And I'm back from my huff. Wasn't all that depression fun? It certainly gets things done.
A couple of the above sentences are false in some way. I bet you can't tell which ones.
The last week I've been busy doing things. Quite a bit of it is an attempt to fill my sad, echoing coffers with some money. I don't know if I want to go into that, though, as it's something that could be seen as cripplingly embarrassing – the way of making money, not being skint. Maybe one day I'll enlighten those who don't read my Twitter about that.*
In between the task of trying to scrape money from an unexpected source, I've been writing. At the moment I'm not writing full stories. I have a few ideas for novels and I want to hash out the plots first, kind of like thinking out loud, only on paper. I've also been pinning down ideas for a short story and a short comic script, at least one of which I hope will be allowed out into the world, as long as it's muzzled and neutered.
The rant from last week did have a result, though (thanks to everyone who showed some support, it was much appreciated). Someone mentioned that I should try to self e-publish at least one of the novels. Self-publishing is something I've done before and what I said about Lulu.com being a fucking disaster still stands, but e-publishing might be a little less painful.**
So, I looked through a couple of e-publishers and after a bit of deliberation, and a false start, I chose to try Kindle Direct Publishing.
Now, now, quiet down, your abuse is making my monitor vibrate. Let me explain.
It's all a matter of practicality. I dismissed Lulu out of hand because they are a bit shitty. I looked at Smash Words, and would have gone with them, but there was a major problem: fucking around with U.S. tax laws. I'd had similar problems when I attempted to publish the Crown Wearer novella through CreateSpace. You need to send forms to the IRS in order to get any money from U.S. companies and this seems to involve sending away a passport for ID.
Now, I'm dubious about this when it's my own country, but sending this stuff away, across the Atlantic, to vanish into foreign monolithic bureaucracy is even riskier in my mind†. Just thinking about it now makes my bowels quake. There's also the rather more practical problem that my passport's run out this year. So, while Smash Words was ideal for me in every other way, that knocked it out of contention, leaving me with Kindle Direct Publishing.
And this is going slowly. My money woes make it difficult for me to get front cover art, since (rightly), the artists I know who are willing to help me out are going to do their paying gigs before getting round to me. Which means waiting. I'm going to make myself wait anyway, because once it's all ready I'm going hold off and unleash it on a Monday. I don't know if that will help my chances, but it's got to be better than going, "Ah-ha! I've finished, now let's get it out into the world at three on a Sunday morning!"
All this is a really long way of saying, I'm going to publish a novel, as an experiment, through Kindle and if I get any success with that I'll put another novel that's failed to hook agents and publishers.
* Comment if you read my Twitter, go on, I fucking dare you.
** Or it could deepen my mortification and cement me as that writer you know who just can't quite make it. Either way you'll get a laugh, and that's really what's important, right, you sadist?
† If anyone knows of a an easier way to do it, I'd love to hear it.
Will
Showing posts with label cynicism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cynicism. Show all posts
Wednesday, 1 August 2012
Tuesday, 24 July 2012
A Tottering Pile
Well, look at that, another rejection. It's the frustrating grind that every writer knows, when you feel like you're putting your best work out there and it's just bouncing off the impervious skins of cynical agents and editors. I get it, not everything can appeal to everyone and so many people want to be writers, yada yada yada. There's been screeds and screeds written on that subject and frankly it's mostly padded out with platitudes and helpless shrugs of the shoulders. It's kind of inevitable, and when you find yourself doing it you feel like a helpless dick. No one profits from it and everyone walks away in a deeper depression, their faith in writing and publishing bashed a little more.
I've come to the realisation that a couple of the novels I've been trying to get published for while are never going to see the light of day. It's even more depressing than the tidal wave of rejections, when you realise the book you've written, read over, re-written, re-read again and re-written numerous times just isn't making an impact with anyone. For me, that's no impact whatsoever. There are people out there who get encouraging rejections. Good for them. I get the standard 'go away' or I get nothing. I'm going to stop there, because that conversation's a route to fucking suicide.
So what becomes of these sad, unwanted pieces of literary detritus? They sit and they moulder, in my experience. All that work and effort only to be chucked in a metaphorical pile to gather dust and dusty cobwebs. That pile of mine is getting big, padded out by the short stories and comic scripts that just can't find a home. It's like an animal shelter where no one even looks at the animals, let alone gives any hope they'll be adopted. I've been writing for a long time, churning out novels and short stories since I was sixteen. The first few novels I wrote, I knew not long after they were finished wouldn't go anywhere (they were hand written, for a start) so they've made a cosy base for the growing pile of pages I'm building up that no one gives any indication they want to look at.
I understand why no one wants to touch at least one of the books: it's derivative and messy, so really why I tried so hard to get it out there is beyond me. A whole lot of wasted effort right there. Maybe it's because I get pulled into the trap of looking at the worst that's out there and thinking, "If that can get published..." before sending off the sample chapters. This is, of course, tremendous folly and leads to disappointment and the writing of long-winded blog rambles.
The book that prompted this particular ramble is one I wrote a long time ago, and took quite some time to get from my brain and onto the page, thanks to life getting in the way in one way or another (although I did manage to write a Warhammer 40,000 novel in the middle, that will also never, ever be seen by anyone but me) and I feel quite bad that it won't get a chance. Partly it's because I waited so long to get it out and partly because it's horror of a particular length the outlets for are almost nil.*
I often think that I was born a decade too late. If I'd been writing around the early to mid eighties, when horror novels were de rigueur, then I might have had more of a chance, but, since the early nineties, the kind of horror I like to write, and read, has tailed off to a great extent. I know a lot of people who will tell you this kind of fiction is still going strong, but I don't really see it. Then I have to wonder if I'm looking closely enough.
I'm thankful to the small group of people who've taken a chance on my writing and given it a wider audience. It's great to see something that was once a raw twitch in the middle of my brain offered the opportunity to fly. I keep hoping that the accumulation of work will make people sit up and take notice of me and I might actually start to get some money for this crazy path I've put myself on.
So, here I sit, with a pile of unwanted manuscripts, like a terrible execution device of my own creation that's leaning over my head, always ready for that extra few pages that will finally make it topple and have done with me. And I keep playing the crazy, obsessed hermit, feeding it and creating my own doom.
* The first person to mention Lulu.com gets a punch in the throat while I fucking weep.
Will
I've come to the realisation that a couple of the novels I've been trying to get published for while are never going to see the light of day. It's even more depressing than the tidal wave of rejections, when you realise the book you've written, read over, re-written, re-read again and re-written numerous times just isn't making an impact with anyone. For me, that's no impact whatsoever. There are people out there who get encouraging rejections. Good for them. I get the standard 'go away' or I get nothing. I'm going to stop there, because that conversation's a route to fucking suicide.
So what becomes of these sad, unwanted pieces of literary detritus? They sit and they moulder, in my experience. All that work and effort only to be chucked in a metaphorical pile to gather dust and dusty cobwebs. That pile of mine is getting big, padded out by the short stories and comic scripts that just can't find a home. It's like an animal shelter where no one even looks at the animals, let alone gives any hope they'll be adopted. I've been writing for a long time, churning out novels and short stories since I was sixteen. The first few novels I wrote, I knew not long after they were finished wouldn't go anywhere (they were hand written, for a start) so they've made a cosy base for the growing pile of pages I'm building up that no one gives any indication they want to look at.
I understand why no one wants to touch at least one of the books: it's derivative and messy, so really why I tried so hard to get it out there is beyond me. A whole lot of wasted effort right there. Maybe it's because I get pulled into the trap of looking at the worst that's out there and thinking, "If that can get published..." before sending off the sample chapters. This is, of course, tremendous folly and leads to disappointment and the writing of long-winded blog rambles.
The book that prompted this particular ramble is one I wrote a long time ago, and took quite some time to get from my brain and onto the page, thanks to life getting in the way in one way or another (although I did manage to write a Warhammer 40,000 novel in the middle, that will also never, ever be seen by anyone but me) and I feel quite bad that it won't get a chance. Partly it's because I waited so long to get it out and partly because it's horror of a particular length the outlets for are almost nil.*
I often think that I was born a decade too late. If I'd been writing around the early to mid eighties, when horror novels were de rigueur, then I might have had more of a chance, but, since the early nineties, the kind of horror I like to write, and read, has tailed off to a great extent. I know a lot of people who will tell you this kind of fiction is still going strong, but I don't really see it. Then I have to wonder if I'm looking closely enough.
I'm thankful to the small group of people who've taken a chance on my writing and given it a wider audience. It's great to see something that was once a raw twitch in the middle of my brain offered the opportunity to fly. I keep hoping that the accumulation of work will make people sit up and take notice of me and I might actually start to get some money for this crazy path I've put myself on.
So, here I sit, with a pile of unwanted manuscripts, like a terrible execution device of my own creation that's leaning over my head, always ready for that extra few pages that will finally make it topple and have done with me. And I keep playing the crazy, obsessed hermit, feeding it and creating my own doom.
* The first person to mention Lulu.com gets a punch in the throat while I fucking weep.
Will
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Oh, I can't be bothered changing the channel...
“On the first day of Christmas TV gave to me,
Hours of depressing soap operas!”
It’s the season to be merry, have fun, relax (kind of…well not really, but it’s a nice thought, isn’t it?), overeat, over drink and sit down to watch some bad television. Y’know, the stuff that the channels have been hooting and hollering about since the end of October.
Every year, for those of us who watch any television, we switch on the goggle box whenever we manage to roll out of bed and after we’ve unwrapped our presents and we hope beyond reasonable hope that this year it will be different. This year our expectations will be, if not met, at least given something to chew on.
We will look out on the Arctic nightmare the outside world has become, this year we’re looking at heavy snowfalls and sub zero temperatures, and feel cosy as we curl up in front of the television.
(The bookies must be shitting themselves this year. Hoping that we’ve had all the snow we’re going to get in 2009. Y’see, snow lying on the ground doesn’t make it an official White Christmas, snow falling does.)
We want to be enthralled, entertained, made happy that its Christmas and that we don’t need to interact with our relatives, alternatively grinning at us like they want eat some vital part of our anatomy or scowling at us like they want to eat some vital part of our anatomy. Yes, you’ve given us some lovely gifts and I’m most grateful, honestly, but right now could you stop staring at me like you’re one of the cast from ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ and let me inure myself to the season with something mindlessly amusing flickered into my brainstem.
Yes, we get the odd gem of good telly. Things like ‘Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death’ and a good film from four years ago will be highlights, but they tend to be few and far between, stuck amongst things like the Queen’s Christmas Speech and any number of rank smelling dramas and television shows that wouldn’t be allowed on air at any other time.
I mean Noel Edmonds is a master of bringing us foetid television, the worst being (and I’m not the only person to note this and I may even have been pointed in the direction by Charlie Brooker, so what? This is the internet, I don’t no stinking original ideas!) ‘Noel’s HQ’ and ‘Noel’s Christmas Presents’. Horrific examples of celebrity guilt schmaltz that would make Frank Capra break out into hives.
Then you have the catering to the soap opera junkies. These poor, zombified souls have been steadily hooked more and more by these insidious dramas, going from being shown two or three nights a week to encroaching on every night. Now the vicarious living that’s offered by these programmes is ingrained in quite a portion of the UK population.
It probably wouldn’t be so bad if the portrayals of life in these fictional places was, y’know something akin to real life with ups and downs, but the wisdom of dramatic imperative for programmes like ‘Coronation Street’, ‘Emerdale’, ‘River City’ (which is only in Scotland, the rest of the UK can heave a sigh of relief about that) and the grand master of them all ‘Eastenders’ is that life for working class people is a never-ending slog from one kind of deep misery to another. The characters listlessly go through their joyless existences until they are swept off the mortal coil in some way so tragic that it stops you from wanting to get up in the morning. Unless a character comes into the show when they are older, they are unlikely to reach anything approaching old age – most of them are lucky if they make it out of their teens. And don’t even get me started on the miraculous metamorphoses that take place.
The grand high wizard of this crushing misery is ‘Eastenders’, a programme so morose that you’d be lucky to see an actor smile in a month, let alone an episode. These people live such uncertain, tragic and short lives that you wonder why anyone would want to live in Albert Square. Murder, rape, insanity, disease and disaster are staples of soap opera life, but only ‘Eastenders’ is innovative enough to pile it all onto the one character. Yes. Yes! They are visionaries in their desperation to keep the viewers coming to the show.
And the Christmas episodes are the jewel in the miserable crown of the ‘Eastenders’ year. A day when they have to double the depression. We are treated to an hour long episode filled with less Christmas cheer than in the city centre of Tehran.
Which brings the thought of what the writers would do if they could get away with it. I mean, they seem to be so keen to portray life with such grey joylessness, and bleak desolation, why not step it up, take it to the next level? I’ve been thinking about this and it wouldn’t be that hard. It would actually be cheaper than their normal offerings, whether they used special effects…or not.
It start like this: you open with the ‘Eastenders’ theme tune as normal, then you would have the characters all sitting in the Queen Vic. All of the tables and chairs have been removed so that everyone has to sit down. As you have come to expect, no one is smiling, but this time there is quite a concrete reason for this – they are all holding shotguns in their mouths.
Slowly the camera pans across their faces, the deadness created by their grinding lives shining there, perhaps a hint of pleading in the younger characters’ eyes. No one says a word, they just stare long and deep into the camera.
Then the person at the end of the line fires. And so it goes, they blow their brains, making a tune: ‘Jingle Bells’ in 12-gauge minor.
Once this spectacle ends the camera drifts across the bleeding, twitching corpses, showing us the growing pools and rivers of blood as they form on the wooden floor. In the background a baby cries and over the sound track plays Adagio for Strings. This continues for the rest of the hour-long running time, going into silence once the music stops, the only sound now the crying baby.
And now ‘My Family’.
Now, I know that this is what people want, but sometimes perhaps the channels might want to consider thinking a bit differently and have something fun, even funny for us to watch after gorging on our Christmas meal.
A nice dream.
And on that note I say Merry Christmas and, if I don’t feel another rant coming on beforehand, a very happy New Year!
Will
Hours of depressing soap operas!”
It’s the season to be merry, have fun, relax (kind of…well not really, but it’s a nice thought, isn’t it?), overeat, over drink and sit down to watch some bad television. Y’know, the stuff that the channels have been hooting and hollering about since the end of October.
Every year, for those of us who watch any television, we switch on the goggle box whenever we manage to roll out of bed and after we’ve unwrapped our presents and we hope beyond reasonable hope that this year it will be different. This year our expectations will be, if not met, at least given something to chew on.
We will look out on the Arctic nightmare the outside world has become, this year we’re looking at heavy snowfalls and sub zero temperatures, and feel cosy as we curl up in front of the television.
(The bookies must be shitting themselves this year. Hoping that we’ve had all the snow we’re going to get in 2009. Y’see, snow lying on the ground doesn’t make it an official White Christmas, snow falling does.)
We want to be enthralled, entertained, made happy that its Christmas and that we don’t need to interact with our relatives, alternatively grinning at us like they want eat some vital part of our anatomy or scowling at us like they want to eat some vital part of our anatomy. Yes, you’ve given us some lovely gifts and I’m most grateful, honestly, but right now could you stop staring at me like you’re one of the cast from ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ and let me inure myself to the season with something mindlessly amusing flickered into my brainstem.
Yes, we get the odd gem of good telly. Things like ‘Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death’ and a good film from four years ago will be highlights, but they tend to be few and far between, stuck amongst things like the Queen’s Christmas Speech and any number of rank smelling dramas and television shows that wouldn’t be allowed on air at any other time.
I mean Noel Edmonds is a master of bringing us foetid television, the worst being (and I’m not the only person to note this and I may even have been pointed in the direction by Charlie Brooker, so what? This is the internet, I don’t no stinking original ideas!) ‘Noel’s HQ’ and ‘Noel’s Christmas Presents’. Horrific examples of celebrity guilt schmaltz that would make Frank Capra break out into hives.
Then you have the catering to the soap opera junkies. These poor, zombified souls have been steadily hooked more and more by these insidious dramas, going from being shown two or three nights a week to encroaching on every night. Now the vicarious living that’s offered by these programmes is ingrained in quite a portion of the UK population.
It probably wouldn’t be so bad if the portrayals of life in these fictional places was, y’know something akin to real life with ups and downs, but the wisdom of dramatic imperative for programmes like ‘Coronation Street’, ‘Emerdale’, ‘River City’ (which is only in Scotland, the rest of the UK can heave a sigh of relief about that) and the grand master of them all ‘Eastenders’ is that life for working class people is a never-ending slog from one kind of deep misery to another. The characters listlessly go through their joyless existences until they are swept off the mortal coil in some way so tragic that it stops you from wanting to get up in the morning. Unless a character comes into the show when they are older, they are unlikely to reach anything approaching old age – most of them are lucky if they make it out of their teens. And don’t even get me started on the miraculous metamorphoses that take place.
The grand high wizard of this crushing misery is ‘Eastenders’, a programme so morose that you’d be lucky to see an actor smile in a month, let alone an episode. These people live such uncertain, tragic and short lives that you wonder why anyone would want to live in Albert Square. Murder, rape, insanity, disease and disaster are staples of soap opera life, but only ‘Eastenders’ is innovative enough to pile it all onto the one character. Yes. Yes! They are visionaries in their desperation to keep the viewers coming to the show.
And the Christmas episodes are the jewel in the miserable crown of the ‘Eastenders’ year. A day when they have to double the depression. We are treated to an hour long episode filled with less Christmas cheer than in the city centre of Tehran.
Which brings the thought of what the writers would do if they could get away with it. I mean, they seem to be so keen to portray life with such grey joylessness, and bleak desolation, why not step it up, take it to the next level? I’ve been thinking about this and it wouldn’t be that hard. It would actually be cheaper than their normal offerings, whether they used special effects…or not.
It start like this: you open with the ‘Eastenders’ theme tune as normal, then you would have the characters all sitting in the Queen Vic. All of the tables and chairs have been removed so that everyone has to sit down. As you have come to expect, no one is smiling, but this time there is quite a concrete reason for this – they are all holding shotguns in their mouths.
Slowly the camera pans across their faces, the deadness created by their grinding lives shining there, perhaps a hint of pleading in the younger characters’ eyes. No one says a word, they just stare long and deep into the camera.
Then the person at the end of the line fires. And so it goes, they blow their brains, making a tune: ‘Jingle Bells’ in 12-gauge minor.
Once this spectacle ends the camera drifts across the bleeding, twitching corpses, showing us the growing pools and rivers of blood as they form on the wooden floor. In the background a baby cries and over the sound track plays Adagio for Strings. This continues for the rest of the hour-long running time, going into silence once the music stops, the only sound now the crying baby.
And now ‘My Family’.
Now, I know that this is what people want, but sometimes perhaps the channels might want to consider thinking a bit differently and have something fun, even funny for us to watch after gorging on our Christmas meal.
A nice dream.
And on that note I say Merry Christmas and, if I don’t feel another rant coming on beforehand, a very happy New Year!
Will
Thursday, 10 December 2009
In which I talk POLITICS...
In light of the pre-budget report being released yesterday I thought I’d have a political rant. A vaguely informed, rambling rant at that. Read on and be entertained at my lack of informed opinion. Hurrah!
Y’know I stopped expecting any sanity from our esteemed government about ten minutes after I played my part in voting that grinning sociopath fuck Tony Blair and his band of Tory Mark II scumfucks (okay, I’m sure they’re not all fuckers in the current incarnation of the Labour Party, but the majority of the cabinet probably couldn’t be trusted to look after a baby without smothering it) into power. Yes, after almost twenty years of continuous Tory rule, most of it under the crushing madness of Margaret Thatcher and the stripping away of public services to private firms I thought, this Blair bloke can’t be that bad.
Oh, the naïveté. I was young and desperate for some kind of hope for my future and my well-being. Cynical hindsight now tells me that I should have smelled something rotten from the moment that the rebranded New (yes, it would be too awful if it was old Labour, fuck having even a shadow of principle there) Labour used that abomination of a song 'Things Can Only Get Better’ and stormed into government in 1997. They crushed the Tories that year.
And crushing things has become the motif of their time in power. First thing to get crushed was the possibility that your average worker would get a fair shake: we got a minimum wage that was multi-tiered. As ever those under twenty-one were entitled to less than those over that age. I can see those under eighteen getting less, because, in general they have less responsibilities than an eighteen year old. As soon as you’re eighteen you are an adult and should be paid as such, instead this wage band is given the insultingly patronising monicker ‘youth rate’. Not that the over twenty-one minimum wage was any great shake. It still isn’t being just under six pounds an hour, a third of which is taken away in tax right away and then you have all your bills and such. Working at this rate you’re lucky if you have anything left.
Yes, I know that people in other countries have it much worse, but I get the feeling that if any UK government could bring our wages down to those rates they’d do it in a heartbeat.
Let’s be honest, the minimum wage was influenced by all those nice, faceless, monolithic businesses that New Labour wanted to stay friends with. Not that it worked. As soon as most of these corporations hear the words ‘human rights’ they up sticks and find a nice third world dictatorship that they can leech from and give those who run them – each already wealthier than all of the working class in Britain combined – those million pound/dollar/euro bonuses that they so require. Really, really, they’ll be in the poor house if they are brought down to their last million.
Before I go too far into the world of the conspiracy theorist there, let’s mention the mess New Labour have made of the NHS. Or rather let’s talk about how they’ve gone about continuing what the Tories had done all through their reign to undermine and damage something that was once the envy of the world. Those efficiencies that New Labour are so fond of has left large areas without local hospitals and those that are left so disease-ridden (thanks to the fantastic idea of having private cleaning firms take over, always a good idea that) that people are afraid to go in because they perceive that there’s every chance they’ll never come out again.
I mean, there’s a lot more, but those are the most prominent things that I can think of right now.
And we come twelve years later, New Labour is limping along after being caught in many lies and a switch to a Prime Minister with all the charisma of a landed monk fish. We also come to the end of a cycle that was also started by the Tories and allowed to continue unabated by our rosy red saviours: The Markets. I hope it’s the end of a cycle.
The banks and The Markets. One should have been monitoring the other, y’know, instead one cloned the other. As we all know this didn’t turn out for the better, as the banks took on the no-hold-barred money-making ethos of The Markets. The wild, testosterone-fuelled grabbing for wealth and growth was adopted by the bank and things didn’t work out well. Especially, as I’ve already said, the banks were supposed to be watching over the fucking Markets!
Y’see the markets, and capitalism in general, seems to work, as far as I can tell, on the principle that growth can go infinitely, that there are resources in the world to be plundered forever. Which is strange as they seem to only hold one ‘resource’ dear: money. Something artificially created by banks to be infinite, but based on real things. Once upon a time anyway. Now it appears to all the world that money’s based on, well, more money. Which is more than a wee bit weird.
This came to an understated head last year (2008, for those people in the future) when a bunch of investments that were never going to pay back started a bit of a domino effect. This started a ‘banking crisis’. Then a ‘credit crunch’ before the governments of the world held up their hands and said, “We might be in a bit of a recession…”
“…That’s the worst since 1929. And half of you are going to lose your jobs. Maybe we shouldn’t have stripped away all those regulations that were designed to stop this happening again. Oopsie. We’ll fix this. Honest.”
They said a lot, oh yeah. Course they would. Standing, pounding on podiums saying, as people had said almost eighty years before (someone hear an echo?), that this can’t be allowed to happen again. And proceeded to wrist-slap their way through these multinationals and banks, who, in public whined about the restrictions placed on them, when they really had to be laughing their arses off that they’d gotten away with (thanks to those pesky governments, har har).
Cos if the banks were so scared of government reprisals why are they still giving their high-ups ridiculous bonuses? When there are people reduced to poverty and either no longer in their home or afraid that it’s going to be repossessed. They didn’t even learn any lessons from the financial institutions that sank because of their own greed.
And this brings me, finally, to the pre-budget report. In which there is another tiny tap to the wrists of the bankers and then it’s time to look at punishing the public. Oh yes, we had the temerity to have no idea of what the bankers and our governments were doing (while they hid it) so now the whip of budget cuts and tax increases are now on the horizon. Supposedly to tax those of higher incomes, but will only hammer the same people living on the breadline who always take the brunt of these things.
The prevailing theory is this is to win them votes for the general election, by people who intone this as though it should be accepted. We mere mortals couldn’t do better. Perhaps, but at least the politicians could at least be a bit more subtle about it instead of pulling down our collective pants and ordering us to bend over. Or even soften the blow to the people they supposedly represent.
But then British politicians don’t have any loyalty to the people of the country, their first loyalty is to the party.
And all this has prompted their brethren on the right to start screaming, “We’re the only ones who can save you!”
Excuse me:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!
Okay. This is going to happen. I have no illusions about this. The electorate are so blinded to any other parties that they believe that the Tories are the only ones to replace Labour. It’s like forgetting what a bear looks like after it spent a nice long while mauling you. The Tories set this all in motion during the eighties! You’d have to be mad to think that they weren’t going to come in and slink all this back in.
A party that referred, I’m told, to the lower employees in the public sector as ‘minions’. Tells you everything you need to know about their mindset, really.
There are other parties in the UK, but most of them don’t get much of a chance, thanks to the media in the country. Aren’t they nice for showing us all the options? So people think they’re left with just Labour and Conservative; and often start giggling if you mention the Liberal Democrats. Here in Scotland we also have the SNP, Wales has Plaid Cymru and Northern Ireland has a bunch of parties. But the central government is still in Westminster.
After another stinging slap in the face by our government, I’m left wondering what can be done. I mean the only way to become an MP now is to have gone to university and studied politics, so we now have a bunch of dead-eyed, indoctrinated creatures whose whole life is politics and they’ve never really done anything else. Doesn’t seem right does it? A nice locked system for those privileged few who know the right people. I know it’s always had that aspect but with this new wrinkle it’s harder for anyone outside of the loop to get in.
I think I’ll just sit and wait for Christmas and New Year, hoping that it will all be much better once the first of January rolls around.
Will
Y’know I stopped expecting any sanity from our esteemed government about ten minutes after I played my part in voting that grinning sociopath fuck Tony Blair and his band of Tory Mark II scumfucks (okay, I’m sure they’re not all fuckers in the current incarnation of the Labour Party, but the majority of the cabinet probably couldn’t be trusted to look after a baby without smothering it) into power. Yes, after almost twenty years of continuous Tory rule, most of it under the crushing madness of Margaret Thatcher and the stripping away of public services to private firms I thought, this Blair bloke can’t be that bad.
Oh, the naïveté. I was young and desperate for some kind of hope for my future and my well-being. Cynical hindsight now tells me that I should have smelled something rotten from the moment that the rebranded New (yes, it would be too awful if it was old Labour, fuck having even a shadow of principle there) Labour used that abomination of a song 'Things Can Only Get Better’ and stormed into government in 1997. They crushed the Tories that year.
And crushing things has become the motif of their time in power. First thing to get crushed was the possibility that your average worker would get a fair shake: we got a minimum wage that was multi-tiered. As ever those under twenty-one were entitled to less than those over that age. I can see those under eighteen getting less, because, in general they have less responsibilities than an eighteen year old. As soon as you’re eighteen you are an adult and should be paid as such, instead this wage band is given the insultingly patronising monicker ‘youth rate’. Not that the over twenty-one minimum wage was any great shake. It still isn’t being just under six pounds an hour, a third of which is taken away in tax right away and then you have all your bills and such. Working at this rate you’re lucky if you have anything left.
Yes, I know that people in other countries have it much worse, but I get the feeling that if any UK government could bring our wages down to those rates they’d do it in a heartbeat.
Let’s be honest, the minimum wage was influenced by all those nice, faceless, monolithic businesses that New Labour wanted to stay friends with. Not that it worked. As soon as most of these corporations hear the words ‘human rights’ they up sticks and find a nice third world dictatorship that they can leech from and give those who run them – each already wealthier than all of the working class in Britain combined – those million pound/dollar/euro bonuses that they so require. Really, really, they’ll be in the poor house if they are brought down to their last million.
Before I go too far into the world of the conspiracy theorist there, let’s mention the mess New Labour have made of the NHS. Or rather let’s talk about how they’ve gone about continuing what the Tories had done all through their reign to undermine and damage something that was once the envy of the world. Those efficiencies that New Labour are so fond of has left large areas without local hospitals and those that are left so disease-ridden (thanks to the fantastic idea of having private cleaning firms take over, always a good idea that) that people are afraid to go in because they perceive that there’s every chance they’ll never come out again.
I mean, there’s a lot more, but those are the most prominent things that I can think of right now.
And we come twelve years later, New Labour is limping along after being caught in many lies and a switch to a Prime Minister with all the charisma of a landed monk fish. We also come to the end of a cycle that was also started by the Tories and allowed to continue unabated by our rosy red saviours: The Markets. I hope it’s the end of a cycle.
The banks and The Markets. One should have been monitoring the other, y’know, instead one cloned the other. As we all know this didn’t turn out for the better, as the banks took on the no-hold-barred money-making ethos of The Markets. The wild, testosterone-fuelled grabbing for wealth and growth was adopted by the bank and things didn’t work out well. Especially, as I’ve already said, the banks were supposed to be watching over the fucking Markets!
Y’see the markets, and capitalism in general, seems to work, as far as I can tell, on the principle that growth can go infinitely, that there are resources in the world to be plundered forever. Which is strange as they seem to only hold one ‘resource’ dear: money. Something artificially created by banks to be infinite, but based on real things. Once upon a time anyway. Now it appears to all the world that money’s based on, well, more money. Which is more than a wee bit weird.
This came to an understated head last year (2008, for those people in the future) when a bunch of investments that were never going to pay back started a bit of a domino effect. This started a ‘banking crisis’. Then a ‘credit crunch’ before the governments of the world held up their hands and said, “We might be in a bit of a recession…”
“…That’s the worst since 1929. And half of you are going to lose your jobs. Maybe we shouldn’t have stripped away all those regulations that were designed to stop this happening again. Oopsie. We’ll fix this. Honest.”
They said a lot, oh yeah. Course they would. Standing, pounding on podiums saying, as people had said almost eighty years before (someone hear an echo?), that this can’t be allowed to happen again. And proceeded to wrist-slap their way through these multinationals and banks, who, in public whined about the restrictions placed on them, when they really had to be laughing their arses off that they’d gotten away with (thanks to those pesky governments, har har).
Cos if the banks were so scared of government reprisals why are they still giving their high-ups ridiculous bonuses? When there are people reduced to poverty and either no longer in their home or afraid that it’s going to be repossessed. They didn’t even learn any lessons from the financial institutions that sank because of their own greed.
And this brings me, finally, to the pre-budget report. In which there is another tiny tap to the wrists of the bankers and then it’s time to look at punishing the public. Oh yes, we had the temerity to have no idea of what the bankers and our governments were doing (while they hid it) so now the whip of budget cuts and tax increases are now on the horizon. Supposedly to tax those of higher incomes, but will only hammer the same people living on the breadline who always take the brunt of these things.
The prevailing theory is this is to win them votes for the general election, by people who intone this as though it should be accepted. We mere mortals couldn’t do better. Perhaps, but at least the politicians could at least be a bit more subtle about it instead of pulling down our collective pants and ordering us to bend over. Or even soften the blow to the people they supposedly represent.
But then British politicians don’t have any loyalty to the people of the country, their first loyalty is to the party.
And all this has prompted their brethren on the right to start screaming, “We’re the only ones who can save you!”
Excuse me:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!
Okay. This is going to happen. I have no illusions about this. The electorate are so blinded to any other parties that they believe that the Tories are the only ones to replace Labour. It’s like forgetting what a bear looks like after it spent a nice long while mauling you. The Tories set this all in motion during the eighties! You’d have to be mad to think that they weren’t going to come in and slink all this back in.
A party that referred, I’m told, to the lower employees in the public sector as ‘minions’. Tells you everything you need to know about their mindset, really.
There are other parties in the UK, but most of them don’t get much of a chance, thanks to the media in the country. Aren’t they nice for showing us all the options? So people think they’re left with just Labour and Conservative; and often start giggling if you mention the Liberal Democrats. Here in Scotland we also have the SNP, Wales has Plaid Cymru and Northern Ireland has a bunch of parties. But the central government is still in Westminster.
After another stinging slap in the face by our government, I’m left wondering what can be done. I mean the only way to become an MP now is to have gone to university and studied politics, so we now have a bunch of dead-eyed, indoctrinated creatures whose whole life is politics and they’ve never really done anything else. Doesn’t seem right does it? A nice locked system for those privileged few who know the right people. I know it’s always had that aspect but with this new wrinkle it’s harder for anyone outside of the loop to get in.
I think I’ll just sit and wait for Christmas and New Year, hoping that it will all be much better once the first of January rolls around.
Will
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