Charlie Gilmour: Status, Crime & Punishment

There's something very, very wrong with the decision today to sentence Charlie Gilmour (that's Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd's son, for context) to 16 months imprisonment. It's an intriguing story, I think, because of the obvious undertones of all the things that aren't actually related to the crime, which came to the fore as a result of a media backlash and have remained there. For those who aren't aware, Gilmour was snapped numerous times doing idiotic things during the tuition fees protests (which, subtly, areas of the press have taken to calling the 'tuition fee riots' as if that were the true organised nature of the event).

For example, Charlie Gilmour swung on a Union Flag attached to the Cenotaph, then claimed he didn't know (despite being a History student) what the structure represented. This makes him at best ignorant, at worst an absolute moron, but he didn't face trial for that. Despite this, though, the judge still saw fit to pass comment on his actions in that regard. In and of itself, I don't think that's an awful thing to have happen, although I would argue that Charlie Gilmour has probably realised by now that he was a fucking idiot on that day.

What Gilmour was on trial for, though, was the attack of the royal convoy for Charles and Camilla that spawned all those sensational pictures of them both looking veritably terrified as angry rioters threw things at their car. Charlie Gilmour was found to have launched a litter bin at one of the cars in the convoy, sat on a protection officer's car, and smashed a window. Can I just repeat for you the length of the sentence he was handed? 16 months. SIXTEEN MONTHS.

That alone is pretty fucking atrocious. 16 months - of which he'll serve half - for smashing a window and jumping on a car bonnet? But it's worse - far worse - when you realise why it is that the price is so high. Judge Nicholas Page said that "it would be wrong to ignore who the occupants" of the car were.

Hang on a minute.

Judge Nicholas Page thinks that if Charlie Gilmour smashes your window, and jumps on your car's bonnet, and throws a trash can at your car, it is not as bad or important as if he does it to that of a royal.

There are so many things wrong with this that it's difficult to know where to begin. We could start with the fact that, given Charles and Camilla's obviously extensive protection arrangements, it's probably not as dangerous physically or emotionally to them as it would be to somebody else. But I think this is missing the point entirely, actually, and the point is this: somewhere, someone, at some point, has decided that the royal family is more important than you, and more important than me. I'm not about to argue that it's the inverse; that would be foolish and counter-productive.

Because I searched through articles galore to make sure I wasn't mis-reading the quote from Judge Nicholas Page, because for quite some time I thought that, surely, what he actually said must have been that it would "be right to ignore who the occupants" were. Alas, I find myself dumbfounded. In the rooms where people make decisions which affect people's lives in the long-term, we have men who think it's okay to, with very little disguise at all, assert that it is more of an issue if someone attacks the royal family than if they attack what I can only assume they refer to as the plebs.

Charlie Gilmour is an idiot but he's got a hell of a long way to go before he's as much of a muppet as Judge Nicholas Page.

The Sinister Smiles of CCTV Signs

Most of the criticism I post here is about news outlets, primarily because these are the sources which most explicitly change our perception of the world. But in a way, these things are pretty harmless if you're a little bit aware of the hazards involved in consuming them. Sort of. I didn't just call the Daily Mail harmless. But what I'm getting at is that there are more subtle ways people, and particularly organizations, affect our outlook on certain issues:

I don't know about anybody else, but this sign makes me a million times more nervous and scared than I can ever imagine feeling on seeing a sign that said You are being filmed and recorded for the purposes of security and safety. I don't find the smiley face funny; I find it terrifying as hell. I don't find the laid-back and presumably hilarious tone of the text cute; I find it actually pretty sinister.

There are certain things that don't need joking about. If the point of CCTV is to make the world safer, surely trivialising its use to the extent that you're making faintly Orwellian wisecracks at the expense of actual information is a poor communication decision at best. But maybe it's not. No, maybe it's deliberate. Maybe the companies and organizations that use uncomfortably nonchalant signage like this are just paving the way for a tipping point where people stop noticing that they're on camera. Maybe they know that.

Make no mistake: they do. It's a process of desensitisation, of making people unconsciously numb to a blasé and relaxed approach to the idea of a stranger taking thousands of pictures of them every minute. If this sounds like a conspiracy theory, I'm not saying CCTV is Satan incarnate. I'm saying that there are debated to be had about its impact on freedom and privacy, and that signs like that piece of shit up there^ do no justice to the seriousness that even MAKING a sign so apologetically awkward implies. If you accept people need to be made to feel less uptight about CCTV cameras, the best way to do it is not to make light of their fear in the first place.

It terrifies me that someone somewhere, by way of either stupidity or treachery, thought this a good idea.

A New Dimension of Banal Celebrity Bullshit

On the scale of mindless and unimportant celebrity bullshit there are four key benchmarks for ridiculousness:

1) Something happened. This is the type of article which purports to be about X's new music video or Y's new movie or Z's show in _____land, but usually actually just spends 5 paragraphs recounting in a tedious and dry fashion the last two weeks of X/Y/Z's life. Still, at least it's about the work that they do, i.e. the supposed reason people know who they are in the first place.

2) Really? Wow. This type of story - though about someone you've never met and wouldn't ever think about were they not plastered all over magazines and tabloids - is nevertheless intriguing. It usually concerns fairly major developments in a celeb's life like a divorce or an injury - personal stuff that affects nobody but is still, for whatever reason, interesting.

3) Nothing happened. Kim Kardashian crossed a road. Avril Lavigne was wearing a bikini. James Corden had a takeaway. These stories are the filler, the real gossip, the real dross; they're the completely empty and vacuous tales of absolutely nothing important or with wider consequences or even with small consequences to the celebrity in question. They're like those crisps that don't taste of anything and don't have any calories either; people just eat them because they want to feel like they're eating something at that moment in time.

But wait, because there's something worse than that:

4) Nothing happened. Literally.

Today the Daily Mail is carrying an article whose headline boldly asserts:

Reigniting the flame: Ashley and Cheryl Cole get intimate on a romantic day out

Got that? Ashley Cole and Cheryl Cole are getting intimate. On a romantic day out.

But the Mail don't just tell you so: they include 3 brilliantly clear photographs of the loved-up couple because the cornerstone of celebrity bullshit is photographs. One is the pair in a restaurant, another is of Ashley lifting his ex-wife into the air, the last is of a romantic embrace in the street.

In the second paragraph of the article the Mail's anonymous byline Daily Mail Reporter asserts with the utmost confidence that:

now it appears there is confirmation that the relationship is back on track

Got it?

Cheryl Cole and Ashley are back together?

Understood? All clear, now?

Are you ready for the twist?

It's not them.

It's a pair of lookalikes.

Making Excuses For Homophobia?

Today, the BBC is carrying an article as the lead of its Entertainment section about an opera which was cancelled after a school decided that - to quote them -

it was still deemed as unacceptable for four to 11-year-olds to be exposed to.

Let's get one simple thing out of the way straight off the bat: the opera company can't be blamed for the collapse of this show. It was due to open in 10 days' time, and it was not their disagreement with the script that led the school to pull its 300 pupils from the production. The company, Opera North, has clearly been driven to make the decision by the school's ultimatum regarding a specific line in the script which the writer refused to alter. Therefore, implying in the article's headline that the opera company has any case to answer whatsoever is greatly misleading. But what of the line to which the school took such offence?

"Of course I'm queer/That's why I left here/So if you infer/That I prefer/A lad to a lass/And I'm working class/I'd have to concur."

Wow.

The writer, Lee Hall (who also wrote Billy Elliot) insists that this is the only part of the script on which he and Bay Primary School couldn't reach an agreement. The school asserts that it is not the simple presence of homosexuality that irks them, but instead the tone and language of the work. Quite how they got involved to start with is beyond me, but the BBC article and interview make it abundantly clear that Hall agreed to change everything but that line.

So, basically, the school has pulled out of a production happening in 10 days' time because of the word queer.

Queer.

Queer can mean strange, but it usually doesn't any more, and certainly not in the playground. It's actually quite true that the word is often used by bullies and in homophobic name-calling, and in that context, yes, it's a bad word. But here, the word is not being used in that context. It's being used by a character to describe himself and because it needs to rhyme with here.

It's quite evident from the writer's protests as to the cancellation of the show that he's not the homophobe in this situation, and so you'd have to assume that the use of the word queer here is not derogatory in any sense. And yet this is the school's excuse. And because of all these things, that's what it smacks of: an excuse. They have pulled their 300 pupils from the production of Beached on the grounds that a - frankly - painfully banal line from the script includes a word which sometimes has negative connotations but in this case definitely doesn't.

At the least, it's cowardice; at its worst, it reeks of actual homophobia, of the literal kind: fear of homosexuality.

Muslims did it. Obviously.

There are a lot of cynical methods employed by the hacks of various newspapers in order to present something as truth when it's actually just conjecture, rumour or straight-up nonsense, but none should set the alarm bells ringing quite as loudly as the subtle use of quotes in a headline, like when the Daily Mail today says:

Censored! Bikini advert blacked out with spray paint by 'Muslim extremists who object to women in swimsuits'

Do you see them, those little inverted commas? They could mean anything, couldn't they? They could mean, for example, that those are the words used by police representatives to describe what they know has happened at the scene of this vandalism. But you know what? You'll never guess. They don't. No. Guess who said those words? Nobody. They're not directly quoted in the article. You know who said that it was Muslim extremists? People that work at the Daily Mail. You know why? Because they're not all that fond of Muslims. But it doesn't stop there; it's actually hilarious, the lengths to which the Mail will go to posture as a source of genuine news. In the first paragraph we're presented with the argument that:

this poster, in Birmingham, has been defaced in an act of vandalism blamed on militant Muslims who were offended by her flesh.

which, in case you weren't paying attention, is just the unfounded opinion of some guy, somewhere. But in case that isn't enough to convince you it was really the pesky Muslims that did it, the Mail have more evidence!

The freestanding advertising unit, stands in the Balsall Heath area of Birmingham, which has a large Muslim population.

Across the road from 'Muslim Students House Masjeed', an education centre, the poster is next to a busy main road.

Don't you see? They're taking over. They live in our cities now! It's practically a Muslim ghetto. Also, Muslim kids don't just deface posters for fun, you know! It's religiously motivated. Just take a look at this undeniable slice of anecdotal evidence from a veritable expert on the subject of religious extremism, Robert Tonkins, who in his capacity as a 45-year-old delivery driver is perfectly equipped to provide insightful analysis:

It's a bit worrying, I don't think it's up to other people to decide what can and can't be displayed on our streets, especially because we're a Christian country.

Testing my patience, now, buddy, because we're not a Christian country at all, but we'll let that slide because of your esteemed position as delivery driver and use your rambling bullshit to form the crux of our article and then pretend that it is objective fact. I can't wait to see the day when the Daily Mail just throw three sheets to the wind and go for:

'Muslims Did It'

in which the reporter relies upon the single indisputable testimony of an EDL member.

For all I know, the people that committed this everyday act of vandalism might have been Muslim. It's a shame I don't have the Daily Mail's infallible logic and reason to aid me in finding a more certain, and provocative, conclusion.

Why tomorrow's referendum is more important than any election we will see.

Referendums don't happen in this country, but when they do, they tend to be on suitably enormous subjects. The only other referendum in UK history was in 1975, on membership of the Common Market - what we now know as the EU. The turnout that day was 64% of the electorate - that's higher than turnout for 2 of the last 3 General Elections. But this time, it's not our economic future on the line - it's our political future. The referendum on the Alternative Vote is not just a throwaway poll on a single voting system. It is potentially the releasing of the handbrake on the UK political system. If there's a NO vote tomorrow, the voting system and politics in general are likely to remain the same for the next two generations at least. If there's a YES vote, it opens the dialogue for further and open discussion: how can we get the best out of our democracy?

We often hear that those who don't vote in General Elections don't have the right to complain when things aren't the way they want them to be. By the same token, this is your chance to impact the future of British politics and, with it, British society in general. There are no consituencies in this referendum, no tactical voting involved. You can vote with your heart and hopefully with your informed mind.

As I've said, this opportunity won't come around again. If you're unhappy with British politics, or you care about it at all, you'll vote in the referendum on May 5, even if you don't vote in the elections. Whichever way you vote, remember you're not voting for a party. You're not even really voting on AV or First Past The Post. You're voting for change, or the absence of it. Because whatever the result is tomorrow, that's the sound that will ring out in political discourse for years to come. If it's a NO vote, it sends the message that the British public voted they were happy with the system they had in place. Are you happy with UK politics? Answer that question tomorrow.

Daily Express: EU Wants To Merge UK With France

There are certain discourses within the domain of UK journalism which persist despite there being no actual fuel to maintain them. Sometimes the stories that compile these discourses are exaggerated and rehashed versions of prior outrages, used to remind readers of that one time when that bad thing happened and it was touted as 'the end of free speech as we know it' or some other equally ridiculous assertion. But sometimes, the things newspapers write about are quite simply complete bullshit.

You would think that if the EU wanted to merge the UK with France, more newspapers would have seen fit to raise the issue. I think it would be quite a big deal, actually, if Brussels wanted France and the UK to become the same entity. That's what the headline which titles this article implies, right? That the United Kingdom (that's US, in case you didn't know) and France (THEM) are going to become the same thing. A merge. I would think - and correct me if I'm wrong - that other people might have picked up on a story of this magnitude, lest we all awake one morning to a fanfare of the Marseillaise and find our local bakery has been converted into a boulangerie.

The reason that no other paper seems quite as concerned as the Express is simple: it's bullshit.

Of course it's bullshit. The article doesn't even seem to know what it's saying, so I figure the best way to approach it is to pick it apart sentence by sentence, translating the language of imbecile into plain English (ed- or French or European):

FURY erupted(1) last night after a European Union plot to “carve up Britain”(2) by ­setting up(3) a cross-Channel region was exposed(4).

which actually means:

WE FELT A DISPROPORTIONATE AMOUNT OF ANGER(1) last night after we found out(4) that in 1996 the EU created a transnational network(3) called Arc Manche which has had its own Assembly and President since 2005. This one guy said something "quotable"(2).

Actually, I could go on, but I feel it would largely be a waste of time. Once you've debunked the premise of an article as unequivocally and easily as it is possible to do here, there's not much scope for expansion.

One interesting thing that this story does throw up is the way in which people rely on newspapers to get their information, and therefore by ignoring a story as it is initially relevant or bringing it up at a later date after it's been forgotten, rags like the Express can imply that there's some sort of a cover-up involved. Which there isn't. Ever.