Wisdom of the Ancients

I've always wanted to do a piece about the place I grew up in. It's a bit self-indulgent, and rather unflattering, but since Halifax has always provided me with pleanty of remoseful and bitter anecdotes and an acute awareness choking anguish, I thought it was only right to give back to the town that made me.

As a general rule, I love proving the older generation wrong. They're full of useless facts, set in their ways, deeply conservative and not very optimistic. It is great when they come out with outrageous statements like "Dogs can't walk backwards", "It'll rain today", "Those darned kids are so noisy" and "You can't drink a whole bottle of ethanol", and you go ahead and show them what the younger generation are capable of.

That said, I now invest a certain amount of time in what old people say, especially if it happens to be in line with my own views on a subject. In fact, the older the better. So I've dragged you out a quote from the sixteen hundreds, from The Beggar's Litany, because John Walter's had a point when he wrote:

"There is a Proverbe, and a prayer withall,
That we may not to these strange places fall,
From Hull, from Halifax, from Hell, 'tis thus,
From all these three, Good Lord deliver us."

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

Halifax, West Yorkshire, is a wretched place. I did have some pictures of the town stored on my mobile phone until it got stolen, which is irony for you, I guess. These included the piles of rubbish that had been ripped open by desperados searching for food or something. There was a good shot of a bloody hand-print smeared down a cash machine, or pools of congealed reddish brown beneath cracked shop windows. It is impossible to go out on a Saturday morning in Halifax and not encoutner dried blood. I don't think there has been a time I haven't absently noted the scene of a possible homicide.

Let me paint you a picture. It's a smallish place, as places go, and always full of people. Tall gothic buildings that haven't been used since the seventies and eighties tower up out of the gloom. It is always gloomy in Halifax. I would say it rains a lot, but it doesn't feel like rain. It feels like nature is trying to wash away the filth with its tears.



Halifax taken in 2007 or 2008. No, honestly, it is. The slight smudging of the sky and the off-grey colour appears in most photographs of Halifax and is characteristic of the crushing despair that hangs over the town.

 There are lots of jewelry shops, the reason for which escapes me since no one has any money. There are a number of charity shops, which is a bit more in keeping with the demiographic, and far too many pubs, most of which are like a terrible nest of darkness.

"Halifax had one of the highest densities of pubs to inhabitants during a study that took place in the late 1990s. One such establishment that gained notoriety during November 2005 was the Zoo Bar. The nightclub had a history of under-age drinking, and became the first establishment in the UK to be closed because of the Licensing Act 2003. At the time of the police intervention officers reportedly identified 420 of the 500 people in the club to be under-age drinkers. The nightclub was identified in an American study regarding youths and alcohol and gained European notoriety. The nightclub was subsequently closed and sold to developers to renovate into flats. A recent report showed Halifax to have above average levels of drink related violence and associated issues."

- Wikipedia

I did drink in the Zoo Bar. I'm not proud of it anymore than I'm ashamed of it. It just happened. I wasn't particularly bothered when it got bulldozed anymore than a passing curiousity that someone could be expected to politely express at the scene of a car crash.

For a small down with nothing but broken glass and crushed dreams, Halifax is has a varied history. The organist of Halifax Minister, William Herschel, discovered Uranus. Dickens makes a few unflattering remarks about the town, and Defoe was once a resident. Crime was controlled by the employment of a machine - the Halifax Gibbet - which decapitated people unless they could get past a certain point - the Running Man pub, and escape. It is, to my knowledge, the only town to invent a serial killer through a collective bout of self-harm. The town hall was built by the guy who designed the Houses of Parilament, Square Chapel is the last... Square Chapel... in the country. And the Piece Hall is the last cloth hall and dates back several hundred years for people who are remotely interested. I didn't think so.

Trying to capture the complete desolation of Halifax, and wider Calderdale MBC, is difficult. The only way I can imagine this feeling to other people - since you get used to it if you live here - is kind of like that mute horror that you feel gripping your soul when something terrifically important goes wrong. Only all the time. Every second of every day. Pulling you towards the ground like you were a derranged Hobbit transporting the Ring of Power at the end of Lord of the Rings. As a rule, no one smiles in Halifax. Smiles are forbidden. They remind us that other people might be happy, athlough you can't enitrely put your finger on the many diffuse reasons why everything is so grim. It's not a single reason. It's an ambiance of tributlation, ordeal, and hopelessness.

So the next time you're in Halifax, get out while you still can. In fact, get out of the whole West Riding and don't stop moving. Don't look back in case you turn into a pillar of salt. And remember that it is sometimes alright to listen to people who are older than you. They've been around a bit, and sometimes the depressing truth is that they realised things you now hold true before you were even born. So on that note, I'll wrap up with a line from an unnamed Calderdalian, written a month before my birth.

"I feel that Halifax is a deadend town, I fancy being a chef but there's nothing doing round here. I did work away for a while and when I cam back I thought the town had altered for the worse. I arrived by train and the station was a dump."

- [Anon], Nothing Interesting Ever Happened to Me, pg. 79

Cake or Death?

It is always going to be a terrible blogpost when it opens with "at risk of sounding like a Daily Mail reader", but there you go. At risk of sounding like a Daily Mail reader:

Lolwhut?

Sometimes, something on the news takes you so by suprise you have to do a short unplanned blog post about it. And here it is. A school in Dorest has banned cake over "health fears", and will fly the George Cross instead of permitting these sugary deathtraps on school grounds.

Yes. Cake is banned.

"The move was backed by both parents and children at the school in Bourton, which will fly an England flag instead.

Head teacher Michael Salisbury said: "There's just too much sugar coming into school.""

Cake has long been a contentious issue in schools, with many people calling for it to be banned altogether, because of the inherant dangers in using it.

Alright, seriously?

Even BBC News have managed to make it sound like a spoof, and I really wouldn't be surprised if it was. Let me introduce you to a speech by Mr. Sailsbury, the Headteacher, who manages to make children's birthday celebrations sound like binge drinking in a prison.

"Our parents think it's a very good idea and I have been really impressed by their views coming through and that they are not passing cakes over the school wall. We have got too much into the cake buying culture as a society. We are not saying don't have a cake on your birthday, we are not draconian about it, we just want to be in control of the amount."

Cake, like common entrance exams, incandescent lightbulbs, the retirement age, the Disability Fund, and Cheques, will be gradually phased out. Persumably to shield people from the trauma of losing it in one go. Hopefully, the proposed installation of 'cake detectors' can limit or control the number of cakes that are coming into school.

In place, we shall have the "just as fun" birthday alternative: Nationalism. The George Cross will be flown on birthdays. With any luck, children will be premitted to salute it, or even march past whilst singing Land of Hope and Glory. But why not stop there? Why not ban sweets and chocolate also? We could substitute them with additional English History lessons focussing on race riots. Even that is just the beginning. We could abolish fun, presents, non uniform days, charitable events, and toys at wet playtimes. In exchange, we can offer additional courses in xenophobia, water-cannon operation, and free membership to the British National Party.

The Nightmare Realm

It might have occurred to people who think too much just how close the internet is to becoming an alternative hellish dimension. Allow me to explain.

From the comfort of someone else's computer, I can parooze sites at will, clicking between webcomics, listening to music and looking for places to go on holiday. I can go onto this blog. Then, on this blog, I can go to stats and view how many people actually bother to read this. From there, I can view search keywords that have plunged some hapless internet cabbage through a portal into this world. The results are somewhat disturbing.

All the classics are there. Blogs, blogging, lemons, stevie, clockwork. There are some more outlandish ones like, 'history of American fencesitting Egypt' or 'Predator Drone analysis'. But nothing quite comes close to "Clockwork fisting porn".

What is particularly distressing is someone has actually gone to the trouble of looking for clockwork fisting porn.  No just fisting porn, but clockwork fisting porn. The worst part must be leaving it to your imagination to try and comprehend what this even means. But this is the internet. This is a lawless frontier world, predominantly ruled by teenagers and young adults. Mostly male. And their decrees are characterful:

"Rule 34: If it exists, there is porn of it."

But we're just scratching the surface with Rule 34, because Rule 34 states "If it exists". What people don't realise is that the internet seems to be some bottomless pit of human emotion, where even in the deepest darkest long-forgotten geocities sites, you can find the manifest dreams and nightmares of collective human consciousness. This means that the first part of Rule 34 is irrelevant. It exists. If you have dreamt it in your blackened soul, or in the bitter hours before the dawn, or whilst falling asleep on a train to Wolvehampton via Saturn, which departed from Lapland at the dawn of time, it exists.

And the prospect that the internet isn't just filled with porn, its filled with everything, is quite terrifying. Of course the internet is filled with porn. It's a running joke. Even the most conservative crusader couldn't even begin to tackle the vast mire of empyreal and hypothectical, intangible crap that could, and therefore must, be out there. But the internet is so much more than porn. The internet is filled with eternity.

You can finish reading about democratic reform in Egypt and get straight on to watching a monkey urinating into its own mouth. You can see drawings people have done of humanoid foxes fornicating on spaceships just having digesting the socio-political impacts of Colgate Total Whitening. You can listen to everything that isn't true. You can play right-wing games of Chinese whispers on an epic scale. You can pretend to be someone else. You can be someone else. You can learn emriodary from from a nun whilst the page on Famous Yorkshire Serial Killers loads up.

The internet is, essentially, an extradimensional hell of our own making. It will broker no attempts to tame it. As proved by the wiki-leaks case, and other times, the internet will fight back. Sites will crash, shares will plummet. Someone will have a nightmare about a giant hamster clutching siscors, and it will come true. A boy in the Congo will be filmed screaming something as a python devours him. It will become a meme. Someone will die, and millions will laugh.

So becareful, traveller, as you navigate the twisting and every changing multicolured spectrum that is the internet. Because one day, when you're alone in the house, you just might get sucked into this alternate dimension. And you will not be missed.

Daybreak Makes Me Want to Cut My Own Head Off

Originally typed at unreasonableOclock on Friday 11th Feb.


It's a crude title, to be sure, but to the point. Everything about the TV Show 'Daybreak' is horrible. 

It is barely gone seven and there are two cheeky, cheery chappies already handing out some Daily Mail style home-truths. These two presenters, Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley, are the type of nauseatingly nice and optimistic people. The nation actually seems to enjoy letting the two of them patronize us. Today's hot topics were: 

Smacking, is right to be an authoritarian right-wing home-nazi? We think so. But only sometimes.

Raising a child versus not raising a child. Should the man stay at home? Should you only work part-time? Should you only have a child if you can financially afford to support it? Some of our viewers believe in sterilizing the poor.

Kate Middleton. Is she too fat? Too thin? Are her clothes the wrong colour? Is she more like Diana or the Queen Mother as portrayed in 'The King's Speech'? We believe that this is actually interesting and important.

Death sentence for Chav who threw a brick at a car and injured a young model. Is there such a thing as over-reaction when we apply the law?

During the programme, they are joined by a bunch of horrendously unreal characters so overtly middle-class that they might have been pulled out of a Guardian reader's club were it not for the atrocious bile that gurgled from their lips. Together, they form some unholy union that manages to be completely serious and absolutely irrelevant at the same time.

Then we've got a break for the weather, which consists of another cheeky, cheery chappie telling us in the most sweet and patronizing way that it is raining. Everywhere. Ceaselessly. Forever.

There is a special on the royal wedding, Valentines Day, and weddings in general, with lots of other enthusiastic sighing and lovey-dovey mush. Finally, they tell me that JLS will be on later, and I have brief Rambo style Vietnam flashbacks to enduring six hours of their latest album whilst serving pop to irritating little girls. When Lady Gaga came on for a brief hour-long interlude, I thought about gouging out my own eyes, but before I could grab the spoons Katy Perry's Teenage Dream Album kicked in and I felt like I was actually drowning and unable to stop it.

In fact, I can't do it. It's horrible. Everything about Daybreak is horrible. When I turn on the TV before it is even daylight outside, the only thing I want to see is a recording of my bleary eyed, unshaven face. I can be sat on a grubby sofa in some sort of dim and pokey hole, surrounded by empty pod-noodles and bottles of vodka, telling myself to give up and go back to bed.

When Words Fail

In the tradition of all unspeakably evil men determined to horde even more money as a result of extremely poor governmental decisions, Donald Rumsfeld has recently published a book "Known and Unknown - A Memoir" of his time in Bush Administration. If it resembles anything like the quote from which he draws the title, it promises to be completely incomprehensible.

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know."

Donald was given a Foot in Mouth award for the comment. The stumped judges at the Plain English Campaign stated that "We think we know what he means, but we don't know if we really know." Other beauties include:

"I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started."

"If I said yes, that would then suggest that that might be the only place where it might be done which would not be accurate, necessarily accurate. It might also not be inaccurate, but I'm disinclined to mislead anyone."

"[Osama Bin Laden is] either alive and well or alive and not too well or not alive." 

"You either know what I'm saying, or you don't know what I'm saying. Or perhaps you don't know that you don't know what I'm saying. Maybe."

Rumsfeld isn't the only person that seems to have gotten a little confused about what is going on. Now, I'm a fan of the English lexicon. I always have been. I relish the opportunity to utilize a great host of charming words in pursuit of eloquence and clarity whilst speaking. Unfortunately, it seems that not everyone shares my belief that words exist not merely to be used, but also to be understood. I was recently thumbing through Calderdale Council's "Cabinet Budget Proposals for 2011". There are nine altogether.

• Getting the basics right
• More open and transparent government
• Tackling the recession
• Safeguarding and care of vulnerable children and adults
• Stronger Communities
• Supporting children and young people, and adult health and social care
• Climate change and environmental action
• Fair enforcement
• Change and value for money

The first thing that becomes immediately apparent is that at least six of those things make absolutely no  sense. What exactly do they mean when they say, "getting the basics right"? I mean, have we been getting the basics wrong since 1974, and only now realize the importance of getting them right?

What is a "more open and transparent government"? That one gets said every year, and thus far we managed to get the Freedom of Information Act which only works if you aren't asking anything particularly important and most of the crazy stuff uncovered never goes mainstream anyway. We got the MP's expenses scandal and just look at how happy that made everyone. It's a shrug. We're at the second priority and it is already the political equivalent of "I'll do it tomorrow."

Tackling the recession moves in to number three spot on the list of priorities, which to me creates a temporal paradox between "getting the basics right" and putting "tackling the recession" down to third place. Personally, I'd say that was the basic that needed getting right. I'd rather be able to eat than to work myself into a lather of rage at "more transparent government".

Then we jump to number five, stronger communities. Like "more open and transparent government", stronger communities is a meaningless phrase that has been banded about for some time. What is a community? Is there one, or many? What do you mean by stronger? I just don't understand.

By the time we get to "fair enforcement", you're starting to wonder if there isn't someone sat in an office somewhere picking random phrases out of a motivational calendar and formulating policy around them. Fair enforcement of what? What enforcement has been unfair in the past? What is fair? What's going on?

We round off with "change", a word that is so abused it might as well have spent fifteen years in Josef Fritzl's basement and come out less damaged than a single year in politics. Change is one of those 1984 double-think words. Where change is used to describe any desirable outcome and to separate oneself from the past. Crucially, political change must involve things staying exactly the same. If we throw in "value for money" as a meaningless turn of phrase then we've got ourselves some priorities for 2011.

Being a conscientious citizen and former politics student myself, I can't help but feel I should be out there doing something. These poor councillors are making the best of a bad situation, but I have a whole wealth of expertise from which to draw. I'm currently drafting a list of priorities for my vision of Calderdale in 2011.

Citizen Stevie's Proposals for Consultation, 2011/2012

• Destiny - life is a journey, not a destination
• Shutting the gate before the horse has bolted 
• Endeavour to be "flat out like a lizard drinking"
• Value for fairness
• Use opportunity to ride the wall of change
• Ensure no good deed goes unpunished
• Encourage the correct basics
• Prioritise good things
• Move away from idiosyncratic words and phrases to promote a clearer understanding of dialogue to enable greater success in local matters

Well, that took about five minutes. They're all things we should strive for, and embrace a broad array of political opinions from 'common sense' thinking - shutting the gate before the horse can bolt - through to soft hippie nonsense - use opportunity to ride the wall of change - and ending on the neo-fascist note of ensuring good deeds are suitably punished. We have also managed to identify a need to prioritise good things, encourage the correct basics and use plain English to do... stuff...

Revenge of the Big Society

It has been a few weeks of cuts*, Big Society, and dubious political posturing. One lady, deciding that the voluntary sector was something she'd have a go at, became an unwitting celebrity and mercenary warrior of justice in Northampton. Watch the video, it is well worth the time. Armed with only her handbag, she plunged into a gang of six sledgehammer wielding would-be robbers. The charge was furious, the momentum unstoppable, the carnage - unthinkable. Caught unawares, the gang fled with one being dragged down by onlookers. Unlucky day for him.

She claimed that she was unhappy with people standing there, doing nothing, allowing crime to go unchallenged. My theory is that people would rather take on a gang of thugs armed with giant hammers than endure any more bad news from Westminister. A kind of suicide by conscience.

But she isn't the only member of the Big Society to launch a fightback against perceived injustice and apathy. The students are revolting, Unions are balloting for strike action. In it's own hilarious fashion, the media gives us the impression that society itself is falling apart at the seems. It got so bad that  Liverpool decided to 'opt out' of being part of the Big Society altogether,* stating:

"How can the City Council support the Big Society and its aim to help communities do more for themselves when we will have to cut the lifeline to hundreds of these vital and worthwhile groups? I have therefore come to the conclusion that Liverpool City Council can no longer support the Big Society initiative, as a direct consequence of your funding decisions."

But Liverpool is not alone. Manchester has joined the revolt, in a somewhat round-about way, by announcing - rather unhelpfully for pretty much everyone, Tory and worker alike - a list of cutbacks so long that they are jockeying for the position currently held by the metaphorical piece of string. BBC News seem particularly irate at the lost of public toilets. Yes, after reporting losing 17% of it's workforce and 26% of it's children's budget, closing swimming pools and libraries and all manner of horrible things, most of the vehemence is saved for the lost of the toilet. But I suppose you'd have to get to watch BBC News 24 to get the full humour of a newscaster saying "AND ALL BUT ONE OF IT'S PUBLIC TOILETS!"

Maybe he had a bad holiday in Manchester.

Even someone who thought it sounded good is thinking twice about the whole idea. After all, how can you run a vovoluntary sector with no money. The thing politicians seem to miss about the voluntary sector is the fact that, despite not having to pay anyone, it is not free. In fact, it is relatively expensive. No one volunteers to man a cardboard box on an industrial estate in Scunthorpe. People volunteer to run soup kitchens and the like. And that costs money.

Even the bankers are livid about an extra levy, although the Bonus Tax thing that happened last year won't be happening this year. Which actually means they save money. They probably feel a bit betrayed by the Tories. Just like people feel betrayed by Labour or the Lib-Dem's. In fact, the best way not to feel betrayed is to become a nihilistic cynic. The first time in history this is actually a political advantage.

Just to complete the round-up of today's carnival of faliure, there are some notorious bastards that are actually enjoying watching it all burn down around them, Cambridge University has decided that it doesn't want to dilute it's excellence with the knuckle-dragging proles, and has decided that an opportunity to get more money is an opportunity to be taken. Fees will rise to £9,000, but 'disadvantaged' students will only have to pay £6,000, which is only double the current cap.

All in all, I hope the Tory plans die a horrible and painful death. Unfortunately, the problem we're seeing is that they're almost like Kamikaze policies. Even in the act of their very own self-destruction, they'll try and take out as many of us as possible. I'd like to summarize, or post a witty quote, a final thought, or something, but I can't really think of one, so you can have this terrifying image instead.




"As the spending cuts bite, Cat unemployment hits 9%."

 * The only thing that hasn't been cut by Tory policies is my lawn. I feel somewhat short-changed that they missed the obvious one.
 *That's right. Apparently, it is now possible to opt out of society. I'm gonna get an application form.

A Simple Life

There is probably any number of reasons as to why Skins is called ‘Skins’. It could be the gratuitous amount of writhing naked teenage flesh that seems to keep its dubious audience enthralled. It could be a reference to the skinhead subculture, although given the lack anyone even resembling a real person, this is unlikely. It could just be a short, edgy name that everyone recognizes. The real reason Skins is called ‘Skins’ is more likely due to its ability to flay the truth from any subject and wear it like a cruel and horrific parody of real life.

I’ve been watching E4 a fair amount recently, having nothing better to do. I say ‘a fair amount’, but I actually mean Scrubs, and occasionally the Gilmore Girls by bad luck. Anyone who watches E4, or most other channels, for any amount of time must have noticed that Skins is back on. The advert, rather predictably, shows mounds of quivering teenage flesh gradually falling into suggestive clothing whilst looking rather like they’re in a ‘happy place’ instead screaming in mute horror at the realization they’re hurtling towards the ground at killing speed.

The recent advert was for Rich, a whiny teenage angst filled ‘metal head’ and subcultural stereotype. He was busy brooding his way through life until he spotted some tail. Cue loud music, nervous smiles and pointless shots of teenagers drinking. Being a fan of the louder, more aggressive ‘kill your friends style’ music, I decided that I had to watch this episode. I’m usually against watching Skins on principle alone, but decided that my blood pressure was falling back within acceptable boundaries, and needed something to work myself into a lather of rage.

Mere seconds into the episode, we’re treated to some shots of Rich, who is busy dancing to passive-aggressive music in a way not unlike an epileptic chicken on speed being given the electric chair. The scene is ridiculous. Even the most basic principle of headbanging involves some determination on the part of the dancer to actually incur brain damage. Two girls approach and our hero immediately reverts to being a dick to prove that he’s all hardcore. He unplugs the music everyone is listening to, puts his own mix in, throws the horns and screams ‘Slayyyyyeeeerrrr”.

This is done in a way that indicates that all research for this episode had been preformed by someone who was more interested in musical prejudice than actual investigate work, and that he was interviewing the most irritating fifteen-year old ‘metal’ enthusiast in the entire world. Compounding the situation, he wasn’t really listening and one, if not both, of the parties was on crack. The scene jumps to Rich and his mate Aldo, or Aldi, or something, tripping over their own feet and falling flat onto the gravel outside. Presumably to indicate they’d been thrown out, although the lack of doormen and the distance travelled indicates the other teenagers had probably used a trebuchet.

Back at Rich’s brooding nest of despair, he is belated by his whiny friend who has a disturbing sociopathic and borderline rapist attitude towards getting laid. I’m going to have to speed up at this point, because there is still about forty minutes of visual hell before me, and picking out everything is going to result in something that breaks the Internet. Anyway, “Bodies” by Drowning Pool comes on, and Rich snaps awake – in any empty room - throwing the horns and screaming “Flllooooooorrrr!” as if anyone but him even cared. Whatever preconceptions one might have about the metal genre, anyone who sits bolt upright in bed, screaming in rage within five seconds of waking up probably has serious mental health problems.

Jump to library. Alo is waiting for Rich, wearing weird clothes. I don’t know if this is his actual costume for each episode, or whether he’d just devoured Lady Gaga and the Village People and then decided to wear all of their gear, or what, including the dog-lead round his neck. They then perve on a girl through some bookcases, quite unnecessarily moving a single book out of the way for dramatic effect. Alo refers to her as “The Angel of Death”, reinforcing the underlying notion that if you’re going to get something wrong, you might as well get it so wrong that it becomes a hideous hate-fuelled parody from Glenn Beck’s wet dreams.

There are a few pointless jokes, which fail to be funny because your brain can’t take in the horror. Like someone telling a “Why did the chicken…” joke twenty seconds after you watched the Twin Towers collapse. Then there’s some leotards and ass shots, a girl being deliberately offensive in a nauseatingly sly way that makes you want to punch the TV to death. Possibly the most realistic character in the show, then. Skip to the middle, and a ballet dancer plans to ‘get in character’ as a metal-head so she can help Rich to not be a total idiot and learn how to talk to women.

Yeah.

So, having seen the entire episode, I think I’ve managed to put my finger on why I loathe Skins so much. It isn’t one single reason, per se, but because it manages to hit the continuum of being simultaneously real and not real. It reminds me of when I was at college, but in a polished, distorted and exaggerated kind of way, where everything is a bit too over the top. A bit too real. Like the chainsaw cut-scene from Gears of War.

At the same time, it is too unreal. It’s a hideous parody of teenagers condensed into a forty-five minute slot to be enjoyed by people who want to be teenagers again, or people who like the lower limit of soft porn, I guess. There is no time I particularly remember heavy drunken orgies, crashing stolen mobility scooters, or drawing a handgun the size of a small dog to point at someone. None of these things happened during my teenage years, which means I must have lived a very dull and drab life comparatively. Sure, I sat on plenty of walls, smoked lots of cigarettes and drank in pubs with a cavalier attitude to age restrictions.

That’s not to say there are not people who do these things. I can name a couple with no difficulty, who have woken up naked in strange places, smashed up random people’s houses and lost entire weekends in a drug fuelled haze. But if E4 is going to use the excuse of it portraying real issues that challenge the youth of today, or whatever nonsense they’re sprouting, then I can’t buy it. It isn’t a representative look at any college life anyone real had. It doesn’t address or challenge any issues. It’s just vomit and slurry covered sex, drugs and rock and roll. Which doesn’t really do anything for the issues, but if it’s sensationalism you’re after, go for it.

At this point, I’m looking dangerously conservative, which isn’t really my intention. I’m not after a moral panic over Skins, or anything teenagers get up to. Heck, I still endeavour to have nights to forget. It’s all good fun. But it still annoys me, on a deep level. Under the skin, to use a not-so-cunning play on words.

As light entertainment, I guess Skins could do worse, if I’m being fair. It is not unlike another E4 show – Shameless. So if you view Shameless as the epitome of working/underclass life, then you’re probably going to take Skins a bit more seriously than I am. You’re also probably a Daily Mail reader. If you’re going to take Skins as a trashy, unrealistic, overdone romp about people who would – were they not exaggerated out of all proportion – be vaguely passable as teenagers then that’s alright. You might even enjoy it.

That, or you can play the Skins drinking game. Anytime someone smokes a cigarette, makes out, takes a drink, uses profanity, or misrepresents a facet of teenage life, you have a shot of hard liquor. It will make the show more enjoyable and shorter, although you risk dying of alcohol poisoning, liver failure, massive heart palpitations or a brain haemorrhage.

That’s the first time I’ve got to end a post with the word haemorrhage. I’m secretly pleased.

Charge of the Mubarak Brigade

At risk of seeming rather dull, I've decided to dedicate another post to the ongoing protests in Egypt instead of writing about why I hate Skins so much, why Pizza was ordained by God Himself, or why the Benefits System is so deep and unfathomable that it goes beyond crushing depth.

So here's the scoop.

Bring a crutch to a Camel-fight. Beat him whilst he's laughing.

It seems Mubarak has more supporters than we might first have guessed, even if they largely consist of paid criminals, cops and people who don't really understand what's going on. Some of them, like the unlucky guy above, decided to ride camels and horses into the square. I'm pretty sure he got a beating. Which, at risk of sounding like a vindictive sociopath, he probably deserved.

"Anti-government protesters said earlier they had detained 120 people with ID cards linking them with police or the ruling party, most of whom had been caught attacking demonstrators on Tahrir Square."

From BBC News

"We could smell the blood."

Yesterday, there were riots in which 800 people were injured and 5 killed. Despite this, protesters continue to cling on to Tahrir square, erecting barricades to defend against missile attacks. The movement transcends cultural, economic and religious boundaries, as proved by these pictures which are credited as Coptic Christians forming a human wall to protect Muslim protesters who are kneeling in prayer. It seems to be building up for Friday, which some have claimed will be the day Mubarak goes.

Even America has all but abandoned Mubarak, stating that the date for his departure "is yesterday". The problem with America's influence is that it has spent so long supporting, training and supplying crooked regimes that even an endorsement in favour of the protesters could be met with hostility. Protesters are unlikely to want to side with America given its track record in democracy abroad, perceived attitudes to the Muslim world, and the fact that they're providing Egypt with teargas. I always figured that if you were going to manufacture teargas for use in crowd control situations, the last thing you wanted was to print on the canisters is "I MADE THIS, BLAME ME." But if you're going to make teargas, you're probably a bastard anyway.

Anyway, people who want to know what's going on can tune in to BBC News 24, or alternative news channels. I tried scouring Indymedia for information, but I don't really get how that place works. You could have got stuff from Sandmonkey's blog, but that looks like it has been suspended.

The situation in Egypt is unsustainable with the economy collapsing, widespread civil disorder and outright violence on the streets. It is impossible for it to end with any result other than the removal of President Mubarak. For the protesters to go home now is not just defeat, it is reprisals. Whatever promises that the government has made, it's clear that if the struggle ends, they will be punished for what they've done. Everyone in Tahrir Square has to stay the course, it is the only way to guarantee their safety and the future of Egypt. I don't vest much hope in democracy, to be honest, which grants the implication that I'm some form of pro-dictator guy. This couldn't be further from the truth.

But with political stagnation in the West, and even the word "change" losing all of its meaning, you've got to wonder if we really have reached the End of History. How long before we get sick of this sham democracy and start taking to the streets? And what then? Will a regime, even a liberal 'democratic' one, succumb quietly? How long will it be before you're staring blankly at a metal tin that says "Made in the USA"?