Archive for: August 2017

  1. Transmission #2

    Transmission #2: The empire is in decline.
    Even at its height the veterans insisted the best was behind them.
    It has always been in decline. It has always been the End Times.

    The End Times are good news for some of the business folk in the cities of the Empire. Good news for the brewers, the distillers, the weed growers and the backstreet pharmacists. Good news for the cellar bars that turn the labour of millions into hard cash.

    There’s one particular cellar bar in one particular city. Somewhere near the middle of the Empire, but not close enough to the action to ever be a destination. This particular cellar bar does steady, if not roaring, trade. Nobody does a roaring trade any more. At least, nobody we know. But some cellar bars do better than others. This one has regulars; enough so it doesn’t have to meet the expectations of anyone else. But not so much as to make the place actually popular. At that point you may as well go the whole hog and take the “cellar” out of the name and put up a sign.

    Hire a Norm and find yourself a Cliff.

    In this place the air still drips with beer, sweat and the confused infusions of a hundred vapes. Just like any other cellar bar. And it’s dark, just like the others.

    Here, the only lights are behind the bar and in the toilets. For the rest, illumination comes from projectors. Old movies loop and fade to black. Rich, dark, film, the flicker. Apocalypse Now, The Maltese Falcon, Transmission #2, something from the Marx Brothers, Dust Devil, Until The End of The World, Metropolis… of course there’s Metropolis. All of them wide-angled and out of focus, soundtracks barely audible, overlapping, engaged in whispered conversation of explosions, screams and urgent double-cross. Buried below.

    Peter Lorre and Martin Sheen stare wide-eyed at one another while you order a beer. And a vodka-redbull. Make it a double.

    Transmission #2

    Why the hell not?

    Behind you an argument in Polish ends with a bitter laugh and a vile insult. You don’t speak Polish but there’s no mistaking the tone and the sharp intake of breath it provokes.

    You’ve been ordering vodka redbulls with every second pint for a while now. The bar stools aren’t all that comfortable, and the movie illumination only works in fits and starts. But the beer is cold and it’s good. They sell little packets of mini-poppadoms, each with a sealed sachet of mango chutney, and nobody cares if you slip some pot into your vape alongside the vanilla.

    But mostly, it’s the sound of the place. That’s what keeps you there. The sound of the place.

  2. The reasons for Brexit


    This is my favourite of today’s reasons for Brexit. Tomorrow we may be back to blue passports for all I know. Or bendy bananas. Yes, I know you — dear “sensible” Brexiteer — may find such notions risible or patronising. But the great thing about democracy is the bendy-banana woman on Question Time had exactly as much say in the referendum as you did. There were doubtless people on the other side who voted “Remain” for reasons you would find silly.

    But I doubt there’s as many of them. And I doubt they’re as silly.

    Truly, the reasons for Brexit are many and varied. But I’ve yet to hear a single one that rang true for me.

    Anyway; it appears from the above tweet that the UK is leaving the EU — a massive policy shift and one that, even if you’re a fan of Brexit, clearly has the potential to wreak havoc if carried out badly (both on the UK and its neighbours) — and it’s doing it because they think some of the people working in the EU aren’t very nice to them.

    “Arrogant” and “unelected” it seems. And it’s hard not to read that and immediately think of The Citizen in Ulysses… sure, sure he’s the butt of many a joke, but there’s plenty of insight amid the bombast and rhetoric…

    – That’s your glorious British navy, says the citizen, that bosses the earth. The fellows that never will be slaves, with the only hereditary chamber on the face of God’s earth and their land in the hands of a dozen gamehogs and cottonball barons. That’s the great empire they boast about of drudges and whipped serfs.

    – On which the sun never rises, says Joe.

    – And the tragedy of it is, says the citizen, they believe it. The unfortunate yahoos believe it.

    The navy is still there, albeit less fearsome than it once was… but so is the hereditary chamber, the royalty and the belief that Empire was something to take pride in. So is the sense that 52% of the population can make a massive, long-term decision without even considering the impact it might have on a close neighbour (one who has been treated quite shabbily enough already) and then start trumpeting about The Will of The People.

    “Arrogant”? “Unelected”? Is it possible, just possible, that there’s some projection going on here?

  3. A brief question to the BBC regarding “balance”

    Dear BBC News,

    While thankfully you don’t do it as often as you once did, you do still give air time to Climate Change Skeptics / Deniers ostensibly in the interests of “balance”. What’s more, these skeptics / deniers are rarely climatologists but instead tend to be politicians, ex-politicians or business people with no recognised qualification in the field; though often with ideological positions or personal agendas that are fundamentally opposed to industrial regulation.

    However, I have noticed that — when discussing the Holocaust — you fail to provide air time to David Irving so that we may hear both sides of that story (or better yet, perhaps a non-historian, ex-politician with overt antisemitic views… perhaps give Jean-Marie Le Pen a prominent slot next Holocaust Remembrance Day?) In the interests of “balance” of course.

    For the sake of clarity, let me point out that I’m not actually suggesting you give air time to Holocaust-deniers. You have quite correctly accepted that the evidence for the Holocaust is strong enough that it doesn’t merit a contradictory voice.

    What I would like to know, therefore, is precisely what standards of evidence are applied by the BBC that are passed by the Holocaust, but failed by Climate Change? Why does the BBC feel the evidence for Climate Change is lacking? What aspects of the scientific consensus does the BBC find unconvincing or doubtful? If there is doubt about the science, why doesn’t the BBC interview a climatologist on the matter rather than a politician and industrial lobbyist? And — importantly — precisely what further evidence does the BBC require before they stop giving air time to Climate Change Deniers?

    Yours, very etc.

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