Woolly Minded Liberal

As some of you may know, I recently moved from Croydon to London (specifically Zone 2). It’s a lovely area, with a great double room and spectacular view of the city, sharing the flat with two lovely people, but at what cost? At an extortionate cost, that’s what.

So I decided last week that I would harness my BTEC Fine Art skills and created an etsy page! Here it is:
http://carmenego.etsy.com/
where, at the moment, you will find a few of the things that I’ve made recently. For now, it’s just some pretty rose corsage headbands, but I’m in the process of making some scented shrunken heads, funky clay badges and geeky jewellery (Cthulu badges are on the way!) as well as crocheted non-Euclidean hyperbolic spheres and some very fancy fascinators.

I’m only shipping to the UK at the moment as I’m fairly new to this, so apologies to my fans overseas. But if you’re in the UK, and you like what you see (or have friends and family who might), let me know and I’ll keep on creating

All proceeds go to my instant noodles and oxo cube fund!

Cx

A Cunning PR Stunt?

I blogged about the T-shirt ban hoax the other day, and how it was a gross exaggeration of some kneejerk advice specific to Croydon. According to Anton over at Enemies of Reason, however, it seems to have a bit more momentum than I had assumed worthy:
http://enemiesofreason.co.uk/2010/05/24/getting-shirty/

Far be it from me to suggest that this could be some highly elaborate PR stunt to sell football shirts but I’d like to throw the suggestion around that this is a rather sleazy way to sell t-shirts.

In the words of
http://www.uksoccershop.com/england-football-shirts.html
: “No true patriot can be without the latest England football shirts.” Hmmm… quite.

Cx

Today I joined the Labour Party…

Today I joined the Labour Party.

Why? Why? Why would I do such a thing? I hear you crowing!

Well I’ve been talking about it for a few days. My family is traditionally very Labour. That political skew has been inherent in my upbringing, as anyone who tells me they voted for BoJo as Mayor of London can attest to – I actually wrote a song about it.

A gigantic argument broke out between two friends on my Facebook page, both traditionally Labour, like myself. One who still holds his faith in the Labour Party and one who lost his amidst Afghanistan, Iraq, and the erosion of our civil liberties (a phrase that has become synonymous with anti-New Labour rhetoric) and yesterday, I watched Theresa May give a speech on crime – the Conservatives are going to get “tough on the causes of crime”. All of this has been going round my head today. Here is my account of the final push into the red:

This morning I had an appointment with my local council offices to find out if I was eligible for housing benefits as my rent is particularly high and I find myself having to choose between attending Skeptics in the Pub and eating every day. It turns out I’m not eligible, for a variety of reasons which I won’t go into here, maybe some other time. I asked the lady dealing with my application if there were any services in my local council to assist with budget management or if she had received notification of any changes to how the benefits will work since our newly elected government has come into place. She told me her daughter was worrying about exactly the same thing as they’ve been discussing cutting the EMA funds recently (educational maintenance allowance).

The EMA fund was set up under New Labour to assist 16-18 year olds from low income households with expenditure associated with attending college. As long as your family had a combined net income of about £32,000 or less and you were in full time education, you were entitled to £30 a week. It is safe to say that myself and many of my friends at Croydon College might not have been able to finish our A-Levels had it not been for this money. I did Fine Art, which is a particularly expensive course in terms of supplies you need to constantly buy: paints, pens, pencils, sketchbooks – I eventually learned to make my own – as well as £7-10 a week to develop a film (digital cameras were way out of my league back then!) and regular trips to museums, galleries etc.

The vast majority of students at Croydon College were not from privileged backgrounds. I would certainly have failed my course if I had not been able to afford the supplies needed to do my coursework. How many students, I wonder, denied the financial backing necessary to complete their course would have succeeded to go onto university? How many would finish their A-Levels, required in almost any job an 18 year old could apply for (short of working in a pub) in order to support themselves as adults? How many of the people who commit the sorts of crimes that Theresa May was pledging to clamp down on have A-Levels, BTECs, even degrees?

When people talk about “getting tough on the causes of crime”, I wish they’d get real. Crime is a complicated issue, and I found it curious that the issue of social inequality did not crop up once during her speech. When a decision is made to cut a simple yet effective method of educating young people from less affluent backgrounds so that they have a better chance to succeed, it seems that these politicians have no interest in tackling the real causes of crime, but an unhealthy attitude towards getting tough on the poor.

Today I joined the Labour Party because I want to continue campaigning on behalf of the good work that benefited my generation. I’ll get to civil liberties in another post!

Cx

A Croydon Perspective

Some of you may have seen the following written on Facebook statuses of your friends and family:

“POLICE R GOING AROUND PUBS & CLUBS SAYINGTHAT WE CANT WEAR OUR ENGLAND TOPS 4 THE FOOTIE & GOTTA TAKE THEFLAGS DOWN AS IT IS UPSETTING THE PPL THAT DONT COME FROM HERE!! NOW IM NOT RACIST, BUT THIS IS TAKING THE PISS! THIS IS OUR COUNTRY & WE NEED 2 MAKE A STAND IF U/THEY DONT LIKE IT GO AWAY! WOULD U REMOVE UR TURBAN & BURKHA BECAUSE IT UPSETS ME, IF U AGREE POST THIS AS UR STATUS”

I’d like to dispel this using personal anecdote.

As those of you who have been reading my blog for a while might be aware, I’m from Croydon originally. When I say “originally” I mean I was born there, sadly I cannot trace my personal history back any further than that, other than the disagreement between my parents over where I was conceived.

Back in 2004, when I was a mere whippersnapper working in a Croydon pub, I witnessed firsthand the damage that these so-called “football fans” caused. The Beer Circus where I worked at the time (a pub specialising in European beers, now a trendy wine bar) among other respectable shops had their windows smashed in, my brother was on a bus that hooligans tried to overturn, it was absolute chaos. Even now, recollecting the evening, I find it staggering that only 14 people were arrested. There were hundreds of people acting like twats.

You can see coverage of the riot on the Croydon Guardian website –
http://www.croydonguardian.co.uk/news/501790.police_and_football_fans_battle_on_croydons_streets/

Immediately afterwards, the police in Croydon drafted a recommendation that pubs should not allow customers in who are wearing football colours (not justEngland t-shirts, all football colours. The link above tells of an English man in a blue t-shirt who was mistaken for being French!) as a precautionary measure against this ever happening again. As far as I know, every single pub in Croydon took this on board. This had nothing to do with immagrunts or forrinurs trying to change our quaint way of life and everything to do with a bunch of football hooligans causing a fucking riot in theirs and my hometown.

People who believe this kind of claptrap need to wake up and think for themselves. Aside from Anjem Choudhary, when have you EVER heard a foreigner telling you how to behave? If you don’t like it, why don’t you wear yourEngland football shirt with pride and get kicked out of every single pub in Croydon for dragging up the memory of that horrible, horrible night.

Cx

Discussion Topics For Reclaim The Pub

Hello all,

For our first meetup, myself and Dawn had prepared a couple of topics we wanted to discuss beforehand to get other people’s thoughts on the matter. Naturally, conversation progressed and we covered a far larger number of subjects than we anticipated which was both enlightening and fun. I thought it’d be nice to get the ball rolling a little early this time and gradually post articles up here as I see them. Perhaps some discussion will be enabled in the comments, and we can expand on those points at the next meetup. What do you reckon?

The first thing that caught my attention was an article on the excellent Feministing (
http://www.feministing.com/archives/021197.html
) – “Men who abuse think others do too.” A survey was conducted in America which showed that “men overestimated by two to three times the actual rates of seven behaviours ranging from throwing something at a partner to rape.”

Immediately my mind sprang to the Danny Dyer/Zoo debacle a few weeks ago (
http://m.guardian.co.uk/?id=102202&story=http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/may/05/danny-dyer-zoo-magazine
) in which an agony uncle column suggested a reader “cut his ex’s face” in order to get over the stress of their break up. Charming. Twitter was swamped in arguments from both sides. Both sides – one side saying that was pretty bad advice, the other saying it was just a joke and we “feminists” need to develop a sense of humour. If we lived in a world where 1 in 4 women weren’t victims of domestic violence, or that domestic violence incidents weren’t reported to police at a frequency of approximately one every minute (source:
http://www.womensaid.org.uk/domestic_violence_topic.asp?section=0001000100220036&itemTitle=Statistics
) then perhaps Danny Dyer’s column would have been amusing.

I would be interested to find out exactly what is taught in Sex Education lessons (are they still called that or is it Sex and Relationship Education now?) and if the complexities of relationships are discussed in schools or left to family, friends and Zoo magazine. Having been in an abusive relationship (emotional and physical) a couple of years ago, it took months after we’d broken up before I even accepted that I didn’t deserve the crap he put me through. Anecdotes aside, it would be extremely interesting to find out exactly how common that feeling of blame is, and precisely what measures are being taken to ensure the safety of men and women on the receiving end of abuse.

To what extent is teaching courtesy the responsibility of the government (in terms of legislation and education) as opposed to family/friends (by example)? In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need to legislate courtesy, but sadly this does not seem to be the case yet, as current statistics on domestic abuse demonstrate.

I rather like the poster campaign currently running on London Transport –
http://www.togetherforlondon.org/
At first I thought it was pretty patronising, until I noticed that people were actually paying attention and as a result, I’ve seen far fewer arguments on the tube and buses since then. Is there a way to integrate this sort of approach to a wider range of situations, perhaps to publicly tackle the problem of domestic violence?

Cx

Ed: Originally posted on
http://reclaimthepub.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/discussion-topics-for-reclaim-the-pub/

Amnesty Ad the FT pulled out of (tech ftw)

Here it is in all its jpeg glory (thanks Sherlock Naomes). Beggars belief really. I thought the Financial Times were against picking sides and all that. Surely a big company poisoning people would be cause for concern to a periodical publication concerning finances? I mean, shareholders might be Reading [bloody iPhone*] the Financial Times thinking “I wonder what to invest my finances in next… Hum di hum… Eurgh! SHELL? No way!” and then a company which POISONS PEOPLE would lose some finances because POISONING PEOPLE is naughty and bad for their corporate image. I certainly wouldn’t want to be investing in a company that umm… POISONS PEOPLE.

Maybe Shell would kick up a stinker and choose to not buy advertisement space in such a publication that would question their integrity. Tush and fi. That’s the only reason I can think of for pulling out when Amnesty said they took full legal responsibility for it. For those of you yet to meet Naomi McAuliffe, head of this campaign, she is rubbish at lying. Her face goes bright pink. If she says she’s taking full responsibility for any legal issues (libel or otherwise), unless her face goes bright pink, that is definitely the case (well, in this case Amnesty would be, but I’m pretty sure she’d get into trouble for making it up).

One time, as a child, my brother invited his friend Adam over for tea after school. Adam was a right little git. He messed up my brothers room, was rude to my mum, and then when my mum quietly mentioned it to his mum, the blasted woman blanked my mum. Yes, she ignored the fact that her son could possibly have been such an odious git, despite me and my mum and brother witnessing the whole thing.

Shell Oil are a lot like that kid Adam. They’ve gone elsewhere to make a mess in someone else’s home and the FT are like Adam’s mum and should be ashamed of itself in pulling out of the ad.

*I’m writing this on my iPhone, which capitalises certain things like the W in White (see?) and the R in Reading (ha! There it is again!) and the P in iPhone (actually I don’t have a problem with that one). Is there an app to correct that?

Making a Prophet

My contribution to Draw Muhammad Day (
http://www.drawmuhammadday.com/
):

Initially, I was very excited to hear of this project, partly because I love blasphemy (more on that later) but also because I love drawing.

As you can see from my contribution, it’s ambiguous enough that it could be anyone. Like Marcel Duchamp, I label it and thus it becomes its definition. A couple of points that I’ve been thinking about then:

1) Is it blasphemous? If I was to draw a picture of a steaming pile of poo with an arrow pointing to it saying “This is God”, then yeah, that would be blasphemous (I think). This is a picture of a superhero. A SUPERHERO. Actually, technically, if God is everywhere (as many Christians would assert), then a steaming pile of poo would theoretically be a fairly churlish but otherwise accurate depiction of the Lord. Nobody said omnipresence was nice.

Besides, this is a picture of a prophet, not God. As far as I was aware, prophets are just humans with a direct hotline to God. This prophet was pretty impressive, writing the holy book and all that. If he’d written it in our time, then I’m sure Harper Collins would have given him a book deal and his photo would be on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine or something. If only they’d had Photoshop in his day, eh?

2) Is it offensive? If someone gets offended by it, then… well… yeah it’s offensive, right? As far as I know, the argument goes “Muhammad is so holy that he cannot be drawn accurately, therefore please don’t try because it’s offensive”. This is more about the nature of offense though, isn’t it? If someone made a racist comment about me, it is my decision to either get upset or rise above it. In an ideal world, every time someone made an offensive statement, the rest of us would just dismiss it as being childish, immature, ill conceived, plain stupid etc. In real life, this is not the case though.

If I was to wear a swastika into work, that would be celebrating the horrific atrocities of WW2 under Hitler and I wouldn’t just be offending those of Jewish extraction but probably a lot more people with ties to WW2 (maybe with parents and grandparents who fought, and people who just identify with not murdering others for no good reason). Seeing the words “Pakis go home” scrawled on a wall in Croydon a few years back wasn’t just offensive to me, but also to my white friends who stand against all forms of racism. The difference, I believe, between these examples and a drawing of a religious figure is the notion of there being a victim.

Drawing a religious figure in a derogative way leaves the ball in the court of the religious: Get offended or just dismiss me as a moron who won’t be going to heaven. Please note that there is a difference between getting offended by blasphemy and threatening to kill someone for their blasphemy:
http://www.thelocal.se/26664/20100516/

It would be silly to blame all Muslims for the actions of a small minority, and this article does not state whether the perpetrators of this particular attack were even Muslims, but this artist has a £100,000 bounty on his head issued by Al-Quaida for his blasphemous but otherwise dull depictions of the prophet Muhammed.

3) If it is blasphemous, blasphemy is fun.

Well… it is. It was fun as a child in Catholic school morning assembly changing the lyrics to: “Then sings my soul, my saviour God to thee… How great thou FART. How great thou FART”, and discovering Monty Python’s “All things dull and ugly” in a children’s poetry book my godmother bought me. The best thing about blasphemy is that it doesn’t have a victim. If God was so pissed off at us taking his name in vain, surely he’d have produced some kind of sign, a punishment, a plague of Geography exams, something, anything to indicate that it was generally not a good idea. Perhaps it will all go on file when I die, and I’ll really regret it. Perhaps all the good stuff I do as an adult will cancel it out. If the Catholic system of penance is anything to go by, a few Hail Mary’s and an Our Father would probably do the trick.

My deeply religious granddad once said that it’s pointless to punish people for blasphemy here on earth because God is big enough to not be bothered by something banal that a tiny little man might say. I think my granddad imagines God as some kind of giant and we’re like ants screaming for his attention. When I started questioning my faith as a teenager, I genuinely believed that it would make that faith stronger, but it didn’t. If faith is weak enough to be destroyed by childlike inquisition and the loudest reaction to that inquisition is the threat of possible eternal damnation (which cannot even be verified), and a death threat, then maybe it would do us all good to examine exactly why we have such faith in the first place.

Cx

News Alert: Bloke gets beaten up by Asian gang, arseholes.

To sum up: An Independent journalist, researching a potential story of voting fraud in East London, was beaten up by a gang of Asians outside the house of the politician he wanted to interview. Hopefully, the perpetrators of this stupid and unnecessary act of violence will be brought to justice. Here’s a link to the article. It’s probably NSFW unless you work somewhere with a relaxed attitude to images of bloody noses. It’s very Andrew WK.

I had a brief look at the comments, though I don’t know why. What did I expect? That the majority of commenters would see this attack as a sign of political and economic turmoil? That it’s just as well one of the attackers dropped his mobile phone, at least the police have more than one viable lead? Well, yes. Those are all fine, but what about the fact that these perps are IMMAGRUNTS???

“Urallwelcome” helpfully points out at 1.42am (who’s up at that time? Doesn’t he have a job to go to? I was in bed by midnight to get up for work this morning):

“if [sic] you allow huge numbers of people into Britain from countries where attitudes to political corruption are very, very different to mainstream British ones don’t be surprised that those people bring their culture with them. Most Independent readers seem to love the notion of UK culture being “enriched”…”

Ah yes, us Asians enrich UK culture, not by our food, or our love of patterned fabric (Paisley, anyone?), or Panjabi MC, but by our systematic beating up of the peaceful indigenous population (I hate that word, it makes white people sound like wild animals). Perhaps, in this instance, the beating up of Jerome Taylor was racially motivated, in which case this gang of yoofs is all made up of arseholes – all racists are arseholes, that’s a scientific fact. Maybe, as is suggested by the tone of the article, he was beaten up for trying to stir up trouble for the lawbreakers and they responded the only way they know how: by kicking the shit out of him. If that’s the case, then they are still arseholes.

The funny thing about arseholes is that most people have one (Chernobyl aside), and so most people have the propensity to behave like arseholes. Does it occur to any of these commenters that it doesn’t matter if you’re black, brown, white, or green and noodly and from outer space, ethnicity and arseholety are not mutually exclusive? Just because these arseholes happen to be brown, it does not follow that immigration is to blame. Is that so hard to understand? I feel like I’m banging my head against a Brick Lane wall (aythankyou) because it seems crazy, and correct me if I’m wrong, that people who blame EVERYTHING on immigrants (not just limit it to cases where immigrants are to blame) are… well…. Thick.

Prisoner Ben, commenting on some of the commenters puts it so nicely:

 “People seem to enjoy all of the benefits of the Web – i.e. a public voice – without any of the downsides. And without taking advantage of the heart of the Web its breadth of knowledge. There is no longer any excuse for ignorance before posting a comment.

 I hope I am wrong. Once I have direct access to the net then I hope that I will be stunned and delighted by the quality of the debate, that the idea of the web raising levels of knowledge is not a false one. After all, the direction our future civilisation takes will be guided by the web, and if people treat it as a mere public megaphone whilst ignoring its ability to be an endless university then we risk a future which is both extremely loud and decidedly stupid.

I’m just glad that I have excellent comments posted on this blog.”

Aside from “Dr” Nancy Malik trying to convince me that homeopathy works, weeks after I’ve moved onto talking about something else, I am extremely happy with the comments I get on here and in the pub (or from my Dad who I just found out reads this – Hi Dad, happy anniversary btw). The web has been an invaluable tool since we first got it at home back in the late 90s – hours spent LMAOing on MSN Messenger with local Goths, Wikipeding homework (in order to check out the reference links at the bottom, natch), keeping in touch with family and friends across the world, reading the opinions of those with more life experience than I (some good, some interesting), looking up details for my family tree, catching up on Dr Who – the internet is a fantastic place. How sad that some people choose to only read the stuff they agree with. How pitiful that in 2010, I feel loathe to call “Urallwelcome” and others like them a bigot, despite them making bigoted comments. And how utterly, utterly wanky that this incredible tool of democracy and free information is being wasted on these poor souls.

I’m not “ok because I’m not like the rest of them”, I am the rest of them. Some of us are nice and pay taxes and clean hospitals and cook great food and run TFL. Some of us, just as in any group of people, are arseholes. To blame all immigrants for the actions of a bunch of arseholes is like blaming the Irish for a lack of bins on the London Underground. To those who happen to agree with “Urallwelcome” and those like them, do grow up.