5 films to watch on Halloween

Let's be clear about this - the following five horror movies are not the best horror movies of all time. You could find better horror movies to watch on Halloween (if you are so inclined). But these films - as disparate as they might at first appear - are thematically linked. And I find the theme linking them fascinating and they all contain something that makes a horror film at least unsettling, if not properly chilling.

And it is fair to say that there are spoilers ahead.

First up, with have The Omen. A film notorious for its increasingly inventive death scenes (something that would come to dominate the franchise), the film includes the impaling of a former Doctor Who and the decapitation of a key character. It is also a masterwork in faux pomposity, even down to inventing a poem from the Bible to add credence to its really rather ludicrous story. Yet the reason why this film remains credible in my eyes has nothing to do with the fancy deaths or the admirable efforts by all concerned to play their roles with a straight face despite some of the outlandish scenarios and the wince-inducing dialogue. At the heart of this film there is a force so powerful, and so unstoppable, that as soon as you come into conflict with its malign intentions it kills you. You can't run; it will find you and despatch you. The Exorcist may have had the spinal tap sequence, the vomiting, the weird nightmares and the aggressive demon, but in the end the Church saves the day and the little girl is Ok. Contrast this with the ending to The Omen - the heroes are all dead and the demon child is now with the President of the United States of America. All the efforts of those on the side of the good were for naught - evil wins.

Which is also true in Paranormal Activity. Of course, this film doesn't have spectacular death scenes. It didn't have the money to film such things. Instead, what it does have is an unstoppable force that, despite the best efforts of the couple at the centre of the film (which are a lot more credible than those in The Omen but just as ineffective), is always going to win. And in a sense, the demon in Paranormal Activity is than the satanic forces at play in The Omen. See, in The Omen people die when they try to interfere with the progress of the antichrist. In Paranormal Activity the main characters have done nothing to warrant the haunting and the eventual death/possession. The demon is just fucking with them because it can. It is a chilling concept - something far more malign and powerful than you decides to terrify, stalk, attack and then possess you and kill your lover. In fact, that force - given it is invisible - might even be in the room with you now... but that's enough of that.

You could argue that the students in The Blair Witch Project have done something to invoke the witch's wrath - although the witch's revenge does seem a little excessive for the "crime" of simply shooting a documentary on her manor. Nonetheless, The Blair Witch Project fits in with our theme, as the trio of would-be documentary makers end up at the mercy of an unseen, malevolent force determined to stalk, terrify, and then remove them from the face of the earth. True, some people don't rate The Blair Witch Project but for me it works because it makes its main characters so helpless. To a large extent it is a claustrophobic film despite being filmed in the open air, because the power of the witch is such that she manages to make the forest into a prison that the protagonists just cannot escape from. The fact that the witch - like the demon in Paranormal Activity - is unseen merely adds to the feeling that the power of the supernatural element in the film is massive.

You can see who the source of evil is in The Medusa Touch - he's played by Richard Burton and everything. But this underrated, clever little film slowly chips away at the methodical, orderly approach taken by the police investigating an attempted murder and shows the awesome power in the mind of the antagonist. This is a man who makes Carrie White look tame - he has the power to destroy space missions, to make planes crash into buildings and - in the climax of the film - "bring the whole edifice down on their unworthy heads" as he destroys a Westminster Abbey filled with the ruling elite. The fact that the police managed to save some from the disaster is a pyrrhic victory; the final scene shows that the human monster has another - potentially must more devastating - target in mind. And he is still able to attack despite having been beaten into a bloody pulp and having been ripped off a life support machine. Such is the level of his misanthropy that effectively being killed will not stop the carnage.

You can also see the menace in the remake of Dawn of the Dead - although in this case it is not one man, but a whole world suddenly filled with cannibalistic zombie maniacs. The premise is not a million miles away from most zombie films - if you go outside, someone's going to bite off your face. But where this version of Dawn of the Dead succeeds is in making the situation in which the characters find themselves so utterly hopeless. The female lead only survives the initial outbreak through blind luck, and the mall that provides a brief respite is also located mainly through luck. When the group do try to do something to better their situation, it tends to go badly wrong. Trying to make things better in this film comes with a hefty body count. And this film does what surprisingly few zombie films are prepared to do - it ends with a clear indication (if you watch through the credits) that there is no option of sailing off happily into the sunset - in fact, the end of humanity is here, crushed under the weight of a world of zombies, and there is no hope.

Which is what makes all five films so striking - the evil/malign forces at play in each film are so powerful that the humans in the films are rendered helpless in the face of those forces. It doesn't matter whether it is satanic forces, or a demon/witch or a world full of zombies, whatever you do against them, you will fail and they will ultimately destroy you. Films like this strike at one of the fundamental (yet often false) assumptions many people have - that you are in control of what happens to you. These films depict far more powerful forces rendering individuals helpless even over questions of their own survival. And on so many levels, that is true horror for a good many people.

Enjoy your Halloween!

Since it's that time of year again...



And if you don't get what this is about, you seriously need to watch Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

(Not) Quitting Blogging

The sad demise of Mr E – one of the most talented bloggers out there – has again got me contemplating quitting blogging. But rest assured, whatever fans of this blog may exist, I’m not going to quite blogging.

Mainly because I can’t. It's true, I even tried once, but was back writing here within a few months.

There’s an odd sort of compulsion to my blogging. Sometimes I wake up and I can’t be bothered to write anything, or I need to write something else other than a blogpost. Then something will happen. I’ll see a news story, or I’ll think of something, and a post will develop in my mind. And then I’ll have to splurge it on the page – often with varying degress of success, but for whatever the reason I'll write it and publish it to the limited readership of this blog.

But it is more than that. Since this blog has started to get more comments and more links, I’ve encountered ideas and comment-makers who, while they seldom change my mind, do at least challenge my views and help to develop them. Take a recent post I wrote about Liberty – the comments there developed, in part, to a debate about abortion. Responding to those comments helped me to fully understand why I am pro-choice – something I probably wouldn’t have a cause to do in my everyday life.

And aside from everything else, there is still so much wrong with this society and the way that it is going that I feel just iterating the comments of others and developing my own views is vital if a case, however small and piecemeal it might be, is to be made for an alternative to the status quo. I also – perhaps arrogantly – can’t help but feel that no-one is going to represent my views as well as I can.

Like Mr E, I don’t have the same levels of rage I had when I stared this blog. But that simply means that the tone of this blog has changed, rather than the contents and its messages. So this blog will go on, despite the fact that my life is getting busier and busier. Of course a day will come when I stop, but that day is so far off that it can’t even be seen on the horizon.

The Vodafone Protest

So, you’re concerned about government spending cuts, and you believe that Vodafone has not given the tax man – or HMRC – what it should. So you decide to protest this apparent oversight at the source. The first flaw in your plan is that, well, HRMC actually aren’t asking for the money:

"We cannot comment on the detail of the settlement but we can confirm that it was reached by HMRC following a rigorous examination of the facts and an intensive process of negotiation that tested the arguments of both parties.

"As a result it was agreed that Vodafone’s liability was £1.25bn and at no point was a liability greater than that established.

"There is no question of Vodafone having an outstanding tax liability of £6bn. That number is an urban myth."

So you’re protesting over an urban myth. Nice. Good going there. Unfortunately it makes this protest anything other than legitimate – in fact, it turns it into a form of chugging: demanding donations from Vodafone for your favourite charity (in this case, the government).

And if we take the idea that paying as much tax as possible is good, at least in the eyes of these protestors, then surely you would want Vodafone to make as much money as possible so they can pay as much tax as possible in the future. Therefore, what is one of the last things you would want to do? Perhaps closing down their flagship store through protesting.

Far be it from me to say that this protest hasn't been thought through, but to protest about a non-existent tax bill in such a way that you may end up diminishing future tax revenues strikes me as the very definition of dumb.

Miliband Minor, Greed and Careerism.

In an otherwise typically whiney New Statesman article about how Red Ed isn’t red enough for him, Mehdi Hasan comes up with a couple of gems. First up, there’s his thoughts on pay:

Let's be clear. There is nothing "red" about objecting to reckless, irresponsible and unfair pay rises and telephone-number salaries.

Well, yes there is. In fact, I think that a certain level of equality of outcome – which is what this sort of observation leads to – is almost by definition left-wing, and therefore “red”. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it is wrong; but it does mean it is a left-of-centre idea.

Of course, I do believe it is wrong, and just the use of “reckless, irresponsible and unfair” is deeply problematic as all three terms are relative. But that’s a tangential, ongoing debate.

In fact, the public would be on your side if you did - polls show voters support a high pay commission and higher taxes on bonuses and object to the growing gap between rich and poor in modern Britain.

Two points – firstly, if polls (never the most accurate representation of public opinion) do suggest that, then it would be nice to see that “fact” backed up by some sort of link. After all, a failure to link or reference something leads to people being able to claim whatever they like without the inconvenience of having to back it up – just as I now claim that a majority of people in this country don’t give a fuck in the grand scheme of things about pay inequity. Nothing to back that up, mind, but if that absence of proof is good enough for Mehdi, then it’s good enough for me.

Besides, even if the polls did show public support for reducing pay differentials and higher taxes on bonuses, that doesn’t make either principle right. Tyranny of the majority, anyone?

St Vince of Cable, the Business Secretary, became spectacularly popular in opposition not just because he could dance but because he relentlessly attacked the excesses and greed of our financial elites.

Ah, Vince Cable – these days he can be used to pretty much prove anything. If you are left-wing and looking for a moderate figure to back up your left-wing desires, then Cable’s your man. Likewise, if you want to give the coalition a broader base of consensus than it might otherwise have, then the fact that Cable is a minister in that government is solid gold. In fact, given his background (economist for Shell, Labour candidate, Lib Dem Deputy Leader, Minister in a Tory led coalition)and occasionally left-wing rhetoric, Cable is so amorphous that he could be a friend to anyone politically, yet a man totally lacking principle to the discerning.

But I do have to take issue with the idea that it was Cable’s attacks’s on financial elites that made him popular under the last government. In part his popularity is down to his (largely spurious) claims to have predicted, and come up with the solutions to, the global financial crisis. But the main reason for his fame is his quip about Gordon Brown and Mr Bean. It is that which struck a chord with the people, and it is that which allowed this vacuous non-entity to become a political celebrity in this country.

Anyway, back to the article: I’ll also point out this curious phrase, which claims that Miliband Minor

…ran as an outsider…

Did he? Did he really? Because I’m pretty sure that Miliband Minor ran as the only real alternative to his brother. And I’m also sure that he really wasn’t an outsider within Nu Labour circles, having been a Nu Labour advisor, then a Nu Labour minister, and he even wrote the last Labour manifesto. I’d say he’s the very definition of an insider. The fact that he was not the heir apparent doesn’t mean he was an outsider.

But the curious desire to paint Miliband Minor as an outsider shows one of the key problems the new Labour leader has in defining himself. He doesn’t want to present himself as a Nu Labour type (despite the fact that he clearly was) because Nu Labour was comprehensively rejected at the polls, while he doesn’t want to incur the wrath of the right-wing media by actually being Red Ed. The results is we have yet another blander than bland leader. The truth is he’s an insider through and through – a careerist politician more interested in personal progression than actual principles.

The Sarah Jane Adventures - Death of the Doctor

In which three people return; one RTD, a little-known writer who's occasionally churned out a Doctor Who in the past, Katy Manning as Jo Grant (being seen for the first time since the 1970's) and, of course, Matt Smith as the Doctor. And to be honest with you, I was most interested in seeing the latter - and I suspect that I am not alone in that.

There's a danger, of course, that with so many elements in a story that the end result is unable to live up to expectations or come up with credible reasons for the involvement of the special guest characters on top of the regulars. Here, RTD did well - the notion of the Doctor's funeral means it is logical that UNIT would be involved, and likewise past companions. It would also make sense that the Doctor would appear - I mean, if anyone was going to crash his own funeral, it would be the Doctor. So the set-up was great, and as such it was pure RTD. He's great at setting up stories, and great at the concepts behind those stories.

He's also great at the emotional moments that frankly transformed Doctor Who when he took it over. Particularly in the second episode, those moments abound. The Doctor talking to Sarah Jane about his most recent regeneration and admitting it hurt while refusing to comment on how his previous incarnation was at the end was touching, particularly since we know what the Tenth Doctor's last words were*. Even more affecting was the Doctor's conversation with Jo Grant, as they tentatively discussed why he never came back to see her** whereas Sarah Jane has seen him many times since she left the TARDIS. And the final scene, where Sarah Jane related what other companions have got up to, was moving as well - the notion that the Doctor inspired them to go on and fight for others here on earth was brilliant***. Again, pure RTD - he knows how to pull on the heartstrings.

However, in terms of coming up with a genuinely striking plot, he's less good. Sure, this episode managed to end without someone pressing the magic button, although the solution to the Weave was hardly original and could have been seen by anyone not terminally myopic when it comes to plotting. The use of the lead-lined coffin to shield Jo and Sarah Jane was good, but again hardly groundbreaking stuff. And given the whole run time of the story was less than an hour, there was still a lot of padding in there - particularly the shuffling through ventilation shafts. And while RTD cannot be held solely responsible for the Shanseeth (which sounds a little like a brand of contraceptives when you say it out loud), the villain of this piece was sub-par, particularly when you consider the well realised villains of the stories in the previous weeks. There was something of the Jim Henson Company about the Shanseeth - but with less of the class associated with Henson. Oh, and the cliffhanger was frankly boring.

Still, the whole thing worked - and that was, at least in part, down to the actors in the piece. The regulars are exceptional - in particular, Clyde is a convincing character in his own right, and very well performed. Katy Manning's return as Jo was strongly rendered, making her recognisably the character who left in The Green Death but at the same time showing she had developed as a person (and, of course, her appearance has, well, changed radically too). And, of course, there was Matt Smith.

It is difficult to work out where the script ended and Smith's performance began, but it is clear that his mercurial incarnation is a far more interesting character than his predecessor. The relentless energy he brings to the role makes his Doctor compelling to watch, and the rudeness (in particular his really cutting comment to Jo about her age) gives him an edge missing in many presentations of the Doctor. His faintly dismissive tone was present - patronising others, particularly about their intelligence, and calling Sarah Jane "Smith" just as he calls Amy "Pond". But Smith's range was shown in the scenes where he was listening to an emotional Jo talking about her life without the Doctor. This isn't a Doctor who wears is heart on his sleeve, or is even particularly aware of the emotions of others. But when he does get that other people are upset - when he engages with their sadness - he has an air of quite empathy that shows he still cares about others. The combination of Smith and the character of his Doctor helps to make for compelling TV - even if he is fighting glove puppet space vultures wearing curtains.

In a sense, you'd have to work hard to make an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures not work if it has the Doctor in it. And this story, in the final analysis, did work, and helped to bridge the gap between the end of the last season of Doctor Who and the coming Christmas special. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but then again, it didn't need to be. It was fun.

*If you haven't been paying attention or can't remember back to New Year's Day, they were "I don't want to go".

**Wasn't quite convinced about the idea of the Tenth Doctor looking in on all of past companions while he was dying, though. Seriously, how long did this regeneration go on for? And what about Sara Kingdom or Adric? Did he go and look sadly at piles of dust and tattered, burnt remnants of pajamas?

***Although I could only buy into some of the fates revealed by Sarah Jane. The gobby, feisty and good-hearted Tegan fighting for Aborigine rights in Australia? Spot on! Perfect! Ace running a multi-billion pound fund-raising company (even one with the acronym ACE)? Perhaps not. I'd have seen her being more involved in direct action, rather like Jo. But small gripes notwithstanding, it was nice to see that life goes on after the Doctor - which is, in part, what the Sarah Jane adventures is all about.

Liberty's Blind Spot

To me, there are two components to freedom - and you need to have both in order to be truly free. The first is probably the non-controversial one; at least to Libertarians. It is the idea that you need to be economically free in order to enjoy liberty. Or to put it another way, you should be able to decide how you spend your money rather than the government deciding for you.

This simple view is the sort of thing that has motivated people across the world to fight for freedom, especially given governments have lost sight of the fact that tax money is not actually their own money - it is money they take from their citizens under duress. You can see an example of such a campaign in the Tea Party Movement over in the US. Whatever you might think of them, those guys are fighting for economic freedom from an ever-growing, money hungry state.

But there is a second component to liberty that is just as essential to meaningful freedom. And that is the freedom to live your life how you want to live it (within the constraints of something like the Harm Principle). And it is here that many supposed champions of freedom and those claiming to be Libertarian start to struggle with the practical reality of liberty. Because to actually embrace liberty means you are happy for people to have beliefs other than your own; to live alternative lifestyles and to do things that you would never do. Sure, you may not approve of what others do. However, if you are a true friend of liberty, you have to allow those people to live their life the way they want to even if their choices are completely alien to you.

And it is here that something like the Tea Party movement departs from a genuinely Libertarian agenda and drifts towards social conservatism. You only have to look at the views of one of their current media darlings - Christine O'Donnell. Her views on abortion, for example, are utterly illiberal. She would deny females the right to choose what happens to their own bodies - something that is completely alien to the concept of freedom. This seems to be fairly typical of many of the leading lights of that movement. It doesn't matter whether their views on abortion are down to deeply held religious beliefs or down to pragmatism in the search for votes from the Christian right - they are still illiberal.

Of course, that's not to say that there aren't genuine Libertarians in that movement. Rather, it is trying to point out the danger (which Libertarians so often fall foul of) assuming that your enemy's enemy must be your friend. You may not like much of what Obama does, for instance, but that doesn't mean that the natural recourse is to trust, and therefore back, Sarah Palin. Likewise, in this country a hatred of Gordon Brown does not make you a Tory. Nor does it make David Cameron and the rest of his party Libertarian.

The point is this - if you claim to be Libertarian, then don't fall foul of Liberty's Blind Spot. Social freedom is just as important as economic freedom, and if you truly feel the need to support the Conservatives or the Republicans, make sure that you do so with a full awareness that, at best, they support just about 50% of what is actually needed to make people free.

More Murphy

Richard Murphy on some spending cuts:

But there’s more to it than that. The people who run these services – lowly paid by and large – want to work with the young, the old, in caring for fellow human beings. The private sector is not going to provide these people with those jobs – because the state is not going to pay them to provide them – and nor is The Big Society – let’s be realistic.

Where to begin? There are just so many problems in this hysterical bilge that I really do struggle to find a starting point. I guess we're just going to have to do this the old-fashioned way, and start at the beginning.

Firstly, those who work for the various services Murphy is chuntering about are often not paid well. But that really is the choice of those who employ these individuals. That's right - local and central government decide how much these people should be paid. Therefore, it is their fault if these people aren't paid particularly well.

Murphy would be on stronger ground if the pay in the public sector was roughly the same across that sector. Of course, it isn't. Those delivering frontline services may be paid poorly, but those in management positions or in office based work are often paid relatively well - a quick flick through The Guardian's job adverts shows this. And those who run councils - the Chief Executives etc - are often paid hundreds of thousands for the work they do. Of course, pay comes down to the particular worth an organisation places on its employees and you can argue that the pay scales in the public sector are counter-intuitive and warped. But that's an internal problem to the public sector - that sector that Murphy virtually worships.

It is also impossible to say what the motives are of such employees. Some will actively want to work with the vulnerable; others might do it because they have no choice. Murphy here is trying to do a crude trick - he's tugging on your heartstrings by talking about poorly paid caring people. The reality is that some carers will match that description - others really won't.

And where's his evidence that the private sector won't give these people jobs? The private sector may well give them jobs if there is a demand for their services and a chance that those services will turn in a profit for the employers. Employers aren't reliant on the state and state funding to employ people who are useful to them - in fact, a lot of employers would far rather that the government buggered off out of their hiring choices.

He's right that the Big Society won't pay for these people - but then again, given the Big Society is a largely empty concept rather than an actual institution, that's hardly surprising. Social Democracy won't pay to provide jobs for them either - again, it's a ideology, not an institution or individual with funds. However, society and its component communities may well pay for these people to have relevant jobs - particularly if the tax burden in this country is substantially reduced and people get to choose how they spend their money to a much, much greater extent. Which, of course, is something that Murphy passionately opposes.

At its heart, there is something very depressing about Murphy's view of human nature. He doesn't see people as basically willing to care about other people without the coercion of the state. In his worldview, people have to be forced to be nice to each other, and to care about the welfare of others. And in doing so, he fabricates an ersatz sense of caring. Many of us who don't share his unthinking reverence for the state believe that if we are given increased freedom, many of us will quite naturally use that freedom to make sure others are Ok. And I'd argue that this is far more optimistic that anything in the statist outlook of Murphy and his ilk.

Timing Your Strike Right

Now I understand why people feel the need to strike - it is an extreme, but sometimes effective, tactic in negotiations and conflicts between employee and employer. And I also understand how striking can be an effective publicity stunt - it brings attention to your cause, even if a lot of the attention is people shaking their heads and wondering why the hell you are bothering (which tends to be my default position with regards to strikes).

Like comedy, I suppose, the secret of great striking is timing. Which is why the Fire Service threatening to strike over Bonfire Night strikes me as an extremely dumb idea. Because, when you think about it for more than 2 consecutive seconds, this is clearly one of the nights when we need the Fire Service more than ever. It moves striking away from being a legitimate negotiation tactic and places it squarely in the negligence box. You're not going to get the best publicity for you cause if the end result of your strike is some kid getting his face burnt off in a Bonfire Night accident.

Still, given the striking union (lack of) intellect this hasn't appeared to occur to them:

FBU general secretary Matt Wrack said they had been left with no choice.

"The alternative is to allow London's firefighters to become doormats for their employers to walk on," he said.

Yeah... you've got no choice. You couldn't, say, strike on some of the other 360 plus days of the year now, could you? You dumb wanker.

The Sarah Jane Adventures - The Vault of Secrets

This story is perhaps more what you might expect from a show like The Sarah Jane Adventures. Delivered at a frenetic pace, high on adventure but low on scares, it is intelligent sci-fi for kids. And any show where a group is called B.U.R.P.S.S. is clearly trying to make kids laugh. Yet, there is much more to this story than might first appear.

Firstly, the story is true to the characters within it - even the villains. Androvax, a returning villain, is given a chance to redeem himself - but rather than this being a saccharine reversal of a character's previously essential evil, he still has an edge to him (especially given what he is prepared to sacrifice in order to get his race back). Likewise, the Alliance of Shade's androids are neither good nor bad - they are trying to do what they are programmed to do, and whether that involves helping or hindering Sarah Jane and her buddies depends on where the adventure is at. The very fact that this story is able to end happily for just about everyone without copping out is a sign of the thought and care that went into the writing.

Furthermore, the body-hopping - that staple of kids entertainment - was given an edge owing to the empathy it created in the main characters towards the villain. They could feel the pain of a dying creature - something that made them both more caring and more careless. The story managed to dodge easy get-outs and cheap laughs and therefore deliver something really rather satisfying.

And for the nerds like me, there were numerous subtle yet clever reference to pick on. In the Doctor Who universe, this is not the first time we've seen these particular androids - and the brief recap featuring the Judoon was also very welcome. But perhaps most satisfying - and most subtly done - was the hints at the similarities between the sole survivors of their species - Androvax and the Doctor. But it wasn't just Doctor Who stuff that got referenced - the androids referenced a number of different movies. The replacement of hands reminded me quite a lot of Robocop, and the similarities between these men in black and the, well, Men in Black was also clear. But it was the links with The Terminator that were most blatant - particularly the taking of a van by Mister Dread and his glowing eyes beneath his shades were clear nods to another type of robot. The latter two references working well in part because the similarities were commented on - thus creating a link with those in the know about the references, but not doing so in such a way as to ruin it for those yet to see the films in question.

When it comes down to it, the reality is that this was an entertaining installment of a great series. But it was nothing more than that. When I look back on this series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, this story won't be one of the ones that springs to mind - despite all of the positive attributes listed above. Which in many ways is a shame, but what can you expect for a typical (for the show) story that is destined to sit between The Nightmare Man and a little story broadcast this week called The Death of the Doctor? I mean, the latter has got... Jo Grant in it. And an appearance from some little-known actor called Matt Smith...

Memo to the World

Dear World,

Please shut up about The X Factor.

Best regards,

The Nameless Libertarian.

The Sarah Jane Adventures - The Nightmare Man

Now I'm reconnected to the interweb at home, I can do all the essential stuff that just isn't possible when borrowing Wi-Fi from pubs - namely, watching the TV on the internet. And as a result, I can now give you my review of the first story in the fourth season of the most successful Doctor Who spin-off - The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Of course, this is a show primarily designed for kids. Yet to call it a kid's show is rather to miss the point. It is often a surprisingly subtle and multi-faceted programme - much more so than Torchwood often is. And given it has superficially simple stories with decent cliff-hangers, it also resembles "Classic" Doctor Who at its best. The best Sarah Jane Adventures could easily be Doctor Who adventures themselves.

Except this one. Not because it isn't good enough, but rather because it is completely caught up in the mythology of this particular series. It is about what happens when a boy who was not designed to dream suddenly starts having nightmares. It is inventive, clever and creepy - indeed, had I been watching the first episode when I was a kid, I think it would have scared me more than just a bit. Not so much the character of the titular Nightmare Man, but rather because of the logic of nightmares. In particular, doors swinging closed of their own accord and malign faces appearing in the glass is the sort of thing that adult horrors are made of. Indeed, the latter image reminded me of the skull-face in The Exorcist - pretty bold stuff for a supposed children's programme.

And there is a depth to the script that you don't often see in modern kids' TV. Luke's nightmares are not just scary - they also deal with teenage insecurity, focussing on a desperate need to be liked/not forgotten by friends and a fear of parental rejection. These aren't just nightmares for Luke Smith - they are also anxiety dreams, where a predatory figure makes him feel guilt for the very fact that he is being preyed upon. Furthermore, there is a nice fate in store for the villain of the piece - he is not just defeated, but given a fate for all eternity that he would clearly hate. And finally, there are nods to much more adult films - the entire set up (and especially the scenes where Luke cannot let himself go to sleep) reminded me of A Nightmare on Elm Street, while Rani being dragged into the TV was a neat inversion of Ring. Indeed, there may be a whole generation of kids growing up and seeing Ring for the first time and thinking that the most striking scene from that film was stolen from the Doctor Who universe.

Of course, nothing's perfect, and this episode (inevitably, given its focus and what it had to achieve) was Luke Smith's - and while the actor playing him isn't bad, he is probably the least involving and the least charismatic of Sarah Jane's friends. Furthermore, the Nightmare Man himself - as played by former Ghostmaker and Davros Julian Bleach - was a little two over-the-top for my liking. This was probably inevitable - had he been anymore freaky he might have traumatised children. But given his appearance and endless laughing, Sarah Jane didn't need help from the Doctor this time - Batman would have been more appropriate to smack this second rate Joker in the face.

Yet this was a great story, well-told and well-performed. Indeed, as season opener's go, this is probably the best this series has ever managed and better than a couple of Doctor Who's season openers since it returned in 2005. It succeeded in dealing with the departure of two main characters in a satisfying and credible way, while still being a great story in its own right. Highly recommended for anyone looking for a decent TV sci-fi/fantasy story.

High Hopes - Pink Floyd

TB *Hearts* Nadine Dorries

Oh, Tory Bear - what's happened to you? You seem to have become a purely partisan blogger, slavishly defending the indefensible simply because she happens to be in the same party as you. And, ironically, you've adopted some of the traits that she uses.

TB swung by BBC Breakfast this morning to discuss the fact that despite being cleared by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Nadine Dorries is still being subjected to a vitriolic and partisan hounding online, especially from the more scummy, stalkerish elements of the otherwise maturing left-wing blogsphere.

There is nothing partisan about commenting on an MP whose lies have just been exposed. And since she is an elected representative paid from the public purse any vitriol against her owing to her deceit is more than acceptable.

Nadine claimed that she changed the names and locations of constituents she discussed in order to protect their privacy and her own. Funnily enough the BBC though this worthy of their airtime.

An MP lying about the details she shares with her constituents being newsworthy? Who'd have a thought it?

The quality is appalling, but someone managed to grab a recording of the discussion with lefty, but a nice one, Zoe Margolis.

I wonder what makes someone a nice "lefty"? And I wonder whether this particular "lefty" really wants to be considered "nice" by Tory Bear?

Anyhoo, at this point in his post TB has the video of his appearance on BBC Breakfast. He's right - the quality is appalling. As is his shirt - he seems to have adopted the two-tone shirts that one normally associates with bankers and Guido Fawkes.

Take note though Andrew Marr, not a basement dweller in sight. Though it's that sort of blogger keeping the attacks up.

No, it isn't - it is people like myself who keep the attacks going because we are sick to fucking death of politicians lie Dorries.

To those that say this isn't a left on right attack are wrong.

No, it isn't a left on right attack - I am neither left wing or right wing, and I am part of the attack. But even if I was right wing, I would still attack Dorries behaviour because for me, unlike TB, I'm not slavishly partisan.

It's precisely because of Nadine's views, that some might regard as controversial, that the left can whip themselves up into such a frenzy about her. But they are running out of attack lines, and funny how quiet they are about the accused fraudsters facing trial from their own side of the political divide.

Well, I object to Dorries's view on abortion, which are crass, illiberal and antediluvian. But that isn't the reason why I'm attacking her at the moment - it is because of her (self-confessed) mendacious behaviour. And I've not been silent on those expenses fiddlers who are facing trial - it is just that nothing is happening with that story, whereas with Dorries, this story is fresh and evolving.

Funny though that despite the countless attempts to bring her down, Nadine managed to increase her majority in May.

In a safe Tory constituency that has not returned anyone from another party since 1929* that isn't quite the achievement TB makes it out to be - particularly since in 2005 she was replacing an MP who had disgraced himself. And the increased swing towards her was only a bit more than the national swing towards the Conservatives. Quite how this current scandal will impact on her constituency vote next time remains to be seen, of course.

Something that along with her clearing by John Lyons is driving the local Labour Party and freaks many miles away in places like Guildford mad.

Well, she may have been cleared but in the process revealed that she has deceived people. It's not exactly a ringing endorsement of her behaviour now, is it?

She remains are popular local MP and would frankly be better ignoring the online nutters...

Well, her popularity may well take a bit of a battering over this. But that isn't the jarring moment in the final line. The use of the word "nutters" (which may well be tongue in cheek to some extent) is simply extending the banal insults thrown around by his fellow party member. Those who disagree with Dorries and call her on her lies are "nutters". The hypocrisy in TB's position should be clear to everyone - he's not a nutter when he attacks Labour politicians, but when someone attacks someone from his party... well, they must be mental.

TB is clearly a publicity hungry blogger determined to make himself into some sort of minor celebrity. Fair play. He's not doing badly at it. But he should bear in mind that there is nothing that damages a blogger's credibility quicker than being a slavish party loyalist. Nothing, that is, other than admitting that 70% of your blog's content is fiction...

UPDATE:

TB tells me in the comments section that he is not longer a Tory party member; sorry, my bad. However I still feel that tribal loyalty is playing a role in his judgement call on this one so when you read "same party" in the post above read "fellow right-winger" or similar instead.

*The boundaries of the constituency have changed over that period, of course.

More Dorries

A breathtaking bit of Dorries insanity from her Twatter feed:

In Politics, Twitter is the sewer of the social networking medium, in which on line bullies live and talk to each other, over and over

I want us all to pause for a moment and take in the wonderful irony of complaining about Twitter on Twitter. Ahhh. Excellent stuff. The image of Twitter as a sewer is brilliant, since it allows me to picture Nadine complaining about a sewer while standing in one. I rather think that if you don't like the sewer, you should get the hell out of it.

Yet in this incredible tweet we have another level of irony - a bully complaining about other bullies. Because the only reason why Dorries doesn't talk to the other bullies "over and over" on Twitter is because she tends to call those who don't agree with her "stalkers" or "nutters" and then run away.

The reality is, Nadine, that this could all go away if you admitted you were wrong to lie to constituents 70% of the time on your blog and showed a little humility. Unfortunately, that seems to be beyond you. However, the more you dig and the more you throw insults around, the worse you will look. And every intervention that you make that isn't an apology will simply keep this story going.

Four Lions

I'm a big fan of the work of Chris Morris. As far as I am concerned he is one of the few people who actually gets what satire should be - topical, biting, true to life and, if need be, cruel. So it was with some anticipation that I sat down to watch his film on suicide terrorism - Four Lions.

The basic idea behind is both striking and spot-on. The reality is that jihadists are not the sort of robotic, fundamentalist warriors depicted in many TV shows and films. They are often inept, shallow and very human. More often that not terrorism - and not just Islamic terrorism - succeeds more through luck than judgment. This is what Four Lions showed in detail - the contradictions of the bombers, their inability to agree on just about anything, and the fact that their bombings were a farce from beginning to end. In a country where many see an ruthless army of Islamic militants waiting to be awakened, this film depicts a scenario far closer to reality - a bunch of incompetents, largely ignorant of the religion they are meant to be fighting for, succeeding in creating death and confusion only after their hastily conceived plan goes wrong.

The odd thing about the film, though, is just how tame it is. The first half of the film - right up until the suicide bombing of a sheep - feels a lot like an episode of Last of the Summer Wine with added cussing and nail bombs. Yes, I get that it is meant to be exploring the mundanity of those involved in the plot, but the end result is that the film seems very sedate and, at times, almost meandering and unengaging. The fact that these people are incompetents doesn't mean that their attempts to produce bombs should be devoid of tension. See Zero Day for a film that deals far more effectively with people both living normal life and simultaneously gearing up for a killing spree.

The film only really comes to life in the final third, as the "plan" (such as it is) goes into action, and then almost immediately falls apart. The heavy handed, lethal policing, the general incompetence of the bombers and the fact that their attack ultimately ends up being confused and unable to hit their actual targets makes for a very watchable piece of cinema - simultaneously tense, funny, uncomfortable and an accurate representation of the idea that neither terrorists nor police are ever truly in control of these sort of events. Its a shame that the rest of the film couldn't have been like the final third.

It is also a shame that the biting edge to much of Morris's work is missing here. It is almost as if he has decided that making a film about suicide bombing is enough - the controversy is a given, and therefore he doesn't have to raise his game. Which makes this, overall, a bit of a missed opportunity. This film didn't - and couldn't, really, given its structure - provoke the sort of reaction and debate as his paedophile Brasseye special did. What would have been far more effective is to do the whole thing as a Brasseye or The Day Today news flash about an ongoing terrorist incident occurring on the day of the London Marathon, complete with inappropriate media observations, ghoulish reporting, nonsense emerging from the police and garbled videos emerging from the bombers - amateurishly shot and utterly confused as to the actual motivations behind the bombings. That would have been edgy, clever and controversial satire. That would have been vintage Morris. Which, sadly, Four Lions - as good as it was in places - was not.

Laurie Penny, Spending Cuts and Attempted Suicide

As part on my ongoing habit of being late on just about everything, I see that Laurie Penny is indulging in a jaw-dropping bit of hysteria (that manages to be in pretty bad taste at the same time):

It's 2am, and I'm sitting under a strip light in the emergency unit of my local hospital, waiting for the doctors to finish attending to a young friend of mine who attempted to end her life tonight. When the paramedics arrived, they told us she wasn't the first - for many Londoners, it seems, something about the news or the weather today gave the impression that a crisis point has been reached.

Timmy nicely fillets her assertions here, while DK turns in an excellent piece of splenetic rage against her here. But I'd just like to throw into the maelstrom my own thoughts on young Laurie's work.

First up, she's being pretty fucking assumptive. She doesn't specify why her friend tried to end her life (and in fairness, I don't want to know and nor should she tell us) and she clearly doesn't (and can't) know why other Londoners (all we know is that there is more than one) have attempted to end their lives either. It hardly seems surprising, though, that in a city the size of London that a certain number of people would try to end their lives each day. What would be surprising, though, is if they were doing it (as is strongly implied by Penny's article) because of the Comprehensive Spending Review. In fact, that would be fucking staggering - particularly if they were trying to commit said act over Labour's failure to counter the CSR to Penny's liking.

Given we don't know the motives of those who attempted to end their lives on that evening, I d0 have to say that it is pretty offensive - and an example of rather odious cheap political point scoring - for Penny to link those personal, troubled acts with the particular partisan argument she wishes to make. It is the sort of thing you see The Daily Mail doing all the time (albeit not normally from a leftist perspective) and, as most normal people know, aping that hate rag is not the way for any journalist to go.

But I don't think that Penny is stupid, even given the crass and offensive paragraph reproduced above. She can write well, knows how to frame an article, get the reader bought in to what she's saying and how to structure an argument (no matter how easily the logic of said argument can be refuted). She isn't dumb. Her big problem, rather, is that she is almost hopelessly naive. She is a living embodiment of the Entitlement Culture, and she lives in this strange bubble where the whole country should conform to her own, statist outlook on life. She's a idealist through and through. Don't get me wrong, I'm an idealist too - but it is mixed with both pragmatism and a healthy dose of cynicism. I know governments and political parties will do things of which I do not approve - however, I don't then link my disappointment in them to the attempted suicides of people I've never met.

It's tempting to round this post off with a terse phrase like "grow up", but I don't think that is what Penny actually needs to do. She needs to get a grip on reality, and the nasty world that is politics. The world isn't suddenly going to become compliant with what she wants and feels she is entitled to. Practical reality will always constrain what she demands. And in the case of spending cuts the practical reality is starkly simple - there's no money left, and all the parties (including Labour, deep down) know that cuts have to be made if the state is going to stay afloat.

The Woes of Nadine Dorries

You've got to love Dorries' response to the revelation that 70% of her blog is made up. It is a classic of its kind - both detached from reality and simultaneously trying to smear opponents. Let's take a look:

After a fifteen month ordeal, I was a delighted, for my family, to have been cleared by the standards commissioner today.

Well, cleared of some things; it has to be said though that having to admit that you lie 70% of the time on one of the main ways in which you communicate with your constituents is perhaps a little bit of a pyrrhic victory.

Everyone is getting very excited about my comments regarding my blog. Not that it had anything to do with the complaint lodged by the BNP.

Well, yes it did - the exposed lies came out in the course of examining the complaint. So the two things are absolutely linked.

Let's indulge in a slightly hyperbolic comparison here. The Watergate scandal started as an investigation into a burglary into a Democrat political operation at the Watergate hotel. On balance, it appears that Nixon didn't know about that break-in. But as the situation was investigated, things emerged about the Nixon White House that were even more concerning than the original break-in. So he ended up resigning.

The point here is that in being cleared of any wrong-doing over expenses, Dorries has been shown to be someone who deceives her constituents and the wider world through her blog. As the next line shows:

My blog conceals IDs, times, dates, and is often out of synch.

Which would be just about ok had you admitted to this before you were forced to in order to save your skin over another matter. You presented your blog as fact - 70% of the time, you were lying about its relation to reality.

This is because I have had more than my fair share of inappropriate attention to deal with

By "inappropriate" do we mean "unwanted because it isn't convenient for me" by any chance, Nadine? Because the two things are very different.

For example - when I do blog exactly where I am going to be - we find ourselves having to deal with some very strange and un invited people.

Brilliant! A classic bit of Dorries bullshit. She paints those anyone who might want to challenge her as "very strange". She paints a picture of them as somehow a bit weird, a bit sinister, and a bit threatening. Whereas it seems to me that she simply does not want to engage with those who do not agree with her - hence the lack of comments on her "blog". She wants to be unchallenged and free to live in her own little world.

Which would be fine if she wasn't an elected representative. However, Dorriesland will always be invaded by people she does not like while she remains an MP because she is, as an elected official, accountable. That means that people she does not like and does not agree with will challenge her and will try to see her at public events. That's part of being in the public eye as an elected politician. Don't like it? Fuck off and do something else then.

I suppose if any of my blog were truly fiction, I could call myself a journalist.

Oh hahahahahaha. Yeah, brilliant, good one. Appear populist by dissing journalists. Boo! Hiss! No-one likes journos! They're almost as unpopular as... well, politicians.

Now I don't like a lot of what passes for journalism in the modern age - far too much of the news has become caught up with opinion and bias. But I don't doubt that for one second that if a journalist made up 70% of what they wrote and was found out, they would be sacked and their media outlet humiliated. So sorry, Nadine, journalists are better than you.

The fiction, in terms of locations etc, is done to protect my family and staff.

And here we have it again - the idea that there are those out there who want to terrorise Dorries. Yet I still suspect that Dorries is actually just trying to protect herself from those with whom she does not agree. Take Tim Ireland - a man who has consistently called Dorries (and others) on inconsistencies and falsehoods. I can imagine he is fucking irritating to have on your trail given he is tenacious and has a rigorous attention to detail. But as an elected politician, you should not only expect such scrutiny, but you have to realise that you actively invite it through your position. So if you have misled people - intentionally or otherwise - then admit to it. Like a proper adult would. Rather than shrieking "oh no, scary stalker man" before running away. Which is, frankly, pathetic.

It will be interesting to see how Dorries tries to dig herself out of this one. She could turn down the heat with a simple apology but for Dorries, sorry really does appear to be the hardest word. If her blog post is anything to go by, she's going to try to spin and smear her way out of the shit. But I suspect, given the amount of coverage she is getting on Twitter and elsewhere, she's not going to get away with it or, at the very least, it isn't going to be easy for her.

Spending Cuts - A Suggestion

To all those complaining about the scale of the spending cuts, in particular those relating to welfare, here's a suggestion - if it bothers you that much, then find an applicable charity and donate money to it. That way you are doing your bit to help even though the government is no longer in a position to afford to help. And if you don't want to do that, then I'd like to politely suggest that you shut the fuck up.

British Sea Power - Zeus

British Sea Power are, quite simply, one of the best bands out there. They write indie rock songs but do so in an inventive way, with unlikely musical arrangements and quirky lyrics on unlikely topics. In a musical world that seems to have set as its benchmark the word “bland”, they are a breath of fresh air.

Their latest EP, however, is a curious work as far as I am concerned. All the hallmarks of the BSP sound are there – the esoteric lyrics containing random name checks, the experimental guitar based music and so on. But it all feels a little forced; being random and experimental for the sake of it, rather than because the songs actually demand it. To me, the EP sounds a lot like the Fall – not in itself a bad thing, but BSP at their best are more coherent and essential than the Fall. They have their own sound; they should use that, rather than mimicking a band who started to become a caricature of itself a long time ago.

In some respects, what they’ve done here reminds me of what Radiohead did after OK Computer or the Boo Radleys after Wake Up! - they’ve lurched off in a direction marked weird, and part of the reason for doing so is to avoid having to write the sort of polished songs that made them so successful in the first place. Of course, this is an EP, not an album, and it could be next year’s BSP album will see them offering the idiosyncratic song-writing that made them so brilliant (IMHO) in the first place. But Zeus - while still being better than most modern music – is a bit of a disappointment. Ultimately there is nothing on this EP that can compare with the sparse beauty of their last album - Man of Aran. And given that album was a soundtrack to an obscure, yet oddly beautiful film, and therefore consisted of soundscapes largely devoid of lyrics, that is a bit of a cause for concern.

*NEWSFLASH* Rupert Murdoch is not a Libertarian

From the BBC news website:

Rupert Murdoch is a libertarian - against too much state control, and in favour of individuals taking responsibility.

Is he a libertarian? Really? Or is he just an economic liberal? Because there is precious little in a rag like The Scum to suggest anything other than a deep conservatism when it comes to social matters. Indeed, the next sentence arguably shows this social conservatism:

Hence the high praise for Margaret Thatcher.

Thatcher wasn't a libertarian. She was an economic liberal in a number of ways, but she was also deeply socially conservative. Furthermore, when you factor in the reality that Murdoch religiously flirts with successful political leaders of all parties in all countries, including the likes of the utterly illiberal Tony Blair, it is difficult to conclude that he is truly interested in anything other than the health of his business empire. That might be why he's a successful businessman; it certainly means he isn't a proper libertarian.

Libertarians need to work hard to stop this association of libertarianism purely with economic freedom. True libertarians (to use a phrase that is almost designed to provoke outrage) are just as much interested in social freedom as they are in economic freedom. To be free you have to be able to spend your money how you like and live you life how you like* - and as far as I can see, Murdoch only really cares about the former. That might make him a champion of economic freedom, and see him leaning more towards anarcho-capitalism. But it sure as hell doesn't make him a libertarian.

*Constrained by something like the Harm principle, of course.

Cuts and Fairness

Oh God, I'm sick of it. Absolutely sick of it. I'm sick to fucking death of hearing that the spending cuts implemented by the coalition are not fair. Particularly since this sort of trite bullshit tends to spew forth from those who believe that the rich paying much greater percentages in tax is the very definition of fairness.

When someone says that the spending cuts aren't fair what they mean is that they don't think that the people being affected by the cuts are the right people, and that the axe is falling in the wrong areas. However, it is next to impossible to cut spending in this country without it affecting someone - such is the intense, pernicious reach of the state after 13 years of Nu Labour misrule. So no matter what is cut, it is going to affect someone somewhere who then will claim that the cut in question is unfair. How, pray, do we then have a fair tax cut?

And you want to know why the poor are more affected by the cuts? Because the Labour government did its level fucking best to make them as dependent on the state as possible. The fact that they are now being adversely affected is arguably as much the fault of the last Labour government than it is of the ConDems, if not more so.

The cuts hurt people - but that doesn't stop them from being inevitable and, in the longer term, helpful. I don't doubt for one second that we will be a far more healthy nation once we have weaned ourselves off the teat of the state and started to realise again that we can, and should, take responsibility for ourselves.

When politicians change their minds

The only people who never change their minds on anything are the sort of tedious sods it is best to avoid. Yet increasingly we seem to expect our political class to never change their minds. It is like we expect them to be right first time on every issue and if they do change their position, then it is a sign of weakness. Sometimes it is almost as if Thatcher’s “the lady’s not for turning” pronouncement is some sort of benchmark against which all politicians should be assessed, rather than an admirable sentiment at the time that later sank that particular leader when it came to stubbornness over the poll tax. .

That idea is, of course, horseshite. Everyone changes their minds on some things; indeed, keeping an open mind, engaging in debate and reviewing your opinions accordingly is a sure sign of an intelligent, engaged mind. If a politician can stand up and say they were wrong on an issue then I’d argue they’ve got far more going for them than a politician who stubbornly sticks to their original opinion in the face of contradictory facts.

Yet I don’t want to give the political class a “get out of jail free” card – if they are continually wrong on stuff, then it does rather call into question their judgment and therefore their suitability for government. So what’s the balance – how can we tell when a politician is justified in changing their mind and when they’re not?

I think the litmus test should be the reasons why they are changing their minds. If they are doing so for reasons clearly of political expediency, then we should treat their u-turn with scorn. Take Miliband Minor’s recent pronouncements on the Iraq War and civil liberties – he claims he has changed his mind* because it led to the electorate to lose trust in Labour. Now that logic simply isn’t good enough. He needs to understand why both the way and the sustained attack on civil liberties under Labour were bad; the reason isn’t simply that they were bad for Labour in electoral terms.

In contrast, the recent conversion of Ken Clarke to not wanting to lock up everybody possible has more credibility to it. Clarke didn’t say what he said for reasons of expediency – in fact, given the opinions of many in the Tory grassroots, saying the opposite would have been far more popular. But what Clarke has done is look at the mess that was Labour’s prison policy (and the prison policy of his own party when it was last in government) and drawn sensible (and, some would say, blindingly obvious) conclusions from that which may contradict his previous positions. Let him change his mind – it makes more sense than stubbornly sticking to the idiocy that went before.

So when a politician changes their mind, let’s find out why. If the reason is intuitively plausible, then they deserve the benefit of the doubt (as long as they don’t keep on doing it). However, if the reason is simply “because it benefits me politically”, then I hope you will all join me in heaping scorn on that particular craptacular politician.

*Yeah, I know some people believe that he was always against the war; however, he was a governmental aide for the party that started the war and he stood at the next election for that party after the war had started. Furthermore, I don’t doubt for one second that had he been in Parliament at the time of the vote on the Iraq War, he’d have voted for it. For career reasons, y’know…

[REC] 2

At last! At last! A decent horror movie. One that meets expectations and delivers on what it promises. And given it is a sequel, that is no mean feat – particularly in an era when most "original" horror movies struggle to be good.

[REC] 2 is a great horror movie. It delivers a strong combination of scary moments and tight plotting and in doing so manages, just as the original did, an environment of constant stress. The pressure doesn’t let up for a second – this is about survival, just as the original was, but the stakes have been raised this time. It isn’t just about the survival of the characters – the implications of what is happening in the apartment block extend well beyond the barriers of the quarantine.

Indeed, the fact that the stakes have been raised is crucial to the success of this sequel. While it is true to the original, it develops the ideas of its predecessor rather than just repeating it. This is no longer about zombies and the authorities trying to contain it – there is something much more satanic going on. And there are new ideas as well, such as the things that can only be seen in the dark. It is a development of the original, not a rehash – and it bodes well for the films yet to come.

It even manages to have a complex plot, that tells a complex and developing story in a non-linear format. Events are shown in a non-sequential way to give different perspectives on the mounting crisis, and a crucial scene from the first film is revisited in such a way to completely change the scope of this story. This is ambitious story-telling for any genre – let alone the sequel to a Spanish zombie movie.

Is it perfect? Well, no. It suffers slightly from over-exposure in the story – part of the success of [REC] was that it was ambiguous as to what was going on. Fleshing out the story has, inevitably, limited a lot of that ambiguity. So the story is now reliant on how you feel about demonic possession as a credible idea in horror movies – personally, I think it works quite well, but some may not like the explicitly religious overtones of the film. Yet this is a small gripe. This is a convincing, well-told and genuinely unnerving movie. It comes highly recommended – something that I don’t often say about modern horror movies.

Keeping Promises, Managing Expectations

Here’s an interesting article about Obama and his current woes. It stresses that he has actually achieved a lot of his agenda, but is struggling in the polls regardless. And the article hints at the reason for this – when he was elected, he promised the earth and now it comes to delivering, what he has to offer isn’t quite the change people believed in. He failed to manage expectations, and is suffering as a result.

This has always been the charge leveled against populist politicians – they offer a better tomorrow, but when they are elected and tomorrow become today, there’s something lacking in the reality they create. So what has happened recently is politicians have become vague on what they promise. Gone are the concrete policies, presumably in the hope that the electorate won’t be disappointed when either the policies don’t appear, or when those policies do appear and actually turn out to be a bit shit. Instead, politicians try to get our votes through spouting platitudes.

It isn’t just Obama and his claims to represent “Change” and “Hope” – although Lord knows those concepts should have been interrogated more thoroughly before he was handed the keys to the White House. It is also seen in Cameron’s call for change – a meaningless concept without extrapolation. And it was in the rhetoric that dragged Blair into Downing Street – just what does “education, education, education” actually mean? That it was his priority – but his priority to do what? Fuck up first? Fuck up the most? Likewise, “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” is meaningless without the “how” – how are you going to be tough on crime and its causes? Furthermore, whenever a politician talks about a big concept like, say, fairness, it is apparently without any inkling that such a concept is relative, and how it will be defined will vary from community to community and, indeed, from individual to individual.

So these empty strap lines and meaningless assertions are meant to make you want to vote for a politician without them actually having to tell you what they will do. But rather than managing the expectations of the electorate, it heightens them. Obama represents change – which the vast majority of people would probably interpret as change for the better. When he delivers the American status quo with just a little bit more state tinkering in some areas (like health care), people are disappointed. Very disappointed. Because that isn’t change. Likewise, Blair’s crime pledge – it sounds like he is going to sort out crime once and for all. When it becomes clear that what he actually plans to do is give various malcontents a meaningless trophy like an ASBO, of course people are fucked off. Particularly when they become the victims of crime themselves.

Saying nothing beyond empty buzzwords is not enough to stop the massive disappointment in politicians when they fail to deliver anything more than the same politics with different personalities presiding over it. The only way in which politicians can effectively manage the expectations of the electorate is to be more honest about what they can, and can’t, do. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: the most honest politician – the sort of one that you should trust and consider voting for – will be the one who says “nope, sorry, can’t help you with that”. But whenever a politician waddles on to the political stage spouting meaningless platitudes about hope and change, you should be very suspicious about what they mean by those phrases – if, indeed, they actually mean anything at all.

The Crazies

The longer a TV series goes on, the more likely it becomes that the quality will decline. In order to keep the viewer interested, writers and producers will keep on coming up with more and more outrageous things. Unfortunately, this has the effect of undermining what initially made the project successful, and viewers lose interest despite their efforts.

As I said, that happens a lot with long-running TV shows. It is seldom that we get to see it happen in a movie with a run-time of less than 90 minutes – however, The Crazies manages to achieve this dubious honour.

It starts out well enough, with a series of strange murders befalling a small American town. Of course, it is highly derivative – even for a remake, which almost by definition will be derivative. The use of a Johnny Cash song over the opening credits mimics a far superior remake of a far superior Romero film. The burning deaths represent a scenario that has been used time and time again in everything from horror films to weepy TV movies. And the scene in the undertaker's references both The Fog and, in the grisly sewing up of the pastor’s mouth and eyelids, the pilot episode of Millennium. Of course, the more weird the deaths become the more it all resembles a film adaptation of an early James Herbert novel, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing – it just means that credibility has been left us for the duration of the film.

Then the US government becomes involved, and the film takes its first nosedive. First up, it stretches credibility that the US government – which failed so spectacularly on both 9/11 and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina would be able to mount the sort of operation depicted in this film. Secondly, the developing mystery of the place crash is largely abandoned, only to be resolved in the blandest of bland ways in the final third of the film. Finally, there is some heavy-handed symbolism – like the potentially infected being herded around in cattle trucks – that is frankly tacky and inappropriate even for a “B” Movie like this one.

Introducing the US government as another enemy in the film has the effect of sidelining the titular “crazies”. Sure, they crop up every now and again throughout the rest of the film, but they are only there to offer inventive deaths only to be dispatched with almost tedious regularity at the last minute by the deputy sheriff. Yes, I get that the real monsters can sometimes be the humans rather than the monsters, but this hackneyed and clichéd point has been beaten to death ever since Romero first made Night of the Living Dead. This film doesn’t add to the idea, it just regurgitates it with an almost criminal lack of flair and inventiveness.

And then the movie disintegrates into a tedious runaround as the ever-diminishing band of protagonists run from both the government and them there crazy people. However, the film has an admirable determination to eject any shred of credibility from its plot with the final revelation that, if you are caught in a nuclear blast, all you have to do to survive with little more than cuts and scrapes is to be in a truck driving in the opposite direction to the explosion. Turns out the CND was worrying about nothing – nuclear blasts aren’t all they’re made out to be. My intelligence would have been utterly insulted had it not been turned off pretty early on for the duration of the film.

Finally we end up with the heavy-handed hints that what we’ve just seen is about to be repeated in another town. All I could think at that point was “thank God the film’s over and I don’t have to watch that happening”.

To be fair to the film it was well directed, with some great action set-pieces and acting that, while it was nothing special, was equally not jarringly bad. And as always, I can hear the objection in the back of my head “it was a horror movie. What were you expecting? A great film?”

And the answer is “well, yes”. Horror as a genre is much abused by studios desperate to make a quick buck from an easy to make genre with an almost guaranteed audience. To do so, they sacrifice much of what would actually make a film great. The Crazies is a prime example of this. It basically seems to be saying “fuck characterization and fuck the plot – as long as we have a few decent action sequences that contain moments to make the audience jump we’ll be fine”. Except the film won’t be fine – it will be anything but. The Crazies doesn’t have characters, it has meaningless empty ciphers designed to provoke audience reactions through empty signifiers – he’s the sheriff, he must be good, he’ll survive. She’s the sheriff’s wife, a doctor and pregnant – she’s definitely good and will survive. And so on until you don’t care about any of the characters because they are so bland as to be instantly forgettable. And the film lacks an internal logic – in fact it never seems to quite work out what it wants to be – monster movie, zombie movie, conspiracy chiller. Of course, it could be all three at the same time (see REC) – but that would involve weaving the plot strands together rather than lumping one type of event after another with no real attempts to link them and hoping no-one notices.

The point is horror movies can be great – they can have strong internal logic, a coherent plot behind the scares and fully developed characters. See The Exorcist, Dawn of the Dead (either version), 28 Days Later and The Shining for examples. However, if you can’t be bothered to provide this, then you do have to question just why your audience should bother with your film at all.

And with The Crazies it would be my recommendation, sadly, that you just shouldn’t bother. Not only to watch the film, but to make it in the first place.

The Next Tory Leader

It may seem odd to be speculating on who the next Tory leader will be when the incumbent is probably the most successful Tory leader for the past decade and a half. Of all the party leaders, I’d say he’s the most secure. But, as Francis Urquhart once observed, “nothing lasts forever. Even the longest, most glittering reign must come to an end someday.” Indeed, the sole certainty that a Prime Minister has on entering Number 10 Downing Street is that they will one day leave office. The same with party leaders.

So, when Cameron does stand down, or is forced out after an election loss, who will take over from him? Looking at the most high-profile Tories, it is difficult to see any of those vying for the top job. George Osborne is no Gordon Brown – he doesn’t seem to have the burning desire to follow his friend into Number 10. Hague is popular with the people, but the recent scandal about his special assistant may have tainted his view of frontline politics and therefore his desire to be leader (again). Who else? Gove? Hardly. Theresa May? Competent, but hardly inspirational. On the backbenches you have David Davis, but he is a restless, impetuous soul who may not be the right sort of personality to lead his party successfully. Perhaps Boris might return to the Commons – he’d be a popular choice with the people, but again he’s a bit of a renegade and his inability to keep his wedding tackle in his pants. As a President, I think Johnson would work. As a leader of a party in a parliamentary democracy and a potential Prime Minister, well, I don’t think BoJo would work so well.

So none of the most high-profile Tories – but then again that is hardly surprising. Cameron will be in power for at least five years, possibly even ten – and given the propensity of all of the main parties to choose leaders with limited parliamentary experience, the next Tory leader may only just have been elected to the Commons – or may be elected next time.

Besides, before the next leader is chosen, something is going to have to happen about ideology in the Conservative party. Cameron’s project of making the Tory party electable again was largely achieved through jettisoning ideology in favour of neutral, non-threatening platitudes. And it worked on some levels – the Tories are back in government. But the problem with being in government – particularly a government facing as many problems as the Con-Dems – is that you do need some sort of ideology to guide you as you govern. Cameron’s beliefs will be exposed by the way in which he governs.

And we’ve already seen the faint glimmerings of that in the concept of the Big Society. Quite what it means remains something of a mystery, but I can’t help but feel that we are witnessing a revival in Tory paternalism. What Cameron is isn’t quite clear, but what he isn’t is a Thatcherite. Which is fine – but there are others in the party who are.

Right now we are in a position where order in the Tory party is maintained by the relative novelty of being back in power. People get behind Cameron not necessarily believe in what he says and what he stands for, but because not seeing eye-to-eye with a Tory PM is better than powerlessly disagreeing with a Labour PM. But that won’t last. The longer they stay in power – and an outright win at the next election – the less the novelty of power will create unity. So in five years time, or in ten years – when Cameron goes – it may be less about personalities and relative visibility, and more about what factions exist at the time, how powerful they are, and who is leading them.

It is too early, far too early to be able to guess who will be the next Tory leader. However I reckon we can make a prediction about the nature of the next Tory leadership contest. When Cameron was elected, it was about finding someone who can win. Next time, it will be about defining what the party actually stands for – or rather about which ideological faction is going to take it into the future.

A Special Treat For All Readers

I make no apology for posting this. It is your choice whether or not you listen to it, and your responsibility to deal with consequences if you do:

The Entitlement Culture (and how to end it)

About this time last year, I thought about writing an article called “The Entitlement Generation” – about all the graduates emerging from universities and claiming they were entitled to a job because they happened to do a degree. The point was not just to point out the hopeless naivety of that position, but to illustrate just how the society they are in make them think that they are entitled to a job by dint of having a degree (often in an irrelevant subjects). However, looking at our society today, it is clear that this sense of entitlement is not just in our students but can be seen across our society.

You only have to look at the response to the Coalition’s cuts – cuts are fine until they cut something that an individual is entitled to. Take the mindless whining about the cut to the playground scheme – the sense of wronged entitlement is palpable. They were entitled to that money and now it isn’t there – who ruddy dare the government take that money away?

The knee-jerk reaction is to just say “oh, do shut up!” No-one is entitled to money from the government – not least because that money actually comes from the taxpayer, rather than from the government. My initial thought is always “do what you want, but don’t expect it to be funded through my taxes!”

Yet this view – while technically being correct, does rather lack an understanding of why people might be tempted to think that they are entitled to funds from the government. It might well be because they have to give so much to the government through their taxes. Actually, no, “give” is not the right word – the government takes taxes – in what feels like ever-increasing amounts.

So why shouldn’t we demand things from the government? We pay for the fucking thing, so why shouldn’t we get some sort of return on our forced investment? You wouldn’t walk into a supermarket and give them a hefty percentage of your salary and then walk out with nothing.

Of course, it isn’t as simple as that. Tax money does go towards some goods – the NHS, schools etc. The problem is that the amount of money the government is taking from us is going up, while the quality of what they provide is at best stagnant, and at worst rapidly deteriorating. If the government was a business reliant on winning money from people it would have gone under a long time ago. It is only because it can demand money from people that it can keep the income coming in. But therein lies the problem. Now, when it is demanding more money from people at the same time as offering those people less. Of course people feel they are entitled to things from the government – they’re still paying for that government after all.

The only way in which we can end this culture of entitlement is by redressing our relationship with the government. If we want to feel that they are entitled to less from the government, then the government needs to take less from them. Ideas like the Big Society don’t cut it. “Your Country Needs You,” says Cameron. Well, frankly my country can fuck off – it has taken enough from me already.

There is a culture of entitlement in this country, and it has been created by our tax-hungry and profligate government. For that culture to change, the government needs to change in a far more radical way than anything being offered by the mainstream political parties. The state needs to get smaller – much smaller – and in doing so return both rights and responsibilities to its people.

Pragmatism and Politics

Let me state something outright – I believe pragmatism is essential to politics. If you are not pragmatic then guess what? You ain’t ever going to get anywhere in politics. Indeed, one of the reasons why I would not run for power is because I am a stubborn sod most of the time – and that is not a particularly helpful attitude in those who want to win the votes of others.

But let me state something else – pragmatism in politics is important, but it is only part of the political process. You can be too pragmatic or, to put it another slightly more graphic way, you can whore yourself out for a couple of votes and lose the reason why you got into politics in the first place. Don’t believe me? Well, you only have to look at Tony Blair for a striking example of this phenomenon.

So the practice of politics is a delicate balancing act between pragmatism and ideology. Individuals need to work out how to carry out that balancing act, and more importantly, what the line is that they will not cross between being pragmatic and being committed to core beliefs. It is particularly true of those who adopt the strategy of entryism – those Libertarians in the Tory party, for example, who are aspiring (vainly if you ask me) to make that party genuinely Libertarian. The question they need to ask themselves is “at what point do I say enough is enough? What would it take for me to decide this party is not longer tight for me and I should leave it?”* I think former Labour party members found that out in 2003, while a lot of Liberal Democrats found out what their breaking point was in May of this year.

In other words, I get that some people think it is worth being a part of a party that does not represent all of their views but might be, if they are able to get into power, able to make some of their views in actual government policy. Such a position is pragmatic; it is a compromise I can understand. But pragmatism must have its limits lest people want to end up being compromised. So I’ll put the question to those who are a member or supporter of one of the main parties again: “what would be the breaking point – the moment when you decided enough was enough and it is time to take your political allegiance elsewhere – for you?”

*Ok, yes, that was technically two questions.

Individuals, Communities, Society and the State

So I’m an individual. I don’t think many people are going to argue otherwise – at least not credibly. The fact that I am individual is very important to my thinking, and to my political identity as a Libertarian. Yet despite my standing as an individual, I don’t doubt for one second that I am an individual whose life is dependent on being part of society.

See, the shoes I stand up in, the clothes I wear, the house I live in – they are all dependent for their existence on the expertise of others. Likewise, I did not farm the food I eat and did not brew the booze I sup. The computer on which I type was built by someone else, as was the application that allows me to type this in such a way in which you can read it. My life is dependent upon others within society.

The quality of life is also enhanced by interacting with others in society. I’m not the most outgoing of people, but I value my wife, my friends and other members of society with whom I interact. Again, my life is not a vacuum – it needs others to make it worthwhile.

And my opinions also do not emerge from a vacuum – they were created, enhanced and adapted through interactions with others. They evolve, they change as I hear viewpoints of others – regardless of whether I agree with those people or not. Intelligent thinking and opinion-forming is not simply a solitary activity – it is enhanced through hearing the thoughts and opinions of others.

So yeah, I’m an individual. But I’m also dependent upon a community. And so is pretty much everyone else in this country, unless they live as a completely self-sufficient hermit in the middle of nowhere.

Yet I want to be able to choose which parts of society I wish to interact with. I want to be able to choose which communities I wish to participate in. I don’t want anyone else telling me what I should be doing – I want to be able to choose for myself using my own intellectual faculties what parts of our society makes my life better. Which is why I believe in community, and society, but not in the state (at least not in its current form).

When you hear Cameron talking about the Big Society, or Miliband going all Platonic and talking about the Good Society, you should be very, very concerned. For what they are talking about is not the type of society or community that might arise naturally from people choosing to interact based on what makes life better. They are proposing a top-down “society” – one based on whatever the party in charge believes is best for the people in this country. Society is not, and should not, be a creation of the state – if anything, the opposite is true.

The nonsense of state-created society is that it is predicated on the idea that millions (in this country, over 60 million) people can all be treated in the same way, and that all will have identical concepts of what is good and what can enhance their lives. This is, of course, ridiculous. You will struggle to find a family of four who agree on what is best, let alone a country of millions. So what happens? What version of the “good” or the life-enhancing is chosen? The type that happens to correspond to the idiosyncratic view of the incumbent leader. In its starkest terms, the community or society that you live in and have to interact with is only a personal choice in its most narrow possible definition, in that it is the choice of a Gordon Brown or a David Cameron.

Which is precisely why I want to see the state being reduced to a minimal possible level in order to allow for more organic and natural societies and communities to arise in this country. I’m not an anarchist – I’m not calling for the abolition of the state – but I am calling for a fundamental redefinition of the state to allow people to be freer.

Of course, values and morality will very from person to person, and from situation to situation. This means that there will be conflicts in any group or society – and some of those conflicts will be irreconcilable and will need independent, external arbitration. That is the part a redefined state could play. As political philosopher John Gray puts it:

“...having a life in common cannot mean living in a society unified by common values. It means having common institutions through which the conflicts of rival values can be mediated.”

Now, I do not expect a state limited to this level to be always independent, and I do not believe that it would always make decisions with which I could agree. But a state that allows for a plurality of beliefs and communities is a far better scenario than what we have now – a succession of governments who believe in the impossible: that they will be able to find a “way”, a “truth”, a blueprint for society that will work for each and every one of the millions of people in this country.

I want to be able to choose which communities I live in and interact it. I want to be free to do that. Every flawed, arrogant attempt to build a society implemented by government denies me that right.