Like life

Sometimes I just want to write.
I don’t know why, but it becomes a sort of irreproachable desire that overwhelms whatever it is I am doing at the particular moment and I want to write. I have hundreds of drafts of random blogs I’ve started when the propensity to sit down at my laptop and arrange thought patterns into words massacres all other modes of thought. And then I get frustrated with the direction the blog takes, knowing it has no real ending, and so I just give up and wallow in languid self pity. I am told this is common for people who enjoy writing. Perfectionism is a fucking bitch. So I thought i’d just write, and see where it leads, and when it ends it ends. And like life It has no overwhelming purpose or meaning, and just imposes itself on those it chooses without aim, quickly forgotten. Bits and pieces imprint themselves on the memory of the back of the darkest reaches of the consciousness, but its essence is always there contributing to what it is (even in the smallest and seemingly insignificant ways) that makes you, you.

I was five when we moved away from Cavendish Road, just off of Saffron Lane. I vividly remember a significant amount of enlightening episodes from before the move. Here are a few:

I remember the fucking horrendous accents – I hate the Leicester accent. I have made a conscious effort over the years to eradicate it from my own speech. If being beaten up badly, and then being spat on as you lay crying in a wrecked ball in a shit filled gutter could be conveyed through an accent, it would be the Leicester accent. It does however provide some beautifully crafted sentences I over hear a lot. Today, in Tesco, a boy on his mobile phone, said “yeah well Josh can suck the fucking piss out of my dirty black nips”. I have never in my life wanted to kill someone for raping the English language, whilst at the same time wanting to worship him as the God of beautiful sentences, so much.

I remember a man being kicked in the face by two other men and then being chased away.

I remember drawing a picture of a boat and my teacher pinning it up on the door of the classroom. I was so proud. But we lived in the social darkness and backwardness of Tory England then, as we do now, and no one told me that pursuing art for art sake is irrelevant in Tory England, we should aim for a life in a call centre instead. Beauty is the destitute office with the distinct smell of printer ink, in Tory England.

I remember adorning myself in Leicester City blue and white and walking down to Filbert Street with my dad, past the rows of cars with Leicester City badges in the windows, and drifting into the wind with the same fans week after week. I was born one year after Gary Lineker moved to Everton from Leicester. The early 90s weren’t the greatest years for Leicester. Though I saw them play in the most exciting Wembley play off final i’ve ever seen, when Swindon Town beat us 4-3 after we went from 3-0 down to 3-3. Steve Thompson was the man on the back of my Leicester shirt that year. The walk to Filbert Street down Saffron Lane was one of the highlights of my childhood. I once saw a man push a grown woman down a flight of stairs of the double decker stand at Filbert Street, she smacked her head and passed out. That wasn’t such a highlight.

I remember my dad and I watching a sunday league football match on Nelson Mandela park, when the ball was manically kicked out of play, and smashed me in the face. The guilty player (who I am adamant even now, should be shot) came over deeply apologetic, and is now one of my dads good mates. My dad befriended my abuser. Thanks dad.

I remember walking downstairs one morning to find our shop had been broken into, the windows smashed, and police talking to my dad. This is pretty normal when you live a few doors in from Saffron Lane. The terraced houses all look the same; the towering army of Edwardian brick chimney tops, street after street. England. But the street is usually full of kids kicking a ball, and old women with nets over their hair for some uninspiring reason. Mrs Spick lived opposite us. I always thought ‘Spick’ was a name that conveyed the feeling of living in cramped streets. She was about 50. I vividly remember the awful smell that emanated from her. She spat when she spoke. Missus Spick spat when she spoke. Oh how the structure of language can disguise the vile essence it is trying to convey. Which leads me onto the next memory.

I remember the day I learnt the word “cunt”. I was 5. I overheard a man on my street call his girlfriend a cunt. We Leicestarians know how to treat our ladies. I didn’t know what it meant, so I thought i’d put this wonderful new addition to my vocabulary to use immediately. My friend who was over with his mum, and I were playing with our wrestling figures. I was Brett Hart, he was Crush. Crush attacked Brett and kicked him across the room. I didn’t hesitate any longer, “you cunt”, I yelled as loud as I could. The helper at our shop overheard me and went insane at me. So I called her a cunt too. I didn’t know what it meant, but the reaction was amazing. One single word could cause an atomic bomb to explode around me? This was like gold dust! Thus began my fascination with the power of language. Word became both exciting, yet largely meaningless and empty. My year 7 English teacher told my parents I would never be a reader and i’d never be a writer. I’ve told this story to a lot of people, because it explains exactly why I struggle at times with my confidence. She used language to convey her stupidity and ignorance and I knew it even back then. Just because I didn’t like Shakespeare, nor her, I was doomed to sit dribbling on myself and getting fat in a dark room with nothing but a TV for entertainment. What a cunt.

I remember cricket. I come from a cricket background. My dad played cricket. He now coaches cricket. He loves cricket. My mum catered for cricket testimonial matches. I could often be found in a hired out old pub, surrounded by people in grey suits talking about who should and shouldn’t make the team. Cricket is an odd game. It is played by kids, coached by the kids grown up, and watched by snobs. The pub rooms and the snobs always smelled of real ale. I can remember the smell so distinctly. Sometimes I miss it. Real ale, and old leather from the seats in the pub rooms. I played cricket for the school for a few years. I was pretty good too. But my god, it’s a boring sport.

I remember being told by our school that we should be careful because there is a man roaming the area trying to take kids by offering them sweets. I have only just learnt that all schools do this every year to teach kids about the risk of paedophiles. But when I was younger, it sounded to me like they were warning us against taking sweets from people. Why would they do that? If someone is offering me sweets, I should say no? Only people who offer kids sweets, want to kill me? All of them? This confusion led me at the age of seven to accuse the shop keeper at the end of the road of trying to take kids, because he sells Snickers. In a shop full of people, me, a kid, accused the shop keeper of being a child molester. Great. Thanks school! Not only did you make me believe I could be Fritzled at any moment, you also ruined the life of the nice corner shop owner. I hope you’re happy with yourselves.

I remember a man a few doors down from us, who was in his 90s and had one leg, the other had been blown off when Saffron Lane was bombed during the war. On the BBC war website, a writer who was eight years old during the war writes:

The worst bomb damage that I saw was in Cavendish Road, on August 21st 1940. I was with my dad in his lorry on the coal wharf at Danvers Road. The air raid siren sounded, it was just after ten o’clock. Dad made me go into an air raid shelter near by, when the all clear sounded, I came out of the shelter and we could see the smoke rising. Dad was worried as it looked to be in the direction of where we lived. He said “come on son we had better go and see if mum is OK”. As we came up the Saffron Lane past the end of Cavendish Road the gas main was blazing and I could see lots of bomb damage, many buildings were in ruins, people were just being rescued with ambulance’s and fire engines all around. This was less than half an hour after the raid. Six people were killed

All I knew from the history of my street, was that it had been destroyed during the war. This one guy in his 90s used to say this his knee in his one remaining leg hurt, and he’s lucky he doesn’t have to deal with pain in the other one. He was fascinating. Here is a picture of the building that got hit. Our place was a few doors up from here:

The houses are pretty much exactly as they were back then. Though, minus that massive gaping hole on the corner.

I remember my primary school teacher had some sort of odd mental breakdown whilst reading a book with me one day, and started to sing “the wheels on the bus” whilst stood on a table. She then collapsed and was taken away by the school nurse and a few teachers. It’s funny because I worried about her. We never saw her at school again. Years later I saw her driving.

End.

The art of being boring

There is a sort of serenity when you realise that you are considered an invariably boring person. You start to appreciate your apparent self deluded sense of sanity and absorb yourself in the wonderment of cynical boringness. I still get a little annoyed and depressed when people call me boring, just for being me, but I am starting to learn to embrace and be proud of it. Let me give you a few examples.

I hate drunk people. Absolutely despise them. I do, and have always considered drinking to excessive amounts, a weakness, and I have no time for it; and not just because when you drink and drive, you ALWAYS run over a horse, as shown in the photo above. I hate how different people become when they drink. I hate that I cannot have a conversation with a drunk person, because it becomes utterly absurd and if I say the wrong thing, that at any other time would not be considered the wrong thing, they suddenly hate me, in their pathetic drunken state, and then I feel guilty, as if i’m the one who is lingering in the wrong. When I finally come to terms with my utter hatred of drunk people, I start to think….. fuck them….. I will ignore them until they apologise for being shit whilst drunk. And if they try to blame their shitness, on alcohol, then I will ignore them further. And it’s absolutely every time I am out with drunk people, that it becomes inevitably negative. I have no positive experiences with alcohol. But, this makes me essentially boring. Being 24 and having an intense hatred of drunkenness does not bode well for my social life. When out surrounded by drunk people, I cannot control the fact that I feel wholly uncomfortable and anxious, as if i’m aware that something negative is going to occur in the very near future. Ironically, the uncomfortable anxious feeling objectifies the negativity that I am waiting to occur. And yet, I like being this way. I don’t want to be a drinker. It doesn’t suit my personality. I’d have to change much of my personality in order to squeeze a tolerance of drunkenness into my psyche. I don’t want to squeeze a tolerance of drunkenness into my psyche. That isn’t to say that I don’t accept that other people enjoy drinking. It’s their decision and if they enjoy it, great. I just don’t enjoy it, and I don’t enjoy being around people who excessively enjoy it. They just work to annoy me.

I do not begrudge people who genuinely love clubbing. Good on them! They have found what it is that makes them happy, that’s great. It just doesn’t make me happy, and certain types of clubbers make me hate it more and more every time I go out. “Omg just enjoy yourself!!“……. no!! I genuinely do not enjoy it. Constantly telling me to lighten up and enjoy something that I don’t enjoy, is so futile, I would rather tell you to be quiet and spend that time banging my face on a nail. It’s like me handing a copy of Camus’ ‘The Outsider’ to a drunk in a nightclub and saying, “here, sit in the corner and just enjoy yourself…. lighten up“. I can’t imagine they’d enjoy it.

Clubbing makes me want to vomit. I enjoy clubbing less than I enjoy being wee’d on by a tramp. You queue up, you pay a fortune, you get threatened by a drunken cunt, you stand in a room that stinks, you go to a urinal that has piss all over the floor, you watch a few people dance for a few hours, you see a fight, you stink, you see a drunk girl with at least an inch of make up on crying because her friend is snogging the chav she wants, you go out into the street to be confronted by an idiot wanting a fight standing next to a slightly overweight girl being sick in the gutter with her minge on show, at the tax stand you walk past two cavemen fighting because one looked at the other “funny”, you pay extortionate rates to get the taxi back to the hotel, you go back to a hotel, you don’t sleep for the next four hours because people are running up and down past the door, you wake up an hour after you fell asleep and for the next 24 hours you feel like your brain has been raped. I find no redeeming feature in clubbing. It is like genocide. I am supposed to, apparently, acknowledge that Saturday night was created specifically for clubbing and enjoyment. Yet, in my land of boringness, the words “clubbing” and “enjoyment” are antonyms. They are completely incompatible, which means for me, Saturday nights being made for clubbing and drunkenness means I either embrace it, and feel like I’ve wasted my weekend watching the enjoyment of other people whilst myself edging ever so closely toward wanting to top myself, or enjoy it my own way, on my own terms, and actually be happy with myself. But to be happy with myself, and what I enjoy, means accepting that I am, infact, fucking boring. I now fully accept that.

The crock of shit they refer to as “dance music” doesn’t help the situation for me. It is awful. It is a constant banging noise. When my neighbours put up shelves, I don’t suddenly stand up and dance to it, and yet it sounds EXACTLY the same as absolutely every dance track ever written. Every now and again, they have a special guest to come and do a live set!!!! How exciting!! “Ziggy from Big Brother is live this week at Oceania!!! Do you want to come?” No, as I am spending that evening poking myself in the eye.

It is probably all down to the fact that I don’t particularly like people. I am cynical when it comes to humanity. We’re bastards. My apparent sense of misanthropy drives my feelings on clubbing and drunks. I can only stand to be around people for a small amount of time on any occasion, unless they’re asleep. I like my own company and my own space. I like being on my own. I like the sound of my thoughts which is rendered impossible by the sound of god-awful club music. I do not dance. I take myself too seriously. I have to be in control at all times. And I fucking like it that way, until people start to question it, as if being me, and not being them, is a problem for me. It isn’t. I quite like it. “You must be 60“…… fuck right off, i’m just not you….. I don’t have to succumb to your narrow vision of what constitutes fun, to enjoy myself.

I do not like the idea that the only enjoyable way for anyone to spend a Saturday night is to be slaughtered to the point of excessive vomiting for the early hours of Sunday morning. It doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest. I quite like to read books and essays and I quite like to sit in bars and talk and I quite like to watch a film or play football. To people who enjoy drinking and clubbing on every Saturday night, my feeling of utter boredom and anxiousness in a club, would be equivalent of making those people sit and watch me read a book for a few hours on a Saturday night.

Clubbing, whilst making me sad, also provides people with something to talk about on Monday morning. “What did you do at the weekend?” …. “I went out!!”. It provides people, who we have already established I do not like, with the opportunity to smile vacantly whilst telling me exactly how many drinks they had, and how drunk they were. As if I care. There is nothing in life I have ever experienced caring less about, than someone telling me how many drinks them consumed at the weekend. I have sat just now and tried to think of something less interesting, and I genuinely can’t. Someone could say to me “Either I am going to spend the next hour talking to you about coastal erosion in East Anglia since 1900, or telling you how many Smirnoffs I drank on Saturday night”, the history of coastal erosion would suddenly appeal to me like being told how to turn poo into gold. And yet I’m supposed to care. I smile and act like downing three thousands sambucas and puking over the taxi-driver’s face is in some odd way, heroic. It bores me to listen to them. I want to cry at how bored I am by their incessant need to talk about how drunk they were at the weekend, I literally want to sob.

I am starting to feel proud, when people consider me boring and 24 going on 50. They are attempting to sound superior as if they are privy to some sort of fun that I am not. In this attempt to seem superior, it makes me feel superior that I am not a sheep when it comes to this.

Do not even get me started on the type of drunk person who thinks everyone will find it fucking hilarious if they start to sing karaoke as badly as possibly whilst drunkenly laughing uncontrollably. I hate these people more than anyone else, including serial killers.

It is a social norm, and a sign of social status, in the collective mind of my generation, that the only way any normal, sane, exciting 24 year old could possibly enjoy them selves on a weekend, is to get horrendously drunk and wake up on Sunday intent on posting the Facebook status…. “….is never going to drink again“. I cannot think of a bigger waste of a weekend, than to go to a club and get drunk. I would disappoint and in fact, bore myself if I were to acquiesce to this terrible social norm.

The band

A couple of bands in the area that I live asked me to do a few sample photos for them at rehearsal. It is my first attempt at band photography. This is what I came up with:

This second lot of photos, is from a band called Soundtrack. They can be heard here.

It is not soul destroying

Today I was subject of a ridiculously inane and somewhat poignant issue at the place I work. I happened to place a tray down on the table of a bunch of people who were eating dinner, in order to put the veg from the tray to the table. I was looked at, by the waitress, as if i’d just walked into their house on a child’s birthday and pissed on his cake; I was told it was unbelievable that I had done that, and I should have in fact used the serving table a couple of metres away. What would the guests think? Surely they would be shocked? Surely putting the tray on their table in order to remove the veg, as opposed to using the table two metres away, was comparable to wacking out my todger and waving it in the face of the eldest member of the group, and then pooing.

The use of the word ‘unbelievable‘ was perhaps a little bit over the top, and worked not to make me regret my apparent lack of hospitality etiquette, but only to insight a burning hatred toward the entire charade. I marvelled at the level of pretentiousness one must have to get to, to resign oneself to a life of getting frustrated if absolutely meaningless table etiquette rules have been a little bit bent. I was told it ‘looks bad’. If someone is to complain that I put veg down on the table an inappropriate way, simply because I put a tray on their table that in no way obstructed them from doing anything else (including laughing and joking with me, as the gentleman did), then I would have to consider telling that person to sit down and maybe re-evaluate what it is that is important in their life. It doesn’t ‘look bad’. It looks nothing. Because people in general are not as pretentious as the overly obsessed soul-less workforce that provide them with a service sector devoid of any social benefit and working – aimlessly – only to illuminate an already overly developed sense of superiority and manic egotism that the guest must have if they take such things seriously.

One has to ask, why does it ‘look bad’ to put the tray on the table? Who does it ‘look bad’ to? People are entirely different. Their experiences in life, their memories, and how busy their minds are at the time will all go toward evaluating who thinks that putting a tray on their long table to put veg from the tray to the table ‘looks bad’. My guess is that it was none them. Especially the nice old gentleman who had a joke with me about the local football team as I was standing there. In fact, i’d guess that’s the most any member of staff in the entire building had said to him (other than ‘lamb or pork?’) all day. There is no inherent way to remove food from a tray. There is no universal immovable law. It doesn’t exist. The idea is contrived by humans, and more specifically, by the place I work; not the guests, and after the idea is there; a funny little tale about it ‘looking bad’ otherwise is created to attempt to justify absolutely nothing. Do you like how I am applying Nietzsche to my work situation?

These etiquettes, these meaningless etiquettes, these weak pointless upper class meaningless etiquettes simply perpetuate the pretentious. And pretentiousness is a rather repulsive trait that humanity has created (it isn’t natural) and amplifies in workplaces like mine, which again has absolutely no social benefit and actually appears more like a cancer to me.

You see how frustrating it is? It is inevitable for someone like me, who struggles to be happy at the very best of times with the direction of their life, and resigns their self to knowing that an absurd World is the one in which they inhabit, like Camus’ Outsider, and have to play the game accordingly; that eventually, they start to struggle with that game, wanting to just throw the board up in the air. Make sure the ones with money are happy. See to their every need. Bend over for them. Wash up after them. Feed them. But feed them the proper way other it’s unbelievable. Take their money. Get a tiny percentage of it back. What a waste of a life. I am currently looking for work elsewhere. Hopefully not in hospitality or the service industry at all. I do not want to be part of a generation wasting away answering phones. Often, when I am performing a worthless task, I wonder ‘what is this achieving?’ and I can’t honestly and forthrightly answer. The mellifluous sound of guilt takes over a little. It is a particularly disagreeable feeling in the mind and pit of the stomach when you suddenly feel like you’ve walked into a wall built entirely out of the words ‘What the fuck are you doing with your life, standing taking this sort of shit? A monkey in a science lab has more social use than you do, and he flings his own faeces around every day. Quick, better get back to work, someone wants a bit more milk with their tea.’

I stood today thinking, whilst at work and decided to write down the first thing that came to my head when I considered my work life. I immediately wrote: “It isn’t soul destroying. It is a curiously undesirable and regrettable form of soul searching”. This surprised me for a second, I was taken aback. I had to think about what I meant. Because I have always been under the impression that the place I work, and the service sector in general is emphatically soul destroying. There is no room for creativity or a sense that you are working to help further mankind and provide a societal benefit. Yet now, I was contradicting myself. And I think I was right. It isn’t soul destroying. It is certainly tedious and laughable, it isn’t real and it is meaningless in the long run; but it isn’t soul destroying. It takes tedium and anguish, and it takes a feeling of emptiness and futility to accept that you are in fact deep in a life of nihilism and the only way out is to decide what it is you want and get it. You create the meaning and the purpose you wish to create because it simply doesn’t exist otherwise; meaning is not an objective truism. Today’s issue with the tray proved that. Meaning is subjective. You insert meaning into what it is you want, and you disregard that which you find absurd and wasteful. My workplace management created the meaning behind the issue with the tray, some people mindlessly sucked it up and live it, others notice that we are not the place that we work. We are ourselves. You start to appreciate what it is about life you adore, and cherish, and what it is you find utterly abhorrent and useless. It nurtures your soul by testing your soul.

Today I had this new sense of self and of ambition that I have admittedly been lacking for quite some time. I am asserting myself entirely to becoming a teacher. I would like to do some teaching in a poorer country first. I would also like to eventually teach history. There are certain aspects of my life that are not important. Learning table etiquette is never going to be important, to any life. I am also going to get right back into Photography. I need an artistic outlet because I cannot fully deal with the way much of the World around me works; again, I find it all one big game, with silly little rules to keep the game moving, and yet all they actually do is make me scrunch my face up and proclaim the World to be a miserable absurdity at the best of times. For it to have been soul destroying, I would have had to accepted the pretentious etiquette as essential and purposeful. If I ever get to the stage where I believe that certain etiquettes have any use whatsoever, I will be able to say that my soul has been destroyed because my soul, as I know it, is utterly at odds with that World.

I do not want to end up actually caring that a tray has been put down on the wrong table.

Lomography Film Roll: Five

My fifth roll from my Diana mini. A few photos from the weekend at the park with friends, and a few from around Leicester.

I have a bit of a love for random photos; snapshots of the mundane life in motion.

Lomography Film Roll: Two

My second roll of redscale lomography film produced the following photos. I’m pretty happy with them. The lady who develops them for me, keeps giving me my money back because they “came out a bit red”. She thinks the film fucked up. It didn’t.

All of these pictures are taken in and around Leicester City Centre.

Time to get cracking on my third film, I think.

Islam and Christianity

I have wanted to write this blog for a while, but didn’t particularly know how to start it. A lot of this writing comes from the knowledge I gained reading Henry Chadwick, Karen Armstrong, and Voltaire. But I still didn’t have a beginning. Today provided me with that beginning.

Today is St Patrick’s day. As I was wandering through Leicester city centre, through swarms of happy people with tall green hats and pints of Guinness, I happened across an Irish pub. Outside the pub were six or seven people dancing to Irish music. Pleasingly, dancing side by side, arm in arm, were two men; An old grey haired Irish man with a huge smile across his face as he swayed, dancing quite comically with a young Muslim man also with a huge smile across his bearded (a bit of a failed attempt at beard growth actually) face whilst his friend filmed the entire scenario on his mobile phone. I was struck by the apparent lack of culture barrier between the two. They were just two men, enjoying themselves.

Meanwhile, in Sheffield, the “English Defence League” plan a march, against Islam. I wondered if this seemingly polarised contrast of values has always existed between the west and Islam? I’d argue that it has. I’d argue that the irrational fear that the contemporary western World seems to have of anything Islamic has been a linear progression since around 900ad.

During the 10th Century, in Al Andalus (Muslim controlled Spain), Islam was becoming amazingly ahead of it’s time. Cordova especially. Under Muslim control, Christians, Jews and Muslims were allowed to live side by side in peace, as long as respect was shown for each other. The Christians and Muslims shared poetry, literature, and philosophy. It was a golden age for the history of Spain. Typical Christian States at this time, were not allowing such integration to exist, because Jews and Muslims were considered heretics, who should be killed rather than accepted.

A Spanish Christian outside of Cordova, whom would undoubtedly be a member of the EDL today, once spoke out against this arrangement, arguing that Cordovan Christians had become corrupted by Islam. Paul Alvaro stated:

“The Christians love to read the poems and the romances of the Arabs. Not to refute them, but to form an elegant Arabic. Alas! All young Christians read and study with enthusiasm the Arab books”

This was an attack on the Christians of Cordova. Christian layman reacted viciously, and started to burn Islamic books and writings in the centre of Cordova. One man in particular, named Perfectus, began to denounce Muhammad publicly. As this began, the Muslim supreme judge known as the Qadi did not pass the death sentence (to insult Christianity, in Christian lands, would have almost certainly resulted in a rather nasty death penalty) because he considered the Christian to have been provoked by both the writings of people like Alvaro, and angry Muslims, so he released Perfectus. But, Perfectus continued attacking the name of Mohammad. And so, without any other option, given the social and historical context of the time, Perfectus was executed by the order of the Qadi under the control of Abd ar-Rahman II. This martyrdom started a fresh wave of anti-Islamic sentiment. Known as the “Cordova Martyrs“, they began to publicly condemn Muslims for being heretics, and did not cease until they were executed. The Muslim court was reluctant to execute people for two reasons. Firstly, they believed it to be wrong to execute people for believing something different. Heresy did not exist for Islam. Disrespect for the Prophet did exist. But heresy, was not a concept Islam understood. Islam expanded at a time of religious plurality in the near East, and so they were used to different beliefs, and did not execute people on that basis. Secondly, they did not want to create a cult surrounding these martyrs. The martyrs were quickly being recognised as soldiers of Christianity. Islam did not provoke nor want a religious war. Christian bishops in Cordova, did not want a religious war. In fact, many Christian bishops and scholars denounced the martyrs as simply out to cause trouble where it was not needed. Slowly, successive Popes started to ban anything slightly Islamic. Koran’s were banned. As was recitation from memory of verses. In contrast, Islamic nations allowed Christian bibles, and Christian debates and discussions, even propaganda from Christians, providing it did not insult Muhammad. Islam, was generations ahead of Christianity both morally and spiritually.

We can then follow that insecurity, and irrational attacking of Islam or anything that was slightly different, almost directly to Pope Urban II and his attacks on Jerusalem. Perhaps this wasn’t necessarily an all out attack against Islam, but more Papal imperialism. Spreading the power of the West. Using Muhammad and the “heretics” as a predicate for war. As if Urban II was protecting Christianity rather than extending his own power, dominance and wealth. The Jews across the Rhine Valley were victims of Pope Urban attempting to kill off any non-Christians across the known World. Islam and Judaism have a lot more in common then they have differences.

For the next couple of centuries, false legends were propogated across Europe surrounding Islam and their Prophet. He was the anti-christ, a child molester (which is rich, coming from Catholicism), out to destroy Christianity, Satan himself.

As the reformation swept through Europe in the 15th and 16th Centuries, it became apparent that Christian ignorance would not go away. Catholics attacked Islam by linking it to Protestantism. They were a breakaway sect of Christianity that denied the Pope’s authority. Similarly, Protestants began attacking Islam by linking it to Catholicism. They worshiped false idols and didn’t believe in faith alone. Even Luther, the hero of the reformation wrote how he considered Europe at risk from being engulfed by Islam; and so the continued irrational fear spread miserably for another century. By 16th Century, the modern historian Norman Daniel points out that Islam was now used as a dirty word. The illiterate European population had no idea what Islam was; had never read the Koran; had never even spoken to a Muslim, but they had all decided through relentless Catholic and Protestant propaganda that Islam was never to be tolerated, purely because Islam held that Jesus was not the chosen Prophet of God.

In fact, it was not until Voltaire wrote his account of Muhammad, as being a great philosopher and Islam as being far more progressive than Christianity, that anything positive from the West was being written about Islam. Francois Rene de Chateaubriand, the French imperialist writer stated that:

“Christianity is the most favourable to freedom.”

And that Islamic nations were:

“A Family without a father”

The Western imperialist powers, were apparently that “father“.
And then rose the British Empire.
The “us VS them” mentality continued. The Empire marched into Muslim lands and proclaimed that those who lived their, were barbarians who needed the British Empire to improve their lives. Algiers, Aden, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya; all came under imperialist power, and we were horrendously evil in our dealings with our new colonies.

The writer Boaudricourt of France at the time, wrote what he had known of the British and French expeditions to Africa and our treatment of Islam:

“About 18,000 trees had been burnt; Women, children and old men had been killed. The unfortunate women particularly excited cupidity by wearing silver ear rings, leg rings, and arm rings. These rings have no catch like French bracelets. To get them off, our soldiers used to cut off their limbs and leave them alive in a mutilated condition”

And we had the nerve to refer to Islam as barbaric?

The fear and violence continues right up until today. George Bush in 2004, run his re-election campaigned claiming to have been sent by God, and that America shouldn’t change commander-in-chief during a war. Christian and Western arrogance propagating fear all over again.
After 9/11, Muslims were viewed with unprecedented fear. As if they were all terrorists who simply “hated our freedom”. The same propaganda that was being used 1000 years ago, was being used again. Screening young muslim men at airports, always telling us that our terrorist threat level was at critical. And yet, the majority of terrorist attacks on U.S soil over the past twenty-years, has been by Christian fanatics. Burnt and bombed abortion clinics, the KKK, the murders of abortion doctors, the Olympic bombing in 1996; all Christian extremists. Why aren’t Christians given the same, if not more level of suspicion given their rather disgraceful past?

It was inevitably that eventually a generation of disenfranchised Islamic lunatics with delusions of hatred and an irrational bloodlust for Americans and the West was going to arise. When one mad man kills a few people, that’s a psychological issue. When a hundreds of men become radicalised, there are underlying issues that need to be addressed. You cannot simply blame Islam for “hating our freedom”. It simply isn’t true. It’s an ignorant, racist concoction used to feed our arrogance because the West, and Christianity, has always had this delusional sense of superiority.

Not today. Today, the Irish man and the Muslim man proved that multiculturalism and tolerance work. The linear progression from the Cordova Martyrs, to the English Defence League and the War on Terror, has not prevailed. It is clear that the anti-Islamic prejudice is slowly dying out, on a scale never before seen. This is a fantastic thing.

ARGH!

“I was spread out daily
and examined for flaws.”
- Anne Sexton

Moan moan moan, fucking moan, is all i’m doing lately. But, people don’t have to read it if they don’t want to. This is why I’d rather write, than talk to people, because talking face to face forces someone to listen, and that’s not fair on anyone. I’d rather just depress the internet.

I’m really really really really really not in a happy place, with myself (as i’m sure you’ve figured out, if you’re a regular reader). And yet, It still isn’t depression, because I do love life. But, my eyes turn inwards and examine myself, like Anne Sexton describes. There is a large empty space that rages away inside me, and I don’t know how to block it. As ineffable as it seemingly is, I need these blogs, to try to express it the best way I can. It’s haunting for me, because it never ends. I’ve been fine these past few days, ignorant to the little mad idiot inside my mind, incessantly poking away at the normality. But today, I ACTUALLY want to scream. I wake up, wanting to scream at myself. My heart rate is through the roof, my mind is a mess. I don’t want pity, or someone saying “you’re just going through a phase”, I just want some fucker to listen!

I’m sick of everything. I’m sick of particular friends. I’m sick of how routine everything in life is. I’m sick of people and the games they play. I’m sick of wondering if I’m being manipulated. I’m sick of shouting and not being heard. I’m sick of listening. I’m sick of self important businessmen cunts. I’m sick of being the ‘confident’ one. I’m sick of love. I’m sick of feeling alone. I’m sick of using sex as a way to relax myself. I’m sick of fat mums yelling at their kids in Tesco. I’m sick of road rage. I’m sick of feeling like I’m being messed around or used. I’m sick of people telling me how much they drank on Saturday night, as if I’m expected to start drafting a certificate of achievement for them. I’m sick of background noise. I’m sick of you smiling. I’m sick of happy laughs. I’m sick of fatuous conversations. I’m sick of Leicester. In fact I’m sick of England, every city is the same, the people are clones of the other half of the Country. I’m sick of crap jobs that you spend six hours slaving at, getting intimidating glares from the boss and his indelibly upper class ignorant friends, and leave with less than £30. I’m sick of the same faces. I’m sick of walking down the same stairs. I’m sick of saying the same shit and feeling completely unable to be myself around ANYONE. I’m sick of the mindless violent idiots, threats and the pointless arguments people have. I’m sick of everything. I need someone to just sit me down and say “right, fucking well talk, NOW”.

There have been a couple of instances, that have driven me slightly mad today. A couple of days ago, my grandfather had a big heart attack. He’s fine now, he coped well. He and my grandmother are both in their mid 80s and have had a few heart attacks between them. They have been married for 53 years. He fought through the war, and came home to her. They were together, before the World had even heard of Elvis. That, amazes me. My grandfather dotes on her, it’s incredible to see, after over half a century, a bond could be so strong. He worries constantly about her. When she had a heart attack not long ago, you could see how badly he took it. He was clearly incredibly frightened. Those two, should never be without each other. When that’s how life is, nothing else matters. The negativities, the fucking idiots that plague life, do not matter. It isn’t just a person I’d quite like to feel that attachment too, it’s anything in life. And I don’t. I have an emptiness that no one or nothing has ever been able to fill, and I hate it. The light at the end of the tunnel, is forever dimming.

I’m intensely aware that when I’m in a relationship, I’m kept somewhat sane by the personality of my partner. It’s a grounding affect, I’m always in need of attention and reassurance, and I’m desperate to feel wanted and important to someone, which explains why when I’m single, I become a bit of a whore. However, at the same time, when I am single, I start to look at myself differently, and balance on a thin line between sanity and complete madness, but the madness is like another overly loquacious person, separate from the rational mind, it’s feckless and constantly at conflict with the rational mind. It’s like a civil war in my head. Some days are quiet, others become a bloody battle for superiority, and the madness is prevailing luxuriantly today. But it’s not real madness. It’s simply mad, in comparison to everyone else. Unless everyone else does in fact think in the same way as me, and I’m just not aware of it.

I’d quite like to just pack up, and escape to nowhere. Not tell anyone. No goodbyes. Just go. But then, I’d have to give up University, which starts in September. And so, I’m looking at this practically. Perhaps if I start to save a little money now, by the time I reach the end of my first year at University, I will have enough to just take off, and spend the summer in nowhere land, with no one familiar other than myself.
My list of destinations I’d quite like to explore, alone…
Rome (again)
Selous
Pu Tuo Shan
Paris
The Inca Trail
Mount Tai Shan
Venice
North Pagai
Côtes de Duras
Milan
Florence
Halong Bay
I may incorporate that list, into what is important in life. An overly optimistic list, ticking off each one, like a shopping list. But, that takes money, which means a career. Which invariably means choosing a career. Which, I just cannot do! Skegness or nowhere….
ARGH!

A symbol

It is horribly easy to hate. It’s much more difficult to think.
Apparently, residents of the City I live, Leicester, are objecting to a statue of Gandhi being erected next to a main road. These incredible facebook groups; I will deface the Gandhi Statue and English nationalists attending Unveiling of Gandhi Statue Leicester, have decided they cannot possibly lead a normal life, when their City has an International symbol of peace and hope as a Statue. It is they, who have turned it into a battle of cultures and Nationalities, rather than an acceptance of a concept.

Fat Nazi chav, Lee Ingram, has been on TV recently suggesting that a Gandhi Statue is simply politically correct Britain gone mad. Of course, to those of us who aren’t ignorant, the phrase “political correctness gone mad” is usually used to describe a situation, where the ignorant have a bit of a tantrum that their obvious racism or xenophobia simply isn’t acceptable. I’ve actually heard people say “Well, calling someone a paki, is like calling me a Brit”….. I’m not entirely sure it’s possible to exist on a more ignorant plateau than that.

This genius has created a facebook topic entitled “whoes up for it”. Which in itself, is beautiful. An English Nationalist with such a slender grasp on the English language, could not have created a more ironic topic, if he’d have tried. He goes on to embarrass humanity in general, by showing his weak minded, pro-violent attitude toward life, with “im going to paint it fucking wjite. then a week later blow the bastard up.” I’m sure all us White British folk are delighted we have this idiot to “stick up” for us.

Now, I’m not sure what the problem is. Gandhi is a World wide figure of peace, of spiritiuality, of non-violence, he is a symbol, he is not simply a Nationality or a Religion. The politics of hate is slowly creeping back to the minds of those who consider themselves “indigenous British”. I’m not about to succumb to the notion that I’m supposed to respect deeply racist groups dedicated to the White power movement. I don’t. I don’t care if they suddenly have BNP representation. They disgust me. They’re scum. They do not deserve the respect of anyone. I do not need thugs claiming to “stand up for me“.

The Nationalists want a statue…………… of Gary Lineker. Simply because he was born in Leicester. A footballer. A commentator for the BBC. Apart from kicking a ball, i’m not sure what contribution Linekar has made to the Planet, and to society as a whole, but then, I’m just a “loony leftie“. I’d go as far as to suggest that by Nationalist logic, St George, their hero, is an odd choice, given that he’s Palestinian. Hypocrisy is a wondrous thing.

The Gandhi statue is funded by Indian Charity, Samanwaya Parivar. The charity has said “We have never said that there should not be any other statues in Leicester. This particular statue of Gandhi will be entirely funded by our charity as a gift to the city. It will add to the vibrant and multicultural elements of this city since Gandhi’s philosophies of truth, peace and non-violence had no boundaries.” They’re right. Very much so. If someone like Ingram who quite ridiculously claims that Gandhi… “has no connection to English culture or the English” wants a Gary Lineker statue in the City then i’m sure both Samanwaya Parivar and the loony lefties such as myself, would not have a problem with it. In fact, it’d look great outside the Walkers Stadium. I’d fully support it. However, if it’s a choice between the two….. I’m going for Gandhi every time.

If these absolutely crazed Nationalists insist on reflecting back to a period when Britain was “great” it will be hard for them to ignore the fact that Gandhi (who studied and lived in England for a while) is Indian, and India contributed over 1,000,000 troops to the British cause, during World War I. Hundreds of thousands died, whilst at the same time, Britain controlled trade by sea to India, which certainly helped Britain’s Sub-continental dominance and thus our wealth and overall standard of living. India, has been interlinked with Britain for the past four centuries. From 1600 onwards, the East India Company, a British owned monopolistic company for trade, had such strong dominance in India, exploitation for our benefit, was their main weapon. If Nationalists want to “protect our culture”, then they must realise just how widespread our culture actually is. It certainly isn’t restricted to our four walls. And given the struggle that Gandhi went through to gain Indian independence from English rule, to protect millions of people, and given he pioneered the philosophy of Satyagraha (the concept of non-violent demonstration), which went on to influence Martin Luther King and help toward to founding of American Civil Rights, I’m not sure why Gary Lineker (although, he does make a pretty good Golf commentator, I give him that) deserves a statue over Gandhi, simply because he was born in Leicester? However, Gandhi was technically British, having been born in British India. He was as British as St Margaret, whom our Leicester Bus Station is named after, and whom happens to be Scottish. Of course, he was Asian by heritage, and so, he stands no chance. If he were American, these English Nationalists would not give a shit.

I support a Gandhi Statue in the City I was born in, because I vehemently support the philosophy of Gandhi and the impact he had on the World. He will be remembered forever, as a 20th Century cultural icon dedicated to non-violence. I’m not all that bothered about what Gary Lineker achieved as a footballer. It’s not all that important.

To sum up, Gandhi helped influence the Civil Rights movement in America, one of the most important movements in Western History, he influenced a philosophy of peace and respect, A UN general assembly resolution recognises his birthday as International Day of Non-violence. India helped finance luxury back in England, and contributed over 1,000,000 troops to our War effort, thousands died so that the “indigenous Brits” back home could continue to live happy peaceful lives. But then, Gary Lineker was the leading scorer of the 1986 World Cup. Perhaps I need to get my priorities in order.

The best of worst of Britain

Thankfully, and with great admiration for my parents, I was brought up to view people as just that, people. I was not brought up to distinguish people, like breeds of animal, based on race or cultural background. I was brought up to respect the differences between us, whether white or black or Asian; gay or straight; Christian or Muslim. We’re all human, we’re all reliant on each other. It is humanity that has made great breakthroughs socially, scientifically, and medically, not a particular race. As a result of my liberal upbringing, the idea that we must “preserve” the “white race” is as ridiculous as claiming to be desperate to preserve the blue eyed race.

The local elections, pushed the agenda of the British National Party to a much bigger audience, angered at the recent expenses scandal and the growingly powerless Prime Minister. They certainly look set to make gains in the E.U Parliament, come tonight’s results, which will indeed put added pressure on the Prime Minister, and Alan Johnson over at the Home Office.

The most abhorrent political Party to exist in the U.K at the moment, preying on the Working Classes, gained a seat in Leicestershire’s, Coalville Council. It saddens me, because this is the City I grew up in. I love the diversity. The Diwali celebrations that attract thousands to the City every year, is great for cultural awareness, education, and the local economy. It’s a mixed culture, I’m privileged to belong to.

Amusingly, the BNP have been using pictures on their websites, of ordinary families, and quotes about why they will be voting BNP. Except of course, that the photos are from different websites, not affiliated with the BNP, and the quotes are made up, by the BNP. You couldn’t make this shit up.

The BNP, last month, held a day to celebrate the work of the armed forces of Britain, and tried to portray themselves as the “only party that supports our troops”.
And so this brings me on to the truly shocking response by the BNP, to the to the heroic British soldier, Lance-Corporal Johnson Beharry.
Born in Grenada, Johnson Beharry is already among the people that the British Nazi National Party consider to be detrimental to British society, given that he’s foreign, and he’s black.
On March 18th 2005, he was awarded the Victoria Cross for valor. A year earlier, whilst driving a Warrior Tracked Armoured Vehicle in Iraq, his vehicle was ambushed; hit by several rocket propelled grenades, the platoon commander along with a number of soldiers were badly injured and radio communication was destroyed along with the periscope – used by the driver to see where he’s going. Beharry therefore, had to open the hatch and drive whilst exposing his face to enemy fire. He drove the broken machine to the edge of the ambush zone, and extracted all of his wounded comrades, to safety, whilst all the time, he himself was exposed to enemy fire.
A month later, in the area of Al Amarah, the convoy was ambushed again. And again, his comrades were badly injured. Beharry himself received serious shrapnel injuries to the face and brain. Despite those serious injuries, he drove to safety, through rocket fire, which in turn, saved the lives of all of his men. He then lost consciousness and had to go through brain surgery.
He was rightfully reward the distinguished Victoria Cross for bravery in the face of such extreme adversity.

A BNP article, stated of Beharry “All he did was drive away very fast from a combat zone.” The article then stated “The politically correct Ministry of Defence decided to elevate this particular occasion to something worthy of the VC.” Suggesting that Beharry was awarded the Victoria Cross, simply because he’s black. Nick Griffin claimed that all Beharry had achieved, was “routine” and then went on to call him an “immigrant“, refusing to acknowledge Beharry’s bravery and courage, saving the lives of many men, for Britain.

They speak of “politically correct Britain“. Yes, I suppose we have become overly politically correct, given that sixty years after the Holocaust, we’re allowing Nazis to represent the British public.
Given that Griffin has spent his life getting grotesquely overweight, and pathetically Hitler-esque in his disgusting views, having fought for nothing, saved no one, promoted racial tension and violence, I’m not sure where he gets the nerve from, to criticise the absolute bravery and honour of a British Soldier. The BNP are not patriotic, nor are they standing up for Britain, they are an ideology. Britain is not based on an ideology. Especially one of such hate and suspicion. The BNP are simply an ideology catering to thugs and those members of society that do not engage brain activity. They absolutely disgust me. For anyone that voted BNP at these Council and E.U elections. You too, disgust me.

The sound of my World

Have you ever sat on a lifeless beach at midnight watching the star light vibrate through the ripples of the waves? I rate my year as a bad one, if it doesn’t include doing just that at least once.

The most sensual and soothing sound in my World, is the sound of the sea. It has no design, no will, an aimless existence dancing wildly through time; it is simply chaotic and yet there appears a beautiful sense of order. From that order, comes the mellifluous sound that exists to relax me on such deep levels. It is the reason I sit alone on the rocks just before dawn, and get photos like this…

I suppose it isn’t just the sound, it’s the scene too. It’s essence is almost indescribable, because we all know what a coast scene looks like, but it looks so much more to me. The sparkle of the ocean, the effortless beauty, the freedom, the emptiness. The scene never changes, an eternal picture that exists exactly the same in my mind as it does in reality. I look out over nothing at all, but everything to me. The euphonious chaos and order of the sound of the coast, is matched only by the aesthetic quality of it’s indescribable essence.

As a kid, travelling down south in the back of my mum and dad’s car, i’d become addicted to trying to spot the sea. A kid from the chaotic city cannot help but be incensed with febrile curiosity the moment a glimour of water comes into view; regardless of the fact that for the entire five hour journey, i’d be pointing to the rivers and lakes of England in the vain hope that one of them might be the ocean.

The manic nature of the City, of Leicester, of London; the packing into tight spaces on the Tube, because no one can be arsed to walk half a mile down the road from Trafalgar to Westminster, or from Oxford Circus to Marble Arch and so our faces end up in the chests of other people tightly jammed into an airless carriage. The business men constantly sweating, on their mobile phones discussing the best way to maximise profits during this Global economic downturn, the stress of shop workers trying to cope with mountains of tourists who do not understand English, crying babies sat next to me on the tube or the train – and although I have no problem with any of that, it opens the gates of stress in my unusually calm mind. And so I lose myself in meditation; my mind is suddenly sitting back on those rocks with nobody around, with no sound except the harmony in the sound of the natural.

During the summer, i’m accustomed to sitting in my garden, and doing nothing in particular. It’s the sounds that intrigue me. The sound of distant cars, the sound of somebody somewhere mowing their lawn, the sound of the birds, the sound of a small aircraft maybe a glider low overhead in an otherwise featureless blue sky, the sound of running water in our cheap fountain at the bottom of our small garden. It makes me feel alive and during those moments, I do not have any worry. I’m least stressed when nature is somehow involved. Be it my cat, or the sound of someone mowing their lawn, it all exists to relax me, and it’s why I love life.

During the winter and early spring, my bedroom window stays open. I rather unsuccessfully wrap myself up to stay warm at night, whilst leaning out of my bedroom window listening to the sounds of nothing. The stars are feint dots on a black canvas, that you have to narrow your eyes to see clearly because the illumination of the street by electric light washes the beauty of the night sky away like an evil man made etch-a-sketch. So if you haven’t sat on a lifeless beach at midnight watching the star light vibrate through the ripples of the waves; you do not know peace.

Immigrants: We need them!!

This blog will argue that immigration is much needed. I’d appreciate genuine arguments against my blog instead of the usual “fucking muzzies coming to our country with their fucking burkas, fuck off, you terrorist scum”.

INTRO:
I’m becoming increasingly uneasy about the level of animosity toward anyone who happens to have an Asian skin complexion in this country, particularly in the City I live, Leicester. Whenever someone says “I’m not racist but….” you can guarantee they’ve been reading the Daily Mail, and are about to spew some disgusting out of date bile.

I’ve said before, the majority of British Nationalists, who insist that they love our Country and see immigration eroding our culture, have absolutely no knowledge of our ‘culture’ other than the fact that they like to drink a lot, fight a bit, and be a bit racist. Our culture consists of historical events like the Protestant Reformation during Henry VIII, Edward and Elizabeth’s reigns, the Civil War of the 17th Century, art movements like Gothic, Renaissance Realism, pop art and post-modernism, the horrors of the Great War that saw the deaths of millions of people for less than a square foot of land. The fight for liberalism, as Churchill’s army of warriors defeated the destructive force of Fascism. This is our culture, and the Nationalists are the ones responsible for trying destroying it.

We have a large Asian community in Leicester. One of my friends tried to suggest that the white man is in the minority in Leicester now. He went on to suggest over 70% of the City must now be foreign. I disagreed. He laughed and decided to insult my intelligence some more. It annoyed me quite deeply. He suggested that if I look around, it’s like “spot the white man”.
Firstly, even if that was the case, why is that a problem? If I were the only white guy living on my street, what’s the problem? As long as they don’t treat me like shit, why should I care? It’s a skin colour. It does not go deeper than that.
And secondly, I was fucking right. According to Leicester City Council, the White race accounts for 63% of the population of Leicester. So to sum that up, I was right, he was wrong.

I’d now like to argue against those who believe Immigration should be cut off, and we should “keep Britain White”.

AGE:
During the 1950s, after the War, we in Britain had what is described as the “baby boom”. Soldiers coming home and starting families. Between the 1980s and today, we have a “baby slump”. Hundreds of thousands of more women are starting careers early and not having children. Which means, we have an ageing population. The baby boom generation is getting old. The younger generation need to support the pensions of those ageing majority. This is known as the “dependency ratio”. Given that there aren’t enough younger people to deal with this, if we took the BNP line and stopped immigration completely, we’d have the worst pensions crises ever. If this extended to Europe, according to the author Philippe Legrain, the population of Europe would fall by 60 million by 2050. This creates a worker shortage, meaning businesses close, deflation sky rockets. An economic disaster. You need immigration.

The Welfare State:
I refuse to give a response to the awful “they come over here, taking all our benefits” whilst in the same breathe muttering “they come over here, taking all our jobs”, it’s an old outdated argument that no one has been able to prove.
The majority of immigrant workers come to Britain (according to Home Office Stats) in their 20s. They then start to work, they pay taxes.
Those workers have not been to British schools and so they have cost the tax payer nothing, whilst they pay back into the tax system. Which means more investment into public services like The NHS. So actually, we benefit, not them.
Many then start up a business, paying more into the tax system. Perhaps they’ll then have children, who will go to British schools, on the money pumped into the tax system by their parents, which is fair and just. All the time contributing to an ageing British population.

“GO HOME!!”
Many immigrants come here for a better life. If you lived in a Country where you feared for the life of you and your family every day, wouldn’t you jump at the opportunity for a better life elsewhere?
The Phillipines has began calling those people who leave the country, to work abroad “heroes”. This is because the workers, after paying tax in America for example, then send some of their earnings home, which boosts the local economies, allowing the National economy of these countries to grow, lifting millions out of poverty. It has no damaging affect on America. It’s a boost to the poor nation’s economy, and it’s much needed. Otherwise we get rich, whilst the poor get worse and worse, and that’s simply wrong. It also then means the poor countries are able to create new opportunities, new jobs, new exports, which benefit us directly.

Job Creation:
“Stealing all our jobs” seems to be suggesting that there is a static number of jobs, limited in presence, and that immigrants are fighting the British born Whites for those jobs. This is simply ignorance.
When an immigrant comes to live here, he’s going to need a house, a car, a bed, a bath, a towel, a mug, a photograph frame, sugar, a carpet, and every other luxury you can possibly imagine. When 200,000 come here, there is a sharp rise in demand for such objects, which means production needs to increase, which means new jobs need to be created for supplies to meet demand, which means instead of stealing all our jobs, immigration create jobs. It’s basic economics. If we denied these people access to our country, demand would fall sharply, prices would deflate, wages would dramatically decrease because the pool of unemployed would get bigger and bigger as businesses everywhere shut up shop.
We’d all be worse off.

“This Country is a mess!!”
To suggest the country is now a mess, is to compare it to a previous time when it wasn’t a mess. I’m not sure that this has ever been the case. Was it the 1900s during a needless war in which parents watched as their children were sent to their deaths for no good reason? Or the 1920s during the Great Depression? Or the 1940s and World War, when kids were sent away from cities and their parents? Or the 1950s/60s when women were treated as 2nd class, gay people were imprisoned simply for their sexuality and racial prejudice was rife? Or the 1970s when our binmen went on strike leading to the winter of discontent? Or the 1980s when the miners went on strike and 60% of Liverpool was unemployed? Or the 1990s when The Spice Girls topped the charts?
When was the World and in particular Britain, perfect? It wasn’t.

My conclusion:
A Nation is simply a line on a map. A meaningless flag. A place where those who have deep Patriotic feelings can get together and proclaim just how wonderful their Country is compared to the rest of the World.
We are all citizens of the same Planet. We all benefit each other economically. We all bring with us knowledge and cultural awareness that can benefit each other both socially and for our own mental strength. Only by mixing and interacting, sharing and understanding, can there ever be anything near to peace.

A clubbers world

There’s always a certain negative feeling I get when out in a club at night. It’s not that I have an illusory hatred of the clubbers, or that I associate the entire thing with mindless thugs seeking a fight, it’s that I cannot endure to stand in an unbearably humid room, full of sweating people, dancing to what can only be described as relentless banging, like that of a carpenter hammering together a new table. It does absolutely nothing for me. Everyone seems to look the same. I don’t particularly want to go to “Ministry”. The first time I got invited to The Ministry, I thought “Why are you inviting me to a Government department? I hope it’s Ministry of transport, i have harsh words for thos……..oh it’s a club? Well will at least, a member of the Ministry of Transport be there?”", and so that should show you just how uneducated I am when it comes to ‘carpentry’ music.

I remember being in a Club in Leicester when I was a mere 16 years old. I’d decided the moment that i’d walked through the door, past the personality devoid bouncers, that I hated the place. It was packed. Literally, you spent twenty minutes queuing for a drink, and then if you made it back to your friends without having some moronic drunk stumble into you whilst having a fit to a Flatboy slim (who was massive at the time) song, then you’d consider the night a success already. I stood next to a friend, both of us aren’t dancers, so most of the night was spent watching other people sweat profusely, and jumping up and down in what seemed to be a pointless motion, growling with excitement whenever the DJ changed tune, as if every tune was different to the last, which I judged it not to be. We couldn’t talk, because the “music” (And I use that word in it’s widest possible sense) yielded an axe, striking down upon any form of linguistic communication, creating nothing but 2000 people, all cupping their ears, trying to understand what the next person was saying. Most of the men could save themselves the bother of having to deal out useless chat up lines, by just entering the club with their cocks out.

I cannot and I refuse to learn to dance. Even though clubbing does not require a sophisticated level of dancing; there is no need to be in order to dance at a club, I do realise that. But I simply cannot dance. I have no rythm. I look diseased if I even attempt to dance. People rush to the front desk to ring an ambulance, presuming i’m having some sort of attack. It’s by far better for everyone, that I just stay off the dancefloor, and so that leaves very little to do in a club other than sweat , get annoyed at the shit music, and sweat to my death. And as much as I just love the shit music and sweating until i’m about dead, I’d prefer to just go to a bar and destroy everyone at pool.

I’m not complaining about the ladies at the club. As a young Libertine admirer, the girls appeal to me, they’re clad in the shortest of skirts, and showing as much of their tits as legally possible. My mind is drawn directly to the chest, paying no attention to the face. No male would look at an attractive female, with her legs and tits out, and think “how unclassy, I wonder what her level of intellect is” firstly. The first thought, to all male minds, including mind, at that moment is “Me, her, fucking…mmm”. That’s just how it is. It came to pass that although I realise i’d gladly sleep with these girls, I wouldn’t want to spend too long talking to them, or even getting to know them. They’d bore me, I have very little in common with them, and before long i’d want to cry myself to sleep every night after spending too long in their presence. Their World and my World don’t mix very well. It’s pretty shallow, but at that age, and when they’re dressed in a way that without the use of any formal language, quite clearly says “I’m hoping to get laid tonight”, you don’t really care about their mental capacity.

That all changed when I went back to the club. A girl with an incredibly short skirt approached me, the problem was, she had a huge spot on her nose, and fat hanging over her skirt. Of course, She had the worst smelling breath I think i’ve ever encountered, and to top off the fact that i’d just been approached and was now being chatted up by the Vicky Pollard’s disgusting twin, she had dirty fingernails. She quite eloquently, and beautifully managed to put together a string of words to form the a question for me, one that took relatively no time to answer, infact, it took all my energy to stop her mid-sentence, and just offer her some sort of soap product, but my stunned ears prevented my mouth from engaging in words. She asked me, and i’m afraid i’m going to have to relay this phonetically…. “iya! you look pretteh fuckin nice yeah, wanna go to the ladies n ‘av ya dick sucked?”…… Have you ever been offered oral by a retarded goat? It’s as tempting an offer, as if a maniac had approached me and asked if i would mind pulling my pants down and allowing him to rectally examine me, using only a metal detector wrapped in sand paper and no lubricant.

Ever since then, i’ve been manically avoiding club land. It doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest. It bores me. I’m not committed enough to the dance floor. It’s not for me.

I’m much happier in a live music venue. Someone with a guitar, a drummer, and a keyboard player playing tune after tune of classic rock n roll. A smoke filled bar, playing soft jazz music, or a man on a piano in the middle of a New York 1950s style diner singing the blues. Or if it has to be a club, an indie club, blasting Oasis and Blur, The Libertines and The Strokes. A bar, A cold beer, around a table of friends, discussing everything there is to discuss, correcting the World and how we’d do it better, talking to new people who excite my mind. People who can challenge my thoughts. Recounting tales of how our generation will one day rule the World, and what we plan to do (overly optimistically) with our future. Mad people. Different people.

The perils of shopping

Let’s push to one side that fact that I left the house today without a belt on, and so kept having to stop my jeans falling down every 30 seconds whilst walking aimlessly through town searching for Christmas presents that because VAT cut has struck, means when I thought i’m spending £20, i’m actually spending a little less than £19.99. Not only did I save money, 35p altogether!!! I also managed to prevent my trousers falling down, which would have exposed what I like to call my “pride” to the World. Which in turn, would have caused women everywhere to faint in awe. Spawning a wave of Women to leave their partners in the hope of bedding me…………… IT MIGHT HAPPEN!!!!……. maybe……..

Let’s also push aside the fact that I took an incredibly huge gulp of Pepsi from my bottle, and at the exact same time, looked directly into the Sun (not the paper, i’d rather drink my own piss than read that) which caused my eyes to water, prompting a very nice old lady to put her caring hand on my shoulder, and say “are you ok my dear?” As if I’d broken down in the middle of Leicester town centre. To be fair, if there’s ever a place that pushes you to the brink of a breakdown, it’s Leicester.

And finally, let’s push even further aside the fact that when I paid the bus driver the bus fare, instead of saying “cheers”, I rather disturbingly, given my sense of pride in my vocabulary, said “cheese”. Who the fuck, mistakes “cheers” for “cheese”. On a full bus too. Everyone heard. I’m so ashamed.

Amusingly, I saw a bus, with a sign on the back featuring a citizen with a speed gun, encouraging the public to join http://www.bealocalhero.com, I think they were known as the Gestapo in Nazi Germany. Report a Jew. Same concept. Clearly http://www.bealocalcunt.com was taken. Clearly asking the public to help tackle real problems, such as Corporate Greed that has lead to the biggest economic disaster in history, leaving millions unemployed, and destroying lives, is not as important as catching someone driving 34mph in a 30mph zone. The thing that got me, is that our car was travelling at 30mph, the speed limit, whilst the bus with this sign on, over took us. How ironic.

Apart from that, I had quite a successful Christmas shopping trip.
Cheese for reading.

The Cheap World

There comes a time in a young man’s mind when he has to let go of the feeling of grandeur, stop peering through Versace shop window, stop spending £80 on a plain white shirt purely because it has a designer label, and move on with life.

When I was younger, I was obsessed with labels. If your jeans failed to say “Calvin Klein” or “Hugo Boss” or even, quite shamefully “Burberry”, then I’d struggle to ever want to talk to you, and perhaps even, you’d be outcast, like the other cheap kids at school. I however, somehow managed to keep it quiet through 10 years at school, that my trousers were Asda’s finest, and my shoes were from the World famous (and when I was world, I mean Wigston high street, and when I say famous, I mean worst shoe shop in the World) “Bacons Shoes”, which stood right next to Aldi, the shop for council estate mums, which housed all our weekly food needs. You’d walk out of Aldi, with the food shopping for the next two weeks, and not spent more than £20. Which is great. But if the kids at school saw your mum coming out of Aldi, your social life was over, and you were now (along with kids who came to school the first day with their blazers buttoned up ) very very “gay”.

Out of school, being cheap with clothes has acted like a Revolution. Free from the shackles of being the social outcast, cheap clothing is the way forward. Especially for me. I’ve long since recognised that my friends who are willing to spend an obscene amount of money on clothes with a label, do not look the part. They just “fit in”. For £90 on a plain white shirt, i’d expect it to cook my breakfast in the morning. I flew to Rome and back for less than that. The expensive clothes, are in short, a fucking rip off.

So, I buy relatively cheap clothes. In fact, since i’ve been down in London i’d say most of my wardrobe has changed. Most of my clothes come directly from Camden. All low priced. But I try to make my own style. I’m vain. As you can probably decipher from the picture. I like to attempt to look presentable. I accept that i’m not the most attractive man in the World, my hair grows thinner by the day threatening to retreat to the back of my head in no time, and my personality leaves a lot to be desired, but i’m happy, and so I dress as well as I can for as little as I can. It’s liberating to know that my clothes, my shirt, hat, jeans, trainers, belt and my meaningful Daojia YinYang necklace all together, cost less than £50, and yet looks a hell of a lot better than a friend who had to sell his family just to buy a new shirt.

A lot has changed since our dads ruled the World. My old man, to this day, wont spend more than a few £ on new clothes. In fact, I don’t think i’ve seen him buy too many new clothes, in my 22 years on the planet. If you were to use the phrase “Male moisturising lotion” he’d probably attack you. Back in our dad’s day. Men were interested in sport and cars, and plotting the overthrow of Mrs Thatcher. Now, we’re interested in looking beautiful. 

I now tend to take pride in my cheapness. Because it’s became evident to me, that my expensive clothes, are bland and quite frequently, just tat.Useless talking pieces for the alpha male pub talk “Yeah well, my overly expensive shirt that has nothing special to it, is fucking better than your overly expensive shirt that has even less special to it!

Having said all that, if you wish to buy me Armani shirts, don’t be put off!!! Do it!