Eck pure greetin wi laffter at SSY's election liveblog

Batten down the hatches, the Tories and the BBC are officially aware of SSY’s website!

That’s right, it’s not just the police who read our blog! In a BBC documentary following Scotland’s dear leader Alex Salmond, Michael Portillo – the former Thatcherite Tory MP who famously lost his seat in the 1997 NewLabourThingsCanOnlyGetShiter landslide and went on to become a tv politics pundit with a boak inducing penchant for flirting with Dianne Abbott - can clearly be seen not only viewing the SSY blog but even VISIBLY CHUCKLING! You can view the documentary here (we’re at 40 mins 39 seconds, but it’ll only be available for a week!)

Of course it’s not the first time SSY have left their mark on the Tories…
SSY infiltrate Tory Headquarters
SSY ambush Scottish Tory Headquarters
SSY vanquish evil Tories from Scotland
SSY egg David Cameron’s car
SSY pour pint over Boris Johnson

We’re sure Michael enjoyed his wee tour of the website, presumably stopping to read Leftfield, marvel at our street fighting skillz, and purchase a copy of our pamphlet Afghanistan: Three Centuries of Imperialism. Hi Michael!

In case you were wondering, the article he was reading was about the SNP’s backwards, unscientific & unhelpful view on the formerly-legal high Mephedrone and their call for it to be banned. Fancy doing a documentary on that Michael?

SSY BLOG ON TV - FUCK YEAH!

VISIBLE CHUCKLING

OH MA GOD MUM MA NAME'S OAN TV!

If it was up to the fashion industry, we'd think this was normal.

Over the last few decades models have been getting skinnier and skinnier, whilst the population of the UK has been getting fatter and fatter. The reasons for this are innumerable. The price of healthy food is consistently higher than the price of high-calorie and ‘convenience’ foods. More often than not, school meals consist of chips alongside something else that’s fried and high in fat. Despite the advise of experts, the government refuses to make it compulsory for the amount of ‘trans fat’ – the most dangerous type of fat – present in food to be declared on packaging (once again showing that the interests of business outweigh the interests of the consumer in the eyes of a capitalist government). Despite the fact that there is a burgeoning weight-loss industry incorporating various drugs, diet-plans, self-help programmes and exercise facilities, these things are most accessible to people with the money to buy them and the leisure-time in which to utilise them – i.e. not the working classes.

And the way this burgeoning group of fatties are treated in society is hardly motivational. Despite being one of the largest groups in our society, the overweight take their place amongst the marginalised. Firstly, it is assumed that they want to change their situation: when it comes to weight, there is only one ‘right’ answer, and that is not to be overweight. But although the established false norms of a healthy body are being continuously questioned, these norms have not changed in any real sense. Pop-culture still bombards us with unachievable, unrealistic ideas of body-norms. This is made worse by the rags that point with glee whenever celebs start developing love-handles and expanding their waistlines beyond 20 inches: although these celebs are far from obese and almost definitely fall within the ‘healthy weight’ category, they are victimised and bullied by the media. How much more so then, for normal people! Reading these glossies we know we are faced with an impending sense of hopelessness – if Kerry Katona can’t keep her figure, what hope do the rest of us have?

Kerry Katona: from size 8 to size 14! SHOCK! HORROR! How does she get out of bed in the morning?!?!!!

So rather than attempting to achieve these body-norms which we have identified as false and impossible, we think ‘fuck it’, and phone the takeaway. Whilst we are eating our takeaway, we will perhaps involve in some light prole entertainment such as watching the TV or reading a magazine or newspaper. These things will often show us images of people with bodies that look very different from our own. They will advertise products which will help us to achieve bodies more like the ones shown in these mediums. The fact that we want to have these bodies instead of our own is assumed. All this is carefully calculated to make us feel like we are doing something wrong. And with all this stuff available to ‘help’ – Weightwatchers meetings, Adios tablets, gyms, handy scales such as the BMI to help us calculate just how inadequate we are – we feel like we have no excuse for being overweight. It’s hardly surprising if we start to feel depressed and worthless. These feelings of depression and worthlessness are the last things that will motivate us to go for an after-dinner walk; in fact they’re far more likely to make us reach for some comfort-food or alcohol.

Of course, there is an extent to which we can resist the media, and the fact that we have identified the norms which the media peddles as false testifies to this. But when other discourses which we see as more authoritative are deeply complicit with media ideas, the overweight individual (and also the individual who views his/her body as less-than-perfect – i.e. most of us) might start to feel victimised. Government health adverts tell us that our waistlines should be under thirty four inches, andthat we must eat so many portions of fruit and veg, if we want to avoid dying an early death from one of the Big Three (Cancer, Heart Disease and Strokes). Debates about whether obese people are entitled to the same NHS treatment as others are rife in the serious press as well as the tabloids. Everywhere the idea of ‘punishment’ is implied: if you don’t eat the right things, if you don’t do something about your weight, you will contract a horrible illness, be denied medical treatment, and die horribly. And it will all be your own fault, because nobody made you fat except yourself. Your self-esteem drops still further. You start to feel like a terrible person. By not striving towards having a celebrity body you are letting yourself down and you are letting your family and friends down. You start to develop mental problems – especially depression – which effect your self-motivation. You start to believe that you are prioritising greed and gluttony above your health and the people who care about you. Rather than feeling victimised you actually feel guilty – you are taught that there is something wrong with you, and that it’s entirely your own fault.

This isn’t encouragement. This is bullying. And that’s precisely what these things are orchestrated to do – to play on your self-esteem in order to pressure you into getting off your arse and doing something about it.

Ironically, the end result of this bullying is that you feel less motivated and less able to do something about your weight than ever.

Maybe this twat has a point afterall.

Is bullying really the best strategy we can use when it comes to solving one of the greatest problems facing our society? Surely there must be an alternative? A possible alternative might lie with the government, who could opt to provide healthy, free school meals for our children, to subsidise fruit and vegetables, and to publish more information on food-packaging so that people are better enabled to make healthy choices. Magazines could stop point and laughing at celebrities of average weight and build. Your average model size could be increased from a size 6 to a size14 – a size which is much more representative of your average woman in the UK but is still well within the parameters of healthy (despite what the Katona-haters would have us believe!).

But this doesn’t exactly solve the problem. The problem is that authoritarian discourses such as advertising, government advice, medical advice and the mainstream media are able to make us feel dreadful about ourselves when we digress from the false norms and the priorities they sets for us. The problem is that dominant discourses tell us what the ‘right’ choices are; they proscribe our priorities for us. Making changes to these discourses – although a good idea that would almost definitely have a positive effect – would be simply perpetuating the trend that empowers them to steer us towards making what they have decided is the ‘right’ choice for us.

Anyone who has read my previous article, ‘Muslim Women Must Write Themselves’, will have realised that I have some faith in a process of “self-determination”, whereby marginalised groups can escape from the mercy of dominant voices, discourses and representations. I was therefore intrigued by this blog entry. Despite having a naively utopian interpretation of Big Society, the author seems pretty clued up on the part that bullying and vilification plays in perpetuating the obesity problem, and creating further problems. Her suggestion is “What if we were to support obese people to take the lead in combating obesity? This means to respectfully include them in being a real part of the solution and not just the problem.” She’s noticed something important here – that currently society treats obese people as a mere “problem”, and not as people at all. She notes that we treat fat people differently, pointing to “prevailing attitudes: fat people deserve to be ‘told’ don’t they? Their weight is their own fault! School peers do not want to be friends with them. Companies do not want to employ them. The fashion industry does not know what to do with them. Airlines do not want to transport them and some health workers do not want to treat them.” This is all part of the process of marginalisation and authoritarian bullying. The message is clear: until you lose weight, we as a society have every right not to afford you the same treatment as we do everyone else.

The process by which marginalised groups stop allowing themselves to be dictated to and represented by voices more dominant than their own, and determine their own strategies for empowerment, autonomy and change, is slow and painstaking. It takes a lot of self-esteem to be able to say to the media and to popular beliefs regarding weight-issues: I know what’s best for me, and it is precisely this self-esteem which these discourses deny to overweight people.

At the moment, people who want to lose weight generally want to do it to avoid the social stigma and marginalisation that comes with being fat – stigma and marginalisation which is both created and perpetuated by the media. They want to lose weight so that they can get themselves out of a position where they are no longer a “victim” of these discourses. And who can blame them if this isn’t a good enough reason, especially when these very same discourses conspire to make them feel like they’ll never be “good enough”, that they’ll always deserve to be a victim because they can never achieve the impossible ideals that lurk behind the ‘celebrity body’ image. The overweight people in our society need a more attractive option, something more positive and tangible to strive towards. Rather than losing weight in order to avoid being the victims of bullying and stigma, they should be afforded opportunities by which they can determine their own reasons to lose weight. And if it turns out in some cases – as well it might – that they don’t want to lose weight at all, then why should they be punished for this?

Other groups in society make what are perceived to be the ‘wrong’ choices all the time – i.e. the choices that are not in their best interests. The student who goes out with mates instead of getting a headstart on that essay, the busy worker who skips breakfast in the morning despite it being ‘the most important meal of the day’, the woman who goes out and has four drinks on a Friday night instead of her recommended two – the possibilities are endless. We do things that aren’t in our best interests constantly, and we don’t expect to be punished and marginalised as a result. So why should fat people be punished and marginalised simply for not acting in their best interests when it comes to health?

Let me make it clear what I am not saying here. I am not saying that people shouldn’t be advised to prioritise their health, that they shouldn’t be made aware that obesity is related to health issues that can become very serious. Education and the availability of facts, statistics and likelihoods is of crucial importance when it comes to every choice: be this regarding alcohol, smoking, sex, drugs, eating habits, and in fact every lifestyle choice. But the crucial word here is ‘choice’ – when we indulge in media bullying, rather than advice, the spectrum of choice is narrowed and distorted. According to the media, ‘choosing’ to be fat is not a viable choice: it’s perverse and wrong.

I am also not saying that people who want to lose weight shouldn’t seek outside help. Self-determination doesn’t mean that you can’t look for help and advice. I am also not saying that people who want to lose weight should be denied help or encouragement on the grounds that being fat isn’t as bad as the media would have us believe.

The SSY and friends have a noble history of challenging corrupt media.

What I am saying, however, is that we have to stop treating fat people as sub-humans. We have to stop perpetuating the discourses which result in lack of motivation, low-self esteem and mental illness. We have to continue to challenge these dominant discourses that prescribe body-images to us, continuing the outrage and the sense of mistrust in the media that was started in the reaction to size zero and airbrushing. We must challenge these portrayals and continue to seek to remove them, because these things create the factors which prevent overweight people from motivating themselves, by constantly telling them how to feel about themselves and what to do about it.

Only once these things have been dethroned – and hopefully even removed – will a space be created in which the marginalised overweight can emerge and start determining their own goals and strategies for achieving a better life. If they decide that they want to lose weight, let us encourage them to do so rather than bullying them for their perceived failures. And if they decide that actually, being fat isn’t so terrible, then let us respect that decision. As a society, we have to stop treating fat people as if they are of a somehow inferior caste, and to challenge the discourses that perpetuate this treatment of them. Putting a stop to the bullying is the only way we can make positive steps towards a healthier, happier society.

George gets defensive about how many people want him to stand

After lots of threatening to do it over the past 5 years, George Galloway looks set to finally stage a comeback attempt to Glasgow.

This weekend, his party, RESPECT, are discussing the possibility of setting up in Scotland. But before they’ve even had a chance to vote on it, George has as good as said he’s going to do it anyway, if not as RESPECT then as ‘George 4 Glasgow.’

When asked why he’s thinking of doing this, his justification has had two major points: “I am awesome” and that he’s against “separatism.” So we can expect him to run an inspired campaign about how much we need him waffling away in the Scottish Parliament, and against independence. Just check out his recent performance on Newsnight Scotland, where he managed to not mention a single socialist policy, talked about how he was a celebrity and the only piece of politics he did advocate was British unionism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6I8wwKbTFk

Scotland needs another egotistical former Big Brother contestant politician like it needs a violent dose of the runs. His intervention couldn’t come at a worse time, and will be pretty much universally unwelcome by socialists who have actually been trying to do stuff in Glasgow, while he was off on his adventures elsewhere.

When the Scottish Parliament was set up, the SSP was formed as an attempt to unify the left and make sure all socialists were working together to try and get someone elected. Of course, back then, George was still a Labour MP, and not interested in anything else going on. Until he was kicked out of the Labour party, and decided to go looking for glory in London, where he managed to get elected as a RESPECT MP in Bethnal Green and Bow.

However, in the last election he didn’t manage to get back in when he stood in a different area, and he’s now casting around looking for something else to do. Hence the brainwave he’s had now – “I can get in up there!”

The problem is, he’s took the decision without actually consulting the existing Scottish left. In the amendment going to RESPECT’s conference, it says:

“Respect has not organized in or contested elections in Scotland in the past because of the hegemony of other parties to the left of Labour. This hegemony no longer exists.”

So speak a bunch of people based in England, who have no idea about the left in Scotland. All the signatories are English based people, because RESPECT doesn’t exist in Scotland. But yet again, English socialists think they know best what will work up here.

People from down south just don’t seem able to get their heads round the idea that Scotland is a different country, with a different political situation. Pretty much all the organised left in Scotland, at least on paper, is in favour of independence. They realise what a farce it would be if there was an independence referendum and socialists were arguing for keeping the imperialist, war mongering British state. If George is aspiring to be the voice of the left in the Scottish Parliament, he needs to realise that he’s totally out of step with Scottish socialists on this issue. But then, we shouldn’t be surprised if a London based organisation, that thinks it’s ok to turn up and plant their flag like modern day colonialists, don’t get it.

You would think though that people in RESPECT would have at least the common courtesy to talk to people before they announced they were coming to enlighten the northern barbarians. The arrogance of just declaring this is the way things are going to be without consultation is amazing.

Socialists in Scotland were able to get elected when they were united. But in 2006, Tommy Sheridan and his supporters decided to leave the SSP and set up another celebrity ego project, Solidarity. Since then we’ve had the even more obscure Scottish Trade Union and Socialist Coalition set up by those same folk. The result is that there’s likely to be at least 2 organisations battling it out for left wing votes in Glasgow next year (SSP and Solidarity/No2EU/STUSC). What this situation calls for is – MOAR PEOPLE STANDING!!!

George and Tommy: best pals, but for how much longer?

In the past, George vehemently supported Tommy (with such bizarre statements as “Let the monkeys shriek in their trees, the lion walks on by. The Lion is Tommy Sheridan.”) Apparently now though he thinks that’s not a runner any more, and thinks what Scotland needs is . . . HIM. He’s even gone as far as saying he thinks there haven’t been any big hitters in the Scottish Parliament, conveniently forgetting his former bromance with Tommy.

What this will actually mean is an incredibly divisive move at a time when the left in general needs to be thinking about the ways we can work together. There’s no existing organisation that will support him, given that his antics down south have alienated most of the other socialist groups away, and there’s no way the SSP will be able to support him. He claims he’s under “intense pressure” from “football fans” and “the city’s Asian community.” We don’t buy it. We think the only pressure he’s under is the pressure to find a new elected position and continue his political career. It’s as if when the SSP was at its height, we’d decided we were going to take England in hand and set up the ‘Scottish Socialist Party – England.’

So consider this a plea to members of RESPECT to live up to their party’s name, and not blunder into a difficult situation and make it much much worse. Three lists standing for parliament almost certainly guarantees that no socialists will be elected, and there’s no way RESPECT can be a unifying force for socialists up here. Yet another “socialist” group getting set up would be a disaster for Scotland.

But it doesn’t look like George is going to listen to reason on this one, he seems determined to plough on anyway. So, for when the day comes that he announces he’s standing, here’s a few of the reasons that SSY won’t be flocking to his banner, in advance:

1. Like we said, he’s against independence. He’s described Scotland as “the country with the highest number of junkies, alcoholics and religious bigots in Europe.” As opposed to the majority of the Scottish left, George thinks the best idea for Scotland is to stay part of Britain. He justifies it with sophisticated arguments:

“The seas are rough out there. Getting out of a liner and into a Para Handy puffer on the storm-tossed seas just for the pleasure of shouting ‘och aye the noo’ as loud as we like doesn’t strike me as all that smart. How about you?”

Independence is pretty fundamental to how we see social progress for Scotland. There’s currently half-a-state in Scotland, and we need to make it a fully independent democratic republic with the power to really tackle Scotland’s social problems. We also need Scotland to be withdrawn from a state that was set up specifically to be a stronger imperial power, and continues to be one today, with Scottish soldiers dying in Afghanistan. There’s just no way we can support electing yet another unionist MSP.

2. He insists on taking the full salary as an MP/MSP. When the SSP had people elected, we made sure they only took the average wage of a skilled worker, so that they could really represent the people who elected them, rather than becoming a well off part of the establishment. This is a well established socialist principle that goes back to the Paris Commune. Not for George though – he says he “couldn’t live on three worker’s wages,” and that he spends his money on “the things I need to function properly as a leading figure in a part of the British political system.”

George lets "page 3 trollopes" know where he stands

3. He’s against a woman’s right to choose. This is another pretty basic political fundamental for us: women have the right to control their own bodies, and restricting abortion would cost untold lives in Scotland – we know this because around the world 200 women die every day due to not being able to access safe and legal abortion services.

To be fair to the RESPECT party it prominently states that its position is pro-choice. It’s just not one shared by their most prominent member, who in the past hassn’t turn up at any time it’s voted on to get out of voting against. But if GG ends up running some kind of independent campaign (‘George 4 Glasgow’), will he even have that restriction placed on him? For us, it would be pretty much impossible to support an anti-abortionist for the Scottish Parliament.

(In addition, he’s not above spouting some really cringeworthy Swiss Tony style remarks about women. Check out some of the belters from his book:

“Air-headed blow-dried telly-dollies”

“fragrant rose”

“all folded arms, chins and bosoms”

“wives of the elite” wouldn’t “get a spot in Sex and the City”

or indeed these two particular offerings from his Record coloumn on key issues of the day: ‘Check out the hot M&S underwear ads‘ and ‘Pirates of the Caribbean boobs‘.  Or the way he ganged up on Jodie Marsh in the Big Brother house using language like “page 3 trollope”. The point about this stuff is its really embarassing and reflective of a lack of engagement with feminism which is essential for socialists. Which leads us on to our next point . . .)

4. We just don’t need another cheesy, Big Brother “lefty” celebrity in Scotland, we’ve had quite enough of the main one (who George used to love)!

No article like this would be complete without talking about the cat thing. I’d actually forgotten he’d done that, until I was reading about him again the other night and burst out laughing. See if you can actually bear to watch it all the way to the end:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1NIuCt72bU

Leave all politics aside, that is just 1 and a half minutes of wrongness.

There’s lots of other reasons people on the left have criticised Galloway, such as the fact that he’s a bit too friendly with certain Middle East governments who do lots of nasty stuff. However, I’m trying at this stage to steer clear of things Galloway fans would argue about, and stick straight to some of the reasons we could never support his candidacy for Glasgow. Things that Galloway himself accepts are his views that are fundamentally different from ours. Three of the above four points are things that George himself accepts, and that we feel are pretty much matters that we couldn’t compromise on, and the 4th is just an undisputable fact: CBB was an embarassing mistake, and it would make us cringe to go out and tell people to vote for that guy.

However, the main point here isn’t to bash George Galloway, but to appeal to members of RESPECT to get some common sense. You have no organisation in Scotland. Trying to impose it up here will cause further alienation and division in a country that’s had quite enough of that on the left. We quite like some of the folk in RESPECT. Please don’t be so arrogant as to support this move, as it will do ZERO good for anybody.

I wanted to say all that to make it clear at least part of the reason I’m writing this is concern for the future of a show I love. Because although the most recent series still have hilarious episodes, there are more and more crap ones as well. And a big part of the reason is that South Park is increasingly depending on the “shock value” of rape jokes.

The absolute low point came a couple of years ago in season 12, with an episode about the newest Indiana Jones movie. In it, there were repeated scenes of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg raping Indy, as a comment on how crappy the 4th installment of his adventures was. Before we see this we see the boys having flashbacks, traumatised and crying, as they come to admit that “one of our friends was raped.” But then, da dum tsh, the joke turns out that the rape is of Indiana Jones. Ha ha, you never saw that coming did you?!

This episode was widely criticised for being insensitive, unpleasant and unfunny. As if to rub in our faces what they were doing, they didn’t make this joke once, but kept coming back throughout the episode to graphic and pretty horrible rape scenes that aped movies like ‘Deliverance.’

Since then the word rape crops up week after week. In this week’s episode, school councillor Mr Mackey comes out with “Don’t touch that or I will rape you in the mouth!” out of nowhere, before we see a scene of him being abused as a child. Last week they made a character from a US reality TV show into a weird monster which pounced on Cartman with him crying “It’s raping me! It’s raping me!”

Yet again, it seems, we need to go over why it’s not cool to make rape jokes. People who find rape funny are generally men, and generally have no idea just how prevalent it is in our society. The odds are that you know someone who has experienced rape or sexual abuse. A big part of the reason I can’t find these episodes funny is because when they start laughing about rape, I think about my friends and how it has affected their lives. Shows like South Park, Family Guy and The Mighty Boosh use rape so freely, as just another word to shock and get a laugh, that they rob it of how important it is. In their ignorance, they have no idea how many people are going to watch these episodes and suffer from real flashbacks, and genuine trauma, unlike the pretend horror and terror experienced by Stan and Kyle “for a laugh”.

Now, a common response to this is, yes, rape is awful, but so is murder, so why is it being singled out? The problem with that is it ignores the way rape is treated by the justice system throughout the world. Rape is a crime overwhelmingly committed by men against women. In Scotland, only 3% of those tried for rape end up convicted. There are two ways to explain this: either 97% of women who report being raped are crazy liars, or the justice system is systematically sexist and biased against women. These figures of course leave out all those who didn’t even go to the police because they knew at best it would be a waste of time, and at worst it could lead to their public humiliation in court and being branded a liar by the press.

In other words, our society doesn’t take rape seriously. We’ve come a long way from the past in terms of attitudes, but their remains the patriarchal social attitude that women basically deserve it (“What were you wearing? How much had you had to drink? Are you sexually promiscuous?”), and that rape basically performs a function of putting women in their place, and disciplining them for not being sexually available.

In that context, rape jokes help to normalise rape, help to make people feel that it’s not that bad. If rape is only as bad as the latest Indiana Jones movie, then what’s the big deal? When you try and pull someone up for making an unfunny, offensive and hurtful rape joke, inevitably they get defensive, because they find it hard to deal with being challenged. They will tell you that you’re being ridiculous, that it was just a joke, that you should calm down. The fact that big popular shows back them up on rape as comedy scenario is only going to make this worse.

Now, I also want to make clear that I know South Park deliberately sets out to offend. I have been watching it you know. And I understand that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are nobody’s political allies. They are just as happy to mercilessly rip the pish out of anyone from anywhere on the political spectrum. They are not feminists.

But there’s a difference between the rape jokes and, say, Cartman’s constant anti-semitic abuse. And that is that ultimately, you are not meant to respect and admire Cartman. He is ultimately a fat, unbearable spoiled little dick. And many of the targets of the show’s satire are well found – it is funny to laugh at the hypocrisy of liberal Hollywood actors for example. But laughing at the expense of rape survivors just isn’t funny. What South Park does best is forensically take apart why a person or group is hypocritical, full of shit or otherwise worthy of being mocked, and do it mercilessly. The rape jokes aren’t that, they are harnessing the power of rape to shock to produce a cheap laugh from ignorant, uncaring idiots. For the rest of us, it’s JUST NOT FUNNY.

There really isn’t much that’s funny about rape survivors, and they don’t deserve to have their pain mocked, or treated as if it’s the same as seeing a really bad film. Hurting or offending them is something I care about, in a way I don’t, for example, about Scientologists or John Edward. If the show isn’t funny, then it’s failing not just in terms of feminism or decent treatment of fellow human beings, but in terms of COMEDY.

FAO The Mighty Boosh: Changing the rapist to the Donnie Darko bunny doesn't make it funny

So I’m not just saying this because I am pro-feminist. I am saying it because I love South Park. I think it is genuinely one of the greatest and most daring comedies that’s been on in my lifetime. I know it will come to an end one day, but I don’t want it to have a slow death of seasons sprinkled with unfunny episodes. Constantly relying on rape jokes is a sign that the writing is weakening, that they can’t come up with the goods as often as they used to. I’ve seen it happen before, with the latest series of The Mighty Boosh, which was far less funny than the other two, and, not coincidentally, relied heavily on rape jokes.

Another thing that shows that South Park and The Mighty Boosh understand what they’re doing is the reliance on what initally look like cute things that then turn out to be evil. In the latest episode they go on a field trip to the woods, where there’s a mascot called Woodsy Owl that sings a little song encouraging the kids not to litter. As soon as I saw it, the first thing I thought was that it would turn out to be some kind of paedophile. And surprise surprise it turned out I was right. I’ve been trying to see if I can find if there’s a proper term for this phenomenon of the cute turning out to be evil, and couldn’t get any closer than coulrophobia or fear of the ‘evil clown’ (e.g. “Stephen King’s It”). But you’ll know what I mean when I refer to the Woodland Critters of the South Park Christmas special a couple of years ago for example.

Blending horror concepts with comedy can work and be funny, but the fact that I knew what Woodsy Owl was the second I saw him means that this particular trope is being overused and is losing it’s power. To me, it’s appearance was simply about using things that are cute, and therefore associated with childhood and innocence, and violating those expectations to give the eventual shock all the more power. Except it’s getting boring and predictable. But more importantly, the shock and horror of abuse are very real for millions of people, and by laughing at it you’re making them feel humiliated and angry.

I’m not saying that rape is a topic that can never be discussed or treated in TV or other media. Absolutely not. But I would like to see the makers of shows try and do it a bit sympathetically, with at least a token of trying to understand reality rather than sensational patriarchal propaganda that has no care for people’s feelings. Using the word and the act of rape as a cheap shock tactic to get a nervous laugh out of the audience (or, certainly, a big laugh from sexist, ignorant bastards) just isn’t good comedy. And it’s killing the enjoyment of one of my favourite shows for me. So consider this a plea to Trey Parker and Matt Stone to think a little bit more, and come up with more episodes of the show I love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE88U5CocpM

Paul O’Grady recently used his primetime slot on Channel 4 to call the coalition government ‘bastards’ and speak out against the ideologically motivated Tory/Lib Dem cuts. Good on him for pointing out how disgusting it is that the Tories and Lib Dems sat in Westminster jeering every time another devastating cut was announced by George Gideon Osbourne and for advocating a French style response!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX1iplQQJTo

Banksy's paintings on the Israeli apartheid wall

Last night in the US the latest episode of ‘The Simpsons’ was on telly, featuring an intro storyboarded by the famous graffiti artist Banksy.

Personally I have mixed feelings about Banksy. If you’ve never heard of him he’s an artist who conceals his true identity to allow him to continue painting on walls illegally around the world, which is cool. However, I think it’s a bit unfortunate how he’s become a cause célèbre for the international group of pseudo-radical hipster dickheads. He’s done very well out of his celebrity, making plenty of money from selling pieces and coffee table books. But he’s still capable of moments of pure subversive genius, a bit like the work he did on the Isreali apartheid wall a couple of years ago. And giving him control of the couch gag was inspired.

The result is an incredibly dark picture of working conditions in the Asian sweatshops that produce US mass culture. The Simpsons has joked about the conditions for the workers who produce the animation for the show before, but this gave us a vision of a bleak Dickensian hell where children sat producing individual stills for the show.

As yet I haven’t been able to find much of the inevitable right wing backlash rearing its head (I’ll update the article if any nutters say anything funny), but we’re sure to be soon hearing the inevitable claims that this is a ridiculous depiction of real working conditions for Korean animators, and that actually we’re helping them by giving them jobs etc. etc.

The fact is, this is an extreme, satirical examination of the fact that The Simpsons is outsourced to South Korea. But nevertheless, most of the most popular US animated shows (including Futurama, King of the Hill and Family Guy) are made there for a reason: you can get away with paying people a lot less than they would in the US. Korean animators are doing a very skilled job for low wages. Before The Simpsons (which is often perceived as a left leaning show) was produced there, it was made by the animation firm Klasky Csupo, run by the Hungarian Gabor Csupo who once told the LA Times:

“I’m never going to sign with a union. If they vote for it, I’m just not going to hire them.I’ll lay them off and take the work to Hungary. I’ll take it to Japan.”

Ironically, it’s when the sequence moves to the most brutally surreal level of satire that it actually gets more accurate. After the animators we see workers producing Simpsons merchandise, shreadding kittens to make stuffing for Bart dolls, sealing boxes with the tongue lolling from the severed head of a dolphin, and punching holes in DVDs with the horn of a starved, miserable chained unicorn.

Chinese Honda workers on strike earlier this year

The power of this is that it’s obviously exaggerating for comic effect. But the reason we’re laughing nervously as we watch it is that most of us now somewhere in our where we’ve shoved the uncomfortable knowledge to our subconscious about how much of the stuff that surrounds us every day is produced. Mass consumer culture for the overdeveloped world today rests on the super exploitation of workers in places like Korea and China. Workers are locked in factories that become also their homes/prisons, are paid slave wages, and hundreds of thousands die every year as a result of work related health problems.

The bit of hope at the end of all this comedy grimness is that there is light at the end of the sweatshop tunnel in the shape of the growing union militancy in China. Bypassing traditional unions which are often in the pockets of bosses, workers have been organising independently, producing high profile strikes at companies like Foxconn, which makes iPods and iPads for Apple, as well as at Honda manufacturing plants. There’s a staggering level of protest in China: in 2004 alone, there were, according to the conservative estimate of the government, 74,000 “mass incidents, or protests and riots.” All the more reason that the model of mass consumption capitalism, which is destructive both of the global ecosphere and of human beings, can’t last much longer: the people it relies on aren’t going to take it much longer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSlt-vedyL8

Eventually Sky had to cut away and just broadcast their logo for a bit. The protests were sparked after Sky presenter Kay Burley went mental at a spokesman for the protesters who were out in London and Glasgow (amongst other places) at the weekend, demanding electoral reform, which you can see below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELJh2bTK1ew

Kay Burley is also the journalist who brought us such clangers as claiming on September 11th 2001 “The entire eastern seaboard of the United States has been devastated by a terrorist attack,” as well as, most shamefully, asking the partner of serial killer Steve Wright, who murdered at least five women in Suffolk, “Do you think if you’d had a better sex life this wouldn’t have happened?”

What the current uproar on Sky News shows is that the Murdoch empire has bet everything on a Tory win, and sunk millions of its own money into promoting it. If they don’t get what they want, they’re likely to go absolutely crazy. How crazy? Check out Sky News political editor Adam Boulton pushing things with New Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell to the brink of a fight. He jabs his finger, and sways like a pissed rageaholic, throwing his not inconsiderable weight around. Alastair Campbell is an odious piece of human garbage, who before he was engineering election wins for neoliberals had a career writing fake letters to porno mags. Who would have thought someone could go so nuts that Alastair comes off looking like the reasonable one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbuXj1HyNy8

Sexing it up is a good way to attract voters

Catastrofuck in the government! Today, Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a huge cock up when he, after being filmed talking to an OAP about her concerns (her pension, her grandkid’s uni debt, the Eastern Europeans..) was then caught on microphone in his car calling her a “bigoted woman”.

This issue is a bit delicate. Undoubtedly what she was saying, which basically amounted to ‘Eastern Europeans come here to scrounge off benefits’, WAS bigoted. This is the basic level of racism that is on display throughout the whole of society, you come across it all the time. Does that mean it’s her fault, or that she is a nasty person? Not really. These views are supported and perpetuated by the government and the main opposition parties all the time, and it plays into the hands of far right parties like the BNP and UKIP. Just look at the way our own government treats asylum seekers in this country, and the language that has been used to discuss immigration throughout the election debates – the system isn’t trying to challenge racist ideas, it’s trying to pander to them and perpetuate them. If someone holds a bigoted view, does that make them a bigot? Not really – if your only reference point for what is going on in your country is the media, particularly the tabloids, then you’re having that view pumped into you day after day. I’m certain that this woman isn’t a hateful person, just misinformed.

So on one level it’s a good sign that our Prime Minister recognises that this sort of view is wrong – you can bet your last cigarette that David Cameron would never be caught on tape making a blunder like this, because he more than likely agrees with the view of this woman. On one hand that makes him a man of principle. On the other hand, it makes him completely full of shit. He doesn’t agree (at least to an extent, as far as we’re now aware) with this sort of casual racism, he knows what the word bigoted means, yet he’s still willing to push this ‘we must be tough on immigration/benefit scroungers/whatevs’ line that we as socialists know amounts to racist horseshit. Desperate, is what I’d call him, especially after seeing his snivelling apology. How we deal with racism in society is both more nuanced and more simple than hiding in your car and calling people bigots – we have to recognise that there are deep seated societal issues, mostly led by the fucked up control that the media has over our political experiences, which lead to people coming to hold these views. But also, for the government the solution is simple – stop telling fucking lies to support and pander to this shite. You’d think not lying would be a pre-requisite for huge fucking governmental responsibility.

What bothers me about this whole ‘blunder’, is how everyone is so concerned about haranguing GB for not being polite to an old lady, but none of the media seem to be bothered that what this really exposes is the extent to which elections and the government in general aren’t about principles – it’s solely about stage management. It only takes a gaffe like this to show you how fragile the whole thing really is. Let’s recap for you here: Prime Minister is ambushed by TV cameras just waiting for him to fuck up, Prime Minister says a few things that are either excruciatingly vague or he doesn’t really agree with, Prime Minister forgets to take microphone off in car, Prime Minister says what he really thinks (and undoubtedly wasn’t even smiling in the car behind the scenes, the fucker), media goes apeshit and handily happens to still be near the wronged pensioner at the time, Prime Minister grovels.

It confirms what we’ve long known: that The Thick of It actually is just a documentary.

Here we see what happened when Peter Mandelson found out about the catastrofuck:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99CZHHgAOy8

In fact, this whole thing just reminds me of a certain factory visit undertaken by our good friend Hugh Abbott.

This evening, they will begin by discussing ‘domestic issues’ – stuff like crime, health, education and welfare, followed by a competition in which try to out-right each other on immigration. All bets are off! Not to mention that half the issues being debated tonight won’t even apply to Scotland, given that much of Scotland’s domestic decision-making is now devolved to the Scottish Parliament.

Over the three televised debates though, one thing is clear: while Brown, Cameron and Clegg will skirt around the edges of the big issues, argue about national insurance increases, numbers of helicopters and who’s the biggest BFFL with Obama, they’re going to completely avoid discussing two of the biggest issues facing the country at this election: the massive public sector spending cuts that are heading our way, and the ongoing bloodshed and occupation in Afghanistan. The reason being, of course, that the Lib Dems, Labour and the Tories all have a consensus on these issues: that cuts which go ‘deeper than Thatcher’ are what’s needed, and that the ongoing war is an ‘honourable’ fight to ‘defend the safety of the British people and the security of the world in Afghanistan’ (as said by Gordon Brown in the Labour manifesto). Riiiight.

Not that you’d know it from the televised debates,  but there are thankfully other parties out there offering an alternative to the war/cuts/death promised by the mainstream parties. The SSP have been consistently raising the issue of the war in Afghanistan - a war that’s opposed by 70% of the UK population – and we’ll be continuing to try and make it a major issue at this election.

criminalise fat cats, not m cats!

Similarly, we’re the only party in this election that will dare to come out and oppose the criminalisation of mephedrone, which comes into effect tomorrow, and question drugs prohibition in general. As we’ve extensively covered on this blog, all the main parties have been quick to jump on the bandwagon to support the reactionary ban on the drug, sparked by months of tabloid lies, misinformation and pseudo-science.

Today, SSY comrades hit the streets to raise this issue, highlighting the waste of police resources and time that will now go into enforcing the ban on mephedrone – a market that has, following months of free advertising in the media, been put straight into the hands of criminal gangs. It’s madness, and if any of the party leader’s come even close to agreeing with that tonight, I will personally… rip off my own scrotum. Because that’s what people on miaow meow do apparently - I read it in The Sun so it’s gotta be true.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p2bmyspD4s

Last night Labour released their first party election broadcast for the general election.

It features Sean Pertwee, off of that Bo Selecta spin off, trudging along some long country roads. At the very start he looks at how far at he has to go and makes a noise that the rest of us would express as “Fuck’s sake,” before trying to find a bus stop.

The point of all this is to remind us how grim things have been since the economic collapse, and how we need to keep plodding along with Gordon. Although PM Brown doesn’t feature in the video, his heroic actions to help banks “families and businesses” are referenced constantly.

It’s not a very inspirational message, recognising that after all these years in power, there’s not really anything the Labour Party can promise us, apart from of course cuts “deeper than Thatcher’s” and kicking people off the internet in order to protect the profits of record corporations.

So instead of ‘Things Can Only Get Better,’ we get “Now is not the time to change course.” In other words, grin and bear it.

Of course, it’s not quite as scary as Sean Pertwee’s last Party Political Broadcast, seen below. Watching this effort, it makes us wonder how far Labour’s repression of our desire for a better society will go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlzXEw616Ho

Although, to be fair, it’s unlikely that Labour will ever bring us something as exciting as Gun Kata.

The broadcast ends with a little voiceover from none other than recently retired Timelord David Tennant, although he’s not doing the English accent he had to put on to be Dr Who. He promises us that we can make Britain “the country we all want it to be”, which of course begs the question of how government spending cuts will affect the Torchwood Institute.

But we do advise Labour to be careful about accepting Tennant’s support. He’s proven to be fickle in his political alliances in the past, and his support could prove to be a poisoned chalice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0UUOQtcVBo

Sean Pertwee is of course the son of Jon Pertwee, himself a former Timelord. If only the Third Doctor was still around he could perhaps have given some much needed advice on how to spice up the film. Here’s how the Labour election broadcast should have looked. If they had put this out as what Labour had planned for the next few years, they may well have persuaded me to stay the course:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hMwuK9mBZg

But as it is, all they are in fact offering us is “stick with boring Gordon cos he’s not quite as bad as the Tories.” Hardly “I have a dream!” is it? In fact, we think that this video pretty much accurately sums up the promises for 4 more years of boredom and neoliberalism given in Labour’s broadcast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr9lEPYf4vQ

Bonus: To see how an election broadcast should be done, check out this.