"Tread More Lightly On Your Lives"

 That was back in November of 2022. Actually it's 'irreplaceable' isn't it? 

 And apologies, this will be a quite long, largely unillustrated, and not very happy post madly stuffed with microlinks, but if you click on only one of those links this last day of Pride, please let it be THIS. Thank you. I always liked you. 

 Okay. Probably the biggest, if not the only, historical development I've derived any genuine joy and hope from this century is the shedding of my own trans-skepticism as friend after friend of mine found the answer to who they were and came out as trans and non-binary. In the growing light of their revelation the world seemed to me, in this one sense at least, to become better, and richer, and more user-friendly and less exploitative. Then the party I voted into office turned that light out because they thought it's the Government who should decide what human beings are and not human beings. I've heard no one this year wish each other a Happy Pride. So no, I can't say I've grown any fonder of Sir Keir Starmer since I posted the picture above. 

 But now Labour is finally finding a replacement, and perhaps the knots in my brain will loosen. However, as the man himself said: 

"while this is an important moment it is not one for celebration. It is one for reflection. On how a party that has always prided itself on its anti-racism, its commitment to equality, its belief in a better, fairer Britain could have fallen so far as to betray its own principles, as well as the principles of the country. This is also a moment to apologise once again. To all those who were hurt, to all those who were let down, to all those driven out of our party, who no longer felt it was their home, who suffered the most appalling abuse. Today, on behalf of the entire Labour Party, I say: sorry."

 Now obviously that wasn't Starmer's resignation speech. That was the speech he gave in February 2023 after the Equalities and Human Rights Commission said they would no longer be monitoring the Labour Party for anti-semitism – the speech from which the quote "If you don’t like the changes we have made, I say the door is open and you can leave" has so often been taken out of context, that context being it was an untreated stream of white crud. Because, two years later, this same Equalities and Human Rights Commission's devastatingly under-researched guidance on who should be allowed into what toilet prompted some of these trans friends to seek out, in the words of one, "a plan and a passport" as the UK plummeted to 44th place out of 49 European countries in its recognition of trans people’s gender identity. In plain sight and to the accompaniment of countless unmarginalised commentators who genuinely don't seem to know what the word "trans" even means, the British Government became more vocally hostile to the gender non-conforming than I can remember in my lifetime, contributing oceans of piss to a rising tide of trillionaire-sponsored abject cruelty with the openly transphobic trustee of Sex Matters becoming the Prime Minister's director of communications (before resigning over Mandelson)...

 

Oh yes, Mandelson

 

... and, at the very opening of this Pride Month, Wes Streeting's replacement as Health Secretary going on the Today programme to pronounce that a trans woman is a man in a dress, an interview I have literally woken up thinking about most days since. (His exact words were in fact "I wouldn't say trans women are women", but what are they then, fucking UFOs?) 

 

 

Sorry, wrong picture

 And obviously – actually I'll take that "obviously" back, because so many seem to miss it – Starmer-mandated cruelty wasn't just reserved for the trans. Look at Woolwich Crown Court: With plans still in place to speed up "access to justice" by ending a person's right to trial by jury, Mr Justice Jeremy Johnson recently set a couple of unorthodox precedents, firstly by intitiating a prosecution for contempt of court against defense lawyer (and veteran of inquiries into Grenfell, Hillsborough, and the murder of Stephen Lawrence) Rajiv Menon for daring to remind a jury that they were allowed to vote with their conscience, and secondly, by sentencing the four Palestine Action activists left to defend themselves to a total of twenty-five years in prison for a crime they'd neither been charged with, tried for, nor found guilty of. What all four had been charged with was "criminal damage", specifically: taking a sledgehammer to Elbit Sytems UK "products" intended to be tested on Palestinians before being marketed globally as "battle-proven". (Who knows what "products"? Helmets probably.) What they were jailed for however was terrorism, with the backing of a Court of Appeal who had, in deference to the Government, reversed the High Court's overturning of Palestine Action's proscription.

 But that's a tangent really, as is Starmer's appointment of the guy who used to run the UK's most notorious monopsony as a new monopolies regulator, as is the constant downplaying of Russian interference even when it's arson attacks against Starmer's own property, as is anything Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood does, or anything I was ever planning to write about Morgan McSweeney, the not nearly famous enough Liberal-hating, Socialist-hating, Gary-Lineker-hating former Chief of Staff who put Starmer into power with undisclosed donations to Labour Together and a campaign of surveillance against journalists. I'm just getting all these brain-shredding grievances down here now because I don't ever want to write about Keir Starmer again.

 But no, they're all tangents, because the only thing compelling me to write any of this at all was there was meant to be a mass lobby of MPs to reject the EHRC's "bathroom ban" last Friday, but it had to be cancelled because of the heat and so I was hoping we could all write to our MP instead (particularly if any of you live in Makerfield) and here's that link again please. I also hope whoever takes over as Prime Minister has a plan for the heat, and the hatred, and the battle-proving, and I hope it's more than just letting it play itself out or whatever.

 Finally, since I hope never to write about Starmer again, I'll use this post to share his very last interview before resigning, given at the G7 summit. Chris Spargo is a fairly new YouTuber to the scene, whose other videos include "Why is this bin everywhere in the UK?", "Do you really need to preheat the oven?", and "I just want to show you some weird stones". I love Chris Spargo. And Callum, Emma, Sib, Griffyn, Harry, Amanda, Ashley, Billie, Sarah, Alastair, Maya, Pippa, Jack, Jas, Jordan, Jay, Es, Ozzy, Miranda, Mamoru, Oli, I love you too. Happy Pride x

 

Exciting Resignation Blog Placeholder: Topless Politics Revisited

I'm afraid you will have to read the link in full to understand this. I should get photoshop again.

 

 Okay. Good. 

 The hopeless, teeth-grinding paralysis logged in my last post has lifted a little today. 

 And with genuine love and respect for all who, by contrast, find themselves disquieted by Keir Starmer's resignation, I do intend to pay my proper goodbyes to that feeble, purge-sanctioning pepperpot soon. But for now I just want to share this Unattended Article from nineteen years ago! I'd thought it prudent to start backing up the blog because who knows what's going to happen to the internet now it's literally being run by Nazis – sorry, "hard power" enthusiasts – and in doing so... well firstly, bloody hell if I say so myself, but this was a great read in its early days before I started just sharing stuff... and secondly, and more pertinently, having grown to believe my anxieties about the normalisation of the Far Right had only begun in 2008, with the shamelessly guff-spraying double whammy of Sarah Palin as Republican candidate for Vice President and an openly Islamophobic Boris Johnson as Mayor of London, I was genuinely taken aback to find in August 2007, when this blog had just begun and Gordon Brown just become Prime Minister: 

I've noticed a number of angry twenty-year-olds at work, angry and hopeless, robbed of any ideology. And it occurred to me of course, any fellow thirty-somethings, that these people have lived HALF THEIR LIVES under the present government… so no wonder they're so scared and racist. It was alright for us because we knew the Tories were baddies when they talked about "Preserving the British Way of Life"… We grew up with images of gorgons smeared in blood and cash and war… But "kids today", they've heard that same poppycock from the good guys. Thatcher's not the baddie anymore, it's something called the New World Order, and expect to hear immigration mentioned a lot...

"There's a big question about what to do with all the rubble..."

 "... there have been preliminary talks and various plans about a Gaza seaport..."

 So that's what I needed to get back on the blog, it turns out. Hope.  

 I mean, sure, instagram stories are great and everything (and don't worry, I'll post soundbites below) but this interview is, if anything, even more useful than a bond-dissolving Niagra Falls of screaming trauma: a gripping, followable, and humanely optimistic account of – for want of a better phrase – what the fuck is going on and, more pertinently, what the fuck just happened. I mean, Trump?! Peace?! HIM??? It could easily be played in History classrooms for years to come, unless of course it turns out Israeli peace negotiator and self-confessed peacenik Gershon Baskin is just making it all up, but I don't know... he's been doing this for forty-seven years. He definitely knows things. I know. Someone who actually KNOWS things.

"I brought an agreement from Hamas, to do what we're doing today, back in September 2024. And I got it from Hamas in writing, in Arabic and in English, and in voice message. And no one on the Israeli side would listen. In fact, the head of the negotiations in Israel told me: 'It's a great deal. But the Prime Minister refuses to end the war.' I went to Qatar and presented it to them, it was with the Egyptians, it got to the desk of President Biden. But it got no traction."

 But Biden, unlike Trump, didn't have property interests in Qatar which might get upset by Netanyahu's later attack on Doha. Nor, it seems, did Biden have real estate mogul Steve Witkoff as a United States envoy:

"Since the Arab Spring, the main base of operation is Istanbul... (Turkish Intelligence Chief) İbrahim Kalın, who's a good friend of (Turkish President) Erdogan, who's a good friend of Donald Trump, and of Steve Witkoff, they got him on the phone and said: 'Ibrahim, we need you to lock Hamas into this deal.' and the Turks – together with the Egyptians and the Qataris – strong-armed Hamas. And Sharm El Sheikh happened." 

 Just as that ***** of **** posted on "Truth Social" it had, before Hamas had even agreed – a crucial tactic acording to Baskin (and useful too, of course, if you're planning on getting Jeremy Corbyn to form a political party with you). So... wow... man... Do watch it. 

 And, on Trump's horrific homefront, if you haven't yet checked out Portlanders in inflatable animal costumes standing up to ICE, I of course recommend you do so, but what I really haven't been able to get out of my head immediately previous to this Peace is Josh Johnson on The Daily Show brilliantly noting how much Trump's started talking about not getting into Heaven. Where is it now... Oh yeah! Ghislaine Maxwell! Still, as distractions go, I mean, Peace is definitely an improvement.

 

"I want to try and get into Heaven, if possible. I hear I'm not doing so well." Actual quote.

Placeholding Shreds of Tom Driberg

 Fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have time to explain further why, but for now here's a picture of Tom Driberg. I don't expect you to know who he is. I didn't until just now. Initially a member of the British Communist Party, and openly gay when it was incredibly illegal, Driberg became Chairman of the Labour Party in 1958, but there's a lot more to know about him than even that. Here's a brief extract from the wikipedia entry where I found his picture:

One of Driberg's elaborate hoaxes was a concert called "Homage to Beethoven", which featured megaphones, typewriters and a flushing lavatory. Newspaper accounts of this event raised the interest of the occultist Aleister Crowley.

 But that's not why I was resarching Tom Driberg either. I was researching him because his was the name which turned up when I searched "MP Driberg 1946," which I did after reading this point of order recorded in Hansard on the thirteenth of March 1946...

FASCIST ACTIVITIES (ALBERT HALL MEETING)

HC Deb 13 March 1946 vol 420 cc1113-4 1113

The following Question stood upon the Order Paper in the name of Mr. Driberg:

137. To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he is aware that a public demonstration is to be held at the Albert Hall, on Wednesday, 13th March, by a body known as the Britons' Vigilantes Action League; and if, in view of the fact that much of the propaganda of this League is identical with that of our enemies in the late war and of the consequent likelihood that a breach of the peace will be provoked, he will prevent this demonstration from taking place. 

 

Mrs. Braddock

On a point of Order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the urgency and the possible far-reaching effect of any reply which may be given, can we have an oral answer to Question No. 137?

 

Mr. Speaker 

No, I can see no need and this is not a matter for me to decide.

 

Mr. Driberg 

Further to that point of Order, Mr. Speaker. Should I be in Order in raising on the Miscellaneous Financial Provisions Bill this afternoon the question of this Fascist demonstration?

Mr. Speaker  

That is a matter for the Chairman of the Committee. It has nothing to do with me.

Mr. Driberg  

May I, in view of the urgency of this matter, ask your leave, Mr. Speaker, to move the Adjournment of the House on a definite matter of urgent public importance—that is, the revival of Fascism in this country and the public demonstration by Fascists which is due to take place at the Albert Hall tonight?

Mr. Speaker  

That is hypothetical, and I cannot accept it.

Back to Women's Garments (Down pointing)

Forward to PERSIA (RUSSIAN TROOPS)

 ... And that's what turned up when I searched "the Briton's Vigilantes Action League," which I did because they're mentioned on the front page of the Daily Mail from the sixteenth of March 1946, in a story entitled "Police crushed by Communist demonstrators," and I know about that because it's currently a prop in Love Goddess.

 

 I never really think about 1946. As I say, hopefully more to follow. Click to enlarge.

Unposted Photographs of November 2022 in Chronological Order

 It's always fascinating to see who's worn your costume before you.

 

 First day of the tube strikes. Choreography starts outside while we wait for the person with keys.

 I see a lot of these signs around Marylebone. I'm forty-eight and I still don't know what American Express is. Is it a credit card? What is it?

 

 We prepare for the plinth. I'm pretty sure it's bigger than this.

 

 After finding out Pizza Express no longer does Veniziana, I start photographing barriers because they remind me of Keir Starmer.

Thoughtlessly shitty quick fixes, looking increasingly unreplaceable.

 We're in the space. We go crazy.

 I acquaint myself with the backstage of the Cockpit.

 

 Show report: I tripped. Where were the barriers?

 

 "Vibrating pockets can still be heard in a dramatic silence." Tickets here.

 

 The Elizabeth Line is not for trypophobes.

 I get lost in Hampstead, and find some cosy blocks with globes in the window.

 Walking home from shows now, I notice the night sky is often coloured in. 

 

 I can't tell by what.

 

  Loughborough Junction has new lights too, where they used to build sets.

 

 Coldharbour Lane is getting a tower block.

 That's not all that's gone up since I left.

 

 I don't remember this book nook. It has a copy of WHSmith's "Treasury of Children's Literature". I sit and read.

 Treasury is a good word for it, although I don't get far with C. S. Forester's "Poo-Poo Finds a Dragon". 

 

 I do consider what kind of brain comes up with protagonists named "Hornblower", and "Poo-Poo".

 

 "Eeyore's Birthday" is also included, the alpha and omega of great sitcom writing. I read it aloud to myself quietly in its entirety, marvelling again, and upon reaching "'Not mine,' said Eeyore proudly" actually get a little teary.

 

 I return to Notting Hill to find Christmas has started. A different vibe.

Why it might actually be a good idea for Tasha Yar to resign.

Because...

 

 (Here's Yar in the opening of Labour's latest election video. An image that really captures the imagination. Capturing the public imagination is of course key to victory at the polls. It doesn't take much, either. Boris Johnson just had to not comb his hair.)

 

everything...

 

(I follow him on instagram too. Here. It's all like this. He gets about. Looking at things. Crawley hospital in Crawley. An Asda in Ilford.)

 he...

 

(He's also my MP. Here he is in Camden without a tie.)

 

 does...

 

 

(Another campaign image. The sign's too small for me to see what he wants to protect though. Would it have been possible to print the values any larger? Probably not. That was probably impossible.)

 

 is...

(Remember when he was director of the Crown Prosecution Service for the killings of John Charles de Menezes and Ian Tomlinson, and he just let the police cover it up?)

 

 literally...

 

  

 

(It was a vigil, not a protest. But Yar knows why he used that word. Some have argued a vigil is a protest, but whose fault is that? Wait, not Tasha Yar. Keir Starmer! Who's Tasha Yar then?)

 

pathetic. 

 

 (Apologies to Tasha Yar! Also, this was written before Starmer's call this evening for the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to not resign.) 

When Hoffa Went On Cavett

 

 It was 1973, and the height of Watergate (I'm using "height" here, in its current sense, to mean "first act"). He talks about his time inside, and prison reform, and where he was when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, and there's some gay panic - which Cavett surprisingly makes a slight apology for towards the end (not that Dick Cavett isn't hip: his "So much for those foreigners" at 39:17 is a typically dry puncturing) – and there's recourse to lie detector transcripts, then a lawyer called Melvin Belli comes on to talk about F. Lee Bailey's latest porn venture, then someone called Charles Ashman who's just published a book about corrupt judges, then they all start talking about "the system", with occasional breaks for messages from the sponsor. And then the credits roll, and they look like this:

 

 

 Like so much Cavett on youtube, it's electric. I sought it out because, as we he head into this third "lockdown" which looks like it's going to last until at least March, I finally today got round to watching all three and a half hours of The Irishman. I'd known very little about James Riddle Hoffa going into it; I didn't know our lifespans had overlapped, and I certainly didn't know he'd done the chat show circuit. But, despite the protests in the description of the Cavett video that "it's an awful movie, anyway" I don't think the former head of the truckers' union comes out of the film that badly, especially when I remember the episode of Ships, Sea & the Stars that detailed how atrocious working conditions currently are for those who work on ships. I really wasn't expecting to be reminded of that. And I thought I might be sick of gangster films, but I'd forgotten they're also secret histories, and everyone in The Irishman talks like Trump. Maybe it's all the Frankenstein movies I've been watching, but I didn't find the digital de-aging of De Niro that distracting either –

 

 It was less distracting than trying to work out where I'd heard the diegetic music, anyway. (Frontier Psychiatrist! That's it!) 

The Village

 "I say people will insist on things being different."

 After Sunday's post, I can't stop thinking about Thatcher, so here's some Socialism. My parents recommended "They Came To A City" to me, or at least told me they'd enjoyed it – it's an unapologetically utopian thought experiment from pipe-smoker J. B. Priestley, just before Orwell put him on a list, and according to my parents, a lot of it has come true. There's another slice of the film on youtube, but these are all I could find. What my algorithms throw up next is not a third clip, but perhaps the most concentrated dose of Seventies British Programming I've encountered outside of pastiche...

 It's called "No Two The Same". I don't know why. It's from 1970, and features a nervous writer called Ian Nairn, saying nice things about a couple of housing estates in Pimlico. Here's Ian with his back to us, interviewing a doctor:

  Initially I wasn't sure why they were both leaning on a car, but then I noticed Ian having a bit of a sit for pieces to camera other presenters might have remained standing for. There didn't need to be a chair nearby. A wall or a bollard would do.

 I looked Nairn up. He died thirteen years after this was shot. I realise that's morbid, but it's a hard question to ignore while you watch him in action. He's really not comfortable standing.

 But he's talking about hope. Not towering hope like Priestley's, just something on the "oh that'll be nice" scale, and it's a tone I'm unfamiliar with. It's not an unemotional watch. Here's more. 

 Here are lives having attention paid to them, not just by Ian and his film crew, but by the makers of the places they inhabit. 

 It's common to dismiss architects like Le Corbusier for asserting "a house is a machine for living in", but I'd rather that than the uninhabited gated off from the uninhabitable.

Ian talks of it as a village, but also seems to enjoy the anonymity these new places afford. It's odd to think hope also looked like this.

 "Nice day for it," he says as he's greeted at the door. I think it's the first time I've heard this said for real, outside of a sketch.

 But all this is real.

  Which isn't to say it's not funny.

  But it's not just funny.

 Here's the full piece:

  P.S. Bonus notice: It opens EXACTLY like an old episode of Dangermouse, to the point where I wonder if it was an influence.