All seventeen year olds love Boris

Aren’t digests great? You get exposed to the most odious and ill-informed of opinions without having to hand over money to the Daily Fail or give them advertising revenue through your precious mouse clicks. Marvellous. Also if it makes it into a digest (in this case The Week) the assumption is that it definitely is not a joke article and the fool with their head stuffed up their arse writing it actually SERIOUSLY BELIEVES THIS SHIT. Although I can never quite bring myself to let go of that last little pinch of salt when dealing with the Fail.

So the most recent thing to waft under my discerning nose is the crap spewed forth by Viv Groskop concerning giving the vote to sixteen and seventeen year olds. Apparently Groskop used to think they should because if you have the right to marry and join the Armed Forces you should be able to vote. I agree with that previous sentence. Except now Groskop has changed her mind. Why? Because of the X Factor.

Yeah, because of a sub-par talent show that exists only to make Simon Cowell money and act as a showcase for a load of whiny, self-obsessed, fame hungry morons the debate on whether or not sixteen and seventeen year olds should have the vote should be over.

You see the way under-eighteens behave on the X Factor is so immature that they shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Seriously. This is the argument Groskop is making in the Fail on Sunday. I’m going to start with the obvious point that everyone acts like a twatbag on the X Factor. I’m fairly sure that’s one of the big reasons why people watch it. That’s EVERYONE Viv, not just under eighteens. Do you think everyone should therefore be banned from voting, or only the exact ages represented in the current series of X Factor?

But apparently even someone who writes for the Daily Fail doesn’t think that the behaviour of a group of ill adjusted and fame hungry teenagers should be the sole reason sixteen and seventeen year olds shouldn’t vote. Groskop's other concern is they might vote for Boris Johnson. She actually said that as well.

‘They love him because he is the funny man with the funny hair.’

^Genuine astute observation from our Viv there. I don’t think I need to spell out how insulting that is to anyone born between 1992 and 1994.

Because no one over the age of eighteen voted for Boris Johnson. Oh wait, everyone who voted for Boris Johnson was over eighteen. How the fuck does that work, Viv?

If we’re being generous I suppose we could say that there’s something to the ‘voting for a personality’ thing, but again that’s been going on for centuries and sixteen and seventeen year olds can hardly be blamed for it. It’s also a pretty sweeping assumption that Boris’ particular brand of baffoonary is what the average sixteen or seventeen year old is looking for.

Perhaps they’re concerned with, oh I don’t know, tuition fees and bus fares? Not in Groskop’s world. No suggestion that they might actually be politically aware, socially conscious and give the same amount of thought to the democratic process as older voters. No consideration of the possibility that being a vacuous dick magically stops when you turn eighteen.

Effectively Groskop Has looked at a current and interesting debate and thought I’m going to say something so bafflingly insulting and yet clearly bullshit it will confuse everyone and stop the debate. Fortunately they also write for the Daily Fail so no one who has ever had a logical thought will give a puffin’s chuff what they say.

NB. I’m not linking to the article because I don’t want to be responsible for people clicking on it. I’m sure if you really want to read it you can find it.   

Nick Griffin and why it isn't Cool to be Gay

Right, before I get onto the main rant I need to hock up a warm up rant about how Nick Griffin is an immature, bigoted, vapid cockwomble and anyone who has ever even considered voting for his band of knuckle dragging, neo Nazi, scumbags deserves to have white hot needles pushed through their eyes. Fair enough, you’re probably thinking, I already knew that Griffin was an immature, bigoted, vapid cockwomble. What has he done now?

What he has done is tweet the address of the couple who just won their case after a court decided they were unlawfully turned away from and B&B because they were gay. The High Priest of all Fuckwits then told the couple to expect legions of his grunting supporters to pay them a visit and tell them, somewhat bizarrely, ‘an English couple’s home is their castle.’

Apparently Lord Cuntbucket thinks this is acceptable behaviour. Intimidating someone because they had the audacity to be right in the eyes of the law is not big and clever you utter bellend. Not only have this couple gone through the stress and inconvenience of the court case but now they’re potentially going to be hounded by pond scum. Fortunately Griffin has made their address public so I can send them some homemade jam to keep their spirits up. I’m sure the police officers who now have to keep an eye on the house would appreciate some as well. Wasting police time as well Nick. Tut tut.

I sometimes think someone created Griffin just for me. It’s so easy to argue against his ridiculous party when he’s in charge of it. There is very little excuse for most of the things he does (including breathe) and this is a particularly shitty example of a coward who is being ignored (because he’s wrong) so he gets all nasty and playground bully-esque and just makes himself look like a snivelling childish waste of oxygen. Fuck Nick Griffin. Fuck him with a crowbar until his spleen explodes.

But what I really wanted to rant about is what I heard on the Jeremy Vine show concerning this story. My Mum’s lived here longer than I have so she gets first dibs on the radio, although she is fully aware that they often pick people to go on Jezza’s show on based solely on how much they will annoy me. She knew this, she could have switched over to Lauren Laverne on 6, she didn’t and this is the result.

The guest they dug up from some unknown cavern (supposedly Vanity Fair magazine where she is the contributing editor) was Victoria Mather I’m not completely sure what kind of magazine Vanity Fair is so I’m not going to comment on it, but I will comment on one particular sentence she said which demonstrated perfectly to me that she is at least semi-detached from reality, or at least any reality that I’ve ever had any dealings with. This sentence was;

‘In contemporary life it’s cool to gay but it’s not cool to be Christian.’

I’m assuming that you’ll want to read that several times to make absolutely sure you got it right so take your time.

Yep, this woman thinks it is ‘cool’ to be gay. There’s so much wrong with that statement I’m not entirely sure where to start, but I’ll give it a go. The word ‘cool’ carries connotations of being both a conscious choice and temporary. Being gay isn’t a trend. You don’t stop being gay when some other sexuality comes into style. I won’t even go into the nasty little notion this woman hinted at that there is an element of posturing to being gay, that people do it because it’s the thing to do at the moment.

Actually fuck it I will. Does anyone really genuinely think that people are so shallow that they will pick their partner on the basis of which gender it is currently fashionable to date? Besides I’d put money on it actually being far more common for the opposite to take place. People who fancy others of the same sex will likely pretend they don’t. These days, thankfully, stage relationships and marriages to hide a person’s sexual orientation are pretty rare in the UK but it’s still at work on a more subtle level. If you have a partner of the same sex chances are, rather than lie, you just won’t mention them or use gender neutral terms particularly with people you don’t know. If being gay was the next big thing there wouldn’t be the fear of rejection sitting in your stomach every time you reach that first point in a conversation with someone when you have to reveal the gender of your partner.

If being gay was cool you wouldn’t be accused of ‘waving it in people’s faces’ just by acknowledging that your partner exists. You wouldn’t think twice about holding hands in public. You wouldn’t feel just a little bit nervous when you leave a gay bar late at night.

But, and I wish dearly this wasn’t so, there is a tiny grain of truth embedded in Mather’s bigotry. There are prevailing narratives surrounding queer people in popular culture at the moment and this might be what she was getting at (although quite what that has to do with a couple being turned away from a B&B is beyond me).

Let’s start with the trope of the young, urban gay man with a lot of disposable income who is well dressed, quick witted and faaaaaabulous, darling. Some gay men are like that, some aren’t, and the ones that are (unless they stay constantly in Brighton, Vauxhall and Manchester’s Canal Street, which I will be coming back to later) will probably get a fair amount of abuse for being so visible. This is probably the man she had in mind when she uttered that stupid statement. I have an idea that Vanity Fair is connected in some way to fashion and I’m also given to understand there’s quite a lot of camp gay men in that industry. So, at the very best Mather is generalising her experience to the whole world. That’s naughty and every fucker else that does it gets rightly told of for it.

Let’s move on to the other narratives, specifically the ones that concern women (sorry lads, if you don’t act like a character out of Queer as Folk your visibility in popular culture is pretty low). The ‘cool’ one Mather was probably thinking of is young women who are openly bisexual. There’s a pretty disingenuous theory currently being grumbled around that these women do this to attract men. This is because porn has taught a generation that lesbianism only exists to turn men on. Think I’m stretching that a bit? Go look up some generic, badly made porn. You won’t get far without some HotGirl4GirlAction or whatever they tag it as these days. So, naturally, a young women who finds herself attracted to women as well as men or who is exploring her sexuality is faking it. Because what’s the point of women having sex if men get no pleasure from it? Oh, and male bisexuality appears to not exist.

Beyond that you have the tried and tested lesbian stereotype. You know the one. It involves short hair and dungarees. A gay woman can’t win. If she wants to rock the DMs she is told she’s feeding into this stereotype and should stop it as well as getting so comprehensively mocked no one in their right mind could consider that image ‘cool’. If she doesn’t she’s a ‘lipstick’ lesbian and this renders her, like the non-camp gay man, invisible. It’s hard to be cool if you’re not even acknowledged.

I’m not saying the LGBT community is immune from this petty pigeonholing, because it certainly isn’t. They appear to have bought wholesale into the myth that the only group worth catering for is the affluent city dwelling gay men. The advertising on Canal Street is pretty squarely focussed on this demographic. This is a situation hampered by the one remaining lesbian bar being run by the most arrogant, self-aggrandising tosspots this side of the X Factor.

So, basically, not being straight is still pretty hard Victoria, and saying pointless tripe like the above does no good. Also, when was the last time being ‘cool’ got you a room in a B&B? Oh, that’s right, you work for a magazine. You probably really think that’s how the world works. Maybe you’re not a bigoted heterosexual threatened by the fact that loving someone of the same sex is no longer a mental illness. Maybe you’re just deluded. Either way I’m not taking a word of what I said back.

That goes for you too Griffin.

The Joys of Being Dole Scum

In January I booked a hotel for four nights in Whitby for me and a couple of friends to go to the Whitby goth festival. I thought this would be fine, because, when I booked it, I assumed I would be doing a PhD or between courses and therefore pretty flexible. But things didn’t quite go to plan and three very tragic things happened to me. One, I had to leave Newcastle, two I had to go on the dole and three I had to move to Wakefield.

If you’ve ever been to Wakefield I don’t need to explain which of those three was the worst. If you haven’t then good for you.

But I digress. I now am pretty solidly on the dole. As of Monday they started paying me and everything, although they took their sweet time. I’m now going to refer to a span of twenty two days as a ‘JSA Fortnight’. And, because I think it’s only fair that if you enter an agreement with someone you uphold your end of the deal I’ve been looking for jobs and signing on and not being late to appointments (harder than you’d think with the bus service near me). So I’ve maintained the moral high ground over the job centre. Go me.

Except my signing on day falls on a day I’m going to be at the seaside. It’s not a complicated procedure. You fill in a form and then come in the day after you get back and sign on and then everything goes back to normal. Except some of the things it asks you to do just seem a bit, well, dickish. For example, you have to say you are prepared to return from your holiday if you get offered an interview. If you do not say you are prepared to do this it goes to a decision maker and you could lost four weeks work of payments. For those of you who think that’s fair enough think about what that actually entails. What could possibly be your only holiday in years is cut short because some bloodthirsty capitalist can’t be bothered to reschedule. And what if you’re there with other people? Do they have to come home too? What if you can’t? What if you don’t drive or you didn’t take your car or you went with advance train tickets and don’t feel like selling your kidney for replacements?

Also I’m pretty sure most employers would be understanding and give you a couple of days grace. Yeah, I know I just called them bloodthirsty capitalists but I got caught up in the moment a bit. I apologise.

Anyway, back to that bloody form. You also have to promise that you’ll keep checking for jobs. I’m jammy. I have internet access on my phone (in theory. Previous experience suggests signal is less than reliable in Whitby) so I can check job sites etc. What if a person has no internet on their phone? They could look in a local paper I suppose, but how useful is a bar job in Brighton to someone who lives in Carlisle?    

But these are just pedantic points dreamt up by me on the bus home. My biggest bugbear is the wording and tone of the form. They kept most of it so I no longer have the juiciest examples but the attitude was that I had done something unforgiveable in asking to go on a trip that had been booked for nearly ten months and at the time of booking, as far as I knew, I would be free. It’s symptomatic of the view expressed by every oozing, self-righteous corner of this country that people on the dole (or any benefit you care to think of) are scum. We’re less than ‘normal’ people and not only do we not deserve the same rights we don’t even deserve the same courtesies.

To be on JSA in 2012 is to constantly search for jobs. It is to never go out, never spend any of the governments money on anything ‘frivolous’ (screw you wankers. I had a half hour wait for my bus and I spent dole money on a second hand paperback and a coffee. A Costa coffee. I am a terrible person). It is to understand that it’s only by the grace of the benevolent state that you don’t starve to death. Although they were so slow processing my claim if I hadn’t had caring and patient parents I would have starved to death. Twice. It is to feel constantly ashamed and like a failure and live with the reality that you are the lowest of the low. As if I didn’t feel like that already.

It’s the same sort of mind set that assumes dole bunnies are scroungers sitting on their arse all day. I know from personal experience that it’s really hard to do fuck all on the dole. Last time I was on it my old computer in its final weeks of life ate an e-mail where I applied for a job. They stopped my JSA for six weeks because I ‘failed’ (accidently I might add) to apply for one vacancy. I had applied for twenty three others in the previous four weeks. Oh, that was over Christmas as well.

So, although I think it’s perfectly acceptable to tell the job centre you’re going away, re-arrange your sign on date and, if possible, keep looking for jobs/checking on jobs applied for it is not acceptable to treat people like this. People on JSA, as the name suggests, are seeking jobs. That can be a really hard thing and if they’ve just been made redundant or something similar it can be a pretty shitty time. They need support not stigmatisation.

Disclaimer: the people who work at Wakey job centre are all really kind and helpful. It’s the system that’s bollocks, not them. As well as being insulting this form was also quite confusing so the lovely Wakey job centre people talked me through it.

P.S. This blog is not getting an introduction. Everytime I tried to write one it sounded shit so I gave up.