Poor judgement

Gordon Brown has stated for the record that he is against any new legislation to make assisted suicide legal. He says that the government shouldn't "put pressure on people to end their lives". But that misses the point. Making a law stating that someone who is severely ill or disabled (but who is unable to commit suicide due to that illness or disability) can ask somebody else to help with the suicide without fear of legal repercussions, is simply not the same as coercing somebody to take their own life. Brown's opinion that they are the same thing reeks of political spin in an attempt to avoid getting too deeply involved in something that could have a detrimental effect on his popularity. It is not as if a law would result in people killing others and then using the defence of assisted suicide as an excuse to get away with murder! The law could easily be implemented around an institution like the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland where professionals and counsellors are on hand to ensure that the person wishing to die is in no way being manipulated into it before giving them the means to end it all. But of course, Gordon Brown stated these opinions when in discussion with Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor (who for some reason always insists that his middle name is reported in news stories!), the head of the Catholic Church in England; I should have known that the dubious morality was coming from the religious lobby and decadent scripture; it's just terribly unfortunate that the Prime Minister of a country is so easily manipulated himself. Perhaps Brown is worried that if he did pass an assisted dying law someone would convince him to commit suicide. Or perhaps politics and religion are just far too intertwined for the occurrence of any social progression.

Institutionalised Economic Repression

Economic repression is when people are forced to take on financial shackles in order to progress in society. For instance, if someone wants a house of their own they must take out a mortgage; if a person wants a university degree they invariably require a student loan. But once they have these things, their opportunities for doing what they want with their lives are significantly curtailed as they have to devote a large proportion of their time towards repaying those huge debts. This form of repression then becomes institutionalised when everyone simply takes it for granted as being 'the only way things are so you may as well just get used to it'. People are blinded to possible ideological alternatives and allow themselves to be shepherded by the greedy, the manipulative and the corrupt. It bothers me a great deal that I appear to be one of the only people in the whole world able to see this clearly; which is why I write about it now, in the extremely vain hope that one day somebody else will read this and understand.

Word of the day

Eunoia.
Not only is it the shortest word in the English language to include all five vowels, but its meaning is 'beautiful thinking'.

Irony For The Unintelligent

The band James have just revealed the sleeve design for their upcoming album release; it features a baby playing with some toy building blocks and a gun. It refers to a recent incident in the good ol' US of A where a ten-month old child was legitimately granted a firearms certificate! The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK have banned this design from being featured on any billboards for fear that it may encourage younger people to use guns...What?! I ask you, how do these authority figures in the ASA get superior positions of employment with mighty powers of censorship when they can't even understand the use of irony? To anyone with more than three brain cells to knock together it's clear that the James album is anti-guns and is in fact mocking the ridiculously liberal (or should that be right-wing Republican) American gun laws. And exactly how stupid are the British youth in the twenty-first century meant to be? Does the ASA truly believe that gun crime originates or is vitally encouraged by billboard promotions? The contradictory madness of society never ceases to amaze me: while pacifist James fans listen to the pleasantly inspirational tunes and consider an ironic front cover that they weren't allowed to see advertised beforehand, they can be secure in the knowledge that a ten-month old child somewhere in America may grow up one day and become a little bit unbalanced by perpetual social repression just in time for him to shoot up a school and blame it on people who will refuse to listen; because that's how gun crime really originates.

Word Of The Day

Iconoclast.

Beards, anyone?

I have recently tried to grow a beard. My god, the hysteria. As I work in an office, numerous people have been chastising me for looking unprofessional or messy. Even though I have blonde hair and it takes me slightly longer to go from the stubble stage to the beard stage than it would for most people, I still found it difficult to comprehend why my work colleagues had such an issue with it. Since when was facial hair a social sign of negativity. Apparently, with the air of vagrancy that I was demonstrating, I may as well have taken off my tie and wrapped it around my forehead! To the people in the world who care so much about public appearance rather than the individual personality underneath, I simply say, "Pay more attention to your own lives and stop concerning yourself with mine, I truly have better things to be thinking about."

Suck On This Humbug!

Reasons that I hate Christmas.
1. Commercialism. Now I'm certainly not gonna spout out religious sound bites that Christmas has lost its true meaning because 'Jesus died for us' bollocks. But there are some people (especially those with young children) who enjoy the magic and sparkle of Santa Claus bringing presents on his reindeer and all that jazz. Yet this notion has seemingly been eternally corrupted by the new spirit of Christmas: shopping! A pastime which people indulge in far too much anyway the rest of the year round becomes a national obsession in December; so much so that stress takes over any feelings of joy. It's almost as if (and sorry about the religious reference again) 'Glory to god in the highest' has been misconstrued with a simple spelling mistake to become 'Glory to god in the High St'! Which brings me on to my second point.
2. Child competition. Some mothers even fight in stores nowadays in order to get the last fashionable toy off the shelf for their beloved children who are apparently somehow better than anybody else's children. Perhaps if parents bought their children little gifts all the year round then they wouldn't feel so much pressure to perform at Yuletide. Or perhaps - and this is a big one, I know - children should be brought up to understand that money and materialism don't encapsulate all of the saving graces of this planet. Wow, wouldn't that be something, to have a child with a sense of morality regarding wealth.
3. Inane happiness. If I'm generally pissed off with the world then - believe me - a few baubles, a bit of tinsel, a fake tree and a fat man in a bright red suit drinking Coke ain't gonna make a damn bit of difference to me. But some people seem to think that Christmas gives them the right to lecture me for being too serious. It simply doesn't. And finally...
4. The same bloody simple-minded music. There are a few good Christmas songs, especially The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl's 'Fairytale of New York'. But most of them are just shallow attempts at cashing in on the festive season with very little real effort. I wish that Slade and Wizzard would fuck right off.
I'm looking forward to being visited by three ghosts this year; only I don't think that the ghost of Christmas past will have much good to show me.