Page Four

So there I was fiddling with the radio dial, when I happened to pause it on Radio 4 for a second. Now this was something of an accident because I drink beer, I do not drink Vodka Martinis so I don't have anything in common Radio 4 listeners or its programme producers. In fact  there's no common cultural experience beyond the fact the presenters are speaking something like English. Anyway it was Woman's Hour, of course it is because it's always Woman's Hour on Radio 4 only it's worse than you think because this was Woman's Hour Late, yep there's actually more than one Woman's Hour on a station that is pretty much dedicated to a female audience. How do people involved in Radio 4 get through the day without thinking that this is more than a little odd?

Anyway, I was glad to have encountered the programme on this occasion because they had an interview with a leading anti page three campaigner. Oh right you're thinking, she must be a real Gladys Tin Knickers, well she might be in reality but on this occasion in her version of reality, she was coming out as a nymphomaniac, with a particular preference for group sex. You know I can hear the tea cups falling to the floor at this very moment only get this it gets worse (or better) these -- encounters (I think we'll call 'em  that for the moment, gang bang is a term that I think needs some rehabilitation before it can be dropped in to polite discourse) were apt to take place at 'Festivals'. What does that mean I thought, I've never seen a tent bigger than a wardrobe at Glastonbury, is she having sex exclusively with midgets? No though, it seems I was labouring under a misapprehension, these festivals were sex festivals, events, apparently, staged for the sole purpose of engaging in group sex...

...ulp.

Holy fucking shit, are you telling me these things actually exist? Well as yet, I'm not totally convinced, reality is a somewhat elastic concepts for most people of Lucy Anne Holmes's ideological disposition. Yes that's the er -- lady in question, Lucy Anne Holmes -- valiant campaigner against page three because we can't have lorry drivers wanking at truck stops can we, cluster fucks for the metropolitan elite and their Viagra dosed priapi, they're ok. Now before you get all het up about the hypocrisy of it all, I do see a certain consistency in Mz. Holme's stance on page three, after all wouldn't the thought of all those hod carriers spilling their loads be offensive to a person of her -- disposition, she must consider it a frightful waste of talent.

Wait a second, how do you get a spot on Woman's Hour detailing your sexual exploits, it seem a mite incongruous even if it is Woman's Hour Late and what on earth could prompt a person with such proclivities to take such opportunity to tell everyone about them? Well my friend the answer is simple, in this the epoch of hypocrisy the motive is money of course, you see Mz Holmes, is an author promoting her book. Wait there's more -- she turns out to be a rather accomplished author in fact with at least two pornographic novels already published and one of 'em a winner of a not so prestigious prize. Yep that's right, Lucy Anne Holmes, the  Jeanne D'Arc of the war on the public display of chesticles, makes a living from porn. I wonder how that news will go down with those model agency starlets forced to take less salubrious assignments now the opportunities afforded by The Sun are no more?

Politics part 1 -- The me manifesto

I find it difficult to segue my political views into the conventional left/right spectrum and I've got serous reservations about the usefulness of that paradigm. It's obvious to me that the labels left and right are applied relatively and are dependant upon the context within which people express their political views and I don't see that view is seriously contestable. Yes I know that a lot of folk align themselves with collective entities, usually political institutions that seek to identify themselves as either left or right but that's by no means the majority and those who do, seem to me to be motivated more by a desire to seek out collective assurance than by personal conviction. Which is  why the most ardent and vociferous of political proponents tend to be young and naive, that's where the failings of older and smarter people, you know the ones who should know better are most apparent. I can forgive youngsters for being naive, I'm not so charitable with the dried up cynics who deceive them and exploit their youthful exuberance.

I hesitate to describe myself as a libertarian, not because I'm  shying away from the now greatly diminished stigma that is attached to that label but I do see a certain necessity in the collective principle. It's quite a limited necessity in my view though, I usually express it by referencing Pharaoh's dream. Yes that's right, I'm citing The Old Testament, the part where Joseph deciphers a dream about the seven fat and seven thin cows and interprets it as a portent of famine, as a result a policy of grain storage is implemented. Of course you can't store grain unless you overproduce it and luckily for us in the developed world, most of our leaders have retained some inkling of that wisdom seeing the necessity of deferring the commercial imperatives of the market place within the context of agriculture. Which is why we don't have a famine every decade, unfortunately without adequate restraint and discipline such an arrangement is open to abuse and corruption, which is why we suffer the appalling insanity of The Common Agricultural Policy.

So I'm not left or right or libertarian, what else aren't I or can I describe my political views in positive terms? How about Nazi or Fascist, well I do occasionally fantasize about sending certain folk a on one way trip to Lower Silesia, accompanied by their families and loved ones. I picture myself waving a hanky at them as the cattle trucks pull out of the railway siding: "Goodbye Mr. Cameron, goodbye Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Piers Morgan, Jeremy Kyle. Ta ta Germaine enjoy the view, you should find a bucket in the corner if nature calls." As a general rule though I can't take those labels seriously and if I'm participating in a discussion where they're used outside their historical context I usually leave the room. I say usually because those terms although hackneyed are not totally redundant, for instance it can be useful to draw comparisons between the post 97 Super-Consumer era and the cronyistic policies of Italian fascism but such comparisons pass somewhat stratospherically over the heads of most who use those terms. So think of me of a kind of secular nihilist, if you've got a political doctrine -- I don't believe it. Doctrine is the product of collective reasoning, the  political entities resulting from such are organs of aggregated self interest which inspire that very reasoning, a nauseating merry-go-round of convenient self justification. Is this where I mention Feminism and Political Correctness?

Comming soon in: Politics part 2 Submission to collective will and how it relates to personal responsibility