Summer of Idiocy?

Well, Summer's here at last. Meteorologically speaking, that is, yesterday being the start of meteorological Summer.  If you go by astronomical seasons, though, you'll have to wait until the 21st.  Personally, I prefer to follow the meteorological calendar so, as far as I'm concerned, it's Summer.  Typically for the UK, though, as soon as Summer officially begins, the sun vanishes and the heavens open.  I got drenched on my way to and from the pub last night.  It's become very fashionable, I know, to complain about the heat whenever we get a run of consecutive days of sunshine, as we did here at the end of May, but personally, I love the heat.  It wasn't always so - when I was much younger I suffered badly from hay fever, so associated summer heat and the sun with raised pollen counts and me suffering excessive congestion and coughing and wheezing miserably.  But I eventually outgrew these allergies, (I still suffer some reactions to high pollen counts, but they are usually very mild these days), so nowadays I welcome the sun and warmth and embrace summer wholeheartedly - even when it kicks off with torrential rain and thunderstorms.  Apparently global warming means that we'll have to get used to living in a warmer climate.  Yeah, well bring on those post thirty degree temperatures that we had last week - they help compensate for the damp and freezing Winter months we're forced to endure.  

Of course, the climate change deniers would tell you that it's all bollocks, that the increasingly early occurrences of very hot weather we've been experiencing in the UK for the past many years isn't evidence of global warming, but rather some kind of 'natural cycle' which they can't actually explain because they are talking bollocks.  But they're generally all extreme right-wing loonies who nobody in their right mind would pat any attention to, would they?  Would they?  Would they?  Well, with Reform UK allegedly polling highly in the UK, (I say 'allegedly' because a lot of these polls are becoming increasingly suspect with regard to their methodology - take that one claiming that Farage is more popular than Labour amongst trade union members: as union membership lists are confidential, how exactly do they know that they are polling actual members?), which indicates that a lot of British people are fucking idiots.  Certainly, anybody who actually votes for Reform UK is a fucking idiot.  Especially if they say they are doing it as some kind of 'protest' against mainstream politics - all you are doing is enabling a bunch of fascist thugs led by an oafish grifter.  If you really want to register a protest, then simply spoil your ballot paper or vote 'Monster Raving Loony Party', or maybe even Liberal Democrat.  But then, personal experience has taught me that most people are fucking idiots.  Uneducated idiots who revel in their own ignorance.  There really should be some kind of restrictions put on who is allowed to vote - an intelligence and/or morality test, perhaps.  Because, as Winston Churchill once opined, 'the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.'  Still, at least Summer's here, so can at least look forward to some nice weather before the idiots vote the fascists into power, then wonder where all their rights have gone and why we don't have elections any more....

After Hours: My Life as an Urban Gorilla

 

Another episode of 'After Hours', which can be heard here:

After Hours: My Life as an Urban Gorilla 

Once again, keeping the running time down was a challenge - this one's just over thirty minutes, but not by much.  It did, however, result in one segment, which was scripted, being dropped in favour of a shorter piece.  It will, however, be held over for the next episode.   Editing this episode taught me another lesson in how carefully you have to monitor AI apps when you use them for producing content.  When I did my first listen through of an edit of the complete show - in movie terms it would have been a 'rough cut' - I realised that Google Ai Studio had duplicated one stretch of scrip, (the duplicate being in completely the wrong place) and had skipped part of the script for another segment.  While the former problem was an easy edit, the second required a re-recording of the whole segment's script as, due to my laziness, I couldn't recall which AI voice I had used originally, (I really need to start taking notes of which ones I use for which characters), so I just started from scratch.  Ultimately, though, I'm reasonably happy with this episode - which was largely created during those hot nights last week when it was impossible to sleep due to the heat.

 'After Hours’ was created using Google AI Studio and Chat GPT Reader.  Music and sound effects by Freesound Community and ShadowsandEchoes- all via Pixababy.

Once again, for the benefit of the knee-jerk AI-haters out there, I should emphasise that the AI part of 'After Hours' is simply the AI generated voices that provide the dramatis personae.  The words they speak are entirely scripted by a human being: me.  So think twice before you go off on some rant about 'AI Slop'.

As a final footnote, the show art, as ever, was generated using an AI app using the simplest prompts possible - in this case 'gorilla sitting in armchair, wearing trilby hat and reading newspaper in a cage in a zoo'.  While the resulting imagery was actually pretty good, I find it disturbing that the gorilla appears to be wearing my new hat. (Which, strictly speaking, is a fedora, not a trilby - the latter traditionally having a shorter brim which rolls up at the back).  How did the bloody app know that I'd just bough a brown fedora?  Is it trying to mock me?  If I was Richard Dawkins, I'd take that as proof that it sentient, rather than simply accepting it as an amusing coincidence...

Sexual Assault at First Sight

So, is anyone really surprised that a 'reality' TV format with a title like Married at First Sight has generated allegations of rape from some of the female participants?  As a non-viewer of this and other reality shows, it just seems obvious that this is a set-up that practically invites sexual abuse.  I mean, didn't the producers ever ask themselves exactly what sort of man would be attracted to participate such a show, with its implicit promise of virtually instant sexual gratification for them?  I couldn't help but laugh when I saw that various people involved with the show said that there had been too much emphasis on sex.  You don't say?  Like a lot of current 'reality' TV output, Married at First Sight is entirely based around the idea that the audience are a bunch of slaving, voyeuristic perverts who are only watching because they want to participate in the vicarious pleasure of imagining the contestants having sex with each other - the whole, implicit, question of who is going to shag who and when, is the mainspring of the format.  Not, of course, that the producers or the network will admit that, instead trying to claim that these formats represent some sort of sociological experiment.  Utter bullshit!  It's titillation, pure and simple.  Just look at another Channel Four format - Naked Attraction - whish is like Blind Date, but with the hopefuls having to select their potential mate on the basis of viewing various bits of their naked anatomies.  Titillation and sexual objectification, all in one package!  It's quite clear that the audience at home are being invited to look at the naked bodies - particularly the female ones - and say 'Yeah, I'd shag that'.  Talk about depersonalisation.

But Channel Four aren't the only offenders here.  Just look at ITV's Love Island.  Once again, it's an exercise in crude voyeurism, with the audience invited to ogle all those near naked beautiful bodies while speculating on who is going to 'do'  who and, no doubt, asking themselves who they'd 'do'.  It wouldn't be so bad if the makers of these shows were just honest about what they are really about: sex, voyeurism and the objectification of, primarily, women, reducing them simply to bodies to be lusted over and judged, rather than as people.  Perhaps they should just come up with a new format where all the guys are sex offenders and have semi-naked women paraded in front of them in order to see who breaks first and tries to rape one of the girls.  You can guarantee that there'd be guys at home urging some of them on - 'Go on, get in there, mate.  She's just gagging for it!'.  Or maybe they could have a format along the lines of Love Island, except that one of the girls is actually underage and see if the guys can work it out before they sleep with her.  Obviously, the 'attraction' behind all of these sex-based 'reality' TV shows, for both networks and audiences, is that they are dealing with 'taboo' subjects surrounding sex  - in much the same way that hardcore pornography's big draw is the promise of seeing real sexual intercourse take place, so it is with these shows, the promise of contestants 'doing it' for real.  It's pushing boundaries, the producers will say.  But what will they do when the novelty of 'ordinary people' shagging wears off?  Reality shows following serial killers around?  A version of The Traitors where one contestant is an actual psychopath and murders their rivals for real?  Or maybe live torture shows from the dungeons of some horrible dictatorship far from UK laws?  Viewers could take bets on which victim will last longest.  Quite frankly, nothing would surprise me these days.

The Power (1984)

I seem to have spent a fair amount of time lately trawling the depths of eighties low-budget monster movies.  So, inevitably, I ended up watching The Power (1984), which most definitely shouldn't be confused with any other movie of this same title.  This is a modestly budgeted horror from the directorial team of Stephen Carpenter and Geoffrey Obrow, who turned out a number of such pictures in the eighties.  Individually, they both wrote, produced and directed several more.  The Power concerns an ancient Aztec idol, through which an evil god exerts control over whoever holds it, allowing them to unleash psychic powers.  A straightforward enough premise which the film, nonetheless, has difficulty in properly articulating, with an awkwardly structured and episodic script.  From the outset, the stuttering narrative structure results in the film having a couple of false starts, opening with a university lecturer who is possessed of 'the power', using it to harm a sceptical student before himself falling victim to it, but not before he tells another character who is in search of 'the power', where the idol is to be found.  At which point the action moves South of the border, where the character seeking 'the power' is shown the idol in a remote desert shack by its custodian, an old man.  Despite the latter's warnings, he tries to steal the idol, murders the old man and his grandson, before finding himself unable to handle the power, which seemingly begins to tear his body apart, dropping the idol.  

We then have another narrative jump, to a US town, where a trio of High School students are experimenting with Ouija boards and the like and have a supernatural experience.  One of the boys, it seems, is now in possession of the idol, although not knowing what it is, as his parents apparently found it at a market in Mexico - there's no explanation of how it got from that shack to the market.  At which point, you begin to think that, OK, it's these kids we're going to follow in the plot proper.  Except, that we suddenly find ourselves in the newsroom of a National Enquirer-type tabloid and start following one of its reporters, whose old college friend has just come to stay with her.  After much internal politics at the paper and more strange experiences for the kids, the plot lines finally cross over when the kids take the idol to the reporter and her friend, hoping the paper will investigate the weird stuff they've been experiencing.  The reporter's friend becomes obsessed with the idol and, surprise, surprise, becomes possessed of 'the power'.  At which point the film finally proceeds along more obvious plot lines.  Bearing in  mind that the film only runs ninety minutes, the extremely lengthy set-up means that the bit we've all been waiting for - possessed guy with psychic powers does evil stuff - ends up feeling somewhat rushed.

Apart from the halting, fractured feel that the episodic script gives the film, the constant introduction of new characters makes it all somewhat unfocused, as the viewer is never sure exactly who the main character or characters are meant to be.  Just as we think we've identified the angle character, they vanish and we find ourselves following someone else.  The reporter eventually emerges as the more or less the main protagonist and her friend the main antagonist.  But, despite being absent for a lengthy period, those kids turn up again at the right moment.  Even with the High School kids, it is never clear which of the three is the main character - at first it seems like its the boy with the idol, but he rapidly gets eclipsed by the girl with the interest in the supernatural, who eventually emerges as their leader.  It's unfortunate that the film's scenario unfolds in such a confusing and lacklustre way, the script's structure mitigating against any attempts to pick up the pace or build suspense, as the movie actually has a lot of good points, including some decent make-up effects, reasonable production values and an overall feel of solid professionalism, in spite of the obviously low budget.  The cast are pretty much the sort of no-name actors who you vaguely recognise from other low budget genre movies of the era, but generally acquit themselves well enough.  In the end, The Power was successful enough for directors Carpenter and Obrow to be able to follow it up with a couple of better-budget films along similar lines, the last of which was even able to boast the likes of Rod Steiger in its cast.

Splitting the Hate Vote

It's becoming increasingly clear that Andy Burnham must have something in terms of ideas, policies, appeal or whatever, that might just halt the rise of the UK's rather pathetic extreme right in its tracks.  How do I know this?  Not from anything he's said, that's for sure, but rather from the way in which the likes of the Mail, Express and Telegraph have gone on the offensive against him since he became Labour's candidate in the forthcoming by-election.  Starmer seems forgotten about already as, day in, day out, they pump out spurious headlines trying to discredit Burnham: he's a U-turner because he's prepared to seek compromise on his position with regard to some issues, he's anti-woman because he doesn't hate trans people, he probably eats babies and he was really shit as 'Mayor of the North'.  All highly questionable in terms of veracity and reeking of desperation.  He's clearly got them spooked.  I find it interesting that Burnham is now seen as some kind of centre-left, progressive, leadership candidate, whereas, the last time contested for the leadership he was rejected as some kind of Blairite right-winger in favour of Jeremy Corbyn. (Possibly Labour's greatest ever act of self-harm, at least since Foot's leadership, or the split with Ramsay McDonald's National Labour faction back in the twenties).  It's a measure, though, of how far to the right the political discourse has been pushed in recent years, that Burnham, of all people, should be characterised by the right-wing media as some kind of 'left-wing firebrand'.

Still, it seems for once that Elon 'Never Met a Nazi I Didn't Like' Musk's attempts to interfere in UK politics might actually turn out to be beneficial.  He's allegedly been backing Rupert Lowe's band of extremists in the by-election, resulting in Farage bleating on about how he's thereby splitting the Nazi vote and calling for a 'United Extreme Right' front.  Which is ironic, as he doesn't seem to like it when parties on the left do such things.  But hey, hypocrisy and Farage are pretty much synonymous.  But it all throws up the strange question of which fascist-lite is worse: Farage or Lowe?  I mean, they are both  utterly repugnant individuals, with their hectoring, bullying approaches and loud-mouthed bottom-of-the-barrel, rabble rousing, rhetoric.  I remember when Lowe was chairman of Southampton Football Club, (maybe that was when Portsmouth fans started calling them 'scummers'), and he was an utterly hateful character then - an arrogant and ignorant snob who alienate fans and foes alike.  So it was no surprise when he started dabbling in extreme right-wing politics, first with Reform UK, then setting up his own, one man, party after his inevitable falling out with Farage.  Not that any of this makes Farage any less repulsive in comparison. He's a hateful grifter and bigot, too.  The fact that he enabled the likes of Lowe in the first place possibly, though, makes him slightly worse, just edging Lowe out in the 'most repulsive extremist bastard' stakes.

Hooray! Hooray!

Hooray!  Hooray!  Tottenham Hotspur are still in the Premier League!  Much to the chagrin of many pundits, commentators and sports writers, it seems.  The pathological hatred of Spurs in the media continues unabated, with many headlines carrying the implication that Spurs were somehow unjustified in avoiding relegation at the expense of West Ham.  'West Ham relegated despite winning final match' was a common theme amongst the headlines.  Yeah, so what?  Spurs also won their last match of the season and finished above West Ham because they already had more points.  It's that simple.  West Ham winning would only have mattered if Spurs had lost.  Which, much to the annoyance of the pundits, they didn't have the good grace to do.  Once more, where Spurs are concerned, the media conveniently ignores the facts in favour of manufactured outrage.  And don't get me started on Gary Neville's rant about how everybody at Spurs should be apologising to the fans for such a shitty season.  Yeah, it was a shitty season, due largely to poor decision making at the top, but surely his foaming at the mouth fake anger should be directed at those running the clubs that were relegated?  Shouldn't they be apologising to their fanbases?  But, as Ange Postecoglu, our former and Europa League-winning manager, noted, when it comes to Spurs, the media just go completely crazy and lose all sight of reality.

But hey, we survived to face another season in the Premier League.  Sure, it took three managers to do it, not to mention a down-to-the-wire finish on the final day of the season, but we did it.  We start afresh again in the 2026/27 season.  Will we be any better?  Will the ownership have learned the hard lessons of this disaster of a season?  It's highly questionable that they will.  Sure, they're saying all the right things now, but we've heard it all before.  Still, at least we'll be going into the transfer window and new season with a manager who seems to know how to win matches and play attacking football.  I'm still not entirely convinced that DeZerbi is the long-term solution - I'm still wary as to his volatile temperament - but there's no question that he's done well so far.  When he arrived, with seven matches to go following that strange Igor Tudor interlude, Spurs looked doomed, incapable of stringing together a coherent performance and wracked by injuries.  Despite yet more injuries to key players, DeZerbi actually managed to get some decent performances and results from the team.  Which all goes to show, well, something.  We started the season with Thomas Frank who, on paper at least, looked to be a decent choice and a safe pair of hands, but he just seemed out of his depth from early on.  The club's ownership really should have put him out of his misery far earlier than February and, with a decent interim coach, might have avoided Spurs' flirtation with relegation.  Still, that's all in the past now and we need to look forward to next season.

Oh, before we go, I suppose I should address the question of whether I feel sorry for West Ham, at whose expense we survived.  Nah, I don't give a toss about them.   Just as they wouldn't give a toss if the situation reversed - in fact, they'd be gleefully dancing all over our relegation.  So they can fuck right off.  Them and all their celebrity 'mockney' fans who like to believe that supporting West Ham gives them some kind of authentic 'common man' credentials.  They can cry all the way to their banks - I wonder how many of them we'll see attending matches in the Championship?  Middlesborough away doesn't have quite the same cachet as Liverpool or City, does it?

 

Hat's Off

 

My new hat was about the most exciting thing that happened today.  For many, many years now, I've kept meaning to replace the fedora hat I once owned.  It wasn't a particularly great fedora - it was cheap and definitely not crushable, as they should be.  I also never risked finding out whether it was waterproof.  I eventually donated it to an amateur dramatics group, meaning to buy a replacement.  Which I never did.  Until I bought this one.  This one most definitely is crushable and waterproof.  It should be, as it wasn't exactly cheap.  There are many fedora-type hats available online, many claiming to be wool felt and crushable.  Most are made in China and the cheaper ones are of the 'single size' variety.  In the end, I opted for one that was UK-made and came in variety of sizes.  Now, hat sizes are problematic for me - I find 'medium' a little too tight and 'large' too loose.  I've learned, though, that slightly oversize is better than tight, so I ordered this one in 'large'.  It is, indeed, slightly too loose, but I employed my usual solution of inserting a band of thin foam rubber into the band inside, resulting in a comfortable fit.  

Anyway, I wore it out for the first time today, when it served as a sun hat while I was on my country walk.  A function it performed admirably.  I've long had a bit of a thing for fedora hats - the result, doubtless, of watching far too many forties crime movies, where everyone, particularly private eyes, sported them.  They also feature prominently in French cinema - Alain Delon, in particular, frequently wore a fedora in his period films.  In Borsalino (1970) both he and Jean-Paul Belmondo wear them, made by the Italian company that lends its name to the film, as they take over the Marseilles underworld.  For both actors, a scene of them carefully adjusting their fedoras in a mirror before going into action, became characteristic - Delon's hitman in Le Samourai (1966), for instance, always ensures his hat is at the right angle before he leaves his flat, while in Le Doulos (1962), Belmondo carefully adjusts his fedora in a mirror before collapsing, having been fatally wounded.  Not to forget that Tom Baker often wore a fedora when playing the Fourth Doctor.  So it's no wonder that I ended up with such a hankering after them.  Mind you, there are those who would suggest that my current interest in fedoras stems from watching Indiana Jones movies, where he always sports one whilst beating up Nazis.  Not that I'd do any such thing.  But if I do see Nigel Farage while I'm wearing this hat, well...

The Portrait of Donald Trump

I caught a film called The Sins of Dorian Gray (1983) a while ago.   Obviously, it was a version of 'The Portrait of Dorian Gray', updated to the then present day and with the gender of the title character switched.  As updatings of oft-told tales go, it wasn't badly done, although suffering from the fact that it was made for TV with TV movie resources.  Instead of a portrait which ages instead of her, the protagonist, an actress, has an audition tape that takes on her age and depravities.  Which actually wasn't an original twist - Brian DePalma's Phantom of the Paradise (1975) used the same conceit with regard to Paul Williams' character.  Anyway, this got me to wondering whether Donald Trump has something similar going, but in reverse.  As he, quite literally, decomposes before our eyes, does he, perhaps, have a picture of himself in the attic that gets younger?  Because, if so, by now it must be slim, healthy looking and sporting a full head of hair.  The big question, though, is whether Trump's ability to be utterly self-serving and downright evil, is because he's been able to suppress completely his conscience and compassion, by transferring them to that picture: the more evil he is, the more physically ugly and completely repugnant his real self becomes and the more saintly that picture of him becomes.

Of course, the biggest question is, what happens to that picture when the real Trump finally dies?  Will it come to life and step out of its frame, a fully three dimensional, youthful Donald Trump, in perfect health, ready for another fifty or sixty years?  We'd hope, obviously, that bearing in mind that the picture had absorbed all of Trump's good side, that this would be a new, benign Donald Trump.  A Trump that gives away his money to good causes, fights against injustice and who is humble and modest.  Perhaps this Trump will also run for president - but as Democrat so far to the left that he makes Bernie Sanders look like Mussolini.  He could run of a platform of socialised health care, the expansion of welfare, workers' rights and racial equality.  Maybe he could be the friend of immigrants.  Maybe he could even win the Nobel Peace Prize legitimately, with his tireless work to promote peace instead of conflict, championing reductions in defence spending and nuclear disarmament.  Doubtless, he would be passionate about women's rights, gay, rights, trans rights, the whole damn lot.  In fact, he might even be gay himself.  Ah, a man can dream of a better future, even if it is unlikely to materialise, because, even if Trump does have that reverse Dorian Gray thing going on, there was so little good in him in the first place, his picture would, in reality, turn out stunted and under nourished, too weak to do anything.  But, like I said, a man can dream...

Massage Parlour Murders (1973)

I have a real affection for films whose titles tell you pretty much all you need to know about them. Like Massage Parlour Murders (1973) - girls are being murdered by a client as they work in massage parlours.  That's it, that's what the film is about.  Two police detectives, one of whom frequents said parlours to get away from his wife, investigate.  His partner proceeds to have an affair with another girl from a massage parlour, (the room mate of the first victim).  Their investigation seems pretty perfunctory, mainly involving them intimidating various weirdo clients of New York's massage parlours, who include 'Mr Creepy', a private client of the first victim, played by George Dzunda in his screen debut, (he also has an assistant director credit) and an astrologer played by Brother Theodore.  In the meantime, more murders occur, the cop bonking the room mate gets involved in a car chase when, as he attends some kind of naked love in with his girl friend at a swimming pool, he spots a peeping Tom.  Rushing into the street clad only in a towel, he commandeers a cab to pursue the peeper.  The car chase which ensues is actually pretty well done, with plenty of crashes and squealing tyres.  But it is ultimately meaningless, as the peeping Tom isn't their man.  Which pretty much sums up the film: much of its running length is nothing more than padding between murders.  

But much of this padding is actually what makes the film so fascinating to watch from a contemporary perspective.  Whilst the car chase is peripherally related to the plot, much of the movie's footage seems to be made up of lingering shots of New York's less salubrious districts in all their grimy glory.  And 'grimy' is the word - these streets are filthy and litter strewn. It's a perfect time capsule of the early seventies, which, to my recollection were incredibly grimy.  The big cities at least.  I'm assuming that it was a legacy of decades, centuries even, of fossil fuel use laying down strata of soot on them, combined with cuts in public spending that reduced the number of people employed to clean the streets.  Coming from a provincial town, I always remember the shock of visiting London when a young child - it was all so filthy.  Nowadays, of course, most big cities have been extensively cleaned up and restrictions of fossil fuel use and traffic management ensure that it stays that way.  But thanks to artefacts like Massage Parlour Murders, you can still marvel at our filthy, dirty urban past.  Getting back to the film itself, its gritty, grimy and downright sleazy feel, along with some quite brutal murders, is probably its strongest aspect.  It features a primarily no-name cast who give adequate performances, a spartan script and direction, rough and ready production values and plenty of sex and nudity.  After vast amounts of padding, it rushes to a conclusion, with the lead detective finally figuring out the killer's theme, (it comes to him in church) - he's murdering girls at massage parlours whose names relate to the seven deadly sins - but failing to save the other detective's girlfriend.  The killer turns out to be some random guy, who ends up having hot oil thrown over him by his last prospective victim, then set on fire.  The two cops arrive just in time to fill his blazing body full of lead, (if they hadn't stopped for a beer on the way, they might have taken him alive).  And that's it - eighty two minutes or so of low budget sleaze which, nonetheless, has a few scenes, notably that car chase, which linger in the memory.

Euro Ingratitude

I was going to concoct a satirical piece on how, if they aren't going to let us win it, the UK should pull out of the Eurovision Song Contest.  Much in the manner of Trump's rant about not getting the Nobel Peace Prize, so why should he be concerned with peace any more?  But yesterday I came across a piece in the Express which said much the same thing, then went further.  Now, ordinarily, I'd assume that something like that was written ironically, but the Express doesn't do irony, (it's writers can't spell it, let alone understand what it means), so I have to take it at face value.  Anyway, the gist of the piece was that those Europeans are so bloody ungrateful for everything we've done for them - most notably funding Eurovision - that they only give us one bloody point.  The fact that this single point came from Ukraine drove the author to further apoplexy - apparently, after all that aid we've given them, not to mention the fact that we've let so many of them come to live here, without requiring the usual visa requirements, plus the fact that they can claim benefits more easily than British layabouts, you'd think that they'd be more bloody grateful and at least give us ten points.  So, in retaliation we should cut off support to them, not to mention all the other foreign aid we give to people who don't vote for us at Eurovision.  In fact, can't vote for us at Eurovision.  Because we could better spend that money at home helping good British people.

Apart from sounding like the Reform UK manifesto, there is just so much wrong with this it is hard to know where to start.   Bearing in mind that Ukraine is engaged in an existential conflict with Russia (and that those Ukrainians we've so 'generously' allowed to come here are war refugees), the idea that we should abandon them because they wouldn't give is more points at Eurovision is utterly perverse.  Then there's the hoary old chestnut of foreign aid - quite apart from the moral aspects of giving less well off countries assistance, in terms of national self-interest, it represents 'soft power', a way of influencing and winning around the sympathies of potential allies.  You'd think that the US's plummeting standing in the world and inability to get anyone to support them in their foreign adventures, would stand as a dire warning as to the perils of cutting off foreign aid - particularly when the likes of china are standing ready to fill the aid vacuum.  As Trump has shown, flexing your military muscles in trying to intimidate smaller nations is no substitute for the influence that the soft power of aid gives you, (at a far lower price, also).  As for the idea that any money saved might be used to help the 'deserving poor' of Britain, well, we all know that, in reality, it would simply finance tax breaks for the wealthy, or be paid out to private companies via dodgy 'outsourcing' contracts for public services.

Now, I could say that I think that the sort of people who write this drivel should be sent to re-education camps in an attempt to drill some kind of basic education into them, accompanied by being forced to work on community projects in deprived areas, (wearing day glo orange jackets with 'Moron' or 'Ignorant Bastard' printed on the back).  But if I were to do that I'd have all those right-wing bastards, (the very same people who think that working class 'young offenders' should be put in the army, that asylum seekers should be confined in concentration camps, or that people should be made to 'work' for their benefits by being put into slave-like indentures to filthy rich companies who could easily pay them proper wages), screaming about how I'm a typical lefty git who just wants to suppress free speech and who is showing their true colours as a supporter of Soviet-style brainwashing and gulags for dissidents etc. So, instead, I'll just confine myself to observing that maybe, just maybe, the reason why nobody votes for us at Eurovision is because we keep entering unrelentingly shit acts.  Just a thought.