What I imagine European harmony looks like...

It’s a year in which the world is gripped by uncertainty fuelled by an unstable Europe. A powerful German nation begins the relentless spread of its domination across the continent. A Conservative Prime Minister, following the grand Tory tradition of ‘Splendid Isolation’, returns from negotiations to rapturous popular support and a largely congratulatory press. He proudly announces to have won a great victory for British interests, although time would quickly prove how shallow this victory was.

I’m referring, of course, to 1938, Neville Chamberlain and the famously un-prophetic “peace in our time” speech. I was reminded of this regrettable chapter of British history this morning as the Eurosceptic press heaped praise for David Cameron’s surprise exit from the EU summit.

I must admit, aside from the hero’s welcome, the similarities between then and now are weak. Europe is probably more closely united than any other point in history, for one thing. There is no Fourth Reich and Angela Merkel is obviously not ‘die Fuhrer’. The comparison between Chamberlain and Cameron isn’t even fair – at least, the former came back from his negotiations with something.

I’d also like to point out that I’m not the first person to make the spurious connection. That dishonour goes to Tory backbenchers, who, in advance of the summit, urged Cameron to show the “bulldog spirit” and complained, “We’ve had enough of reading of British prime ministers coming back from a summit with a kind of Chamberlain-esque piece of paper”.

Ironically, these are the same people now enthusiastically cheering Dave – who’s come back with less a piece of paper and more a red card with ‘NON’ stamped boldly on it.

What European harmony actually looks like.

Why then do I mention the archetypal appeaser? I think it’s worth reminding ourselves that the PM failed absolutely in his aims. He contributed nothing to further the rescue of the Eurozone, he didn’t receive any safeguards for the City, and his veto did nothing to stop the closer integration of the Eurozone. As Kevin Bacon’s character says in A Few Good Men: “these are the facts, and they are undisputed”.

That most the press (and likely the public) think this somehow translates into a Good Thing reflects the great British tradition of seeing retreat as victory.

In the minds of many Conservatives, we’re still living in 1938: there’s some sort of trouble going on across the Channel and the best way to deal with it is to turn away, tuck behind the proverbial walls of Fortress Britannia and leave Johnny European to get on with it. Their mess, their problem.

This explains why leading articles in the right-wing papers are so enthusiastic in their acclaim. As far as these Little Englander’s are concerned, David Cameron, by walking away friendless and empty-handed, genuinely was acting in England’s best interests. ‘To be left alone’ is the means and the end in itself.

And so, the Daily Mail hurrahs:

“Today the Mail salutes Mr Cameron for his courageous leadership and resolve in standing up to Angela Merkel and, in particular, to the preposterous Nicolas Sarkozy…”

The Telegraph intones:

“Mr Cameron was, therefore, pushed into a corner – and refused to buckle under. This brave and bold decision should immeasurably strengthen his domestic position, unite his party behind him and begin to provide the clarity regarding the nature of our relationship with Europe that has long been lacking.”

The Daily Express rants:

“Well Mr Cameron can rest assured that back in his own country many people – including readers of the Daily express – will be queueing up to shake his hand. For his conduct of these negotiations has been admirable.”

The Sun boasts:

“WE asked David Cameron to act like Churchill and stand up for Britain. And he did.”

“If so-called isolation means independence, is that a bad thing?”

And the Times asserts:

“Yet, for all its complexity and its potentially momentous consequences, there is a simple question that can be posed. Did the Prime Minister do the right thing? And a simple answer that can be given: ‘Yes.’”

With so much fuss being made by so many for so little (to paraphrase Churchill), I imagine if Cameron ever did succeed in actually repatriating some powers, the leader writers of these papers would dispense with the usual breathless verbiage and simply staple a jizz-drenched tissue on to the front pages.

In terms of ensuring an informed electorate, it’s a shame so many British papers possess this dogmatic “By Jingo, Alone!” mentality but it’s pure incompetence to portray a major historic event in such a blinkered and fawning manner.

David Cameron went to Europe carrying the hopes and fears of a proud yet struggling nation. He returned with less than nothing and is hailed a hero. I know we Brits can’t help but support the underdog – but why celebrate the loser?

[Update: the extent of Cameron's failure is spelt out by Faisal Islam in his article: "Ten Curiosities about David Cameron's Veto"]

Fuck the 99%, this dude speaks for EVERYONE

With the threat of eviction looming over the Occupy St. Paul’s protesters and the forces of America PD already coming down hard on its trans-atlantic primogenitors, we may be witnessing the final days of a movement said (by particularly deluded or insensitive supporters) to rival the Arab Spring.

It’s been a confusing and potentially alienating journey for spectators. I mean, I’ve always assumed I supported things like social justice, fairness, a more equal society, and so on. But I quickly grew frustrated and annoyed by the London occupation.

Recently, I voiced my concerns and criticisms, only to be told I’m “missing the point”. That troubled me. Was my feeble brain incapable of comprehending how brilliant, worthwhile and successful Occupy has been? Were my peers headshotting the point between the eyes at abandon, while I stood apart, aimlessly spraying my sympathy-bullets into the surrounding scenery like some n00b meat-puppet playing Goldeneye?

Fortunately, it seems I wasn’t such a freak. A quick Google search revealed the point to be as elusive as the Pokemon Mew . Actually, that analogy doesn’t quite fit. While there were a lot of people, like me, being told they were missing the point, there wasn’t much agreement on what exactly we were missing.

For example, the REAL point of the Occupy movement is, depending on who you ask (or don’t ask, as the case may be)…

Asking rhetorical questions…

“you are missing the point about that sign. I don’t think it is an attack on those people, I think it is an attack on what this society considers as freedoms. The purpose of it is to get people to question what freedom really is. Freedom is a word that gets used a lot by politicians and we all like to think we live in a free society. But do we?”

History is Made at Night

Solving a crime…

“The lack of an “agenda” or a lack of a coherence to the aims of the protestors is missing the point… A crime has been committed but the only clue they have is that it is something in the City and this thing in the “City” has made them a victim of a crime they don’t understand and it has cost them their job/home/car whatever… They are coming back at a perpetrator that government has failed to bring to book but in the hall of financial mirrors they don’t know where exactly to aim or exactly who to aim at for but they know roughly where the perpetrators hang out.”

CityWire

Rejecting democracy…

“I agree with your first part of the argument, the vinyl vanguards looking for a single unifying anthem of youth are missing the point. Occupy London are not representative of a single sub-culture, or even a shared ideology. Like you say, this is about a rejection of conventional politics.”

New Statesman

Rejecting debates…

“[One member of the camp] said Chartres’s [Bishop of London] earlier suggestion of a debate was “missing the point of this global occupation”.

The Guardian

Totally, like, opening up space in people’s imaginations, man…

“Screeds of criticism have now been written about the protest and on almost every point, they misunderstand the purpose of this form of street protest. Is this a revolution in the making? Of course not. Will it topple the government? No… The protesters’ aim is to open up space, physically and socially, for people to connect and thereby open up space in people’s imaginations.”

The Guardian

Setting up a camp site (while not making demands)…

“These questions miss the point… they’re not interested in making petty demands on a system they see as irreconcilably flawed. If anything, the camp itself is their demand, and their solution: the stab at an alternative society that at least aims to operate without hierarchy, and with full, participatory democracy.”

Patrick Henry Press

Not having an impact on its target…

“The purpose is not to directly affect your target. It is to rally support for your cause.”

Boardgame Geek Forums

Protesting for the right to protest…

“Anyone active on the left might be tempted to judge it and find it wanting in any effort to challenge capitalism, but that would be to miss the point. Understanding what it represents not judging it is the essential task. Here an historical framework can help and several models come to mind, the first of which is the symbolic occupation of space… All these instances are about winning the right to protest in certain spaces and that is certainly what has happened at St Paul’s in recent weeks.”

Morning Star Online

Attracting people who are temporarily pissed off…

“…enthusiasts for the action say this misses the point of the encampment – to provide a permanent focal point for dissent, not a home for an unchanging cast of campaigners.”

BBC

Having a wider, deeper conversation OR Acting as some sort of weather vane for human sentiment…

Even people accusing other people of missing the point are, apparently, missing the point:

Article: “The political [Labour] left have – in several places – criticised the Occupy movement for the lack of clarity in their aims. For me, this misses the main point the movement is trying to make… Since the crash showed us all the man behind the curtain, protestors are no longer simply trying to stop or promote particular actions or policies. They’re now trying to have a wider, deeper conversation about what happens now the house of cards has fallen.”

Comment: “I think this article misses the point entirely. The occupy movement is a spontaenous ensemble. The idea it has to forge itself into a lean mean fighting machine is not what it is about. Its about, for me at least, a weather vane about current sentiment and about what that current sentiment might become.”

Liberal Conspiracy

And the actual point is… our secret (so there!)

Maybe the point is they don’t want to tell us the point? The following (genuine, non-satirical) quote from an Occupy Wall St. activist writing on CiF certainly suggests so…

First, they come to us demanding, “What are your demands?” Then, they come to us insisting, “Where are your solutions?” We have waited our entire lives for this moment. And we could not be more ready to answer these questions. We smile, unphased, and tell them what they already know: “Our demands are too numerous to choose between, and we refuse to do so. The solutions are out there and we have long known what they are.”

Comment is Free

All this makes me suspect that I was right all along and it’s the protesters who are missing the point, NOT ME. But if you think I’m going to persecute myself by telling you what that point is… well, I might have to let my foot occupy the space between your left butt cheek and your right butt cheek. Purely to engage with you on a deeper level, of course…

1. Clumsy Stupid Rhetoric.

“When the Occupy Wall Street movement erupted on 17 September 2011…”

Nakedly partisan. Massively overblown. Possibly inaccurate. Mildly sexual? Good start.

“well-established and similar encampments had emerged in hundreds of communities around the country…”

Communities is one of my least favourite examples of unspeak. In this context, at least, I think she means ‘cities’ – ‘the encampments emerged in hundreds of cities around the country’.

“which would mean working on behalf of those who have suffered most from the tyranny of the 1%.”

The meaning of tyranny risks being neutered through misuse. Does Angela Davis honestly look at oppressed people protesting in genuinely tyrannical regimes and think, ‘oh, do they have to pay for their university education too?’

“we have had to engage in difficult coalition-building processes, negotiating the recognition for which communities and issues inevitably strive.”

I don’t know what coalition-building processes are, nor what makes them difficult (or what doesn’t, for that matter). Must you ‘engage’ in them? And she’s talking about communities again – though this time I think she’s using it to mean ‘peoples’. Can issues ‘strive’ for something?

“I don’t know whether any of us could not have predicted that on the second day of the conference, the plenary audience of more than 1,000 would be so riveted by this historical conjuncture that almost all of us spontaneously joined a night march…”

If this conference was anything like I suspect it was, I think I could’ve predicted you would ‘spontaneously’ do that. I think I could’ve predicted it very easily. Unless the double negative isn’t a typo and that’s your point…

“Indeed, it can be persuasively argued that the 99% should move to ameliorate the conditions of those who constitute the bottom tiers of this potential community of resistance”

Sure, it can be persuasively argued, but why bother when it’s easier to just assert that this is the case? And she’s using fucking community again! Only this time, it seems to be referring to, well, everyone minus the 1%. So we’ve got a community of communities occupying communities. Crystal.

“They call upon the majority to stand up against the minority. The old minorities, in effect, are the new majority.”

This strikes me as being the first part of the article to be written. “The old minorities are the new majority”. That’s the sort of ethereal guff certain people go nuts over. It doesn’t actually make any sense of course, whether in effect or in actuality.

“And if we identify with the 99%, we will also have to learn how to imagine a new world, one where peace is not simply the absence of war, but rather, a creative refashioning of global social relations.”

Why if we identify with the 99% do we have to do that? I honestly have no idea what the writer is getting at here.

2. Clumsy Stupid Language

I am probably being really unfair, but parts of the article made my brain vomit inside my own skull. Offending words and phrases in bold…

“I happened to be reflecting on my remarks for the upcoming International Herbert Marcuse Society conference.”

“…we were struck by the serendipitous affinity of the theme with the emergent Occupy movement…”

[Aside: can something that's previously erupted be considered emergent?]

“…we repeatedly expressed our enthusiasm about the confluence of the Wall Street and Philadelphia occupations and the conference theme, which seemed to us to emphatically enact the 21st-century relevance of Herbert Marcuse’s work.”

“…which wended its way through the streets of Philadelphia toward the tents outside city hall.”

“At the site, I reflected aloud – with the assistance of the human microphone…”

“Thus, the most pressing question facing the Occupy activists is how to craft a unity that respects and celebrates the immense differences among the 99%.”

As you can imagine, after reading the article I reflected upon an emergent need to craft a unity between the computer screen and my fist.

3. Clumsy Stupid 53-Word Long Paragraph

At what point in the paragraph quoted below do you a) find yourself merely scanning instead of reading, b) forget how the sentence began and what the point is, and c) lose the will to live.

“The organising theme of the conference – “Critical Refusals” – was originally designed to encourage us to reflect on the various ways Marcuse’s philosophical theories push us in the direction of a critical political practice located outside the proper realm of philosophy, but nevertheless as anchored in philosophy as it is in a will to transform society.”

For me, the answers to a), b) and c) are all at ‘PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE MAKE THE PAIN STOP’. At least, that’s what flashes before my eyes before I black out for a few hours.

4. Clumsy Stupid Crowbarring of a Point

Although hazy on the specifics, I think it’s kinda been established that OWS (and company) are pro- social equality and anti- capitalist greed. Watch how Angela Davis tacks on her own particular beef with all the grace and subtlety of a wild elk suffering from dystonia attempting to re-tile your bathroom floor.

“In the past, most movements have appealed to specific communities – workers, students, black people, Latinas/Latinos, women, LGBT communities, indigenous people – or they have crystallised around specific issues like war, the environment, food, water, Palestine, the prison industrial complex.”

“It seems to me that an issue such as the prison industrial complex is already implicitly embraced by this congregation of the 99%.”

“We are learning also to say no to global capitalism and to the prison industrial complex.”

“Decarceration and the eventual abolition of imprisonment as the primary mode of punishment can help us begin to revitalise our communities and to support education, healthcare, housing, hope, justice, creativity and freedom.”

“There is a direct connection between the pauperising effect of global capitalism and the soaring rates of incarceration in the US.”

5. Clumsy Stupid Complete and Utter Absence of an Argument

[tumbleweed]

The wisdom of the blogosphere tells us that the following are luxuries, not rights…

Disposable diapers

Comics

Toes

Live Venues

Friendships

Weekends

Flasks

Events

Health Insurance and candy bars

Side towels

Niche Artistic Markets

Lights on a soccer field

Safer transportation routes

Helmet deposit stalls

Education

The high interactivity of this site

Seeing an R-rated film in a cinema

Uptime on Facebook

Protection against someone calling you anything

Manga

3D TVs

Entertainment

“My trust”

Music

“Me time and blah blah blah”

Privacy

Buying your own home

Baseball

“Being obesity”

Job choice

Everything other than having character of Jesus formed in us and building house of God

If you’re anything like me (and I hope, for your sake, you aren’t), your first act after hearing the news was to quickly check its “interpretation” by the Telegraph’s resident troll, James Delingpole. Sadly, at the time of writing this, he’s been unusually quiet. No doubt he’s busy scouring the (three) denier blogs he reads, looking for someone, anyone, to tell him what to think.

In truth, believers in reason over ideology will find limited satisfaction in this news. Already arch-sceptics are either weaving this study into their elaborate conspiracy theories, or pointing out (genuinely in some cases, but with slippery dishonesty in others) that they never, ever said the earth wasn’t warming and, anyway, the real question is whether or not the change in global temperature is being caused by humans. So there.

On the surface, this doesn’t seem an unreasonable position to take. But this argument, like much of the news coverage I’ve seen of this study, misses an important point. The BEST report is further proof that climate scientists are not engaged in deception, exaggeration, or sloppiness. There is no conspiracy. There is no scam.

It’s shocking, I know, but they really have been telling us the truth all along.

And while climate scientists have been vindicated, the climate ‘sceptics’ are the ones who have been proven wrong. Yet again. All their doubts, protestations and demands for ‘real science’ have been shown to be completely unfounded.

So, maybe next time the science guys and gals who’ve been proven right say to the public, “yes, global warming is caused by humans, we should be worried about it and here’s our evidence to prove it”, should we, and the media that channels things into our putty-like minds, not trust them a bit more? Wouldn’t that make sense? I mean, not everyone can be a climatologist or a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Some of us can’t even spell physicist. And we can’t all spend our days picking apart stultifying statistics in some stodgy journal. We’ve got to accept some things on the basis of authority and credibility, right?

And when the alternative is to listen to the confused rants of the eccentric, hysterical science-deniers, repeatedly, embarrassingly showing themselves to be wrong time and time again, is there really any choice at all?

We all know the results of this latest study will not change a single person’s mind. But who cares? If you want to believe that a secret, globe-spanning cabal of evil scientists are inventing science while under the command of a mysterious shadow-EU for the sole purpose of inventing a crisis that allows them to impose new taxes FOR SOME DIABOLICAL REASON, then go for it. Good luck with that.

I only hope journalists, bloggers, columnists, politicians (and anyone else setting the agenda that defines the future) stop indulging in the fake “debate” and focus on the real one. Climate change is here. Shit. What the fuck are we going to do about it?

I’ve just finished reading the amazing A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, which got me thinking about the wondrous toolbox of fantasy fiction clichés authors have at their fingertips.

I have no doubt the world would be a far poorer place without the noble lion-hearted hero travelling many ‘leagues’ across culturally-appropriate terrain to avenge his father’s murder at the hands of the dragon-crested baddie. If we couldn’t sum up an entire race or culture with one particular personality trait, where would we be? Adrift in an ocean of nuance and complexity, that’s where. Fuck that. I like my fantasy books like my fantasy heroines: with as little dressing as possible and easy to get into.

In honour of those literary shortcuts, I’ve cobbled together this short passage containing (at least) fifty of my favourite clichés. Your challenge is to identify as many as you can. Click continue reading or scroll down to the bottom of the page for the answers.

Note: some appear more than once. If you spot one I’ve missed leave a comment.

Ready? Then let’s begin…

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Blood Harvest

The crowd bowed reverentially as their lord proudly made his way to the executioner’s dais. Alix only stared longingly at the father he hadn’t seen for nigh on fourteen seasons. Where the town-peasants and plains-folk saw the victorious hero of Ayr’s Gash, towering above them in glory with thick auburn beard and skin as white as marble, Alix saw only a stranger’s face, tired and haggard. His father had developed a slight stoop, Alix mused, and held his shield arm with a stiffness he had not possessed when he first left for battle those many moons ago. Even a Farsford ranger with Faelfleyn eyes would have struggled to notice such flaws, but Alix had cherished in his mind a crystal-keen image of his father. War had changed him.

As the lord of the Nordermark lofted the ragged banner of House Fallen high into the air, the muted tricolore of the bear, wolf and lion waved defiantly in the chill breeze and ebullient cries of emotion from the crowd threatened to drown even Alix’s dark feelings. It was not just longing for his father that inspired such melancholy. Today was the eve of the Blood Harvest, when the spirits of ancestors past return to this world to leech wasted life off the living. In a waking dream many nights ago, Alix had seen the celebrations, kick-dances and rowdy group-songs of the festival. He saw his father’s triumphant homecoming and the faith he inspired. And he saw darkness spreading from the north, turning faith into despair and tears of joy into fountains of blood. His dread vision revealed a future of death, hate, betrayal…

And the return of The King.

Attempting to dispel the shadow of his thoughts, Alix returned his attention to the stage where his father was now making a speech. It was tradition on Blood Harvest’s Eve to welcome the honoured dead by spilling blood in their name. By the lord’s own hand, the foulest of criminals were put to death in public execution.

To a chorus of cries, wails and hisses, Alix’s father announced the name of Zuh Luh-turgal, the butcher of Gladestown. A raucous clamor erupted from the audience as the condemned was escorted to the stage by the imposing figure of Nordermark’s most trusted servant: Cr Treacher, knight of the old order, wolf-kin, augur of Misdon-Keep. Garbed in azure drilkiln-pelt and carrying a dull-grey warhammer, the venerable soldier and Alix’s mentor-at-arms deposited the prisoner at the foot of his master with obvious disgust. Alix was tall for his young age, but still had to stand on his toes to see the wretched beast groveling on the executioner’s stage.

His dark face was adorned with crude tattoos and ugly piercings. Revealing yellow teeth, he growled like a caged animal; though a hard kick from Treacher soon saw him tamed. At length, the king read out the butcher’s list of crimes. The murder of three children in Staine’s End, the razing of Grunswyrd, the rape of thirteen Pantheon brides… and so the list continued. On occasion, those violated by his foul deeds would step forward, spitting and cursing.

At one point, a woman of the Dhans-kin clambered onto the stage, tore off her tunic and raked long nails down her bare flesh, from breast to belly and below. Alix understood. This woman had been raped by the butcher. Her performance was an act of defiance, as dictated by the custom of her people. Treacher gathered up her clothes and, not unkindly, moved her off of the stage.

His crimes now aired for the gods to judge, Zuh Luh-turgal’s neck was eased onto the block while his father unsheathed The Sword. Standing almost as high as a knight, the black blade, which Alix knew would one day be his to bear, shimmered under the weak glow of the Palling Sun. On cue, the Grand Pantheon’s earthly representative rose to perform his part of the occasion. Moving surprisingly gracefully for such a grotesquely fat man, the pox-faced High Priest mounted the stage and started his ceremonial declaration. From behind, Alix could hear the Master of Books translate the oration, performed in the high speech, lingua deus, into the common tongue. Alix did not need such a translation. He had quickly mastered languages as he did all other subjects.

Bored by the pomp of the old religion, Alix took the time to look for familiar faces in the audience. Although he could not see him, Alix knew his arch-rival, Cethil Cur-Medgar, heir to the House Be’traille, would be watching him. They had hated each other from birth, but whereas Alix attempted to maintain his distance with characteristic Fallen stoicism, the other boy, with his gaunt, deathly-white face, small, pink-rimmed eyes and bitter tongue, would bait and snipe with a coward’s spite. Whenever Alix rose in challenge to the petty insults, Cethil would run, scared and spitting lies to his mother. Alix could see her, standing in the crowd, radiating distaste like a sour moon. Swlthin Nur-Medgar, the Baroness of House Be’traille, clung to her minkin fur as if to protect her noble self from the swarming peasants. Tradition of Alix’s House said all castes stand equal at such occasions. For such proud customs the Baroness and her kin considered Alix’s bloodline primitive.

For what it was worth, Alix found Swlthin’s own ways more vile. She was the mistress of manipulation and whoredom, whose only passions were power and politics. Wife of the lecherous Baron-Knight Medgar, her spread legs had sired him two children and won her the right to title and land. Cethil, the eldest, was all the spawn of his bitch mother, while the infant Celi, standing next to the Baroness, was as bright and generous as any child Alix had met. Ignorant of the spectacle on the stage, her sparkling eyes were fixated on a troupe of Fallen knights standing nearby. A flicker of a smile crossed Alix’s countenance. The noble girl who dreamt, in vain, to be a warrior. At that moment, the Baroness noticed her daughter’s straying attention as she harshly yanked the child to her side and hissed cruel words under her breath. Alix felt a pang of pity for the innocent youngling. She was born into the wrong family in the wrong age. Shaking off these thoughts, Alix heard the priest reach the climax of his speech and so returned his attention to the stage.

With a polite nod from the priest, Alix’s father wrapped his strong, steely fingers around the well-worn hilt of his mighty blade. Alix remembered being held warmly by those hands once when they were soft as leather. Now, after years of fighting the warring tribes beyond The Pit, they were as coarse as the tongue of a grizzled Sabre-Cat.

Bloodshed mere moments away, the crowd roared. Alix almost didn’t notice Salia Laella stepping smartly from the throng, standing so close he could smell the sweet scent of rose-water on her skin. Alix forced himself not to turn his eyes from the stage, but from the edge of his vision he could see the soft outline of her proud features, the gentle curve of her chin and the slight swell of her breasts poking out beneath her traditional virginal tunic. She was his Solistani, his chosen one, and one day, Alix knew, she would bear his seed. A delicate hand lightly clasped his own.

“I can read your worries, cousin,” she whispered. “Quell your fears. Victory belongs to House Fallen. The Outerlands acquiesce to your family’s might.”

Alix did not reply, but the slight tensing of his fingers around hers was enough to betray his resolve. Though his eyes may have been set on his father’s gruesome duty, Alix’s mind looked far past to the land beyond Argyll’s Shame where, in his waking-dream, he saw the unliving hordes of The Shadow gathering ‘neath the black banner of The Unforgiving Eye.

With a face as cold and grim as the land he ruled, Alix’s father swung the blood-iron blade smooth and strong. The scarred head of the black butcher bounced across the Barrow-wood planks. The crowd cheered for their master, the bringer of justice and peace. For a fleeting second, as he scanned the masses with a hunter’s care, the lord locked eyes with his son. It was only a passing glance, but Alix understood. There was a price to pay for justice and peace, his father’s look told him. And that price was weighed in blood.

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[Click continue reading for the answers]

How did you get on? Answers are below…

50 Fantasy Fiction Cliches

1. The inexplicable adoration downtrodden peasants show their totalitarian rulers
2. Common names spelt wrong
3. Vague units of time
4. Sticking ‘folk’ after words
5. General rule: the paler you are, you more good you are (see 35)
6. Unusually perspicacious teenagers
7. References to unknown cultures, locations, or historical events that supposedly have meaning
8. References to a people’s ‘eyes’
9. Sticking ‘mark’ at the end of words (usually place names)
10. Bear, wolf and lion: pretty much the only animals worth giving a shit about
11. Grotesquely dark festivals
12. Prophecy!
13. Capitalising words for The Emphasis
14. Young hero watching an execution
15. Bad guys with guttural names beginning with Z, Y or X
16. A spattering of made-up titles. Not enough to require effort, but enough to make everything suitably otherworldly
17. Introducing characters with a long, tedious, meaningless list of titles / honoraries
18. The darker your skin, the badder you are
19. Saying things “at length”
20. Lots of rape
21. Sticking ‘kin’ at the end of words
22. Inappropriate nudity
23. People doing ridiculous things in the name of ‘custom’
24. People doing things “not unkindly”
25. All cultures are polytheist
26. Massive phallic symbols
27. Fat people moving ‘surprisingly gracefully’
28. Priests are ugly and fat
29. Hijacking latin
30. Everyone in the world can speak the ‘common tongue’
31. The hero is amazing at EVERYTHING
32. Religion is mostly for stupid or cowardly people
33. “Knowing” things although you can’t see them
34. The evil house
35. If you’re too white you’re evil, but in a treacherous way
36. Unpronounceable names
37. Weird names for small creatures (which, strangely, are never used for banners or heraldry)
38. Good guys have strangely modern, liberal values
39. Women are manipulative bitches or whores (or.. see 41)
40. Flickering emotions
41. Women who want to be men
42. Mangling words to create animals / objects
43. An obsession with the breasts of underage girls
44. Only certain words use a made-up language (another example of effort vs. minimum level of otherworldliness)
45. “Bearing seed.” Urgh.
46. Incest
47. People who don’t speak like people
48. “Betraying” emotions
49. The Shadow / The Darkness = the big bad guy
50. Everybody channelling Tolkien

I ended up wondering, what’s the point? GrrlScientist seems to think she’s helping illustrate the “childish silliness of Christianese to all of those who aren’t Christian”. With this in mind, I hit play expecting a witty and astute dissection of some of the creepier sayings favoured by over-zealous bible-bashers. What I saw was… well, something that made me feel uncomfortable.

Don’t get me wrong. I like sarcasm. I love funny voices. I joyously giggle at the hypocrisy of religious fanatics. I’ve no problem saying I’m a proud atheist. Hey, I even find Richard Dawkins tolerable.

But this video hit a nerve. It really made me think about the amount of time smug secularists spend sniping and sneering at those they see as sectarian simpletons.

I’ve a lot of time for weighty intellectual debate about religion and its net value to society (if any), but I’m beginning to understand why armchair Chomskys and rentagob Russells are so reviled outside the rationalist enclave.

And no, if you’re reading, it’s not that you’re too controversial and iconoclastic for our feeble brains to handle. You’re just really rather tedious. Not to mention capable of pointless, repellant pettiness.

Religion may be “poison”, as Christopher Hitchens argues, but most people who consider themselves religious are totally undeserving of the level of inane scorn represented by that rubbish video.

Sadly, most pro-atheism content I see online is like this. It’s nothing positive, it’s just slagging off those dumb-ass Jesus-folk. There must be more to the secular utopia than this.

If championing the strengths of the enlightenment is so important to respectable atheists like GrrlScientist (as it should be), I’d like to see them spend more time talking up their values, instead of taking the piss.

Here’s a challenge for you all: without even mentioning religion, I want you to tell me what’s so good about atheism?

Ed Miliband’s belief that the Alternative Vote will unleash Britain’s “progressive majority” is looking more than a little bit presumptuous. A YouGov poll for Channel 4 News shows that while the big winners of voting reform will undoubtedly be the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives come off none the worse and Labour actually end up losing more seats than they gain. What’s worst, more Lib Dem voters have said they will choose Cameron’s Tories as their second preference than Ed’s Labour.

So, belief in this ‘progressive majority’ would seem fairly optimistic. Especially considering it’s far from obvious if there is a progressive majority within the Labour party itself.

A battle for the very soul of the Labour party currently rages* behind the scenes, with the notion of ‘Blue Labour’ being championed as a way to regain the support of lower-class voters. Blue Labour describes that ‘socially conservative, economically interventionist’ strand of the electorate who, it is argued, felt abandoned by the hyper-modern, change-frantic progressiveness of New Labour.

This idea is elaborated upon by Madeleine Bunting in The Guardian, who disregards some of the historical grandeur behind Blue Labour and focuses instead on the “value of nostalgia”. Still, the two lines of thought share the same core reasoning: Labour’s core voters have been abandoned. Bunting writes:

“…there was – and is – another account of betrayal in which a liberal elite, smugly superior in their metropolitan progressivism, championed globalisation and sold ordinary working people down the river.”

And so Bunting doesn’t just begin to define some of the frustrations felt by these “ordinary working people”, but puts them directly at odds with the smug, uncaring progressive majority Ed Miliband’s been fantasising about.

Intrigued by this dichotomy, I brainstormed** some terms I feel represent those ‘nostalgic’ values of Blue Labour voters and pitted them against the corresponding principles of the progressives.

The differences between the nostalgics and the progressives are, in many cases, vast. But the purposes of this little exercise was not just to highlight the foolishness of Ed Miliband campaigning for AV using language which will actively repel those it doesn’t simply bore. I also hope this list could help progressives step beyond their own values and connect with nostalgics by speaking in terms the latter can relate to.

Owen Jones offers some sage advice for anyone wanting to communicate with people beyond the echo chamber. His first rule is to start where people are. I don’t think you could go too far wrong using this list as a reference.

New Labour’s skill was in speaking to the impulses of the nostalgics, while shrewdly smuggling a form of pragmatic progressivism through the back door. Ed, unfortunately, does not have this skill. He’s in an echo chamber of one and quacking like a duck.

I’m not unsympathetic. I imagine attempting to unify the disparate groups of latent lefties must be like wrangling a schizophrenic hydra. But Ed’s ‘progressives’ are currently struggling to talk to the majority, let alone with them or even, heaven forbid, for them.

* Poetic licence – it’s really not all that raging.

** Powered using only my brain, I’m afraid. If you want to contribute your brain to either deride, improve or celebrate what I’ve attempted to do, please leave a comment.

From the left, we have the anti-corporate, socialistic practitioners of the dreaded ‘black bloc’, who, in Central London on Saturday afternoon, unleashed their emo fury in violent protest of the government’s cuts. On the right, we have the champions of the free market, willing cannon fodder in the government’s war for growth, who launched StartUp Britain on Monday to widespread, often hilarious, occasionally furious derision.

The members of both sides are (despite what some may claim) essentially apolitical. The former are arrogant teens, latching on to the recent wave of popular protests to boost their egos, play the romantic revolutionary and bash shit with sticks. The latter are self-assured entrepreneurs, riding the waves of Cameron’s pro-business rhetoric to gain publicity and try to make some easy cash. Grappling with political realities they barely understand, the two forces have ignorantly suicide-bombed the causes they purport to advocate.

So what went wrong? A lot of things. But I’m going to focus on the misplaced confidence, political misjudgement and the perils of cyber-utopianism which characterised both efforts.

Join the Bevoiviions! (awesome photo via alethiaphotos.com - link at bottom of post)

“Well, I’ll smash this window with a brick and then, one day, they’ll build a fucking statue of me”

Both sides vastly overestimated how much other people think like them. The rioters may believe they’re at the forefront of a popular revolt to overthrow an unjust regime; but to most observers they’re seen as a thuggish minority of idiots. In a letter sent to UKUncut, they even identify themselves as representing a “highly visible radical presence” of the mainstream movement. I’ve seen supporters claim in online comments that left-wing critics of their actions are not displaying sufficient solidarity.

While it is no surprise to me that they are being turned upon by those they saw as their ‘comrades’, overconfidence in their own righteous indignation blinded them to the inevitable divisiveness of their plan.

It’s a similar story with the brains behind Start Up Britain: a concept so vacuous and devoid of creativity, only other entrepreneurs could appreciate it.

Heroes within their own echo chamber, I’m sure they never imagined the ferocity of negative opinion their little website would incite. Unfortunately (for them), not everyone ‘gets’ the entrepreneur mentality. The inherent flaws and slapdash sloppiness of the product on launch may not bother the type of people who are focusing on the ‘bigger picture’ (whatever that is) and already working on their next ‘revolutionary’ idea, but the general public simply hasn’t bought in to that bullshit.

On Twitter, they seem genuinely surprised that people don’t understand where they’re coming from (and trying to get to). If they’d have tried thinking like ordinary people, they might have anticipated such a reaction.

Text expertly aligned by the broken ruler society

“I tried to get Nick Clegg involved, but he was worried about it damaging his credibility.”

The political misjudgement of the rioters hardly requires explanation. It was only a matter of time before measures were proposed to clamp down on such activity, and it’ll take a brave politician to oppose them. Protests will be a little less free in the future, wholly because of the rioters.

Did they really think such indiscriminate violence would be likely to attract popular support? For the majority of the country, watching Saturday’s events on TV or reading about them in the Sunday papers, the overwhelming impression is not going to be one of honest families, unified in support for a real alternative to the coalition cuts, but of masked yobs starting fights with coppers and terrorising shoppers. To what political end does this serve?

Of course, the rioters would angrily contest this portrayal. The entrepreneurs, on the other hand, wandered blindly into a political shitstorm. Following hot on the heels of the budget and Cameron’s pro-growth speeches, it’s unimaginable that they would not expect to be intimately associated with the government. Maybe they thought the presence of the Prime Minister and Chancellor at their launch party would have a positive impact? Big fucking mistake. They opened the floodgates and within hours spoof Twitter accounts, spoof news articles and even a spoof website had turned their vision into a joke. They failed to put their scheme in context.

One of the charges of incompetence thrown at the entrepreneurs was their recommendation of a US crowdsourcing site for logo design. ‘What’s wrong with that?’, they ask, naively. After all, new businesses don’t have money to throw around and the crowdsourcing solution is a practical, cheap alternative to a professional designer. In the context of growth for Britain, however, such a recommendation is understandably seen as undermining British graphic design companies – exactly the opposite kind of message the government wishes to promote. This wouldn’t be a problem for the average non-political startup, but has proven a disaster for the politically-loaded Start Up Britain.

God gave up on humanity the year "Speed-Networker" passed for a job description

“Just think, a little over a decade ago we’d have had to travel door-to-door to sell this shit”

I think both examples are products of cyber-utopianism, the belief that the internet, or, more specifically, social media, is the ultimate harbinger of enlightenment, liberalism and progress. Evgeny Morozov warns about the dangers of cyber-utopianism in his book, The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World, in which he chastises those who preach the internet as a panacea, while conveniently ignoring the poisonous elements.

What we’ve seen over these past few days are some of those poisonous elements.

If we are to accept the conventional wisdom that says social media better enables the mass mobilisation of politically active individuals, we can reasonably say that Saturday’s protests (both nasty and nice) were greatly helped by this technological wonder. However, we should also consider that the TUC rally (with its vast, largely offline network) could still have taken place, while the ‘anarchists’ campaign would’ve been far less likely to make up the numbers.

And let’s not underestimate the power of the echo chamber. Through social media like Facebook and Twitter, it’s now easier than ever to immerse yourself in opinions that support your world view while simultaneously dismissing anything you don’t want to hear. This will naturally distort people’s perception of reality and convince them their views are more widely accepted than they probably are.

The case of Start Up Britain portrays a different side of cyber-utopianism. Rather than being by-products of the internet revolution, these entrepreneurs are fully paid-up acolytes. In many cases, the ‘brains’ behind the ‘initiative’ owe their very success to the web 2.0 explosion. Their faith in the transformative power of the internet clearly lies at the very foundation of their idea. Crowdsourcing, blogs, social networks… seemingly, an expensive, expansive bureaucracy providing individual, personal advice to businesses to help them grow is no match for a single page website linking to a handful of online resources.

While all this social media jazz may be considered exciting (in some circumstances), when it comes to policy this approach has, yet again, been resoundingly rejected and ridiculed. The public obviously don’t share the cyber-utopians confidence that Britain can crowdsource its way to growth.

I suppose you could argue that this is only evidence of a lack of vision on behalf of the public. And, naturally, we should wait and see before making any final judgements regarding how effective this will be in the long run. However, the mistake the entrepreneurs made was assuming web 2.0 principles (iterative development, beta launches, internationalisation, crowdsourcing, etc.) would easily translate into public policy (or an extension thereof) and be widely accepted. How many times will people make the same mistakes before they learn?

"If you even think about spinning that bottle I'll cut your fucking balls off" (another aletheiaphotos.com pic)

Final thoughts

I hope everyone’s cheered by the thought that both anti-corporate thugs and free market-loving yuppies can be equally incompetent. Sadly, both sides of the political divide have to deal with the respective consequences.

A rare, passionate and awe-inspiring gathering of those much talked about ‘hard-working British families’ was pushed off the front pages; the message of a real alternative was lost amidst the din of shattered glass and the more media-friendly context behind the forthcoming strikes has been irrecoverably muddied. This only helps the Tories.

For the blue team, their first thunderous shot at a growth narrative has turned into yet another embarrassment. Within just a few hours of an enthusiastic launch starring the biggest players in the coalition, Start Up Britain was desperately trying to distance itself from the government. Dave and Gideon’s strategy for growth once again appears as shallow, vague and unwelcome as their Big Society.

So that leaves us still locked in a brutal programme of cuts, unemployment and inflation, but without even the pretence of an intelligent plan for growth. Thanks, wankers.

The sad thing is how easy it would’ve been to avoid such gross errors. If the rioters and the entrepreneurs had simply broadened their world view to include, y’know, normal humans in their plans, many of these mistakes could’ve been averted.

More importantly, if any one of them had genuinely cared about the cause they claim to exemplify, maybe they would’ve been motivated to look beyond their own ego and narrow self-interest.

*****************

Alethiaphotos have some awesome shots of the anarchists. Well worth a look.

Bear in mind I was only trying to contact them because they contacted me first. They dropped an email in my inbox, all I wanted to do was send them one back.

This is how it went.

Step 1 – Received an email from Microsoft’s billing team. I can’t simply reply to the email (why the devil not?), so I click the link included in the email.

Step 2 – (Not pictured because the experience was too traumatic) Before I could go further I had to log in to Windows Live. This involved discovering my password had been changed, changing my password back, immediately unleashing a barrage of spam on all my contacts, changing the password again, before finally getting through and remembering the reason why I abandoned Hotmail for Gmail long, long ago.

Step 3 – Enter billing account overview, discover I can’t really do anything here, find a helpful link to contact support over on the left.

Step 4 – Get taken to here:

After a few moments screaming at the screen in frustration, I am able to find the link for the Xbox Live customers. Although I note it only offers to take me to another billing and accounts page and not some way to contact customer services. I click the link and hope.

Step 5 – Fucking Microsoft.

Why the FUCK are you asking ME what happened to this FUCKING page!? Oops!? FUCKING OOPS!? Oh, so you moved some things around, did you? THEN WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU MOVE THE PAGE I’M LOOKING FOR AND WHY DID YOU NOT UPDATE THE FUCKING SUPPORT PAGE? I THINK IT’S PRETTY FUCKING IMPORTANT, DON’T YOU?

*Sigh*

It’s just depressing. Unfortunately, my journey doesn’t end there because I still need to figure out how to contact them. Sure, it may be much easier if I started on the actual Xbox website, but the fact is I followed their instructions every step of the way and got dumped on a 404 error. That is appalling.