the brilliantly leaping gazelle

This rather alarmist headline appeared in today’s Daily Express “Amber heat health alert for huge swathes of UK as warning of ‘risk of death’ issued”

“A worrying amber level heat-health alert has been issued for huge swathes of the UK as high temperatures continue leading to an increased ‘risk of mortality’ for some groups. According to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the prolonged warm weather could lead to “significant impacts” on the health and social care sector with an increase in “mortality” across the population “likely”. “

You see what they did there?

‘Likely’ is basically unlikely with one’s fingers crossed. It isn’t probable or any other expression conveying certitude. It’s guesswork, informed guesswork to be sure, but guesswork nonetheless.

It also struck me that in order to justify its own existence – and to avoid any budget cuts – the UKSHA hasto dress up basic common sense in the language of officialese as if the lower orders had never experienced hot weather before and were therefore utterly bereft as what they should do in these unprecedented times.

“The UKHSA warning continued saying indoor temperatures inside hospitals and care homes may exceed the threshold and impact on the ability of services to be delivered.” In other words ((IOW), nurses and care workers may become more knackered than normal. This may cause problems

“It also warned people being cared for in the community may be impacted and that the high temperatures could affect staffing levels as well as public transport.” IOW, the lower paid you are, the greater the chance you are to think ‘Fuck it, I’m sweating like a pig here, I’ll call in sick’

“These warnings mean minor impacts are possible across the health and care sector but there was still an “increased risk of mortality” amongst “vulnerable individuals” and “increased potential for indoor environments to become very warm”. IOW, the chances of anything we’ve said happening are small but be sensible. Drink water (not bleach) and open windows. That sort of thing.

“Significant impacts are expected across the health and social care sector due to the high temperatures, including: observed increase in mortality across the population likely, particularly in the 65+ age group or those with health conditions, but impacts may also be seen in younger age groups.” IOW, we’re hedging our bets here, but some age-groups are more likely than others to be affected.

I might put in a freedom of information request to the UKSHA asking them exactly how many deaths occurred following this stark warning, I mean there’s bound to be some.

As the government noted “During summer 2022, there were an estimated 2,985 (2,258 to 3,712) all-cause excess deaths associated with 5 heat episodes, the highest number in any given year.”

Again, you see what they did there? “All-cause excess deaths” means to me plenty of wriggle room with which to fudge the data.

I might put in a freedom of information request to the UKSHA asking them exactly how many deaths occurred following this stark warning, I mean there’s bound to be some. What and how many were the ‘significant impacts’ they cryptically alluded to and how ‘significant’ were they? No, thinking about it it, a far more sensible idea would be to contact the excellent ‘More or Less’ programme on Radio 4 to investigate. They love all this sort of thing.

As I imagine most people were, I was shocked by the news earlier this week that Woking Council, faced with a £1.2billion budget deficit, has proposed a plan to address this by implementing a drastic measure of cuts, including those to care, the arts, sports groups, playgrounds and community schemes. The scale of the councils debt is only matched by the number of councils that will soon be in the same situation.

The Independent reported that at least 30 per cent of councils in some of the poorest areas of the country are considering declaring effective bankruptcy this year and, for added doom and gloom also added that a survey of 47 local authorities in the North, the Midlands and on the South Coast revealed the severe strain on finances meant five are currently in the process of deciding whether to issue a section 114 notice of their inability to balance their annual budget in 2023-24.

The reason I was shocked wasn’t so much that this the situation we now find ourselves in, but more that an abject collusion of complicity between politicians and the electorate has allowed this to happen. That is sort of the point I was making in my last post, regarding the seemingly Faustian pact between us – the electorate – and them – the politicians -, that allows the fantasy of better public services and lower taxes to become a reality. The one that permits the electorate and the media to protest vociferously about individual incidents, whilst remaining conveniently silent about the system that perpetuates such. The one that that places increasingly unrealistic expectations on councils to do more with less .So in the last week we have had the scandal of the less than concrete concrete and now councils going bust and no doubt more scandals are just waiting to be revealed.

I was also shocked because this state of affairs needn’t be this state of affairs, if only politicians were brave enough to tell the electorate the truth and that the electorate was mature enough to hear it it. Yes, we have an ageing population, we know that, but what exactly does that mean?

Well, according to the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR), whereas today 18% of the population is over the age of 65, by 2065 they predict it will be 26%. The OBR also has a lot of forecasts, analysis and projections that I’m sure are as fascinating as they are terrifying but what I takeaway from it is this; 26% of people in 2065 will be costing the state much more than they contribute, 15% of people will be under 16 and same thing, will cost the state more but contribute nothing, but the difference is that they will eventually contribute.

Under any metric one chooses, it seems to me that the current state of things – and things are in a right state – is as socially irresponsible as it is catastrophically unaffordable. I’ve just had a quick look at the UK governments care and statutory guidance as updated this year and it underlined for me not only why we are where we are as regarding councils providing these services and financial consequences resulting from doing so, but much more importantly, that we have to stop.

So rather viewing assisted dying as something best avoided, parliamentarians of all parties should instead seize the initiative, explain the sums of money involved – adult social care alone cost £26.9 billion in 2021/22, up 3.8% from 2020/21 and according to the OBR, pensions will account for 42% of the welfare budget this year, that’s £124 billion, the largest single expenditure – and as soon as possible introduce a scheme of state sponsored euthanasia.

When the current crop of pensioners – those over 80 I’m talking about here – were adults of working age and paid tax, successive governments had a realistic expectation that their time as a pensioner might last for maybe 15 years or so. Wasn’t that the deal with state pensions? That their tax paid for the pensions of the old, and when they were old the tax paid by others paid for theirs. However, the Office for National Statistics estimate that by 2045 there will be 3.1 million of them or 4.3% of the population. So to my way of thinking, anyone over the age of 85 who is claiming a state pension is guilty of benefit fraud. It may well be through no fault of their own, but they’re still claiming a benefit to which they’re not entitled.

However unpalatable one might find the prospect of state sponsored euthanasia, it doesn’t make it any the less logical. The government could offer pensioners upon retirement a deal, a lump sum equal to the value of their pension for 15 years – that’s the state sponsored bit – in return for a guaranteed undertaking for voluntary euthanasia on their part. 15 years seems about enough time for people to pit all their affairs in order, take all the holidays they’d never had and generally depart with dignity. Of course, when the 15 years had elapsed they could renege on their part of the deal, of corse they could, but that would mean an immediate termination of any governmental – local or central – responsibility for them.

And of corse the benefits to society would be worth it. If people knew what the deal was, then the money invested in private pensions – estimated to be £112 billion in 2021 by the Institute for Fiscal Studies – quite a bit of that might be ploughed back into the economy. It would also help the NHS. It’d help solve the bed blocking crisis for one thing and also alleviate its obscene staffing shortage and also its obscenely expensive cost. There’d also be a benefit to the housing sector, inasmuch as more stock became available, house prices and rents would fall. Employment too. There’d be a huge swathe of jobs that were no longer needed, thereby creating new employment opportunities.

It will happen. How soon it happens and exactly what form it’ll take, is a question of when the unthinkable becomes thinkable.

With a predictably that was as tedious as it pointless, the scandal of an unknown number of schools having been built using a less than concrete concrete, has been used by some in the media to have yet another swipe at this government. Today it was the turn of of Gabby Hinsliff, who penned an article in The Guardian with the headline, ‘Collapsing schools are the latest sign of a crumbling country – and a lesson in Tory cost-cutting’. It was a Guardian readers wet dream, combining parents fears for their children’s safety, bureaucratic penny pinching, departmental incompetence, ministerial buck passing and of course, Boris’s Jonhson. It ended at the point where I thought it was going to be more than just another piece of click bait for people whose smugness is only superseded by their self-righteousness.

‘The more disturbing question is how many other quick fixes, cheap compromises and questionable solutions to tight budgets have been quietly invented not just in construction but across the public realm during the past cash-strapped decade, with unseen consequences still yet to unfold for decades to come.’ To my way of thinking, this isn’t the more disturbing question. The really disturbing question is why successive generations of the UK electorate have been all too willing to buy into the patently absurd idea that you can have better public services and lower taxes.

For once, the blame isn’t all the fault of politicians; much of it is, but most of that is due to circumstance and that circumstance has been dictated by the electorate. Political parties only get to form governments if they’re elected and they’re only elected if they’re selling something the electorate want to buy. If not, then voters can make their feelings clear through by-elections, council elections, and ultimately a general. But usually it doesn’t come to that, because the incumbent government will proffer some mealy mouthed self serving justification of why a policy has to be ditched. Doesn’t always work that way though. Sometimes it is the politician who’s ditched. Thatcher and the Poll Tax leap to mind.

So it seems to me that since the mid 1980’s, the British people have been more than happy to enter a political equivalent of a Faustian pact, one that not only which obviates any need for them to examine in any great detail what exactly are these chimeric ‘efficiency saving measures’ that will deliver better public services and lower taxation, but also to complain about its necessarily calamitous shortcomings when they are exposed as if they were innocents in the whole sorry affair.

Politicians have a limited culpability in the less than concrete concrete scandal. From the ideology of privatisation that inexorably led to the decimation of once state owned public services under Thatcher, to the financial incontinence that is the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) aggressively enforced by Blair, Brown and Cameron, none of this was a secret. None of this was hidden. It was all out in the open. Politicians quickly cottoned on to the fact that whilst the electorate liked easy answers to complex issues, they weren’t so keen on asking too many questions.

I’m as guilty as anyone, anyone that is who isn’t suddenly concerned about how things are done on the cheap but with no diminution in quality. Schools, hospitals, libraries, care homes and many other municipal buildings built using PFI are now of concern. Now they are.

Hindsight. Wonderful thing.

If anything better sums up the offensively hypocritical contortions of some of those who purport to champion woman’s rights, then to me it is the case of Luis Rubiales.

Quite rightly, Rubiales, the head of the Spanish F.A, has faced fierce criticism for days after he grabbed Jenni Hermoso by the head and kissed her on her lips during the Women’s World Cup final trophy presentation. How he has reacted following the incident is a textbook example of what not to say or do when one finds oneself in the middle of a firestorm of outrage of their own making. Basically, not doing anything to make it any worse. It didn’t’ seem possible that he could, but he did, claiming on Friday that “The kiss was the same I could give one of my daughters,”

Appalling as his actions were – and they were – I can’t help but compare his justified vilification by the British press, with the treatment that Karen White received. And if her name doesn’t ring any bells, well, that kind of makes my point.

White entered the UK prison system as transgender. However, despite dressing as a woman, the 52-year-old had not undergone any surgery and was still legally a male. She was also a convicted paedophile and on remand for grievous bodily harm, burglary, multiple rapes and other sexual offences against women. In September 2017 she was transferred to New Hall prison in West Yorkshire. During a three-month period at the female prison she sexually assaulted two other inmates.

The Rubiales incident presented a very simple narrative. In addition to being seen live by millions on TV and therefore not requiring any detailed analysis, it had the added benefit of not being controversial. By that I mean that it was instantly understandable who was the villain and who was the victim, but also fitted into a pre-existing narrative; a man in a position of authority abuses a younger woman.The story wrote itself and he media piled in. They’re still at it, a week after it happened and show no sign stopping anytime soon.

The case of Karen White is much more complex for the media. There is the whole issue of transgender politics to carefully navigate. The media are acutely aware of the need for caution when reporting on transgender issues lest they become part of the story themselves. Because facts are something some trans activists take exception to, and are not averse to rousing a Twitter mob to right a perceived wrong. So no lead items on the news, none of the usual suspects writing endless articles querying why a man was judged as suitable to be housed in a woman’s prison. Indeed, and this to me is the most troubling aspect of the whole sorry affair, hardly anything regarding the complete abnegation of any duty of care towards the two victims by the prison service. A prison sentence is meant to be a deprivation of liberty, which is fine but it seems to me that the rights of two actual women were less important to the authorities than a kowtowing to an ideological travesty.

So yes, whilst are not entirely without the media are to blame for choosing to run and run with a story that kind of speaks for itself, are we the public just as, if not more guilty? Algorithms and other technological wizardry allow media organisations to gauge which stories we read – and by extension ignore – and tailor their content accordingly. Thats why click bait is called click bait.

Unfortunately, I can’t see any of the situations – men behaving badly, the reporting of such – ever changing

I’ve never had any desire to have children.

Some people do and that’s laudable. There are countless children put up for adoption every year which means the need is there, so why, one wonders, aren’t more people adopting? But to some, that isn’t the same thing as having a child of one’s own, because at some future date the birth mother might herself known to the child with potentially catastrophic consequences. And more importantly, the adoptive parents will know the child isn’t theirs and no matter how much they convince themselves it is theirs, will know deep down it isn’t.

But thankfully, we now live in a world in which nature can increasingly be circumvented. I myself am living proof of this. By rights I should’ve died years ago after my accident had I not been put into a medically induced coma for a month. But that was a medical emergency whereas this post is about elective procedures – one’s that the patient chooses to have – and more specifically, one reported in The Guardian on Wednesday which I think is both indicative of the times we live in and a warning of the danger of unforeseen consequences.

“Woman ‘over the moon’ after sister donates womb in UK first” ran the headline about a woman with an ‘undeveloped womb’ who had her sisters womb donated to her. Everyone concerned was absolutely thrilled with how it all went and presumably this news was only revealed after a suitable interval and exhaustive tests had confirmed all was well. There have been ninety of these transplants around the world, leading to fifty births and it is hoped that this ‘pioneering operation could allow dozens of infertile women a year to have babies.’ The co-lead surgeon, Isabel Quigora claims that women have already been in touch with the charity that helped fund this to offer donate their wombs.

Therein lies one of the problems I have with this. Yes, if they’ve already have had their children or know that they never will have them in the first place, then offering to donate their womb is their choice. But is it a choice they should even be allowed to make? Did I miss something, possibly when I was in the coma? When was the public ever consulted about this? Maybe there was and ‘Google’ can’t find them. Apparently, ‘they were also assessed by a Human Tissue Authority (HTA) independent assessor to ensure they were aware of the risks and to confirm they were entering into the surgery of their own free will. The case was reviewed by an HTA panel before permission was granted to proceed.’ Exactly how reassuring is that? How many times has a HTA panel said no? And who is on that panel anyway?

According to their own website, the board of the HTA from which the panel comprises is made up of exactly the sort of people one would expect to find on it. Anyone who is chosen to sit on a board like this will have been exhaustively vetted to make sure they’re the ‘right’ sort of person. ‘Right’ meaning someone equipped with the ability to understand all the issues involved, and by dint of that, reliable enough not to rock the boat too much.

But whoever they get approval from, whatever hoops they have to jump through or what self-serving criteria has to be met, giving infertile women the chance to have a baby has got to be a good thing, doesn’t it? Or is it? Where is it written that whatever you wish for you shall have? If nature has decided motherhood is not for you, then nature can increasingly be ignored, reduced to another obstacle to be overcome.

Science is advancing all the time, so what is impossible today, may not always be so tomorrow. . And it isn’t so much that science is advancing all the time and more that science doesn’t actually exist. Well not in the way that a tree does or in the way that most people understand something to exist. It isn’t one thing. It’s an umbrella term used as a shorthand for a complicated series of nebulous theories, hypothesises and postulations are constantly being challenged and refined. The people that do this, scientists, are not neutral observers in all of this.

Scientists have an agenda and that is to advance their own careers within the particular field of science they are engaged in. It’s human nature. No footballer wants to be playing non league football, he wants to be playing for Real Madrid, for example. But science is increasingly obviating nature and what it means to be human, and because scientists live in the same society we do are subject to the same, if not more pressure to adhere to the prevailing orthodoxy. So whilst transplanting a womb may seem like a good thing, it ultimately devalues what it it is to be a woman. Because we have no idea where this will lead, so whilst they might be able to transplant a womb today, scientists have already successfully grown a mouse embryo in an artificial womb, uterus transplants are now a thing, meaning it is now theoretically possible for transgender woman to give birth, which will lead to what?

Exactly, no-one knows.

And just to be clear, a woman is a biological female.

I’ve not posted in a while and this is due to John Lennon. Not that he was responsible in any way for this, this, but more that his quip “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.” rather neatly sums up the last few weeks for me.

One of the things that has vexed me over the last few days has been the perplexing outrage surrounding Bradley Cooper and his decision to wear a prosthetic nose when playing Leonard Bernstein in a film about the composer. I’m perplexed because the outrage didn’t come from his family, because they issued a statement to the effect they were fine with it. I’m also perplexed because if he hadn’t worn a prosthetic nose to play Bernstein, the professionally outraged would’ve been outraged by that. But mostly I’m perplexed by the idea which permeates modern culture that has it that is more important that you share either ethic or cultural similarities with the character you are playing, than any other factor. That it is the actors perceived appropriateness for the role, as determined by an ever changing cadre voices seemingly beholden to an equally ever changing criteria, rather than talent which is all important.

But of course, this being the modern world in which we live, exceptions and contradictions apply. The entire MCU for example. That gets a free pass. So to do the ‘Batman’ films and the ‘Harry Potter’ films. Anything with either ghosts, vampires, zombies or aliens as well. Why aren’t those subjected to a similar level of opprobrium? Because we know that Iron Man and Batman aren’t real, that wizards don’t exists, and that the only zombies you’ll ever see will be if you happen to near a club at 5am on a Saturday morning.

No-one picks up the cultural cudgels to beat an actor with when they play a serial killer. No-one is suggesting only serial killers can play serial killers. But why aren’t they? Why can’t Lucy Letby be allowed on day release so she can have another career? When exactly does a demand for appropriateness become inappropriate?

What some people conveniently overlook when it suits them to do so is the fact that actors act. They have a job, which is to utter words others have written, to utter those words as directed by someone else. Their purpose is to entertain.

And how entertaining or not Cooper is as Bernstein, nobody knows. The film premieres in Venice next month. The professionally outraged are outraged by a trailer of a film that they haven’t seen. It seems that the willing suspension of disbelief, which an audience needs to make most creative endeavours succeed, has been suspended all too willing by them.

Equally perplexing and equally unfunny, the 10 best one liners at the Edinburgh Fringe were announced today. Here they are

1. I started dating a zookeeper, but it turned out he was a cheetah – Lorna Rose Treen 
2. The most British thing I’ve ever heard? A lady who said ‘Well I’m sorry, but I don’t apologise.’ – Liz Guterbock 
3. Last year I had a great joke about inflation. But it’s hardly worth it now – Amos Gill 
4. When women gossip we get called bitchy; but when men do it’s called a podcast – Sikisa 
5. I thought I’d start off with a joke about The Titanic – just to break the ice – Masai Graham
6. How do coeliac Germans greet each other? Gluten tag – Frank Lavender
7. My friend got locked in a coffee place overnight. Now he only ever goes into Starbucks, not the rivals. He’s Costa-phobic – Roger Swift
8. I entered the ‘How not to surrender’ competition and I won hands down – Bennett Arron
9. Nationwide must have looked pretty silly when they opened their first branch – William Stone 
10. My grandma describes herself as being in her “twilight years” which I love because they’re great films – Daniel Foxx 

To me, a one liner should be wholly separate from the rest of the comics set, be a self-contained burst of hilarity. You wouldn’t even get these in a Christmas cracker. They’re about as funny as a kick in the bollocks

Did you see it? I did and it wasn’t a surprise, more of of a predictable piece of nonsense that once again held Brexit up as the main causative factor behind whatever perceived ‘problem’ upsets the denizens of Kings Place. Today, ‘The Guardian’ was crying into its organic ridiculousness about:

Post-Brexit fall in English ownership of European second homes, figures show, screamed a prominent headline and when one clicked on it came the chilling news that a Government survey finds that less than 30% of holiday homes are on continent – compared with 40% a decade ago

The article went on to quote a couple of people who didn’t in any way whatsoever have a vested interest in blaming all their woes upon Brexit.

Annette de Vries, an estate agent in Monpazier, in the Dordogne, said that the additional bureaucracy of Brexit had deterred many people from buying in France.

“Less British people are looking for houses than before,” she said. “The main reason is Brexit. It’s so much more difficult for British people to buy something here. They need health insurance and that’s very difficult for them.”

Sylvie Mayer, an estate agent in Huelgoat, Brittany, said: “Many Britons have left the area. Since last summer, a lot of them have sold their second homes because the paperwork got too complicated for them to spend time here.”

All very Guardian were it not for the somewhat inconvenient truth that hot on the heels of Brexit came Covid and the one saving grace – for me anyway – was that not only did we have a glorious summer that year, but I also had a large garden to make the most of this unexpected good fortune. With the gradual easing of lockdown restrictions, came foreign holiday restrictions leading to the increase of holidays in the UK. Might that, a rational fear of another pandemic and lockdown, curbs on foreign travel make people think twice before buying a second home abroad? After all, what use is a second home if you can’t use it.

More importantly, someone who can afford a second home isn’t really someone I’m going to shed any tears for. If you can afford a second home, the chances are you didn’t vote for Brexit because you did enjoy some of the benefits that EU membership conferred. That possibly ‘health insurance’ and supposedly complicated ‘paperwork’ is the very definition of what a service industry is there to sort out?

Also, isn’t cutting back on air travel a good thing? Exactly a state of affairs that one would expect “The Guardian’ to be pleased about. Oh no, silly me, I was forgetting that ‘The Guardian’ serves a panderocracy, which they call readers but which are really their paymasters/shot-callers/proprietors/ and their self-serving double standards.

Must keep the flow of money flowing so even if is a story that has nothing to do with Brexit, well it happened after June 2016, so Brexit must have something to do with it.

I voted to Remain, by the way.

Maybe it’s me, possibly because I’m brain damaged, possibly because I’m not in the least bit affected either way, or possibly I don’t venerate children in the same way that our society seems to. More likely it’s a combination of all three.

Whatever it is, I can’t work out why Not Hardies statement to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg last Sunday that Labour if won the next election he would keep the controversial two child benefit rule was so deserving on the criticism it received. I mean obviously I can, just as much as I can see why some called it controversial but to me, these people are living in a different world, imagining we still live in a world of plenty and not of food banks.

Quick recap time. According to ‘The Guardian’, the rule prevents parents from claiming child tax credit or universal credit for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017. It was introduced by the former chancellor George Osborne in his austerity drive with the aim of encouraging parents of larger families to find a job or work more hours.

Am I missing something here? If you were on universal credit (UC) or claiming child tax credit (CTC) for two children and had just conceived a third after July 2016 but before April 2017, then yes, I can see why you’d be angry. You’d only have yourselves to blame, but you’d be right to be angry at yourself, given as how the change was announced in the Budget of 2015, indicating how it was to implemented in April 2017.

Unless I’m very much mistaken, what this means is that anyone already claiming UC or CTC for two or more children, then deciding to have yet more children after the announcement was made and the implications made clear have only themselves to blame. The government made their position clear, gave well enough warning and if people are so bereft of common sense as to not practice proper birth control or else to access effective preventative measures to terminate the foetus, well the government can hardly be held responsible for that. Condoms, the contraceptive pill, the morning after pill and abortions are available. We’re not America.

According to ‘The Guardian’, ‘ Abolishing the cap would cost £1.3bn a year but would lift 250,000 children out of poverty, and a further 850,000 would be in less deep poverty, according to campaigners. The End Child Poverty coalition says removing the cap would be the most cost-effective way of reducing the number of children living in poverty.’ What about the cost to the planet in all of this?. The weather is getting warmer, our energy needs are increasing and we can barely meet demand as it is. In winter the weather is getting colder, which again increase our energy needs, which we’ll be even less likely to meet demand if poverty campaigners, no matter how well intentioned, advocate measures that will only plunge more people – not just children – into poverty.

Net Zero by 2050? What could possibly go wrong, aside from increasing unpredictable energy supplies occasioning not only travel instability but also decreased agricultural output and higher food prices? I know the ‘The Guardian’ needs to perpetuate the myth to its readers that having children is somehow equitable with lowering energy demands, limiting consumption and polluting less to ensure that its readers continue proving financial support to fund their delusions, but when are they going to stop and simply point out some harsh truths to them. All concerned might find it liberating.

Has the cost of living crisis been sorted and I wasn’t paying attention? Thought not.

One of the main drivers of the cost of living crisis, is that there are too many people living both nationally and globally to be in any way sustainable. Just because some might find this sentiment unpalatable doesn’t make it any the less true. People are living longer which puts ever increasing pressure on the NHS, public services and infrastructure, and the dwindling proportion of taxpayers relative to the amount of people claiming benefits. So any extension on the limit of this particular benefit to feckless spongers should be celebrated.

Or is ir just me?

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.”