Why people look at pictures pt1

Well, yesterday’s critical post about cats went down a storm.

… almost too easy.

Blog postings from the same series currently in the pipeline include:

• Urban cyclists? Worse than cats?
• iPod ownership and the demise of individuality (Part 37)
• Are you daft enough to believe in Fair Trade coffee?
• Glaciers? Who needs them?
• Why everyone should vote Conservative / Republican

And then there’s the one about people who frequent photography forums, pontificate about the superiority of their £3,000 lens collection and then fill the forums up with pictures of their pets taken in their back gardens.

That’s more of a speciality post, admittedly.

But then I get to pondering upon the broader subject of what kind of photos do I, and others, actually enjoy looking at.

The short answer to that question is easy. People generally only enjoy looking at pictures they’ve taken themselves or pictures of themselves...

I may have mentioned this story before but a friend visited me once, shortly after returning from a driving trip along the West Coast of America (you know who you are). He popped a cassette of his travels in my VCR. The high point of the tape consisted of a long clip of film of the view through the windshield as he drove, slowly, from one end of the Golden Gate Bridge to the other. My friend was clearly thrilled to relive this classic footage in my company whilst, at the same time, I was soundlessly mouthing the words ’Why are you doing this to me? Why?’

The full, non generalised, answer to the question as to why people look at other people's imagery is a tad more involved and best broken down into chunks:

Why do amateur photographers take pictures?

• As a record
• As a means of artistic expression
• Because they’re perverts

Why do amateur photographers display pictures?

• Because they think they’re great, want to be discovered and pack in their day job
• Because after spending thousands on equipment and processing they can’t think of anything else to do with them
• As a form of artistic expression
• Because they’re perverts

In this respect, sites like Flickr are a fantastic alternative to the pre Internet destination of 99.5% of all photographs – an old shoebox in a cupboard somewhere. On the subject of Flickr, there is clearly some motivational overlap between photo sharing and personal blogs. Though, I’d say there’s a wider range of impulses behind personal blogs; cries for help, the search for kindred spirits, voices in heads, late night insomnia attacks, and all the rest. Even if the intention is there, only a very skilled photographer would be able to communicate a personal blog style message purely through imagery. Having said that, community style photosharing sites like Flickr and their interactive commenting systems might change that. Mmmm, I wonder what a Cry for Help Photosharing site would look like? Maybe I should give one a try.

Why do people look at amateur pictures?

• Out of a sense of politeness because you asked them to
• To see images of themselves
• Out of a sense of curiosity or wonder
• Because they’re perverts

Because I’m a photo nut I DO look at other people’s pictures, out of a sense of curiosity and wonder. When I am looking at those pictures I am constantly, and subconsciously, asking myself 'why did that person take this picture and why are they showing it to me?'

Motive counts for a lot and comes through in a photograph. A technically poor photograph that reflects the sense of humour or humanity of the photographer or the subject will always be intrinsically more interesting than technically better images captured by, or of, tossers.

To be continued - when I’m feeling more erudite than that last sentence.

Cats

Ooops,

I’ve just realised that the last post could be construed as anti-cat or anti-cat owner. Big mistake.

The last thing I want to do is get on the wrong side of cat lovers. Off the top of my head can think of several reasons why I should be more scared of them than, say, Al Qaeda:

• There are more of them
• They are more fanatical
  
• They have even more contempt for human life
• They really are part of a shadowy international network
• They talk to themselves
• Given that they usually don’t have kids or go out very much, they are very well funded
• They really can blend in unnoticed with the rest of society, well mostly

I was cleaning up my back yard a couple of weeks ago when a couple of workman called to me from the top of a building in the middle distance

Workman: ‘Hey mate!’

Me: ‘Yes’

Workman: ‘There’s a lost cat standing on your wall looking at you’

Me: ‘Yes, I can see it’

Workman: ‘The owner’s coming down to get it. Could you…’

Me: ‘What?’

Workman: ‘… keep it there with you’

Me: ‘How?’

Workman: ‘Its name is Seamus’

Me: ‘And?’

Workman: ‘Call it to you’

Me: ‘ Yeah right’

I stare at cat

Me: ‘Seamus. Seamus. Here boy’

Cat blinks unknowingly

Me: ‘Seamus. Seamus’

Cat licks its inner thigh, Saunters off to next garden

Cat owner appears (female, mid thirties) on other side of fence. Proceeds to call out the name Seamus in squeaky voice many hundreds of times. Seamus sits on next door neighbours’ picnic table throughout; 100% unresponsive to its 'owners’' pleadings. Stef gets bored. Goes back inside. Seamus presumably not retrieved as the local area is plastered with posters offering a reward of £150 for its return. Picture of Seamus shows a nondescript tabby cat, same as countless millions of nondescript tabby cats out there.

The moral of the tale? However intellectually challenged Seamus might be, ‘Duh, what’s my name again?’, this is but nothing compared to its owner. Seamus obviously doesn’t give a f*ck, yet mummy is willing to fork out 150 nuggets for its return, even though she could pick up Seamus II from a local pound for nothing. Seamus II would look the same as Seamus I, be just as unaware of its given name and be just as likely to come home in the mornings.

I’ve got no problem with cats, any more than I have with any other animal. It’s the owners that baffle me. They are so committed to their pets. They bestow human qualities on them. They talk to them. They decorate their houses with cat-related objets d’art of breathtaking mawkishness and sentimentality. Meanwhile Mr Tibbles just sits there licking its arse.

Sometimes, Mr Tibbles might trundle outside and slaughter a few furry animals for sport, toying with their twitching carcasses for an hour or so just for a laugh, before going back inside to continue with the important business of licking its arse.

Mmmmm, how many animal lovers have I heard solemnly regurgitate the line ‘Man is the only animal that kills for sport’ ...

UK cat density is currently something like 226 per square kilometer, that’s 500 times greater than in the wild. UK cats accounts for the death of something like 300 million small mammals and birds a year. The only creatures cats won’t go for are rats, they’re too pussy, which is one reason why we share London with 70 odd million rats; that’s about 10 each. When I was a lad gardens, even urban gardens, were havens for all sorts of wildlife. Now there’s nada. Unless you consider watching cat turds drying slowly on balmy summer days as being at one with nature. I’ve done my bit though and bought an infra-red triggered sonic cat scarer for my patch of earth. It works a treat. The only downside being that exposure to it leaves me open to suggestion and becoming involved in Presidential assasination plots, but it’s a price worth paying.

Anyway, I don’t get it at all. Cats are not people. And turning to them as people surrogates is a bad sign.

But, no, the last thing I want to do is get on the wrong side of millions of cat owning sociopaths. So, just to demonstrate my total, and completely insincere, impartiality on the matter of cat ownership here are a few links…

For Cat People

Kitten Cuteness Ratings

For Dog People

Shockwave flash kitten shooting game

For Both

Cat Buckaroo

No Sh*t Sherlock pt1

I’m a big fan of Sherlock Holmes.

This is not the same thing as saying I’m a big fan of detective stories.

The attraction of the Holmes myth lies more in the character of Holmes himself than in his problem solving skills. Sherlock represents and idealised view of the British ruling class of his time; rational and unemotional, yet incorruptibly committed to basic principles of decency and fairness in a detached, aloof kind of way. Holmes represented the perfect judge, senior civil servant or colonial administrator. Deep down people liked to believe that people like Holmes were running the show and in charge of their well being.

Recently, I’ve been kicking around the idea of updating Holmes for our own times. It’s not that easy. Simply transplanting his character into the 21^st century wouldn’t work. He wouldn’t fit. Crafting a revised character based on our expectations of those who rule today would invariably result in a parody. These are much more cynical times than Conan Doyle’s.

And then there’s the wee issue of Sherlock’s deductive powers.

Almost all of the short stories begin with Sherlock meeting someone for the first time and deducing that person’s full history and occupation just based on visual clues present in that person’s attire, physical condition and mannerisms. In a hand-made world populated by engineers, tailors and farmers you can see how that would work but how would it play in our times? Everything we wear is mass-produced. Nothing lasts long enough to bear the marks of our character. Most of us sit in front of a PC for a living.

That’s a problem.

But my biggest problem in resurrecting Holmes is more fundamental than that. My biggest problem is figuring out how to distinguish a deduction from a rant.

In one of the Holmes stories, Sherlock concludes that the owner of a discarded hat is obviously an intelligent man. The hat is quite large and Sherlock logically deduces that big hat equals big head equals big brain equals intelligence. This is not the Holmes-meister’s finest hour and, even as a twelve-year-old reading the stories for the first time, that deduction niggled me. Clearly, I reasoned, there’s a very fine line between being a master of forensic analysis and an opinionated old fart. Holmes and the lunatics who accost people on public transport have an awful lot in common.

‘Madam, judging by the cut of your thong, the Japanese tattoo just to one side of your all too visible bum-crack, your grating accent and the irritating ring tone emanating from your wireless telephone I can deduce that you are indeed a daft slag. I have resolved therefore to insult you loudly on the top deck of this omnibus.’

The World around us is just jam-packed with an infinite number of visual clues to causal connections. Every object, every person, every event occupy their particular point in space and time as the result of being at the end of a chain of events. This is obvious enough. However, things start to get really fun if you are male, getting on a bit and under some degree of stress. Your take on causal chains becomes quite noticeably different to everyone else’s.

I was sitting with my Dad in hospital last year. He was suffering from a blood infection he’d picked up in the hospital, on drugs, far from happy and semi-delirious. An advert for dog worming pills was playing on the television. All of a sudden, Dad sat up in his bed and started spitting and shouting about ‘f*cking people in f*cking council houses’. He ranted for a good five or ten minutes. Once he had calmed down we talked through where he was coming from. The deal was this:

• The advert for dog worming pills featured large dogs
• Many owners of large dogs come from low-income social groups
• Large dogs are expensive to own
• My Dad ran his own shop and paid tax for 50 years
• … just so people from low-income groups could keep large dogs

Now the logic of this line of thought was pretty flawed throughout but my Dad had just had his bladder whipped out and was full of MSSA (just like MRSA but not eligible for inclusion in the official figures), so I let it go. I however did go home wondering if I would end up like that in thirty years time.

Fast forward a few months. I was in my back yard this weekend. I love this time of year. All the seeds I potted a few weeks ago are beginning to poke through the Earth. I sometimes stare closely at them for minutes on end just marvelling at the miracle of new life. These seedlings are my babies. And just like real babies, I generally lose interest in them as they get older. However, for the moment I am their guardian.

And it is for that reason I am pissed off with almost everyone on my street and generally hacked off with 21^st century social trends.

Yes, I have turned into my father thirty years early. Nor do I have the excuse of major surgery or serious infection. My reasoning went like this:

• My seedlings are being eaten by snails
• There are lots of snails in mine and neighboroughing gardens. I’m talking bucket loads
• The snails thrive because there are no natural predators i.e. birds
• There are no birds because cats have eaten them all
• There are so many cats because my street is largely occupied by people who have turned to cats as surrogate partners, friends, and children

Ergo my plants are being eaten because I am surrounded by people with empty lives. I could go even further and correlate the number of snails in my garden with the rise of consumerism and the historical collapse of the family unit. I could spin a whole thesis out of it. Graphs and all.

Sherlock would have been proud of me.

 

Tremble before the awesome power of Ghinger!

So, there I was watching the election coverage at small number o’clock this morning.

Suddenly, and from out of the blue, one of the BBC reporters casually dropped the line that some of the newly elected London Labour MPs 'are off to join a celebration party in a secret location where they will join celebrity New Labour supporters such as Chris Evans, Eddie Izzard and Mick Hucknall'.

Obviously, this story was only covered after voting had closed. Forget the Iraq War and all the rest of the stuff, the thought of voting for the same party that zany Chris, Eddie and Mick do would have wiped Labour’s majority away in the blink of an eye.

And before anyone accuses me of gingerism, some of my best friends have the same complexion as satsumas, they just don’t happen to be arses with it.

A little later on in the morning, the deputy leader of the Scottish National Party was interviewed. Her name is Nicola Sturgeon. Fantastic! Now that Alex ‘the D is silent’ Salmond is back in charge of the SNP, the people of Scotland have an historic opportunity to vote for a party led by two people named after fish.

Conservatives take note. Now that Michael Howard has announced he’s standing down as their leader, Conservatives should take a leaf out of the SNP’s book and rename all prospective candidates with suitably aquatic surnames. For some genuinely inexplicable reason names like David Herring, Theresa Trout, Michael Bream and Geoffrey Carp come to mind. Shame about Sturgeon being taken though. That’s a good one. Mind you the Tories are playing a clever game with their fondness for leadership contests. At this rate everyone in the country will have a crack at the job before the decade’s out and then at least some of us will feel obliged to vote for them.

Sadly, several hours after voting closed, I found out about a party that I would certainly have voted for instead of the Liberal Democrats. They weren’t fielding a candidate in my area but I would have gladly moved just to get the chance to support them. Yes,

The Church of the Militant Elvis Party

They had some cracking policies. I particularly enjoyed this one:

When elected our MP would like to go the Antarctic, stand in front of the icebergs and shout "Stop Melting You Big White Bastards". It won't do much good but it's more than Bush & Blair are doing

Can I 'help' you?

Our local polling station, like most others, is a shabby uninviting sort of space. The atmosphere is all very muted and low key; almost as if something biologically necessary but shameful is taking place. Most polling station officials are quite old and occasionally smell of stale urine.

There is more of the feel of a seedy public lavatory or pornographic bookshop than anything more noble. Being issued with a flimsy piece of paper before being ushered into a secluded cubicle only adds to that feeling.

A little festive bunting would go a long way. Garish Soviet-style posters of local people heroically casting their votes would also pump up the ambience a little.

I was thinking these thoughts whilst waiting outside for Tracy to cast her vote. I also whipped out my camera and took a few photos of the entrance.

One of the semi-incontinent, packed-lunch eating, cardigan wearing officials standing at the doorway approached me

Woman: ‘Can I help you’

Stef: ‘No thank’

Woman: ‘I was just wondering what you were doing taking pictures of the polling station’

Stef: ‘That would be because I want some photographs of the polling station. Why do you ask? There’s no law against it’

Woman: ‘I was just wondering’

Stef: ‘I’m waiting for my partner to cast her vote and I’m taking some photographs. If you have a problem with that I’d like to know why?’

She walked off. None the wiser as to the true nature of the threat to democracy I presented.

At first sight this might seen to be a trivial encounter. An election official checking out the potentially suspicious activities of a suspicious looking man with a camera. But I don’t think it’s that trivial at all. I take a lot of pictures and have become accustomed over the last four or five years to an increasing degree of low to medium level hassle whilst going about my lawful business. Not from the police though, who on several occasions have supported my right to take pictures. No, the hassle comes from the burgeoning swarms of 2^nd tier lackeys that infest our streets and public places; parking wardens, laughably pathetic security guards, CCTV and speed camera operators, and all the rest of that crap.

There seem to be two motivating factors at work. Firstly, many of them sense that someone with a professional looking camera is looking to take their scalp in some way, which naturally suggests that they have something to hide. The second factor is potentially more worrying for the long term.

They genuinely believe I might be up to no good.

Ten years ago the sight of a bloke standing outside a polling station taking pictures of the signs would have encouraged little to no curiosity whatsoever. People might have asked you about the gear you were using or where you were going to use the picture but they wouldn’t have questioned your motivations for taking the photograph. Photography was considered a legitimate passtime in its own right. People wouldn’t be suspicious of your motivations because they simply couldn’t conceive of any dubious motivation on the photographer’s part.

Well, that’s all gone into the toilet hasn’t it. This War on Terror bullshit is so very, very insidious and pervasive. After all, I might have been planning a terrorist attack on the polling station. It’s a Fearful and Cowardly New World and Everyone gets the chance to be a suspect. Hitler would have been creaming his jeans at how easily and quickly an entire population can have its entire worldview warped.

What a difference four or five years make and God knows what’s in store for us over the next four or five years.

Greedy or just plain stupid?

Aside from the lack of proportional representation in this country there’s one other glaring issue with our current election system here in the UK…

Greedy and stupid people get a vote too.

One thing that struck me time and time again whilst listening to members of the public being interviewed during the course of the campaign was just how focused they were on their own immediate self-interest. Their voting decisions were based on crude calculations of the net benefit to them, usually financial benefit, of each party’s package of proposals.

A thoroughly depressing spectacle that means political parties are forced to compete with each other by offering give-aways; funded at the expense of one group of another, society as a whole, or the environment. It’s no surprise that issues such as pensions, civil liberties, global poverty, nuclear power or the environment barely got a serious mention throughout the entire campaign.

The War in Iraq DID get a lot of air time but, at the end of the day, it wasn’t seen as a pivotal issue. Even people who disagreed strongly with the War ended up voting for Labour, presumably taking a long, hot shower immediately afterwards. A word of advice to those people, particularly all those Labour MPs, who supported the War against their own consciences – it’ll never wash off, you self-interested, spineless bastards.

And, on top of the greed, there’s the stupidity thing.

One of those lessons in life that creep up on you one day as an adult is the very simple observation that there are some really seriously stupid people out there.

As a child you grow up familiar with the thought that all grown ups are quite sensible and can be allowed too operate heavy machinery, that sort of thing. And, as with many child hood misconceptions, this belief is often retained through to adulthood. But then there come those moments in life when something happens that reminds you that all those really stupid kids at school grew up, haven’t changed at all and are now reproducing.

And voting.

There really must be an awfully large number of stupid people out there. Maybe that’s why the schools are so rubbish. Maybe that’s the plan.

How else can you explain Tony Blair having the cheek to deliver, and getting away with, some of the lines he’s been using these last few weeks?

The Iraq War is a prima facie example. Imagine someone is on trial for killing his wife and has consulted Blair’s Bumper Book of Bullshit before conducting is own defence. How far would he get with such high-octane arguments as:

‘Look, I cut her almost three years ago now. Isn’t it time we drew a line under the whole affair and moved on? That was then. Now is now. And I think we should all be looking forward to what I can achieve as a widower rather than constantly harping on about the past.’

Or how about the classic …

‘OK, I could have let her live but the bitch was asking for it. I’ve never criticised people for saying I shouldn’t have cut her up. I respect their point of view. But they should respect the fact that I had a decision to make and I made a decision.’

So, what’s it going to be? Has my nation become cynical and greedy or is it just plain stupid? Or is it both?

Yippee

Well, that’s over with for another four or five years

And what a very interesting four or five years it is going to be. All those issues that weren’t discussed during the election campaign are going start crawling out from under the carpet whether we, or our politicians, like to think about them or not. It’s not going to be fun.

The two of us in our household spent some time mulling over whether to vote or not yesterday. Ours is a strong Labour seat and voting Liberal Democrat as we decided to do would have been an exercise futility. There are several lines of thought as to whether to vote or not in these circumstances:

• If everyone thought the same as you and stayed at home there would never be any change
• In the absence of proportional representation, your vote is a wasted vote and all you do by voting is endorse a flawed system
• No, your vote isn’t wasted as it adds weight to calls for a proportional type voting system
• It all depends as to whether there is anything interesting on the tele or not

In the end we decided bugger it, went to the polling station, marks were made, and our forms (presumably) counted before being passed on for recycling. At no point did either of us feel buoyed up with the joys of living in a democracy. Why should we? There are millions of people throughout the country who have voted for second place parties for their entire lives and whose vote has never truly been reflected in the composition of government. It says a lot about our current voting system that nobody ever thinks about implementing it in any of the countries turning to democracy for the first time. British style, first past the post systems for Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa? Don’t be silly.

I wrote about this in a blog entry a couple of months ago and my predictions turned out to be spookily true. All that money spent on campaigning. All that piss and wind. All for a result that was 100% predictable months in advance …

61% of eligible people voted. Of that 61%, 36% voted labour, 33% voted conservative, 23% liberal. Which yielded 356,198 and 62 seats respectively. These figures throw up all sorts of interesting observations, none of which appear particularly democratic

• Labour secured 36% of the vote but won 55% of the seats
• Liberals secured 23% of the vote but only 10% of the seats
• Labour beat the Conservatives by 3% of the vote. That 3% yielded 158 additional seats. That’s a quarter of all seats
• 2% of the eligible voting population gave Labour an absolute majority over all other parties combined

To call this poor is an understatement. To claim a mandate for national government after securing 22% of the available vote and only 2% more than your nearest competitor is an insult to us all.

Our system made a lot more sense back in the days when politics was a straight fight between labour and capital and there were only two main opponents. That isn’t the case any more and we should change the system. This won’t happen of course. Both the main political parties are bought and paid for by vested interests and the last thing they will permit us is actual democracy.

Flags pt3

Golly

Tracy was feeling run down a couple of weeks ago and we agreed that she needed a couple of days away from London. When the two of us first met we used to trip regularly around the country. We do very little of that these days. High travel and accommodation costs, traffic congestion and a terrible rail service have combined to take the fun out of travelling the UK. The few times we do go away for the weekend we travel to Europe. Bizarrely, a two day trip to somewhere like Brussels, staying in a discounted five star hotel, works out cheaper than staying in a crappy guesthouse in Lyme Regis for the weekend. Go figure.

Anyway, Tracy wanted to get away and suggested a weekend in Antwerp. I countered by suggesting that we go somewhere really foreign and exotic instead. I suggested Great Yarmouth …

Yes, Norfolk, the English Louisiana. It’s flat, it’s marshy, people don’t travel much, and children with big ears and extra fingers abound. A popular destination for people on boating holidays that is just begging for a remake of Deliverance to be set there.

Quoting directly from the Great Yarmouth tourist guide:

“Greater Yarmouth buzzes with events throughout the year. On the sporting front, there is the World Indoor Bowls Championship in January and the horseracing fixtures run from April to November. The Yarmouth Stadium present greyhound and stockcar racing all year. Festive events include a special Christmas show at the Hippodrome Circus and the Christmas Fayre, where you can track down those perfect Xmas gifts at the craft fair with a Scandinavian twist. Great Yarmouth has a rich and proud maritime heritage and once boasted being the one of the wealthiest town in Britain on account of its prosperous herring industry. In 1724 Daniel Defoe was compelled to say that the town had "the finest quay in England, if not Europe".

Without committing an extensive travel diary to the web the most characteristic features of our two days in Great Yarmouth included:

• Staying in the hotel which Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield. Our room retained many original features from Dickens’ time; including the bedding, electrical fittings and washing facilities. The bookshelf in the Lounge area contained two tatty Agatha Christie novels and the John Player Golf Yearbook 1974.
• An extensive seafront lined with old people staring out to sea contemplating Death
• A tired pier (Soundtrack: Early 1980’s hits, especially Yazoo)
• Numerous seedy arcades (Soundtrack: Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre)
• Several run down pubs (Soundtrack: Walking on the Moon by The Police)
• Many boarded up business
• A strong multicultural presence consisting of one Chinese takeaway and a curry house
• Tired cafes occupied by old and middle-aged people drinking cups of boiling hot tea
• No sign of a Starbucks all day
• Shops selling usually hard to find items such as gollywogs, air pistols, Chinese fireworks and flick combs
• The all-pervading smell of stale cooking oil

There was no sense of playful post-modern irony about the place. This was how it was. Nor was there any mystery as to the source of stale fat smell. Yarmouth is infested with dozens of makeshift chip stands and is unquestionably the alfresco fried potato eating capital of the World. During Saturday lunchtime in particular the entire population of the town turned out onto the streets to eat chips. Hundreds and hundreds of people eating chips. At one point I stood in the centre of Yarmouth market square and everyone in my field of view was either:

• Waiting to buy chips
• Eating chips
• Smoking
• All of the above,

OK, that’s not strictly true. One couple was eating doughnuts. We tried a few ourselves and they tasted, to no-one’s surprise, like sugar coated, jam-injected chips.

It was clear that Yarmouth’s extensive port facilities and the huge expanse of agricultural land that surround it are straining at full tilt just to keep the town supplied with the potatoes and vegetable oil necessary for its continued existence

So, what’s my point?

Those two days in Yarmouth were like stepping back 25 years in time. The last time I encountered such retro-shock was during disco night in a pub in Rotherhithe a few months ago.

Being old enough, but only just, to remember how things used to be I managed too spoof the folks in that South London pub and in Yarmouth into thinking I came from the same planet that they did.

The truth is I don’t.

With notable the exception of isolated pockets such a Rotherithe, you’ll see more change in 12 months in London than in 12 years in somewhere like Great Yarmouth. The majority of people who live in places like this, and there are still millions of them, haven’t a f*cking clue what’s going on. They are white, monocultural and very English. Our ruling class hates them. And they face a dismal future in a multicultural society where the only culture frowned upon is their own. The Great White Tribe is going the way of the dinosaurs and everyone knows it.

Some of them are a little pissy at the thought of that.

Flags pt2

Someone commented on my previous post about how strange it was that someone could be considered racist for displaying their national flag in their own country.

Let’s be specific here.

We’re talking Britain here.

Let’s be more specific

We’re talking England.

I can think of no other country on Earth where people feel that they cannot display their national flag.

Now, the explanation given for that is because the Union Jack and the Cross of St George have been hijacked by racists and fascists, tarnishing their image.

That’s bollocks though isn’t it.

Plenty of other countries have extreme nationalist parties that display national flags but residents in those countries haven’t abandoned their symbols of nationhood.

Nope, ultra right groups in the UK picked up our flag after it was dropped by the mainstream. They didn’t hijack it. No-one was holding it.

Without repeating thoughts I have already expressed, it’s fairly clear to me that the new British establishment has a streak of middle-class guilt and self-loathing running right down its Chablis-swilling back. According to this strain of thinking the British are xenophobic and narrow minded, live in a country with a uniquely shameful history, their society and institutions are outdated and, above all, we never ever forget The War. World War 2 that is, not that other War.

Now we’re really talking bollocks.

Britain is the most ethnically diverse nation in Europe, possibly the World and it is the mother, or saviour, or both, of pretty much every democracy in that World. People are strapping themselves to the underside of freight trains to get here.

… and we’re ashamed of our flag.

The debate on whether we should integrate further with the European Union is a fine example of our supposed xenophobia and narrow mindedness. Apparently, we’re not to keen on signing up for more Europe because we’re a nation of insular Little Englanders. Umm, that would be the same European Union that seriously doesn’t want to admit Turkey on the basis that it’s full of Muslims. By my reckoning, even if you believe that the British are still obsessed with 1945, that puts us about 270 years ahead of the rest of Western Europe. The Ottoman Turks were turned back from the walls of Vienna in 1683 which, as bigoted race memory goes, leaves even the Irish and the Scots far behind.

That Neo Nazi sticker I commented on in my earlier post represents, in part, an extreme expression of a reaction against this curious self-loathing some of the British have for their own identity. Let’s be quite clear. I’m absolutely not condoning fascist thinking but I do think it’s sensible to try and understand the drivers behind it.

Flags pt1

Well, there hasn'€™t been much musing from this particular PC for the last few days. I'€™ve been spending my valuable displacement time scanning and archiving pictures from half a lifetime ago and uploading some of them onto Flickr. It'€™s quite a strange experience poring over old photographs; mulling over what was, what might have been and realising that, yes, you are now older than you ever dreamed of being.

I'™ve also spent some time reading through other folk'€™s blogs and looking at their pictures. I'€™ve been exclusively in produce rather than consume mode for some time now and narcissism is never a healthy thing.

And then I came across this photograph on Flickr ...

Fascists
Originally uploaded by Pete Ashton.

Not very nice is it.

The guy who originally posted the picture mentioned that he'€™d seen it on a bus stop in Birmingham. He described how he was in two minds about tearing the thing down; eventually deciding that, yes, he would.

A few people then commented that this was an excellent thing to do and thoroughly justified.

I couldn'€™t help myself.

I dived in.

Without repeating the comments I made there, the gist of my point was that freedom of speech cuts both ways and the true test of a free democracy is how prepared we all are to have people express views we fundamentally disagree with. Obviously there is a limit. Incitement to violence goes beyond free expression but, short of that, in a truly free society more or less anything should go.

Even fascist thinking.

Sorry, that'™s the way it is.

One commentator took exception to my position and argued that Nazi symbols made people scared for their well-being and should be torn down on that basis. OK, but then it would be fine to rip down Stars of David in deference to Palestinian sensibilities. Corporate logos would have to be torn down to please anti-globalisation campaigners and Conservative and Labour party material would have to come down to keep me happy.

There'€™s a fundamental hypocrisy at the heart of contemporary liberal thinking. Free speech and minority rights only apply to groups deemed worthy of these gifts. The recent ban on fox hunting in the UK is a cracking example. People, largely on the Left of politics, campaigning against hunting, argued vociferously that the majority of the UK population supported the ban. I doubt very seriously if they would use the same arguments when debating, say, immigration, gay rights or the reintroduction of capital punishment.

Another, admittedly trivial example comes to mind.

I smoke. I am addict and a victim of corporate manipulation. In all probability my addiction will kill me or at least shorten my life. But let'€™s be honest here. Smokers are scum aren'€™t they? Heroin addicts on the other hand are true victims and are worthy of sympathy and as much support as society has to offer.

That don'€™t make much sense to me.

As it happens, I personally support a '€˜liberal'™ position on the issues mentioned above but I also know hypocrisy when I see it. Liberal fascism is still fascism, just a different kind of fascism, that's all.

I'm not pretending that the sight of a swastika on a British street doesn'€™t bother me. It does. But I want to live in the kind of free society that we kid ourselves we live in. Tolerating muck like that is the price of living in that society. Once you start saying it'€™s OK to start tearing things down, who do you appoint to decide what is or isn't torn down? Politicians?

Half an hour spent at Speakers€™ Corner can be quite instructive when considering these issues. There are some pretty extreme guys plying their wares there. Curiously, it'€™s not unusual to see heated arguments between Fundamentalists and Atheists, Marxists and Nationalists taking place with no sense that they will degrade into violence. The guys speaking there know the rules and accept that sharing space with people who piss them off is the price of entry. They also welcome the chance of a good row. Personally, I'€™d like to extend Speakers Corner by about 15,000 miles in all directions.

Rather than ripping Nazi stickers down we should leave them, maybe with the addition of a scribbled rebuttal, but they should be left where they are. For two reasons; firstly to remind people that such groups exist and secondly because it'€™s easier to deal with bullshit thinking in the broad daylight.

Take the offending picture posted on Flickr.

I actually visited the website of the sticker'€™s authors. Apparently, the group is ...

'€˜Fighting for the Survival of British Culture'

Mmmmm, fighting for the survival of British Culture by adopting the political symbolism of Germany from 70 years ago. Well, that's bollocks for a start. Over half a million British Citizens died fighting Nazi tyranny and these guys are ignorant enough to portray the swastika next to the Union Jack. I'™d say they were spitting on the graves of people who really did fight for the survival of British Culture, whatever that might be.

But would I endorse banning this kind of nonsense? No. They simply aren'€™t worth it.

Returning to the concept of double standards in the world of contemporary liberal fascism, consider the differing attitudes to, say, violent juvenile offenders and Neo Nazis. The first group are the product of a disadvantaged upbringing and can be helped through sympathetic support. Neo Nazis are just scum and should just be eradicated and suppressed.

Mmmmm, that'€™s also bollocks isn'™t it.

I'd say people become Neo Nazis for just the same reasons that liberals cite for kids taking drugs or mugging old ladies. They feel excluded and insecure.

There's also that whole, repressed homosexual, communal showering, macho leather-boy thing but there are ways to indulge in those tastes these days without donning a political armband. It's almost certainly less of a factor than it was in 1933.

No, it's mostly an insecurity thing.

And, as with Germany in the 1920s, you can either find ways to make these people feel like they have a stake in society or you can ignore them until they go away, or there are so many of them you can no longer ignore them.

Mmmmm, drowning out someone's voice by shouting louder than them, then patting yourself on the back for being so right-on and clever. Yeah, that's going to work ...

(to be continued, probably)