Facebook recently threw open the floodgates for the ‘political views’ listing, which had hitherto been restricted to a bland spectrum from liberalism to conservatism, but can now be anything a user’s heart desires to display to the world on his or her profile. I settled on ‘optimistic liberal’ in the end, not wanting to launch into a fully fledged speech with about the same number of characters to use as a single text message. Andrew – a kindred spirit from Peterhouse – kindly asked me to elaborate, allowing me to set out my stall brimming with optimistic spirit about how far humanity has come, and how far we might be able to go, despite all the challenges, all the setbacks, and all the ugly realities. And in general, I fully believe it.
But there are moments.
On Wednesday I spent the early part of my evening stood outside King’s Cross tube station, handing out election fliers for Ken Livingstone to anyone who might mistake it for a freebie paper. The occasional nutter was pleasantly mild, and I was rather fond of the elderly avuncular Tory – and I’m making an assumption he was a Tory out of a very strong sense of instinct – who merrily put his arm around me and declared that he was awfully sorry but had already declared for another man. As a reward for my brief moments of sacrifice, I was given a free ticket to the Time Out mayoral hustings by the two Ken organisers, who were, incidentally, the kind of blokes you know are decent, hard-working and thoroughly good people within a fraction of a second.
Boris was skipping the hustings, so it was left to Ken, Brian and Siân (for the Greens) to produce a panel essentially united around progressive politics. So not terribly good argument, but uplifting all the same. If these are the people running, you can’t go wrong, right? Well wrong, of course, because of the looming figure of Boris. But y’know, it’s not even bloody Boris which dents my optimism. Nor even the swarm of loud-mouthed supporters who hung around outside in matching Back Boris shirts chanting various pieces of nonsense. No, because it’s a democracy and they represent a legitimate viewpoint, so let them have their piece. The depressing thing is knowing that Lynton Crosby is hanging around backstage, managing it all, out of sight and out of mind to most of us.
But even this pales into insignificance when I come home to read of the BNP’s candidate forced to withdraw after writing that rape is “simply sex” and “cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal”. This man was second in line in London: if the BNP won two Assembly seats, he’d have been there, drawing a salary from us as a spokesman for London. I think I can be forgiven for letting that dent my optimism just a little bit – though, on the other hand, it heartens the spirit to see the Boris folk singing from the same hymn-sheet as us when it comes to the BNP.
Having said that, I cannot ignore the people who are “not racist” and “not sexist” and “appalled” and “shocked” and “sickened” and all the rest of it, yet spout regressive beliefs as if it were a natural reflex. Lynton Crosby plays the politics of fear and division to put people into power: for every hardening of people’s attitudes towards ‘others’, he should feel ashamed, though of course he never will. Columnists from Richard Littlejohn to Peter Hitchens attack the BNP, yet all the time make it more and more likely that people will turn to them. And to you, JF, to you who casually sneer at the ‘feminist left’ and blog in what I can’t quite decide is mock or real ignorance: be honest with yourself, for you could so easily have been the one to write – without thinking, but with a casually different contextual spin – “I’ve never understood why so many men have allowed themselves to be brainwashed by the feminazi myth”.
I’ll calm down now 
Sincere apologies to my sister who sensibly wrote that “I way prefer bullet points of what you’ve done then long theoretical debates or Ken propaganda!”
I have so many things I want to blog about, but I know that if I simply speak my brains (in true The Day Today style) it will prove to be the most unreadable document since Jeremy Kyle’s Seven Step Guide to Colonic Irrigation (with free CD!). On the other hand, it’s my blog and no-one’s forcing you to read it. Unless you’re one of the people who I have forced to read it, of course. You know who you are. But I’ll be brief…
A very, very long time ago, Saoirse and I decided to harass Abbi by text until she magnanimously agreed to spend her lunch break with us. In all seriousness, I hadn’t seen her for ages and she’s a great person to hang out with: don’t joke about going home to South Africa on Facebook again, please! After she returned to the grinding millstone \ prelapsarian paradise of work, I was led to visit the famous Bookmarks – where you can swap book tokens for socialism – and the British Museum, which had a cheery exhibition on death. If I was a better blog writer, I would now find a way to link the theme of death with my ice-skating day last Thursday, which certainly came close. Well, this is perhaps unfair: I didn’t break any bones, but I suppose it’s hard to break any bones when you’re clutching the side and watching five year olds skate merrily on by with a smug expression on their faces. Still, afterwards Abi, Oliver and I headed back to Oliver’s (lovely!) house – which excited me and no-one else by being located in Zone 5 – where we had a typical young people’s evening: lie on the carpet and discuss the existence (or not) of God. Or gods. Rowdy, aren’t we?
(It didn’t fit, but inbetween these two events I had a quick meetup with Rishal, Ria and Manoj in a Starbucks. Fascinating, this blog, isn’t it? OK, enough of the rhetorical questions Dominic. Not to mention the third person.)
Friday! Friday was exciting for it featured Josie’s birthday party and thus the opportunity to join Scott in ditching the ‘conventional’ dance moves to 5,6,7,8 (I think) in favour of a quite magnificent can-can. We absolutely rocked that party. There was also a sweet photo taken, which I shall display here but was originally stolen from Josie’s many social networking profiles:
Coupley!
For the rest of the weekend at Lucy’s, we laughed at Most Haunted Live in the dark, played Peggle – which later developed into a little bit of an addiction – took Abbi’s advice and saw Horton Hears a Who! (which was adorable, as promised) and toured the exciting museum of Birmingham’s history. This final bit came about after Lucy poured cold water on the idea of playing the Tube game in a city lacking a tube.
Today’s Band To Love is Steps…
Sex! Booklet
Whilst in Suffolk yesterday, we went through boxes of ‘old stuff’ yielding numerous gems from the past. This leaflet is my favourite, from 1971. To be fair it’s rather progressive – I suppose – though it manages to cling on to the idea of marriage throughout. “If a girl gets pregnant before she’s ready for a baby, she may have to do one of several things: have an abortion; have the child adopted; keep the child, who would be illegitimate; marry the father for the sake of the child.” Clearly, this type of forced marriage has its downsides: for the girl, she may have to ‘give up her job just when they need the money’ whereas the boy ‘may have to leave technical school or college and give up his chance of a good career’.
Despite this, it’s a somewhat sweeter and more innocent world at the same time. Sexually transmitted infections – or VD, as it was called – only receives a mention by page 8, and as something that is a worry but at least can be ‘completely cured’ if spotted early enough. Not true any more, my dears…
Now, if I may be permitted to do a chronological blog backwards, I should promote the game which Lucy and I played on Friday to great effect: pick a random Tube station with your eyes closed from the index at the back of a Tube map, and go! Given that we could have trekked to Amersham or West Ruislip, or – heavens – Stonebridge, we actually think we did rather well with our destination: South Acton. It’s lovely! Well, it’s entirely residential, but it’s a short walk to some more promising green spaces and some cafés! We then spent a highly public-transport focused day being drawn into central London, where we became complete tourists and got tickets to see The 39 Steps that night. The ‘brass bar’ that we were warned that would be in front of our cheaper seats turned out to be naught but a puny brass rail, and it was great
Happy Easter, chocolate fans!
Joshua looks on astonished and impressed as Sanna creates a thing of temporary yet wondrous beauty
The event which this photo plays testament to – yesterday’s gathering (not a party, Tasha’s very strict on the definition) – was great, as it always is to see people again after coming home. We also had an interesting staggered method of departure, with Sanna leaving, then Joshua, followed by Saoirse until finally Emily was left to watch Torchwood with several Selfs, as only the very coolest of the cool do. But thanks to everyone who came to play Jenga, Jenga Truth or Dare, Junior Pictionary and making bubbles!
Sorry Abbi, but I’m going to have to pre-empt your feature on the London Mayoral elections. Then again, maybe it may help to influence you!
The London Mayor is a funny institution, but it’s also tremendously accountable. You’re voting for a single individual, not a broad coalition of MPs, and they are thus empowered to put forward policies which are more original, more daring, then a party ever could be. It hardly has to be said that Ken Livingstone played an important role in shaping the post: as an independent in his first term, he defined the office as being more than a puppet spokesman for party, and given the state of party politics in Britain today I think anyone should be grateful for that! But the flip-side is that if we as voters get it wrong, we get it very wrong, because we’ve put one person in charge of vast swathes of London’s services, so they better be able to handle it.
This election will come down, ultimately, to Ken Livingstone against Boris Johnson. According to a recent Evening Standard opinion poll – and yes, the Evening Standard have hardly been the most impartial of observers – Boris is currently soaring ahead with 49% of first-preference votes. If he got 50%, he would win outright. Less than 50% and it comes down to second-preference votes being added to the final two candidates.
As funny as he undoubtedly is, Boris is at heart a right-wing Conservative. This is a huge problem given that the most important area of control for the Mayor is transport. However you feel about right-wing Conservatives, I believe they are at their worst when it comes to transport.
But what’s Ken Livingstone’s record on transport? Well, as much as Londoners enjoy complaining about it, you’d be hard-pressed to argue that it hasn’t improved. The Oyster card. 90p buses, and many more of them. Free bus travel for children. A seventh carriage on the Jubilee line. Siverlink taken back into public control with London Overground, which will result in new trains over the next few years. Crossrail given the go-ahead to be built. For god’s sake, the other day TfL even nationalised Croydon Tramlink – the type of headline you really don’t get very often.
Compare this to the £1.50 paper-tickets of buses in Birmingham (sorry) and elsewhere. Compare this to the privatised train companies in London, who have taken years and years to accept Oyster and are still dragging their feet on it. These are reflections of what happens when you let the Conservatives run transport: sold off to the highest bidder, split up and run for profit in natural monopolies which you can’t do anything about. These are Boris Johnson’s core instincts. Would he keep trying to persuade the government to give the Southern franchise to TfL in the next stage of London’s integrated transport? No, of course not – he’d be too busy faffing about with spending hundreds of millions of pounds replacing bendy buses and posing as tough on crime. He hasn’t a clue.
So essentially, I am hopeful that people who value London’s unique transport – and the improvements going into it – turn up to support Ken Livingstone, the man with the track record of change for the better. And I also hope that those who aren’t willing to vote for Ken as their first choice – possibly to support the Lib Dems, for example, who have an excellent candidate – consider at least putting Ken Livingstone as their second choice, to help fight off a Boris victory.
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
