Steven Wilson - Friend or Foe? Hero or Villain? Do You Even Care?

In 2011, as I had over 1000 legal and illegal CDs in my office, I decided to play everything from A to Z and I forced myself to throw away any CD with a download on it that I do not, have not or have no inclination to play. I did the same again, but with a less sentimental hat on during the autumn of last year.

I have maybe 600 CDs in my office now and some of the ones discarded reminded me that I was once a collector - a person who would require to 'full set' otherwise my listening or viewing pleasure would not be as fulfilling. The reason I tell you this is because up to 10 of the CDs I binned were Porcupine Tree bootlegs and CDs with their stuff on it and Steven Wilson, the man behind that band and numerous other projects has a real problem with the illegal download market - despite its existence probably guaranteeing him a quantity of my money he may never have seen.

I should quantify something (again). If I download something, illegally, and I like it, I buy it. If I download something and I think its shit, I bin it, usually before I commit it to disc. Sometimes I'll keep it, if it's good but not that good. As someone with a limited budget this serves my purposes even if it probably infuriates artists, record companies and retailers. Once I become confident about an artist's output I rarely download anything illegal and just pre-order it. The last time I spent good money on something I hadn't heard first was the 2013 Steven Wilson solo - The Raven That Refused to Sing - and frankly that had an enormous influence on my almost year-long personal vendetta against the album and the guy who made it.

Subjectivity probably causes wars; it causes enough arguments, divides opinions and fires up emotions like very few other things and the fact that two strangers can hurl insults and vile bile at each other because of a record one of them likes and the other dislikes possibly says more about the way humans have adopted (to) the Internet than anything else.

I am so categorically guilty of kneejerk subjective anger it is almost a separate entity to me; like a sub-version of the already markedly different Internet version of my real self. Politics tends to be my red flag - I tend to accuse people who are anywhere right of centre of being fascists, Nazis or just wankers, depending on the depths of their lack of humanity and recently my brother suggested that calling people Nazis has almost become a default setting for me now when someone's politics doesn't agree with me and, to be honest, there is something deeply satisfying about calling a defiantly right wing person a Nazi. But... a recent bout of public discussions with a UKIP supporter, where a large percentage of my friends all ganged up on said UKIPper and bombarded him with what essentially was bullying and all because none of us agreed with his beliefs, made me realise that being partisan can also be as bad as being a Nazi.

That's how terrorism starts.

The Internet now has a supremely large percentage of, to varying degrees, trolls - whether the people consciously know it or not and I'm possibly one of the worst because I wear my beliefs on my sleeve, have never shied away from sharing them and ... am prepared to call people Nazis when they disagree with me and my largely socialist beliefs. I'm not shy to come forward and offer an opinion - often negative - about things, especially when I've something invested in it (like money or years of following). In a world that seems to be dictated by the number of people who 'like' what you say. it's almost acceptable now to be abusive to someone who doesn't agree with the norm.

It's always great when people are on your side, but has social media killed the art of debate?

One of my favourite expressions is 'opinions are like arseholes; everyone has one' and that is pretty much as accurate as you're going to get. Some opinions stink, as do some arses.

I've always thought football fans sum it up best of all - not rival fans, but fans of the same team. I see more anger, recrimination and bloody-mindedness between fellow fans of Spurs than I do from rival fans. My football team causes more tensions between its own fans than it does from other, rival, London clubs. It has never ceased to amuse and amaze me at how vicious and nasty two fans of the same team can be because they disagree with each other; but it is within music fandom that the worst offences take place and it tends to be instigated by the Brits and the Yanks. I don't know if that's because we all, conceitedly, think we're better than other, non-English-speaking countries (or Australia because, well... it's Australia...) but I sometimes despair at the depths we all sink because someone has annoyed us.

Why have they annoyed us? Because they don't agree with us. It's as simple as that. It's bad enough when it's someone we know and respect, but if it's 'some twat' we've never met, who we don't know, who is presuming to tell us that we don't know what we're talking about...

I'm a hypocrite - I'm an offender. I offer my opinions - often when I'm dissatisfied - and then take umbrage because people disagree with them. It is a human trait, but one that has been exacerbated by the internet and the necessity to have our opinions heard.

One thing I've struggled to get my head around, especially in the last few days, are the people who take it as a personal attack on themselves if you criticise something they love. Like these people think because you have slagged something off that it is going to sour it for them and everyone else, so retribution and revenge against you has to be gained.

Or, at very least, attempted.

If someone says something that is wrong, or there is an alternative viewpoint, then directing that person to be able to see the error of their own ways or other, well considered, opinions should always be the first thing we do. Calling someone a cunt because they have dared to suggest that David Cameron does care about some things or because they believe Rita Ora's tits were offensive lessens civilisations slightly. I neither think Cameron cares or Ora's tits were offensive, but, you know, surely there are more important things in life to concentrate your ire on? There is a lot of talk about media manipulation - directing us to focus our energies on inconsequential ephemera rather than important issues - but in the last 15 years there are more people out there who care about celebrity than they do the poor or disenfranchised.

But I digress...

Discussion has gradually been rendered pointless on the internet because some idiot will come along, grab the attention by saying something inflammatory and will lesson the ability to actually have a proper discussion. It does still happen and sometimes people can make an argument so well, or so succinctly that it changes the way others feel. That is discussion at its best. My brother has always been a bit of a Tory, but through careful discussion and allowing him to make his own mind up about certain things, his politics have softened in recent years to the point where he can see that for his children, his grandchildren and his future health, the Tories are probably not going to do him any favours. It wasn't just me, but it was through considered discussion that he changed his mind, not because I kept shouting 'twat' 'wanker' or Nazi' at him.

The major problem with the Internet is its impersonal nature - humour, sarcasm and subtlety are lost in black and white and there are many people out there who will use smiley faces in an extremely cynical way - "You're an utter cunt ;)" doesn't lesson the insult (unless you're talking to me) and it doesn't matter how many emoticons you put after it...

Now, to get back to our theme. Steven Wilson is someone I'd not even heard of in 2004. To me the entire idea of prog rock was dead; a dead horse being flogged by a bunch of people who couldn't move on. I'd been exposed to some of the nu-prog floating around and while it was okay, was it really prog? Then, because of another band I discovered at the same time, I ended up doing something that Steven Wilson would probably have me shot for - I downloaded an album called Recordings by some group I was vaguely aware of called Porcupine Tree. The next day, I downloaded the other illegal torrent which purported to be an album called Recordings II, which turned out to be an unofficial compilation (even worse) of previously unreleased or non-album stuff. It might have been wrong, but the point was I was hooked. How had I managed to go so many years without finding this band, especially as my best friend had seen them live in 1995 and had numerous albums?

Over the next few years, I stuck to my guns and bought my way through as much of the PT back catalogue as I could (some of which are pretty much the rarest records in existence - which is why I have illegal downloads). Everything that was available I parted with good money for it. I was rarely disappointed and the output from the band between 1990 and 2007 was like discovering a whole new world...

I was a huge Genesis fan in the 70s, but by the time the 90s rolled around they were just an old joke gone too far. Every other year during the 1980s they'd release a new album, tell the press it was their best yet, make shedloads of money and leave me feeling slightly cheated. But you couldn't argue with the fact that Abacab outsold Selling England by the Pound by about 10:1 even if the quality of song writing and musicianship was considerably poorer. But, that was just my opinion; someone, somewhere (at any time of the year) would argue that mid-1980s Genesis was just the thing to complete their otherwise dull lives. Opinions you see are very much like arseholes.

In my own mind, there was a subtle irony in that by the time I'd discovered Porcupine Tree they were on the verge of releasing the album that would break them into rock's bigger time and that album is and was, in my probably not so humble opinion, the worst album they'd ever done. Fear of a Blank Planet pushed lots of people's buttons. It was a prog-metal album with Fripp and Lifeson guesting and probably made Wilson and co., more money than the previous dozen albums put together. This alone should explain that its not as crap as I thought it was, but one man's subjectivity means nothing when the general consensus is positive. Plus there are people out there who could have the faeces of Steven Wilson forced up their noses and would still squeal with joy while ejaculating money - fandom can be extremely blinkered and partisan (as well as downright weird).

I wasn't the only person to dislike FoaBP, my mate Roger detested it and even today, when I tell him there are actually a couple of tracks worthy of listening to again, he dismisses this the same way I dismissed the last Steven Wilson solo effort.

When you discover a musical polymath like Wilson, with a back catalogue that can keep you busy for years, it is a great thing. It's a little like finding a cellar full of unreleased Dickens novels or a secret Beatles album they created and then buried under a mountain for the future to find. And because there was so much of it, it didn't matter what I thought of Wilson's 'side' projects: No-Man not to my tastes, Blackfield - a great pop band. That I could take or leave Bass Communion and that IEM were good and bad in equal measures, there was so much out there it didn't matter if some of it wasn't to my tastes.

I was especially drawn to some of Wilson's 'solo' stuff and when his first solo album was announced I felt a frisson of anticipation that I was surprised hadn't been killed off by the underwhelming feelings I had for the FoaBP album.

Now, as we're discussing this in a good and civilised way; let me be honest about this. Insurgents was the best Porcupine Tree album for years. It was full of everything we'd grown to expect from a great PT album, in all but name. The next and probably final Porcupine Tree album - The Incident was the best thing they'd done - collectively - for a decade. Wilson's second solo album - Grace For Drowning was almost as good as Insurgents and as a music fan this was a purple patch par excellence. If you were new to this then you were in for a treat.

Now, don't get me wrong, my change of attitude towards Wilson didn't just happen with The Raven Who Refused to Sing, I'd grown a little tired of his whining and bleating about ipods, illegal downloads, taking pictures at his gigs, and his general aversion to the modern technology that most young people take for granted. The irony is that FoaPB was about this very thing (except a man in his 40s shouldn't be trying to do a hip and trendy 'message' album when the audience he was targeting wouldn't give him a second look). I was seeing or hearing too much of Steven Wilson's 'politics' and slowly I was finding that he just sounded like he was moaning all the time and seemingly at his fans.

You'd hear about his being pissed off with people in the audience but never how pleased he was that his audiences were now in their thousands and not in their 10s. Or how he didn't like people having illegal copies of his music, but if he made this music readily available, rather than perpetuate a ebay revelation, rather than pumping out another live CD or DVD, then maybe he wouldn't get pissed off about people having illegal copies of Staircase Infinities.

I started to think - based on his presence in the media - that Wilson was growing increasingly more egocentric and seemed to have as much desire to alienate people as attract them. I think Bryan Ferry is a complete and utter twat, but some of his music is good and Wilson was starting to fall into that category. Musically he was producing some of the best of his career, while simultaneously sounding more and more like a cock.

Then The Raven Who Refused to Sing came out and I'd long before pre-ordered it. The first two SW solos had been superb, what could possibly go wrong?

How about it being a load of shit? Sorry, that's me being subjective and opinionated, but that's what reviews are all about, isn't it? So I wrote a review on Amazon - as I'd bought it through them - and I thought I was fair and even-handed in the review. Boy, was I going to come in for pages and pages of abuse. Very few people who bothered to comment actually had much to say about the review, most of them wanted to belittle me, someone they didn't know, because I'd been critical of an artist they all admired and they didn't agree with me. Well, I admired him as well, but if he does something I don't like I'm just as entitled to shout about it as I would have done had I liked it. Or is that somehow a warped concept or way of thinking now?

The Raven album had the last time I bothered to look, something like 40 reviews on Amazon. There are two reviews that slag the album off and these two reviews have 100+ comments each, while the other 38 reviews have less than a handful of comments between them. People are more inclined to comment if they disagree than if they agree - it's why letters pages for magazines and newspaper struggled to find positive letters because negative letters outweighed them by 10:1. People don't feel they have to defend something they like if everyone else likes it - which makes perfect sense in a simplistic context. Because music is a personal thing, it should technically be impervious of criticism on a personal level.

I have seen people get so wound up by my criticism of the last Steven Wilson album they have dispensed with civility and general thought and just directed a hail of abuse at me. I even tried to point out to someone who was very personally offensive that they had no idea who I was or what I was like so making countless allegations about my sexuality, my brain's ability and the people I love was not called for. I just got more abuse.

The sad thing about this is that until you have a kind of epiphany and realise that it's pointless and counter-productive, it makes you want to sink to that level. Calling someone a cunt because they don't agree with you has an instant gratification; the problem is people remember that and when you want to put a point across and are called a cunt yourself ...

That's how wars start.

My horror - because that is what it was - at the Raven was reflected in my review. I made the suggestion that I'd been cheated out of my £15 and this seemed to be a real issue with some people, especially when I suggested that others should feel cheated too. To say it was an album I detested would be accurate. After several plays, I grew to dislike it more each play. As far as I was concerned he was no longer doing his own brand of prog rock, he was now trying to emulate and copy his heroes - specifically King Crimson (arguably a very acquired taste in prog circles, especially during their latter periods) and elements of the Canterbury Scene - in retrospect I probably couldn't have been more wrong.

And I have beaten the same drum ever since. I said in March 2014, that I would never play The Raven ever again, so angry was I that this hadn't lived up to my expectations, like I'd commissioned Wilson to do it and it had not been to my liking... And in January 2015 when Wilson announced his latest offering, there was I slagging that off before I'd even heard it.

And there is the psychological reason behind this kind - we buy something, it becomes ours - we now own it or part of it - and therefore if it doesn't live up to our expectations, we feel we have a right - which we do if it's civilised - to express that dissatisfaction publicly. What causes the confrontations is, even if people put those IMHOs in front, is that even if you personally don't like something, if someone does like it, they will want to, primarily, argue, then abuse you for not agreeing with them. Some might want to examine why there is such a disparity between two fans' opinions, but in general, if I told you your music taste was crap - albeit about as indirectly as physically possible - you are going to kick out against it.

It isn't just abuse; sometimes you get incredibly intelligent trolls; people with a deep rooted sense of personal injustice, who understand that there is a certain 'ir-rationale' about airing beliefs on the internet in an abusive or aggressive nature, so they employ a form of what I've been doing here - reasoned analysis with a 'fuck you' caveat (except, this time, there's not going to be a caveat).

I have been playing The Raven That Refused to Sing all day - on and off - and it doesn't seem half as bad as I remember it and the second track - Drive Home - which according to Roger could easily be a PT song (that isn't difficult, considering) didn't make me rush to vomit uncontrollably because of an unfair comparison. I'm not going to immediately do an about face and say how I now think this album is superb, but I'm beginning to wonder what happened to make me so vehemently anti it when it was released?

It is different to the previous two solo albums, which, at times, could easily have been PT albums and that could be the reason why some die-hard Wilson fans have a problem with it; or maybe that's the problem, because it is yet another reason why the old four-piece of PT is maybe no longer needed. Plus, Wilson has produced an awful lot of unlistenable, impenetrable shite in the past, was my ire purely down to having spent money on The Raven?

He's moved on and is doing things that float his boat; what right have I got to lambaste him for doing what he wants?

Back in the late 1980s, a comic creator called Bill Willingham wrote in a foreword of his then comic that while he liked people taking an interest in his characters, would they please stop making story suggestions or asking for this to happen because, quite simply, it's his idea and that's the story he's going to tell. I really respected Willingham for taking that stand, especially in a medium where Stan Lee had made everyone think they had a say in how stuff worked. If I admired Willingham for that surely the same ethos belongs to Steven Wilson?

The internet allows us to lance the festering boils of discontent, and we then spray the pus of our indignation in the directions of anyone who doesn't think of us as prophets of truth.

Why I'm disappointed there's no future Porcupine Tree stuff planned is also something of a puzzle. The band's quality output in the last decade hasn't been anything like the previous ten years; while Wilson's solo stuff, until I pilloried The Raven, had been batting well above average. It is like I have no rational explanation for the way I've almost forced myself to dislike Wilson - although, to be fair, there are enough anecdotal and physically evidenced things he's said or instigated in the last ten years that makes him a little nerdy, needy and therefore probably dislikeable.

Maybe I just don't like change? Maybe the idea of a 'prog' band employing Nick Beggs (of Kajagoogoo fame) just sits wrong with me. Perhaps it's because I feel he's doing things with new people that he could have been doing with the other three? The thing is I don't own Steven Wilson; I can be disappointed with his albums and I'm entitled to a public opinion and protection against internet loons who take my personal dislike of something they also usually like as an excuse to be far more offensive. Surely the most civilised way of dealing with a negative opinion is either to ask what the basis for that opinion is or just ignoring it. How often does condemning someone for their beliefs end well?

As for Wilson. He's not a musical genius like many suggest he is, but over all he's supplied me with a lot more enjoyment than upset and if I was to review The Raven That Refused to Sing now, I'd probably give it 7/10 and have some reservations about the general direction he was going.

Now, if only the rest of the arseholes with opinions out there can have the same epiphany...

This Title Has Nothing to Do With the Contents...

Almost six months to the day since 'Shit' the blog about dogs and unpleasant faecal matter, I dropped myself into some metaphoric shit by having the same intentions I had back in June. Then as now, I was bored so took the dogs for a different, much longer walk and it backfired.

That blog was about me sitting in the garden going slowly mad through inactivity; yesterday I was sitting in front of the monitor trying not to wish time away, so I pulled up (Classic) Google Maps and tried to find something a little different. I did. It was very different.

Also last year, I wrongly believed I'd walked 5 miles when I'd just walked 5km. This was an entirely different walk, but as I take the dogs out probably a minimum of 360 days a year that's not difficult to achieve. I also, initially, had no intention of walking quite as far as I did yesterday and on a day when the temperature was about 3 degrees and I was dressed up for Antarctica, from the moment I started to worry about getting from A to B, I should have stopped being such a twat and just turned around. Instead I walked up a cul-de-sac of industrial estate sized proportions and then all the way back - adding about ¾ of a mile to my journey and all because of some razor wire.

By the time I retraced my steps, I was saturated from sweating, my legs ached, my back was grumbling at me, I was covered in mud and I still had nearly ½ a mile to go. When I returned to the car we had walked according to the 'How far Did I Walk' website, a total of 3.87 miles - give or take a ¼ of a mile.

Now 3½ miles might not seem much to you, but in my condition, having sweated almost a third of my bodyweight away at only the halfway point of this fucking idiotic odyssey - while not in the same league as the Lodz debacle or other memorable walkabout episodes - it was enough to seriously fuck me up for the rest of the day, evening and most of today.

I also had an interview for a job today, working with autistic people. I didn't get it; I wouldn't have accepted it had I been offered. All through the interview and after, I felt like I'd been on holiday with a dominatrix and a real, honest-to-God, Medieval rack.

The reason I'm looking for a job is no reflection on the health of Borderline Press, but more to do with mine. Most people who know me are pretty sure I'm a wee bit mad; the thing is if I don't fill my days up with something more meaningful than emails, social media obligations and waiting for the next deadline to come around, whilst paying myself an almost laughable 'retainer', I am probably going to do something that involves extreme violence, lots of swearing and probably lots of guilt and recriminations.

I'm just so fucking bored!

So I'm looking for work. If you see any let it know about me. I'm not very good but I'm keen and reasonably able.

***

Getting plagued by nuisance calls? You'd think OfCom would be the people to go to, but no, they offer downloadable PDF files with 'easy' to follow guidelines if you're getting nuisance calls. If you think you might have been overcharged (anything from 1p to millions) you have an express service; but if some fucking shyster company phones you up on a daily basis and then hangs up without even speaking to you you have no real way of combating it.

What is the point of these Off-bodies if they can't help in the most simplest of things and why doesn't the government make it illegal for phone numbers to be sold to companies that will use your details to fuck you over?

Oh. Yeah, I forget sometimes.

***

Bad news about Edgar Froese - Tangerine Dream played a big part in my life in the 1980s.

***

I could go on a bit more about the usual shite, but this time I won't.

Same old same old

The inspiration to write this, my first blog of the year, was prompted by various stories I saw in the paper this morning. A couple of them weren't even political...

I personally believe that the Tory party's continual accusations that the BBC is left wing is just a massive snow job, or LIE as we used to call them. The reality is it just panders to their whims and creates this feeling that everything is much better when it clearly isn't. Oh and 4/5ths of the political reporters are dyed-in-the-wool Blues...

Actually, let's start this with the 'impartial' BBC...

Surely a publicly funded broadcast company that runs its own 24-hour news channel should have a remit that forces it to have to educate as well as entertain (or 'infotain')? Whether or not news can be entertaining isn't an issue here; what is an issue is educating ignorance rather than pandering to it.

Nigel Farage has been on BBC News more times in the last 12 months than arguably the prime minister, yet not once have I seen so much as a two-minute item explaining to people who what and why UKIP are. There has been no programming to look at the pros and cons of us actually quitting Europe (because when faced with the details it is clear to see that pulling out of Europe only benefits the rich and the xenophobic and the rest of us get screwed fiscally).

Today we have a news story about a proposal, from a Tory, to set up an independent body to scrutinise the manifesto claims of the parties - to see if they are economically viable, I don't know what the outcome would be if they were found to be lying through their teeth, but if we're going to go down that path then why not hold the ruling parties' to account if they ignore their manifesto/election promises once they've gained power.

The BBC news department's role in the world should primarily be reporting news, secondly it should provide educational and informative programmes and lastly it shouldn't be spending time and money reporting on what the general public thinks - because what we think is irrelevant, even if some of us think the right things.

***

Staying with politics for a second. The government announced billions to repair the roads recently - 'huzzah' you say, but it was nothing more than a vote winner, because we all give a shit about our roads.

Road repairs have been abundant in the middle England haven of Shoesville. In fact, you'd think, by the PR generated by Michael Ellis, the local Toryboy MP, that he single-handedly filled every pot hole in himself. There are many people in Northampton currently very happy that the pot hole issue has finally been addressed. I mean, for some people that guarantees Ellis their vote come the beginning of May, because simply put he's done more for his area of town than Sally Keeble - the feeble former Labour MP.

As a lifelong socialist, Ellis comes across as a far better constituency MP than Keeble could ever muster - lessons to be learned there, I think.

However, like most things, if you scratch the surface you start to see just what a clever and manipulative politician Ellis really is. Most of the resurfaced roads in the town are in Conservative boroughs; the roads where extensive patches have been administered are largely the LibDem voting parts of the town - and go into the council estates, the Labour heartlands, such as where I live and in the town centre and the roads are just as bad as they were five years ago and there's no plans to fix them.

Take the Westone estate on the east of the town. It is suburban residential, middle class and predominantly Tory. Ellis owns property there - this is important - and as a result, every square inch of every road in Westone - most that barely needed an odd patch, was resurfaced. Less than a mile down the road in Eastfield - a slightly run down council/housing association estate - you can't see a patch, let alone a resurface for love nor money and these roads are still woefully inadequate and potentially harmful to older vehicles, with less suspension etc.

I know of three people, myself included, who took the sad path of writing to the Chronicle & Echo to point this out - all three of us were ignored in favour of a letter from a resident in Westone claiming Michael Ellis is a demigod. The Chron is a Tory owned and supported paper.

***

The Guardian has a double page feature today on how 56-year-old Madonna is no longer hip and trendy and down wid da kidz.

This is what I mean. This is why I had the idea to write this. How is this even news? In fact, how is half the crap that finds its way onto screens, into news bulletins, etc., even news or worthy of being on the news when there are so many people dependent on food banks or being made homeless by the Draconian policies of the coalition?

Two years ago, the UK was submerged in its own 2013 ice age. We had months of cold, wet, snowy weather and yet the third story of the news the other day was that parts of the UK experienced its coldest night of the winter - a cataclysmic -6 degrees.

The so-called 'weather bomb' that hit the UK in December would have been called an Atlantic Storm Front before it got infotainment-ised. The ridiculousness of the entire situation was summed up when Joanna Gosling, the BBC anchorwoman, charged with overseeing the extreme weather event on the day, asked an Orkney resident how they were coping and he said, with a hint of humour in his voice, that this kind of weather was not uncommon for Orkney and that they get about 60 storms a year, so it was business as usual. The anchorwoman pushed, but she was getting no change out of the bemused Orkney Islander. Cut back to Gosling once again foretelling the end of times because there were 100mph gusts of wind in the Outer Hebrides.

As for Madonna; the thrust of the article was to say that 15 years ago she was relevant to the internet generation but now she's just generating bad press because she's out of touch.

She's 56.

End of.

In 2001, I was innovative on the Internet, what with my e-magazine and the forums and things that I set up and help run. Today I'm just a 52-year-old manic depressive who can't understand most things said by people under the age of 20 and I've worked with kids and young people for the best part of the last 15 years...

***

Like him or loathe him, but Charlie Brooker's 2014 Screen Wipe was essential TV and possibly the most important show on over a Christmas TV period that looked like it finally gave up the ghost. I cannot remember a Christmas with less things recorded or watched.

Being even more specific, what was important about Brooker's programme wasn't his 55 minutes, but the 5 minutes dedicated to an excerpt of a new documentary film about media manipulation and how we're almost programmed to accept things. It was one of those things you want to have 50million You Tube hits and be shown almost daily, as a public information film, on terrestrial TV. And it's all related to everything I've talked about so far.

***

The Palace are strenuously denying that Prince Andrew had sex with a 17 year old because it is illegal to have sex with 17 year olds in the USA (which frankly is incredible and kind of hypocritical given the social problems that country has). I can't help thinking if this was Italy the press would be saying, "Hey, that lucky bastard Prince Andrew shagged a 17 year old!"

Yes, I am aware that the woman in question claims she was forcibly made to have sex and that is heinous, if true. The aristocracy have a solid gold history of abusing - sexually, mentally and/or physically - anyone who isn't a member of their exclusive club, so when this is finally swept under the carpet, we will all be completely convinced that Prince Andrew had forced sex with a 17 year old. If the Royals privacy is made even more strict, in the form of an aristocrat-riven Tory government, I'm sure there will be even more heinous crimes forever swept under rugs...

***

The growing anti-Islamic movement across Europe - fuelled by the far right and neo-Nazis - is both a little like the persecution of the Jews and a lot like a Man U fan saying he wants football banned because Chelsea and Man City win everything. My mum used to call it 'cutting off your nose to spite your own face' and what I cannot fathom for the life of me is how this is going to be anything other than a negative thing that will incite further problems and probably send us on the path to war.

Isn't it strange that we're getting this at a time when countries are worried sick about economies and the future. What better way to solve everything than have a war. The west and the Establishment can manufacture its own Jihad and we can have Muslims versus everyone else. We can go into this war with the knowledge that different factions of Islam hate each other more than they hate us so they'll help the cause by fighting each other when they're not fighting us... And, of course, it will generate productivity and put people back into work - win-win!

***

In an attempt to stimulate growth, the government imposed a VAT on small businesses doing trade with the rest of the world. At the same time the government loaned/gave private companies over £1.7bn to investigate new ways of obtaining fossil fuels. They also introduced a policy that allowed medium and large companies to get tax breaks much easier, while penalising small businesses with higher rates and no access to this new deal.

What I find incredible and ties directly in with the opening statement of this blog, is why we find out about these things from bloggers or foreign news and not from our own? That's a rhetorical question as I'm well aware why, I just can't understand how we've (read: the Libdems) allowed them to do that without so much as a whimper?

***

A&E waiting times are of no real concern to the Tories. If you die waiting to see a doctor that's one less pension they have to stump up for.

***

Something very important happened the other day and it should be accepted for what it is...

I was driving through Boothville and I saw a van with a name on the side and that name was the name of a qualified electrician running his own company and by the looks of the 63 plate van I'd say he was doing okay.

I knew the name, but immediately dismissed it as someone with the same name. Later I discovered the electrician was indeed someone I had worked with during my first year at the Youth Offending Service. I helped get him on his first sparky's course. Good news, eh?

This person was involved in a pretty horrendous sexual offence when he was 16 that involved his pre-teen sister and other things that would make you struggle to even look at him like he deserved to be treated with any respect at all. That offence happened 11 years ago.

He served his sentence; did his 'probation' and was allowed to return to society, albeit with a sex offenders registry entry (which may be removed this year). There was not a social media campaign against him. There was not outrage from his family or the people involved in the crimes. There was no movement to continually punish him after he'd served his sentence.

It doesn't matter who you are or what you have done, if you have paid the penalty to the limits of the law then you should not have to face trial by the public because some people are offended by it. Perhaps we should dispense with the justice system entirely and have trials by Facebook? Or maybe let the punishment be decided by the BBC's Ed Thomas by gauging how heinous the crime was by the closer to a whisper Ed's voice gets when reporting on it? Programme the red button into a Live or Die thing and we can let ITV viewers decide the fate of anyone who ever offended someone else...

The Ched Evans situation is horrendous because the above applies to him as well, but so many people have made some valid arguments about his public persona and the fact his victim has been... well, victimised.

I don't, however, buy this bullshit about him showing no remorse - he pleaded not guilty and has stuck rigidly to that ever since, to show remorse would have repercussions for his appeal - which he is entitled to have and is under way. It's made all the muddier by the fact he has maybe an 8 year window left in his life to earn any decent money, because as it has also been stated the only thing he knows about is football (which might be why he's in this mess in the first place).

What 'Jean Hatchet' the 'woman' campaigning for the right to utterly destroy Evans' life doesn't realise is her campaign is, in many ways, far worse, because she's publicly destroying a person's life and getting social media to justify 'her' actions, despite what the law say about these things. 'She' might be related to the victim - which is also no justification - or just another fanatic with too much time on their hands getting their jollies from the number of people 'liking' what they're doing.

We wouldn't have had a fraction of these problems if this had been before social media and this new craze of 'Trial by how much a member of the public is offended'.

***

Oh, Social Media - I took 5 days off of at the turn of the year and as each day passed I coped with it a little easier than the day before. I didn't disconnect with the internet, just Facebook and other places that take up my time.

***

Is it just a Northampton thing or are there more and more people choosing to walk in the road than ever before, despite there being more than adequate, working, pavements/paths? Part of me thinks that because there are a growing number of imbeciles in the world that some people think that they have as much right to walk in the road as a car has driving on it.

Yeah. Let's see how that works out for them when they have their first head on collision.

***

There were no real resolutions from me this year, all I want is a better year in everything (although I'd be happy if we had a repeat of the weather but with a nicer August). I considered trying to cut down my swearing, as it has got fucking ridiculous, and have managed to cut it down by about 80% and yet still sound like a builder in a dockyard with a bad head and a wanker for an assistant.

I gave up cutting out the sugar in coffee over the festive period and as a result I'm back up to bladder-bursting quantities of coffee again and a higher risk of diabetes. Honestly? I don't give a honey-coated fuck.

No one bought me slippers for Christmas, that was a disappointment.