/users/andlosers

In the UK? Care about the National Identity Register? (Did you know that although ID cards have been partially scrapped, the mandatory database behind it remains?)

Please join this Facebook group and invite as many people as you can. The more I think about this issue, the more I think it matters.

From a No2ID email I got today:

In a stunning piece of bluff and double-speak, the Government announced this week that it was scrapping compulsory ID cards. It is flat out rubbish!!! The Government is still pressing ahead with its plan to make everyone who needs to update certain "designated documents" have to register personal details on the database behind the national ID card, the National Identity Register. In other words, if you renew your passport or driving license after 2011 you will have to supply information which will go onto the National Identity Register. You can choose to have a little plastic card or not, but having your most personal private details logged on an intrusive database - no choice at all. There will then be a fine of up to £1,000 for failing to inform the authorities of any alteration to the information you have been forced to give, such as a change of address or name. The scheme hasn't changed. The Government just hopes no-one notices that their "U-turn" is nothing of the sort. The white elephant is still ploughing on.

FYI.

So to mirror what someone else asked in their journal recently: if you've been following my journal for a while - or my life! - what advice would you give me?

I won't take offence. But if it helps, this entry's public and comments are screened, so you can respond anonymously if you like.

Recommendation: although it's heavy, Morag's post about rape is worth your time and thought. (As is the rest of her journal.)

Twitter is awash with talk about police brutality at the G20 protests, but after almost a week of silence from the official Number 10 account, here's what they had to say:



Lovely! Flowers! Aww!

Hannah and I went to see The Age of Stupid yesterday; her writeup is here, if you're on her friends list.

It was a well-made film. I've always got to remind myself that I'm not the target audience for this sort of thing: if you want to alarm me, throw statistics, facts and projections at me. This was in a more emotional vein, to the extent that documentary segments were actually linked with science fiction footage of Pete Postlethwaite in the future sighing dramatically about how we didn't do anything when we were faced with our own extinction. Apparently it's doing better business than An Inconvenient Truth did, which implies that for a lot of people this is what works.

The big thrust of the film was that 2015 is a kind of tipping point, after which further warming effects are likely triggered that will cause runaway warming; six degrees is the temperature threshold where we start looking at mass extinction as a serious possibility. No real factual evidence was provided, but for argument's sake let's assume there's a large body of rigorously tested scientific theory behind these claims.

This means we have six years to fix the problem. The problem being a side effect of the lifestyle now enjoyed by most people on Earth.

How?

There was a panel session afterwards, populated inexplicably with a guy from UNISON (the public service trade union) and some other dude who looked like he was on drugs, and I think was from a climate change pressure group. Hooray, I thought! Maybe they'll tell me how I can do my part to help solve this problem! They certainly are telling me they'll tell me!

Here are some ways they felt this problem could be solved:

• By changing the global economic system from "growth economics"
• By telling Gordon Brown that if something isn't done, WE'LL ALL DIE
• By marshalling people into action and ordering them to change their lifestyles
• By going on holiday to Ecuador and getting a T-shirt by this famous artist, man, look at it, isn't it cool?

Drugged-out man (who I doubt was actually on drugs; the Father Dougal expression he held throughout was likely indicative of something else) at one point exclaimed that if there wasn't a heavy social justice component - i.e. changing the global economic order - he wouldn't want to be involved. Socialism, by implication, was the answer.

I felt like I was turning into the Incredible Hulk. I wouldn't have made any productive contribution to the debate, but hey, I would have been greener than any of these clowns.

Please don't get me wrong: I believe very strongly in social justice. But I also believe very strongly that if you have an imminent problem, it needs a practical solution. It's clear that most of the social injustice in the world relates in some way to money - illegal wars for oil, oppressive regimes ensuring consistent access to resources, and so on - so it seems like the solution should also come down to money. More efficient technologies will, over time, cost less money than less efficient ones. Think about lightbulbs, and how that market's changed in a short amount of time, in large part due to Ikea ramming the point home and providing low energy bulbs at low initial cost. Rinse and repeat that sort of practical social entrepreneurship and we may be getting somewhere - both on an individual and on a much larger, societal level. (For lightbulbs, think power stations.)

The cool part of that is that social justice follows. Sustainable resources are everywhere; there's no need to underwrite oppressive regimes or go to war to make sure we have another decade's worth of fuel. It's just there. All without needing to rely on a mythical socialist revolution or subscribe to crackpot vanguard theories about global leadership.

Better yet, we don't need to wait for governments to wake up and make legislation. It just takes a forward-thinking business plan and some entrepreneurial thinking; something most of us can get started on.

The Where the Wild Things Are trailer totally just gave me goosebumps.

Yesterday, I saw something that disappointed me and questioned the sanity and intelligence of people I thought I knew on a pretty fundamental level. It made me realise that the years I'd given them were not what I thought they were, and ultimately made me question - without negating the good parts - whether any of it should have happened.

I refer, of course, to the Battlestar Galactica season finale. Read on for major spoilers and mild but deeply-felt swearing. ( Read more... )

The picture doesn't do it justice, but this tree amazes me:


It's like a still-frame of an explosion of colour and light at the moment the tree hurtled into the ground from outer space. It's round the corner from me, outside the Co-op, and every time I walk past I have to stop and look.

Yesterday I took delivery of my new iPhone. I took this unintentionally unsettling self-portrait to celebrate: for the first time in 18 months, I have a phone handset that actually works. The very first SMS I sent was to Celia, to see how she was doing at work; the first phone call I made was to Hannah, to see how she was doing at home. I got an SMS back from Celia, but the first call I received was from the Cameo Cinema in Edinburgh, saying that Hannah had left her handset there after watching Milk and did I have a way to get in contact with her please. Auspicious.

There are a couple of branding thoughts I have. The first is that the iPhone isn't really a phone. Sure, it makes and receives calls, and does the overpriced SMS conversation dance that all cellphones do. The thing is, it also does a million things besides: the applications I've installed allow me to update my blog, check Facebook, and wield my phone as a lightsaber while I breathe deeply into my other hand and inform my stuffed bunny that I am his father. All important computing tasks, so let's be clear: the iPhone is a tiny tablet computer. Although to be fair, if they'd called it the iTablet, it would have sounded like some kind of incontinence treatment.

The other is that the iPhone - in common with, as far as I can tell, all Apple products - comes with a set of Apple logo stickers. Someone in some marketing meeting obviously thought this was a really canny idea: "yeah, we'll get them to stick our logo on everything, as if they wish all products were Apple products!" The trouble is, I'm at a loss as to what to do with them.

( Read more... )

It's a long-standing complaint of mine that Bride and Prejudice's title didn't have the alliteration of the original. Never mind the fact that the change to the title doesn't made a ton of sense and isn't really indicitive of the Bollywood transformation given to the source material: it should have been Bride and Brejudice. Of course, Brejudice isn't a word, so it should probably really have been Bride and Bread Justice. Which sounds like an altogether zippier kind of film.

I mention this by way of introduction: via Andrew Ducker I've been made aware of the existence of Pride and Predator, a film where Jane Austen's characters are pursued by the titular hunting-for-sport-loving alien. This, of course, closely follows Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a novel where brain-munching action was inserted into the 17th century frockery. They're not really having a good time of it in Longbourn.

Where next for Ms Bennet, Mr Darcy et al? Here are some suggestions:

Pride and Prejudice on a Plane - "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a motherfucking wife."

Ramsay's Pride and Prejudice - Michelin-star-wielding chef and all-round scheisskopf Gordon Ramsay sorts out the love lives of a 17th century family while hilariously falling foul of the societal manners of the time and swearing a very great deal throughout.

Proust and Prejudice - Marcel Proust and Mr Darcy have a fling, but 19th century France does not approve. Set to a disco soundtrack, obviously.

Pugs and Prejudice - Aww.

Perestroika and Prejudice - Featuring Mikhail Gorbachev as Mr Darcy and Ronald Reagan as Elizabeth Bennet. "Mr Darcy, tear down this wall!"

Any more?

I'm gonna fly on down for the last stop to this town

This post comes to you from bed, by which I mean my bed, circa 1998-2004, smack against the wall in a womb with a view on the southern reaches of Edinburgh. The walls are pink and warming; the skirting boards are the same claret colour I clumsily brushed on while I listened to Electro-Shock Blues one eventful summer; glow-in-the-dark sheep paint a luminescent moustache against the lampshade's nose. Off in the distance I can see the Craigs, the Castle, and the Appleton Tower: three icons that formed the backdrop to a vivid chapter now reduced to little more than prologue.

Once upon a time, I thought I'd never leave. I'd make a life in this city, which was big and all-encompassing and beautiful, its scowling glances at the outside world timed to its own heartbeat; what more could there be?

It's funny how perspectives change. My world is bigger, my ambitions grander, my outlook and personality invigorated to suit a desire to not just make a life, but take on the world. I want to go everywhere; I want to see everything; I want to climb heights that I've been warned are well out of reach.

But I'll keep coming back. Stale smell and daggered wind be damned, she keeps reeling me back in, and Lord knows I have more reason than ever: Reekie, auld girl, you'll be seeing a lot of me.

Live in Britain? Object to MPs concealing their expenses?

Please consider joining this Facebook group, which is run by members of MySociety. Here's some background.

This year, I'm posting a new photo every day, in a photoblog sort of way (each photo attempts to say, if not a thousand words, then at least two or three). The set is over here, or check out the group it's a part of. If anyone knows a way to automatically post the photos here every day, I'd love to hear it.

In lieu of making a summary of the year available publicly, which I'm not going to do this year, here's some things I've learned:

1. Things change. Never take for granted that something will continue as is, or that a window will continue to exist. So don't wait to take advantage of opportunities, and make sure you spend time with the people you love. Don't let anyone tell you that doing so is wrong; they're most probably jealous.

2. A house is just some walls in the dirt. All it takes to shatter the separation between your inner sanctum and the outside world is a carefully aimed brick. This is nothing to be paranoid about: it just means you're part of the same world as everyone else (but you might want to think about locking your side gate).

3. I'm human, but mostly good. Or at the very least, no worse than most people. I started the year with an inferiority complex, so this is a big lesson. I'm not someone who is capable of having one night stands or exciting encounters with people who don't know me. But the people I care about care about me, and I make friends wherever I go. I know I'm capable of loving hard, well and for the right reasons - and of being loved in return - and I'll never use someone for my own emotional ends. In short, I think people know that while I'm far from perfect, I mean well.

4. When they say "be yourself", they mean it. Most people respond better to me the less I hold back, warts and all. The people who don't respond to me so well, I might as well not worry about, because there's not a lot I can do about it.

5. Stay open but true to yourself. Sometimes the most amazing things are just around the corner, when you least expect them. Don't be set in your ways, and just as things change, be ready to change yourself, and be open to changing your opinions and ideas. Don't lose sight of your core principles, because otherwise you can be led down rabbit holes to places you don't want to be. And if people insist that your principles are wrong, be open to the idea, but don't assume they're right; change has to come from you.

6. Take care of yourself. Sometimes what seems like selfish self preservation is the right thing to do, and occasionally you have to say 'no' or hurt or offend people in order to cause less hurt or offence in the long run.

7. Have fun. Don't overthink things, and don't make arbitrary rules for yourself. Go with what you think is right.