Should Prisoners Get The Vote?

By Euclides Montes (@Gatulino)

The British broadsheets are reporting that the government is poised to bring the UK in line with most European countries and allow prisoners to participate in the electoral process by voting.

This is one of those heated topics that usually divide people throughout the country regardless of their political leanings. So, should prisoners get the vote? And what does this question in itself mean for the role of the prison system in modern society?

On the one side, there are those that would argue that prisoners have excluded themselves from the rights law-abiding citizens enjoy, including the right to take part in participatory democracy. Those on this side of the debate often liken voting to undertaking jury duty and they argue that a person who has been given a prison sentence has also effectively given up their right and that this is a privilege of sorts that can only be regained once the prisoner has paid their debt to society. This disenfranchisement of prisoners is very much in line with the way the prison system worked in British society for most of the 19th and 20th century where a prisoner was understood to have lost their citizenship rights.

This is a view that has been disputed for a long time and the other side of the argument has gained a real foothold of the debate in modern society. Those in favour of giving prisoners the vote usually argue that rather than a right, voting should be seen as a civic duty and giving prisoners the opportunity to join in with wider society is a useful tool in their process of reintegration. Beyond that, an argument that has driven this debate over the last decade is that by giving prisoners the vote and raising their electoral capital in the process, politicians would pay closer attention to our prison system as it would mutate from a problematic field of policy into a possible source of important votes during an election.

Although it’s quite clear that there is probably not a right or wrong answer, allow me to have a go at answering the question of this ponder.

My personal feeling is that it really depends on how we view prisons and their role in society. Whilst it is a very valid view that prisons should remain a place where those who have transgressed against society pay their penance, I personally believe that prisons should instead be a place where prisoners are rehabilitated and given the tools to rejoin and be able to participate fully in their society. An eye for eye is a bit outdated for my liking and a prison term should not be seen as a payment for faults but as a system that helps our fellow citizens to gain the skills needed to be integral parts of their society. I believe voting, or rather having the choice to partake in participatory democracy, is a key part of this rehabilitation. As such, I personally welcome this move. How about you?

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Whose Line Is It Anyway?

By Euclides Montes (@Gatulino)

I’m sure by now we’ve all heard the horrible stories coming out of “Mexico’s drug war” or maybe heard about the street battles between different gangs trying to regain control of the drug business in Medellin (Colombia) and I’m sure that like me you have shuddered at the idiocy and senselessness of the situation.

Whilst this is happening, drug use in the West is said to have stabilised and it is not uncommon to find guests at different parties powdering their noses away without any care in the world. Although drug using still conjures up images of dirty flats and broken lives (see current Eastender’s plot line for proof!), this is also an image that is being challenged by my late 20s generation and this is a move that will certainly continue – lest some major cultural shift takes place – being pushed by the younger generations.

So, what’s my ponder? I read over the weekend an article by Antonio Maria Costa (executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) who in very diplomatic terms peddled the view that the decriminalisation of drugs would lead to ‘catastrophic consequences’ in the world. Although it cannot really be called scaremongering – after all, Mr Costa does make some very valid arguments about the way we as societies deal with drugs and their consumption – I found myself disagreeing with him in principle and fact in several passages.

So, rather than fisking his article here, I thought I’d open the floor with my ponder. Is it really such a bad idea to decriminalise drugs? I’m personally of the view that introducing a system akin to the one introduced by Portugal over a decade ago on a large scale in the West would help not only to curb the problem of addiction but it would help the countries producing the drugs to fight the production of what would be no longer illegal substances. This has been true for decades of tobacco and alcohol, why not just extend it to other substances? (it’s worth pointing out that Portugal’s system has been rather successful in helping the country to deal with the massive drugs problems it faced a decade ago)

I have rewritten this article a couples of times now because I really want to avoid the preachy tone many articles like this one usually take but I hope you will all forgive me one little indiscretion in that respect. After all, every line of coke that we in West consume at our parties and festivals contributes to the deaths, violence and poverty enveloping so many nations right now. So, rather than asking you to ‘stop and think’ before you use drugs, which would be a hypocritical stance by anyone who enjoys many of the other benefits that life in the West has to offer, I’d like to ask you to ponder about where you stand in terms of the argument for decriminalisation and help us bring the debate forward regardless of which side you fall upon. To quote Mr Costa, “are we ready to engage?”

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Need Not Apply

By Euclides Montes (@Gatulino)

We regret to inform you that your application for the position of XXX has been unsuccessful this time… More empty and generic pleasantries to follow.

‘Ah, and I had such a good feeling about this one’ he thinks. Just like he felt with each one of the 20 rejections that had come before. He moves to the kitchen where the cafetiere betrays the fact that he’s already overdone it with the coffee today.

He thinks about the pile of unopened envelopes on his dining table, the various requests for money going ignored for one day longer.

Time for a break, he thinks. Another cup of coffee and the newspaper online! The newspaper doesn’t help. “70 other people going for the same job”, “The toughest time to be a 20-something”, “Millions of jobs to disappear”. Voluntarily leaving his job to chase the ‘dream career’ suddenly doesn’t look too clever anymore.

He sighs.

‘No need to worry’ he reasons with himself. ‘Surely every generation has one of these moments. Although this really feels different. Who would’ve thought that after spending 3 years and thousands of pounds at university to gain a good degree, I was going to end being at the front line of a social struggle… a struggle to get a job!’ He smiles.

He trawls through the job sites again. Finds another position he likes. Another 8 page application. Another ‘equal opportunities monitoring form’. Another certain wait. Another certain negative email.

He ponders again on whether this should really be so. After all, creating news jobs instead of curtailing existing ones is surely a failsafe strategy to drive the economy out of recession? Surely pulling funds out of the job market is merely a cynical political move and it doesn’t take into account the people who are struggling to make ends meet?

He wishes he could get organised and write a few pamphlets and get people talking about this but he knows he can’t. He might be certain he won’t hear back from this other job application but he can’t afford not to apply.

He sticks his favourite artist of the moment on the CD player. He gets the coffee on the go again. Puts on his lucky hat on. Looks down on the page.

“NAME: ______________”

He sighs.

The Beautiful Game

By Euclides Montes (@gatulino)

I found myself in a peculiar position recently. As you might already be aware, there is some sort of football competition going on at the moment and being one of the many loony football fans around the world, I could barely contain my excitement. Having been born in a country whose World Cup experience is painfully risible, my allegiance has squarely been with the English team for the last decade or so, yet I found myself defending my position as an England supporter recently in conversation amongst a group of British-born fans. Peculiar indeed, in my opinion.

Of course there are the obvious – and to an extent reasonable - arguments of ‘why bother?’. With the English team it’s usually a matter of ‘we came, we saw, we stuttered, we went home with our tail between our legs’. The echoes of ’66 still ringing as loud and heavy as the vuvuzuelas in South Africa. We all know that we’re probably going to face Portugal or Germany at some point, and that Lampard will take that pivotal penalty kick and … well, I can even see The Sun headline already ‘HE BENT IT LIKE BECKHAM’. But surely that’s no reason to stop supporting our team. After all, being a glutton for pain and disappointment is an essential requirement for football fans everywhere, especially if you are an [insert your own team here] supporter. And besides, this could be our year after all!

Add to that the fact that some of our players will never make it into any of our Christmas card list and that the modern state of the sport mean that some of those disliked players still command ridiculous sums week in, week out and you can understand why some people have chosen to forsake the national team and support teams from other countries. As I said above, understandable.

However, one criticism I have seen gathering pace recently is that of football – and the World Cup at that – being a prejudiced enterprise in almost every sense and just by supporting it I should almost feel ashamed of myself. I am a very woolly liberal, I’ll be the first to admit but this argument really grates. I know that the sport is not perfect in any shape or form. Corruption, overpaid stars, a tacit allowance of homophobia, racism and sexism, Sepp Blatter. These are evils that continue to plague football to this day. However, the advances the sport has made to clean itself from these problems have been vast and commendable and to dismiss offhand the pinnacle of what is possibly the most universal sport of the 21st century through a very loaded and hackneyed viewpoint is surely not helpful and even prejudiced in itself.

I understand many people’s discomfort to cheer for England. Some of our symbols have been appropriated by racists and extremists and I have no doubt groups like the EDL are having their birthday and Christmas all come at once - especially with so many lies spreading like wildfire. But surely to shy away from reclaiming our team, our symbols, our right to feel proud of our nation without the tinge of jingoism, in short to cower away is not be helpful. It would instead give those who hold these extremist views an open field to claim ‘supporting the English team’ as well and that surely is a worse state of affairs? Unquestionably everyone can see that supporting doesn’t equate thuggery in any sense?

Besides, beyond all those arguments, football will always be in its most basic form a beautiful spectacle but it is a spectacle that can bring people together and it always has done so successfully. It is flawed and it has issues that need resolving but surely to dismiss it offhand is not beneficial in any way whatsoever? Hmm…

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Wouldn't You Rather Know?

By Euclides Montes (@gatulino)

Please forgive the shortness of this post. To be entirely honest, I’ve really been struggling to write it. I wasn’t sure whether to write a serious note or instead approach the question that’s got me pondering this week in a light-hearted way. In fact, I over thought it so much that at some point I even tried to write a poem! Thankfully for all of us, I remembered very quickly that, erm, I can’t write poetry.

This 19th of May is World Hepatitis Awareness Day and the reason that I’m finding this post a bit difficult to write is because this day is quite important to me. You see, I am Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C positive. I’ve had these two viruses affecting my life for over 13 years now. Half as long as I’ve been alive in fact! But that’s not really the point of this post. The reason I bring it up is because when I was first diagnosed, all those years ago, I underwent treatment for my illness and as far as I was aware, I cleared the viruses. A misdiagnosis that meant that for a whole decade I walked around completely unaware that these destructive illnesses were attacking my liver on a daily basis.

And that’s the problem with Hepatitis. By and large, it’s a very silent killer. It can go unnoticed for years and when left untreated, it can lead to very serious liver damage. It is estimated that at least 500 million people are infected worldwide by hepatitis, the disease costing the lives of over 1 million people every year. To put that in stark terms, one in twelve of us have a positive status, whether we know it or not. Even more worryingingly, some estimates suggest that one in every three health professionals in the western world might actually be affected by the disease. To give you my final fact of the post, that means that 3 times more people are infected by Hepatitis than HIV/AIDS, and yet public awareness of the risks is almost non-existent. And that’s where my ponder lies. Why aren’t talking about it more? Why is it that one of the biggest killers in our society doesn’t get the attention it deserves?

This lack of spotlight on the issue means that governments across the globe have neglected to fund research into cures for these diseases. Or even worse in my opinion, normal folk, like you and me, don’t know much about the disease. Something as innocent as sharing a toothbrush with someone affected by Hep C can mean that you have contracted this disease and what’s worse, you won’t even know it for years. Perhaps until it’s too late. I believe that’s definitely something worth talking about.

So please allow me to use this post to invite everyone to find out more about the risks hepatitis poses and if you think you might have been exposed to the viruses in any way, please get tested!

After all, in the words of a very bad poet:

With the stakes so high and the effort so low

I really have to ponder, wouldn’t you rather know?

Another brick...

By Euclides Montes @gatulino

The tickets were booked, the walking boots broken into, the guide to hiking in the Himalayas already packed and the excitement of flying to the mythical-sounding Kathmandu was starting to permeate everything I did, from watching television to doing the washing up. Even the forerunner to this post, the one that you were supposed to be reading whilst my plane took me to Nepal was already written but then my partner called me to give me the news: “they won’t give you a visa”. Ouch.

The curse of being a dangerous, dodgy Colombian strikes again!

It had been a very long time since I had been in that position. After living in the UK for well over a decade and travelling all around the world relatively problem-free, my nationality has come once again to mess up my plans.

But were they right to deny my visa straight away? Just because my humble passport isn’t red like most British passports are?

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that the issues are more complex and complicated than the simplistic ‘will-they-won’t-they let me in’ that I describe above. Countries need to control their borders and sometimes it is important to ensure that certain procedures are in place to make immigration [even for tourism] manageable. But, surely, cases need to be looked at individually and all rules must have exceptions?

Back in the 80’s and 90’s, I kind of understand why Colombians like me were flagged and, like most Colombians, I grinned and bear through the extra airport controls, both retaining the moral high ground [‘you distrust me but I’ll be Gandhi-like and bear it’] and knowing that they’d have to let you in in the end [‘because I’ve already jumped through all your hoops and I’m clean’!]. But do blanket restrictions like that really work? Or are they just counterproductive in the end? I mean what exactly led the Nepalese immigration officer on Friday to go into a frenzy of email activity that climaxed in the legendary [ok, legendary in my household] sentence “Dear ******, Foreigners cannot enter in Nepal.”. Since that’s obviously not true in the first place, is it really necessary?

Someone whose opinion means the world to me opines that in the big scheme of our lives, these things are insignificant. And I agree. 100%. This reminds me of the words of John Berger on endurance “Meanwhile, the answers abound in the multitudes’ multiple ingenuities for getting by, their refusal of frontiers, their search for holes in the walls… their recurring acknowledgement that life’s gifts are small and priceless. Trace with a finger tonight her (his) hairline before sleep” (from ‘Ten Dispatches About Endurance’).

And, on that note, I come back to my original ponder: Were they right to deny me entry to their country based simply on the basis of the place I was born? By doing that, we are closing the door on something that could’ve been beneficial to everyone, not only in terms of the experience, but also in terms of how we could grow together perhaps as a global community. Now we will never know. What’s the point of building so many walls around each other?

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The Sins Of Our Fathers

By Euclides Montes @Gatulino

It's been a bad couple of weeks for the Catholic Church. Defending itself from accusations of cover ups of child abuse – involving in some cases some of its highest dignitaries – the Church has taken some powerful knocks and not for the first time it has been called upon to explain itself.

Some in the atheist camp would have probably followed this news with more than a tinge of schadenfraude. But I imagine that most would have also shared my discomfort and sadness at each new development in the knowledge that each new crisis will almost inevitably mean another set of lives that will have been changed forever.

This had led me to ponder about religion and its place in society. Should we be pushing our society to a state of complete secularism where religion is simply a personal interest and its institutions regulated as any other public institution? Or would curtailing religious freedom perhaps lead us to miss out on the benefits generally associated with religion?

It’s a tricky argument and I’ve found myself at times getting angry and ready to take up some metaphorical weapons and fight against religion and what I perceive as all its evils; whilst at other times I find myself thinking about the good things religion has to offer and how sad a place the world would be for so many – some very close to me– without religion. It’s at this juncture where you join me and will hopefully be able and willing to help me ponder a bit more about this.

It is undeniable that religion can be, and by large is, a positive influence in people’s lives. Although it would be impossible to analyse religion as a whole in just a few lines, the significance of its role in helping people to deal with a variety of situations, from grief to imprisonment, is clear.

However, we only need to look to the scandals mentioned above, or the influence of the profitable right-wing Christian communities in America, or the extremist elements in Islam to see that it is also clear that religion brings into the social forum a large amount of negative baggage. And this is where my ponder lies. How can we find a balance between the religious and the social spheres?

So, should we be pushing our societies to a stage of overt and complete secularism? Where religion is reserved for the privacy of our own homes? In this scenario, religious institutions would be accountable to secular society and religious rites and customs would be informed by the accompanying secular values, rather than the other way around.

Alternatively, should we feel that the secularisation of our society is undermining some of the religious values that many have come to identify with Western civilisation?

It’s a tricky argument indeed but one that I feel can only be beneficial if everyone thought about it at some point in their lives. After all, whether it is faith schools or extremism, religion has been a regular feature in the arguments that have shaped the news over the last decade.

So, I open the floor and ask you, where should the balance lie between religion and society? Should we be pushing for an official inquiry into paedophilia in the Catholic priesthood in Ireland for instance, and expecting priests to be judged and held accountable just as any other person in a position of trust like a doctor or a lawyer would be judged? Or should we be giving the Church certain concessions and trust that there are enough internal systems of accountability to act as safeguards for everyone?

I invite you to think about this whilst we celebrate St Patrick’s Day and hopefully you’ll let me know what you think in the comments below.

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Sexy Kids

By Euclides Montes @Gatulino

Last week one of the strangest occurrences took place in my household: David Cameron came on whilst I was watching the evening news to talk about something and just as my partner was getting ready to stop me from throwing my shoes at the TV again whilst foaming at the mouth and shouting expletives, she actually found me nodding along to what the Etonian darts-lover had to say. And although it would be difficult not to agree with him on this one at face value, my ponderings this week have been giving it a good go anyway.

The issue out of which he was trying to build policies was what he called the ‘sexualisation of children’ from an early age. You know, giving little babies t-shirts with sexually explicit words on them, allowing young girls to wear padded bras or listen to Lilly Alen. That kind of thing. And that’s why I say that, at face value, it’d be difficult not to agree with him. I’m sure not many of us would like others to see our children as sexual beings and even more, we’d prefer our kids to feel free to be children for as long as they want before getting entangled in complicated world of sexual politics.

This was made clear to me a few months back at my nephew’s birthday when a similar issue came up. My partner and I [childless] bought him for his 3rd birthday the most beautiful miniature Arsenal kit. As he proceeded to put him on, I could see the other [child-bearing] guests dropping their humus-covered carrot sticks disapprovingly as we ran around playing in the playground. But you could see their point. Parents perhaps shouldn’t bring their own habits, likes and beliefs into their kid’s lives. In an ideal world, they should grow up in a well grounded environment where they’ll have enough tools to make their own decisions on their own. So whether it is an Arsenal kit or an ‘I’m a future WAG’ t-shirt, adults shouldn’t be providing children with these adulthood entrapments that could define their lives, right?

Well, not quite really. Childhood in itself is defined by a constant lack of self-awareness that leads to scraped knees, broken windows and that general sense of ‘I-don’t-give-a-fuck-ness’ that kids possess. Just by wearing an Arsenal kit, my nephew is not guaranteed to be an Arsenal supporter when he grows up. Heck, it doesn’t even guarantees he likes football! By that same token, allowing little girls to sing along to Rude Boy won’t necessarily define their lives and ensure that when they get old they become, erm, singers*.

So, what does this mean? Is this simply the politicisation of children-wear? Not really. I think that it’d be a far too harsh assessment on Mr Cameron’s words. I believe some of these concerns are very real and we need to be talking about them more often. But I don’t believe that moving to ban pre-teen magazines and chase the bib-making industries is the way forward? Surely it’s better for kids to be prepared for their adult lives by not being patronised and instead take control of the conversation? I don’t know about you but sexual-related stories welcomed me when I joined primary school and I believe that maybe I’d like to know what myths and facts my kids are picking up? And who should be in charge of that? Do we really want the government taking the lead? My gut feeling is that the responsibility for this one should land right on the parent’s laps. However, I reckon I could be persuaded.

Or maybe I’m really missing the point. By thinking that kids are either unaware or uninterested in the connotations of Rihanna’s song, I’m doing the argument a disservice and I should really be worrying a bit more about it?

*Particularly telling that coverage of this particular item of news focused almost entirely on ‘girls growing up too fast’ and I didn’t really see the sexualisation of boys covered anywhere. Hmm… I don’t have enough space here to run on one of my feminist rants now though so if you picked up on this as well, drop a comment below!

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Laughter On The Edge

Euclides Montes @gatulino

If, like me, you’ve welcomed with incredible excitement the news that Chris Morris’ new film
has finally made its debut in the festival circuit, or probably chuckled at one of Frankie Boyle’s frankly daring BBC-aired jokes. Or maybe found yourself bewildered by the nationwide parody response to that Ross and Brand prank call, then it probably means that, like me, you enjoy your comedy edgy, satirical and, dare we say, anarchic and reckless with an ironic heart. In other words, funniness with teeth.

You will probably also have noticed then that a backlash of sorts has been occurring over the last year or so against exactly this kind of comedy. And in its place is an increased appetite for middle-of-the-road, big stadium routines; whilst the critics of edgy comedy have been growing more vocal and becoming more influential, and this has got me thinking: are we perhaps experiencing a turning point in the comedy environment in the UK?

The signs would indeed indicate so. After all, Morris’ film hasn’t even been shown to most reviewers in the UK [at time of writing] yet the rumbles of the "film treading on the limits of what distributors and broadcasters might tolerate" are already doing the rounds. Russell Brand went straight away after Sachsgate and Ross is going now, a few months afterwards [after doing enough to salvage a much more ‘publicly-funded’ career than Brand]. And anyone who went to see one of Boyle’s warm up shows for Mock The Week will know that although he officially left the show to ‘pursue other projects’, his despair at knowing that a large part of his routine would never make the final edit probably played a pivotal role in his decision.

I understand that some will argue that rather than a shift in comedy, what this reveals is a shift in what is acceptable in television or radio [particularly on the BBC] with people more willing to complain and demand a more conservative kind of comedy. And I think they’re probably right to an extent. After all, live comedy is still going strong and catering to all tastes, with the likes of Richard Herring and Stewart Lee selling out dates throughout the country.

But what concerns me on a personal level is that if edgy comedy were to be entirely pushed off our screens and radios, it would inevitably affect the way the circuit behaves as tastes are indiscriminately shaped by whatever or whomever is being given the oxygen of publicity as the much-maligned yet incredibly successful Michael Mcintyre proves. So, I ponder again, are we really going through a game-changer in the world of comedy [at least in the UK]?

I certainly don’t know the answer to that and I doubt that anyone does for sure. But in an age when bigots are getting organised, religious extremism is on the rise and politicians keep treating us all as if we are bewildered children who’ve just experienced a magic trick, surely we want our comedy to be cutting, edgy, pushing boundaries and not gagged. The efficacy of comedy has been proven many times. From Chaplin’s Hinckle to Carlin’s Seven Words, from Pryor's riffs on race to the wave of right-on British comedians during the Thatcher era. Edgy comedy too has proven to be a successful tool when aimed at the right targets and allowed to flow. It’d be sad to see comedy toothless, without bite. Hopefully I’ll reread this ponder in a year or so and laugh at how wrong I was. Feel free to let me know what you think please.

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The Ballad Of The Naughty Noughties

By Euclides Montes @gatulino

What will be the feature that comes to define the ‘noughties’ whenever future generations cast their critical eye on us? Would it be perhaps the belligerence of our political and religious systems? Or, maybe, the Warholian accessibility yet ultimately transience of celebrity? Or, perhaps, we’ll be judged under a more positive light as the generation where the seeds of environmentalism finally took roots?

As this decade draws to a close, we’ve had lists aplenty organising in a neat order the greatest moments/songs/places/etc of the decade but I’ve been instead pondering about that one defining feature that will always be associated with the ‘noughties’. Regrettably I don’t have the advantage of a magic ball to look into the future but as an avid observer of the “western experience”, I personally believe that the feature that will define the ‘noughties’ generation will be its quasi-instinctual belief that everything they want is not only possible but easily achievable as soon as they want.

This Veruca Salt-like mind set has been the feature that has shaped most of this dying decade and I wonder where it will eventually lead us. The 'I Want It All, I Want It Now' mantra of the noughties reached its logical conclusion in the rather fitting financial crash that plunged us into an uncertain economic environment for the last part of the decade. What the crash also revealed was an almost caricaturised version of the inherent greedy nature of our society in the form of the fat cats bankers and financial gamblers that led our economy to the edge of financial oblivion and also exposed the ideological bankruptcy of our collective political and social systems.

I understand many will view the statement above as a rather critical assessment of our society, but we have reached a point where the ideological glue holding us all together has been stretched to breaking point, revealing its weaknesses and giving us in turn a massive opportunity, if not a mandate, to take the reins again and shape our society into a fairer and more equal one.

It’s said that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince humanity he didn’t exist. Similarly, the greatest trick that greedy and unchecked capitalism pulled was to convince us that we can have anything we want, whenever we want it and at the lowest monetary cost possible. Do you want your fast food burger and chips? Pay a couple of pounds for it, never mind the Amazon being destroyed to breed cows. Do you want a £1 top? Go to your high street chain and buy it, never mind who made it and under what conditions. Do you want to have 6, 8, 10 holidays a year? Book and check in online and while you’re at it, put it on your credit card, never mind the cost to the environment or the fact you can’t really afford it yet. Do you want an 8 figure bonus at the end of the year? Gamble with someone else’s money, never mind the OAP who’ll have to do with less money since you’ve just lost their pensions.

Make no mistake about this, we’ve all bought into the ‘Veruca Salt mind set and we are partially responsible for the state of where things are. We need, almost like children, to learn the value and worth of ‘no’. No, we shouldn’t always have everything we want. Sustainability shouldn’t have to be a life choice but instead it should be part of the way we interact with our surroundings. I believe we are at a pivotal stage in our development as a species where a few tweaks in our ideological mind set could set us in the right path. And here’s where the heart of my ponder lies. How can we achieve that? We are about to embark on a whole new decade, how do we want the future to judge us? And are we capable of change at a social level and move on from the ‘I want it all, I want it now’ mind set to a fairer one where ‘at any cost’ is no longer part of our vocabularies? Or am I perhaps a raving dog barking at the wrong tree? I don’t know. What do you think?

O, and Happy New Year!

 
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The Fear

by Euclides Montes (@Gatulino)

You’re on the night bus, on your way home after a night out on the town. A group of boisterous hooded teenagers get on the bus, perhaps having a laugh about something or other. You can feel the mood change in all of your travel companions. It darkens. The fear can almost be seen by the naked eye. These are no longer teenagers, you see, but they are instead the shadowy demons from Ghost who have come to claim your peace or maybe even your souls. Never mind that 9 out of 10* of all bus journeys will always end up as intended: just a bit late, with us iPoded Britons looking grumpily for a free seat. I could have used many other examples to highlight the explicit fear that I think permeates our society but in all of them, the result is always very clear to me. Even though the odds are stacked heavily against the things that scare us – be it gun crime, immigration causing an uncontrolled increase in our population or the PC brigade trying to ban Christmas – the fear of these things happening is here, it’s obvious, it’s pervasive and, I feel, it’s here to stay. And so, to my ponder. Is this fear understandable? More importantly, is there anything or anyone perpetuating the fear? And for what purpose?

Where to begin? For a start I believe that there are many anthropological/ sociological/ biological explanations of what ‘fear’ is but this post will not attempt to tackle these philosophical musings since the author cannot really claim to have the academic nous to put forward a definitive appraisal of the explanations! However, in the spirit of a good ponder, I have been wondering what it is that drives these waves of fear in our societies, for the simple reason that it’s as clear as day to me we are suffering from a terrible case of collective heebie-jeebies. Since we haven’t got too much space, and time is always a commodity, let me plant my flag and declare my stance on this issue.

I believe that as a species, our brains are wired into feeling fear. Fear of the dark, fear of the unknown, fear of heights. In short, fear of the dangers that in evolutionary terms have been with us for a while. We have now taken those fears and translated them, writing them into the complex socialised system we know as a society. We have understood them, given them fancy names and tried to master them but these fears are part of our biological imprint. They are part of what ‘we’ are. Now, here’s where my piece could be seen as a tad controversial because I believe that what’s different about this particular moment in our social history is that we have not only tried to master our fears but we have also managed to use them as tools of social control. This has happened to such an extent that we are at a stage where we are being constantly bombarded by fear-mongering from all directions with one single purpose: someone wants to sell us something. And in order to do so, our primeval ‘fear’ has been, and continues to be, exploited.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not simply talking about the McDonalisation of our private fears. After all, fear has always been used to sell almost anything that needs selling. A religious system, a dodgy war, a government campaign, the latest brand of toothpaste, a xenophobic ideology. In fact, this has become such a repetitive process that we have taken the next logical step in this tale and “The Fear” is now a permanent feature of our daily lives.

And who’s perpetuating this fear on a daily basis if not the media? I’m not saying they’re wholly responsible for this state of affairs but they are certainly liable for at least some of it. The newspapers and news channels that we go to get our daily dose of facts are suddenly now using this sales technique for their own agendas and that worries me.

If fear is part of our psyche and it is being exploited indiscriminately to sell whatever it is you’re supposed to be buying, where does the responsibility of the media start? This question arises because, in my opinion, this was a bad year [and maybe even a bad decade] for journalism. For every positive achievement by the media, there were 10 scaremongering pieces out there. For every Transfigura, there were your Dunblanegates and your racist fau pauxs. For every Aaronovitch, you had your Jan Moirs and your Littlejohns. All in the name of sale figures.

Why? It’s an issue that goes to the very meeting point of our modern society and our primeval fear. We have readily-accessible information everywhere and suddenly every click and every sale is worth a lot more than before. Sometimes I can’t help but feel that certain sectors of the media want you to be in a constant state of fear, scared of everything. It would seem that tales of teenagers killing are better for sales than reporting on fiscal deficits or Prime Minister’s Question Time.

Some of you might say that business is business after all but here is where my ponder hopefully becomes yours. Shouldn’t newspapers be more responsible? Shouldn’t we expect them to be a positive force in our society? Don’t get me wrong, ‘the fear’ came first in this ‘chicken and egg’ scenario but I believe that a few fat cats have made a omelette of it and the result is that suddenly our bearded neighbour becomes a jihadist, a vaccine becomes a poisonous arrow and our children become the goblins who haunt our trips back home from the pub late at night. ‘The Fear’ is here and here to stay. And now the weather...

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Things To Do While I'm Alive

by Euclides Montes @Gatulino

A couple of weeks ago I convinced myself that I was dying. Ok, it’s not as dramatic as it sounds, the sense of impending doom lasting for just about 5 minutes during an idle bus ride. But with my general clumsiness and medical history, the feeling was very real while it lasted. And the aftertaste it left got me pondering about life, achievements and all that. At 27, have I achieved everything I wanted to? Certainly not. So, what are those things I should, nay, must do before I actually kick the metaphorical bucket?

I should write a small disclaimer at this stage. If in the next few lines you’re expecting to read a great philosophical treatise on the futility of life achievements or the fragility of our existences, I must admit that you’d have more luck finding a YouTube clip of Jeremy Clarkson noisily suckling directly from the royal bosoms. I just ain’t that deep. Instead, I’m offering you a little glimpse into my crazy head and hoping it gets you pondering about (and planning for) those things you’ve always wanted to do.

I started by thinking about some of the greatest achievement in my life so far and the list looked like:

Keep a great relationship with my loved ones Check

Find the woman of my dreams and make sure she falls desperately in love with me Check

Run a marathon, raising £1000s in the process Check

Learn another language to high professional level Check

Grow my beard and hair until I look like a wannabe Messiah Check

Snog Margaret Thatcher Check

Ok, let’s stop there because this is quickly turning into a self-serving exercise, ego blosturbation if you will.

So, there are all of these things that I’ve managed to achieve already in my life, but the list that I wanted to draft was about the things I should get on with doing now that I’d had my new found sense of purpose thanks to my wonderful [read: rather trivial] epiphany.

So I visited the rich literature of ‘thing to do before..’ that abounds online and the choice is endless yet vaguely pointless.

Swim with dolphins? I think I’d rather chase squirrels in the park. Far cheaper and more rewarding.

Fly Concorde to New York? Erm.. Bugger, as late as Silvio Berlusconi’s sense of decorum.

Walk the Inca trail to Machu Pichu? Only if you promise to clear the country of all tourists but me.

Travel into space? Ta but most hardcore drugs give me a fuzzy belly.

In fact, it felt to me that most of these lists had been drawn up by travel agents during the times when we all used 10 pound notes to wipe our arses with. But to me, all these lists rang hollow and pointless. Should I really spend the best part of my year working like the Duracell bunny, saving all of my money only to fly away to Texas to have a go at cowboy ranching? Really? If I was actually dying tomorrow, would I be thankful that the last thing to flash before my eyes was the glimpses of a bunch of cows waiting in line for the slaughterhouse?

No, friends, that’s not for me. So, instead, I think we should draw a better list and maybe even post it to every single person at the age of 16. That way people aren’t going to be disappointed when visiting a casino in Las Vegas only to find that faux-Pharaoh selling them chips is actually a pissed off usher working like crazy so that he can fly to our very own London and go on the London Eye. Hmm.

I’ll start us off, shall I? Here are the first items in my new list and I promise to do all of this (or at least have a proper go at them) and I might even add a few of your suggestions if they’re really, really good.

Keep the first two of the list above going strong until the peaceful day I give up the ghost.

Write that novel I’ve been threatening the world with for so long now.

Become a master in the science of stilt walking.

Get 200 people to re-enact that Braveheart scene (you know the one) in Trafalgar Square with me.

Become best friends with Simon Pegg.

Never shrink from standing up for what I believe.

Age disgracefully and never allow the puerile and immature child in me to die.

Never say no to an ‘off the beaten’ track challenge.

It’s possible that I may be accused of lacking ambition, or some such similar charge, but to be honest I’m not sure I care. I firmly believe that life should not be defined by how many exotically-named facebook photo albums you have.

In fact, the reason that I’ve called my list ‘things to do while I’m alive’ is because we shouldn’t be hankering after these seemingly “amazing things” to do at some point in the future, but maybe it should instead be about finding the beauty and magic in every moment we have right now.

I grant you, it’s probably not possible to achieve your greatest conquest every day. But each day that passes could be a stepping stone toward getting there. That way, when you’re actually facing the grim reaper at the final stage you’ll be able to hand in a well worn body, a memory full of wonderful victories, a heart overflowing with happiness and a bright and wide smile that says ‘no regrets’.

Right, I better quit while I’m ahead lest I embarrass myself any further by sounding like Oprah’s Christmas Special. To come full circle, I reiterate that I hope this silly post gets you pondering about those things you’ve always wanted to do with your life. I’ll certainly get on with mine! Now, who’s up for some kilt-wearing hilarity in central London?

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Lament of a Woolly Liberal

By Euclides Montes @Gatulino

I’m worried. That in itself isn’t new, worrying is the favourite pastime of us woolly liberals. In fact, worrying is precisely the reason that I haven’t eaten anything Nestlé in years, or why I have never had a cup of coffee from Starbucks in my life.

But this is different. Overt racism, currently in vogue in its Islamophobic manifestation, is suddenly thriving in the United Kingdom [and The West at large] and it really worries me. Worse than that, I would argue that liberals are giving these formerly extremist views an almost free passage into middle ground politics. When fear mongering about Muslims ‘conquering Europe’s cities, street by street’ is not only accepted but praised and commentators are confident to make statements like ‘The Serbs figured [it] out... if you can’t outbreed the enemy, cull’em’, I worry that we have a serious problem on our hands. A problem compounded by a self-imposed liberal myopia that refuses to accept the prevalence of racism in our society.

No matter where you stand on the issue, it would be hard to deny that racists and racism are apparent through all levels of society right now. They are in the papers that we read, they are representing some of us in office, they are gaining a legitimate foothold in the national discourse. Heck, they are so confident that they’re taking to streets, in numbers.

And Islam seems to be taking the brunt of this xenophobic wave that’s washed up on our shores. For instance, the English Defence League (EDL) is slowly but surely becoming more confident in its actions, and its arguments are more honed to deliver a message through which Muslims are invariably cast as the proverbial boogie men. And what’s even more surprising is that whilst hundreds of EDL protesters marched through the streets, throwing Nazi salutes and racist chants, most of my friends [well educated folk and mostly woolly liberals like me] are unaware of the EDL's existence, let alone their actions. You could argue that the EDL by themselves aren't actually the main problem, the main problem is that the EDL are just the tip of the iceberg you see. Wherever they go, the ugly face of racism appears. They’ll be marching through the streets of Manchester later this week and the signs of yet another wave of racial attacks have begun propping up everywhere. Just last Friday, over 25 Muslim graves were desecrated in the Southern Cemetery in Manchester, an item of news that didn’t even get a couple of lines in any national newspaper. It worries me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we’re experiencing the dark days of fascism all over again but no matter how many times we joke about the way they look, how many times we dismiss their views as marginal, how many photoshopped pictures of their leaders sporting toothbrush moustaches we release on the blogOsphere, no matter how inconsequential we feel it is that some of them gained public office, dismissing it as nothing more than a ‘fluke’ or a ‘wake up call for the mainstream parties’. No matter any of these things, the racists are moving further and further towards the centre and they’ll openly be on our televisions soon. And soon we’ll have to hand over a large wad of taxpayers money to these elected members in public office for their campaigns. No, I’m not suggesting we’re experiencing the worst of fascist racism but it worries me how easy it has been for them.

And what worries me even more is how much of the responsibility for this sad state of affairs – where a person of Nick Griffith’s calibre is one of our faces in Europe and a legitimate political option in the United Kingdom – lies in the heart of the mainstream left. Many would argue that racism has always been there and that closet Mosleyians are just feeling more confident in expressing their views, making this fresh wave of overt racism a bi-product of complex social circumstances. But none of these arguments gets us off the hook. We cannot dismiss the intellectual bankruptcy in leftist flanks that has allowed this situation to arise.

Whereas previously the Griffiths, Caldwells and Manchester rioters of this world would’ve been met by a strong, committed left; confident in its own values, arguments and merits. Whereas before we could have seen off the challenge of a racist party in electoral contest, now, we have to sit and stare. Now, the only heated arguments we feel confident to hold are with other lefties about the tactical merits of ‘going green’. We’ve lost our intellectual backbone, if you ask me. Where are our EP Thompsons and our Battles of Lewisham? Even that vanguard of left-of-centre journalism The Guardian can sometimes get muddled up in the dark waters of centrist appeasing. You can go and blame Tony Blair for that. I blame all of us.

When faced with these great political challenges of the 21st Century, we’ve resorted to navel gazing. When faced with one of the greatest racist uprisings in our country in the last 50 years, we have resorted to the intellectual equivalent of ringing doorbells and running away. We are far too ready to shout ‘racist’ but not that willing to stand our ground and defend our point. This cerebral anaemia is not only unacceptable but it’s also untenable in modern society.

We need to be ready and willing to challenge racism wherever we may find it, whatever shape it takes. Dismissing someone’s fears over foreign appropriation of jobs or the country being ‘overrun’ by over-breeding, benefit-claiming asylum seekers as simply racist without instead providing a reasoned and sensible challenge to these views, is not only unhelpful but worse, it helps recruit supporters for those who are trying to stir up feelings of victimisation for the "indigenous population". Regardless of whether they are backed up by fact or reality, the concerns of the British working class people who are now turning their backs on the Labour party and are instead joining ranks with the likes of the EDL are genuine concerns that cannot, and should not be dismissed with a cry of racism. Our reluctance to face these issues head on has paved the way for a malignant racist minority in our society to successfully foster a culture of misinformation, rife with stereotypes and prejudice. It’s our duty to challenge them rather than dismiss them. Crying ‘racist’ only plays into the hands of the wolf.

This brings me back to my original point. Muslims are the main target of that part of our society where prejudice and xenophobia breed and prosper. And although I truly believe that the open hostility towards this important part of our society is purely symptomatic of a deeper, more dangerous and, suddenly, more confident and vocal racist streak embedded in the very fabric of western culture, I worry about the immediate consequences this may have, especially if the Left doesn’t come out of the wilderness with a revived sense of purpose and, more importantly, a stronger intellectual backbone. Until then, I worry about what might happen. But I guess I’d say that because I’m a woolly liberal, right?

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