That Joke Isn’t Funny Any More

Bloody Foreigner - coming here wanting to know what love is

I tried not to write any more blogs about Brexit, really I did.

I’m not one of those people who want to rerun the referendum or stage a military coup to overturn the result (although I do confess to saying that a few times on June 23). I have enough respect left for democracy to accept that the rules of the game whereby if your side loses, you accept the result and move on.

Hell, I even gave serious consideration to voting leave. When I heard the result, I will confess to a little frisson of excitement about what would come next – I’ve always had a soft spot for Schumpeter’s idea of creative destruction.

In fact, I now see – and I hope to god that the Americans take this lesson on board quickly –that more often than not, attempts at creative destruction just result in destruction.

In our case, of anything resembling the kind of liberal political values which have held British society together for the last 70 years and which people like me have taken for granted as defining the sort of country we live in. In the USA’s case, it could be “human life on earth itself” if that fucknugget Trump gets elected president – a proposition which still sounds like something JG Ballard would have not bothered writing a story about on account of it being too far-fetched.

Still, if we are all reduced to radioactive smears on the wall within the year, we would at least not have to witness any more parades of smirking wannabe fascists like this week’s Conservative Party conference.

No, I have gone along with Brexit. I was relatively pleased when Theresa May become prime minister, instead of Boris Johnson or any of the other maniacs left at the wheel of the clown car. I had assumed that the immigrant-baiting we’ve seen over the last couple of months was for show – to please the angry mob with promises of something, sometime, and to scare the European Commission into settling on better terms. That it was just more politician talk that would end up in nothing much.

Until this week. The last straw for me was the idea that businesses should have to report on foreigners they employ doing jobs that could be done by British people, floated by the home secretary, a person called Amber Rudd.

The scales fell from my eyes at that moment. This is really happening. They really want people to be hounded out of their jobs and their homes until they leave the country. People I had assumed were liberal-democratic politicians who would – when it counted – stand up for the values I had assumed we had in common, would genuinely rather see ethnic cleansing on our streets than put their fucking seats at risk.

The country voted, by a narrow margin, to leave the EU. It did not vote for some atavistic, blood and soil, Alf Garnett dreamworld. There must be people who voted leave who do not want what Brexit is turning out to be, who will speak out. Because to my eyes, “Brexit means Brexit” means “Brexit means fascism”.

Do not think for a moment that it couldn’t happen here. The opposition is giving up on parliamentarism in favour of a movement on the streets (and if you look at the form, Black on Red street action tends to work out badly for the lefties when things get serious). Supposedly liberal people are calling for democratic decisions to be voided and while others think that a 52-48 margin means that all discussion of what the leaders put forward is beyond the pale. 

It’s not just the Tories who are contributing to the Weimarisation of this country. We don't realise where we're heading, because we arrogantly believe that it could never happen here - because we're British. 

Are we that stupid and passive and short-sighted that we will sleepwalk into this AGAIN before the last veterans of the Second World War are in their graves?

Apparently, this is my 200th post. Happy anniversary to me. 

Welcome Back My Friends To The Shitshow That Never Ends...

A week certainly is a long time, in anti-politics just as much as in politics.

I wrote one version of this post last Wednesday and planned to publish it on Thursday or Friday. Then someone murdered an MP, allegedly shouting “Britain First” and then (on court record) giving his name as “death to traitors, freedom for Britain”.

Suddenly, the warnings I had jotted down that neither losing side would accept the result of Thursday’s referendum – such was the corrosion of commitment to democratic compromise and conspiratorialism the campaign had exposed – looked like truisms hardly worth stating.

Can the liver of British society filter out all this venom, or will it succumb to cirrhosis? Both sides have already got their respective Dolchstosslegendes to blame the stupid or “confused” voters or the establishment and the experts in its pockets ready, and are no doubt preparing their respective Werwolf Organisations to carry on stay-behind operations in future enemy territory.

If anything, the whole shitshow has demonstrated how thin the veneer of commitment to democratic and liberal values – when the chips are really down - is among large parts of the British public.

Well, to hell with you all:

• To hell with the Remainers who think that people who don’t agree with them are too thick to be allowed to vote.
• To hell with the Brexiters who are so irresponsible that they will cynically whip up a latent racism that their leaders (probably) don’t even believe in for votes
• AND to hell with the smirking abstainers, making their impotence a badge of honour, who would rather preserve their immaculate lack of responsibility for anything than have to make a serious choice.

A place for sanctimonious posturing, more like

It’s clear to me (now) that political apathy and the lack of difference between the parties are the only reasons we don’t have to endure this sort of theatre of hate every five years. I suppose Scotland gave us some hints of what would happen – where plenty of ultras are still denying the validity of the result two years on. We should do more to foster apathy and to lower the stakes in future.

But this time, the stakes are really high.

If you don’t stand up for what you have or what you want, then what you get is what you deserve.  

I have voted Remain for reasons relating to me and my family. You may disagree, and that’s your right. If you disagree, use what leverage you have to bring about your favoured outcome. I can respect people who vote Leave, even if they’re voting for reasons I think are bad reasons. I have no respect for people who stand by and dodge responsibility. So I will say it again:

If you don’t stand up for what you have or what you want, then what you get is what you deserve.  

Whoever Wins We Lose

That was the strapline for 2004’s “AVP: Alien vs Predator” - a showdown between two hideous, misanthropic powers in which ordinary people like you and I feature only as collateral damage. Does that sound familiar?

Yes, it's another post about the EU referendum. 

Given the choice between having a living embryo implanted in me which would eventually gnaw its way out of my chest and being hunted for sport, I would probably have to come down in support of the Predator.

But when it comes to voting for Brexit or Bremain, it’s not quite such a clear-cut choice. Our ballot papers arrived yesterday and - having just last week urged all of you to vote FOR something rather than AGAINST - I don’t know what I’m going to do. Brabstention is not an option, but Brapathy and Brisgust are exerting a lot of Brinertia on me.

Why it’s hard to vote Brexit

At the risk of offending my bien-pensant friends who suffer no such atavistic urges, there’s a part of me that wants to vote Brexit. It’s roughly the same part that made me an insufferable teenage wannabe Marxist windbag, an insufferable “punker than thou” music snob and various other species of insufferable arse over the years.

It’s that “anti” attitude which makes one’s default position one of opposition to/distaste for whatever exists in favour of an alternative that doesn’t. 

“Some men just want to watch the world burn”, said butler Alfred in The Dark Knight (a film about a man who dresses up as a bat to fight a man who dresses up as a clown). I’m not sure if that’s quite Roger of Sicily, but I certainly am one of those people who is attracted by a desire to see the look on a lot of people’s faces the day after a “Leave” vote.

But then I think about Boris Johnson’s face and Nigel Farage’s face… And I think, as much as I would like to treat “the issues” completely separately from “the personalities”, it’s these awful people who would be the power in the land come June 23rd.

And as well as believing in leaving the EU (debatable in Boris Johnson’s case), most of these people also hold a lot of other opinions I strongly disagree with. Intellectual, libertarian Brexiteers like Douglas Carswell have disappeared, so that voting in favour of leaving the EU cannot be separated from voting in favour of a whole lot of nativist, racist, social-authoritarian, revanchist “back to the Empire” idiocy. 

We do not have the option of voting for one without voting for the other. Some people are happy with that, but I’m not.

The downside of the Singaporean model

A case could be made for a post-EU Britain reviving itself economically and culturally once the dead hand of Brussels was cast off - although the only version I’ve seen to date is a suggestion that we follow the example of Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore, which is hardly a great model for liberals and democrats.

However, the forces that would take power in the event of a Brexit vote have no idea of how they would achieve that. If they do, they’re keeping it quiet, because I can only assume that it would be to subject the UK to the sort of neo-Thatcherite deregulatory shock therapy the former Eastern Bloc underwent after 1989.

The Brexit camps encompass a lot of different positions, but it’s the entitled, right wing, economic know-nothings who would be in power in Brexit wins. That’s the problem. And that's why I have trouble voting for them.

Why it’s hard to vote Bremain

“I'll forgive and forget, If you say you'll never go. 'Cos its true what they say - It's better the devil you know” said Kylie Miongue in her 1990 number 2 hit, “Better The Devil You Know”.

If taken literally, that is surely one of the most pessimistic and retrograde messages ever committed to CD, vinyl and cassette. Yet it is the sum total of the Remain camp’s argument: everything will be worse if you seek change. You are powerless to improve your lot in life, so surrender to your fate.

Thanks a lot Kylie.

Let me make one thing clear: I love the many different cultures and peoples of Europe. I feel a shared sense of pride in our cultural and economic achievements and a shared sense of shame and humility in the face of our crimes and tragedies. It’s obvious that in a globalised world, some things are better done at a supranational level. I love the German language, French wine, Spanish holidays, Scandinavian crime dramas, Greek philosophy, Balkan brass bands, full English breakfasts, Italian coffee, Slovenian avant-garde industrial music, Swiss AND Belgian chocolate and more. I think I am as far from a Little Englander as it’s possible to be. A real union of Europe would be a magnificent thing. 

But the European Union we actually have is a rotten, corporatist, undemocratic mess. Surely the negativity of the Remain campaign reflects the fact that when you consider the EU on its own merits - as opposed to the spirit it is intended to (but does not) embody or the merits of others it ascribes to itself (eg lack of European war) - it's pretty hard to get enthusiastic about. 

Within the EU, the idea that every political problem has a technocratic solution has metastatized into a self-congratulatory, anti-pluralist “because we say so”, embodied in Jean-Claude Juncker’s warning that “deserters will not be welcomed back” in the event of a Brexit vote.

If the technocrats were competent you might have more sympathy, but they’re not. The story of Greece is just the most glaring example - allowed into the Euro on data everyone knew was false to prove a political point, now reduced to penury for the sake of international bondholders. And that’s what happens to non-deserters...

Europe will continue to exist and Britain will continue to be a part of Europe whether the UK is in the EU or not. Whether the EU survives much longer with or without the UK is another question entirely. 

So endorsing our continued participation in this arrogant shambles is something I find it hard to put my vote towards. 

There you have it: that’s my dilemma. If I follow my own advice and vote FOR one side rather than AGAINST the other, I am unavoidably voting FOR something I find repulsive. 

Not as repulsive as John Hurt’s gruesome demise in Alien, but not far off. 

Don't Make Me Think!

Along with “when is ODHSNM coming back?” and “what are you doing behind those bushes?”, the question I have been asked most in recent months is “how should I vote in the EU referendum?”

Long-time readers will recall that this blog has been on the wrong side of every major political controversy of recent years – from proportional representation, through Scottish independence, to Albania’s 2011 Eurovision entry.

As such, the hordes of journalists, pundits and other halfwit gobshites that make up “the media” have been clamouring (so far fruitlessly) to elicit the views of Roger of Sicily – knowing, of course, that whatever he says will be precisely that thing which fails to come to pass. Like the political inverse of Paul the psychic octopus.  

My molluscular counterpart

Well, before I give you your instructions, let me talk about the two campaigns for a moment. Last year, I said that the 2015 general election campaign was depressing, but never have I seen a more dismal spectacle than both sides of this EU referendum debate.

Remain appears not to have a positive case to put for EU membership, or if they do they are afraid to make it, and so fall back on increasingly laughable and outlandish claims about how terrible the consequences of not voting for them will be.

Leave, in turn, seems to have gone beyond making any sort of argument for its point of view and just wants to stamp its feet and shout about how everything is unfair – like a surly five-year-old up long past his bedtime.  

Both campaigns – like the Donald Trump phenomenon in the USA – show how we are now in a post-factual political culture. I’m not claiming that coinage – I got it from this article, but it’s probably been around for ages. As Ronald Reagan said (or maybe he didn’t) “facts are stupid things”.

To the partisans of both sides, facts are only facts to the extent that they support their particular point of view. Claims of fact that contradict it are not simply mistaken – they are wilful, deliberate lies put forth by the selfish (if not outright evil) opposition to manipulate you, you poor innocent dupe.

There are good arguments to be made for staying in the EU. And there are good arguments to be made for leaving the EU. Some of those arguments - on both sides – are based on true facts about the world. Some of them are based on value-judgments, which I don’t believe can ever be true or false. I’m kinda old fashioned in believing that the world we live in is a mixture of facts and values, that aren’t always compatible with one another.  

There are good arguments on both sides of his referendum debate, but no one appears to be making them. We seem to have reached a point where every genuine point of disagreement devolves into “culture war”, which is an infantile kind of politics. It comes from the same place as the ever-growing enthusiasm for conspiracy theories – and that place is simply intellectual laziness.

It’s laziness that’s the problem with “the public” – it’s not stupidity.

Because it’s hard to deal with a situation where both sides can be partly right and partly wrong, and you have to choose between options that aren’t simply black and white, isn’t it? And it’s even harder to take responsibility for your choice!

It’s a lot easier to say that you are right because your heart is in the right place; that facts that don’t fit are lies; and that people who disagree with you are not just wrong but also bad.

Not the answer

Just like it’s a lot easier to say that everything is controlled by corporations or the Jews or space lizards than it is to admit that the world is complicated and maybe – just maybe – you don’t actually understand all of it.

Just like it’s so much easier to say “they’re all the same” than it is to listen to what the differences are and take the responsibility of judging and justifying your judgement.

What depresses me the most is how this line of argument (if you can call it that) has been taken up by ordinary people. My Facebook news feed (for example) is full of people I otherwise like and respect, on both sides, making the most ridiculous claims – not about the merits of their own opinions, but of the malign intentions of anyone who holds the opposing view. Again and again, I see the opinion-cart put in front of the fact-horse, without regard to the stable door of complex, imperfect reality.

I’m as bad as any of you. I’m sitting here behind my ironic facade – does he really mean it? Or is he joking? Who will be the first to pose the immortal question “U OK hun?”

No, I’m not going to tell you how to vote. I don’t know how I’m going to vote, and when I do, I will take responsibility for it.  Just vote however you’re going to vote for the right reasons. Don’t vote against anyone. Vote for something.

It’s Nerf or Nothing

I’m not a pacifist. I think that violence is the only answer to certain questions. Like the interwar writer and peace campaigner Storm Jameson said about the Nazis, I accept that some things are worth killing for.

But that doesn’t mean that I approve of or like militarism and the glamorisation of violence that we – and especially our kids – seem to be subjected to. Violence is an evil that is occasionally necessary.

As a general rule, Elvira and I have discouraged our boys from having toy guns. Not entirely out of explicit principle – I still remember my boyhood friend in the 1980s who was kicked out of the Woodcraft Folk for drawing a picture of a cannon, which seems to be a matter of putting the cart before the horse – but at least partly because we don’t want them to develop a casual attitude towards the prospect of killing others.

Because that’s what an awful lot of what boys get exposed to through child-oriented media seems to promote. Most of the cartoons that they choose to watch and the video games they choose to play involve fighting of some sort.

Also speaks like a 1930s gangster - WHY?

OK, you expect stuff like that in things like Ben 10 but when the bloody Care Bears are apparently referencing the Vietnam War (or rather films about the Vietnam War) by shouting “fire in the hold” and “incoming!” there’s surely some cultural mutation that’s gone a bit wrong.

Alright, little kids are not likely to get the references (and when did “referencing” things become clever in itself anyway?) but why make the reference to war or war films other than to consciously or unconsciously normalise and make attractive the idea of war?

I grew up as a little militarist through no direct fault of my parents but just by exposure to a pro-violence culture. I thought the Falklands War was the coolest thing ever, primarily because we (Britain) won. In pretty much any scenario, to me and my friends, the baddies were the Germans – despite the Second World War having ended more than 30 years before we were born.

What scientists look like

The hangover from these assumptions are still present today. Watch any cartoon. If there’s a mad or evil scientist in it, he will have a German accent. And he may well be wearing a monocle, which is a cliché that was outdated even by 1939.

Thankfully, we are little more careful today than to casually demonise other races and nationalities to our children. An Afghanistan or Iraq-based version of “Battle Comic” is unimaginable.

Nevertheless, kids are still fed the idea that there is such a thing as cannon-fodder which can be “destroyed” (note the regular use of phrases about “destroying” someone in cartoons as a blatant euphemism for “killing” them) without consequence. It’s just that today it’s robots or aliens or something else non-human that’s been placed outside our moral community, not Japs or Krauts.

To be honest, I think it would do more good to children to show one of these “destroyed” aliens screaming in pain, shitting itself and crying out for its mother than sanitising death to the point where they’re indifferent to it. But instead, we just see the fallen body flash and then disappear – if we even think about it at all. This indifference was parodied to great effect in the first Austin Powers movie, where we saw the henchman’s wife finding out he’d been killed.  

This all brings me on to Nerf guns. Our kids got some of these for Xmas. I wish they hadn’t. Now, if the people who got them are reading this – in no way am I having a go at you about this. Guns are appropriate and popular presents for boys. That’s just the world we live in, whether we like it or not. They were always going to end up with toy guns, it was just a matter of when. The kids loved them and I’m not going to deny that even I enjoyed playing with them.

It looked like this

I had toy guns when I was a young ‘un, ranging from cowboy revolvers to replica M16s. I particularly remember my own Mauser automatic pistol – which, being German, was inherently an evil weapon.

Apart from spud guns though, I don’t think they fired anything. Nerf guns fire sponge darts with a soft plastic tip. They use what appears to be the same mechanism as used by air guns (I stand to be corrected if that’s wrong – it’s not like I do any research here...). They propel those darts with a surprising amount of force. If you got shot with one, it would sting a bit.

Now I’m sure Nerf and other “airsoft” stuff is safe enough to comply with legal standards and that you’d really have to be doing something stupid in order to have somebody’s eye out with one. You can certainly throw a ball, or a toy car, or a rocking horse at someone’s head and do them just as much if not more harm as you can by shooting them with a Nerf gun.

But have you seen the adverts for Nerf stuff? They feature paramilitarised American teenagers – old enough to impress kiddies and young enough to frighten the grown-ups – romping around, Call of Duty-style, discharging blasts from their rapid-fire, multi-barrelled plastic guns, and then proclaiming in a voice laced with menace that “it’s Nerf or nothing”.

If this was taking place in real life, they would – of course – be shooting at each other, or unwilling nerds. But that can’t be shown on TV. And nobody is likely to get very excited about shooting tin cans any more.

So do you know how they’ve got round that problem? Bloody zombies.

Yes, Nerf “zombie strike” weapons are for shooting zombies: kids today’s Germans.

Zombies offer the advantage of having the precise same anatomy as a human being whilst it is nevertheless unambiguously ok to shoot them because they’re evil or because it’s self-defence or something. This is a Nerf machete. Only for killing zombies, obviously.

In no way does this desensitive kids to violence...

And so Nerf takes us over the line from cartoon violence into real world violence where we go around pointing guns at human-shaped objects that we understand to be incapable of suffering and/or deserving of death. And when we pull the trigger, we don’t just get a feeble “rat a tat” noise like we used to – we launch something that behaves very much like a bullet. 

On Anger

HULK SUBLIMATE!

People often think I am unemotional, but in this they are mistaken. I am in fact a very emotional person, whose complex and varied inner states express themselves outwardly only in limited forms.  

That is to say, no matter what is happening to me and how I feel, I express myself more or less uniformly somewhere on the spectrum between boredom and rage.

In the same way that a power station turns coal into heat, which turns water into steam, which turns the rotation of a turbine into electricity (or something like that), so my constitution reliably metastasises every stimulus into one or another form of annoyance.

This is an exaggeration of course (you IDIOT) but it contains an element of truth. To have a furious side is quite restrictive, given that it is socially unacceptable EVER to be angry.

Generally, I get around this by the trusty old British standby of irony. You may have noticed this strategy in play on this very blog – I rant and rave, sneer scathingly, belittle and threaten others, but I don’t mean it.

Or do I?

I used to love irony. It felt so clever saying one thing and meaning another. Now I just want to say what I mean – but it’s practically impossible. People would think I was mad. Not because the things I want to say are mad (well, not all of them) but because there are things you just don’t say directly.

Like – oh, I don’t know...for example – that one thinks that another is an idiot, upon whom one has spent quite enough time already trying to explain simple things.

Having always to say this indirectly and in a way that doesn’t upset the other actually makes me even angrier.
 

Do you ever just want to get a sledgehammer and smash everything around you like the Hulk?

I do. Quite often.

And the fact that I can’t do that – because (i) everything around me belongs to me and I’d have to replace it, (ii) I’d get fired from my job, (iii) other people would be upset and/or (iv) the law – is quite irritating.

Can you perhaps see my problem?

What are people in our civilised society supposed to do with all the pent-up rage and aggression that our civilised society causes in them?

Play squash, get ulcers and have strokes?

Calm down dear

Everything around us is arranged to maximise annoyance value and minimise opportunities for legitimately releasing the pressure.

 Just phone up your gas supplier – it’s not the person on the end of the phone’s fault. You can’t get angry with them.

THIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE!

The insincere pre-recorded apology for your train being late?

THIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE!

By the way, none of the above is true. I’m being ironic.

LOL. 

London – Not as bad as expected

A few weeks ago, I scoffed at the thought of going to London during the Olympics. And right now, I am on my way home after having done so.

Like most people whose sole window on reality is what they see on TV and read on the internet, I had expected something resembling all-day Tokyo rush hour supervised by the Army with corporate blackshirts snatching anyone who looked out of place through secret doors - an early glimpse of the UK’s inevitable descent into dystopian, totalitarian nightmare.  

However, it wasn’t like that at all. It was much like any other day in London. That’s not saying much, but it certainly wasn’t 1984.

To tell the truth, I was a little disappointed not to see a single missile launcher or have to dive out of the way of a speeding dignitary in a Zil Lane. Indeed, the number of people in tracksuits I saw was no higher than a typical day’s viewing in Leeds.

I even saw a little shop with a set of Olympic rings in the window. I took a picture – no doubt scaring the shit out of the owner, taking me for a LOCOG goon – but I thought twice about sticking it on here. Let it never be said that Oh Dear. How Sad. Never Mind. is a snitch. Bloggers and social media are already doing more than their fair share of turning the whole populace against the idea of freedom of speech.

Well, here’s my own little marketing ambush:

If you like the London 2012 Olympic Games, give me some of your money.

If you don’t hear from me again, assume I have been disappeared into the back of a migraine-inducing purple van.

From my experience today - apart from the splashes of lurid magenta besmeared across everything -  you could be forgiven for thinking that the whole event was actually being produced on a sound stage at Pinewood or in Pixar’s studios and that the entire idea of the Olympics actually “taking place” in London was some elaborate Baudrillardian joke.

While controversy surrounding the Games has focused on the cost and the restrictions on Londoners’ freedoms, for me there are some major issues that have not been given due attention:

1. Barbarians are allowed to take part – this is in clear breach of the Olympic spirit. Was their Greek even tested?

2. Competitors are also not naked

3. Total lack of chariot-based events

4. No oxen were sacrificed at all during the opening ceremony. Like myself, the gods are likely to have found Trevor Nelson’s commentary a poor substitute

Seriously LOCOG, Zeus is a volatile deity at the best of times. 

He has “enforcement officers” of his own, and I’d hate to see Paul McCartney get struck by lightning.  

Haunting the chapel

I’ve just been robbed by Henry VIII.

Yes, Britain’s favourite wife-killing fatso has cost me about £20 or so 550 years AFTER his death.

“How?”, you may well ask – unless you are already asking “Are you having a psychotic episode, Roger?”

Well, let me tell you – because the erstwhile Tudor monarch could well be reaching out his chubby phantom fingers from beyond the grave to lighten your pockets also if you try to buy a house.

The merrie maniac

Henry VIII, you may recall, was responsible for the dissolution of the monasteries. Much like our present-day rulers, he wanted to grab hold of a load of cash and give some of it to his chums and spend the rest of it on war.

To cut a long story short, when this happened the Church’s liabilities for the repair of church buildings passed to the new owners – which were then generally dumped on the local starving, struggling populace in the form of tithes.

Still with me?

Tithes were then gradually abolished over the following few hundred years.

OR WERE THEY?

Turns out, no one is quite sure if certain bits of land across the country are in fact still liable to pay for repairs to church buildings in whose parishes they may happen to be. The records are sketchy.

In 2003, a couple were charged £100,000 for repairs to an ancient chapel on a farm they had inherited.  The good old House of Lords decided that the Human Rights Act didn’t apply – which is surprising considering how many of its members have undoubtedly inherited ancient chapels.

And so, we return to the present day and the preposterous Chancel Repair Liability Search – for which I have just paid my own tithe, on top of all the other pointless costs on which I have already bent your ears. Eyes. Whatever – sense organs generally. I’m fairly sure I haven’t touched anyone about it.

As I said before, records in this area are sketchy. It’s not clear, even if you check all the available paperwork, whether the property you are buying is potentially liable.

With the same enervating uncertainty as Ant and Dec telling an unpopular celebrity that “it might be you” who has to face the Bushtucker trial (but less than half the charm), Chancel Repair Liability Searches can only tell you that you “might be” liable for a whopping great bill at some unspecified point in the future.

And on what grounds? On the production of some tattered scrap of paper found in the crypt of some OTHER church, which says you are.

That is, if the institution which stands to benefit from finding such evidence digs out documentation which was available only to itself. Now that’s justice.

And so, whither goest risk, hither cometh the insurance industry. You can insure yourself against the danger that you might be financially fucked forever by a law that you not only didn’t know applied to you, but which you couldn’t know applied.

In 2008, the government refused to do anything about this Kafka-esque state of affairs. Its reply to an online petition said:

Chancel Repair Liability has existed for several centuries and the Government has no plans to abolish it or to introduce a scheme for its redemption.  

The Government acknowledges that the existence of a liability for chancel repair will, like any other legal obligation, affect the value of the property in question, but in many cases this effect can be mitigated by relatively inexpensive insurance. It is for the parties involved in a transaction to decide whether or not to take out insurance.

And so the demands of the past over the present are sanctified by the availability of insurance.

Perhaps legal anomalies of this sort are just the price we pay for our “living” constitution – the appendix or coccyx of the body politic.

Indeed, we have many thousands of apparently humorously quaint and charming laws, some 800 of which the Law Commission is looking to get rid of later this year.

Isn’t it delightful that we live in a land where you can technically be pilloried for not tethering your goat correctly on St Swithin’s Day?

No it isn’t – and here, the drummer out of Blur explains why. As he says:

There is no such thing as "technically" being a criminal

Let me paraphrase (and draw perhaps slightly stronger conclusions than a Labour candidate might endorse): these laws put power into the hands of the state which may subsequently be used to suppress activities you had no idea were illegal.

That a person can be criminally liable for something he or she had no idea was illegal and which has never consistently before been treated as illegal is the essence of injustice.

The persistence of these ancient laws is a merkin for the arbitrary exercise of state power – they are the Patriot Act hiding on the village green.

Yeah, it’s only £20 – but it’s the principle of the thing, innit. 

The Illusion of Safety

If it is remotely possible, I am not going to go within one hundred miles of London during the Olympics.

That’s not as a result of a curmudgeonly refusal to join in the spirit of things. I do quite enjoy watching the Olympics. When else do you get to see women’s weightlifting and doubles table tennis in the same day?

Anyone who watched the Beijing Modern Pentathlon show jumping event in 2008 – complete with untrained race horses charging headlong into the fences – will know that there will be some great stuff buried away on the red button coverage.

No, I will definitely watch some of the Olympics – but on TV. I once went to a live sporting event (the 1995 Oxford-Cambridge boat race) and it was crap. Never again. You can’t see properly, there’s no commentary to explain what’s going on, you can’t go to the toilet (in peace, at any rate...) and there are too many people.   

The reason I will not be going anywhere near London if I can help it because if I wanted to live under martial law in a place where the interests of the native population are subordinated to impressing visiting dignitaries, I would go to China or Bahrain. 

As the government installs missile batteries on the tops of buildings in London, one has to wonder exactly whose benefit they are doing this for. Because – and if any counter-terrorism experts or military brass are reading this, please feel free to correct me - if you shot down a hijacked airliner over any part of London, bits of flaming wreckage are almost certainly going to fall into heavily populated areas, aren’t they?

Apparently, some 19,000 military personnel are going to be deployed in London to make sure that foreign investors...I mean sports fans...are kept safe. More than are currently in Afghanistan.

Which brings me on – in my mind, at any rate – to this “little” device I was recently given on opening a new bank account.

I put in my card, type in my PIN and it gives me an access code which I can use to log in to internet banking.

If I don’t have it with me though (or if I have broken it my attempting to put it into my wallet and then sitting on it), I can log in using a number they sent me...in a letter.

So as well as being too big to carry around with me other than in a large bag, the machine is actually pointless because the security it offers is hopelessly undermined by the “back door” Nationwide have kindly provided.

Both the rooftop stingers and Nationwide’s calculator (which doesn’t even do maths) are designed to give the illusion of safety. In fact they create more risk by encouraging complacency about real threats.

Five tips for shitty drivers

I know a lot of you out there are really terrible drivers, who ought never to have been allowed behind the wheel of anything faster-moving, heavier or more expensive than a Cozy Coupe.

So, I have put together these top tips to help you – if not to actually become a better driver – then at least to minimise the threat your fundamental incompetence poses to other road users.

No biscuit for going slow

If you are driving past a speed camera in – say – a 30mph zone, there is really no point in slowing down to 20mph while you pass it. It’s not going to “accidentally” go off if you’re doing 25mph.

Yes, it’s true that bad things happen when you go past one too fast.

That doesn’t mean that good things happen when you go past too slow.

The cameras do not photograph you going past below the speed limit in order to send you a present for being a good boy.

Don’t force people to be polite

OK, sometimes it can be difficult to right pull out of a junction into a busy road. Here is a tip though: don’t pull out halfway and block the traffic coming from the left while you sit and wait for someone to let you in on the right.

If this was the sort of blog where you get other people’s jokes recycled, I’d say something about tiny women in massive 4x4s at this point. Or BMWs.

But this is Oh Dear. How Sad. Never Mind. and everything here is fresh. Or if it isn’t, I can assure you, I came to the same conclusions independently.

Know your limits

When I am dictator, one of the first things I will do is make lorries straying out of the left-hand lane on the motorway a capital offence.

If your vehicle is restricted to, say, 55mph and the speed limit is, say, 70mph, YOU HAVE GOT NO BUSINESS OVERTAKING ANYTHING! Stay in the slow lane and do not block the whole frigging carriageway up until you have dragged your sorry arse round.

If you have a caravan, just stay off the motorway altogether. In fact, just stay at home. And don’t ever leave it.

Make other drivers aware of your idiocy

The best way to signal your lack of any kind of redeeming sense to other motorists is to buy a Porsche Cayenne or Range Rover Sport.

If you cannot afford one of these gold-plated wanker beacons (or if, despite being a congenital imbecile, you nevertheless have a vestigial degree of taste), your options are as follows:

1. Take a normal car (preferably an affordable Japanese model for authenticity) and put stickers in the front and back windscreens saying “Minicab”. On seeing this tell-tale sign, other drivers will not be surprised when you make a U-turn in front of them, mount the pavement to hit a cat or do something similarly deranged.
2. If you would rather be thought of as an arsehole than a maniac, buy a van.

And finally...

If you see a large man in black on a small, battered white Honda scooter, let him do what he wants. Get out of his way, cheerfully wave him past and try not to run him over. 

I Stamp on Your Duty

Of all the parasites that clamp their jaws onto the body of a home buyer, surely the worst is Stamp Duty.

The five figure sum I am going to have to hand over to the government when I buy my new house dwarfs every other vig I have to pay up put together, coming as it will at 3% of what I’m paying.

And for what?

A stamp. Possibly not even that.

Without wishing to arouse the teabag crowd, resistance to the Stamp Act 1765 on the grounds of “no taxation without representation” was one of the major catalysts of the American War of Independence.

Well, I can’t complain about not being represented in juridical terms – I have a vote and I usually use it, for what that is worth – but for its naked rapacity in expropriating people of money in return for absolutely nothing whatsoever, I don’t think Stamp Duty has changed much in 250 years, even if we do call it Stamp Duty Land Tax now.

I am going to have to give all of the House of Sicily’s savings – built up over the years, with all due tax paid before I got it and then again on anything the savings earned – to the government.

For nothing.

For them to simply say that what I am doing is not against the law.

OK, it's not the highest percentage tax take imaginable. Sure, VAT gives the government a 20% cut of everything you buy. On road fuel that’s around 65%, because not only have you got fuel duty, but you’ve ALSO got VAT! Don’t believe ministers when they blame oil prices.

But when it comes to reminding you that there’s rarely much difference between taxation and racketeering – when you have to wipe yourself out ALL OVER AGAIN after buying a house – it’s hard to beat Stamp Duty.

Did I mention that we’re moving house? Please expect more on what a horrendous process this is over the coming weeks and months. 

Bradford: Symbol vs Reality

Here in Yorkshire, there are two Bradfords. There are two places co-terminous in space but miles apart in other respects (or Respects, if you prefer) going by that name.

The first, which has been flung back into the public imagination in recent weeks, is “Bradford the Symbol” – Bradford, the illustration of whatever lesson the (inevitably London-based voice) you are listening to wishes to preach.

As long as that lesson revolves around (i) decline and stagnation or (ii) ethnic segregation, I should add.

So, we have the Bradford that proves David Cameron is out of touch – not something that requires a great deal of proving. We have the Bradford that proves Labour is finished in the north of England. And of course now we have Bradford the symbol of George Galloway’s spectacular victory/opportunism/ego (delete as your prejudices dictate).

We have the Bradford that proves that white working class people are awful. The Bradford that proves that poor people are all racists, and the Bradford that proves that they aren’t as well. British Bradford and not-British Bradford – take your pick, but just don’t come so close that you get your hands dirty with context!

I have particularly enjoyed the colourful depictions of “Bradree” or clan politics as if Bradford were in another world entirely.

I must confess to never having come across this myself, but hey I live in Bradford East not Bradford West and we have a nice, cost Lib Dem for an MP where we are. I’ve even heard we’re going to be made part of Leeds in the Boundary Review, so how’s about that for moving up in the world? Bradford won’t be my problem soon...

In contrast to symbolic Bradford, we have Bradford the reality. The reality of the lives of nearly three hundred thousand people, persistently made out to be victims or manipulated pawns with their individuality subsumed into their “group”.

It's supposed to look like this. 

Of course, Bradford has its problems and the pictures recently painted of symbolic Bradford are not false as such.

But they all just use Bradford to make another point, because nobody really wants to think about Bradford the reality for too long.  

Bradford may have the national attention for the moment, but if all we can’t rise above being just a sad example of what went wrong with (i) the cotton industry, (ii) Thatcherism, (iii) immigration, (iv) local politics or (v) methods of rhubarb cultivation, then it will be long forgotten before the public has finished picking the remnants of that pasty out of its teeth.

Westfield is not the only gaping hole in the centre of Bradford. The city can’t sit around waiting for London to rescue it. It’s not going to happen, with Galloway or without. While Bradford is a symbol of victimhood and a byword for awfulness it’s going to remain the way it is. 

Only if some dynamic local energy and motive force comes from within this city – or any city that isn’t London – can we hope to stop the relentless decline.

And that’s why, if you live in Bradford, you should REGISTER TO VOTE and then VOTE FOR an elected mayor on May 3^rd! Stop waiting for handouts and let’s start solving the problems ourselves!

The Dukes of Moral Hazard

After praising the Greek government for sticking to its guns on a referendum on the bailout package yesterday, I was rather surprised to find that some 15 minutes after I had published it, Papandreou had changed his mind. The ODHSNM kiss of death strikes again. 

Suddenly George had decided that “democracy” meant something a little less Athenian and bit more Burkean than he’d previously been inclined to lead the world to believe.

By that, I mean:

1. Because the parliamentary opposition supported the bailout – no doubt after having their children taken hostage by G20 agents and spirited to a bunker in Cannes – there was, in fact, total agreement in the Greek polity on the whole “selling oneself and one’s descendants into slavery” issue.
2. The general public had their chance for a say when they elected their MPs. No point whinging about it now Stavros. Just eat your grass and be quiet. 

So, well done everyone - especially Existential Doubt for his article explaining WTF brought us to this moment. That’s the crisis over.

Well, call me paranoid and a prophet of doom, but I’m glad Elvira and I decided to book our upcoming break in a non-Euro country (the Czech Republic, since you ask).

While flights might be cheaper after the Euro has collapsed, I don’t want the added hassle of bartering for food, huddling around burning pieces of furniture in an exploded basement overnight and fending off marauding barbarians during the day on top of the usual stresses of a holiday.

Yes, well done EU and G20. The banks can rest easy knowing that there’s nothing you won’t do to stop them losing a penny. Things are going so well.

While we’re at it, EU, why not finish the job properly? All the governments – step down. Let’s get a Hapsburg on the throne and change the name back to "Holy Roman Empire".

Rotten boroughs for everyone

Electoral reform may be dead, MPs' expenses may be buried, but a good old fashioned boundary change can still send our political class wee-wee-weeing all the way home.

Behold the astonishing words of "one senior Tory" who is perhaps unaware that the Guardian is something that gets published to the outside world:

"We are not happy about this...There are MPs who gave up a lot to come here and now it looks like they face real fights."

Hilarious innit? Absorb it - I'm coming back to it. 

Broadly, the plans would see the number of MPs cut from 650 to 600 – although the Sicilys' own region would see just four go. Disappointing, I'd been hoping to see more ex-MPs on the scrapheap.

With our house on the market, I am delighted that we're looking at being shifted from hopelessly down-market Bradford East to aspirational Guiseley and Yeadon. We'll be whacking up the price accordingly.

So we might be happy, but Conservatives are not – apparently because the sinecures that they "gave up a lot" for might not be quite as guaranteed a route to a fat lifetime at the public teat after all.What a thoroughly disgusting attitude. If you're happy to share your arse-witted opinion, "senior Tory", why don't you share your name with us as well?

Nor are Labour happy though. Before he considerately deigned to examine the plans in advance of responding formally, Ed Miliband said:

"We have serious concerns about the government's decision to change the boundaries, which we believe was an act of gerrymandering by the Conservative party."

Boo hoo. Life just isn't fair, is it?

While most 19th century cartoons are generally made even less funny by knowing what the words say, I'm going to help you out with the preposterously small text in the picture above. 

Fat man says: "Here they are all good votes - ready to vote for my coach horse if I order them. Give me the money and I'll secure you the seat."

Rich man: "Well here's the cash. As for the votes, I'll leave them to you."

HA HA HA. See those peasants in the background? Politicians think that's you, that is. 

Who do you think? The Libyans!

So, goodbye then Colonel Gaddaffi, you crazy old bastard.

It may not have all been over by April at a cost of a few hundred quid, and it may have required a little more force from NATO than was strictly mandated by the UN, but what is it they say?...ah, yes...the ends justify the means.

That's the moral authority and military hegemony of the West re-established then. No longer can it be said that democratic states will tolerate tyrants; even ones who pose no harm to anyone anymore except their own citizens; even ones who make themselves useful from time to time.

Let that be a warning to all you other dictators out there. You hear that? That's the Clash of Civilisations in the distance! Put a foot wrong and BANG, we will mess you up real bad. Are you listening Hu Jintao? No, I didn't think so.

Anyway, now the brave people of Libya can elect a modern, secular, centre-left (or even centre-right! It really is up to you!) liberal democratic government of their own - just like the people of Egypt did earlier in the year.

Hooray for democracy.

By which I mean "fingers crossed, but not getting my hopes up for democracy".

In the meantime, remember the good old days?

PS – The image above is a John Yates classic.