Coming!" a hilarious programme which told us all what we already know, the highlight of which for me was the Peterborovian natives explaining over their cans of Stella outside the Unemployment Office that they were desperate for work, but not so desperate they would do any. The work on offer was arduous, cold and grim - vegetable harvesting, and it was a long day. That said, it paid £7 an hour. I know this is not a great deal of money, but seven hours of it would pay more than a week's income support, and that would mean that in the other days of the week, you could easily earn more money than you get on the dole. You would have to earn your rent as well, but that would still mean you would end up with £100 a week in your pocket. Dammit, I bought a house on £7.50 an hour.

This fits in with My Mighty Question: if we have migrants finding jobs, why are we paying able bodied homegrown couch potatoes to sit around on the dole? I want to know.

I'm also quite interested in how come all these foreign workers - who are surely paying tax - are such a strain on resources. Where is all that income tax going? Or have the government lost that as well? Oh look, there's the problem! Not the migrants, but the crapsticks administration who don't know they are there because they don't keep records at passport control or at the Tax Office. William the Conqueror would never have run the country like this.

Back with Enoch Powell and voluntary repatriation, I felt that the Czech sleeping under a bush, and the Poles who spoke of people who "couldn't come back" might not have found that as racist a policy as all that.

Eurovisual

I have a sneaking regard for the Eurovision Song Contest. It is rather like one's parents' stories about the war; having found them tedious and annoying for the first thirty years, sometime in your fourth decade you change your mind and decide they are interesting, and social history, and not so much justification for homicide as they once seemed.

However, unlike your parents' stories about the war, Eurovision has actually changed. And with every passing year it becomes more camp, more bizarre, and more incomprehensible.

It has long been hard to understand by what criterion Israel is part of Europe. Indeed, my understanding of Israel was that it was created by people who needed to escape Europe, so even its desire to be involved is pretty baffling. Geographically (which is often how countries are defined) Israel appears to be in Northern Africa or the Middle East. Really not Europe. Yet there they are, upon occasion even there they are winning. Strange.

Less strange but more annoying, is the addition of every tiny country which used to be in Russia and now wants to be in the EU. Again, this is all very bizarre - they made a great deal of fuss about not being in Russia, but five minutes out and they want to join another pan-European community. It makes little if any sense. If they think Brussels is going to allow them their own sense of individual nationalism, they clearly haven't yet been through the designated food definition laws which have got the English Press so aeriated so often in the last 35 years. If they think Brussels is going to dole out the profits of capitalism so as to help them to catch up to the West, they must think that Western Europe has no sense of self-preservation or self-promotion, which is not a conclusion history would necessarily lead to.

However, this would not matter if they weren't busily voting tactically in the Eurovision Song Contest that it has become practically a foregone conclusion that a) an Eastern European former Communist State will win and b) nobody West of the Iron Curtain will get a look-in.

This fills my soul with dark inchoate rage.

Let us for a moment discuss the music. The music was - throughout one's childhood - nearly uniformly awful, but the songs that won were sometimes quite perky little pop songs. The point was that there was always one song that was okay - and this all-right-tune, regardless of the petty politics of Malta and Spain and Certain Other Countries always voting for each other, won. It was the law.

Now, however, there is far too much politics. And it isn't right. Primarily because it strips us of even a remote chance of winning - worse, of a remote chance of making a decent showing on the score board. This flies in the face of all Eurovision tradition; Nul Point throughout is the province of the Scandinavians. But the real problem is not the dodgy tactical voting - although I would like to point out that these people are using the tools of democracy to make a laughing stock of us - no, the real problem is that there are around a million of these itty bitty teeny weeny totty dotty Used-To-Be-In-Russia countries. If you have about ten countries in a contest, then you have a statistical hope of winning every ten years or so. Once you are up to 49 countries - well, you do the sums. I think England should start watching again in about 2046.

When I rule the world, I will fix this in a simple manner, or by making the votes of countries proportionate to their population. Since we have always been - with Germany - the industrial heart of Europe, with the resultantly dense population, and now we have started another wave of immigration, I figure England's will be the only vote worth having. We will once again rule the musical waves and Hurrah for Us. Alternatively, we should start breaking down our countries into smaller components, allowing us to rig the voting. The UK has four parts for a kick off, without getting into the whole question of the Isles of Wight, Scilly and Man, and the Channel Islands. France has Brittany, Spain has Catalonia, and Germany could claim to be about five countries right off the bat.

The Eurovision Contest, however, has another plan. This year there will be not one but TWO semi-finals. This will bring a certain result, which is - all Western Europe will be out before the final. Western Europe will then not watch the final in droves. Eastern Europe - which uses the Contest primarily as a platform for national advertising for tourism etc - will have lost their target audience and be Annoyed. And next year, I suppose the Contest Planners hope, one or two of the Westerners will be allowed back in. I don't know that this will work, but I do assume it's their plan. And if it doesn't work - well, who cares? Let's have our own competition; something we do best; something only we Brits can do - live costume drama anybody?

Torchered to Death

It was a big day for Torchwood. Billed by the BBC as "their darkest hour", they were facing up to the fact that Owen was dead. After 5 minutes of screentime and an hour in their world, they had had enough of that facing up to facts malarkey, and Capn Jack went to a church full of snoozing weevils, who kept a Special Glove (twin to Buffy's glove of Mynhegon) which brings people back to life in a biscuit tin under a small avalanche of broken dolls. I was pleased by this detail, and I have started to warm to Torchwood.

Soon Owen was up and running, full of the darkness of death, and acting as a portal for Death Itself. It was very important to the gang to stop Death from claiming thirteen victims. Otherwise Death would walk the earth and his hunger would know no bounds. Many people might point out that Death does walk the earth, and that the idea that he would gain control seems - well, are the Dead going to be more dead after Death comes back? Will there be more of them? It didn't seem to make any sense. Still, it was clearly an important piece of information, since Death bothered to mutter it to himself in a strange Death-language that took the alien technology (everything in Torchwood is done with alien technology, probably including the special effects, meaning there's no need to worry about them taking over the world just yet) several seconds longer than usual to translate. This was just long enough for Tosh to say it wasn't working - she is named after what she talks, and should have whacked the Alien Tech with a human fist before making any such ridiculous claims.

Then Death followed them to a hospital - apparently a work-related decision; maybe Death was feeling too peaky to kill the healthy, though the gang thought it was due to Death's wish to conceal his plan. Shouldn't have possessed Owen and talked to himself in front of the CCTV then. Things carried on making less and less sense until Owen played two-man ring o' roses with Death which despatched it back to the Other Place. Don't ask, I've no idea what it was all about, and neither has anybody else - certainly nobody on the creative side.

Owen being dead is actually a hoot. He can't sleep, shag or drink, and this makes him very sad. However, it does mean it's now safe for him to date the Femme Fatale of the Group - Tosh. They can't have sex, but then none of the women in this show are permitted to do so - only boys, and preferably together.

Anyway, I said it was a big day for Torchwood and so it was - the day we found out whether Capn Jack's omni-sexuality embraced necrophilia. And it turned out it didn't. There are still some places - like Canadians having sex with dead people, or women having sex with anybody at all, that are too dark for even the post-Watershed BBC to go. Thank goodness.

I know it's only me ...

But hell, couldn't Torchwood just try to be something other than a feeble imitation of Buffy?

Bad enough that the episodes are weak re-tellings without the wit and character of the original, but surely they could have changed the titles? "End of Days" and "Sleeper" are both straight steals, and "Something Borrowed" echoes "Something Blue". It's just - depressing, to make so little effort, and insulting to your audience, to assume they won't notice.

Owen is about as dead as I am. Possibly less.

As I say, I'm growing increasingly convinced it's only me...

Intergalactic Austin Powers

Scary episode this week: horrible people chopping up an innocent off-world creature for meat while it was still - quite inexplicably - alive. Gwen's man finding out that she meets her half of the rent by hunting aliens. And Capn Jack Not Getting Any. My he looked hacked off. He emoted teariness, wood-faced fury and ethical dilemma by turns, but we viewers knew that what was really pissing him off was that he had been FORCED to go a whole fifty minutes without a snog.



At one point he had Gwen in a tight-shot up against a tall order, but still she did not dive forward with a small gasp and smother him in a suffocating 90 second screen kiss. I don't know why; he was telling her she couldn't run up to her husband until after he had endangered and/or incriminated himself with the alien-butchers, which was just as alluring as his talk last week on how he was glad he'd left his home planet because he'd seen such amazing stuff, and that earnt him a Random Snog from one of the team. There was neither lead-up to this snog, nor was there any sequel to it; it seems that this is just what happens to any character left alone with Capn Jack. He doesn't care what he snogs or sticks his dick into; far from being an alien, he seems - well, pathologically & superhormonally male. He pretended to cry out of pity for the alien whale, but for my money, when Burn Gorman was struggling with an Acme Comedy Syringe full of Alien Whale Killer (his own invention; three buckets full of which he had cunningly knocked up in two seconds flat from the contents of an Ikea shelving unit full of bottles of coloured liquid, none larger than the average bottle of cough mixture) in a "mercy killing", it was not the continued anguish of being butchered piecemeal that he was rescuing the house-sized mammal from; no indeed, it was the likeliness of a romantic interlude with "Capn Jack".



That man has no more right to that rank than I have. He's so blatantly somebody who's made up an army label for himself so he can impress people who don't know any better. He hasn't even got the knowledge to pretend to a decent rank. Captain indeed. At least Dr Who used to be helped out by a Brigadier - fallen on hard times now. But now, Capn Jack uses his rank to get dates and it's all a very obvious ploy. "I'm a Captain, baby, does it make you horny, baby?" I kept expecting to hear him crooning at the chained leviathan. Or Rhys, whom he was also very tetchy about not getting to snog.



Oh well, there is always next week, when I think it will be Burn Gorman's turn for Capn Jack's attentions. His character should be well up for it. He uses extra terrestrial rohypnol to get relationships; his sexual politics are just exactly the same as Capn Jack's.



Does it make you horny, baby?

Oh, the Shame ...

Once again I am gripped by febrile guilty interest in something I know I shouldn't be watching. This one is called "Vanity Lair" and it is on T4 Sunday at lunchtime (when people of my age should be serving up crispy roasts to ungrateful oiky children of their own genetic stamp.)

There are ten self-selected "beautiful people" who sit around wanting to shag each other in a mild sort of way, but are prevented by their own all-absorbing narcissism, a series of "tests" of their attractiveness, and the fact that each week they have two new auditionees, of whom one will stay, duly choosing who to evict to make room for them. So either they shag everyone or no one.

The show claims it will test "what is most attractive", and advertises a hope that qualities other than the skindeep will emerge victorious. What currently looks like it will emerge victorious is having a penis. Already the group has chosen to take in a man, and he has chosen to evict a woman, leaving the group 6:4 male. The boys and the girls like men - boys because they're the elite, like themselves, girls because they dislike other girls for being shallow and vain, like themselves. Within a very few weeks, that will be a very boy heavy house.


When I first stumbled across it, I thought it was a remake of that film where nobody can leave the dinner party; they are rather creepy. My impression was not altered by the fact that when their faces were tested for symmetry the boy whose face was least symmetrical left the dinner table for the toilet and retched. It was the most extraordinary display of distress. Not for the first time, I wondered if Channel 4 has Gone Too Far. Obviously the person concerned is vapid beyond the wildest wet-dreams of Heat magazine, but the fact that he was genuinely upset fascinated me. He has no sense of self beyond his floppy hair. He doesn't even realise it. I genuinely wondered if he should be on show, because surely believing you are only as good as your hair-do indicates that the balance of your mind is disturbed.

Or maybe it's just me. Maybe I am eccentric because I don't think my value as a human is dependent on the floppiness of my hair. Maybe I shall be watching next week.

Buffy's Still Better

The BBC is making valiant efforts with Torchwood, and one wishes them well. But still, it is important that I let them have some hints about why it is still not as good as Buffy.

1. Characters and Casting

They all look very similar. Owing probably to restricted budget, but possibly restricted acting range, you never get moments when you are oggling a character's face as it emotes Something Important. For some reason, nothing in Torchwood ever seems very important, although often it does look overplayed. It would matter less if they didn't all look the same - a bunch of people in poor light with similar colouring and height. It is NO GOOD having people who look similar on the telly, because it confuses the viewer. I refer Torchwood - and other programmes - to Buffy. Three leads of either sex, all distinctive. The female leads have DIFFERENT COLOUR HAIR and sometimes even different heights. The male leads have DIFFERENT AGES AND COSTUMES AS WELL AS DIFFERENT COLOURED HAIR. And different accents.

I never understand quite why anybody casts similar looking types in the same programme, but the BBC have done it all my life. I suppose it hardly helps that good looking people tend to have regular features, and therefore a tendency to resemble each other. But I still don't believe they're trying. Having carefully cast identical actors, they continue to dress them like two sets of triplets - except for Capn Jack, who has A Coat. He is currently being challenged in Coat Supremacy by Spike from Buffy, who sports The Coat in the Buffyverse. Spike has A New Coat in Torchwood; it is a rather dashing Redcoat in the Hussar style. When it comes down to the Coat Wars, my money is on Spike. He is daringly wearing colour, apart from anything else. Oh yes, and he has that conviction that the rest of the cast lack. Wait and see.

2. Want of Drama

Why is it nothing matters on British TV? Is it to do with our lack of international clout? American TV is full of High Stakes and all that guff. When Torchwood tells me that Cardiff is about to be exploded by nuclear-warhead-wielding aliens, I just don't believe them. What on earth would aliens be up to in Cardiff? Hoping to blend in better because alien accents sound like Welsh ones? Pull the other one. Either they'd be in the middle of nowhere, or the White House. Not the Millennium Stadium. And why blow it up? It's all a bit ho hum.

3. No Relationships

Do they know each other? Really? Crumbs.

Their Hearts Were On The Left

... A quick but baffling reflection on the insanity of language revision ...

I learnt last week that the words "blind" and "deaf" are offensive.

The re-designation of these words as offensive puzzles me. I am plainly missing something. I understand perfectly how a word describing race can be pejorative, but then, there are two major factors contibuting to this. One is that the words follow the act - black people have been systematically denied their rights as well as acknowledgement as human in the eyes of a manufactured hierarchy. This has been a cultural excuse made for an economic and social system of privilege. White people benefited from racism. This doesn't make all white people racist, any more than all white people benefited equally, but it is no good denying that the people who gained were exclusively not black. That was the point. Therefore, the words were part of the problem. If culture is developed in order to justify an injustice, the way words emerge to suggest inequality - how their meaning is skewed or manipulated - is part of that injustice.

In the case of those who are blind or deaf, I fail to understand how society has manipulated these conditions to benefit those who are do not have them. I have never, ever heard anybody use either as an insult. Do sighted people need to belittle the sightless in order to gain? Do they do so? Are blind and/or deaf people discriminated against for reasons that have to do solely with their appearance?

And this brings me to my second point; that the user of racist language was spoilt for choice. There were - and sadly, are - a plethora of racially abusive terms, because racism itself was so pervasive that words were constantly perjorated into abusive terms. But there are no alternative words for blind or for deaf. Neither has ever connoted stupidity or dishonesty or any other bad quality, as far as I know. They exist solely with one meaning.

Furthermore, I discovered that it is not just the words themselves, but any phrase containing them, which Somebody has decided is offensive. The phrase "blind spot", for example, is supposedly offensive to those who cannot see. So presumably, when you are driving and thinking about overtaking and swearing as you bob about like a fishing fly on a stormy pond, trying desperately to check what monster BMW is hoving into range at 100mph, it is offensive to YOU. More true than whoever started this knew.

It seems rather absurd to decide that a word for which no synonym exists is offensive and should be avoided. Perhaps when you need to use the word "blind", you are supposed to shut your eyes and start flailing your arms about and walking into things to convey your meaning? Seems to me that would be an awful lot more offensive than the word.

Who has decided that these words are offensive? Have all the people who are without sight or hearing in any degree been consulted and duly voted? This would seem to me to be a key issue here, as would the degree of sight or hearing impairment from which they suffer. If they aren't actually without sight or hearing, then obviously they have no more right to find these terms offensive than anybody else, as they don't apply to them more than to anybody else. These, my friends, are deep waters.

After reading Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct", I agreed with the theory that language is creolized - ie invented anew for every generation, every group of learners. In a big world, meaning is hard to pin down, when none of us speaks quite the same tongue. I am not sure that that means that it's a good idea to say that only people who have been "re-educated" to say certain words have good hearts. Maybe a little common sense and crediting others with good intentions rather than mean or offensive ones would be a start.