2011: The Last Year of the Hitchslap

Christopher Hitchens, 1949 - 2011

I awoke from my slumber at Hoar Cross Hall to hear the news of Christopher Hitchens’ death, late last evening.  You often hear people say they remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they got wind of a huge public news event. It’s usually a death of some sort, 11/9 and Princess Diana being two prime examples.  I don’t hugely recall the latter, though I remember being in the living room as the pictures from Paris flashed across the screen.  The former, although I may have misremembered, broke while I was in school.  At dinnertime, we hijacked a teacher’s office and read the story online with shock; the idea that some colossal building in America could be obliterated by anyone certainly never occurred to me before.  Maybe I’d watched too many Disney films.

I doubt I’ll forget where I was when I heard the news of Christopher’s death, but rather than say, ‘I’ll remember where I was when I heard the news’, it would be better put if I instead said, ‘I’ll always remember what I was doing when the news was happening’.
I was suspending disbelief in others while Hitch’s disbelief was soon to be talked about in the morning news.  The melodic beats of Lady Gaga reverberated around the Stately Home while the melodic beeps in the hospital ward became one, and singular.  I slow danced while his dance slowed, and stopped.

I will miss hearing his acerbic wit, hearing thoughts from that Rolls-Royce mind and his seemingly inexhaustible knowledge of, well, everything.  Richard Dawkins put it very nicely when he wrote, “Farewell, great voice. Great voice of reason, of humanity, of humour. Great voice against cant, against hypocrisy, against obscurantism and pretension, against all tyrants…” and Vanity Fair wonderfully described him as “the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant.”
It is a great shame we will no longer be treated to his cutting, witty turns of phrase.  I quite subscribe to an oft quoted saying of his mother: “the one unforgivable sin is to be boring”, and on Cameron, he said, “People ask: ‘What do you think of him?’ and my answer is: ‘He doesn’t make me think.’”
Please forgive me when I write ‘LOL’.  Luckily, I can’t remember all his witticisms, so I’ll certainly look forward to reminding myself of others, and chuckling, happily.
When heroes fall, others fill their place.  I don’t mind having a hold of the torch, I think; a daunting level of courage required, but a stunning view after ascension. Wondrous and beautiful atop Mount Enlightenment.

So I’ll remember what I was doing when I heard the news; I’ll remember what I was doing when the news was happening.
I was drinking Martini and Christopher Hitchens was dying.  What an unfortunate combination, Hitch would’ve preferred me on Johnnie Walker Black.

The Problem with the Problem People Have; An Essay on the David Starkey Newsnight Uproar

Following the August riots throughout the country, the certain appearance of Historian David Starkey caused what you might ironically call a riot of words.  The BBC received hundreds of complaints from people calling his views on some of the potential roots of the riots racist and having no place in today’s society.
Now whatever you may think, you’re an idiot if you call for views negative to your own being disallowed from being heard; you pour petrol on the free speech Guy Fawkes.

The BBC has received nearly 700 complaints about the historian and broadcaster David Starkey.

People seem to suggest he was singling out a race for the cause of the riots and I don’t think this was the case at all.  He was instead singling out the culture of one community of people, the fact they were black was unimportant; it was just a coincidence. He wasn’t being racist. He was talking about a culture, negative culture. Unfortunately, it involved black people, so he must be racist. The other Newsnight panellists immediately switched off and weren’t listening to him from then on and wouldn’t let him finish his sentences.
Why can’t the culture of one community or society be a negative influence on another? He wasn’t saying anything about skin colour; nothing whatsoever.

Having an opinion about culture is different to saying the cause of the negativity is skin colour. He wasn’t saying it was because they were black. And I don’t think he was targeting the entirety of black culture either, he specifically cited black gang culture (which branches off from other things, obviously). Although even if he was, that can certainly not be about racism. I happen to consider Islam a negative influence on society, same with any other religion, same too of consumerism and hundreds of other things, all of which feature skin colour being coincidental.  Sharia Law would be a negative influence in England, so too Nazi culture, BNP culture, a caste system that segregated a community, a tradition that wouldn’t allow a working class person to marry someone upper-class, all would have a negative influence. Some culture just happens to be bad. Now, if you were an idiot, you might mistake something I said as racist if you only heard me speaking about one of these things, unless you listened; unless you thought.
Non-racists can often get swept into the same category as Nick Griffin by morons. This is particularly the case if you’re negative of Islam, as you may get labelled an Islamophobic.  As an atheist, I hold all religions with equal contempt, so if people assume I was purposefully focusing on Islam because I’ve been swept along by the ring-wing extremists, they are mistaken.
So with regards to Islamophobia (a misnomer), it is very much a term that is extremely unhelpful and confusing. Islam is a religion, and while it has predominantly one ethnicity (largely because of its non-inclusive nature), to disagree with those religious tenants and other Islamic cultural aspects cannot be considered racist. The EDL and the BNP hold a negative view based on mindlessness and skin colour, not logic or reason. The term Islamophobia is used to discredit non-racists just as it is racists, and as you can’t be racist against something that isn’t about race, it is an unhelpful term.

I think that no one stopped to listen to David Starkey fully. Perhaps people should ask what he means by what he said, rather than shut off and stop him from expanding and clarifying; he was cut up constantly.  Take for example, Starkey’s point about gun crime that was completely unacknowledged.
If, say, gun crime in England was carried out mainly by the people of my town, say 81%, I’d fully expect the authorities to be more suspicious of me and be fine with it. The facts are the facts, denying them won’t change them, only dealing with them will. Then the facts can be reassessed, and perhaps foxes or badgers will be stopped at airports more frequently than humans.
If 81% of gun crime happens to be committed by black people (I believe that to be the statistic Starkey quoted, but even if it isn’t, take this as a hypothetical situation), then wouldn’t you feel a requirement to explore why that happened to be the case? Might there not be a problem or issue in that community? And wouldn’t you feel apprehensive about asking the question in fear of being lumped into the same category as Nick Griffin?
Even if he meant the entirety of black culture was largely a negative influence, that’s only racist if he thinks they’re behaving badly because of their skin colour. And if he happens to have concluded wrongly, then that’s all he’s done. Not been racist, just been wrong. If someone says ‘Western Culture’ is degrading the world, I’d examine why, rather than assume it was because a person thought it was because Westerners are White.

So consider how a negative view of Islam might be made by a non-racist, in the same way (and this is the example he gave) as plenty of popular Black rap glorifies guns, violence and treats women as objects. Rap, after all, is black. Starkey got specific. If they’d listened, or let him expound.
He was talking about aspects contained in culture that happens to have black participants and black origins. He needed to label it somehow, so I disagree that skin colour was his focus, and instead suggest it was just an unavoidable label of many aspects of a culture that happened to be black.

To conclude, what I am trying to say is simply this: David Starkey was merely speaking about culture, and skin colour was coincidental. He did not say skin colour was the cause, but culture.

Assume for a moment that he isn’t racist, and listen again, bearing in mind that he was constantly interrupted and halted from expanding his initial statements.  What developed was not a dialogue, but a horrific tennis match when one side was trying to explain themselves and the other was hurling assumptions and abuse, instead of engaging and asking questions.

Assumption, as I believe Oscar Wilde put it, makes an ass out of u and me. 

#yestoav?

On 5 May, the whole of the UK will vote in a referendum for the first time since 1975

At the moment, I’d say I have my foot in the #yestoav camp, but there are questions I still have to work out the answers to.

The will of the most votes or the will of the proportional majority (namely 50%)?

While alternative vote (AV) isn’t the most proportionally representative voting system, it is unfortunately the only one on the cards, and it doesn’t look like we’ll have much chance to alter it anytime soon if we end up sticking with First-past-the-post (FPP), so, ‘should we vote yes to AV?’

In May of last year, The Guardian reported that an analysis by The Electoral Reform Society concluded that if AV had been implemented in the last General Election, the minority parties would have had exactly the same number of seats and the Liberal Democrats would have gained just 22 more.  The impact of this report is largely irrelevant because each camp acknowledge that AV would have an impact – #notoav like to say that it would lead to more hung parliaments (and fewer stable governments) while #yestoav insist it’s a fairer system which is more representative, proportionally, than FPP.  The ability of our politicians to reconcile a hung parliament is something I’d have faith in them to do sufficiently, or at least something they should all learn to be capable of.  If it progresses into more of a 3-party system, then that’s what they would have to end up doing more often anyway – if the electorate come to that decision, we must accept it.

I think I would have to agree that hung parliaments and coalitions lead to instability (in the initial stages, at least) and it becomes troublesome as to who you blame if each party’s manifesto is largely disregarded as the coalition seeks ‘compromise’ – but I don’t think it can necessarily be something we should seek to avoid if it means sticking with an unfair electoral system.  I’ll reiterate, vox populi.

It becomes apparent that we have to move away from worrying about hung parliaments and whether or not AV may increase them, and instead concentrate on whether or not the alternative vote provides a fairer system than First-past-the-post does currently.

So, is it actually fairer?

In my mind, it will certainly put people off from the traditional tactical vote, which is caused, typically, because the voter has become so frustrated with the safe-seat constituency he lives in, that his vote will becomes thought of as wasted.  When the likelihood of toppling a safe-seat constituency is so slim, it’s easy to see how people might arrive at this point of annoyance; they end up voting for their second-choice party candidate (who has a slightly better chance of toppling the safe-seater than their preferred choice) or an ‘extremist-nutter’ candidate out of anger.  People will be able to vote for their first choice (even if it is a minority party) knowing that there’s a shot they might actually get elected because the constituency will be voting honestly.  With the preferential system (ranking candidates 1,2,3,etc.), second, third and fourth choices will be where better, more engaging voting tactics will come into play; those that prefer Labour  (which may traditionally may be third in their constituency) might put Lib Dems (which may be traditionally second-place) as their second choice as they’d prefer a Lib Dem candidate to a Tory one, this may lead to a safe-ish Tory seat being toppled in their favour. This would mean that the hypothetical winning Lib Dem candidate would have proportionally more people in favour of him/her as their MP, and would have gained their seat of that basis – proportionality being judged to be fairer.

I’m struggling to decide whether or not this preferential system (AV) is a decent enough way of collating the vox populi, or if it is better than FPP in terms of pushing us towards the arguably fairer system of proportional representation. Will AV give us better proportional representation that FPP does currently? Is proportional representation even a fairer system? The will of the most votes (FPP) or the will of the ‘sort-of’ proportional majority (AV), which is fairer?

Those against AV will say that it gives more weight to lesser votes (paraphrasing Winston Churchill), and they may quote the fact that the BNP are in favour of it as perfect justification to vote #notoav.  Such tactics – and I’m referring to the ‘BNP-card’ – undermine logic and rational and in no way help their cause.  I’m sure the Nazi Party had at least one decent policy, and to imply that an idiot cannot stumble upon a good thing is to simply ignore fact.

Under AV, if no candidate reaches the 50% mark, they disregard the lowest candidate’s votes and redistribute them using their voters’ second choices. This process continues until one candidate attains 50%.

Now this talk of ‘lesser votes’ troubles me.  Are we to say that everyone who votes for a minority party is an idiot? Sure, I’ll accept anyone who votes for the BNP are either racist or fooled thanks to their own stupidity or miseducation, but is every minority party the same?  To be honest, I don’t actually know; although the Christian Party is also one to avoid.  If a BNP vote is of a lesser value than one of the main parties and thusly their second choices should not decide an election result, then that reason must surely be that those people are immoral, unjust and/or stupid – if that is the case, then I’d have to say that I consider Tory votes to be ‘lesser votes’ too; I don’t think the three main parties should be immune from this kind of rational/criticism, which quite rightly leads me to have one leg in the AV door and the other leg clinging onto what it recognises and is used to, FPP.

Paper, Wait. [fiction]

I have a temporary job at the moment. And too much work to do. Why is it that people expect you to do mountains of work all the time? Do I look like an Intel Quad-core processor? I guess it’s no surprise they expect me to do so much, I do have deity-like status thanks to living in this defunct town; my IQ allowing for occasional compliments, jewellery, and child sacrifices.

‘Magic me some filed reports,’ my hilarious co-colleague ushered.
Sadly people like this still considered Peter Kay’s Live at the Top of the Tower material under-used. I was a magician as well you see; only semi-professional, but I considered myself very proficient, and able to give David Blaine a run for his money. Sadly I didn’t have enough funds in my current account to out-do Criss Angel. Extras and stooges cost money you know.
‘Sure,’ I offered, pretending never to have heard her tireless attempt at humour before.
My reports were in a particularly bad way, but thankfully I’d not put any labels on them: so they’d be a cinch to reorganise.
I could almost hear the sirens; almost.
I hadn’t meant to, but I’d murdered a snake. Well it wasn’t really a snake, it was a slow worm. And as luck would unfortunately have it, is a protected creature under the Wildlife and Cruelty Act of 1981; I prayed news of this had not reached my inhospitable surroundings of a hometown.

‘Squelch’ went the limbless reptile, as the spade came down like an elevator devoid of brakes; or rather, an elevator in Walsall. The last thing the poor Anguis fragilis (to give it its Latin name) saw before it met its maker, was the glint of the previously polished (don’t ask) blade (is this Sparta!?) of the garden implement that was hastily selected for its demise.
‘Would it really go squelch?’ you may hark.
‘Probably not, but this is fiction after all; the hasty abandonment of the truth never hurt nobody, someone once said,’ is my retort.
A few Google searches later, and I found my harmless reptile. Well I say a few, it was slightly mangled by the time I’d finished with it. You can never be too sure when dealing with potentially venomous reptiles, and the down side is always reptile identification.  I sought desperately to find out if his name was Clive or Carlos, all to no avail.  Retrieving the national reptile dental records you see, was troublesome, so I had to settle for simply identifying the species. Type, type, type.  Click, click, click.
After I satisfied my curiosity, I popped it in the bin.

With Big Brother becoming more and more a reality, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the government searched my bins and demanded some sort of fine. Sure, they’ve slowly phased in speed cameras as they look to ban smoking, but you can never have too many Millennium Domes. It was with this in mind that my heart skipped a beat when I heard the faint sound of sirens. The men in the white coats were coming for me. Plus the RSPCA would be pissed at the snake. Uh, I mean slow worm.

I moved my paper-weight from atop my awkward filing system. Loosely attached to one file was a yellow post-it with details of a party the following night. I prepared for a panic attack, but quickly remembered that I had agreed to go. Wait. Yes. I did. Damn.

Let’s Not Get Too Carried Away [fiction]

I don’t really have a gun.  Well not really anyway, though I do have several elastic bands and some Morrissey LPs.  I say LPs, I really mean MP3s.  I don’t want to alienate my readership you see, it’s important to reach out not only to those with lung disease and a multitude of sexually transmitted diseases, but also to the- uh, oh, I guess that covers everyone. Silly succinct me.
Allow me to introduce myself.
‘Finally’, you say.
‘Finally’, I say. ‘My name is Christopher Conway, and I live in a defunct, underfunded, wasteland of a subhuman town in the centre of England; I’ll be your narrator for this novel. The words can be found at the front and at the back of the book, anything I do say will be written down and read – by you.’
‘Okay, start with the plot already, I’m confused.’
‘As you wish’ I reply.

They say write about what you know – but what if you don’t know anything? And that’s exactly what I felt, or rather thought (if you can think nothing) when I came to, atop a uniquely fragranced sofa. I’d had a drink the night before, I remembered that much. Eddie always said don’t drink too much. But as the old saying goes, if you get told not to do something too many times – you remember. Well I didn’t remember.
Let’s think, I remember a surprised deer, a faulty internet connection, and half deciding to go out and get bladdered because I feared for my future; or rather worried about it.

Page Load Error [fiction]

Staring at my computer screen I obsessed over our society and its reluctance to admit its faults.  It doesn’t know everything yet.  It can’t fix everything.  Sure it’s not so bad with scientists, but the media hypes things up.  A society full of quick fixes:  ‘Cure baldness fast’, ‘lose those pounds’, ‘download music for free’.  All with the familiar totalitarian asterisk underlining its false promises.
The screen read ‘Page Load Error’.  The website you requested cannot be found.  Typical.
Some days you get by by merely obsessing over the latest episode of some mechanically churned out sitcom.  Normally American, they’re the best at that sort of thing.  Others you fill with creativity or adventure.  A proper adventure.

It’s a good job Eddie rambles, or rather used to. How else would you end up with things to explain? Textual puzzles to unravel? And all for your benefit. Smile.
It’s not like you’d imagine, my life that is. It’s mainly filled with the above mentioned marathon TV sessions, strumming a black guitar searching for the next great riff, or performing an invisible classic pass. The usual. So smile.

Back in the summer of tranquility, as Eddie used to call it, we had our first adventure.  Our first of many in fact.  It involved a net and some crabs, so don’t get too excited.  We were young , well, younger than we are now.  Eddie is ageless though.  Should I be jealous?  Probably.
I get up from the computer screen.  Repetitive strain injury has always been a bitch.  The air was calm, but I was indoors.  That happens occasionally I’m told, but not often enough when I was growing up.  The house would constantly have its windows open.  Sometimes doors too.  But never front.  Unlocked though, but never front.  I’d get up and close one, two, three, four.  We had a lot of windows.  I’d walk upstairs, to get something or other; probably a DVD, and when I’d get back down they’d all be open again. Spooky.  But it wasn’t like that with Eddie.  He never had windows to worry about.  Should I be jealous? Probably not.  He’s dead now.

My Zeitgeist. [fiction]

Incandescence abounds my ramblings and writings, and makes the formulation of a simple grammatical sentence almost impossible. What is it I seem to look for? Is it inspiration? If it is then from where? And why? I don’t mean to rain on my intellectual parade or subject anyone to total boredom induced by philosophical reveries, let alone my philosophical reveries. But I guess you’ve stopped reading by now.

I could pick up this gun, point it to my head and pull the rusty corroded trigger. It may fire, it may not. There’s no fun in uncertainty: that’s why I removed all the bullets. My desk is a mess, a tidy mess obscured by unfiled reports, used fast-food packaging and a box of Bicycle playing cards: Bikes. Typing always was a bitch, but I guess you’ve stopped reading by now.

Eddie said I was a hero. Fumbling with the steering wheel. I watched the deer approach the headlights, I’d swerved it, missed it by a whisker. If deer have whiskers. I’m restless now, I need that kind of adrenalin rush again, something to liven up my boring existence. Anything.
Eddie said I was a saint. Taking those old ladies their milk every weekend when they couldn’t manage by themselves. And I never asked for any money, wouldn’t have been right, taking advantage of those poor old ladies. I’m restless now, I need that sense of purpose, a willingness to do good. Something.

What Eddie didn’t say was that he was a hero too. And what a hero. Not in the modern sense, he didn’t save any babies from burning buildings or rescue cats from trees, but he did mask the furniture while painting. He lived an odd sort of life, obsessed with comic books and cinema. He said he couldn’t be the hero he sought, but I could.