Comment Archive:
Friday 21st January 2005
Mobile Phone Violence And Conspiracy Theories
In this terrible age of drive-by desensitivity and GBH glamour it is a rare thing for me to find myself so sickened and enraged as I was last Wednesday evening. The cause? A news item on one of the early evening TV news bulletin shows. The story? Not as you would imagine the bullying and mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by the British Army - though of course yes, this is appalling but what sort of behaviour do you expect from soldiers? – but a story that was in fact a lot closer to home...
Apparently a snide and ugly new craze is sweeping The London Underground and public bus service. It appears that gangs of teenagers, armed with the latest video phone technology are finding it entertaining to film themselves punching fellow commuters in the face before disappearing into a milkshake fuelled cloud of baseball caps and crap sneakers [they’re not sneakers, damn you – they’re pumps! Pumps!] leaving their hapless victims in shock, pain and a good deal of distress. It would also appear that women and children are not at all exempt from this contemptuous activity but are in fact considered worthy targets.
Just what kind of pathetic and spit-worthy animals are we as a society breeding here?
Bullying, of course, isn’t a new thing; in fact it seems to be an ancient and depressingly intrinsic part of our very nature. But that doesn’t mean we should accept it or resist efforts to see it stamped out. But usually bullying is restricted to people that you know or associate with – your own peer group or people that you come into regular contact with. This new occurrence, however, has crossed some worrying boundaries. These teenage gangs are not only attacking complete strangers but often are attacking people a lot older than them. Aside from demonstrating an immense lack of respect for fellow members of society it also demonstrates a complete [and utterly stupid] absence of fear...
Not only are these puffa-jacketed arseholes totally unafraid of any kind of reprimand through the machinery of the Law but they also seem to totally disregard the possibility of a more personal reckoning being meted out to them. How long will it be before one of their randomly chosen victims turns out to be a psychopath far more vicious and “hard” than even they aspire to be? How long before some punched and bleeding commuter rises up in furious retaliation and twats one of these slack-lipped little gobshites round the head with a briefcase, or an umbrella or a machete that they just happen to keep stashed away in their back pocket in case of emergencies? The possibility isn’t all that outlandish. And God forgive me, but having seen footage of these nasty little crud-heads at work part of me actually wishes that this does happen - and that their precious mobile phones get a good stamping on too.
Then of course they’ll revert back to being exactly what they are – stupid little kids. Bewailing their broken phones/bleeding noses, complaining vociferously about how unfair it is that they’ve been treated this way and loudly vindicating their own rights to travel unmolested – the very rights, in fact, that everybody is entitled to and that they’ve just ridden roughshod over. Twats.
But hey. I’m already fending off accusations of being anti-youth and that honestly isn’t the case. At the end of the day these idiots are just kids and clearly beating them to within an inch of their own questionable fashion-sense isn’t the answer (as enjoyable as this might be – only joking). But tackling the age-old problem of bullying IS. Because that is all this behaviour is. It’s not big. It’s not cool. It’s just bullying. Boring. Clichéd. Predictable. Transparent. Depressing. Bullying.
Bullying has its roots in a lot of societal problems – peer pressure, fear, lack of self-worth, inequality, bigotry, emotional dysfunctionality... the list is long as it is depressing and this is not the arena in which to explore it. But there is one item on the list that is always overlooked. The one that is forgotten about because it is the most obvious. And it is the one that we are ALL – every one of us - susceptible too:
Example.
As a race, right from our earliest years, we learn by example. We copy what we see; we mimic speech, movement, opinions and adopt codes of behaviour that we see other people employing. Usually people who hold power. And by emulating them we unconsciously strive to acquire the power that they appear to have over us.
Cue footage of British troops beating defenceless Iraqi prisoners. Cue photographs and testimonies revealing the bullying of Iraqi troops by American soldiers. Cue the fact that America – at the moment the world’s only plausible super-power – seems to think it has the manifest right to invade the sovereignty of any country in the world and dismantled its government, kill its people and batter the survivors into adopting the American way of life... bullying on a global scale. America has done this for years (it never needed 9-11 to justify its actions before). So have we. So has every country. But hey, what do you expect from soldiers, right? Except such behaviour is ultimately sanctioned by governments and politicians not majors and generals. Governments and politicians who - sometimes with our votes, sometimes without – have absolute power over us and control our lives in thousands of insidious and secret ways. Regardless of how they attain their power we keep them where they are either through delusion or complacency.
And before I get emails defending America’s actions let’s keep the facts as they are now known in sight. Iraq made no move to invade either America or Britain – we were not under threat. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There are no links between Saddam Hussein and Al Q’aida. Yes Saddam was a bully. But does that mean it’s ok for us to be bullies too? Given our actions, I guess it must do.
Like I said, bullying is an ancient and depressingly intrinsic part of our very nature. But it is strange that the footage of the West’s misdemeanours in Iraq should touch me far less than the behaviour of a few gum-chewing yobbos here at home. After all what is the difference? They’re using technology to cower their opposition – even to revel in their victories – just like our boys in the Middle East. Think of all the hi-tech arms that the West now employs in modern warfare. Think of all the hi-tech programming that goes into computer games that emulate the Second World War, Vietnam, etc. How long before the Iraq war is on the top shelf of Game or Woolworth? And if we’re buying into the games, aren’t we buying into the ethos? Aren’t we accepting that might is right?
Cue a gang of kids on the underground armed with a video phone and curled right fists.
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Friday 7th January 2005
Happy New Year My Arse
Call me a cynic but I’ve never been one to take an unquestioningly jovial ride on the bandwagon of buffoonery that is the New Year’s Eve celebration. For me there is something irritatingly inane about the whole premise of suddenly having to feel “loved up” and idiotically hopeful just because one year ends and another begins. I mean isn’t it down right laughable that it’s become de rigueur in Western society to suddenly act like a coke-head on 31st December and drink yourself into bed with the kind of person that on any other night of the year you normally wouldn’t dream of touching with a ten foot barge pole? There’s something depressingly desperate about it. Oh God, oh God, it’s New Year’s Eve, I absolutely HAVE to get out and have a good time, get muntered, get laid, prove to the world I’m not some Billy-no-mates sitting at home watching the Top One Hundred Fish Pie Adverts Of 2004 on the telly, waiting for the chimes of midnight to kick in...
Get a life! This desperate need to appear ecstatic and ferociously philanthropic just doesn’t ever ring true. If anything I view such New Year acolytes with the same suspicion [and derision] that I would normally reserve for furtive looking men who linger with intent around public toilets and alleyways at the back of nightclubs. There’s nothing noble or wholesome about such behaviour. At best it’s merely a pathetic attempt to appear “one of the crowd” and at worst it’s a callous machination designed to take advantage of the inebriated state of a co-celebrant and get yourself that all important end-of-year shag.
I mean for Christ’s sake! It’s like the end-of-year shag is some sort of kite-mark or badge of approval that proves you haven’t been an abject disappointment for the previous 364 days! Somehow getting a drunken leg-over redeems all of your miserable misdemeanours and failures of the last year and magically transforms you into some sort of super party-being that other people will want to know and be friends with forever more.
With the exception of the poor vessel that you slept with of course who views you the morning after with the same excruciating horror and embarrassment that you in turn view them. God I must have been drunk out of my skull! You are precisely the one person that I didn’t want to sleep with. Ever. And so you wake to a brave new world on a brave New Year’s Day with the same feeling of personal chagrin and mortification that you woke to on every preceding morning. Congratulations. Happy New Year. Dolt. Where is your bubbling largesse and overflowing humanitarianism now?
And yes I AM one of the smug clean living gits that has never done the above. But nor was I stupefying in front of the telly watching The Top One Hundred Panty Liner Commercials Of 2004. There are ways of spending 31st December that don’t require you to sell out to the rabidly grinning consumerism that is New Year’s Eve [what else do you call the obligation that drives you to drink and drink until you puke up your sphincter muscle?]... but my New Year’s Eve was just that. Mine. I don’t need to wear it like a badge or broadcast my activities to my peers in the hope of gaining their [unsought for and unwanted] approval.
At the end of the day this obligation to celebrate and be happy is a form of emotional fascism. And it is one that we inflict upon ourselves. We force ourselves to collude in a huge lie (most people I’ve spoken to find New Year’s Eve innately depressing). We pretend that we are euphoric and that we genuinely like the person we are standing next to in the queue for the bar, we pretend that the next year is going to be fantastic and full of opportunities that we are going to hold onto with both hands. It’s going to be so different form the previous year - because this year we’re going to make it. This year we’re going to be different and better.
Except that we said exactly the same thing this time last year. This time last year when we got absolutely wasted on cheap doubles and suddenly found the mysterious volition to make all of these promises and resolutions that when we’re sober we just know aren’t worth the hot air that they’re full of. Can you see a pattern forming?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking the idea of self improvement or of setting yourself goals and personal ambitions. What I am knocking is the emptiness and falseness that lie behind most people’s endeavours on New Year’s Eve. It’s just become an excuse to get drunk and your tongue down someone else’s beer-lined throat. A way to acquire a coolly embarrassing anecdote that you can impress your friends with the next time the conversation runs dry. Where’s the nobility in that? Basically it’s just a normal Friday night out on the town that’s been elevated and invested with spurious significance simply because of the time of the year. A banner that celebrates nothing but our own feckless inanity.
Like I said - a bandwagon of buffoonery.
Happy New Year.
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