Two sided stories blog

Morrisey...pale pink in tooth and paw
you might want to laugh...

Described by one high court judge as "devious, truculent and unreliable", the former Smiths frontman is no stranger to controversy and criticism. But tomorrow he reignites a simmering row about his views on race in an interview in Guardian Weekend magazine, in which he describes Chinese people as a "subspecies" because of their treatment of animals.

... or you might think his comments are beyond a joke.

I never liked his songs. I will confess that this made me somewhat bemused by his rise to prominence.
His lyrics were occasionally interesting, mostly banal teenage angst, but that atonal droning and poncing around on stage as if he was in some way more attractive than a half used bin bag, put me in the position of "non fan".

Since his refusal to grow up, and instead become one of those intensely boring preachers about animal rights and militant veganism, he now qualifies for a proper and thorough trashing.

Most especially because he has now demonstrated that his elevation of animal rights over human ones stretches to comments that the Chinese are a "sub species"!
Where is the mentioning of Chinese culture that so eminently pre-dates and surpasses in quality, anything he could trace his own roots to?
and, if he wants to attack modern China - (the political culture might be a decent target) then its human rights not animal rights that need dealing with...

This self-abusing adolescent got fame for being a narcissistic wordsmith, and it did him untold ego-inflation damage, making him believe his opinions are worth more than those of others - including the entire Chinese population...

I think for karmic justice, it would be good if he managed to get an appropriate bacterial disease, a particular one I have in mind:
- necrotising fasciitis -
Imagine his response...
"OH no! you cannot kill those bacteria - they are my friends!"
- what an apt fate

Blair and Hague topped the news stories today. Tony with his ever so modest approach to publicising his book and playing the Dick Cheney "I am still your president" role. William giving a heart string plucking plea for sympathy over his malfunctioning sperm, to distract from rumours of his wandering penis.

I have to say, - and this is such an amazing turn around from 1999 - I have a lot of sympathy for William Hague, and none for wannabe Pope, Tony Blair.

Hague never set my gaydar off, but who knows - maybe the sharing of twin bedded hotel rooms while on election tours was a bit suspect (I still think he should have made much of it being an economy on election expenses)

Tony on the other hand - has really fallen for his own self publicity - he seems to really believe he is now fully qualified to lead the world.

It seems even being out of power can corrupt you even more completely.

The title linked article from the Observer has prompted this response, which I will publish since they certainly won't. ( later edit - well blow me, they did, with key bits missing..)

Sir,

Padraig Reidy lays out his humanist credentials before expressing his nervousness at the more extreme end of the anti-Catholic movement. (Comment 22.8.2010).

As someone who does campaign against the Catholic church's existence (rather than seeking its moderation, as he appears to advocate) perhaps I should lay down the personal credentials I hold to:-
The suicides of one rather wonderful young Catholic priest on a railway line near my current home, and of a 35 year old Irish friend who despite therapy could not deal with life following years in those very Christian brother schools of which Padraig makes slight mention.

For these crimes no Catholic officer has ever been held to account - but they are a tip of the larger iceberg of human desecration that the church reaps upon all its members, and the whole human world through the wider corrupting influence.

Reidy seems to resort to the "no true Scotsman" argument in pointing out the extremist end of the rhetoric that constantly mentions the sexual abuse - as if, a) mentioning it was somehow rude, and b) the far more widespread physical abuse by the Catholic schools over many decades were in some way excusable.
It seems that "no true Catholic" would abuse a child, or cover up the abuse, and "no true humanist" would object more than mildly in writing to their local paper...thus would abuse continue unchallenged for ever.

Aside from the very literal deaths for which it is directly responsible, what the Catholic church has done for the world as a people amounts to a massive net sum of harm. Criminal harm on an unprecedented scale.

I agree there is a basic human trend, (however much it is based on our underdeveloped human psyches), to seek "God". But those who wish to do this can find myriad forms of this Christian religion without being shackled with the weight of anti-human dogma, bad doctrine, guilt tripping and massive abuse that is embedded in the Catholic tradition.

On the BBC world news, Anne Wiidecombe and the Archbishop of Arbuja in Nigeria were more severely, and rationally, trounced by Chris Hitchens and Stephen Fry, in the "Intelligence squared" debate, and a larger audience view turn around achieved in before and after polling, than in any public debate I have heard in 40 years.

That debate was, and is still, "Is the Catholic Church a force for good in the world?"
- and it was laid bare by the after debate vote just how rational people will - when given the facts - reject it for its past and ongoing crimes against humanity.
The answer is emphatically that it is a force for harm.. This does not condone pelting the Pope with tomatoes - but the gentle mass flying of inflated condoms past his pompous and truth avoiding British based pontification, designed to raise funds for that criminal organisation, seems eminently justified to me. As would be the pursuit of "accessory before and after the fact" charges for decades of unchecked child abuse.

Directors of Social services departments have lost their careers for far less.

No true rationalist can successfully argue for the continued subsidy (security costs of his visit) of this abomination.

A precis of an episode in my sound recordist life.
Back in 1982 I drove/was driven 530 miles across Spain to Andalusia to film local bullfighter, Tomas Campuzano, and the cultural life that would make up the back story of this Welsh documentary, “Matador”.

I was not as anti-bullfighting as many of my contemporaries who regarded this, and fox hunting, as the great campaigns to be won in the field of animal cruelty.
I always thought that if you were vegetarian you might have an argument, but as a meat eater there were more pressing issues to do with animal cruelty than a few bulls being killed in public. I did however, find the whole notion of taunting the bull and stabbing it with many spears before plunging a sword into its heart to be a repulsive idea. So the fact I was going to film this act in close up and from the perspective of the family of the Matador was worrying to me.

After picking up our translator, who spoke French but no English, we arrived in Gerena, the home of Tomas the Bullfighter, about 30 kms north of Seville late at night. The place we were staying was not really a hotel
– more of a favour by a friend who happened to have some spare rooms – Gerena was well off the tourist track and there were some young women we met there who had never seen anyone with white skin before, (and Madrid people can have white skin).

Filming included some wonderful precursors to the actual main fight. It was the time of La Feria de Abril de Sevilla and in the main streets during the day we captured groups of young women in their flamboyant Flamenco dresses, often giving a twirl and a sexy smile as soon as they saw the camera. The pattern was for almost the entire population of Seville to move to the tented city of the Feria at around 9.00 in the evening, drink Fino (dry sherry) by the bottle and dance until 5 in the morning – crawl home to bed and then get up and do it again for five consecutive days.

We got to film a testing of the young cows, where the yearling calves are tested for their aggression to see if they will breed the best fighting bulls, quite young children, maybe 10 or 12 years old got to wave the muleta, the smaller red cape normally used for the final stage of the bull fight. The cows were small enough that if they caught the young pretenders there would only be a bruise and not the goring that a grown fighting bull would cause. Even so, while I was fiddling with my “mini Nagra” tape machine and pointing the gun mic at the action I got one heck of a shock as the cow slammed into the protective gate area, its stubby horn inches from my legs. Not at all like this picture but, for me, similar emotive power...

Part of the filming involved the tranquillising dart sedation of a fighting bull so we could film a spot of surgery on a growth by the animal's mouth. Two men stood on the sleeping bull's horns as the Vet did some speedy work with a scalpel, he had to be very wary since even in its sleep, the bull twisted its neck, throwing off both men as if they were insects.
Apparently the bulls are not supposed to fight unless they have had no illnesses and no contact with men on foot at all, what we had filmed was kept anonymous as the authorities would have disqualified the bull – costing the owner a small fortune in lost revenue.

What I did not realise until I was making this film, was that in Spain the Bulls are always owned and bred by the rich ruling class, the toreadors all from the peasant or working classes.
The duty of the rich land owners is to breed the best and most honest fighting bulls. If they fail to do this, if their bulls are poor, don't fight well, or seem easily tired – their standing in Spanish society is hugely reduced.

The Matador, the star of the show, has to represent the ordinary man, bravely playing the bull as close as possible to his body, in fact the biggest kudos and rewards go to those who make the bulls horns pass within a few centimetres of their genitals.
We were invited to dinner at one of the big bull owner's expense and with some decorative but unsmiling ladies in attendance. It was pointed out to me by our translator that since the death of Franco, this land owner was no longer shown any deference, ...in any public place,
...and while his money was still good enough for every restaurant business the waiters were often conspicuous in paying more attention to any visiting bull fighter than to the traditional lords and masters.

When it came to the day of the big fight – the Corrida in Sevilla at the end of the Feria, is the premier event, our man Tomas was third on the bill and we followed him for the day with unparalleled and unexpected access.

This included his inviting us into his hotel room, where he had come the night before as part of his pre-fight ritual and filming him getting up and dressed ready for the show. Bobby the cameraman told me that they might have to use judicious cutting to prevent the Welsh Audiences getting a full on view of the genitals that were soon to be dicing with the horns of destiny.

When the matador and his team of toreadors are squeezed into their star spangled suits they all drive, and Tomas' team was no exception, in groups of five squashed into a Peugeot 505, to the rooms below the stadium.
There we left Tomas as he went to the chapel for the private prayers that they all made before the action started. We filmed from the ring side and when I saw the first matador kneel in the centre of the ring as this enormous beast burst from the released gate I had a gripping realisation that this was not just risking death, but insanely risking almost certain death. With expert precision he flipped the cape to the side and around and the ton and a half of muscle with twin overhead 16” spikes missed, but made a handbrake turn, ready to charge again.

The weakening of the bull by the picadors is the most unappetising aspect of the fight, whereas the running passes of the toreadors as they thrust their banderillas into the bulls shoulders has a real element of risk and skill, despite the apparent cruelty of this whole episode. (pictured)

The bulls in Seville that day were the biggest I have ever seen, standing fully six foot tall at the shoulders, in scale, they are to the average British bull what a walrus is to a sea lion, but far more agile.

It struck me that while this was apparently a cruel way for a glorious animal to go to certain death, it was primordial and more respectful than the trip of most beef cattle, after a shorter less pleasant life, into lorries and on to an abattoir where they are quickly killed as a production line product of no worth with as few people watching as possible.

Whilst I now understood the drama more fully, I did not have any respect for the ogling crowd, getting vicarious pleasure from the fight. The Matadors, on the other hand, and Tomas in particular, won my great admiration for courage greater than I could imagine ever mustering.

When Tomas fought the first of his two bulls, during one of the passes with the muleta, the last act before the kill, this bull made an unexpected sideways lunge, knocking Tomas to the ground. My heart leapt to my mouth, surely he was about to be gored. We had all seen photographs of the many bad injuries suffered in this very ring
– one with a matador 20 feet in the air having been caught on the very first pass and tossed effortlessly, one with a horn (and 16” seems to be the standard length) virtually invisible inside the tight trousers of a toreador who was being lifted 4 feet off the ground by this force between his buttocks. The death rate over the decades had improved dramatically with the onset of antibiotics and sophisticated surgery, but to have a horn twisted inside you, as a bull would try to do, was still very much a potentially mortal injury.

But Tomas was quickly up and in control of the bull once more. We could see blood on his hand, and we later learned that this was from that fall being onto his own sword, nevertheless he lined up in the classic pose and delivered a perfect heart shot, the huge beast falling almost instantly to the ground.

Because he had fought, and placed his body so far forward, so bravely, and the bull had been “untrue”, not following the cape properly, the crowd gave massive applause to Tomas. The body of the bull was towed away by a team of horses to become the most expensive steak and beef cuts available in the country. The sweetbreads are supposed to be a special prize delicacy which we were invited to try later that night – there was no chance of me tasting that.

This is an abridged excerpt from my memoirs - only going up on the blog temporarily for Soul Pancake purposes...
follow the title link to see why...

"Graduates can expect to earn £100,000 more over their working life than those without a degree, says the chair of the review into university fees in England."

so, - a working life is 40 years, yes?
that makes it £2,500 a year

On the sliding scales of earnings that represents a lower percentage for those high earners, lets take £50,000 a year as an example...
how much better does £52,500 sound?
...given that you have to pay off a debt of £12,000, to £18,000 and have missed out on 3 years of earning possibly £50,000 in total.
(Dependent on living at home)

so lets take £68,000 off that £100,000 and say that the bonus for all your hard work is a paltry £800 a year.
so don't feel so bad if you didn't get into college
- become an apprentice, get an idea for the Dragons to back,
or something.

And people of my generation can just smile a little guiltily at having zero fees and full grants when we went to college...

'The government is to refocus public spending on areas that will boost the UK's long-term economic success, the chancellor is to say.'

"is to say..."

The main news on Radio 4 this morning is about a news event that hasn't happened yet. Apparently the news forecasters are able to inform us that important government policies that may change the way we act and feel will be happening, but haven't happened as yet.

Of course this type of forecasting is a little more successful than the weather forecasters - because in general the political powers giving the press release to the morning news outlets are tightly focused on a speech that is written for a minister and must not be changed when he finally gets to say it.

maybe as a companion we should have weather yesterday reports - just to tell us what weather we have just been through.

It would be a good idea,
to find a spot not near
the city streets
or where night glow meets
the open sky,
for tonight is shooting star night...

please let the clouds stay away

(but I saw 15 last night...
so that's OK)

The murder of aid workers is not a first - but this latest killing of ten aid workers where the bodies were stripped of all their valuables is of a particular significance...
The local Police and villagers told the media it was clearly the work of robbers but the Taliban have claimed it was their members' work. They also claimed that these people were being Christian missionaries - which is against....
which is against...?

...well it might be considered rude if that was all they were doing -as opposed to being kind and saving lives but doing so from the conviction that some people take from their religion - however foolish that noble notion may end up appearing.

Islam teaches respect for all people - a particular closeness between "people of the book" - partly based on the kindness and hospitality shown to Mohammed and his followers when he was an exile from his homeland, by a Christian king who gladly exchanged this philosophy.

It has been clear to me for many years that extremists and warmongers can lay no claim to be Christians or Muslims - those who truly adhere to either of those faiths could no more kill another human being than swallow a pig whole.

But
for the Taliban to claim this atrocity as their own is to lay claim to be the lowest of the low - robbers and murderers of the innocent...

this is the Taliban not being Muslim in any sense of the word.
How can they live with the shame?