For those of us of a certain age, this was part of a fondly remembered series of adverts featuring Arthur Daley, sorry, George Cole, extolling the virtues of the Leeds Building Society's Liquid Gold account. They, of course, were launched during the height of Minder's popularity and the resemblance between Arthur Daley and Cole's character here borders on the actionable. Thanks to UK advertising rules, though, by this time popular TV characters couldn't be used to advertise products. You could, however, hire the actor known for playing them and get them to play someone as close as copyright infringement would allow to that character. So, for Liquid Gold, George Cole exchanges Arthur Daley's trilby and camel hair coat for a flat cap and sheepskin jacket, but he's still clearly some kind of small time wheeler dealer, albeit without a second hand car yard. Indeed, Cole himself always maintained that while the character he played in these ads wasn't Arthur Daley, he was clearly a close relative.
This particular entry in the series has always stuck in my memory because of the presence of 'Hong Kong Harry' - not because of the casual racism inherent in the character name and the 'Velly solly' comment by Cole's character, but rather because he was played by another very recognisable actor. Well, recognisable to those of us who watched Gerry Anderson's live action TV series. Anthony Chinn was very busy in the seventies, regularly appearing in UFO as an alien and sometimes as a SHADO operative. He also had a recurring role in The Protectors, as Nyree Dawn Porter's chauffeur-cum-bodyguard. Along with Burt Kwouk, he was one of the stock actors that UK casting director's inevitably turned to when they wanted to cast Chinese or Japanese roles. In reality, Chinn came from Guyana and was of mixed Chinese and Brazilian parentage. Never a star, but ever present in British films and TV up until his death in 2000, he even notched up appearances in four Bond movies, his most prominent being in 1985's View To a Kill, where he played a Taiwanese businessman (possibly a close relative to Hong Kong Harry), who gets dropped out of Max Zorin's airship. He also memorably appeared with George Cole in an episode of Minder, playing a jury member who constantly beguiles Arthur Daley (who has secured the position of foreman of the jury) with his enigmatic and nonsensical proverbs. So there you have it - another unsung stalwart of British TV and film, immortalised in a classic commercial.
I decided the other day that what my collection of freight stock was missing was a milk train. In reality, these could could be seen, from the thirties until the early seventies, transporting milk in tankers from country dairies to major cities. Railway milk traffic went into decline during the sixties as more and more milk distribution switched to road transport. Consequently, the trains became shorter and ran less frequently. Nevertheless, they remained a prominent feature of the railways, particularly on the Southern Region, the area my layout is intended to represent, when completed. Indeed, London-bound milk trains on this region were interesting, as they terminated at Vauxhall station, between Clapham Junction and Waterloo. The station is built up on arches and inside theses arches were, at one time, large milk storage tanks. Milk tanker trains were pulled into one of the platforms, where hoses were attached to their undersides and the milk drained down, via valves, into the storage tanks below.
Anyway, back to the model variety. Real milk trains were extremely heavy when fully laden, had to transported quickly and smoothly, meaning that they were treated in the schedules like express passenger trains, usually hauled by large express passenger locomotives and having a bogied passenger brake, rather than a standard goods brake van, on the rear. They also usually featured another van or vans, such as CCTs or GUVs marshalled directly behind the locomotive, (and sometimes in the middle of the train). Now, I have plenty of express passenger locos, especially Merchant Navies and light pacifics, both of which featured prominently on southern milk trains from the forties to the sixties, a decent collect of passenger brakes and several CCTs and GUVs. So all I lacked to make up a model milk train were the tankers themselves. I recalled that, as a child, my Triang-Hornby clockwork train set had included a milk tanker. It was basically their standard four wheeled fuel tanker painted white and marked 'UD', (for 'United Dairies'). You can still get these second hand at relatively low prices. The trouble is that real milk tankers were specially built and, from the late thirties, ran on six wheeled chassis. Moreover, they weren't painted white. post-war they were painted silver and, after nationalisation new build wagons were blue, with the dairy name on the side. The idea that they were white seems to derive from the silver colour, which faded quickly to a dull pale finish that looked white both in black and white photos and in colour films from the fifties that I've seen. To further complicate matters, many existing milk tankers were never repainted either silver or white and retained their old liveries, getting dirtier and dirtier, their lettering fading until the dairy names could barely be read.
Six wheeled milk tanker models are made: Hornby Dublo produced one in a variety of liveries (including white) throughout the fifties and sixties, which was subsequently produced by Wrenn and is now available from Dapol. From the eighties onwards, Lima also made a six wheeled model in various liveries, with a version of it currently being made by Hornby. The problem is that both types tend to go for pretty silly prices on eBay (currently the main source of second hand model railway equipment). So, I surprised myself by actually winning an auction, at a very reasonable price, for the job lot of three of the Lima type seen above, as a start to my milk tanker train. Now, I knew from the description and eBay photos that they weren't perfect, with a buffer missing from one. But when I received them there turned out to be other minor damage, possibly incurred during transit (almost certainly in the case of two broken couplings). I was also surprised as to how lightweight and flimsy they feel compared with my older Hornby and Wrenn goods rolling stock, more akin to the Airfix goods stock which always felt too light. Although described as being Lima, I'm pretty sure that they are the later Hornby versions - certainly thy are fitted with the lightweight version of the Hornby coupling (which I detest as it is too easily broken). So, now it is a case of repairing damaged buffers and sorting out those couplings. Still, they do represent a start to my milk tanker train, even though the dairy whose livery they carry operated mainly in the North West rather than the South, (tankers, though, could and did wander around regions and dairies, often without being repainted). I just need another three or four to sandwich between a CCT and a passenger brake and I'll have a reasonable representation of a mid-sixties Southern Region milk train.
The use of children as either victim or villain in horror films is always problematic. For one thing, you can guarantee a knee-jerk negative reaction from various sections of the media before they've even seen any such film. If it can be presented as having some kind of artistic merit and shows nothing explicit, like Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1962), then you can probably get away with it and eventually your film will be hailed as a 'classic'. At the exploitation end of he spectrum, then you can expect a much rougher ride. I've just been watching The Children, a low budget direct-to-video horror from 1980. It garnered terrible reviews upon its initial release, with the LA Times, for instance, calling it a 'despicable movie' that 'reeks of a nasty, ill-defined dislike of humankind'. Other reviews resorted to personal insults aimed at the cast's appearance, describing them as 'ugly'. The film's main 'crime', of course, is that portrays a group of children turned into radioactive killers by a leak from a nuclear plant, as a bunch of evil monsters casually killing all the adults they encounter. Worse still, it sees them finally dispatched by violent means: when it becomes clear that they are impervious to bullets, the local Sheriff resorts to chopping off their hands with a sword (which kills them). All of which breaks just about every social taboo with regard to the portrayal of children in films - not only are they evil and violent, but they are also shown being not just killed but dismembered.
Obviously, there is a deep-seated social and moral reasons why such portrayals of children are generally taboo. For one thing, as adults, we should have naturally protective instincts toward children, whether or not they are our own. Furthermore, religion, particularly Christianity, plays a powerful role here, with its insistence that the souls of children are innocent, as yet untainted by the sins of the material world. All of which, of course, makes it extremely tempting for film makers, particularly those whose job it is to provide shocks, to try and subvert these perspectives, turning children into less than innocent antagonists who we can only protect ourselves against by somehow overcoming our natural protective instincts and employing violence against them. Now, ordinarily, it would seem all too easy to dispatch such child-monsters - they are still children and therefore physically no match for an adult. Which is why they are typically imbued with supernatural powers: either they are possessed of the devil, the Anti-Christ, aliens in disguise or radioactive mutations.
Which brings us back to The Children. While I wouldn't call it 'despicable', it really isn't a very good film. My main objection to it is that it is poorly made. with low production values, a terrible script and a plot that doesn't so much as progress logically, as stumble along confusingly with little rhyme or reason. There is absolutely no character development, leaving the viewer not caring as to the fates of the various characters or the fact that innocent kids have been turned into monsters that go around frying their families to death when they touch them. It isn't offensively bad, but it certainly isn't so bad that it is good. Ultimately, it just comes over as a cynical exercise in trying to shock by exploiting the taboo notion of children as monsters. This is particularly evident in the attempt to portray the surviving adult characters' moral dilemma over using violence against the mutants - it is all too trite, coming over as the writers just playing lip service to a complex idea that could and should have lain at the core of the plot. Moreover, the fact that the only way to kill the mutants ids by cutting off their hands makes no sense other than as a cynical way of justifying some 'shock' sequences of children being dismembered.
The fact is that, even in terms of low budget film making, the whole concept of children-as-killers has been done much better. Bloody Birthday, for example, which was released a year after The Children is far more effective, despite having a pretty ludicrous explanation for the evil nature of its trio of ten year old villains: they were all born during a solar eclipse, which means that they were born without consciences. While its resources seem no better than The Children, (it is shot like a TV movie), it is better written, with a reasonably logical plot and a degree of characterisation which leaves the viewer actually caring about the potential victims. Unlike The Children, the antagonists of Bloody Birthday don't have any special powers, they are just ruthless little bastards, pure psychopaths prepared to remove any obstacle to their plans. Which makes the murders they commit truly shocking. Using mainly everyday stuff that ten year olds might have access to - skateboards, skipping ropes and the like - they make several murders look like accidents, before progressing to the use of a stolen gun and a sister's archery bow. Ultimately, the plot hinges on the fact that the heroine and her younger brother can't convince anyone else of the evil of the psychopathic children and face the dilemma of defending themselves without killing the little gits, which would make them, in the eyes of the town, the villains. It still isn't a great film, but it does handle the central concept of murderous kids much better than The Children, something reflected in the somewhat better reception it received upon release.
Frequently to be seen in the late night schedules of streaming services, always in the form of scuzzy versions which look and sound sourced from a fourth generation VHS dupe, Land of the Minotaur (1976) - or The Devil's Men, if you saw it in the UK - looks, on paper, as if it should be a classic slice of Euro horror. For one thing, it boasts two British genre icons in Donald Pleasance and Peter Cushing, Luan Peters as the imperiled heroine, a then-fashionable Satanism theme and exotic Greek locations. Unfortunately, the film itself is something of a chore to watch: slowly paced, utterly predictable in plot terms and with some atrocious dialogue. Moreover, apart from Pleasance and Cushing, the cast are uninspired, delivering flat performances. Indeed, even the two horror stars themselves are far from their best: Plesance, for his part, seems to be channeling Barry Fitzgerald in his role of a Catholic priest, (who, for some reason, is tending a parish in Orthodox Greece). While Pleasance at least looks like he's enjoying himself, Cushing, while as professional as ever in his performance as the villainous Baron Corofax, seems detached and disinterested, giving the distinct impression that he is simply going through the motions. (At this point, Cushing's career seemed to be rapidly winding down - with the British horror film industry pretty much dead, he increasingly found himself appearing in foreign productions which were clearly interested only in trading on his name rather than providing him with roles worthy of his talent).
When various young Australian and American tourists go missing while visiting some old ruins, Pleasance's priest, (who knows some of them), investigates, suspecting that spiritual evil is involved. The ruins are on the land of Cushing's Baron, a transplanted Carpathian nobleman, to whom the inhabitants of the local village seem subservient to. The Baron, of course, is running a cult, worshiping a huge effigy of the legendary Minotaur in a subterranean temple, where he and his cultists (the villagers) make human sacrifices out of passing tourists. With the disappearances mounting and unable to make headway himself, Pleasance calls in his friend, private eye and sceptic Milo, who drives a clapped out old American car, totes a revolver and looks a bit like Edd China from Wheeler Dealers, (obviously useful for keeping that car on the road). Investigating the village, they encounter all manner of bizarre stuff, including the villagers all vanishing at night and the power going out - with both events denied by the villagers in the morning, a Black Mass during which Milo runs over the local police chief, who then gets up and walks away and the kidnapping of the last remaining tourist, Luan Peters. Eventually, the combination of Plesance's faith and Milo's two-fisted detection leas them to overcome the forces of evil in the film's best sequence: having penetrated the temple, Pleasance destroys the cultists by throwing Holy water at them - they explode on contact.
Sadly, novel as the climax might be - blowing up cultists with Holy water is pretty much unique in this sort of film - it really isn't worth sitting through the rest of the film for. That said, despite the film's many deficiencies, it does have some notable aspects, particularly the production design. The temple set is especially impressive, with a massive Minotaur statue that pops up through the floor and snorts flames from its nostrils. The costume design for the cultists, their robes all in rich tones of red, purple, green and so on, is quite striking. As already mentioned, the climax is surprisingly impressive, with the exploding cultists very well realised. It's also worth noting the Greek locations, which are all very nicely filmed, usually in bright sunlight, emphasising their appeal to tourists while simultaneously contrasting with their more menacing night-time manifestation.
Land of the Minotaur was one of a number of British and American horror movies shot in Greece during the mid and late seventies, many of them tax write offs which were barely released. While it is tempting to think that this film also falls into that category, (particularly in view of the lead performances, which give the impression that the actors might have thought that they would never be see), it did, in fact, enjoy a pretty widespread release to cinemas and long afterlife on home video. Not only that, but the ending, which sees Pleasance, Milo and the rescued Peters and her boyfriend, leading the village children, (who survived the climactic holocaust because their souls were innocent), away from the temple, gives the distinct impression that the makers were hoping to spin off sequels. Thankfully, however, we were spared any further evil-fighting adventures on the part of Pleasance's priest and private eye Milo.
A few years ago I suggested here that soap operas and most specifically EastEnders, might consider turning to the conventions of Giallo movies in order to wrap up storylines that had gone on too long and dispose of characters that had come to the ends of their tenures. At the time, the soap had supposedly decided to cut short a story arc which had originally been planned to span several years, but had quickly become tedious. I felt that the best way to do this would have been to introduce a mysterious black gloved killer who dispatches various of the characters in suitably bizarre ways, before vanishing, never to be referred to again. Either that or, years later, to have someone discover some dark secret which, while unconnected to the original truncated plot, binds all the deceased characters together and points to the identity of the vengeful killer. Well, of late it seems that they have taken my advice. Sort of. Of late, just about any character departing the soap has done so by being murdered by the resident serial killer.
While solicitor and wife beater Gray Atkins, the character in question, doesn't really fit the Giallo killer criteria - there is no mystery as to his identity, he doesn't wear black gloves and doesn't leave taunting clues for the police - he does enjoy the sort of outrageous luck usually seen in Giallo movies in order to avoid detection. Moreover, he has, at last, committed a sort of bizarre murder by pushing someone under a tube train - avoiding detection by the unlikely expedient of the station CCTV system not working - highly unlikely in these days of constant terror alerts, (extra security staff would be deployed if the cameras were down). Of course, while his identity is known to the audience, it isn't to the rest of the characters, a situation with precedent in Giallos. In Mario Bava's Hatchet for the Honeymoon, for instance, we know the killer's identity from the off, as he tells us in the voice over who and what he is. But while EastEnders' producers haven't quite gone the whole hog in embracing the spirit of Giallo with this plot, there's still time to rectify the situation. Perhaps they could introduce a quirky detective, who looks like Donald Pleasance or eats hard boiled eggs all the time, as a protagonist for the killer. Or maybe a new piano teacher who looks like David Hemmings could turn up to unravel the mystery.
The inter-war pulp version of smut, Spicy Stories was one of a number of such titles, including Snappy, Film Fun, The Stocking Parade and High Heel Magazine, which specialised in cover paintings featuring provocatively posed young women in their underwear, usually showing lots of thigh and cleavage. With their breasts invariably straining to pop out of their lingerie, these girls held the clear promise that the contents would serve up tales of hot passion and heaving naked bodies. The reality is that the actual stories were, like those cover girls, something of a tease, never actually giving any detailed descriptions of sex (nor, indeed, even mentioning the word). The hottest they ever got were overheated descriptions of their male protagonists fumbling to undress their women. The closest to erotica you got were passages like: "Wilbur found himself kissing the love giving hardness of her breasts", or "his worshiping hands found the delights of Dixie Dolly's charms and lingered on each curving breast with a loving tenderness."
Actually, "Well rounded" and "delightful" breasts are about the only part of female anatomy that is ever named or given any kind of description. Still, in November 1933, when this issue of Spicy Stories was published, breasts were probably the only part of a woman a man could imagine getting his hands on - the so called 'permissive society' was still a long way off. These stories were accompanied by line drawings that went a little further than the covers, with some bared breasts and buttocks. Perhaps surprisingly, the magazine did include a number of, by today's standards, rather tame nude photos - all very artily posed and, again, focusing on the bared breasts. As with the men's magazines that succeeded the pulps in the fifties and sixties, the accent is on titillation rather than eroticism. By today's standards it all seems rather charmingly coy and inoffensive. But back in the day, at least judging by the sheer number of titles, (which also included specialist genre variants such as Spicy Detective Stories, Spicy Western Stories, Spicy Horror and so on), there was quite a market for these titles amongst, presumably, the sex starved youth of the day.
I was planning to write about another off beat schlock movie today, but I've just had to go another round with my ailing washing machine. Which is now, officially, fucked. The seals between the drum and the main door seal have clearly gone - as witnessed by the flood in my kitchen. (To be fair, the flooding was nowhere near as bad as that caused by its predecessor when it finally died). So, I'm now in the process of buying a replacement. Anyway, the upshot of this disruption to my day, (actually, it had already been disrupted by another development from left field, but that's something I can't talk about just yet), is that I'm just not in the mood for talking about old films. So, instead I'll say a few words about the whole business of the 'European Super League' (ESL) and the furore surrounding its announcement. I can't remember the last time I've heard such a tsunami of sanctimonious and hypocritical shite than that which has flowed from the media and football pundits regarding this development. I found the likes of Sky Sports and BT and all their tame 'experts' shedding their crocodile tears over how the ESL was some kind of 'abomination' that 'betrayed fans' and would kill the game, particularly offensive. All that they were worried about was the fact that the existence of the ESL would, in effect, devalue their current deals to carry UEFA's current European competitions. Believe me, once the dust had settled, they'd be queueing up to try and secure rights to screen the ESL.
Because that's the point - it is all about money. Whether it is the ESL or the existing set up, it is all about how much the clubs and media can scalp fans for in order to see their teams play. I find it ironic how all those football fans lined up with the FA, UEFA and the media to condemn the ESL and demand sanctions against the six English clubs involved. I seem to remember them protesting at the way UEFA and the FA sold the rights to screen matches exclusively to pay-TV - yet they now seem to want to defend this status quo. (Indeed, despite their protests and threats of boycotts, these 'concerned' fans all happily signed up to Sky Sports). As for UEFA - that anyone should see such a corrupt and venal body as a 'hero' of some kind is beyond me. Likewise the Premier League which, let us not forget, was similarly formed as a 'breakaway' league when the top tier of clubs decided they wanted a bigger slice of the pie when it came to TV rights and the like, so decided to split from the Football League. The only difference between them and the ESL is that they retained a mechanism for promotion and relegation to and from the lower leagues. As for the talk of the six clubs being sanctioned or thrown out by the Premier League - empty threats. These are the six wealthiest clubs in English football, the Premier League simply wouldn't be viable without them. Certainly, they would no longer be able to command current levels of payment from the TV companies.
Which, finally, brings us back to all those pundits, mainly ex-footballers who earned millions in their playing days and now want to earn millions more for talking bollocks on TV. Barely a handful of them are capable of delivering any kind of meaningful analysis - the rest are idiots like Rio Ferdinand, Danny Mills and Paul Merson, who seem barely able to string together a coherent sentence between them. There's a very good reason why they didn't end up as managers and instead spend their retirement sitting on sofas spouting ill informed shite. You know, I don't have any idea of whether the ESL would actually be good for football or not, any more than any of the above have. I do know, however, that if it ever came to pass, that all of these idiots would be busy reporting on it and enthusing over it as soon as their paymasters at Sky, BT et all signed up the broadcast rights, (just like all those fans threatening boycotts would have signed their new Sky or BT contracts and been buying tickets for the matches). I will say one thing in favour of the ESL, though: Boris Johnson waded in to oppose it and make all sorts of threats as to what he would do to stop it, (strangely, I thought he and his cronies were in favour of free enterprise and against government interference in private industry), which means that I'm automatically primed to support it. Still, it all seems to be a moot point now, with all of the English participants withdrawing. But while the ESL might be dead in the water, the issue that sparked it - UEFA's ridiculous proposals for reforming their existing European competitions, turning them into an even bigger money making joke than they are now - still needs to be addressed.
I often extol the virtues of episodic TV from the pre-streaming 'good old days', the era before overarching 'story arcs' and the like, when each episode was self-contained. Back then, it didn't matter if you missed an episode or two, as when you next tuned in, nothing at all would have changed in terms of the set up and character dynamics and you wouldn't find yourself having to pick up loose plot ends and try to make sense of developments you had missed. Which was great, because it meant that you didn't feel committed to having to watch all twenty six episodes of a season (the average series length of US TV series in the seventies; in the UK it could vary from six up to twenty plus, depending upon the type of programme). Which, of course, is the way watching a TV series feels these days, as missing an episode could prove fatal to your chances of actually understanding what is going on. (If I were a more cynical sort of person, I might suspect that this modern styling of drama series is a deliberate ploy by streaming broadcasters to keep you paying for episodes).
But the self-contained episode format can have its disadvantages, as I was reminded of the other day, when I caught an episode of CHiPs. This was from the final series, when the series format was pretty much exhausted, any way, (Larry Wilcox had already quit - along with a lot of the regular supporting cast - leaving Erik Estrada as the undisputed star, now with Tom Reilly as his new partner). I mean, just how many car crash variations can you run? How many plots can you somehow manage to weave around road traffic law enforcement? So the producers had clearly decided, 'What the Hell?' and thought they'd try something different and spend an episode trying to develop Estrada's character beyond his flashing smile and womanising. So, in this particular episode, he falls in love, gets engaged and makes plans to get married. Now, bearing in mind that the rule in these seventies/eighties series was that the format was never broken - everything had to reset to normal by the end of each episode, we just know that this isn't going to end well.
Nevertheless, the episode plays out as if his marriage is really going to happen. So, in the course of fifty minutes of screen time, Estrada's Ponch meets a woman - a teacher - falls in love with her, woos her, gets engaged, even considers giving up his job for her - something which, these days, would form a whole story arc for a season. But here it has to all play out in a single episode - which also has to accommodate a sub-plot involving the usual motor mayhem regular viewers expected - which makes it all seem ludicrous. Particularly when it reaches its inevitable conclusion, with the teacher abruptly being run over as she tries to rescue the puppy Ponch has given her from the path of an oncoming car. It just comes out of nowhere, feeling surreal and likely to elicit laughs rather than tears from the audience, especially as we know that, with the start of the next episode, the grief-stricken Ponch will apparently have forgotten her, with no mention of these events ever being made again. Which is actually a pity, as the main actors involved do play it straight, doing their best to sell what should have been a moving and ultimately tragic story. In truth, to do such a story justice, it should have played out over one of the two-part episodes you sometimes got in these series. At least then it wouldn't have felt so perfunctory. So, sometimes perhaps there is something to be said for modern TV formats.
I was shocked and disgusted earlier this week when I tuned into a TV channel - I believe that it was called 'Talking Pictures TV', which lead me to believe that it was a service screening classic movies from the early days of sound - to be greeted by the sight of an Egyptian mummy lumbering around murdering people in the most appalling fashions. I find it hard to believe that, less than a week after the passing of HRH Prince Philip, any channel should be so disrespectful of his memory as to show such a film. Damn it, this was meant to be a week of national mourning, with the British people sitting quietly at home, dressed in black, genuflecting in front of their wall mounted pictures of the Duke of Edinburgh and his blessed wife, our gracious Queen and monarch. If television was to be watched, it should have been for respectful programming representing a fitting tribute to the Duke. While classic British dramas from the 1930s, featuring the likes of Cedric Hardwicke, George Arliss and George Sanders might have been acceptable, a murderous mummy certainly wasn't. Particularly as this bandaged ruffian appeared to be targeting solely English gentlemen of some breeding. A clear attack upon our traditional values and, by extension, our fine Empire and Royal Family.
The screening of this film was especially insensitive in view of the revelations in the Daily Express that the Duke had, in fact, been strangled to death by an Egyptian mummy which had been revived by Meghan Markle as part of her vendetta against the Royal Family. (It is obvious from her dusky skin that she herself is, in fact, a reincarnated Ancient Egyptian High Priestess hell bent on righting the supposed 'wrongs' perpetrated against Egypt by the British Empire. I really don't know what these Egyptians have against British Royalty - we gave them back the Suez Canal (which they didn't build in the first place, damn it), didn't we?) I really think that you, as the UK's media regulator, have been severely remiss in failing to ensure that all TV channels weren't forced, during this week of mourning, to carry black screens and play mournful music in order to match the public mood.
Jungle Stories ran quarterly for 59 issues from 1938 until 1954, with each issue carrying a short novel featuring Tarzan knock-off Ki-Gor, with the rest of each issue filled out with unrelated jungle tales by a variety of pulp writers. One of the 'exotic' pulps, which also included such things as South Seas Adventures, Jungle Stories tapped into the appetite for bizarre African jungle adventures sparked by Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan series. The Ki-Gor stories which led every issue were written under a house name, with their quality varying significantly according to the actual author. The best of them are very highly rated by pulp fans, who put some of them on a par with the genuine Tarzan stories. In their day, they were hugely popular. As can be seen from the cover above (the Winter 1943-44 issue - the cover painting was later re-used for the Winter 1953 issue, with different stories), like the Tarzan stories they imitated, the Ki-Gor series frequently included fantasy elements, in this case dinosaurs and a lost world.
Just as Tarzan had Jane, Ki-Gor had Helene, who frequently sported a leopard-skin bikini on the covers. She was also frequently pictured being tied up and/or menaced by various wild creatures, from dinosaurs to lions and, inevitably, gorillas. When not being bound and menaced, she was being abducted by the usual cast of villainous white hunters, witch doctors and, yes, gorillas. Just for variety, it is occasionally Ki-Gor who is tied up, with a whip or spear wielding Helene coming to his rescue. Ki-Gor also had native allies, including Massai chief Tembu george and pygmy N'Geeso. As with the Tarzan stories, the Africa these stories depicted had next to nothing to do with the real continent, something which must have become ever more apparent in the post-war period. This growing public awareness of the reality of modern Africa undoubtedly contributed to the eventual demise of Jungle Stories and Ki-Gor, (the Africa inhabited by Tarzan in his fifties and sixties films is notably less exotic than that of the original novels). But they had a good run, lasting virtually to the end of pulp magazines.
James Bond wasn't the only British super-agent saving the world from an arch villain in 1977. While Roger Moore was defeating Stromberg's plans to wipe out human life on earth, in favour of his underwater city, by going to Egypt and Sardinia, Nicky Henson's Charles Bind was busy defeating the more modest plans of Arthur Loveday, taking in some rather less glamourous locations in Lindsay Shonteff's Number One of the Secret Service. This spy-spoof arguably represents peak Shonteff, certainly, he was coming off the back of a terrific run of low-budget movies, including sleazy psycho-thriller Night After Night After Night, gritty private eye flick Clegg, groupie drama Permissive (every bit the equal of Derek Ford's better known Groupie Girl), the two Big Zapper films, ingenious heist film The Fast Kill, and Len Deighton adaptation Spy Story. Number One is very much in the vein of the two Big Zapper films: lots of sight gags, innuendo and cartoonish, frequently bizarre, violence, (which, to be fair, was also pretty much the formula for the Roger Moore Bond films). While Bond knock offs were, particularly in the sixties, two-a-penny, Shonteff's efforts stand out because they never over reach themselves, unlike many other such spoofs, especially the Italian ones, he makes no attempt to try and replicate the extravagant sets and art direction of the real Bond pictures, nor the scale of their action set-pieces, opting instead for a far more modest approach.
Consequently, Charles Bind finds himself operating in seventies London, with a brief overseas excursion to glamourous Boulougne and, rather than face a nuclear submarine eating oil tanker, he finds himself having to deal with a cross channel car ferry full of assassins. Likewise, rather than trying to hold the world to ransom with some super-weapon, villain Arthur Loveday's ambitions are more modest: to assassinate the world's wealthiest men, some because their wealth was gained by nefarious means and now puts them beyond the law, but most because they are the sort of people who refused to give his poverty-stricken father work back in the day. Loveday himself has become a wealthy man on the back of his own industry and sees his campaign as an extension of his other philanthropic work. Making sure that he always has a very public alibi when these men are assassinated, normal law enforcement can't touch him, so the Secret Service's Number One agent, Charles Bind, is sent in to try and stop him. In order to distract Bind, Loveday employs Dudley Sutton's mercenary band KRASH (Killing, Rape, Arson, Slaughter and Hits) to mount multiple assassination attempts on the agent. Bind is, naturally, assisted by a beautiful female agent, Anna Hudson (played by Aimi MacDonald) who he spends much of the film trying to get into bed with.
The action sequences are, typically for Shonteff, actually pretty well done and quite effectively parody the style of the fight sequences in official Bonds - rather get involved in lengthy fist fights involving all manner of improvised weapons and bizarre venues, Bind simply guns down various villains with his twin .357 Magnums (which he never seems to reload) - usually having out-outmaneuvered them with his trademark back flip. When confronted with a small army of KRASH operatives, he simply utilises the .50 calibre heavy machine gun which impossibly swings out from underneath his sports car (a ludicrous device which neatly parodies the gadget laden Bond cars), to literally shoot them to pieces. Bind is such a good shot that he is even able to shoot a rooftop sniper dead with the bullet from one pistol, while stopping the sniper's bullet with the bullet from his other pistol. The film is full of such such sequences, which effectively take the logic of the real Bon films to their extreme - a personal favourite being the car crash which Bind, quite literally, walks away from, completely unscathed and unruffled, despite the vehicle being crushed against a wall.
When it comes to seducing women, Bind is equally direct. Not for him any of the charm and smooth talking employed by Roger Moore's Bond - his standard ploy for getting Hudson to take her clothes off is simply to spray her with any handy soda siphon. While Bind most certainly isn't as suave and smart as he clearly thinks he is, he does get some decent one-liners, ('I abhor violence', he says after massacring the KRASH guys, adding 'I don't have a problem being violent myself, I just don't like people trying to kill me'). Despite his history of B movies, Henson was a somewhat better actor than Roger Moore (he did a stint with the RSC after this film) and pulls off the part well - in lesser hands Bind could have seemed either arrogantly dislikeable or a buffoon, but instead comes over as likeable and charismatic. Indeed, one of the film's strengths is its casting. Bind's boss is played veteran character actor Geoffrey Keene, (who was also about to embark upon a long association with the official Bond series, playing Minister of Defence Frederick Grey in sex consecutive films). Jon Pertwee does a cameo as a clergyman while a gallery of familiar Britsploitation faces, including Dudley Sutton, Milton Reid and Oliver MacGreevy, portray various heavies and villainous sidekicks.
Most impressive is the casting of the main villain, Arthur Loveday. It is always slightly disconcerting to see one time matinee idol Richard Todd in low budget exploitation films, but by the late sixties and seventies these seemed to be the main work he was getting offered. His sort of stalwart British officer- class actor had fallen out of fashion by the sixties - it was all a long way from Pegasus Bridge (which he had helped capture for real in 1944 and again on film in 1962 for The Longest Day, his last appearance in a really big mainstream movie). But, despite his fall in status, Todd remained a pro and he delivers a very good performance in Number One of the Secret Service, making Loveday a very likeable villain - he isn't motivated by self-aggrandisement or personal material gain - who it is impossible not to have some sympathy with. In contrast with the villains of contemporary Bond films, Loveday is anything but flamboyant, with Todd making him very ordinary-seeming, yet still interesting and intriguing. His quiet confidence and truly British sense of courtesy provides a neat counterpoint to Henson's brash, would-be flashy, secret agent. It would have been easy for an actor who had enjoyed the star status Todd once had to have simply phoned in a performance for an exploitation film, so it is very much to his credit (and to Shonteff's as a director), that he actually turns in a very polished performance.
To many nowadays, films like Number One of the Secret Service doubtless look hopelessly dated. I've seen plenty of online commentators try to dismiss it for its corny humour and bizarre action scenes, But that's the whole point: it is meant to be corny and cartoonish. None of it is meant to be taken remotely seriously. This is the sort of genre parody that Shonteff excelled at. Most of the tropes of contemporary Bond films are neatly deconstructed and parodied, their sheer ridiculousness exposed and exaggerated. Within its own limitations it is actually a very well made film (Shonteff was a very professional director), making excellent use of its resources to produce a film that acts as a counterpoint to its inspiration, with the superficial glamour and glossiness of the real Bond films stripped back to expose their own B-movie roots. Sure, in the final analysis it is corny and it is sexist, but so were the Roger Moore Bond films it was spoofing. The bottom line is that Number One of the Secret Service remains a lot of fun if you approach it in the right frame of mind. Oh, and in Simon Bell's 'Givin' it Plenty' it has one of the catchiest theme songs of any Bond knock off. Ever.
The stuff YouTube puts on its homepage as viewing recommendations continue to perplex me. I honestly can't figure out how some of them are in any way 'inspired' by my previous viewings and searches. At least the dubious stuff about 'breast feeding' and the like that were appearing a couple of years ago have vanished. (That said, I lately had a spate of recommendations which seemed, judging by the thumbnails, to feature young women in their bathing suits or underwear, all apparently to do with beauty contests and fashion shoots. Quite what triggered these, I don't know, but my refusal to click on any seems to have resulted in them vanishing). Right now, there are a number of bird videos showing up. That's birds of the feathered variety, obviously. Now, I have to say that I have no interest in ornithology whatsoever and I can honestly say that I haven't ever looked at any kind of bird-spotting videos. While the bird stuff has just appeared, last week I had a spate of videos about hamsters and guinea pigs - like the real thing, they just seemed to keep multiplying and I had to go through the entire home page marking them as 'not interested' before I got any respite. I wouldn't mind, but I've never owned a hamster or guinea pig, let alone watched a video about one. (I did have a gerbil when I was eight or nine, but that's an entirely different rodent).
Worst of all, I keep getting Norman Wisdom movies turning up. Now, I hate and loathe Norman Wisdom with a vengeance. I go out of my way to avoid his films when they show on TV, (which they do with disturbing regularity). So I'm really confused as to why these bloody things keep showing up. It isn't as if I spend time searching for or watching old films featuring other British comics of yesteryear, which might explain their presence. Indeed, I don't understand why I don't get more stuff related to Italian horror films, British sex comedies and general schlock turning up as recommendations, bearing in mind the amount of time I spend searching YouTube for trailers and the like relating to such things. As ever, I frequently find myself suspecting that some of the stuff that turns up in these YouTube recommendations have less to do with what I've been watching there than they do upon more general web searches I've made, other sites I've visited and even e-mails I've received. Which is highly disturbing, as it implies an even higher level of web surveillance and data mining on the part of Google et al than one assumes is going on, (and I assume a very high level, anyway). Jesus Christ! I've just checked again and now I've got bloody Jeremy Clarkson videos being recommended. That really is the bloody limit!
"Posts on this blog have been suspended - please retune to BBC1 for a major news report."
You know, I don't want to seem disrespectful to Prince Philip - I rather liked the old bugger - but what the fuck? I really think that, as a country, we need to ask ourselves some searching questions when the death of a member of an anachronistic institution like the Royal Family results in every BBC station, both TV and radio, switching to wall-to-wall coverage of the 'event' (and an entire channel - BBC4 - is taken off air), with ITV's main channel following suit, (Channel 5 finally went back to its schedule this evening while Channel 4, thankfully, didn't indulge in this totalitarian nonsense). Apparently, this disruption will continue overnight - why? What on earth is going to happen during the dark hours? Indeed, how can anyone justify this sort of coverage at any time, just to repeat the same thing over and over: Prince Philip has died. As foul play isn't suspected, it is hardly a developing story, let alone a surprise, ("Ninety nine year old man in ill health cut down in his prime - in depth analysis follows!") Quite why it would be disrespectful for people to watch EastEnders or Coronation Street this evening, I don't know. But it has apparently been decreed that it would. Just as it would be disrespectful if you were to watch England's Women's International Football match on BBC4 - but it is OK to watch it on the Red Button service though. (In a truly ridiculous development, a few minutes ago the Red Button stream for this match was being promoted on BBC 4 - wouldn't it be easier to just show the bloody match on BBC 4 as scheduled rather than do this?).
Of course, all the Royalists out there will be saying 'Well, you don't have to watch BBC and ITV - other channels are still running their schedules as usual.' Which is true - I thank God for the advent of multi-channel digital TV and streaming services - but such a response raises issues of its own. The fact that the rest of the TV spectrum is operating as usual (and apparently enjoying higher than normal audiences) just highlights how out-of-touch with people's actual attitudes the UK establishment has become with its insistence that public service broadcasters surrender their schedules to a stream of sickening sycophancy bordering on propaganda. Moreover, as a licence fee payer, I help finance BBC services and I therefore have every right to expect them to provide a proper service, not fill every one of their channels with the same obsequious drivel all day and all night. It is as bad as when, every four years they turn into BBC Olympics and those of us with no interest in the event are expected to endure wall-to-wall coverage of it. In this case, it wouldn't be so bad if the incessant repetition of a single 'news' story wasn't blanking out reporting of other, frankly more important, stories. (Despite saying that I didn't want to be disrespectful, I can't help but speculate whether Prince Philip was actually 'sent on his way' so as to distract from other developments. Perhaps Boris Johnson smothered him with a pillow to try and draw attention away from the Brexit-inspired violence in Northern Ireland that the UK press had finally started reporting. Obviously, the Express and Mail will claim that it was Meghan Markle doing the smothering).
The bottom line is that I've suffered bereavement too, (quite recently my 101 year old Aunt was cut down in the prime of her life), so I understand his family's grief. But I also know from experience that grief is a private thing - this attempt to make it a public event is intrusive and tasteless. So let's just get back to normal, for God's sake. It isn't as if there aren't issues of wider concern going on: we're in the middle of a pandemic, after all - and the 120,000 plus Britons who have died in it seem to barely warrant a mention by the media, which rather puts this current overkill into some perspective, I feel. Still, if you think the media reaction to Prince Philip's death is over-the-top, just imagine what it will be like when the Queen pops her clogs. While I'd like to think that the growing backlash to today's approach might result in a rethink of how such events are covered, I somehow doubt it. So, a few years down the line we can doubtless look forward to TV schedules being derailed for several weeks, our screens filled with black-clad weeping presenters, all trying to out do each other with 'grief'. God Save the Queen - for as long as possible!
You know what makes my blood boil? Well. like any self-respecting Gammon, I get extremely angry when I don't see justice done. Just look at this recent case where a grandmother was mauled to death by two dogs that got into her garden - now we learn that the animals involved have been humanely destroyed. Humanely? It is just typical of the namby pamby liberalism that afflicts this modern world that these murderous canine delinquents are allowed the luxury of painless euthanasia while their victim died in terror and agony. The bastards should have been given the most inhumane deaths imaginable - torn apart by hungry tigers, perhaps. At the very least, they should have been tied up, then beaten to death with pillow cases full of bricks - a suitably painful and lingering death for these homicidal hounds. Oh, I know what you bed-wetting snowflakes are saying, while wringing you hands, that it isn't the fault of the dogs, but of their owner, that it is he who should be held to account. Well, fine - he should have his cock and balls cut and fend to his dogs in front of them, then dangled upside on a rope while they - having got a taste for the git - tear him to pieces. Then, of course, the dogs would have to beaten to death with pillow cases full of bricks because, you know, they'd have become man eaters with a dangerous taste for human flesh.
It's about time that we got back to basics and started making the punishment fit the crime: arsonists, for instance, should have petrol poured over them before being set alight. Murderers should be executed in a similar manner to the way in which they killed their victims: stabbed, shot, strangled, bludgeoned or poisoned as appropriate. But where would you find the sort of people needed to execute criminals in such a grisly fashion, I hear the bed wetters cry. Well I, for one would be more than happy to perform this socially beneficial function. In fact, I would be honoured to dispatch a few anti-social murdering bastards - or even bugger a few rapists to within an inch of their lives. I would have absolutely no qualms about it. But would you be prepared to execute anyone if there was a chance they were wrongfully convicted, these same snowflakes ask. Obviously I would - their conviction wouldn't been down to me. My conscience would be clear. Besides, they are bound to be guilty of something - their type always is. Ah, they then ask, but would you be prepared to risk being wrongly convicted and horribly executed? Which is an utterly ridiculous question - people like me don't go around committing such crimes. Or if they do, don't get caught. Even if I were to kill someone, I have sufficient connections with the right people to ensure that any court would see it, rightly, as self-defence. So, you see, the system I propose is fool proof - only the right sort of people would be convicted and punished, not decent, patriotic, types like us.
It's interesting how we always seem to think that the issue of 'blackface' in films is purely a Western problem and, indeed, specifically one of English-speaking cinema. While watching King Kong vs Godzilla the other day, (not the recent CGI-fest, but the proper 1962 one where the man in the monkey suit squares off against the man in the lizard suit and wreck a series of meticulously constructed miniature landscapes), I was reminded that it is something that crosses cultural barriers. It was quite startling to see that, during the scenes on Kong's island, the 'natives' are actually blacked up Japanese actors. By 1962, of course, this sort of 'blacking up' to depict non-white characters had long been abandoned in Western cinema, (although it was still the norm to see white actors in 'Yellow Face' portraying Chinese or Japanese characters). Perhaps it was all a 'homage' on the part of the Japanese filmmakers to the era in which the original King Kong was made (although there, the 'natives' were played by black actors). Then again, perhaps their excuse was that there simply weren't enough black actors available in Japan for these scenes. Whatever, it makes for a jarring moment. But, as I keep saying: the past plays to different rules and it is pointless getting too upset about this sort of thing - just take solace in the fact that it, hopefully, shows that we've progressed sufficiently that this sort of stuff clearly looks and feels wrong.
But simply because something was a convention 'back then', doesn't mean that we can, or should, accept it unquestioningly. The use of 'blackface' historically is deeply rooted in racism - on the one hand it reflected the attitude that non-white people were simply incapable of doing anything as 'sophisticated' as acting, on the other it was designed to reinforce the idea that they were simpletons by presenting them as idiotic caricatures. Not that it got much better when Hollywood started using real black actors for these roles - just look at the way they are usually cast as a bumbling simplistic comic relief, always acting as a subordinate to the main white leads, (it was as if slavery had never ended). Black leading actors like Paul Robeson were very much the exception. Not that the use of 'blackface' confined to Hollywood - you can find examples of it in British films well into the seventies, with white actors regularly playing Indians and Pakistanis. I've also seen French films with blacked up white actors from this era, not to mention Paul Naschy blacking up as an Indian in Vengeance of the Zombies, or Bud Spencer donning turban and boot polish to disguise himself as an Indian in Charleston. Italian cinema actually has quite a history of blackface - as late as the early eighties there was at least one Bud Spencer/Terence Hill comedy that featured Sal Borghese in black face as a comedic 'native'. Even when they weren't using black face, many Italian exploitation films included highly racist portrayals of non-white and non-European peoples. In particular the cannibal movies, which, despite employing indigenous peoples to portray their 'savage' tribes, like to give the impression that such peoples are exclusively flesh-hungry, head hunting barbarians hell-bent on raping, dismembering and eating every white woman they encounter. It really is quite depressing how universal racist stereotypes seem to be in the supposedly developed world.
I found myself watching The Legacy (1978) again the other night. Don't ask me why - it was on and, by coincidence, I'd been thinking about it lately, having seen the original trailer on a streaming channel, so it seemed like fate. I actually remember the film being released in the UK. Or, rather, I remember the John Coyne novelisation being published, which alerted me to the fact that a new British horror film had been released. Which was a big deal in the late seventies. By then, Hammer, Amicus and Tigon were pretty much done and most UK produced horror movies were of the independently produced, very low budget variety, which received only limited releases, were never reviewed by the 'respectable' press and generally passed by unnoticed. Direct-to-Video releases were in their infancy and very few people had access to VCRs. So a British horror movie getting a cinema release should have been a big deal. But it didn't seem to be. I don't recall it playing my local cinema, (not that it would have mattered, as I was too young for the certificate it was released under). I have to say that what I knew about it at the time didn't really inspire me - while it was co-written by Jimmy Sangster, (who had scripted many of Hammer's classic movies), it didn't seem to feature any established horror stars (apart from Charles Gray in a supporting role), instead featuring a collection of British character actors and headlined by two American actors not associated with this sort of genre movie: Katherine Ross and Sam Elliot. Moreover, it was directed by an unknown, Richard Marquand, whose first feature it was.
I eventually caught up with The Legacy on TV, some years later. I have to say that it left me with mixed feelings. While it looks good, is decently directed and the cast do their best, it just never seems to come alive. Not only is the script confused and meandering, but overall the film seriously lacks any pace or tension. The scenario just isn't interesting enough, the set pieces underwhelming and the whole thing moves to a limp and anti-climactic conclusion. It feels like a horror film made by committee, where it was decided that, in order to sell it to general audiences, certain archetypal elements had to be included: creepy old country house - check; cabal of wealthy Satanist - check; mysterious patriarch confined to locked room - check; centuries old portraits the spitting image of heroine - check; long haired cat trying to look creepy slinking around the place - check. Which, of course, it was. By the time The Legacy got made, the only way that anything other than low-budget productions could get off the ground in the UK was if they had some kind of international funding. Which meant that they had to appeal to the widest possible audience - cinema audiences were in decline and genre offering like traditional horror films, which appealed to a niche audience, weren't considered commercially viable. Hence, the US-backed The Legacy, doubtless inspired by the success of 1976's UK/US horror hit The Omen, had to have a more or less mainstream cast, fronted by recognisable 'name' actors and, to sell it to international audiences, had to emphasise its 'Britshness' as a selling point.
Sangster's original script had, apparently, been set in contemporary Detroit and represented an attempt to get away from what he saw as the tired tropes of the traditional Gothic horror film - something the finished film instead tries to play on. Which, ultimately, secured its downfall. Even if it had been released five or six tears earlier, it still would have looked out of date - an example of the 'old dark house' sub-genre that, by the seventies, was considered only fit for parody, (Frankie Howerd's starring vehicle House in Nightmare Park, for example). As it was, it found itself being released in the same year as Halloween, the film that effectively rendered old-school Gothic horror obsolete and ushered in the era of the 'slasher' movie. As Sam Elliot himself noted in an interview a few years later, 'I wouldn't rush out to see it. It is at least fifteen years out of date.' Still, The Legacy does have some incidental pleasures - seeing Roger Daltry choke to death is always as pleasure, as is the sight of Eliot's moustache in its youthful prime. It clearly did well enough that Richard Marquand was able to get a couple of far better directorial gigs (Eye of the Needle and Return of the Jedi) before his untimely death. The one thing I always remembered from my first viewing of it was that it failed to hold my attention for its hundred minutes or so running time, (this excessive running time contributing to its slow pace) and I found my attention wandering long before the underwhelming ending. Not surprisingly, the same thing happened on this latest viewing - the various supernatural deaths are long delayed and, frankly, just not that interesting, being indifferently staged and, by apparently coming out of nowhere and not advancing the plot, lacking in any tension or impact. A fatal flaw for any horror movie.
You know, I'm coming around to the idea of 'vaccine passports'. I like the idea of being able to sit in a pub drinking a pint knowing that all those sad anti-vaxxers are being turned away. Just imagine the pleasure of being able to sit by the window and give them the finger, or make wanker signs at them, as they hang around outside, hoping they'll be able to sneak in. "Who's the stupid wanker now,eh?" you could shout at the sad bastards. In fact, I think we could take it even further and insist that if you can't produce a 'vaccine passport' then you'll have to wander around with a bell, shouting 'Unclean! Unclean!'. These loons need to have it made clear to them that their anti-social actions have consequences. Sure, anyone is free to hold any lunatic views they like, but they just have to accept that doing so makes them a second-class citizen. I really think that we should have been tougher with the anti-mask brigade - they should have been refused service and forcibly ejected from supermarkets. Once they were starving, they'd soon change their tune, believe me. Again, the sight of some anti-masker 'exercising their rights' would be reduced to some sad git forced to beg for food outside of supermarkets. Throwing a can of tinned peaches at them would be very satisfying. I mean, they want repression, let's give 'em some repression!
But enough of my authoritarian fantasies. It's Good Friday! Not that you'd know that from the TV schedules, where it looks like business as usual. Oh, I tell a lie: BBC1 had The Sound of Music on and BBC2 mustered King of Kings in acknowledgement of the religious significance of the day. I remember the 'Good Old Days' when Good Friday was characterised by wall-to-wall religiosity on the part of the TV channels. Back in those days King of Kings and The Greatest Story Ever Told used to alternate, with one on Good Friday, the other Easter Day on alternate years. Plus, you'd inevitably get double bills of The Robe and Dimitri and the Gladiators, with the Archbishop of Canterbury and assorted other clergymen popping up on your TV screen left, right and centre. Those were the days, eh? I had every intention of writing up properly at least one schlock movie I've watched recently this week, but somehow it just hasn't happened. Too many distractions, from podcasting to writing a new story for The Sleaze. Plus, I've spent the last couple of days working on the new wiring for the model railway. All the wiring for the cab control system is now in place, (it currently looks like a mess of multi-coloured spaghetti under the baseboards), but has yet to be tested. If it does work, then I'll have to look at tidying it all up and constructing a control panel in which to mount the switches. Then I'll finally be able to run trains again and not have to satisfy myself by watching videos of other people's layouts on YouTube.
For me, the most shocking thing about the government Commission on Race and Ethnic Diversities' report which concluded that there is actually no such thing as institutional racism in the UK isn't that it is clearly a fabrication, nor that it tries to justify this country's history of slavery and Imperial exploitation, but that people are actually shocked by the fact that the government can think that it can pass off such a patent pack of lies as fact without challenge. Isn't this exactly what we've spent years working up to? What do you think the last few decades of blatant, bare faced lying on the part of those in power has been about? Whether it as all those denials of corruption during the Major years, Blair and his dodgy dossier, Cameron and his falsifications of the economic situation in order to justify austerity or Boris Johnson every time he opens his mouth, the underlying strategy was clear: to normalise the idea that lies are the truth. That anything authority says must be accepted without challenge. Even when there is overwhelming evidence that it is untrue. This has been backed up by the parallel strategy of the media, particularly the right wing print media, also consistently lying. Most of the stories they carry are clearly 90% fabrication, yet are accepted as truth by a large proportion of the public who have been successfully programmed not to question the veracity of such stories.
Successive governments have weakened education in this country, suppressing the teaching of subjects which might lead to students making independent critical assessments of popular narratives and openly condemning any teaching which appears to encourage students to question the status quo as 'subversive'. With people increasingly inured into unquestioningly accepting what they are told, the authorities now ensure that their version of the 'truth' is disseminated via their media outlets as quickly as possible, knowing that if it is read first, then it is more likely to be accepted, even if subsequent facts contradict it - the original false narrative will endure. How else do we explain the fact, if asked, most people will tell you how the Brazilian guy shot by mistake by the Metropolitan Police during the aftermath of the 7/7 terror attacks ran away from the police and jumped the barriers at the tube station, when CCTV footage clearly shows that no such thing happened? By the time that footage became public, the other narrative had been embedded in the public consciousness thanks to the relentless efforts of the press. Having got away with one murder pretty much unscathed, it has been possible for the police to use similar disinformation and character assassination of victims to do it again and again. It doesn't have to be illegal deaths they are covering up - just look at the way Avon and Somerset Constabulary immediately reported that some of its officers had suffered broken bones, even a punctured lung, during the recent 'Kill the Bill' demonstrations in Bristol - it was headline news across the media for a couple of days, discrediting the protestors as violent thugs. By contrast, their subsequent retraction of these claims came and went from the news in a few hours. So, please don't claim to be surprised by this latest pack of lies - it's the new normal.
