Doonesbury
Posted by David N. Guy | August 25, 2010 | Comments Off
After much discussion with our readership over concerns about its relevance to a British audience, we are proud to announce a thrilling new relaunch of Doonesbury coming this Friday. Updated and translated strips by some of this country’s top comic strip writers, the new Doonesbury is sure to delight and confound you in equal measure.
Labyrinth
Posted by David N. Guy | June 30, 2010 | Comments Off
Part of BBC 4′s current Summer of Remakes series, this re-imaging of the popular 1980s childen’s film is strangely disquieting. Although not the most mis-judged of their remakes (Steptoe and Son featuring Matt Berry – as Son – and Brian Blessed – as Steptoe – takes that accolade), there is something wildly inappropriate about the whole endeavour.
Replacing the controversially extravagant sexuality of David Bowie’s Goblin King with a strange stop-motion-esque performance by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke removes much of the tension and subtext of the drama, leaving us with nothing much beyond the glossy but superficial surface of the story about a girl entering a maze in search of her younger brother Toby, a midget who has been given a Muppet head to wear.
Labyrinth is broadcast at 9PM on BBC 4 tonight, and is also repeated throughout the week.
The new iPad 2.0 revelations are the most revealing yet
Posted by David N. Guy | June 30, 2010 | Comments Off
Hot on the heels of the release of iPhone OS 4, Apple has recently been talking about the upcoming iPad 2.0, scheduled for release on Sunday (July 4th).
Among a number of expected updates to the device, described on its release as “irreproachable” by Stephen Fry, are a host of completely surprising new features. Perhaps the most interesting of these is the new second screen, located on the back of the device, which, utilising the gyroscopes and accelerometers contained within, means that never again will you have to worry about turning the iPad around to see the screen. Picking it up and just using it is now so easy it truly astonishes.
Steve Jobs also demonstrated an interesting new feature that takes advantage of the second screen. Called Zoetrope Mode, the user holds the iPad between their palms, one pushed against the top right corner, one against the bottom left (there is also a left handed mode, which lets you invert these settings), and then spins it around. A single static image is displayed on each screen, andas the iPad is spinning around, this changes to a new image while the screen is facing away from the user, creating possibly the most impressive animation techinque currently available. Watching stick figures moving around the white void in which they lived was incredibly moving. It will be interesting to see what the likes of Pixar will be able to do with this.
So far, opinion seem to be incredibly positive. Although Stephen Fry was unavailable for comment, it is known that he was quietly impressed by it, despite his dislike for the childish medium of animation.
Vuvuzealous
Posted by Vom Vorton | June 15, 2010 | Comments Off
Vom Vorton, “our man near a post”, studies the second loudest football phenomenon ever.
I am in South Africa, and it is full of bees. I keep waving my arms around in front of my face to bat them away, but my hands come into contact with nothing. Because, you see, it isn’t the practically extinct bumble-bee that has packed this backward country, but a sort of virtual bee, trapped in a cone.
Invented by Mexans in the 1970s, the Vuvuzela is a long, thin, annoying device that can only play a single note, much like Noel Gallagher. Fittingly, Oasis used the plastic “trumple” – it is precisely half trumpet, half bugle – on many of their 90s megahits, layered betwixt guitars to drown out any passing critics.
Much coverage of the Vuvuzela has focused on the negative qualities, but to the South African natives, it makes the sweetest noise of all – that of victory. Ironically, a noise that the Bafana Bafana rarely hear, because 17 members of their World Cup 2010 squad were deafened during qualifying – 12 of them by the infuriating noisemakers themselves, and 5 during a run-in with bellowing oaf Dean Windass.
As Earth’s Finest Tournament rolls on, and critics of The Harshest Noise are slowly drowned out, some have attempted to move the goalposts and slyly claim that the real problem with the VVZ is the health risk, germs and bacteria being blasted forth from the fluted end like some kind of genius war machine. However, regular attendees of football – or “soccer” – matches will attest to the complete lack of danger involved in spitting furiously for two hours.
As I write, listening to the exhilarating end-to-end action packaged neatly into the match between New Zealand and Slovakia, I feel gently soothed and massaged by the waves of sound that ooze forth from my iPad 5live stream, and my only criticism is that the massed hornets aren’t loud enough to drown out the woman commentator.
Mark my words, football fans – when the World Cup South Africa 2010 is over, you will miss these sweet, noble tones. So enjoy them while you can.
The Fourth Voyage of Sinbad
Posted by David N. Guy | June 3, 2010 | Comments Off
Production year: 2010
Country: US
Language: English
Cert (UK): 18
Runtime: 162 mins
Director: Ted Vaaaak
Cast: Naveen Andrews, Faye Dunaway, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Kate Winslet, Chelsea Charms, Maggie Cheung, Isabelle Huppert, Elina Löwensohn, Bridget Fonda, Uma Thurman
The first live action outing for the mythical Arabian hero in over 20 years, The Fourth Voyage of Sinbad is short on computer generated monsters and fantastical vistas, instead concentrating more on the psychological horror and the slow degradation of morality that a lifetime of adventuring can cause.
Taking Sinbad’s (Naveen Andrews in his first role since his split from wife Barbara Hershey) little known fourth voyage as the basis for its somewhat slight story, the opening scene, seemingly plagiarised directly from Pixar’s Up, follows the marriage of Sinbad to his childhood sweetheart, and her eventual untimely death. In a stunningly claustrophobic funeral scene, Sinbad is imprisoned in the community’s communal tomb with the decomposing body of his wife. As the stone doors closed above him and the screen descended into darkness my breathing stopped entirely for almost a complete minute. The utter silence in the cinema suggested my colleagues were all similarly afflicted.
Slowly succumbing to hunger in the darkness, plagued by troubling visions, Sinbad must confront the very things that make a man a hero and reconfigure them around him. When the corpse of another village member is thrown into the pit along with his beautiful wife (Maggie Cheung), desperation forces Sinbad’s hands around her neck and his teeth to eat her flesh. From here things only descend into greater depravity.
Over the course of this film’s extensive running time an increasing number of widows are thrown in to the pit with him. Will Sinbad be able to maintain his single minded devotion to his task for long enough to build a ladder form their corpse and escape, or will his humanity re-exert itself before he can reach salvation?
Director Ted Vaaak has spoken of his wish to show that Hollywood still has a place for women and their talents, regardless of their age. With roles for some of cinema’s greatest female talents, this powerful near-masterpiece, with its extended metaphoric uncertainty and its uncomfortable eroticism, will hopefully be the box office success that will prove him correct.
Peter Bradshaw is still away. We hope to bring him back soon.
England World Cup Squad Announcement Live Blog
Posted by Vom Vorton | June 1, 2010 | Comments Off
Vom Vorton, “our man with a ball”, will be here bringing you all the official news of the World Cup squad announcement live as it happens throughout the day. Additional reporting by David N. Guy and Reuters.
14.38: Capello hasn’t announced the team yet. Shambolic. It’s shambolic. And a farce. I’ve been here since 9 o’clock, and for what? Five hours of semi-confirmed hearsay and a graphic of John Terry’s face slowly rotating across the world’s screens.
14.39: Remember to get in touch with any thoughts you might have had today. I’ll print as many as I can.
14.40: From iluvesouthendunithed on 606: “I think my dream England team would just be a whole load of Milners, giant wide heads bashing around.”
14.41: I know it’s unprofessional of me to say this, but I’ll tell you what I like. I like it when Peter Crouch and Shaun Wright-Phillips play together, and one of them scores and they have a hug, and the height difference is so severe that I get vertigo and collapse, bleeding from the nose.
14.42: Or when the commentator says “there is some kind of absurd creature on the touchline, stretching out stalks in every direction, perhaps searching for intelligent life or trying to kill us all” and it is just Peter Crouch warming up.
14.43: I’m pretty sure that happens a lot.
14.44: If nobody is prepared to assemble a team out of giants, midgets and super-mutants then I think I’m probably watching the wrong sport.
14.51: Oh, here’s something. We understand that Capello has sent everyone home apart from Ledley King, who is flexing his kneecaps and grinning, showing the most sincere disregard for pain.
14.57: From genitalmaster on 606: “Why has nobody mentioned the fact that Wes Brown has the face of an enormous baby yet? Surely this is reason enough for him to be picked in any England team, past or present”
Good timing, genitalmaster – Capello has just appeared on Sky Sports News, riding Wes Brown around the room like an oversized dog. Apparently if he passes this initiation, he will force Jamie Carragher from the team and into a cannon, aimed directly into the sun.
14.59: Latest news suggests that David Beckham’s cheek has exploded. It’s not a pretty sight I’d imagine.
15.00: Capello has just announced a press conference for five minutes time – we will, of course, report back with all the news as it happens.
15.11: He has just announced that the official breakfast cereal of the England World Cup Team is going to be Golden Grahams. Based on our database, this rules Emile Heskey out of the final 23, as he is “a Weetabix man, through and through”. More as it happens.
15.14: Fabio is now throwing miniature footballs into the crowd. The waiting journalists are delighted, but does anyone remember why we’re actually here? This journalist hasn’t seen anything so ridiculous since 1884, when football was played in a gravel pit, by monks.
15.16: Fabio Capello has just announced that this year’s official England song, South African Boogie Woogie by Jools Holland and Keith Allen, will be available from Monday, exclusively on iTunes for 99p.
15.17: He has started singing the song.
15.18: He’s really getting into it now.
15.19: Fabio Capello’s mask has just slipped off, revealing he was being played by Michael Palin all along.
15.21: The FA have reacted to Fabio Capello’s dismaskment and Alan Shearer has been announced as the new England manager.
15.22: FIFA have announced that England have been banned from the World Cup, unless Alan Shearer is destroyed.
15.31: Michael Palin has been reinstated as the England football team manager. No word as yet on the method of destruction that was used on Alan Shearer.
15.34: If you want to discuss Alan Shearer’s destroyment, get yourself over to this thread on 606. I think I’d quite like it if the method they used was quite painful and exceedingly messy. Perhaps some sort of high-speed collision with a fine wire mesh.
15.35: The FA’s website is down. This is getting beyond a farce.
15.37: It is still down. Only the FA could contrive a situation like this on a day such as today. I am ashamed to be English.
15.38: It’s back up now. There’s a big picture of Trevor Brooking on there. I hope this means he was the one who supplied the final blow to Alan Shearer.
15.40: On Sky News I just saw Shaun Wright Phillips open Peter Crouch’s back up and climb inside. I wonder if this means Michael Palin can include an extra player now.
15.45: I wonder what Sir Geoff Hurst, Lord Bobby Robson, The Duke of David Seaman or Winston Churchill would think about this ludicrous fiasco. I think it’s safe to say that Hitler would have won World War II if the FA had been in charge of the army.
From Mecha_Alf_Ramsay on Twitter: “Would Germany still have lost the war if Hitler had been replaced by Jurgen Klinsmann? I think it’s fair to say they they would.”
15.50: Peter Crouch has made a special appeal to bloodthirsty fans who have been camped outside his home for two months, begging for him to appear on the balcony and dance like a robot. “I’ve said NO”, said Peter, a tear rolling down his magnificent cheek. “Not unless I score a goal in the world cup final, or provide an assist during the group stages, or win a drinking competition with my good friend and team-mate David James. Or if I’m at a disco.”
15.56: The FA have now made an announcement. They have announced that an official announcement, about when the final, more important announcement is due to be announced, will be announced “a bit later”.
16.01: JESUS FUCK I CAN’T TAKE THIS ANY MORE
16.02: Wait I think they’re announcing it now. Something’s definitely happening anyway.
16.03: The announcer has just announced who is going to announce the squad.
16.04: Stephen Fry comes onto the stage, holding an iPad. He holds it up and chooses the official England iPad app from the menu.
16.05: My god it’s beautiful.
16.06: So beautiful.
16.07: The whole room is in tears. It’s a bit like that Radiohead video where everyone collapses, but in reverse, somehow. The joy is overwhelming.
16.08: It’s just astonishing. Everything I have ever dreamed of has come true before my very eyes.
16.09: I can’t go on I’m sorry. It’s just… nothing seems important anymore. Nothing will ever be the same again.
16.10: This week’s FA chief has just come back into the room. “I’ve got some very sad news to announce about the announcement,” he says.
16.12: Poor, poor Theo Walcott. We’re hearing that the Arsenal man “began to swell and pulsate” when he was given the news that he would not be on the team plane. He has now been placed in an airtight chamber and ordered to calm down, amid fears that he could suffer a full pangranisation of the Gascoigne gland.
16.15: R.I.P. Theo Walcott. When he scored that glorious hat-trick against Croatia in qualifying, his future seemed so bright. And now he is being scraped off the wall of a medical facility.
16.17: Apparently Theo WAS on the list to go to South Africa. On the plus side, this now means there is room for Stephen Warnock to join the final 23, where he is expected to play a generally insignificant role in The World’s Greatest Tournament.
The 3 best iPad apps
Posted by David N. Guy | May 31, 2010 | Comments Off
To celebrate the iPad’s third day on sale, our chief Technology writer David N. Guy rates the three most must-have apps currently available.
#1. The Electromagnetic Spectrum
Making superb use of the iPad’s extreme audio/visual strengths, this interactive trip through the spectrum of light, from the psychedelic beauty of the rainbow to the plasma osccilations of the sub-infra, is an intellectual treat. Narrated by Stephen Fry.
#2. Videodrome
The Videodrome app displays a huge close up of Debbie Harry’s face on the iPad, the sub-pixel rendering making her look even more beautiful than she ever did in reality. Pushing your face directly into the screen is surprisingly refreshing, the feel of the your corneas pushing themselves flat against the tactile touch interface one of the most exciting sensations available.
#3. The Loop
The Loop, brought to you by the Guardian’s dedicated team, is a constantly changing and never-edning fractal-powered visual search. Loading up the app brings up the Guardian website’s front page. The screen then begins to zoom onto the first picture of the iPad it can find. Displayed on this iPad will be another Guardian feature about the iPad, which you can briefly read the headline from before the camera zooms into the article’s glossy iPad picture. Displayed on this iPad is yet another Guardian article about the iPad. It is strangely mesmersing, and after 72 hours of use, I have yet to see any repeated articles. For £1.99 this app provides perhaps the most startling content-to-cost ratio of any software yet sold.
The iPad that changed my life
Posted by David N. Guy | May 25, 2010 | Comments Off
As the UK excitedly gears up for the launch of the Apple iPad, we hear from David N. Guy, an early adopter of this wonderful technology, and discover how it has revolutionised their life.
I had been unemployed for the longest time. It had been so long I couldn’t even remember what it was like to get up and go to the toilets every hour to stare into the mirror and scratch at the inside of my nose with the longest fingernail I could find in the hope that I could make my nosebleed and watch it drip into the virginal white porcelain sink and drain away out of sight. The closest I would get to that was chewing on the straps of my rucksack as I sat with it on my lap in the queue at the dole. It wasn’t the same. It felt like a life without worth.
All that changed when I spent some of my spare cash on importing an iPad from America last month. Although this is technically illegal, or at least against Apple’s express wishes, which for many of us is the same, I felt that, due my dual British and American citizenship, I was not breaking any laws, legal or moral.
The first thing you notice when you get your iPad is how small it is, and also, paradoxically, how large it is. The next thing you notice is how bright it is. You haven’t even turned it on yet. When you do, the button just works. After turning it on you press it to your ear like it’s a nice warm cat that’s perched on your shoulder. The feel of it is exquisite, the cool softness of the screen accentuated by the inaudible frequency that the processor hums at, giving everything a warm sepia feel, much like listening to a 7inch Duran Duran picture disk on a vintage record player.
The first app I try is inscrutable but the second, which makes the screen look like it is made out of wood, is just astonishing. I stroke my hands up and down the tactile multi-touch screen. Closing myeyes it even begins to feel like wood. I let out a sigh. As I lay there, lost in thought as my fingers caressed the screen, images began to blossom in my mind. Ideas that I hadn’t never had before. Ideas that would have been impossible before.
Within days I have cleaned myself up and signed off the dole. My tattered clothes have been consigned to the bin, my previously unkempt beard is now expensively and ironicly unkempt. Every morning I get up with a new sense of purpose to my life. Today I created. What did you do?
David N. Guy is the Senior Architect behind the highly successful Cats-Online app.
Doctor Who Live Blog
Posted by David N. Guy | May 25, 2010 | Comments Off
Today’s Doctor Who episode is being guest written by Iain M. Banks, science fiction writer and anti-war protester. It should be interesting. Join us here from 6pm for the most accurate breaking Doctor Who coverage on the internet.
5.59 PM: Hello everyone. Are you as excited as me? I hope you are.
6.02 PM: This doesn’t start until twenty past six by the way. Total Wipeout’s on at the moment.
6.05 PM: I wonder if Richard Hammond has ever had a thought.
6.09 PM: I can’t take any more of this. I’m going outside for a while. I may be some time.
6.11 PM: There was some children out there so I came back in in case they asked for a light.
6.12 PM: I don’t have a light.
6.13 PM: Although sometimes I wish I did smoke. It would mean I had a reason to loiter outside pointlessly without looking sinister or confused.
6.14 PM: The only time I can just stand around outside at the moment is when the moon is out and I can say “I am looking at the moon” if anyone asks.
6.18 PM: A man just fell off something into something. I think he’s won.
6.19 PM: As the Total Wipeout credits go up a quick preview of Doctor Who plays, showing me almost absolutely everything. Things shown include Doctor Who talking about socialism, Doctor Who drinking a glass of whiskey, Doctor Who telling Amy the TARDIS’s full name (Rogue Class Time Ship Tremendous Anarchist Radiating Delight In Space), a man throttling a crow and then stamping on its eggs, a castle that is about to explode.
6.20 PM: The voiceover woman introducing it then proceeeds to tell me the rest of what will happen. What will happen: The castle will explode.
6.21 PM: I’m going to bed.
A Morning Walk
Posted by Alistair Bright | May 18, 2010 | Comments Off
The man is walking to his local greengrocers stall. But this isn’t just any type of man: this man is a very intelligent type of man, and a very serious one. With each step he places one foot exactly 35cm ahead of the last just like he always does. This is his standard pace for walking on paved level ground. He had long ago perfected this optimally efficient gait and he didn’t even need to look down at his feet to check himself anymore. Just a quick re-calibration every January the 1st is all it takes to maintain the stride.
“Maybe if everyone in the world walked correctly like I do then there would be no war” he thinks to himself.
The man has to stop abruptly as he realises he’s drawn level with the stall already! He curses the lapse of concentration that had almost led to his overshooting slightly and wonders whether he should increase the calories in his breakfast tomorrow by 50kcal to sharpen his mind, or to dock himself 50kcal as a punishment.
“Good morning Rich!” beams the pretty young woman running the stall.
He gives her a quick nod; “Anna”.
“It’s just me holding the fort today, Kath’s been up north all week sorting out some family stuff.”
“Oh,” he says in his calm reasonable tone. He doesn’t care who sells him the fruit. It’s still the exact same fruit.
“What can I get you today then?”
“Tomatoes. 750 grams.”
Anna fills a recycled brown paper bag with beef tomatoes, carefully placing – as the man notices approvingly – the largest in first then continuing in descending order.
“And can I get you any fruit as well?” The man sighs. “Can I get you some fruit, Rich?” she presses.
“Tomatoes are fruit” he reminds her.
She rolls her eyes; “Well some more fruit then.”
“Apples. 750 grams”
“Righty-o; these Braeburn are nice and ripe, fancy some of these?”
“I buy by weight not ripeness,” he states reasonably.
“Well, if you buy the weight you want am I permitted to pick out the ripest to put in your bag for you?” she coaxes in an almost motherly tone, her good mood only slightly dented.
“Everything is permitted,” he mumbles, allowing himself a wry smile.
Not getting the reference Anna starts to place some apples into a second brown bag. She stops when she notices someone crossing the road towards the stall “Kath!” she calls out, in a way that sounds more like an unconscious ejaculation of delight than a greeting.
“Hey, you.” Kath replies with a more mature reserve but no less affection. She leans in for a kiss. Katherine, with an elegant long build and high cheekbones is taller than Anna, so Anna has to tilt her head back quite a bit. What started as a quick peck on the lips lingers unexpectedly, telling of some point in the last week when one or both women had had the urge to kiss but remembered a cruel split second later of the other’s absence. The man stands there. The bag of apples haven’t been fully loaded yet so he can’t pay for them. The bag is sitting there on the scales with the weight clearly visible to him. He could easily calculate (for he is highly intelligent) how much money he could leave next to the till to walk off with the mere 527g of apples the bag still contains. But he doesn’t want to do that. He bought exactly the right amount of cash for 750g of apples. He wanted 750g of apples. The kiss continues.
“Maybe Anna’s neck will start to hurt and they’ll stop,” he thinks. But then he remembers her passion for yoga. She could probably stand with her neck like that all morning. One day when he came for a pair of grapefruit she bleated on about prana for eight whole minutes and when he got home he’d missed the start of The World at One. She can be so gullible sometimes. He doesn’t understand how someone so stupid can be so happy all the time. Still kissing. Maybe he should just turn and walk away, but he doesn’t want to seem like a homophobe.
“Perhaps if I made a noise it would get their attention,” he thinks. A little cough? No, that would imply that he is ill. He isn’t ill and nothing good ever came of lying. “I’ll just jolt the stall a bit then,” he decides. He gives the stall a little shove with the heel of his hand. No reaction. He pushes a second, harder time. A couple of Kiwi fruit shift in their basket but that’s all. He’s getting a bit flustered now and butts the stall with his pelvis, bruising the skin near the anterior corner of his iliac crest. Nothing from them. He takes the rim of the stall with both hands and bangs it up and down and up and down up and down and snarls “Apples! Seven hundred and fifty grams! Seven hundred and fifty grams of fucking apples!”
His nose starts tingling and his face feels hot like he’s about to cry but he won’t cry, not in front of these fucking people he won’t give them the satisfaction. This gets their attention: Anna steps back scared and Katherine glares. Then he remembers. He is very intelligent. His mind works fast, much faster than the minds of other people. While he had stood there for an age in his own perception maybe as little as five seconds had passed in their world. The girls’ reactions, the reactions of the other people at the stall support this hypothesis. Not taking her eyes off him Katherine briskly fills the rest of the bag – with Jazz apples and not Braeburns he can’t help noticing, but tactfully lets pass. She doesn’t take as much care not to bruise them as usual as she roughly plonks his two bags in front of him. He pays with the exact change he had already counted out at home, mumbles some vague explanation about perceptual time dilation as a sort of apology and heads home.
With each step he places one foot exactly 35cm ahead of the last just like he always does.
Our People correspondent Alistair Bright spent the day with Richard Dawkins. In next week’s Guardian Weekend, Alistair spends the day with author Iain Banks.
The Fear
Posted by Paul Farrell | May 12, 2010 | Comments Off
I can’t remember when the fear started. Probably in my teenage years but possibly it was as late as the year in my early twenties when my grandmother, my uncle and a family friend all died of cancer.
But with the fear there has always been the desire… the thrill. What if it came true? The experience of life cut short in sweet agony.
So there were false starts. The persistant stomach pains that were explained as gluten intolerence. A suspicious mole that was never going to amount to more than a slight rash.
But then, a persistant cough that didn’t shift with antibiotics, A shadow on a chest x-ray. A complete lack of appetite. A biopsy. And then a diagnosis – Germ Cell Cancer with further tests to see if there are any other tumours.
The jackpot.
And the fear? The fear is… gone but replaced with further worries. What will the chemo do to me? Will I ever feel hungry again?
What if I survive?
Paul Farrell is our resident cancer journalist. He will be with us until he is gone.
England’s Beast of Burden
Posted by Freyja Peters PhD | May 12, 2010 | Comments Off
Last week my colleague over at the Daily Mail, Leo McKinstry, published a hard-hitting, but long-needed, expose on the current state of ‘Great’ Britain . Inspired by his work, I asked my editor David Guy if I could follow-up on it, by going on a rail and road tour to see some of the places McKinstry describes. Taking my own journey upriver into the heat of darkness; wherein I might perhaps find that our own bloated Colonel Kurtz is none other than a maniacal villain with a Scotch accent and a glass eye.
The newly re-configured Yorkminster
David tried to discourage me, fearing not only for my safety, but also my emotional and intellectual well-being (not to mention the threat a weekend of Northern ‘cuisine’ might pose to my digestive system). But I was resolute: how can we help heal this rift without knowing what barriers we must overcome? I must, like Michael Buerk in 1984, show the world what had become of one of its forgotten corners.
Boarding a train at Euston a cold knot forms in my stomach.
The journey is uneventful until we pull out of Birmingham New Street, when I become painfully aware that I am now longer surrounded by my fellow citizens. An ill-wind has swept them off the train, and brought a whole new breed in their stead. Barbour jackets, broadsheets and brioche are supplanted by Gregg’s packets and unmoisturised faces.
At Wolverhampton two women in burkhas scuttle onto the train and distribute copies of the Socialist Worker to all, even children and the elderly. Most take it without argument. One man calls it ‘Tory claptrap,’ but later completes the crossword anyway.
The situation worsens at Stafford, where armoured plating descends noisily to cover the exterior of the train. This is covered in pebbledash and grey stone cladding, to give us the appearance of an innocuous council estate. Our lone, smiling and ruddy-cheeked guard departs and is replaced by a 12-strong team of Virgin Militia personnel, toting machine pistols and smoke grenades. I had been warned about this, but I was yet unprepared for grim reality.
The only light in the carriage now is from the braziers hastily improvised by tribes from various northern urban communes. I engage one of these groups, all dressed in hi-vis jackets, for as long as I can stand the stench of gravy and hand-rolled cigarettes, and the permeating threat of physical and sexual violence. They have been to London, they tell me, as part of a state-sponsored cultural-enrichment outreach programme. Although heavily subsidised by the Department of the Proletariat, this trip has still cost them £38 each, which is, unbelievably, a week’s wages here. But for that they did get tickets to see Amanda Holden in Kevin Spacey’s production of Waiting for Godot, a trip on the Docklands Light Railway, and a meal at a Pizza Express of their choosing, so clearly not money and time unwisely spent. They enjoyed themselves, but how much of that, I was forced to ask myself, was due to the participation we had allowed them in our artistic endeavours, and how much of it was due to the crate of cheap lager they’d clubbed together for. You can lead a horse to water…
If you drive northwards you will see nothing but the picked-clean carcasses of roadkill and human dung.
At Macclesfield station I catch glimpses of a clash between a gang of black youths and an elderly man who is naked but for a toga made from a tattered St Geroge’s flag. It is hard to see any winners here.
An impoverished and threatening scene greeted me on Edinburgh's Princess Street
At Preston I hire a four-wheel drive to continue my tour. Public transport will not go past here. In his piece for the Mail, McKinstry wote that ‘You could drive southwards the whole way from Lincolnshire to the Isle of Wight without leaving Conservative terrain.’ If you drive northwards, I can now attest, you will see nothing but the picked-clean carcasses of roadkill and human dung.
I had keenly anticipated my afternoon’s excursion into the wilds of the Lake District, but when I arrive there, I find that it has been paved over and replaced with the UK’s largest debt advice call centre.
I forge on for several more hours to the Highlands, where all the peasants were, quite literally, told to ‘clear’ off in the 17th and 18th centuries, helping to establish Sir Walter Scott’s rugged, romantic wilderness. But to my dismay, it’s now a wind-farm run by lesbians. Lindisfarne (aka Holy Island) is a day spa for Africans and Eastern Bloccers awaiting deportation. Chatsworth House is an abortion clinic.
‘Who did this?’ I ask again and again, in place after place. There is only ever one answer: ‘Broon’.
'Maggie', 47, hopes to escape the NHS for a new life in Berkshire
Disconsolate, I decide that the landscape is a lost cause, and instead speak to some of the people here, to see if there are any rays of hope amongst them. In Harrogate I meet a nurse, Maggie. Maggie isn’t her real name, but she fears reprisals from hard-liners within her community: a group with the slogan ‘Better dead Foot than broken (C)Legg!’.
‘I wanted to do a business and finance degree,’ she says, ‘but Mum and Dad told me it was a fool idea – a road paved only with long hours and hardship, and no gratitude from
the people you were supposed to be helping. I remember Dad’s exact words: “Why choose a hard life when you can grow fat off the public sector, darlin’? Get into the NHS, and you’re set-up for life! Only disability benefits is better, and God never saw fit to bless us in that respect.”’
Linda pauses and looks down at her hands. ‘So now here I am. Do I feel good about the choices I’ve made in life? No. But the fortune I’ve amassed inserting IVs and wiping up old folks’ shit has afforded me a better life for my family, so can I say I regret it? No. We might….we might even get to move down to Reading in a year or two. I mean, it’s a long way off – maybe more like 10 years. But we’ve got family there, so maybe they could help us get started. Just whilst we build up our share portfolio and whatnot.’
‘The fortune I’ve amassed inserting IVs and wiping up old folks’ shit has afforded me a better life for my family.’
Donny now works with youths
Donny from Alnwick is less optimistic about the future. ‘My mum and dad were social workers. Their parents were all social workers or teachers, and we come from a long line of people who laboured (pun intended) under the delusion that helping people was a morally good and socially productive thing to do with your life. So what hope was there for me? I’ve got an MBA, but every interview I go for, they get to the part of my CV that says I’m from the north-east, and it’s straight out the door. I used a friend’s Hampshire address for a while, but they’d always catch me out somehow. In one interview, I was just leaving, thinking I’d got the job, when they cracked a joke and I laughed. I didn’t get the job. It was only later that I realised they had been quoting Peter Kay at me.’
‘I’ve ended-up working as a youth worker now – telling kids they’ve got a future, pretending we don’t live in a shithole that hasn’t even been voted best place to live in Britain since 2002…It’s a joke, and it’s a sickness that goes right to the very heart of this part of the country.’
But there is still hope amongst some. In Glasgow and in Gunchester I visit several projects set-up by charitable trusts, and sustained by the tireless efforts of volunteers, to improve the quality of life for those who are not yet completely lost to the ravages of the social welfare system. In the South Gunchester suburb of Chorlton, I meet Gemma Cloud-Atlas and Dave Cameron (‘No relation, sadly!’), of philanthropic group Northern Rocks! who have been in this area for 7 months working and even living amongst these people, selflessly taking unpaid career breaks to show the few tribesmen here with most of their teeth and a clutch of GCSEs that there is hope, even in this interminably fruitless scion of humanity. ‘Once we arrived, the turnaround was almost instantaneous’, explains Gemma, in her irrepressibly charming Surrey voice, ‘we started with the absolute basics: emergency hummous handouts, career coaching triage tents, a week-long amnesty on Iceland food, etc. Within a week, there were the green shoots of semi-polite society. Miracles can happen.’
‘Then last month we tried our most ambitious tactic yet: taking a group of the most promising guys on Eurostar to the Dordogne. There were some incidents, most notably an unfortunate faux pas with the nose of a brie, but on the whole it was a success for everyone, and we’re looking into the feasibility of leading a trip to Goa in 2012.’ ‘That sounds ambitious!’ I say. ‘Yes, but we’ve got to take some risks. This generation is essentially lost, but perhaps, if the foundations have been laid, the children, or more realistically grandchildren, of these northerners may just hope to become the future’s southerners.’
Northern Rocks! have transformed this row of beaten-up immigrant shops into a civilised enclave of bars and gastro-eateries, galleries, and Paul Frank outlets (seen here during a trade unions rally). Perhaps not be what we’re used to, but for these people it’s the dab of pesto on a dry and moulding barm.
And, as Gemma quite rightly reminds me, once this crumbled city was the founding home of this very publication, during its 19th century halcyon days as a capital-driven centre of human strip-mining. Can’t it be that great again? Can civilisation return here? ‘We don’t want to give false hope’, says Gemma’s colleague, John Rhombus, ‘after all, we’re basically talking about complete desolation of the fundamental human spirit of aspiration. It’s baby steps. But, yes, perhaps one day. It’ll never be a Guildford or a Maidstone, but maybe, one day, a Luton.’
‘The woman added, “And I don’t even give a shit about Stephen Fry.” At that point I just had to walk away. ’
Students in Hull model their new school uniforms, supplied by Saatchi and Saatchi
On the day I join the team they are handing out free iPhones and Blackberries. The uptake is good and enthusiastic. But, as Dave points out, it’s only half the battle. ‘We can hand out all this gear, and they appreciate it up to a point – texting friends and calling their “Nannas”, but simple acts that we do everyday are anathema to these people.
‘I mean, one woman described Twitter to me as “Arse-clenchingly awful, solipsistic nonsense.” She then added, “And I don’t even give a shit about Stephen Fry.” At that point I just had to walk away. Or I would have hit her. You just have to accept that some people just can’t be helped. Won’t be helped.’
At the end of my two days in the land that time (but not crime) forgot, I return to my studio apartment in Welwyn Garden City, reflecting on my experiences. I have seen the depths to which parts of England have sunk. But we are all responsible for this tragedy, still playing out, even as I write. They are more responsible than us, of course, but can we really blame these tattered souls for their ignorance? For their poor earning potential and lack of BUPA health plans? For buying into the fallacious and insidious dream of equality for all? Yes, we can. I for one am glad that this publication backed Nick Clegg’s Tory-lites for victory. Because now I may live without fear that I will one day have to wake up between Primark sheets in a faux-leather Argos bed.
Leeds
The kiss
Posted by David N. Guy | May 10, 2010 | Comments Off
They’ve been working hard on it all week, this kiss, preparing themselves in front of the mirror, sucking on the backs of their arms and pretending it’s their new lovers neck, reciting the words they’ll say as they draw near, the hesitant trembling touch as they reach out a hand towards their partners cheek. And now they’re here, together, alone, and neither of them know what to do, what to say. The silence has stretched out for what seems like a month. Time and space have solidified around them. They feel like they couldn’t even move if they wanted to.
But then David breaks free from his paralysis, though whether through fear or sheer force of will he cannot tell. “We can do this,” he says. “We have to do this. We’ve waited so long.” He stretches his arm out, stiffly placing it on Nick’s shoulder. “We both want it.”
The contact releases Nick, life and courage flowing through his body. “Oh yes,” he says. “Oh yes.” He takes David’s hand into his own, puts his other hand on his lovers cheek. It’s sticky, like the skin is not quite solid, putty not yet set. It’s incredible, so sensuous, like placing a hand directly into his being. Emotions take hold, tenderness replaced by an animal roughness, their faces pushing in, their mouths locking, tongues pushing hungrily past each other, saliva spilling from the corners of their lips. Nick’s hands sink into David’s cheeks, drowning in the ectoplasmic depths.
David’s hands are busing undoing the buttons on Nick’s shirt, pulling, tugging, ripping at the fabric, desperate to get to the flesh beneath. Nick’s skin is cold, white, puckered, freshly waxed and quivering at the touch. He rubs his thumb over one of Nick’s nipples, its shape and solidity making it feel oddly like a Risk piece lost in a country all of its own.
Nick steps backwards, pulling his hands out of David’s face, clumps of puttyied flesh hanging from his fingers like jelly on an East End eel. He undoes his belt and drops his trousers, while opposite him David quickly, almost miraculously, disposes of his own clothes. David’s body is unformed, soft, clean, unlined and smooth, the only blemish the crude hairless genitalia stolen directly from a Greek sculpture. Nick stares at it, fascinated. He bends down, soundlessly moving his lips in a final prayer.
Outside, Gordon stands on the verge, forgotten, glowering and desperate, a face like Goya’s Saturn. He takes another bite from the corpse in his hands, anything to stifle the screams he can feel building in his heart.
Election Night Suicide Live Blog
Posted by Noel Oxford | May 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Join us as the results come in, for absolute razor’s edge coverage of the end of Noel’s short, sexy life.
20.06 Got the razor blades, the chloroform, the plastic bag and the ligature. I’m all set.
20.23 Going to go to the pub for a last drink. Spot of Dutch courage, too, if I’m honest.
23.14 fuck i8t they’are might stoll be a coalittion
The Lives Of Us
Posted by David N. Guy | May 6, 2010 | Comments Off
Production year: 2010
Country: UK
Language: English
Cert (UK): 12A
Runtime: 183 mins
Director: Ted Vaak
Cast: Kevin Spacey, Jude Law
This idiotic English-language remake of The Lives Of Others, set in modern day London and starring Kevin Spacey as a civil servant, is a remarkably muddled return to film-making for 70s cinema wunderkind Ted Vaaak. Kevin Spacey, whose job in the Home Office consists solely of monitoring potential dissidents on a big bank of monitors showing every CCTV feed in the capital, is assigned the job of proving that beautiful patriot Jude Law, a director of adverts and political films for the Conservatives, is a paedophile, thus discrediting his work and allowing for his imprisonment.
Vaaak, once described by Nic Roeg as a “pervert”, for once manages to give us a relatively unsexualised narrative, although he has replaced the coda of the original film with a sequence in which, after the (presumably hoped for) fall of the current Labour government – Vaaak was a notorious Thatcherite in the 1980s, which was often assumed, incorrectly, to be the reason for his blacklisting by the British film industry -, Kevin Spacey and Jude Law meet each other just outside the gates of Buckingham Palace and, both smiling nervously, reach in and tenderly kiss.
One of the criticisms of the original was its perceived misogyny, with the only female character being a weak-willed and drug-addicted informant for the state, and although this has been addressed by Vaaak, his solution of having an all male cast is deeply disquieting.
Peter Bradshaw will return.
Noel’s Election Twenty-Ten Drillbit Part Three
Posted by Noel Oxford | May 5, 2010 | Comments Off
With only hours to go before polls open, CMF endorses its pick for the 2010 election.
It seemed so sweet, didn’t it? The possibility of a profound change lay thick on the air like sweet arson smoke as, for the first time in a generation, the Lib Dems became Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. Nick Clegg might have been a clockwork used car salesman with a stretched piece of 8-track tape for a voice-box, but his rosette was a fucking totally different colour. I mean it. Check it out on Lycos.
But two weeks is a long time, not only in politics, but everywhere. Imagine if you went for a wee and it took two weeks. Imagine if it took two weeks to get to the Moon. Now, Clegg’s Merry Marauders, as I don’t especially like to call them, have slumped to a dismal joint second in the polls and look remarkably like a bouncy castle/stiletto heel incident.
Cleggbamamania seems sunk. The dream is dead, and all is blue, middle class ashes. And this time, there is no get out jail free card. The fierce urgency of now has become the farce lethargy of never. Britain is to be denied her moment, and Nick Clegg consigned, intermittently, to the spam filter of history’s Hotmail. Not even the endorsement of the mighty Guardian herself can hold back this tide of blue emulsion.
The novelty wore off, folks. The electorate got sick of its AT-AT and flung it down the stairs, irremediably shattering its dreams, and those of every benighted fool who had room in their bellies – and their hearts – for a bit of devilled Clegg. And so it’s with a deep, inconsolable ennui, that I must announce my last-ditch plan to get the Lib Dems back in the race where they belong.
If the outcome of tomorrow’s ballot is anything but an historical Liberal Democrat landslide, sweeping Nicholas ‘Nicholas William Peter “Nick” Clegg’ Clegg to Number Ten, atop an overall, commanding majority, then I will literally kill myself live on blog.tv on Friday night.
And I know very well that it won’t make a blind bit of difference even if he does win. Look at the callous way Barack Obama has taken the hopes of his naive countrymen, used his colossal mandate to lube them up, then rolled them into a cylinder, and fed them slowly up his backside. But at least he hasn’t fired them back out again in a shower of faecal horror. Yet.
That’s the best outcome you can hope for, Britain. Vote well. Vote hard. Don’t make me do it.
Cartoon – Cameron not too Proud to Beg
Posted by Jedes Balldip | May 5, 2010 | Comments Off
Cameron: "Please, please, PLEASE take me back, Britain."
Why I’m Going Around Boring Everyone Frozen About David Cameron
Posted by Oubliette Chadmers | May 5, 2010 | Comments Off
Sock, Rock, Bock-bock director OUBLIETTE CHADMERS today explains why the Tories have got the touch, and also the power.
He is married to someone far, far richer and more beautiful than you will ever land, you horrifying sack of offal.
Here, Oubliette, 39, explains nothing at all, and spends a long, long time doing it.
Smart... Oubliette Chadmers
Matthew Vaughn said in the Sun last week that it was squeaky bum time for Britain. I don’t know what that means, but it sounds spot on to me. We in Britain are at the turning point of this election where literally every voter who intends to vote will vote for a party and then a party will win, and it will have an effect of some sort, somewhere, probably. Or maybe people mostly won’t notice or care.
As a director of films, I spend all day every day telling more talented people than I how to do their jobs, then in the end I waltz off with the lion’s share of the credit and money for their efforts. That, if nothing else, makes me blue to the bone, Tory through and through, and Cam is My Man. Say whatever you like about Thatcher and the Conservatives through the 1980s, but don’t say they weren’t incredible stewards of the USS Great Britain, and quite literally the most incredible government that we have ever had the honour of subjecting ourselves to.
I make films because I have a skewed, immature worldview; yet I also have the towering pomposity and arrogance to believe that my outlook is of enough innate, intrinsic worth to warrant putting millions of dollars and dozens of careers in the balance, just so that it can be expressed to its fullest advantage. When I made Jason Statham eat a stilton and spinach pasty that someone had spaffed over, in the closing minutes of my 1999 smash hit Sock, Rock, Bock-bock, I was making a very clever political allegory that I doubt even my old film tutor would have gleaned. Basically, right, the spaff is taxes. Figure it out from there.
But that’s why I’m the one who is qualified to tell you what to do, not Stephen Fry or Danny Dyer. Me. I’ve built a career out of it.
Nobody could look at these past long 13 years of Labour Schmabour and fail to sense their gorge rising in their throat. Then, literally projectile vomiting a liquid khaki spume across the keyboard and monitor such that you can barely even see what you are typing any more. Gorgel Clown promised he wouldn’t give us another recession, but then utterly failed to rein in his fat cat friends in the City. He might as well have sent the economy to the moon or to like caveman times or something. If the previous eternity of Conservative government proved anything, it’s that we can rely on the Tories to lay the law down on the rich.
We live in a different world now, and Glargon Toon needs to step aside and let the big boys get on the rostrum. The pace of technological change is incredible. Only five short years ago, nobody had heard of many of the new inventions we all take for granted. The internet, YouTube, Bebo and Lycos were all pipe-dreams when Grogan Goon took possession of number 10. DavCam is Facebook to Brone’s Friendster. And you can rely on David Cameron not to call someone a bigot. People in glass houses…
Cameron is the real deal, folks. He has proven you don’t need to steal policies to win support. Indeed, you don’t need to have policies at all.
Now go and do what I say.
Cartoon – Manchester Clegg
Posted by Jedes Balldip | May 3, 2010 | Comments Off
Lib Dems poised to penetrate Greater Manchester
Chelsea Charms and Me
Posted by Freyja Peters PhD | April 30, 2010 | Comments Off
I’m walking along the King’s Road with a galpal of mine, who, like me, is a recent mother, but also a wildly successful Primrose Hill restaurateur and a barrister to boot. ‘Where does she find the time??’, thinks me, who got a migraine thinking about the mere logistics when one of the other mums at the Finchley Baby-Swim group asked me if I fancied joining her Yummy-Mummies Yoga Club.
My friend asks me if I’ve heard of Chelsea Charms. “Is that the new Conran shop?” I innocuously/innocently ask. My friend takes pity on poor, gloriously isolated from popular culture me (Me who enquired at a dinner party, just last week, “Does Amy Winehouse takes drugs, then?” Me who thinks that Tom Cruise is still a good Catholic boy.), and explains that Chelsea Charms is, in fact, not a new purveyor of exquisite talking pieces for the vibrant Chiswick household, but rather the owner of the world’s pair of largest (cosmetically-enhanced) breasts. “Gosh,” I squeak, when Calliope reveals that, at last measure, Charms vitals clocked in at a staggering 153XXX-23-34.
Yes, that was 153XXX.
These dimensions are completely alien to one such as myself, who kept waiting and waiting for puberty to really kick in in the chest section. I finally wearily admitted defeat when, at the High Michaelmas Ball in my second year at Oxford, my rather Pimms’d boyfriend of the time spent an hour telling me about the ‘wonderful’ advancements in breast augmentation procedures. ‘Not that you need it…’ Yeah right! Dumped!
I’m not sure I’d even like big breasts. When I was pregnant with Malachy, and then breastfeeding (and, by-the-by, are any other new mums concerned about what fluoride in our tap-water could be doing to breast milk, and – in turn – to baby’s health?? Email me), I reached the heady heights of a (leaky) D cup, but I felt like a grotesque. It turns out I was used to going unnoticed in crowds with my little crab-apples, and now I was schlepping round biffing people in the eye with a pair of granny smiths!
On the other hand, I have a Ugandan friend whose beautiful ochre breasts billow and flow under unbelievably beautiful busuti and gomci dresses and, every time I see her, cause me to rue the day I was born a porcelain-white stick.
But then, maybe Chelsea Charms’s breasts empower her. In a world STILL ultimately predicated on men’s tastes and desires, perhaps the only way for a woman to get power is to present a façade of complicity, but to really be manipulating those who seek to manipulate her, and all of us women. I really don’t know the answer.
I do know I’m now the proud owner of a divine Conran end table, though. C’est la vie!