Pullman Class on a Budget

Another one of those weeks where I've been all over the place: at model train fairs, in the pub and outside enjoying the weather.  Unfortunately, this has left me completely unfocused as regards to posting here.  To be fair, we got off to a strong start with the piece about the Hamilton film, but it was all downhill from there.  It isn't that I haven't been watching plenty of movies of dubious quality, it is just that I haven't had the energy to write about any of them so far.  So, as I was at that aforementioned local model train fair, I thought I'd take a quick look at a couple of items I bought there:

This is a pair of Pullman coaches I bought very cheaply - the upper one is a Hornby first class parlour.  The design dates back to the seventies and replaced the old Triang version, which was well under scale length.  Judging by the clip in bogies, this particular model comes from the eighties.  The main flaws with it is that the roof has some kind of sticky, dirty deposit on it which will need to be scrubbed off and it is missing its name transfers.  (Luckily, I have some spare Pullman name transfers).  The lower one is a Hornby Dublo first class kitchen car, dating back to the early sixties.  While it is underscale length-wise, it is closer to scale length than the Triang 'shorties' and doesn't look as out of place when coupled up to the newer, scale length, Hornby coaches.  I'm not entirely sure if the bogies are original, but it does have Triang style couplers rather than the Dublo type, which saves me the trouble of having to change them.  

Arguably, I have too many Pullmans now, but the ones I already owned included a preponderance of first class parlour cars and a single second class brake.  These two coaches, along with a Wrenn (ex-Hornby Dublo) second class parlour I bought a couple of months ago (and which needs a bit of attention, including a repaint of the roof), will allow me to create somewhat more representative formations for the 'Bournemouth Belle', while leaving a couple of first class parlours spare for boat train duty.  Which also means that I can finally get rid of my Triang 'shorty' Pullmans.  These two coaches cost me less than a tenner, an extraordinary bargain, but typical of what you can get at this sort of event if you are prepared to put a bit of work into rectifying minor defects or don't mind non-standard features (like the couplings on the kitchen car) that would send a collector shrieking from the room in anguish.  Remarkably though, a lot of people seem happy to pay way over the odds for second hand model railway equipment on eBay or even higher prices at the big online retailers.  For skinflints like me, these model train fairs are an absolute Godsend.

Battle Cry

If it wasn't for that cover painting of some Nazis about to brand some unfortunate half naked woman with the swastika,  you'd be hard-pressed to identify this issue of Battle Cry as a war-story themed men's magazine.  None of the stories featured on the cover appear to have any connection with any war, nor any military theme.  Instead, they read like the contents of the raunchier end of the men's magazine field, with their relentless focus on sex and sensationalism.  It's all there: wife-swapping, small town prostitution, harems and even some cannibalism thrown in for good measure.  Somewhat bizarrely, tacked onto all of this we have 'A Bowling Pro Tells: The Secrets of a 200 Average!'.  Now, unless a '200 Average' is some kind of sexual euphemism, this strange mix of stories tell us something about the fantasies of American men in the early seventies:  sex with exotic women, eating human flesh and racking up a top score at the bowling alley.  Not necessarily all at once.

Battle Cry started life as a comic book, before becoming a war themed men's magazine in the mid fifties.  It stayed focused on war throughout the fifties and into the sixties.  But as World War Two (the main conflict featured in stories) receded into history, other wars began to feature more prominently, notably Korea and Vietnam, not to mention Cold War tales of Soviet/Red Chinese/Cuban depravities, even, eventually, the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland.  Semi clad women featured ever more prominently on the covers as the sixties progressed, to be joined by increasingly sex-orientated content in the late sixties.  By the early seventies, with the magazine, like its contemporaries, increasingly scrabbling to retain readership, the sex and sensationalism started to overshadow the war content.  Sometimes, as with this November 1970 issue, crowding it out completely.  Battle Cry staggered into 1971 for a few more issues before expiring.

Panic in Year Tory

Apparently, the UK is facing a perilous future, with all manner of threats to our security - but don't worry, Rishi Sunak is the safe pair of hands we need to guide us through them.. It's like that old gag isn't it?  'You're at death's door, but don't worry, I'll see you through it'.  The idea that the country's security is safe in Sunak's hands (or those pf any other Tory) is utterly ludicrous - they've trashed the economy, cut defence spending far more than any Labour government ever has and they've accepted huge wads of cash, both individually and collectively as a party, from Russia, the very entity they now identify as the main threat to the UK's future security.  Do they really think that we're that stupid?  (OK, I know, I know, people voted for Boris Johnson, not to mention Brexit, so clearly there are a lot of credulous idiots out there).  If nothing else, Sunak's ridiculous posturing does finally confirm just what all this 'World War Three' scaremongering in the right-wing press has been about.  In recent weeks it has reached ridiculous proportions and with stories speculating about what UK cities might be targeted in a Russian nuclear attack, utterly irresponsible.  Despite all of these scare stories, despite all the 'experts' and 'academics' they keep digging up to tell you otherwise, it is highly unlikely that the war in Ukraine will become some kind of nuclear flashpoint.  Let's not forget that Ukraine sits right next to Russia, so the fallout from any nuclear weapons the Russians might use there would just as likely blow back on them- remember how the fallout from the Chernobyl accident, (Chernobyl now, rather ironically being in Ukraine), drifted far and wide.

As for nuclear strikes on targets outside of Ukraine, well, unless the West gives Putin some kind of pretext by physically attacking Russian forces, or making incursions into Russian territory, this seems even less likely.  All the sabre rattling by Putin and his mouthpieces about using nuclear weapons simply reveals the position of military weakness he is actually in - the Ukraine campaign has revealed serious inadequacies in his military and conventional weapons systems.  Moreover, Russia is likely to come off second best in any hypothetical nuclear exchange.  But that, of course, isn't the point - it provides fodder for the right-wing media in the UK to try and whip up a panic aimed at reinforcing the position of their Tory friends.  'Oooh, it's so scary!  But don't worry, the party that has undermined our security by weakening the economy via Brexit and their corruption, resulting in defence cuts, is here to save us!'  Pathetic!  A fake crisis to try and sustain in power a government that has created a real crisis in the economy and public services.  But it isn't without recent precedent: let's not forget how Boris Johnson desperately wrapped himself in the Ukrainian flag and tried to convince us all that he was a wartime leader and therefore shouldn't be forced out of power, even if the war wasn't actually happening in the UK or even close to the UK and UK forces weren't directly involved.  His handling of one crisis, the pandemic, which did directly involve the UK had backfired on him, so he tried to seize on a distant one instead - one where he is incompetence could have no direct consequences.  But it didn't work for Johnson then and I doubt it will work for Sunak now, despite the press trying to inflate the magnitude of the current non-crisis.  (Of course, having said all that, the nuclear attack alert will now go off and Russian missiles will start falling on Europe...)

Hamilton: In the Interest of the Nation (2011)

What seems like an eternity ago (and let's face it, online anything that happened more than two weeks ago belongs to prehistory), I wrote a piece here about the 'Hamilton' character, sometimes described as the 'Swedish James Bond'.  To briefly recap, the character originally appeared in a series of novels by Jan Guilluo, starting in 1986, many of which were adapted for Swedish TV, others into films which remain relatively unknown in English-speaking markets.  (With the possible exception of 1998's Hamilton, an abortive attempt to launch a big budget English-language film series based on the character, which starred Peter Stormare).  But in 2011 a new film adaptation retooled and reimagined the character for the twenty first century.  Hamilton: In the Interest of the Nation (2011) was a big budget, action-orientated spy movie which proved to be a huge box office hit, both in Sweden and internationally.  Having finally managed to see the film, several things struck me about it - most notably the way in which the producers took a leaf out of the Eon productions play-book when it came to adapting one of the novels.  Basically, as with most of the Bond adaptations, the plot is completely gutted, with the whole Cold War background the books were rooted in ditched in favour of a post-Soviet storyline involving international terrorism and arms smuggling.  The KGB have been replaced as the main villains by a US private security firm, whose mercenaries are busy stirring up unrest in the Horn of Africa, via assassinations they blame on local terrorists, in order that their clients can better pursue their commercial interests and to ramp up arms sales in the region.  

Hamilton himself has become more of a conventional action hero - while the opening titles explain that no Swedish intelligence operative has a 'licence to kill', although under extreme circumstances they might have to use lethal force, Hamilton them spends much of the following film dispatching various characters via stabbings, shooting and, most often, his bare hands.  Moreover, his mission has no underlying moral aspect to his actions - he understands that allegiances and perceptions of who are the 'bad guys' constantly shift, but is instead concerned simply with protecting Sweden's international reputation for neutrality, (a Swedish arms manufacturer is in league with the private security firm to covertly supply arms to the African war zone).  But like many Bond adaptations, it also retains portions of the source material, but suitably altered to meet the requirements of the new plot.  In this case, the original novel involved Hamilton facilitating the defection of a Soviet admiral via the Middle East, the film retains the Middle East location, but now it is a former employee of the private security whose 'defection' to Sweden he facilitates.  Rather like Casino Royale (2005) this return to a version of the original plot only comes after a lengthy opening diversion to set up the new plot elements and new characters.  

While Hamilton: In the Interest of the Nation, is clearly modelling its look and updating of the character on the Daniel Craig Bond movies (leading man Mikael Persbrandt even bears a passing resemblance to Craig), it does do some things you are unlikely to see in any Bond film.  For one thing, it comes from a discernibly left of centre perspective, (albeit not as strongly left-wing as the source novels) - Hamiltopn is aligned with the PLO in the Middle Eastern segments, employing their assistance to get the rogue company man to Sweden.   Most interestingly, it addresses the most troubling aspect of all films about international super-spies - the fact that they are trained killers who, arguably, would find it difficult to handle normal life between missions.  While recent Bond films have paid lip service to this issue, we never see an off-duty Bond get frustrated by queue jumpers at the tills in Sainsburys, or rowdy youths in his local pub and completely lose it, snapping necks and cutting throats with broken bottles on reflex.  But in Hamilton: In the Interest of the Nation, while back in Stockholm, Hamilton does snap, reflexively cutting his girl friend's throat when she startles him while he is sleeping, dreaming about a recent incident in which he was forced to kill an adversary.  His culpability for the killing and his department's covering up of his involvement in the face of an investigation by a determined police detective becomes a major sub-plot in the film.  (As it was in the source novel).  The killing is a shocking moment in the film and serves to completely throw the viewer in their perception of Hamilton - is he really a 'good' guy we can identify with?  Should he face justice over his actions or should he evade it as leaving him free to do his job is 'in the interest of the nation'?

Hamilton: In the Interest of the Nation is a fascinating film, working well as an action thriller, but with an added level of complexity which forces the audience to examine their perceptions of right and wrong and how they are presented in this genre.  Should we really be rooting for such a ruthless and reflexive killer who, even though he clearly has remorse over his reflexive and involuntary killing of his girl friend, can apparently put the act and his feelings about it, aside?  Not something you'll find in the average Bond film.  It's interesting to compare this with the 1998 Hamilton film which, while it went some way to turning the title character into a more action orientated hero, still adhered to the source material's presentation of the character, which had more in common with the characters found in Le Carre and Len Deighton novels - intellectual analysts who, while often out in the field, do much of their most crucial from behind a desk, via careful investigations of files, reports and other documents and interrogations of other characters.  The 2011 film pushes the action angle far more - Hamilton barely sets foot in his office, let alone gets behind a desk, here.  From a UK perspective, the film is of interest because much of the dialogue is in English, with several well-known British actors portraying the villains, (albeit with American accents).  Such was the film's success, that a sequel, Hamilton: But Not if it Concerns Your Daughter, was released in 2012, again with Persbrandt in the lead.  Unfortunately, this was nowhere near as popular as its predecessor, the same critics who praised the first film condemning the second.  (I haven't seen it, so can't comment on its quality).  While there were plans for a third film, with several release dates floated, this never seems to have gone into production, although there was a new Hamilton tv series ran for seventeen episodes in 2020-2022.

Madcap

A US man's magazine of which I know next to nothing - there seems to be very little online about the publication.  Madcap started in 1962, with a single issue.  Its publication schedule remained intermittent until 1966, when it settled into a quarterly schedule, which it maintained until it ceased publication in 1982.  Well, sort of - from 1967 it was retitled 38-26-34 and the fiction content was phased out, with the magazine becoming more of a conventional 'Girlie Magazine', with covers gradually becoming more explicit.  What seems to be clear from the 'Adults Only' on the cover, the suggestive photo covers and story titles, Madcap was intended to appeal to a more 'mature' readership than regular men's magazines, which tantalised their adolescent audiences with the promise of sex and depravity between their pages, but never really delivered.

Interestingly, the 38-26-34 version carried the sub-title 'The Way Out Magazine' until the late seventies, implying that, along with its fixation on big-breasted women, it was continuing the off-beat approach to its material that its original title had indicated.  It was also, doubtless, an attempt to connect with the 'way out' youth culture of the late sixties.  Anyway, this cover from Volume 1, Issue 4, from 1964 is pretty typical of those of the Madcap era. The story and article titles give a pretty good idea of the content and its target audience.  By today's standards it would undoubtedly seem incredibly tame - as I've noted before, even yesterdays smut seems quaint.

That Man Bolt (1973)

Fred Williamson was, undoubtedly, one of Blaxploitation's biggest stars during the seventies, headlining some of the best remembered titles such as Black Caesar (1973) and its sequel and Mean Johnny Barrow (1975), amongst many, many others.  By the eighties he had moved on to Italian exploitation films, starring in post-apocalyptic action movies like 1990: Bronx Warriors (1982) and The New Barbarians (1982) and the Black Cobra rogue cop series. (1987-91).  That Man Bolt (1973) comes from a particularly busy period in his Blaxploitation career and represents an attempt to expand the genre beyond its usual urban settings and gritty crime-driven plots.  As can be seen from the trailer, the film is effectively an attempt to blend a number of popular action genres from the period: Blaxploitation, martial arts and Bond-style super spy adventures.  Indeed, the trailer and poster heavily push the image of Williamson as a black Bond ('He's Bonded!' say the posters), engaged in all manner of action against the backdrop of multiple glamourous international locations.  That it was intended to be the first in a series of 'Bolt' movies is evidenced by the fact that Williamson's contract included an option for two more films.

In the event, That Man Bolt was never followed up, despite being a studio-backed production with a bigger than average budget and better production values than most Blaxploitation films of the era, it just didn't seem to meet audience expectations.  Perhaps the problem lay in the fact that it crossed over too many genres and ended up not entirely pleasing the fans of any of them.  That the producers had problems establishing the film's identity is highlighted by the fact that it was started by TV movie specialist David Lowell Rich, but completed by veteran adventure movie director Henry Levin, who replaced him mid-production.   Or maybe Universal Pictures simply weren't confident that a black Bond-type character would appeal to a wide audience, (despite the popularity of Blaxploitation films with non-black audiences).  Whatever the reason, this was to be international bonded courier Bolt's only outing.  Not that Fred Williamson was overly worried: not only was he an in-demand leading man for Blaxploitation movies, but he was apparently paid for two 'Bolt' films, even though only one was made.  Not bad work if you can get it.

Thrashing the Monkey for Profit

So, people are still being charged in connection with the global monkey torture network uncovered by an extensive BBC investigation.  Terrible though cruelty to animals undoubtedly is, I can't help but feel somewhat underwhelmed that the best the BBC could uncover was a monkey torture network.  I mean, after watching countless exploitation movies and video nasties, I was expecting a global human torture network, run by international sadists, operating on the dark web to have been uncovered.  It's not just movies which have advanced this narrative - the tabloids frequently go through phases when the usual flying saucers, yeti sightings and ghost stories aren't bringing in the readers, of trying to convince their readers of the existence of 'snuff films' and online live murder channels.  While I don't doubt that there have been real-life 'snuff films' in which unwilling participants really are killed, I'd guess that they are pretty rare and confined to a very specialised underground market - let's face it, getting caught in possession of such a thing is going to land you in serious trouble with the authorities: you'd certainly be implicated in the on screen murder.  So, in addition to having a very limited market in the first place - there really aren't that many people who want to see such a thing - even many of those interested would be unlikely to want to take the risks associated with physically being in possession of such an artifact.  Interestingly, while most people would (understandably) have no stomach for watching real violence, torture and murder being practiced against human beings, many have no problem with seeing it being done in fictional form in so called video nasties, precisely because it isn't real and more often than not, it is obviously not real (something the moral campaigners never seem to grasp).

Getting back to the global monkey torture network, I suppose that torturing monkeys is the closest you can get to torturing an actual human being.  To be accurate, of course, these were baby monkeys being tortured for pleasure, which is disturbing on several levels.  Most obviously, it implies that for those involved, theses baby primates were proxies for human children in their fantasies.  It also tells us that the people doing the torturing aren't even capable of taking on adult monkeys - some of which, after all, are pretty small.  Clearly, they wouldn't risk trying to torture gorillas - the tables could too easily be turned and you really would have a global human torture network, but run by gorillas.  Actually, I suspect that the fact that the actual torturing part of the operation is outsourced to Indonesia might be why they stick to smaller primates - importing gorillas might have seemed a bit suspect.  Frankly, I firmly blame the CIA and MI6 for this outsourcing of torture - it's something they both 'pioneered' with respect to terror suspects. It's an absolute disgrace - they're putting home grown sadistic bastards out of business, for God's sake.  Another thing that struck me about this global monkey torture network are the absolutely pitiful sums of money the participants pay for the 'privilege' of seeing monkeys tortured - so far the sums paid by individuals that I've seen mentioned haven't even reached twenty pounds.  Not just sadists, but cheap bastards, too.  The ones so far convicted are also a pretty pathetic bunch of social misfits, a long way from the evil sadistic masterminds the media would have us believe are lurking in every shadow.  I think I'll stick to the video nasties - despite what the moral campaigners would have you believe, nobody ever got hurt for real in them.

Fight Back (2001)

As I've mentioned before, the explosion in streaming services, all desperate for content with which to pad out their schedules and libraries, all manner of obscure and forgotten productions have suddenly found a new lease of life.  Even micro-budgeted shot-on-video productions with no name casts that nobody ever saw when they were first released.  Like Fight Back (2001), for instance, a weird little geriatric vigilante movie that seemed designed to try and cash in on the tail end of the original direct-to-video boom, fuelled by the advent of VHS players.  By 2001, these were giving way to DVD players and higher audience expectations for direct-to video productions.  By any standards, Fight Back is crudely made, fuzzily shot with tinny sound and a cast apparently drawn from a local amateur dramatics group, (look, I'm not knocking amateur dramatic companies and their productions, but the key word here is 'amateur' - none of the performances on display here are remotely at the level of even the weakest professional actors).  It sits not just several steps, but several staircases, below the output of other pioneering British micro-budget direct-to-video film makers like Cliff Twemlow or Michael Murphy.  Despite running well under ninety minutes, the film is so slackly plotted and paced that it feels longer.  Indeed, its tale of mysterious pensioner Bill moving to a run down Devon coastal town and tangling with local juvenile delinquents and corrupt local officials, meanders all over the place at a leisurely pace before pretty much petering out, leaving all sorts of threads unresolved.  To be fair, on the way to its underwhelming conclusion, it does include quite a few amateurishly staged fights, a sort of car chase that ends before it ever gets properly started and other action 'highlights' including Bill avoiding falling slates and a speeding car.

Yet, despite all of its flaws - I say 'flaws', but the truth is that it is pretty crap in its entirety - Fight Back has exerted a certain fascination over me this past week or so. Part of this comes from the fact that I've seen it a few minutes at a time, as I've channel surfed.  It seems to show regularly every evening on one of those live streaming channels that seems to exist purely as a vehicle for the commercials it carries, with the films occasionally interrupting  them.  They only seem to have a handful of films, which show over and over on a looping schedule.  Fight Back has that curious property of simultaneously not being good enough to capture my viewing attention for more than a few minutes at a time, yet compelling enough that I keep going back each day to catch a few more minutes.  I think part of the compulsion comes from the fact that it is so utterly devoid of production resources, let alone artistic merit, it is hard to believe that it actually exists.  It isn't the worst film I've ever seen, but it is just so poorly realised that you are left wondering exactly what the intent and hopes of its makers were.  It does have some points of interest  the run-down Plymouth locations - all run down ex-council houses and industrial estates - make a refreshing change form the way Devon is usually portrayed as all sunny, affluent and tourist friendly, for instance.  The theme of seemingly ordinary people 'fighting back' against local thuggery and crime, while far from original, had potential, especially when placed in setting far from the usual urban jungles that feature in the genre, but here it is very poorly handled, with a script based upon a distinctly middle class, middle aged, not to mention patronising, view of young people.  

Fight Back's main sub-text falls into that ever popular middle England refrain of what the 'youth of today' really need is a 'kick up the arse', both literally and figuratively.  The young thugs of the film are first beaten up by Bill, then forced by him into learning new skills, (he effectively imprisons them in a workshop), which make them both better citizens and compliant and respectful of authority.  (Not all authority, of course, only the 'right' sort of authority).  Something those 'namby pamby' (or as the right would say today, 'woke'), lefty-liberal dominated things like the probation service, state education and social services are incapable of doing.  It's a depressing view of British youth, barely a stone's throw away from that old reactionary favourite of 'put 'em in the Army' or 'Bring back National Service' - coercion is the only way to deal with teenaged rebellion.  Because, after all, they are only rebellious because they are horrible little working class gits who don't know their place - to Hell with all that social and economic deprivation bollocks.  Getting back to the film itself, Fight Back is incredibly obscure - there's barely anything about it to be found on the web, for instance.  Checking on IMDB, it appears that most of the principal participants in the film never did anything else, industry wise.  The director had previously directed a couple of shorts but, after Fight Back, he seems to have disappeared from the scene.  But, for now, his only feature is probably being seen by its widest ever potential audience - this is undoubtedly the most anyone has ever written abut it.  (If you are interested, it is also currently available on Dailymotion).

Unsolicited Alarmism

Ever had one of those week's when you feel that outside entities are getting way too intrusive with regard to your life?  I've just had one such week, which , if I was that kind of person, would have sent my paranoia levels through the roof.  First up, completely out of the blue, I received a letter from some pharmaceutical developer inviting me to apply to join a drug trial.  Sadly, it wasn't for any of the fun hallucinogenic ones, but rather a treatment for type 2 diabetes.  The reason I had been 'selected' was because these days third parties are given free and direct access to our confidential NHS records, rather than having to go through doctors first.  I'm obviously now on their database and meet some of their criteria for this trial - namely that I'm in the right age demographic and have type 2 diabetes.  Reading their letter, however, I'm pretty sure that, even if I filled in and returned the application form, I wouldn't be selected: the nature of the medication implies that they are looking for people with type 2 who are more overweight than me and who don't take regular exercise.  But if I had returned it, I'm pretty sure that I'd end up receiving more of these 'invitations' as that would be taken as an indication that I was interested in taking part in drug trials.  As you've doubtless gathered, the letter went in the bin without a reply.  Quite apart from the fact that I take enough pills everyday as it is and have no desire to spend five years acting as a guinea pig for trialing yet more of them, I just find this sort of approach overly intrusive - my medical records are meant to private and I object to them being accessed by for profit institutions.  Furthermore, I have never given any indication to anyone that I'm remotely interested in participating in any medical trials.

The letter also put my back up with its overly alarmist tone, warning that type 2 diabetes can increase your risk of such things as liver failure, kidney failure, heart disease and even lower limb amputation.  Well, yes, it can, but so can many other common health conditions.  Moreover, such things aren't an inevitability and the risks can be reduced via lifestyle choices (as can most health conditions) - hence my daily exercise regime and monitoring of my sugar intake, rather than relying on pharmaceuticals, (although I do also take the commonest anti-diabetes drug, Metformin).  Just when the feathers ruffled by this unsolicited invite had finally settled, I get one of online banking communications from my bank that they obviously think are somehow 'useful'.  This time it was a communication informing me that last month I'd spent 74% more than the previous month and would I like to opt into their budgeting advice service?  To which the resounding response was 'fuck off'.  I've never actually asked for this kind of rather creepy monitoring of my spending patterns - I only signed up to online banking because my plumber prefers to paid via direct bank transfer.  But my bank keeps on giving me unsolicited advice, as if we are in some kind of relationship more significant than the fact that I allow them to hold my money for me.  I really don't need to be pestered about investment options every time I get payments into my account.  Incidentally, that increase in monthly spending was down to the one off cost of buying a second hand laptop to back up my now nearly nine year old main laptop and, to be frank, if spending less than three hundred quid can put my monthly spend up that much, then I'm not spending enough!  I'm clearly even more of a cheapskate than I thought I was!

Electoral Dysfunction

Unlike Boris Johnson, I remembered to take my voter ID to the polling station today, so I was able to vote to elect both a local councillor and the local Police and Crime Commissioner.  The latter really is a Mickey Mouse position - in reality they have little actual power over the police (let alone crime, unless they are committing them all themselves).  The fact is that until the Tories came up with this nonsensical position, we actually did have democratic oversight of local police forces via Local Police Authorities, which were part of the local councils we elected.  But the Tories just love to keep reinventing the wheel, but square, rather than actually come up with anything new and/or progressive.  I've always thought, though, that I should change my name to 'Gordon' and stand for election as Police and crime Commissioner.  That way, if I was elected, I'd be 'Commissioner Gordon'.  In fact my whole manifesto could be that we abolish those expensive cops and instead set up a Bat Signal to illuminate every time a crime is committed locally, in the hope that Batman or some other superhero might see it.  It's certainly more of an idea than any of the policies put out by actual candidates for the role.

Getting back to that voter ID, as I'm one of those weirdos who still has an old style non-photo driving licence (I've never had need to change it), a passport so expired that the photo doesn't look remotely like me and isn't old enough to have an OAP bus pass, I have to rely on a piece of paper with my photo on it issued by the council.  As the photo is a selfie and the whole application process was online, I'm not sure quite this document proves that I'm who I say I am more than the old system of giving my address at the polling station and confirming my name against the electoral register for that address.  But hey, we seemingly have an obsession with proving our identities these days, in order to access the services that we've already paid for.  Not that it has anything to do with making access any more secure, rather it is to discourage as many people as possible from actually enjoying those services.  Particularly democracy itself - we've got to the stage where the Tories are so unpopular that their only policy now is to prevent as many people as possible from voting in the hope that it will narrow their margin of defeat to being merely slightly embarrassing rather than an utterly humiliating defeat.