June 13, 2008 at 10:59 am · Filed under News, Politics
It’s time for me to voice my disgust at the rise in favour of the Tory Party. Or, more specifically, the fickle abandonment by Labour voters and general left-leaning-types of their principles for no better reason than David Cameron has a more convincing smile than Gordon Brown.
It’s important that I first point out that I’m NOT writing this because I’m a devoted Labour supporter. I’m frequently annoyed and generally disillusioned with them. But, like Charlie Brookner (commenting in his blog on the Guardian website), I have a ‘anti-Tory prejudice, which is so ingrained and instinctive it feels like something hand-stamped on my DNA … I know in my bones that rightwing policies are wrong. Obviously wrong. They just are. It’s Selfishism, pure and simple.’
I don’t think I need to say much more about this, as recent quotes from two clever and funny people sum things up perfectly. First, from above mentioned Charlie Brookner, who continues to say:
Clearly some kind of self-defence is in order, which is why I’ve already started mentally withdrawing from the real world. It’s easy: all you have to do is imagine that the whole of life itself is just a low-budget daytime TV show, one you’re watching uninterestedly from the sofa with one eye while reading a magazine with the other. You know: Cash in the Attic, something like that. To help sustain the illusion, imagine a cheapo theme tune playing each morning when you wake up, and again each night before you go to bed. Before long, the day in between will feel like zero-consequence schedule-filling fluff, thereby lifting an almighty weight from your shoulders.
With practice it’s possible to become so psychologically distanced from issues that affect you, you could comfortably watch your own leg being sawn off by an unhinged bearded intruder, without doing more than raising an eyebrow and muttering, “That looks painful,” before returning to an article you were reading on the history of mashed potato. That’s the state of mind I intend to be in the day Prime Minister Cameron gives his victory speech from the front steps of No10.
Brookner also points out that more horrifying is the prospect that, for example, Boris Johnson might actually do a good job as Mayor of London. Is this possible? What happens if PM Cameron actually turns out to be okay? I’m utterly unconvinced, though. Even if a Tory government turned out to be ‘not too bad’, there’s no way that old-style Tory ’selfishism’ wouldn’t rise in power also.
My revulsion at the swing-to-the-right trend was expressed brilliantly by Jeremy Hardy on a recent News Quiz on Radio 4. There’s no handy web-based transcription for me to quote, but if I remember correctly it went something like this: ‘I can’t understand Labour voters suddenly voting Tory. I could understand if they switched to voting for the Greens or something, but to go for the Tories … That’s like saying, “Well, all these years I’ve had my hair cut at that nice barber on the high street, but I think this time I’ll set my head on fire.”’
I’ve been a fan of Modern Toss for some time, with their crappy drawings and their grumpy obscenity. Now I find out they have a TV show on Channel 4, with live action stuff. Totally bizarre, it is. I like this clip — the deadpan delivery.
Okay, so there’s loads of internet stuff popping up all the time. So called ‘essential’ zeitgeisty applications like Twitter, or steadily growing sites like Flickr and YouTube, or phenomena like blogging and social networking. Most people I know stick to email and Facebook, and don’t venture out much further. Perhaps these people — you — simply don’t see a need for it. If so, fine. But perhaps you’re curious but just can’t be bothered working out what it is or how to use it.
So let me encourage anyone with the slightest curiosity to head over to CommonCraft and try out a few of their charming and extremely simple video tutorials. They use simple old-style line drawings, cut-outs and animations to explain all of these hot internet technologies to non-technical people.
The two things I’m most keen for people to try out are RSS feeds and Twitter.
Twitter is like a mini-blog, but cut down to text-message size. It enables people to stay in touch with more frequent messaging — if you like — or to simply compile brief thoughts, ideas, news, etc. in a one-page mini-blog. You can even display all the posts from a group of people together on one page. Or have them texted to your phone. Or sent to your instant messaging service. Have a look at my page if you’re curious — click the ‘Twitter page’ link on the right. Have a look at the CommonCraft video here.
RSS feeds are an extremely useful way to have the latest information from your favourite sites delivered to you, rather than actually going to each site individually, which can take time. In fact, this has become so widespread these days that most email services (Gmail, for example) have an integrated reader, and actual email programs (like the latest Apple Mail) have started to do the same. The idea is that you check your email and RSS feeds at the same time, in the same window. My feeds are also located on the right, under the ‘Meta’ section — you may need to scroll down. But first you’ll need to have a reader service in place — have a look at the CommonCraft video here.
If I had loads more time (if I knew, for example, that I’ll live another one thousand years) I’d prowl the streets, the hotels, and the bars of the world taking pictures like this. For a while I’ve been fascinated by these kinds of images — packed with narrative. I remember T once saying to me — as we looked at a photograph by an old friend in South Africa — that it looked like there was a whole film going on in it. It showed, if I remember correctly, a sprawling industrial landscape; in the foreground a large parking lot vacant except for a few scattered details. Each detail it’s own vignette, and our eyes roamed from one to another, bringing them together, making up the story.
I stumbled upon this one today. How utterly bizarre. And magical.
