a SOLitary life

I love reading blogs, but I haven't yet got into the habit of writing one regularly yet. Not all that many interesting things happen to me, so when I decide I will get ahead and blog, I find I have nothing to say. And sometimes when I am dying to pour my heart out, I don't get the chance until the urge has gone.

Right now, I am somewhere in between the two - time to say something and keen to say something, but not having all that much to report.

The one thing that has really irked me this past week has been watching the Fawlty Towers repeats on BBC2. It's been years since I saw the show, and I have become much more politically aware since then. What I see now I find frankly shocking. Blatant racism with a whole character produced just to mock the Spanish as foolish little creeps, homophobia focused on the whole idea that man-on-man love is funny and all wrapped up in intense sexism and misogyny with Basil often threatening women with his fists! Even Basil himself, ostensibly a laughable old Tory bigot, is in a sense the hero rather than the anti-hero of the show - always having the best lines and earning the sympathy of the viewer who doesn't know better.

Now some of this can be defended as a relic of a racist, sexist and homophobic age in which such jokes were acceptable. But that doesn't really explain why we should have such programmes on our screens now. We can forgive the people of the 1970s for their ignorance, but that is no reason to accept it today. Why do we allow such crap on our screens?! We wouldn't show films based around the idea of black people being inferior any more, but we allow 'harmless' jokes against the most central tenets of progressive society to damage us all without raising a complaint. I've never written to the BBC before, but I may send a full letter of complaint on this issue when the showing of Fawlty Towers ends. If Channel Four can ban a show for making jokes about paedophiles, progressives can work to get a show banned for the trio of bigotries - sexism, racism and homophobia - which Fawlty Towers has in abundance.

The anti-asylum hysteria continues as two innocent refugees who face real danger are rejected from this country purely on account of who their father was. This sort of thing makes me so angry. No one chooses their parents and no one should be held responsible for their parents' actions. If Saddam Hussein's two daughters lived a life of luxury in Presidential palaces in Iraq then good luck to them, because they deserved some compensation given who their father was. They are innocent Iraqis like nearly all those we blew to pieces, and they should be welcomed into this country with open arms to make amends for our outrageous illegal war. If that displeases Daily Mail reading, BNP voting scum then all the better. I hope they will both appeal.

Celebrations mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Coronation? Please! The last royal occasion I celebrated was the death of the Queen Mother, and the next will probably when His Racist Highness the Dick of Edinburgh pops his clogs. I'll give this "celebration" a miss.

On the bus this morning I felt irritated the whole journey. On the seat next to mine (on the left side of the aisle, myself being on the right) a man was avidly reading the Daily Mail. The interesting thing was how casually he did it, as if it were the most normal and natural thing in the world. Really, it was as if he were some twenty year old college girl reading any old novel. At first I just ignored him, figuring there was little I could do. But more and more he would lightly chuckle to himself as more and more bigotry from Simon Heffer or Melanie Phillips seeped in. It was as if I could actually feel him becoming more intolerant of asylum seekers as the journey went on.

In my experience, Mail readers are small-minded types at the best of times, and I really didn't want to tackle him. He was a little overweight and well-dressed in the conformist sense of a shirt and trousers. He probably has three kids in a semi-detached house and drives to work daily in a gas-guzzling BMW. I certainly hadn't seen him on the bus before. Probably his gas-guzzler was being repaired. All in all, a pretty unsavoury fellow.

It was only when we both came to get off the bus in the city centre that he spoke to me. He had reached into his jacket pocket at the front for his cigarettes and found the box empty: "Ahh no". Clearly he had been desperate to smoke all the journey and wanted to light his next one as soon as he got off the bus, desperate to pollute the air as soon as possible. He casually asked me if I had any change for a 'fiver'. Having taken an instant dislike to this Mail-reader, and having that dislike only increase over time, I replied that I did have the change, but I would certainly not subsidise a disgusting and anti-social habit like his. He looked very surprised, sizing me up as if I were something he had stood on. "Look, if you've got a few pound coins I'd be grateful if you could help me out," he said, this time more threateningly, as if he hadn't understood what I said the first time. By now the bus was stopping and everyone left on was stood up. I got up as well and I must admit I smirked a little as I proudly told him that if he didn't waste his change on "bigoted, rancid, intolerant, socially irresponsible lie-papers like the DAILY MAIL" he would not have to bother me for change to fund his "equally anti-social habits" . I spoke loudly so the whole bus could hear, virtually shouting the name of the newspaper. I was pretty eloquent considering I thought it all up on the spot. As is always the case with arguments, you wish you'd thought to add something else. In my case, it was that his smoking only further burdened the NHS. Either way, it was a good start to the day. The whole bus was staring at us after I castigated him. He looked down in embarrassment as even the driver stared for a moment.

I think sometimes ordinary socially responsible people are keen just to bend over backwards when faced with men like this. On a normal day, perhaps even I would have given him change without any comment on his dubious habits and reading material. But why? We have every right to speak our minds. Perhaps that Daily Mail bigot will even reconsider openly reading such nasty material in public - or at all! Wouldn't that be something? I don't regret standing up for my principles, but I would have regretted aquiescing and saying nothing. In such situations, you should try it yourself.