The fiercest number

Some actual bona fide good news last week - Alan Johnston, kidnapped journalist, freed after 114 days. I think this should be marked in some way. How often do you get actual good news in the true sense? Usually it's sporting victories, which aren't really news, or things about calves born with extra legs, which aren't really good.

Meanwhile, one of the new brooms says the terror fight could take 15 years. I would like to see how he's worked this out. Maybe people are just demanding specifics; they're easier to deal with than vague hand-flaps of uncertainty when lives are at stake. I suppose the people responsible for the impossible job of sorting out terrorism can't just hold up pieces of string at press conferences and shout "HOW FUCKING LONG IS THIS? A? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?"

Still, I'm finding it hard to stifle my sense of absurdity when it comes to the recent non-attacks. (I'm sure there are better links than these to cite but dammit, if you are here it means you are an intelligent bean with ability to use internet, and there are many more splendidly comprehensive bloggers in my blogroll to whom you may refer on such matters of import. So!) It's not that these things shouldn't be taken seriously (ish) because it shows that the intent is still there, even if the ability isn't (and there were doctors behind these things? I fear for the quality of our healthcare all the more. Perhaps years of listening to people complain about their knees drives one to jihad. My GPs are thoroughly sociopathic fucks in any case. So!). And terrorists are just as able as anyone else to learn from their own and each others' mistakes, especially if the media helpfully point those out.

But the fact is that this - two non-bombs in central London and one semi-bomb in Glasgow complete with flaming terrorist determined to at least take out one person even if it was only his silly, on-fire self - was a giant laughable arse-up all the way. I was very pleased by the sensible reaction of Brown's lot (since I last wrote he has finally ascended - I did ask him to wait till I was ready, but he was busting), a far cry from what would have been another set of ominous showboating pronouncements from that flouncing ringmaster of a Blair swine - but! the media have overwhelmingly taken the line that we were only saved from being bombed to molecules by "a combination of luck and public vigilance". Not that the Scottish bloke doesn't deserve much kudos and his internet celebrity - in fact that just makes me grin a lot, really. He did good. But in both London and Glasgow, the attacks were thoroughly buggered up before they even didn't happen, and it was less to do with luck and vigilance than the kind of blithering incompetence rarely seen outside of rubbish 70s sitcoms whose plots revolve solely around thin men being unable to operate bicycles.

So the rhetoric baffles and bothers me somewhat. Of course any number of other, more efficient attacks might have been ready to go, so I understand the raise in threat level etc etc etc (what a whimsical notion that is - I like to find out the weather, the travel and how scared I need to be of a morning) bUT I wish these attacks had been put in better perspective by the Feral Beasts. Considering the failure of a non-viable bomb to go off an 'attack' is like considering a foetus a toddler. Saying "if these bombs had gone off thousands would have been killed", when the bombs couldn't have gone off (they were missing a vital component, apparently - that one is a good link, btw), is taking the fine art of rabid speculation to glorious new levels. If all the news were treated in the same manner, we'd have so much hysteria-based fun.

Supermarket knife rampage man thwarted

...The weapon was later found to be a small plastic spork. "If it had been a large machete, the carnage would have been unimaginable," said Inspector Dollop...

Yars.

Meanwhile I've had an interesting week at the Website. I've been doing holiday cover there for a year, and now the job's come up. I have concluded, for a variety of reasons, that I would step over my own mother to get it. I would also step over an acquaintance who is also apparently applying. Only, the first time I tried to step over her, I would deliberately miss.

Yeah, s'like that, homes.

It was a week unusually full of interesting men, which is always a good week. I don't know where the interesting women are, but - oh, it might have something to do with the fact that I've always worked in ever so slightly gender-wonky situations. These were men I worked with or have worked with, or men I met backstage at Reading and ended up living with who I haven't seen in four years and who look so completely different with their weight loss and tattoos and coloured contact lenses and lack of facial hair that it was rather a surreal experience. Media-ish and/or music-related men, to a man. These are the circles I've always moved in. I've probably absorbed an unhealthy amount of testosterone over the years, and get mistaken for a man all the time without realising it.

Actually, I did get mistaken for a man rather a bit when I wrote for the satire sheet that is no more. We had credits, not bylines, and everyone else there had a Y chromosome which was plain to see in their names. So it wasn't surprising that people would write in about something I'd written and refer to me in the register of bloke. It was curiously gratifying, though, especially as it meant I never had to take any criticism, because it all went to this male alter-ego the readership inadvertently created. I named him Ted.

The week's menfolk were mostly curmudgeonly and cynical, in a mostly pleasant way, although one was properly wise and one maintained the same infectious enthusiasm for things that I remember appreciating before. One of them gave me a new drug experience, although he didn't necessarily mean to - but I have discovered the secret of joy, and her name is CODEINE. How it is legal, even if it requires a degree of cajoling and fibbing, is beyond me. I spent the last hour of work stoned out of my gourd, then ran home from Baker Street to Walthamstow on winged feet, wrote a 300-page high-concept novel and showed it to God. God gave me this wicked quote to use on the cover of the paperback.

(I'm pretty sure I also saw some E scattered on the steps at King's Cross, but if you think I picked any of them up to check, you're sorely mistaken. I simply bent down to lick one. It was inconclusive. Thinking about it, I should have gathered them up and sold them outside regardless. Curses.)

Yesterday I did a stint as a steward for an art event in a pretty wood in a place I thought for years was made up by the BBC so Mark from EastEnders could get his first break. I wasn't too impressed with the fluro-jacket, but was thrilled with the walkie-talkie. There's nothing like strolling past some innocent event-goers with your hip occasionally bursting into a snatch of semi-comprehensible monologue. I was bitten by something on the neck, but it didn't matter because it was the first July-like day of July and I would gladly have given a vein's worth to the starving insects of Essex for that.

Oh, and Shedvixen has apparently given over the shed to Shedfox. I saw them together, looking like a single fox with four ears, but since it's just been himself. Neither today, though. Keine foxen. I no longer appear able to get decent pictures, which is an ass. But if I got this Website job, I may be able to borrow some gobsmackingly brilliant camera that digitally compensates for all lack of talent and wobbly arms, and run away with it.




Two new additions to the 'loll - Piqued and Evidence of a Struggle. You will laugh, you will curl your lip, you will vomit uncontrollably but not notice until you wake up three hours hence.

Taking Liberties: a righteous plug

OK, so here's the thing - Taking Liberties is a documentary about the state of civil liberties as we come to the end of Blair's tenure. I saw it last night (along with Rachel who's in it), and while I can't be totally objective as I did contribute to the accompanying book, it's dead good. I expect many red-faced Sweeney-grade-shouty arguments to spring from its viewing.



It's released in 12 cinemas, mostly on June 8th. If you fancy seeing it, try and make it to the opening weekend - that way it's more likely they'll get wider distribution, and you will have the unconditional love of a load of dedicated and knackered filmmakers.

You can get the book ere and at Waterstones and all that, but I really recommend going to see the film itself. (And yes, Boris Johnson is in it, but don't let that skew your perspective.)

If you set your iPod to shuffle in the woods, does it play 'Pet Sounds'?

A beautiful faux-spring day. I spent some of it sitting in a churchyard talking about books and sundry related issues with the ice-cap-melting sun in my eyes. I saw a heron and two dancing tortoiseshell butterflies. (There was actually someone else there as well. I wasn't crouching over an ancestor's grave telling them about the mixed feelings of giddiness and shrugginess I'm alternating between over this here book, about which I'm thrilled and not really much bovvered at once.) It was bliss, frankly, even if it made me fret about stuff as the world is really meant to be doing more. (That first link's really good, by the way.)

Previously, at about 1am, I was on Oxford Street when a large sleek heart-coloured American automobile slouched by. I admired it - I like a bit of car occasionally. I did ogle a VX220 earlier - you almost never see them as they never caught on, but apparently they're brilliant. They are properly sexy cars, because they have a certain wackiness and humility about them. People just didn't want them cos although they're basically modified Lotus Elises, they still said 'Vauxhall' on them. People are shallow. At least the ones who buy sports cars, it seems. So someone with one of those I might infer could look past the superficial and I would be immediately Interested, whereas a knob with a Porsche could take his pretentions elsewhere. Most cars that are meant to be sexy leave me cold. But yes.

I was trying to figure out what it was (something wide and American, in any case) when I noticed it said 'WESTWOOD' in big silvery letters across the top of the windscreen. So in fact more like

WESTWOOD

And lo, as it slunk by I clocked that still really not entirely unyouthful face in profile. Despite having met quite a few quite famous people and all but witnessing that they go to the toilet just like the rest of us, I am filled with a certain helpless unapologetic childish glee upon sighting a Famous. On this occasion the glee was somewhat enhanced because well, it was 1am, work it out for yourself. So I did shout, or rather holler, "WESTWOOD!" Or indeed

"WESTWOOD!"

If I'd had my wits about me I would have gone

"WESTWOOD GOODLOOKINGOUTTHERE MYMAINMAN UPINTHEBUILDING BABY BOY HOLLA BACK!"

But y'know, I think I made my point clearly and concisely. Then I made to my companion the neither concise nor clear point that Westwood is actually brilliant, because while many many claim to, like, Not Give A Fuck what people think, he is one of about three living individuals who actually Don't. He must be one of the most ridiculed public figures ever, but he continues to be ridiculous without a blink. It is hard not to believe he's not putting it on, but I think if he was then the enormous number of hip hop artists who give him mad props would have nothing to do with him, and would probably go out of their way to insist that he's a laughable assbag who insults their culture every time he loosens his chiselled white jaw. And, y'know, surely the fact that he was popped in a drive-by shooting in 1999 gives him credibility in his field. Unless someone just thought he was a laughable assbag, of course, in which case the rotten bastard should have put their gun away and just posted something rude on the Radio 1 website like any normal idiot.

I'd just come to London for the first time to live (excepting when I was born, because I was born in London and am a proper actual Londoner and deserve some sort of prize dammit) and was staying in Kennington when said incident went down. (Ooh look, and that's the hospital where I was born that they took him to as well. In London.) I was aghast. The guy doesn't even allow swearing on his late night show and dubs noises over all the fucks in the stuff he plays, which means some tracks just consist of a smattering of phat beats and loads of birdsong like they have on Big Brother when someone says "Adidas". He's just a nice bloke. Bonkers, obviously, but nothing warranting a cap in the ass or even in the arm.

(Heh: "police think he may have been followed". Oh, really?)

So I am down with Westwood, due to his setting of a beautiful example of how to be yourself even when white middle-class tossers who would probably love to be a bit more like you like Toby Young and Marcus Brigstocke smugly deride you as a fraud, and everyone else thinks you're a bit of a silly embarrassing twat. I salute his indefatigability.

Go hard, brother number one. N junk.

A bit of a week of new excitingness, really, aside from celebrity hollering (I also saw Neil Tennant in Soho last week, although I didn't holla at him, it would have been inappropriate.) This year is looking at least some shade of fine. 'Fine' in the urban sense, I mean.

Could someone tell me why they silence out the 'god' in 'this ain't a scene/it's a goddam arms race' in the Fall Out Boy song of the same name when the video is on the telly, but not on the radio? I suppose Nietzsche would listen to emo.

Paedo's out (I have been waiting all my life for a pun such as this)

Whoops. I just got a bit carried away with the labels. I have so many as to render them quite useless. Still, an inability to file is a sign of a creative mind. It is.

I did write a thing about the present prisony fiasco with regards that big old paedo, but I don't want to immediately alienate everyone, even if I'm going to alienate some by not writing about it. I might just find someone I agree with and link to them. Oh bugger it, I'll fillet some bits out.

1) Actually it's not actually illegal to just be a paedophile because it's not illegal to fancy children, only to act upon it, which makes you a paedophile who is a sex offender. I wish the media would stop being so lazy on that point. Actually. It's important.

2) Mumble mumble are people who watch nasty child pron actually dangerous in the most literal sense so if we're talking about only the most dangerous criminals that bloke doesn't necessarily qualify does he mumble murfle I think I left a thing over there and have to go now.

3) If they're worried about what nasty crime will be committed next necessitating the lock-up of people for whom there is no room at the inn, I would bet dosh that it's going to be some manner of severe damage to said blokey, who was clever enough to go on all the telly with his face and say that the judge was just doing his job. Get the police guard off Jade's house post haste, they're lining up with leftover fireworks. (I can't watch BB anymore although I suppose I'll watch Shilpa win tomorrow. It's all too ghastly. Whatever those unpleasant women did, their lives are now going to be ruined, and it's rather disproportionate considering they weren't being any more idiotic than most of the idiots you find who aren't on telly.)

Much as I can barely bear the Indie at the moment (it won't stop until we are all hanging our heads in shame so hard we get whiplash), I had to make a knowing face and say 'uh huh' at its front page today. Scroll down for list of people who've been banged up recently, including the naked rambler and people who've refused to pay taxes or fines for political reasons.

Oh and I was also interested to read this, or attempt to read it. I got through a paragraph and a half and then my entire head started to spontaneously warm and sweat reservoired in my ears. For the love of all that is holy, what is that woman taking? I mean, I thought my prose was a bit florid and hectic and such, but compared to her I am Emily goddam Dickinson.

Idiots in idiocy shock

But first: 28,004. Rock! Only another 10,000 or so to go I reckon. Tra la la. And some interminable tinkering obviously.

So I stopped watching Big Brother because my telly broke, although I would probably have stopped anyway as it was becoming painful. I don't find people being horrible and humiliating each other or themselves entertaining even when it's fiction, let alone reality. Now telly has been cleverly reset in a way only someone who's not a techno-arse can manage (thank you), and I'm going to be drawn back to it just to see, just to seeee if those awful women are as bad as the massive furore suggests. It's hopeless.

It's difficult to pin down whether or not the fairly obvious bullying of Shilpa Shetty is specifically racist or not, but oh the issues, the issues it raises. 21 MPs have signed a Commons motion condemning it, and Channel 4 have refused to make any proper comment beyond a generic one. The former probably haven't seen the programme, and the latter are going to milk the controversy beyond the point at which it's acceptable for a show which is always going to seek controversy. Both stink. You do have to jump on racism very hard as soon as it raises its head, but you've got to establish that it is racism first, otherwise you are making matters worse in much the same way as women who cry rape do. Channel 4 are going the other way, and getting very close to being irresponsible.

Part of my problem is that all the howling about racism rather excuses the fact that she's been called a cunt by that nothing-boy Jade Goody is porking - so sexism's OK - and undermines the fact of the bullying itself, which isn't acceptable behaviour either (although it might be inevitable in the BB house; they did do it to that poor fucked-up bloke last year... oh... and he was Pakistani. But that's probably a coincidence. He was dreadful. But still).

So I agree with maybe 20% of Germaine's argument - the rest of it is the usual naive crap that gives people credit for the kind of Machievellian plotability that only a sociopath could sustain. I really don't believe she's at all manipulative - she's got no need to get the British public on her side to further her career, she doesn't care if she wins or loses, and she didn't know anything about the show before she went on it. I've rarely seen anyone appear to be so genuine on there, celebrity or otherwise. Thus, Germaine, I need to say my love is eternal but do shut up, you intermittently horrendously erroneous windbag.

I think the racism's there, but it's the fat end of the wedge. It's just oozed out of the general nasty garbage bag (yes, I hate Americanisms too, but 'rubbish' just doesn't convey the kind of rancid goo I need here) of hatred that the other idiots have for the woman. If you're a moron and you find someone objectionable for something specific and fleeting, then you find larger, permanent, personal things about them to hang your objections on - a pair of specs, a big arse, a funny accent. It's because you can't quite articulate your objections in and of themselves - they have to be attached to something. Specific objections are subtle and fiddly and require a bit of analysis - vulnerable personal attributes are like big child-sized building blocks you can grab onto and throw about. Plus, morons think hate is fun. It's like bingo. This is why they don't do it alone. It's a communal, bonding activity, and a bind against the dark suspicion somewhere in the echoing cellar of their brain that the world might find them pointless.

Shilpa is very un-pointless - she seems to be a great example of humanity. She's immensely successful, poised and cultured and well-mannered and beautiful and a lot nicer than you'd expect. The others have had varying degrees of success on the basis on not much talent or beauty and must know how limited it is. They might have some subconscious sense of how 'totally and utterly ordinary' they are by comparison, and how beastly and base they are. Maybe they suspect Shilpa knows it, and so they're just childishly going all out to prove how very horrid they are to her, in that sheep-as-a-lamb sort of way. Or they might just be galloping gormless oafs with no idea of how to treat people.

I don't think they can justify their behaviour on the basis of Shilpa's behaviour, as I think they are doing to themselves, even if Shilpa has been annoying. They're reverting to the lowest possible insults in the face of someone who outclasses them so comprehensively that they can't digest it. But I had to laugh when I saw a clip in which Danielle Lloyd, a dead-eyed Scouse twit who never puts a 'T' on the end of anything when a simple Gordon Brown-esque unhinging of the chin after a vowel will suffice, slobbered "She carn even speak English proplee!"

I suppose I should feel sorry for her, as her flimsy career will be in ruins and she'll probably need to pay for her own protection, which she will need because a lot of other ignorant bastards will want to beat her up. A most mature response, especially when most of them will be the kind who regularly spout much worse in the pub. But for the time being, I'm just finding her a nasty little girl.

The trouble is that the wilfully ignorant often seem to claim a sort of psuedo-racial immunity from criticism. When Jackiey Goody had that scrap with Shilpa over mispronouncing her name, she bellowed "If I can't pronounce your name it's not my fault". Why isn't it? Because no one should ever expect you to make a tiny bit of effort to get someone's name right, so you can show them that most basic level of respect? Well, not if they're foreign and have a silly name. It's their fault for having a silly name, and you don't need to apologise for not being able to get your flapping gob around it. Or it's just the fault of the universe in general. The universe in general cops for a lot of shit from the stupid.

Nothing is ever an idiot's fault. It's just this automatic failsafe against criticism and means nothing, beyond "you are not allowed to criticise me because I am a poor bear of very little brain". This can be augmented by insistences of shit childhoods, drug problems, other problems, other nasty people, etc, but it usually stands up on its own as this impenetrable wall of ignorance. But you can always make an effort, however intellectually challenged you are - you can always try. That elevates you, that you're aware of your shortcomings and refuse to offload them onto others - if you can't pronounce a name, you are contrite about it, not hostile. Why would you be hostile? How can you justify it? You don't need to - it's not your fault, so fuck them. It's just always easier to be permanently on the edge of defensive hostility, and to absolve yourself of responsibility for that and everything else, with the get-out-of-jail-free card of your idiocy.

I can't wait to hear the justification Jade and Danielle and Jo will have for this. I suspect Jo will be horrified and will repent enormously in an ohmigod-what-have-I-become sort of way - she'll wring her hands over ever going into the house in the first place and apologise profusely, having realised she does still want to be famous and liked after all. Danielle will just dig herself in deeper with more twittery, and try and justify it, and flutter her lashes, and then Teddy Sheringham will dump her, or defend her, or defend her and then dump her. Jade will just shout that her dad was black, and then go into hiding, then make a kind of mockery of a Kate Moss-style comeback, possibly by being photographed snorting coke. Shilpa will just go back to her great life in India where she is adored and venerated by all, and hypocritical self-loathing newspapers will call us all cunts.

Then stupid people will continue to be rewarded by society for staying stupid, remaining infants, and causing any amount of damage for which we don't hold them to account. Maybe this is a good start on that score. I try to believe in freedom for everyone to be what they want to be, but I find it so hard not to be militant about idiots. I think they're the biggest problem in the world, and idiocy knows no boundaries of race or nationality. It's only lucky for us that they're too stupid to unite, otherwise we'd be fucked. It's bad enough as it is. (It would be totally inappropriate of me to mention for example suicide bombers at this point, and to speculate that the most significant thing about them is not their race or nationality or religion but their rampant and self-justifying and dangerously energising and self-perpetuating and contagious idiocy. So I won't.)

I might write a book. And then go into hiding.

Links! that I am too rubbish to work into the post properly (I'm not very good at this blogging lark - I should make an effort and elevate myself, or something)

Uniquely British 'not-quite-racism'

Good point, really

Ha ha. Yahoo news is no better than Jackiey "Shoopa... Shuffpa" Goody

Nu happy woo!

Yes oh yes. Happily I had the original wizard jolly time at Rachel's, came home all skippy mid-morning on the 1st to find the dog (who does not usually get left all night by any means, I hasten to add) had done a cat-like guilt trip by removing a banana skin and teabag from the bin and putting them in the hall to indicate his hysterical desperation for food. Sorry K. Also happily I strolled like a jammy bugger right past the hangover. Unhappily I was then suddenly strucken with some evil winter lurg on the evening of the 2nd, ensuring that my long-anticipated viewing of the 'This Life' special was punctuated by stumbled dashes to the loo down The Corridor. (The Corridor is the defining feature of my flat, which was built by a philanthropist in the 30s like most flats in Walthamstow, and it is so very long that it's not nice when you're ill.)

'This Life +10' was so fist-chewingly insultingly bad that I might have had cause to go a-vomming regardless. I bloody love the original series, it's up there with 'Six Feet Under' for me in terms of wit and nuance and emotional Truth, and of course Anna was a formative influence etc etc no but really, it was great. So it was grotesque to see these sort of reanimated character corpses mouthing lines they would never actually say, in this nasty smug artificial clunky set-up, and although it hasn't ruined it for me I rather wish I'd avoided it. It was such a Comment, or it thought it was - a fly-on-the-wall documentary within a film, and all the look-now-it's-the-noughties-people-have-iPods stuff - and I hate that.

So two fingers to Amy Jenkins even if it was her concoction in the first place and we should be grudgingly grateful. But more importantly a whole set of offensive digits to whatever this malaise is. It's not dissimilar to the bout of whatever it was I had a year ago, which may or may not have been food poisoning. This was too late both for the new year oysters (how did the affluent and properous ever get into those as a stylish sexy thing? They are so messy you need a whole council cleaning squad on standby pointing their high-power hoses at your top) and the subsequent prawns, so it's obviously just the continued wrath of the God in whom I don't believe. This one's evidently pissed off that not everyone thinks He exists, although any decent God wouldn't give a rat's ass because He would have the confidence in Himself, innit. But as Woody Allen once quoth, "How can there be a God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?"

Food is once again my enemy, and me and food usually get on pretty well. Constant nausea, wobbly head, old-lady gait. Bugger. And of course the world hasn't realised that the law is, there shall be no bad news for the whole of January. Most of the bad news, as usual, seems to be stupid news. Naturally my gears are especially ground by the re-emergence of the tabloid anti-darling, the Devil Dog. The mauling to death of a small girl is unquestionably horrific and tragic, just as the mauling to death of a small baby was last year, but they seem to be events that just suck the common sense out of the press and police and public alike, spit it out and run around making Eddie Izzard noises. ("Hello, can I come in? I've got a pig in me trousers. Can my friend come in too? He's got jam for brains.")

I have far too much ire on various angles of this for my poor head to deal with at present, but by way of pretending I'm not sickly let's have a nice LIST (with nowhere near sufficient links but, well, I'm new at this really, and I'm ILL, etc):

1) Did I tumble in surprise from my chair when it was reported that they'd seized £15,000 of cash and (at least according to The Sun) some quantity of heroin and coke from the house where the kid died, the stuff belonging to the dog's owner and kid's uncle 23-year-old Kiel Simpson, a tracksuited skinhead with a stupid face? Niet! I must report that in fact my arse stayed exactly where it was m and barely registered a twitch at this unexpected twist. I was Jack's entire family's complete lack of surprise and that of all his dodgy, responsibility-bypass, tracksuited, scally bastard neighbours.

If she'd accidentally swallowed a load of chinawhite and died that way, the press would at least have rounded unequivocally on the feckless little bastard, but because the dog was the deus ex jobby in this case, they somehow can't bring themselves to really point and shout at the crim scum whose fault the situation was entirely. Well, a couple of people have a bit, but one of them was Simon Heffer, and who listens to that old gasbag? It is not a dog issue, besides the fact that the dog was illegal (under a rather moronic and arbitrary law which doesn't work). It is a crim scum issue.

1b) As for ascribing human moral values to dogs, that's just the other side of the noxious sentimentality that propels people to feed their pets ice cream cones. Totally consistent. It's not just the tabs that do it either - so many people, who should know better, automatically think of dogs as knowing what they're doing in the way we do, having motives in the way we do. They do not. I don't get angry at that sort of idiocy because it gives dogs a bad name - dogs don't care - but because the bad name gets dogs and people killed.

Dogs do not have responsibility. Nothing is their fault. They are done to, acted upon, and everything else is instinct. They don't have morals. If loud fireworks bang make jump, as has been suggested was the case here, maybe go bite. If squeal heard, more bite until no more squeal. That's how they work. High-pitched sounds stimulate dogs to bite. It's nothing to do with any desire to kill people. That's why they love squeaky toys - they mimic the distressed cries of prey animals. K's squeaking of his squeaky is fantastically funny and awfully cute, but it still often occurs to me precisely why he enjoys it.

This dog was a year old. It was a puppy. And already fucked up enough to attack, kept outside and isolated, and given the opportunity to act on its most dangerous instincts by fools. (It's now emerged that the family were discussing getting rid of the dog after it bit one of them a few days before - can't find the link but I'll add it later.)

2) It's amazing how little the media seemed to be arsed to find out about the (actually not very long or taxing) Dangerous Dogs Act. They were content to say that only pure-bred pit bulls were banned, when in fact it clearly says 'pit bull type dogs', which covers a multitude of cross-bred, brick-headed, long-legged, muscle-bound penis-extension canine sins. The morons on the internet were calling for pit bulls to be banned when they already are, you morons, but they're the morons on the internet.

What worries me is that the media are starting to figure there's almost no point in getting the facts completely straight about such an emotive issue, because, well, it's a bit pedantic when children are dying and morons are baying for blood. Oh, and also, faced with the choice of a thousand dog experts champing at the bit to go on telly and explain that it's a more complex issue than it appears and it's not as simple as 'pit bulls bad', or of any number of traumatised victims of dog attacks, who do all the outlets pick? Even the BBC take the juicy option and parade the poor sods on the show. Does anyone do sensible news any more? And what's this thing of handing influence over to people who are (totally understandably) hysterical and usually know nothing about the broader issue? They are not in any position to influence opinion, and they don't even realise the media are exploiting them in their pain. If anyone starts talking about 'Ellie's Law' then I am off.

3) What was 3)? Oh yes. The raids. Well, great, they're busting a dog-fighting ring - needed doing. Except that to begin with, they should have done it a long time ago, and for the sake of the dogs, not because of some binary connection with an attack on a person. This means the dogs are now being treated as dangerous objects to be removed from society, rather than the subjects of abuse that they are.

But more importantly, like the DDA itself, the raids aren't going to make any children any safer whatsoever. This is for a very simple reason that I haven't seen anyone else bring up yet, either because they don't know or because it'd be too unpopular and iffy a point to make. If you're a big old crim and you breed dogs for fighting, then you probably know what you're doing as much as a big old crim with a crack lab. The dogs are used in a sport (legality aside) and in gambling and so they are an investment, just like greyhounds. Of course many of them are mistreated, but the serious people are going to spend money and time building and maintaining athletes - champions. (The ones seized from Merseyside so far were from a couple of lock-ups, both at buildings owned by a local bloke who also owns a gym. Yeah? Minted crim scum.) People have to handle the dogs, take them to and from fights. So they don't want the dogs to be people-aggressive, only dog-aggressive. Dog aggression and people aggression in dogs are not the same thing - there's an overlap, yes, but one does not indicate the presence or even propensity of the other. Any dog-aggressive dog should be watched around people, but, well, it's just not a direct equation at all.

So, pit dogs are bred and trained (as far as you can stretch the definition) to want to fight other dogs. If they show signs of wanting to fight people, they are no good. In that context, they are Bad Dogs. They're frowned upon. They're no more suitable as champion fighters than a greyhound with a gammy leg. What worries me is that these are maybe the dogs that the serious dog-fighters offload onto molluscs like Simpson. Although of course his dog Reuben was only a year old, so Simpson probably bought him as a too-small puppy for £400 from one of his dodgy crim mates. Or a bloke at the side of a road. Whatever.

The point is, the likelihood of these lock-up raids bringing in any actual potential child-killing dogs is pretty negligible. (Obviously any dog larger than a baby is a potential child-killer, a point that I wish more people were making till blue in face and cliche-sick, but statistically... it's just not likely.) They need to worry about individual dogs, pit bull or otherwise, owned by individual idiots. Same as before. Same as in 1991 when the DDA was hurried through the House like an illicit lover out of a window. That's not going to change, but as is usual with difficult problems the solution is too tricksy and long-term to be seriously contemplated by a government that wants to stay popular. The public want results, and now they're getting them, even though they're the results of something else entirely.

An amnesty isn't going to help either - all it'll do is shut a few people up until the next attack (I'm betting it'll be, ooh, maybe a Neapolitan mastiff, to shake things up a bit). In the meantime, slightly more well-meaning but still moronic morons are beseiging animal shelters and such with desperate enquiries about their perfectly docile, amiable bull breed slobberer that they now believe is a ticking time bomb, while others are just abandoning them in a panic. (This happened with Rottweilers last year too, only it wasn't reported. The media's angle this time is slightly, fascinatingly different - all because of the legal issue with the dogs, which gives a certain sense of calm and your-government-is-in-control to it. There's room for a mote of sympathetic stuff about the dogs and responsible-ish owners. With the Rotts, it was just scary anarchy time, and the abandonment issue just wasn't relevant somehow. Hmm.)

Oh, and others are having themselves what would appear to be slight little overreactions. The rotten bastards.

The ignorance! I can hardly stand it. (Ha! And now Posh is setting a great example. Sigh.)

Speaking of which, I'm afraid I'm hopelessly hooked on Celebrity Big Brother this time. I know, I know, but it's so succulent for the amateur psychologist. But crucially, it is full of what seem to be genuinely nice people. I really, really like nice people.

I think celebrities in general get a fucking hard time, and of course some of them deserve it because they're horrid or stupid people who were always going to be horrid or stupid one way or another. In Big Brother terms, though, the celebrities are always going to be better value than the nobodies. This is partly because they are used to being watched and analysed, which makes it less of a morally-suspect exercise, and partly because many celebrities become famous due to their natural charisma, personality and yes, intelligence, or the effects thereof.

And, and, if people deal with the pressure of fame for years on end, they either become partially destroyed by it or they achieve this sort of aura of placid contentment and Knowledge. They know themselves. They might not have anything left to prove. That's certainly the defining mark of most of the lot this time. They are lovely. The disgraced former Miss Great Britain and sort-of WAG is an irritating little empty-headed twit, and the two ex-popstars are boring, and Leo Sayer is a needy blabbergob, but the others are just lovely. Especially the lovely Shilpa, who I expected to be rather precious as a massive Bollywood star, but is actually totally humble and sweet and just lovely lovely lovely and trying ever so hard.

The Goody family on the other hand are a repugnant shower of deeply unlikeable sub-humans. Jade is just a genuine idiot who's learnt to flaunt her ignorance for a lot of money, her boyfriend is some sort of half-smiling, vacant-eyed shadow, but the mother... Put me in a house with that woman, that aggressive, childish, beastly, bellowing, thick-as-two-short-pigshits woman, and it'd be like that episode of 'The Shield' where Vic puts two rappers in one of those shipping crates and tells them to sort it out and then in the morning only one of them walks out and says he wants breakfast. I am telling you.

Black holes, not revelations

I was just about to email someone I vaguely know to point out that there's an amusing typo on a relatively important bit of his website. But then I thought - no one cares. I've thought this before but have usually swatted it aside as heresy or at least something unhelpful. Of course this being two hours into New Year's Eve, my sense of acceptance of the essential pointlessness of what I mostly do for a living may be false. You always look for things that point to stuff being Different in The Future at this pestilent time of year. There's probably a gene for it. A gene with a timer.

Anyway - I don't know, perhaps I should just crack down on my tendency to point out people's oopsies to them thinking they'll be grateful, and then work on the flinch I get whenever I see the twitching corpse of what could, in the right hands, have been a sentence. Especially since I am very far from perfect on that score myself. In any case, it's just not sexy. Maybe good English just needs its own Nigella, but I'd need a few years, some hair dye, some elocution lessons, bigger hips, and to sleep with several BBC Four commissioners (the ones that could still manage or appreciate it).

So there's a late night revelation. Other recent ones include:

1) It is physically impossible to tire of that Scott Matthews song with the video with all the beds.

2) 'Stranger in Moscow' is the last good song Michael Jackson will ever record, but it is still better than ooh, so much other stuff.

3) It's very handy to have Film 4+1 as well as Film 4 and a remote control handset, but it tends to result in watching the same film in an absolutely batshit order.

4) 'Spirited Away' is really very amazing but the ending is rubbish.

5) Cheese shops and delicatessens and the like have yet to reach this end of the tube line. Nearest thing is a posh sausage shop but that only sells posh sausage. However, this is bound to change. This place is going to be the new Stoke effing Newington and I'm going to be outclassed and outpriced before too long.

6) It's wonderful to really feel committed to a belief that you've wavered on and picked to bits for years before settling on one side. Even if it's ultimately depressing to hold the belief. This I realised today when I heard with some shock about Saddam's execution. No personal sympathy for the guy well obviously well of course, but you can't just have some new category of Eeeeevil that justifies officially offing someone. It's not the mark of a good democracy. At least that's one thing we no longer do here. Though you might not think so from Margaret Beckett's mealy-mouthing about him being brought to account, but er cough we still don't really kind of support that sort of thing, but then it is Iraqis' business and we don't want to interfere with their fragile emergent democracy, even if... yes. Cough.

I think justice is like freedom or perfection or any other absolute ideal - something you can and should strive for but can never completely achieve. And are a bit batshit if you genuinely believe it's possible. People tend to get very hoity-toity about justice having been done in the event of an execution - the absoluteness of it seems to appeal to that desperate need for closure that we can probably blame Oprah for creating in all of us, or possibly 'Friends'. But the equation just doesn't make sense to me. Above all, lofty as it sounds to me, I don't think it is our place to mete out death as a punishment. Ever. I don't think there is any higher power whose place it is to do it, except perhaps the ghost of Darwin. Who is a bit like Jacob Marley but maybe with, like, little bones hanging off his jacket or something. The Darwinator. That guy. But just because there isn't a higher power doesn't mean we should act in lieu of one.

Obviously many people who do believe in a higher power condone the death penalty, which is odd because you'd think they'd let God kill 'em all and let er, God sort it out. But He seems to be good at delegating when it comes to that sort of thing.

Incidentally - when the Iraqi Prime Minister said that Saddam faced his death "like all tyrants", did he mean that as some kind of backhanded compliment? Bloke went to the gallows if not defiantly, then at least with a certain obstinate demeanour from what I've seen. I suppose most tyrants don't go to their deaths blubbing for mama and begging forgiveness, but then to many people that sort of stubborn scowling thing would be taken as admirable dignity. As befits, y'know, a martyr. So... that's not really what you want from your tyrant's death, is it?

It'll be interesting to see how many people are actually sacrificed to the dead tyrant, and if it'll really be recognised as such, and how many people will insist that it's got nothing to do with Saddam's execution - or if it has any connection, well, it was worth it, because the fucker had to die. As if he actually had to. As if he hadn't already been neutralised, but like the mad Russian blond guy said in Die Hard, "I don't wan neutral, I wan dead." (He's dead too, that bloke. Ho hum.) And as if he didn't have so much more to be held to account for.

I think they just couldn't bear the thought of another eight trials for other atrocities. There may not have been enough lawyers in Iraq to get through it. Buggers were getting assassinated as fast as they could glean the salient details of the case.

7) Power cuts like the one our street experienced earlier this evening really need to last longer than ten minutes for that full childish glee effect to descend. But I did meet my new neighbour after we both stuck our heads out of sundry apertures in our respective dwellings, waving torches around.

8) It's a uniquely awkward situation when one estranged member of your family (presumably) gives another your mobile number. Erk.

9) I know Steve Irwin did remarkable and genuine and lasting good things for animals overall, but I still can't watch footage of him poking snakes in the eye and bellowing "COR HE'S REALLY ANGRY" without throwing things at the telly. Sorry.

Defying SOCPA means never having to freeze your tush off. Oh wait.

So after all that fannying about, I sallied forth to the demonstration in Parliament Square this evening. I spent the day labouring under the misapprehension I was still going to be less than legal, because I hadn't had my special Willy Wonka golden ticket yes-you-may letter from the police in the post. When I discovered from Rachel that a) it's sort of like a driving licence in that you don't have to actually physically have it on you, kind of thing and b) the police, when she phoned to ask after the progress of our permission things, were outraged by our insane interminable loiter last week, I was gratefully disabused. And a bit disappointed, obviously. Robbed of my amusing coda.

The plan was to hold a mass lone demo (as has happened every month since August), completely and humbly legally, from 6 till 7pm, then move a few yards over and have a rip-roaringly non-legal and naughty carol service. And that's what transpired. I hate to say a good time was had by all, but I think it was. It was a good thing to do so although you're supposed to be selfless, I think you're allowed to feel a bit pleased. I have limited experience of demonstrating, and so am irksomely analytical about it, but one of the distinctive things about a demonstration like this is how blooming jolly it is. Jolly and very British - peaceful but not po-faced, a bit daffy without ever losing the sense of enormous importance. This sort of humble gaggle milling about under the looming, gorgeous, other-gold-looks-like-Ferrero-Rocher-wrappers-next-to-this opulence of Parliament. Parliament is an absolutely intimidating place, representing power in one of the most effective, criticism-rebuffing ways you can imagine. You feel very small next to it, and obvious as it is to say, your voice and presence as a defiant citizen in the face of such an impassive and significance-fraught structure feel infinitesimal.

But everyone deals with that overwhelmingness and gets on with it. I love the absurdist convention of these demos - the bonkers notion that you could be arrested, if you didn't have permission, for waving a placard saying 'No more smelly cheese', and of course the silly things themselves perfectly satirising the silliness of the relevant sections of the Serious Organised Annoying Little People Who Probably All Live On Quorn And Are Malnourished And Wrong In The Brain Act. I went for the double-pronged assault of 'ASBOs for apostrophe abuse' (two people asked me if 'ASBOs' shouldn't have an apostrophe; I smote them) and 'Better grammar for placards' (at least no one questioned the spelling of 'grammar'). This was an agonising decision which meant that my favoured campaign, 'Hide Daniel Craig's clothes', had to be sacrificed. Next time, however, as it is a matter of grave import that we strive to bring about a state of perma-nude Bond.

Gathered there all giggly and shivering, we held our placards (and in one spectacular case a pink Christmas tree, decorated grotesquely with laminated images of the casualties of illegal war), circulated and chatted, unwisely went in the road, waved at passing honking cars and mopeds, and were cold. There must be laws and constants about public demonstration, many of them things you kind of don't want to admit to yourself because you're supposed to be being totally selfless and above this sort of thing, like, say

Trundle's Law: Adversity of weather conditions is directly proportional to sneaky sense of righteousness.

Beanamble's Constant: If you demonstrate and no one gets arrested or questioned or stopped or otherwise interfered with, you feel if not a sense of actual failure then certainly a sense of anti-climax.

Fossingberd's Wotnot: Beanamble's Constant is inevitably followed by a sense of horrified guilt over sense of anti-climax. Etc.

I don't know, perhaps that's just me being a git. It sounds pretty beastly when you put it like that - you don't want any martyrs in this, and I know how dedicated people are and how little they let anything like that interfere - but I suppose it's because it's just mind-boggling to break a law or breach it or circumvent it or however you put it, in front of the seat of government, and to have nothing happen at all. When you're actually doing it, it's quietly surreal, and the lack of consequence is equally surreal given everything you ever learnt about right/wrong and legal/illegal. Plus, the whole issue we were protesting was the right to freedom of speech (by extrapolation), and although that only really means the right to be heard, dammit, you want to be listened to. Even if the representatives whose attention you attract are not receptive, you want to be acknowledged, just as you are implictly when you go and vote. Seeing that you're not being acknowledged makes you feel - not personally, but really as an average example of people of your country - neglected. Which in turn makes you angry. I suppose if you protest regularly you get over that, but for a novice like me it makes for an unpleasant aftertaste.


As expected, there were no police - no journalists to speak of either. There was a Liberal MEP, though, which was very something. The only police visible were the ones usually propping up the Parliament gates, looking cold and bored in their fluorescent jackets. Brian Haw had a little passive-aggressive pop through his megaphone at one point, and people laughed nervously, but no one came over and demanded to see papers or anything. It's another layer of surreality - before SOCPA people would protest all the time there and be ignored by politicians, but now we have to apply for permission to be ignored. It's like being not there at all, being negated on some official level. (I went to the rally in Hyde Park in early 2003, remember the excited hollers of a million on the streets and felt so roused, and then so furious and impotent when those million marchers were eaten up in a soundbite and swallowed away like a bad taste. It sticks.) Like hanging around a police station, shouting "ooooo-ooooo" at distant officers who register nothing of your presence. Anyone who's ever given or received the silent treatment from a lover, or opted not to respond to criticism, knows the immensity of the power of silence, and now I suppose the government have figured it out too.

Rachel gave a properly rousing speech, reminded us that "it is the duty of all citizens who give a stuff" to be here, to acknowledge what's going on and challenge it. I watched the cars going past (Parliament Square is a very daunting and almost inaccessible island, you feel like a rabbit dashing across the lanes to get there, and it's another thing that gives you this sense of 'you are not supposed to be here', but I digress), observed the gawping or mildly interested or blank or smiling faces of passing drivers, and wondered how many of them actually know about SOCPA. The form of a small demonstration is pretty standard, and in London people can easily tune it out like they tune out a hundred other elements a day - it seems far enough removed from usual life, aberrant and irrelevant enough to not pay attention to. But this is the sort of issue that attracts people who do give a stuff, but don't often feel the need to actively go and stand in the cold about something - like me. This is something that really affects everyone, however much it may seem to affect only a small pocket of placardy people. So I stood there and hoped that some of the people going past were thinking about what was going on.

At 7 some of us shuffled to the corner for the illicit carol service. It's such a perfect concept - it was held last year and will probably be on next year, and the police are never going to interfere because imagine the front covers if they went in and arrested the bejesus out of a lot of rosy-cheeked warblers in the middle of 'Silent Night'. They dismiss it for this reason, and I had to pause for a moment to get my head around the idea that it was breaking the law, but it is. It's an organised demonstration. I went last year and wrote about it in typically one-foot-out fashion (I know, I annoy myself) - this year it was a smaller gathering, and colder, and altogether less political. There was a gallant, slightly wobbly saxophonist in lieu of missing solo trumpeter, and there was giggling and competitive caterwauling during 'The Ten Days Of Christmas', and swigs of hip flasks and mulled wine (did I mention it was really very bastard cold indeed because if I didn't that would be a grievous error and would imply that we did not suffer for our noble cause). We didn't do 'Little Drummer Boy' because that was a terrible heap of bewildered pa-rum-pum-pums last time. We learn. And we missed out all the juicy Satan stuff from 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen'.

We held a minute's silence as the traffic rushed by oblivious. Nothing does the same thing as silence, as I said - maybe next time we should stand in silence for an hour in the square. One protestor covered her mouth


and there's not really any substitute for that either if you want to declare your outrage that your right to say things is being curtailed. People tune out milling, chatting, politely whooping protestors. If we're being silenced, and being met with silence, maybe silence is the way to strike back. It would certainly signal disgust. (There's always mooning for that, of course, but let's put that on the back burner, or the back of a bus full of drunk rugby players.)

Brian Haw said some brief, typically passionate words, but he was more subdued than I've seen him. He tends to be a human foghorn, but not this evening. Last year we made much out of the fact that we were defying the law - this year Brian did an amusing little "I'm breaking the law right now, la la la" into the megaphone, and Tim gave us a round of applause and we all joined in, but we were quieter about it. The positive spin on this is that we all knew why we were there, in the effing cold and friz, and we simply defied rather than banging on about our defiance - it's no big deal, we could do this every day, and maybe we should. The negative is more along the lines of - we are tired and weary and helpless and we do not know if this is doing any good at all.

I would go with the positive, though, with only the usual little niggly doubts and cynicism around the edges. There will be at the least a steady trickle of people prepared to defy SOCPA in this way for as long as it's in place, and although it's hard to cling onto the belief that it will do good, it's of symbolic importance to keep doing it, to counterbalance what is an insidious, craven and terrible symbolic gesture on the part of the government.

I suppose this now means I'm obliged to go and get frostbite again sometime soon. Thank you, Tony, because of you I will have to buy stupid thermals. Ooh, I could get a onesie, like the ones in old Westerns where the sheriff is rousted out of bed at night by the posse and he comes out in his hat and boots and a onesie with buttons up the middle and his gun. That'll do nicely.