There are two types of film genre I can’t be doing with, sci-fi and horror.

In my view, one goes to the cinema to be entertained, although seeing as how ‘No Time To Die’ was the last film I saw in a cinema was and that was as entertaining as a public hanging. Given as how they killed James Bond and all, possibly that film is the exception that proves the rule.

The problem I have with most sci-fi films, is that they make up their own rules, which I call my ‘magic button’ theory. Invariably, at some point of a sci-fi film, something will happen, maybe a seemingly inescapable situation is suddenly escaped from at the last second, or possibly the heroes will thwart the villains plans for this or that by miraculously – and also at the last second- exploiting a hitherto unremarked upon flaw in their plans.

Admittedly, a few do not. The excellent ‘Moon’ being a case in point. Logically consistent and being set on just the right side of a future that was already being seriously speculated on – extracting precious minerals from asteroids, remember when that was a thing – and well that’s it. There are bound to be more, there must be, but off the top of my head I can’t recall them. Perhaps as I’m writing this post, some ‘non magic button’ ones will occur to me. Thinking of ‘magic buttons, I think of ‘Doctor Who’, which gets a free pass because it not only has so many magic buttons to be almost a parody of itself, but I’m English and well, duh!

Horror films are kind of the same, but with added wankiness. The genre has so many tropes, visual cliches and other bollocks, that directors are lauded by critics for making a film that subverts the genre. It’s not three scantily clad young women who investigate creepy noises outside their remote woodside cabin late at night, no its three older women, or maybe its early evening. Soon, directors will be subverting the subversion by returning to the old tropes, but insisting they’re paying homage to the genres traditions. Or pastiche, if its a ’15’ rating their after.

I was thinking about this after watching ‘Nope’, the latest attempt in Jordan Peele’s quest to become like M.Night Shyamalan, another emperor who wears no clothes. Although at least he was upfront with it what with the title of the film being a clue right off the bat.

Was I going to enjoy this? ‘Nope’. Was it going to make any sense? ‘Nope’. Were any of the characters going to fully fleshed out, have a compelling back story or something that’d make me want to root for them? ‘Nope’. Was it going to make me glad my house-mate had made me buy it on Prime, or that my investment in time was rewarded? ‘Nope’

But according to Wikipedia, “Nope is a 2022 American neo-Western, science fiction horror film”, it has an 83% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a lot of people who are paid to tell others what to think were so convinced that the film the film touched upon a lot of important themes that I thought they’d watched another film.

This is why I thought of ‘2001’, a film that is as bewildering as it is overrated and in that it shares similarities with ‘Monty Python’. Like ‘2001’ most people only liked ‘Monty Python’ because they didn’t want to embarrass themselves, to admit to not understanding something everyone else agreed was both terribly clever and unlike anything else that had gone before it. They both became something that others explained to others why they should enjoy it, without actually enjoying it themselves.

Mind you, given that ‘Nope’ had world-wide box office of $172 million, against a budget of $68 million. when I think of the attendant marketing, publicity and distribution costs that a film is saddled with nowadays, I joyously admit that the truly horrific thing about ‘Nope’ was its awful box office.

Where to start?

Well I should be writing a post which extols the sheer ease with which the city planners have made cycling in Amsterdam such a joy. But that post is for another day.

This post is going to be about the hypocrisy of ‘The Sun’, which broke the ‘story’ about the BBC presenter who is alleged to have paid a younger woman for sexually explicit ‘photos of her. My problem with all this manufactured pandering to the mob – well one of them anyway – is that there isn’t a story here at all.

If the young woman had been a very young woman when he’d first suggested paying for sexually explicit ‘phot’s that would be another matter, but she wasn’t, but was over the age of consent, meaning that however distasteful one might find it, no actual crime was commited. Nor is there one in her using the money he is alleged to have paid her to fund a drug habit which sadly has ended up with her being a crack addict. Maybe if he have said, when she gave him the ‘photo’s ‘Here’s some money but you can only spend it on drugs, and here’s the number of my drug dealer. She can sort you right out.”

But he didn’t, just as much as she didn’t use the money for something else. A deposit on a flat. Doing a degree at Birkbeck. A holiday. That was her choice. If somehow he becomes culpable for how she spent the money, then Camelot should be by rights shitting themselves.

As ironic good luck would have it, the first hit you get when you type ‘ National Lottery winners drugs’ into Google is this story in ‘The Sun’ detailing how someone who won £13M, spent it all on drugs.

The other thing that annoys me is that ‘The Sun’ is somehow portraying itself as some kind of moral arbiter. It’d be laughable if it weren’t so offensive. This, lest we forget, is the paper that every day for 44 years published topless ‘photos of women, well I write women but the most famous of them, Samantha Fox, was 16 when she started.

They only stopped in 2015.

I know that the two are nowhere near the same, mainly that for 20p one could perv along with countless others, whereas he was paying for exclusivity, but they are on the same spectrum.

According to wikipedia “In British media, a reverse ferret is a sudden reversal in an organisation’s editorial or political line on a certain issue. Generally, this will involve no acknowledgement of the previous position.”

I am presently in Amsterdam, but the computer on which I write these posts is in London, but thanks to WordPress having a facility whereby one can write a post and schedule it to be published at a later date, that’s exactly what I’m doing.

Or did, on June 20th, so therefore what follows may well be an accurate narrative of what is going on, but equally, it may not be.

Anyway, I’m here in Amsterdam with Marge, my former house-mate, cycling around Amsterdam and its surrounding area on an electric version of the adult tricycle I used to own. Electric it may be, but it still has the same fundamental problem that my one had. That of having three wheels, two control freaks but only one set of controls. It’s not so much that I need to be in control, but more that I’m so much better at it it than anyone else. The problem is that she almost certainly thinks the same way too. She used to joke that the only reason she hadn’t killed me yet was because if she did, she’d have nothing left to look forward to. This holiday may prove otherwise.

So, the train journey on Eurostar was either ease from start to finish, with everyone being as helpful as possible or a complete nightmare, where everything that could go wrong, did. Equally, the accommodation she, she, booked on airbnb is is both handily located for our needs and utterly delightful in every way, or it may be in Amsterdam the way London Stanstead airport is in London and makes one think of the shithole Withail lived in. Navigating our way to the bike hire shop from where we are may be simplicity itself, with helpful and plentiful signs, understanding locals and patient car drivers or it may be a tabloid headline in the making, warning those Dammed Amsters of the foolishness of tourists.

That’s before we get to the cycling component of the holiday.

Whilst there have been numerous warnings about unusually hot weather in Amsterdam we may well have heeded such and brought sensible clothes – hats, linen shirts, shorts etc – sun cream and water bottles or we may have thought it all was a lot of fuss over nothing and brought totally unsuitable clothes. We may have learnt from our previous jaunts, and chosen to bring on our bike rides only what can be safely stored about our person, possibly utilising a backpack to make things easier, or else we will be like a modern day Hansel and Gretel, leaving a trail of odds and ends that have fallen out of our pockets littering Amsterdams countryside. The cycle routes themselves will wend and weave us through some breathtaking scenery, on cycle-lanes that are as easy to navigate as they are well maintained, or we’ll be beset by routes that take us through deserted industrial parks, and in one one of which, late at night and at the furthest possible point from our accommodation, we’ll get a puncture.

The travel insurance I bought may have been in hindsight totally superfluous, or a prudent move, especially when she reads this post and with some force, repeatedly introduces her feet and fists to my man bits, deciding that its high time that that she put me out of her misery. It might happen.

Finally!

I knew it was only a matter of time, of ‘when’ and not ‘if’, until the fanciful imaginings of my youth – and also of countless of others – became tantalisingly close to becoming a reality.

An Olympic-styled competition for drug-taking athletes is being launched by an Australian entrepreneur.

Melbourne-born, London-based businessman, Aron D’Souza is the president of Enhanced Games, a coalition of athletes, doctors and scientists. He plans to stage the inaugural games of no drug testing in December next year.

Who in the world, after being off their trolley on drugs and finding themselves to unable to complete even the most simple of tasks without it taking ages, hasn’t thought ‘If it takes me this long to make a cup of tea, imagine how much better the Olympics would be if everyone was on drugs?’?

Just imagine the fun watching it would be!

It’d be like ‘It’s a Knockout’, with lycra instead of enormous padded costumes. The chaos of the 5000m, the danger of the javelin, the utter slapstick of any cycle race, the folly of even attempting a marathon. It’d be TV gold, and don’t tell me you wouldn’t watch it because I know would. You could even ‘take part’ – which programmes continually exhort us to do nowadays – and take the drugs the athletes were taking as you sat safely on the sofa and placed bets on how long the 4x400m relay would take.

The Winter Olympics would be even better. The sheer lunacy of the downhill slalom! The absolute insanity of anyone even attempting the ski jump! Curling is already bonkers enough as it is, so imagine if they were all on acid? I

tI’d all be like the best bit bit in ‘For Your Eyes Only’ where Bond has to ski down a bobsleigh run, as gunmen on motorcycles chase him. Only much better.

I know its only days, but the seed has been planted, and much like anyone who’s ever tried to grow their own pot plants, we just have to wait and see if anything happens.

Just looked at ‘The Guardian’. They have a review of her performance at Glastonbury. I mis-read it initially.

Blondie at Glastonbury review – Debbie Harry is an atomic charisma bomb

I saw the word ‘bomb’ and assumed she’d done a Keanu Reeves who with his band ‘Dogstar’ played what is considered to be one of the worst sets ever played there.

But no, 4 stars.

Anyway, I just wanted to finish the story about her that I started the other day. One of the years of the mud. Finding a tent that sold tea and had seating. Sitting down on something dry at last. A shaven headed extra from ‘The Matrix’ coming in and saying that Debbie was outside, wanted to come in and would anyone give up their seats.

The answer was, of course, no. Didn’t stop him asking everyone In the tent though. Same answer.

Back when I was sharing a house with Marge, Joe, and the glorious force of nature that was their daughter, Little Miss Sunshine (LMS), LMS thought that my idea of a good time was to watch “Peppa Pig’ on the computer with her. It wasn’t, and I told her this, but as it suited her needs to do so, she ignored me. I watched so much of it that I ended up venting my frustration in a post entitled ‘Is Peppa Pig mind control’

She was only about 4 and I resigned that it couldn’t get worse. How wrong I was. She then went through her ‘Holly and Ben’ phase, made using a style of animation that might charitably be called ‘naive playfulness’ but to my eyes, made ‘Scooby-Do’ look like the work of a creative visionary. Telling the ‘stories’ of the ‘adventures of ‘Holly’ – a fairy princess – and ‘Ben’- an elf – it was worse than it sounds. But she’d watch, equally enthralled and with an endless appetite for more of them. By now she was about 6, and I owed her.

Because no matter how many different anti-depressants I was prescribed after my brain injury, nothing was as effective as an insistent 2 year old banging on my bedroom door, telling me to get up because she wanted to play. So it was the least I could do, but too late I realised that by enduring both ‘Peppa Pig’ and ‘Holly and Ben’, I’d made a rod for my own back and that rod had a name.

“Frozen’

If you know why this cultural abomination is so reviled by anyone over 10 who has had the misfortune to see it, then you have my sympathy. If you haven’t seen it, don’t. It makes ‘The Greatest Showman’ – which I’ve also watched more times than a grown man should – seem like a towering cinematic achievement in comparison. It’s that bad. But she loved it – I mean she really loved it – to such a point where she could sing all of the aural detritus -‘songs’ – far more enjoyably to my ear than the film versions. ‘Let It Go’ was a particular favourite of hers and she would sing as if she were channelling the spirit of Ethel Merman. That’s high praise, by the way, just in case you think otherwise.

Anyway, I was thinking of ‘Let It Go’ when I saw yet another poll in ‘The Guardian’ seeking to bolster their position that Brexit was a con, that people who voted for it were conned and that anyone who campaigned for ‘No’ was unspeakably guilty of enabling something that they didn’t like. They way they carry-on one might imagine them patiently admonishing a truculent child,

‘Now it would be in everyone’s best interests if we just put the whole thing behind us and pretended like it never happened. We know you had a temper tantrum and we hope you feel better for it now, now you’ve got it out of your system. But that’s all it was, a temper tantrum, and as the adults here it would be remiss of us not just to point out that you were wrong to act in that way to begin with, not just to point out that what you thought would make things better, hasn’t. But more importantly, to make sure you never get such wrong-headed idea’s ever again. Because that would upset us, and we don’t like being upset.’

Thus we had on this bit of democracy bashing on Thursday,

Only 18% of leave voters think Brexit has been a success, poll finds

Mmm. But if 18% think that, doesn’t that mean 82% think something else? What might that something else be, I wonder. Oh hang, a detail that wasn’t worthy of an eyeball grabbing top story clickbait was to be found in the text, once you had clicked on the story and bothered to read a bit that is, that 30% said it had gone neither well nor badly, and 26% said it was still too soon to say.

That means then that if 18% of people polled think one thing but 56% think a combination of other things, that’s, er a total of 74%. That can’t be right, can it, that 26% of people polled just vanish? But it seems that they can and did, because there’s no mention of them anywhere else, but the story just throws up other percentages that prove this and damn that.

It does helpfully note however that the pollsters Public First asked more than 4,000 leavers how they felt now about Brexit. Not helpful enough to tell us how much more than 4,000 leavers were polled – was 1 or 207 – or how the pollsters were able to accurately identify leave voters, but hey, what’s the use a running a story about a poll if you can’t cherry pick the results?

Hilarious, as it turned out. It provided proof that the Law of Unintended Consequence’s can cause embarrassment to be dressed up giving space to an alternative view. Because the next day ‘The Guardian’ ran – or more likely was forced to run after complaints from the pollsters Public First – an opinion piece by Anand Menon, the director of The UK in a Changing Europe, who commissioned the survey and Sophie Stowers, a researcher there. Ostensibly to reinforce the sentiments expressed by the audience in the previous nights BBC1’s ‘Brexit Question Time’, with findings from their survey, they wrote,

One of the most interesting comments last night came from an audience member who was sick of being told she had been lied to. A majority of leavers feel they had all the information they needed to make a decision in 2016. And a plurality think that they had sufficient information from both sides of the referendum campaign to make an informed decision. What they resent is the fact that political leaders have not capitalised on the sovereignty for which they voted; 39% of them think politicians have not even tried to make Brexit work.

Hang on, that’s not quite the narrative that ‘The Guardian’ endlessly perpetuates, that of leave voters being hoodwinked, lied to or subjected to Russian something or other. Nay, nay, and thrice nay! But they weren’t done yet, endowing those who voted to leave with rational thinking, which must’ve been something of a shock to a ‘Guardian reader/organ grinder/sponsor who imagined them all to be pitch-fork wielding illiterates.

Yet while they are frustrated, leavers did not expect instant results. A quarter of them think not enough time has passed to judge whether Brexit has gone well or badly; 61% think Brexit will turn out well or very well in the future. There was a sense among those in the audience last night that they did not expect to wake up on 24 June 2016 in a whole different Britain. Rather, Brexit is an ongoing process that, while politicians have messed it up to date, still holds the promise of greater successes to come.

Steady on! Next you’ll saying that leavers don’t experience any doubt as to the certainty of how they voted, oh, that is what they say

So, it should come as no surprise that many – including most of those in Clacton last night – still back the decision they made in 2016. In our survey, 72% of 2016 leave voters, knowing what they do now, would still vote as they did. There was much groaning and eye-rolling at (Alastair) Campbell’s support to rejoin the EU. For most leavers, even those who are “Bregretful”, another referendum is not the answer.

The Guardian’ is treating its disciples in much the same way that ‘Peppa Pig’, then ‘Holly and ‘Ben’ and finally ‘Frozen’ treated LMS It gives them what they want, a simple and graspable narrative, that they know will get them and more importantly, keep them hooked. The one difference being that LMS was a child and was treated as a child, with no discernible ill effects. ‘The Guardian’, by contrast, treats adults as children, with a poll seemingly every other week, always finding something that’ll reinforce their increasingly contemptuous attitude to democracy. That democracy only works when it works for us, and if it doesn’t, well we’ll just have moan and complain until it does.

I just want to point out, in case you’ve forgotten, that I voted to Remain. I didn’t however, vote to remain perpetually petulant about the result though.

And if I did, then I’d blame 27.2% of voters who could have voted and changed things, but couldn’t be bothered. That’s who the real villains are, the one’s that exercised their democratic right not to vote, that’s who “The Guardian’ should demonise instead, but doesn’t because it doesn’t suit their simplistic narrative.

Anyway, here is one of my favourite ever Glastonbury moments. I was there, along with a few hundred other people, the mud and the rain. Just before Faithless had come on it had hammered it down, that’s why everyone is wearing waterproofs and why you can see the rain dripping off front of the stage. But more importantly, much more importantly, the crowd is well up for it, going totally banana’s, and then going a full fruit salad after 5.50. A few years later, when they were bigger name, they played the Pyramid stage to a far bigger crowd but to a much, much less enthusiastic response.

As far as I’m concerned, those who knew knew, but those who came later had possibly only read about Faithless and because they were told they were good and it legitimised them. Those people had no yardstick upon which to base any judgement of if something was good or not, never having been into dance music in any of its forms. They relied on the opinions of others, with more experience, cultural commissars, to do it for them. This partly explains – well to me anyhow – the curious and long-lasting reverence which some have bestowed upon ‘Aphex Twin’. Because no matter how good his press is, no matter how how many laurels the critics put on his wreaths, after one listen to most of his many tracks, most people would be hard pressed to want to listen to anymore.

But those who knew where he came from, had danced to some of the same tunes he had, had some of the same musical influences he had, would know. They’d discern in his music threads of a rich and ever expanding aural tapestry, one that they didn’t need a music critic to explain to them what colours were his. Because, as I wrote in the previous post, we are as much defined by what we don’t like as what we do, and no-one better exemplifies that musical truism better than ‘Aphex Twin’

I know that recent my post about Coldplay was a not exactly what you might call positive about them, but as there are more members in the Coldplay than actually read my posts, there aren’t that many people to call it anything.

But that doesn’t matter, because Coldplay perfectly exemplify my feelings about music.

One is as much defined by the music they do like as much as the music they don’t. Thinking about it, can anyone just ‘like’ music, is that even possible? And even if it were, would even one want to be that kind of person? Not me! No, one either loves a particular type of music or one hates it. There is no like, no easy going toleration, no passive acceptance, no patient indulgence. If someone smacked you in the mouth, you’d have them arrested, wouldn’t you? Why this doesn’t extend to GBH of the earhole is beyond me. I’m also equally aware that some may hate the music that I love and that’s fine, as long as they love some other type of music. If hell existed, people who claimed to like all ‘kinds of music’ would be in there for sure.

Anyway, I’ve always hated jingly-jangily guitar music (JJGM) even before I gave it a name. It was the sort of music ‘The Smiths’ made. Them and ‘U2’, ‘The Cure’ and for those who believed those bands had become too commercial and thus didn’t want to tainted by association with, ‘The Jesus and Mary Chain’ No prizes for guessing that I went to an all boys secondary school, notionally a Catholic one, despite everyone seeming to worship Morrisessy. The way I saw it, if music didn’t make you instinctively want to dance, then it was dirge, an aural pollutant that came in many forms.

School disco’s were therefore hilarious. Sixth-form girls from the local convent school were invited to add to the youthful angst. The smell of wet look hair gel, Clearasil cream and Paco Rabane was overwhelmed by the sweat that only young people can produce when finding themselves at a social gathering where the opposite sex is present and dancing is expected, realise that whilst JJGM had taught them many things, dancing wasn’t one of them. Had I known then what schadenfruede was, I may well have thought it had a sound as well and that sound would be, ‘Walking on Sunshine’ by Rockers Revenge. Or the 12″ version of ‘I.O.U’ by Freeze. Or, or, or. There were just so many great tunes, almost as many as there were bad haircuts on show. It was a harsh lesson, that of the signal importance of being able to dance, was one better to be learnt early on, especially with rave culture on the not too distant horizon, that dancing was, is and always will be an vertical expression of a horizontal intention.

But rave culture, great as it undoubtedly was – and it was – could not have happened without all of the great music that went before it. Disco, funk, electro, the shoulders upon which the great dance music of now is built. And it is great. Old people like me are meant to shake their heads in despair when we hear it. Muttering things like,” It was much better in my day.” as we do. That’s our job. Young people, by contrast, are meant to be young people while they are young shake their tail feathers, while they can. That’s their job. Then they become the old people and find themselves shaking their heads.

And you can’t do that to JJGM. I mean, you can, of course you can, and good luck to you, but really?

I was thinking about this, thinking about how it is the job of people my age to bemoan modern music as much as it is the job of young people not to care. I didn’t when I was young and my parents wouldn’t even have bothered pretending to know who Africa Bambaata was, and even if they did it would’ve been embarrassing. But the organisers of Glastonbury 2023, are clearly stuck in a bizarre musical graveyard if their headliners are anything to go by.

Guns n Roses are headlining on Saturday night and when did they last bother the charts? Same goes for Elton John on Sunday night. I know that the headliners aren’t the main reason people go to Glastonbury, but with the lineup being announced well after tickets have sold out, I just hope that the other reasons compensate for being trapped in a world of outrageous markups, disgusting sanitation and sleep deprivation. The first time I went to Glastonbury I bought my ticket three days before we planned to set off and then only after Eavis’s had grudgingly conceded that yes, as young people wanted to dance, they were going to have dance tent. There was still loads of JJGM ear botheration to contend with then and it seems there is now. Blondie is causing yet more racketeering there I see. Again, when did she last bother the charts? Although she did once gave me an unforgettable Glastonbury moment, not like that!

It was one of the years of the mud. Mud so thick it could suck the shoes off your feet, mud so watery it was like a sea of brown porridge and mud so everywhere that it was like being in the Somme, but with incessant JJGM instead of German artillery. Some of us had found a tent that not only was selling tea, but crucially had lashed together a Heath-Robinson type seating affair. It was the first time any of us had sat down in what seemed like living memory, and everyone in there felt the same, because we had to wait ages to get a seat.

Anyway, this bloke comes in, dressed like he’d stepped out ‘The Matrix’ – dark suit, shaven head – goes up to counter, has a conversation with the proprietor who shakes his head and walks away. Then blokey approaches everyone, has the same conversation which elicits the same response. We wait our turn. When he finally gets to us he asks, “Debbie Harry is outside. Would you give up your seats for her if she came in

Anyway, here is one of my favourite ever Glastonbury moments. I was there, along with a few hundred other people, the mud and the rain. Just before Faithless had come on it had hammered it down, that’s why everyone is wearing waterproofs and why you can see the rain dripping off front of the stage. But more importantly, much more importantly, the crowd is well up for it, going totally banana’s, and then going a full fruit salad after 5.50. A few years later, when they were bigger name, they played the Pyramid stage to a far bigger crowd but to a much, much less enthusiastic response.

It was exactly what Danny meant in ‘Withail and I’, when he observed “They’re selling hippy wigs in Woolworths.’

Aah Sarker is in the news today.

Or to be be more accurate, the news that “The Daily Mail’ (DM) considers news and so they have judged a Twitter post of hers about the ongoing but now increasingly desperate search for the mini-submarine that went to look at the wreck of the Titanic, not just news, but outrage worthy news’

Guardian columnist Ash Sarkar sparks backlash with ‘utterly grotesque’ Titanic sub disaster tweet saying: ‘If the super-rich can spend £250,000 on vanity jaunt they’re not being taxed enough’

Leaving aside the dig that they got in about her writing for ‘The Guardian’, which is a code for meaning she’s soppy left-winger who writes for a soppy left-wing newspaper, which means DM readers can despise her without any guilt, they find space to mention that she has written 23 articles for them but sadly not over what timeframe they were written over.

It could be 23 this year alone. Who knows?

But no matter, the DM’s anger is righteous and in full flow, so go on then, what was this tweet that was so offensive, that so far exceeded the bounds of good taste that Twitter is known for, that another Twitter user felt that they had to reply, branding it ‘utterly grotesque’ and thus enabling the DM to manufacture a 500 word story out of?

I should warn you that this is shocking stuff.

‘If the super-rich can spend £250,000 on vanity jaunts 2.4 miles beneath the ocean then they’re not being taxed enough.’ 

What’s shocking about that is that her tweet isn’t shocking in the slightest, what is shocking is that it conclusively proves that the DM employs a team of people to monitor Twitter to create stories based on someone expressing an opinion that falls foul of the DM’s rather fluid morality.

I agree with her, I mean something is very wrong with the world where going down to explore the wreck of what after all is a mass grave, isn’t consider repugnant, but instead a thing that you can do if you have more money than morals. At what level of delusion do you have to be operating under to think that going 2.4 miles under the ocean is a good idea? The people that facilitate this kind of extremely expensive folly are just as much to blame. They turn a lunatic idea into a very real possibility.

She then had the sheer audacity, to respond to critics of that tweet to tweet back

‘The Titanic submarine is a modern morality tale of what happens when you have too much money, and the grotesque inequality and sympathy, attention and aid for those without it.

‘Migrants are ”meant” to die at sea; billionaire’s aren’t.’

Again, a rational response, so much so that ‘backlash’ continued. To which she responded – and I think a lot of Twitter users should do this, rather the plunge ever deeper into a digital rabbit hole of bile – to a critic by observing,

‘If you don’t like what I have to say, l’m perfectly comfortable with that. But perhaps you might be better off ignoring me, rather than howling incessantly into the void?

Of course the whole issue of the super rich not paying enough tax was always going to invoke the ire of the DM, given as how Viscount Rothermere, the owner of the DM, lives in a mansion in Monaco, identifies as French, has non-com British tax status, and because the DM is registered in the Bahama’s, pays no tax anywhere.

In a recent post I wrote about how business’s were seeking to change our perception of them, so that they became not the rapacious capitalist entities they are, but instead present themselves as somehow at the vanguard of positive social change. I cited Google, but honestly, there are so many at it, all trying to disguise the fact that their primary goal is to sell us things, that it could’ve been one of any number of them. Its as if King Herod announced that he was opening a maternity unit for mothers on low incomes, in order to help people forget his much publicised less than warm-heated attitude to babies.

When exactly did business’s become so obsessed with not only how they were perceived by their customers, but also if that perception was a negative one, one that potential customers found off-putting, to change it to a more favourable one? Or have they always been and I just didn’t notice? But certainly, its got out of hand now, so much so that one could be forgiven for thinking that the actual business of some business’s was nothing more than an embarrassing hobby, a distraction from fulfilling their true purpose, that of being social justice warriors (SJW’s).

I first became aware of this, or to be more accurate, cognisant to the fact that there was a concerted attempt by business’s to do this, after the global financial crisis of 2008 when Lloyds Bank began running a seemingly never ending campaign of disinformation. They weren’t a financial gang of reckless shysters who had only been saved from ruin by a government bailout, no we were meant to forget all that, and imagine that they were always ‘going to be by our side’. No, they weren’t part of a shadowy cabal of charlatans and con-men who had caused untold misery and despair to millions, no they care about mental health now. Obviously not when their feckless lending caused houses to repossessed, business’s to collapse and dreams to be shattered, not then they didn’t, but now, well, now is different.

Now they want us to forget all of that and to of focus on the now, the now being the now of now they care – care that we forget what their basic core instinct is, to make as much money for themselves – and to instead think that commercials featuring a load of CGI horses running amok is somehow going to do that. To forget that the first thing they did after the government – the taxpayer – had bailed them out, was to award themselves huge bonuses for doing something they should’ve been in prison for.

Mind you, the further away we get from 2008, the greater the likelihood that it will all be like Bobby Ewings shower, a bad dream that flees our consciousness, although probably going into a branch of Lloyds and asking for any help with trying to remember it, will soon show how on you side they actually are.