25 years too late

watching footage of the g20 protest, it seems the media has decided the police have a bit of a thing for beating the crap out of unarmed members of society.

two thoughts spring to mind.

one – orgreave. the footage was there. it was no secret. i saw it and i know lots of others did. the media were pretty quiet about it. not the sort of story they wanted, i suppose. not like the miners who dropped the concrete on a taxi taking a striker to work. that got lots of play. they moved heaven and earth to show it. fair enough, that was murder (or a perfect piece for the news, depending on how you look at it), but chasing unarmed men over a mile on horseback armed and in riot gear isn’t exactly the hallmark of a healthy democratic society. brown people do that and we send in the un. 25 years and they start to worry about police violence. even the dinosaurs thought quicker than that.

two – when i saw the footage on the news tonight it bore the imprint of sunday times tv. call me a cynical old sod but when did they get this stuff of police hitting people with riot shields? it’ s been a while since it happened. still, i wouldn’t want to accuse the press of jumping on a bandwagon.

all the bad stories coming out of westminster are about the government. it can’t be they are the only ones doing crap things, can it? it seems murdoch and the other press barons who feed us with the news they need to warp our opinions and make sure the government we have is favourable to their interests, has tired of labour. my friend dave will be delighted. i called to tell him but sam said he was off down the ‘undefined embarassing disease clinic’ and then claimed fran was on the other line bitching about her sham marriage. frankly i have no idea what all that was supposed to be about. hope she hadn’t been at the cooking sherry. again.

still, if annoying people tell you the government is politicising the police, just smile and say ‘orgreave’. freaks the fuck out of them.

but do remember. plenty of people fought very hard to stop all that ‘armed cavalry riding down (unpopular) members of the public’ shit. they’ll be happy it’s come around again and this time with acceptable victims. not scum like the miners who wanted to plunge us into a second dark ages. and maybe feed their families, selfish buggers.

oh yeah… and that crap about those who forget their past being doomed to repeat it. or as brecht would say: ‘the bitch is in heat again’.

the best search

‘china girl love bic penis’.

entirely in two minds.

typo? normal person? or very very weird???

you be the judge.

a post about sex (wahey)

no, i lied – it’s about g20.

now i like an acronym as much as the next person.

assuming the next person spent three years at university buggering about, getting up late and reading the occasional book, as opposed to doing a real degree like law where you were supposed to end up knowing stuff. or – gawd help us all – just got a bloody job when they left school. (shudder – more than 20 years and i’m still valiantly managing not to achieve what some real people did aged 16).

‘flotus’ doesn’t mean something that got chucked off a boat or even a fart in the bath (unlike edward woodward). it would appear to mean ‘first lady of the united states.’ michelle o (not the big o), the lady who asserted her importance in a truly feminist way by telling barry (he and i tell jokes about how stuffy big dave is) to get the hell out of her closet. (no snidey jokes please; snickering about homosexuality hasn’t been mistaken for funny since 1979). (actually i’m not sure i have been mistaken for funny since about 1979 either but hey…)

now both the things i know about flotus have been culled from reclusive leftist (one of the best blogs in this life and the afterlife – but how can you not know?) so i must simultaneously acknowledge the great and truly learned dr socks as my educator and spare her any responsibility for the views that follow.

it’s never good when the heads of the g20 nations descend, the good the bad and silvio berlusconi. but what makes it almost the equivalent of hearing that the place where you live has been chosen to host a garden festival (consett and ebbw vale were the first two in britain – you with me now?) is that with these overdressed monkeys come the wags. partners you imagine have something better to do with their lives than get stuck in london’s traffic have to hug each other, pose for photos and errr well that’s about it really cos they are 95% women (apparently herr merkel found something to do and we do hope it wasn’t downloading tedious ‘adult’ (oh please) features on expenses). so what did they do? they shopped and went to the opera.

well fuck that.

how much more proof is needed that the world continues to view women as some kind of designer accompaniment to us, the men what make everything happen (hmmm credit crunch? nice work, us!)? of course herr merkel is a quantum chemist and looks dreadful in floaty floral prints, so had to miss this beeno. angela also feared he would be embarassingly ignorant on the subject of eyeshadow and urged him to stay at home lest she be shown up. it could have been his unconvincingly-dyed hair and there at least, i agree, ange has a point.

however, michelle o (short for ‘oh for fucksake’) did not fritter away her time here in the uk. she chose to visit a school and talk to some female pupils. feminists may briefly take their heads from their hands – she urged the benefits of education and the role of women as leaders of a society (in a metaphorical sense, you assume). but she said lots of good stuff about being all they could be. she went on to say (re-insert heads in hands and assume brace position) she had met some truly inspirational women while in britain: there was the queen, sarah brown and … maggie darling, all of whom were doing great work. now you may be scratching your heads (makes a change from banging them against the brick wall). i was.

even i remember who the queen is. i can spot sarah brown as gordon’s other half, but it took me a moment to make the logical leap that maggie darling is alistair darling’s wife. now, she is a journalist and has the misfortune to be labelled as feisty (ohmigod, scary – woman with a job) – and mrs o may or may not know she seems generally to be referred to as maggie vaughan (i’m not going to lambast her for that – i didn’t know either). none of that is particularly important.

what does strike me as significant is that the only people michelle was allowed to meet were other women (though probably not merkel as she’s busy talking serious stuff with the boys). and the role models she chose for the young women she urged to build our future were: one who matters by dint of being someone’s daughter and two who are someone’s wife. i’m sorry if she really is some kind of burning feminist beacon but ffs, why didn’t she just add some pole dancers and glamour models while she was at it? still, i imagine her dress looked nice.

i was reassured to hear one of the girls wasn’t too sure what the queen did (join the club) knew sarah brown but was totally in the dark about maggie darling. should go far.