Rob – Page 105 – EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS

Hello again, Rob

Dear Rob,

Well done, you! You increased your majority by a good few thousand, and with Martin Salter out of the picture, this makes Reading a fully Tory town. You must be really pleased. It’s a vindication of your sterling work as a local MP. It must be. Cos it’s got nothing to do with the policies under which you campaigned.

It must be amazing to be part of the parliamentary process at a time when it’s going through the most profound shift in half a century, with the chance of even more profound reform coming up. It was truly astonishing to see David Cameron on the steps of No. 10 with Nick Clegg as his deputy, and downright fall-off-the-sofa stunning to see the list of what they’d agreed to as a framework for future co-operation. The Repeal Act alone takes most of the issues I’ve written to you about over the past couple of years and fixes them in one fell swoop.

But there’s more, and as I read through the policy changes and announcements, I feel more hopeful than I have done in a long time. There’s balance here, the feel of a proper partnership. We have a cabinet that contains almost a third of all Lib Dem MPs, and although I’m disappointed not to see Vince Cable as the Chancellor, I can understand the reasoning. He’ll be kicking arse and taking prisoners in the banking sector soon enough. I’m a bit worried at a junior figure like George Osbourne taking on such a massively important job, but it’s not like he won’t be getting the Vincester to check his sums, after all. I know it’s not fair, but I saw this on Twitter and laughed, by the way:

“George: Vince, can you check these figures for me?

Vince: George, that’s a drawing of a pony.”

This is a chance to really set aside party emnities and actually run the country in a co-operative and grown-up fashion, stripping away the old grudges, the petty point-scoring, the playground fights. Weren’t you sickened by the appalling display of sour grapes from some Labour MPs following the announcement of the coalition? (although you’ve got to laugh at the mindset that would settle on the word “harlot” as the most cutting insult they could come up with for Nick Clegg. Kinda sad really.)

Yeah, sure, there’s still some things in the new agreement that make me wince. The cap on non-EU economic migrants is likely to come up and bite the government in the bum when the NHS can’t get hold of the skilled staff they need from overseas anymore. As for the limits on the application of EU Working Time Directive – we already work longer hours in the UK than in any other country in Europe. Control on working hours is necessary legislation, and vital for the work/life balance that’s critical for everyone in these stressful times. But for the most part, I see policies that will help this country to become a fairer place.

So, what do you think of it all? I know it’s not ideal for you, but then let’s face it, I don’t think this is a situation that any of us voted for, or expected. We’re in genuinely new territory now (although our European partners must be viewing the freaked reaction to the changes with some bemusement. After all, on the continent, coalitions are the norm and you don’t se gloomy pronouncements of economic and social meltdown on a daily basis there. But then they don’t have the Daily Mail, I suppose.)

So, Rob. I’m kind of pleased to see you back. It’s good to have a familiar face here in this unfamiliar territory in which we find ourselves. I’m looking forward to writing to you again. I hope you’re looking forward to hearing from me. We’ve been through too much together to let a little thing like the restructuring of British politics stand in the way of an amicable relationship.

best,

Rob.

Some Stark Home Truths About Tony.

...and an extra $200 if you wear the helmet and call me Howard.

I dutifully trekked to the movies last week to check out Iron Man 2. Following the runaway success of the first film, and it’s winning formula of laughs, action and a fittingly dramatic tale of an arms dealer’s epiphany and redemption, expectations for the new one were high. There have been some poor reviews, and general complaints that in this movie you didn’t get to see that much of the armour. It’s a fair point, given that this is the first of the tentpole big bang movies of 2010. But I really enjoyed the film, for precisely that reason. The enduring fascination for me lies in the flawed, self-destructive character of Anthony Stark.

He’s based, according to Stan Lee, on Howard Hughes, the playboy billionaire technocrat turned paranoid recluse. Like Hughes, Tony Stark is a glamourous, globe-trotting ne’er-do-well. Like Hughes, he’s also fundamentally broken at base level. He’s bi-polar, alcoholic, has serious daddy issues and seems unable to have any real friends outside his staff. He’s dating his secretary, fercryinoutloud…

That Stark/S.H.I.E.L.D. consultancy - not going so great.

With this in mind, it becomes much easier to sympathise with the bad guys in Iron Man 2. Vanko has a very clear and obvious grudge against Stark, whose father used and deported his dad for pretty nebulous reasons. “He was only in it for the money”, we’re told. How vile, an industrialist trying to make a profit, never heard of such a thing. Similarly, Justin Hammer and Senator Gary Shandling have justifiable grievances against this raving narcissist who somehow has access to bleeding edge tech, is using it in one-man vigilante operations without any sort of international sanction, and keeps it locked down and proprietary. I can’t help but imagine that this is like Steve Jobs moving into weapons design. The implications for someone with Iron Man tech using it for means that are not US friendly are never really explored in the film. Sure, Vanko will probably sell his designs on (to the usual bloody suspects, Iran, North Korea et al, when he’d be much better advised simply undercutting Stark and Hammer and making a mint out of the US military, who have no bones about dumping manufacturers if they can make a saving) but his primary motivation is revenge. I’m lost as to why he doesn’t just sue Stark Enterprises for a half share of the profits. It’s not like he doesn’t have any evidence. It’s all a bit – well basic and unimaginative, really.

As befits the industrial espionage theme at the story’s core, most of the villains or opponents Stark comes up against are after the Iron Man tech, and it’s his refusal to hand over or share that causes conflict. The principal villains in both movies are industrialists first and foremost, and more honked off about Stark’s assault on their profit lines than anything else. His petulant outburst at the Senate hearing “It’s mine, and you can’t have it!” tells us everything. The guy simply cannot play nice with others. When you consider that the arc reactor at it’s heart wasn’t his idea in the first place, and that it’s his father’s blueprints for the new element Starkonium (as I’ve decided it should be called) that save his life, that petulance is a bit rich. Ivan Vanko has just as legitimate a claim to the tech as Tony, and yet somehow he’s the bad guy? I walked away from the film feeling that Vanko had been spectacularly hard done by, simply because he chose to deal with the grief of losing his father in a more direct fashion than might have been advisable.

Well, tell him I'm in a MEETING or... somethng *urp*

As ever with comic book adaptations, it’s better to go back to the source. Here we see some really interesting developments in Tony Stark’s character. For the last couple of years in the Marvel universe, he’s been effectively a villain. Heading up an initiative to unmask the superhero community that split them down the middle, taking over S.H.I.E.L.D. after an assassination attempt on Nick Fury, he has become an authoritarian stuffed-shirt with little of the joie-de-vivre that fans of Robert Downey Jr. would expect. He is trouble, pure and simple, melting down into a puddle of booze or paranoid delusion just when the planet needs him most.

He can be even more toxic to those around him. The moment when Tony, in an attempt to bring Pepper a gift to apologise, offers her strawberries, the one thing she is allergic to, says a lot about the character. The flippant comeback line, “I knew there was something connecting you and strawberries” is the capper. He doesn’t care about her. He only has a vague idea of her likes, dislikes and the fruits that could potentially kill her. I genuinely felt that he was closer to the robots in his lab than to Pepper, Happy or Rhodey.

But maybe there is another aspect to the character that needs to be tied into the mix. The Iron Man armour itself. A major part of the film is the hunt for a power source for the suit that won’t kill Stark (palladium poisoning won’t give you techno-emo tattoos, by the way. It’s nasty stuff). In the comics, Rhodey’s take-over of the War Machine armour nearly kills him too. The suit is dangerous. Stark has no qualms with flying unproven prototypes of the armour in to combat, regardless of the risks (and as the arc reactor generates almost absurd amounts of power, the catastrophic failure of that device could cause the end of everything. Imagine Iron Man losing containment over China, airbursting with a force equivalent to every nuclear weapon ever made at once. That, my friends, is an extinction level event. All because Tony-baby couldn’t wait to play with his latest toy.)

So, let’s sum up. Our hero is a narcissistic drunk, incapable of a meaningful relationship, and a hoarder of world-changing technology who has taken it upon himself to police the planet without any form of oversight or supervision. All it would take is one bout of alcoholic hallucinations leading him to believe that Kim Jong Il is actually a lizard from outer space and he could spark off World War 3.

I dunno about you, but Tony Stark flippin’ terrifies me.

(The Wizardworld photo is courtesy of Mike Bartolomeo.)

Plugs and Shouts

I wanted to push a couple of things that my friends and fellow travellers are up to in the coming weeks and months.

Ben Woodiwiss, writer of Blood + Roses and the opening segment of Habeus Corpus is screening his short film You Look And You Think on Monday, 17 May It’s at RICH MIX 35 – 47 Bethnal Green Road, London, E1 6LA. The film will screen at 7pm. Ben, ever the shameless self-promotor, has this to say about You Look And You Think:

Please do not feel in any way obliged to attend.
The film is 6 minutes long. Do not haul ass across London for 6 minutes.
I have the feeling that it’s going to be an uninspiring evening.

The big tease.

Meanwhile, the amazing Kiki Kendrick will be taking her one-woman show Next! to Edinburgh for the 2010 Arts Festival. It’s on at The Baillie Room in The Assembly Hall, from the 5th-30th August. She describes the show thusly:

You know what dying feels like? The job interview that goes tits-up, the exam failure, redundancy, divorce, not being selected or elected? “NEXT!” is one woman’s tragicomic ‘die every day’ exposé of real life auditions. Live the dream, feel the pain, and discover there’s a lot of muck among the stardust.

She’s told me and Dom a couple of the stories that are in the show, and had us in stitches. There will be previews in London from the 20th-22nd July, at The Etcetera Theatre, in Camden High Street. I’ll certainly try and make it to one of those if a roadtrip to Edinburgh turns out to be a bit too much of a push. At either location, it’ll be worth your time.

The Day Before Tomorrow

I’ve become much more politically active over the past couple of years. I don’t mean in terms of joining a particular party, going to demos and the like. This is a self-proclaimed introvert talking, after all. Some days you’re lucky to get me out of the house. But I have found that I’m reading political blogs, signing petitions and posting about issues that are desperately important to me. Things like freedom of speech and expression. The right to privacy. An unassailable Human Rights Act. Protection of the vulnerable. Tolerance for all, regardless of skin colour, religion or cultural differences.

I’m writing and acting on these issues because I increasingly see them under threat. I’ve been stopped and searched twice under section 44 of the Terrorism Act, for no reason that I can see other than the bulky backpack I toted around back then (my Gabe bag of choice is considerably slimmer nowadays, and it’s not just out of consideration towards my back). It’s becoming more and more difficult to take a photo on the street these days without a uniformed jobsworth demanding to see the contents of your memory card. Even bloody Facebook is making it virtually impossible to keep control of what I can and cannot share with the world. (I know, I know, the government has nothing to do with Facebook. But it keeps my righteous anger simmering nicely.)

But I remain hopeful, which is why I campaign and sign and write letter after letter to my MP. I believe that once people organise, pool their resources and knowledge and make a stand against issues that concern them, then things can change. I contribute regularly to groups like 38 Degrees, the anti-BNP organisation Hope Not Hate, and have been a paid up member of Amnesty International for years. I’m not telling you this to brag or to show off my wishywashy liberal credentials. I’m telling you this to make it clear that by sitting at a laptop for a half-hour a day and bashing out an angry letter or two, you can genuinely make a difference. Thanks to online campaigning, the Liberal Democrat stance on the Digital Economy Bill, the awful, flawed, rushed piece of legislation that seeks to cut off a family’s internet connection based on an unverified accusation of copyright infringement, has hardened to the point where it’s repeal is now policy.

Furthermore, thanks to blogs like Angry Mob, Tabloid Watch and Enemies Of Reason, I now feel much more secure in my ability to counter the poison spouted by rags like the Mail and the Express about immigration and Europe. I learnt early on to take anything I read in papers with a large handful of salt, and that’s considerably more palatable than the bitter gall that the Murdoch, Desmond and Rotherhithe papers gush on a daily basis. I find it worrying that much of the guff that’s spouted by the BNP and UKIP comes directly from the unsubstantiated lies that these papers serve up on their front pages and editorials.

Tomorrow, then, there’s a chance to change all that, or at least point our nose away from the brow of the waterfall. These past couple of weeks have been utterly illuminating, as the two main parties suddenly see an electorate sickened beyond patience with the current political system, and scurry wildly from one extreme to the other in a desperate bid for power. Frankly, they’re as bad as each other. Better writers than me can come up with a pretty long list of what Labour have done to the country over the last decade and a half, but I’m also absolutely convinced that if the Tories were in power at any point in that period, they would have made the same choices, if not worse. For the Cameronbot to talk about change when a cursory glance at the policies makes it clear that they’re offering the same old bullying tactics towards the poor and helpless, focussing cuts in public spending towards the services that do the most good.

I think it should be pretty plain by now which way I’m voting tomorrow, so I won’t be crass enough to spell it out. But I will point out that I’m in the fortunate position of being able to vote both tactically, and towards my conscience, towards the path that I feel will do the most good.

If anyone reading this is planning not to vote tomorrow, then can I urge you to think again? This is the first time in a generation that the public in general has been so involved in an election campaign, and I’m fascinated to see what the turnout is going to be, and whether we wake up on Friday morning to a genuinely new political landscape. Arguing that “it doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always gets in” is a specious and reductive argument, and one for which I no longer have any patience. That’s the sort of argument that has led to painfully low voter turnouts, and the smug, unrepresentative government that we have suffered for far too long. We can do better. And we have the chance, tomorrow. Get your asses to a booth, and make your voice heard.

If you’re still not sure of who to vote for, spend five minutes with Votematch, which should point you in the right direction.

Endings, beginnings and others.

It’s been an interesting week, filled with activity of all sorts which could make 2010 a very fulfilling year for me creatively.

First up. I hit page count on Script Frenzy. I made it a couple of days before the deadline, which is always a nice feeling. Not having to race to the line gives you a feeling that you’re ever so slightly more in control of the material, and not just lobbing random words at the screen in the sure and gloomy knowledge that they’re all coming back out when it comes to the second draft.

Writing a comic script is different from anything I’ve ever tried before. I’ve had to be much more aware of the way the story flows from page to page, keeping things moving while leaving little bits of room for the story to breathe, for the characters to come to life. Essentially, I’ve had to write 96 little stories, each with their own cliffhanger. It’s been fun, and a challenge.

The job now is to get an artist on board. I can layout and probably do character design, but I’m fully aware of my shortcomings as an artist. I know I couldn’t do the story in my head justice. Any takers out there that might be interested collaborating in a dose of decent old-fashioned skiffy?

In Straight8 news, Dom and I finally got together with the brilliant Kiki Kendrick for a morning of reshoots on our 2009 film Time Out. It’s been over a year since the initial shoot, and we’ve been trying to merge schedules for the last nine months. Third time turned out to be the charm. In an intense two hour session we nailed five shots in two locations. The film is being processed, and with luck and a fair wind we can drop these shots into our existing cut and have something we can show you in a couple of weeks.

Finally, potentially the biggest news of all. Leading Man Clive and I are collaborating with Simon Aitken, Ben Woodiwiss and Brendan Lornegan, the guys behind Blood + Roses on a feature horror, Habeus Corpus. It’s an anthology movie, and we’ve all contributed a short script. The overarching theme of the film will be “the exploitation of the dead”. Treating the dead as a resource, rather than a threat. Humanity doesn’t come out well in our tales.

We’ll be directing our own segments, apart from Ben, whose opening segment will be helmed by the mighty Paul Davis of Beware The Moon fame. I’m incredibly excited and gut-wrenchingly nervous about this. It’s a massive step up for me, and I really hope I can do it justice. It’s some comfort to do something like this with friends, though. People whose judgement and skill I trust without question.

The script is just about locked and it kicks significant barrelfuls of ass. We’re starting on the long painful task of looking for finance. It’s going to be hard work, and I know blood will be spilled. But at the same time it’s another step up, another barrier to vault.

See? Told ya. Exciting times.

You Can Clap Now

Rufus Wainwright is in the country, touring his new album All Days Are Nights. The show he’s put together has a certain schizophrenic charm. The first part is a straight run-through of the album, with projected visuals, gloomy lighting, and Rufus in costume, wearing something that’s a cross between a black bridal gown and a pageboy’s suit. It’s an enormously theatrical set, showcasing a very strong collection of songs. The stark setting works well, I think, highlighting the simplicity of one man at the piano. In the second half, he’s more relaxed, chatting and telling stories, and even forgetting the words to old favourites like Cigarettes And Chocolate Milk, allowing the audience to cheerfully yell out reminders.

There’s a discussion to be had here about an artist’s relationship to his audience, and what they can and can’t get away with. Any fluffed lines in the carefully rehearsed and constructed first half of the show would have been unacceptable in the heightened atmosphere he had created. This sepulchural feel was extended to include a request that there be no applause until he had left the stage at the end. His walk-off was part of the act. This has raised some eyebrows and comments, and it was a request that was ignored at his show in Glasgow. I think it’s fair enough to ask for this, but there was a palpable sense of relief in the second half. It’s also interesting to note that his request that there be no photography in the first half was respected, but also taken as a tacit approval for the cameras to come out for the second half. Which they did, with a vengeance. It’s been a while since I’ve been to a theatre gig, and it was interesting to see that the stop and search approach for cameras that seemed to be the case a couple of years ago seems to have evaporated. Madame WDW was accompanying TLC and I, and was certainly making the most of the opportunity, taking photos and shooting video with her new Flip HD. But then, let’s face it. You can’t very well confiscate everyone’s phones at the door, and a couple of YouTube vids of Rufie fluffing the second verse of Cigarettes is hardly going to hurt his profile.

Separating new and old material quite so directly is bound to be a polarising approach, though, and Rufus Wainwright is not for everyone. A couple to the right of us couldn’t wait to get out of the theatre, tutting “I hope you won’t force me to watch that rubbish again.” I thought it was a bold approach that suited Rufus’ theatricality. This is, after all, a man that has written his own opera, which is not something you can say for your average singer-songwriter. Furthermore, performing All Days Are Nights in it’s entirety meant that there was none of the “here’s something off the new album” moment that’s normally a cue in a gig for a rush to the loos. He made the new material an event in and of itself, and by creating a church-like atmosphere, gave these songs of mourning and release a framework and context that they wouldn’t have had otherwise. But it did mean that the audience was slightly tentative in the second half, and Rufus had to remind us that it was OK to applaud – hence the quote that makes up my title. There was a genuine air of not knowing what to expect – which I think is unusual in a rock show these days. I’d imagine there was a certain set of expectations – after all, he was touring a bare-bones set of piano ballads based around the death of his mother. I think if you wanted show tunes and costumes you were an album too late.

On the whole, then, one of the more unusual gigs that I’ve attended recently – and one of the most memorable.

Here’s a taster, with my favourite song on the album thus far. This is Zebulon.

Hit Girl, and why film reviewers should stick to what they know

Last week, I had a bit of a night out with a bunch of friends. All male, all film-makers, all nerds (and I mean that as a compliment). A few beers, a bite to eat and a movie. There was only one choice of film with that crowd, really. It had to be Kick-Ass.

Now, I will admit to a slight feeling of unease going into the Vue West End for this one. I’m not the biggest fan of Mark Millar. I find his work simplistic and derivative. And Matthew Vaughn made a bit of a hash of Stardust, dazzled by a big budget and Hollywood starfuckerage. But I’d had a couple of beers, and I was feeling accommodating.

I had a really good time. It was fun, silly, gory, sweary no-brakes nonsense, and I laughed more in the cinema than I have since subjecting myself to Emmerich’s godawful 2012. The comics references were spot on, the fight scenes just on the right side of wire-fu overload, and Nicolas Cage was a delight as he channeled Adam West’s 1960’s Batman.

But the absolute star of the piece is Chloe Moretz as Hitgirl. She oozes confident nonchalance throughout, curling her lip with aplomb at every curseword. She still comes across as a kid, but not one that has been damaged in any way by the manner in which her dad has brought her up. Frankly, seeing an 11 year old girl on the screen that isn’t interested in Barbies or makeup makes a refreshing change.

Of course, certain members of the press have glommed onto the fact that Hitgirl dresses up in a short skirt and throws c-words around like shiruken, and began shrieking that the end times have come. Christopher Tooky in the Daily Fail loses the plot completely, throwing teenage pregnancy stats into the mix, before stating

The film-makers are sure to argue that there’s nothing wrong with breaking down taboos of taste – but there are often good reasons for taboos.

Do we really want to live, for instance, in a culture when the torture and killing of a James Bulger or Damilola Taylor is re-enacted by child actors for laughs?

…which is, of course a typical Mail tactic. Take an argument and then immediately present the worst possible scenario as the next logical step.

It’s telling that the Mail website has closed the comment thread on Tookey’s review. As the Bleeding Cool forum notes, every single comment blasted the critic for his over-reaction. Kinda cheering, considering that it was pretty obvious that the Mail would have it in for the movie – or rather it’s writer, Jane Goldman, wife of Mail bete noir Johnathon Ross.

Meanwhile, over at the New York Times, Manohla Dargis also manages to find the wrong end of the stick with both hands. Calling Mark Strong’s mob boss a “supervillain” is a bit of a head-desker, but I can let that go. However, she can’t resist the icky angle either, claiming

Tucked inside this flick is a relationship as kinky and potentially resonant as that between Lolita and Humbert Humbert…

*wince* Well… no. Not unless she was watching a whole different cut to the one I saw. While Manohla has at least sussed that Kick-Ass is at heart a satire of superhero movies, she hasn’t cottoned on to the fact that Hitgirl is the latest in a looong line of kid sidekicks. Robin is the obvious example, and notably in Frank Miller’s Dark Knight incarnation, the cape and pixie boots were worn by a girl.

Sidekicks are typically wounded characters, and will frequently suffer at the expense of the main character. Green Arrow’s ward Speedy famously ended up on drugs (the clue was kinda in the name he chose) and the Jason Todd incarnation of Robin was killed off by popular demand. Rick Veitch’s Brat Pack goes even further, making a group of sidekicks both stooges and over-worked helpmeets to their headliners, and the victims of a superpowered serial killer.

Hitgirl’s character path tightly knits into the rites of passage that every sidekick undergoes. The tragic loss of a family. The extensive training, interspersed with the fatherly urging of the superhero in charge that she’ll never quite be good enough, that she keeps making schoolgirl errors. By having her break free from this towards the end, by having a (kinda) normal life with a new family, she breaks the dysfunctional chain that would always see characters like Dick Grayson unable to forsake the cape.

It’s the fact that she can rise above that training, use what’s appropriate and discard the unhealthy bits that makes Hitgirl such a powerful character. She’s no role model, but no-one’s claiming that she should be.

The last word, though, should come from Hitgirl herself… or rather, Chloe. In an interview with MTV, she comes across as likeable, grounded and totally cool about the whole situation – unlike the critics, who don’t seem to be able to see past the fight scenes and swearing. Swearing that, as Chloe herself points out, would have her grounded until she was twenty if she dared to try.

Chloe, the commentators of Mail Online and just about every other person with at least two brain cells to bang together should be able to see that Kick-Ass is broad satire with a few wry points to make about the state of the comics, and indeed the comics movie scene. Claiming it as a symptom of some greater malaise is not so much missing the point as running past it blindfolded while whooping and waving your arms about. Apart from an uptick in purple wig and mask sales, I can’t see the Hitgirl phenomenon hitting the streets in any major form.

Although if it helps to drop the instances of playground bullying – I’m all for it.

Oh, Chloe’s on Twitter as well. @ChloeGMoretz. Keep an eye on this kid. She’s gonna be something.

Dear Rob

Dear Rob,

You must be sick of hearing from me by now, but I promise this letter will be the last one you receive before the election.

We came into this together, you and I. I had moved into the area not six months before the 2005 general election that made you my MP, and something about you made me feel that I needed to keep my eye on you. Maybe it had something to do with the way you were always in the local papers. Your slick demeanour. Maybe it was simply because you lived just down the road from me. Whatever it was, you piqued my interest, and I looked you up on TheyWorkForYou, and started seeing just what it was you had to offer my adopted hometown.

I’ll be frank, at first you weren’t doing anything to allay my suspicions. You questions in the House were partisan and party-tactical, rather than seeming to show any kind of concern for the constituency. But slowly, this began to change. Your open and honest approach to your expenses means that you are one of the very few MPs in the House who have a clear record on the scandal. Your support for local business, and the fact that you’re willing to get behind initiatives like Camra’s campaign to save the British pub have led me to view you with respect. And if I wrote to you, dashing off an angry email about libel reform or the Digital Economy Bill, you wrote back. It’s always exciting to get a letter from your MP on that lovely, creamy Commons notepaper.

It’s with no small measure of regret, then, that I have to tell you that you do not have my vote on May 6th. I don’t ever take my responsibilities as a citizen lightly, and I have carefully read the manifestoes of all three leading parties, as well as indulging in those neat little online quizzes that address policies rather than personalities. Boy, it was a shock to find out that I agreed with UKIP on something.

But for the most part, my choice is clear. My politics veer towards openness and freedom of information, towards compassion to the down-trodden and less-fortunate, towards education as a way of curing the kind of knee-jerk paranoia and blind hatred that frequently comes out of ignorance or simple misunderstanding.

Simply, I do not believe that Britain is broken. I believe that we are living in an age where there war, poverty and hatred have never been at lower levels. We live in a country free of religious and ideological persecution. We are watched, but we watch too, and our press is free to expose corruption and abuse of privilege. I choose to vote for a party that does not come up with the same old cliches and paranoia, that chooses not to demonise children and those who come to our country in search of a better way of life.

Further, I certainly will not vote for a party whose main manifesto pledge seems to be that we should do the government’s work for them, by signing up to run schools and hospital trusts. This is a bit rich following the grass-roots campaign that sprung up against the Digital Economy Bill. Hundreds of thousands of voters wrote to their MPs and ask them not to rush through a fundamentally compromised piece of legislation. They did it anyway, in rushed debates in an almost empty house. Writing to me afterwards and saying:

Even if every single Conservative and Liberal Democrat MP voted against the Bill, it would still have passed if every Labour MP had turned up to vote.

is fair enough. But the Tories chose to abstain from the vote, which is even more distasteful. At that point it had become obvious that your party had already chosen to deal with the Government on this issue, and their absence from the house during the three readings of the Bill is galling in it’s sheer disregard for public opinion. If you’d chosen to make a fight of it, I might have been impressed, and who knows, the result might have been different. But you and your colleagues simply turned your back, choosing not to bother.

So, here we are. I honestly wish you the best in the upcoming election. After all, we’ve been through some turbulent times together.

If you win on May 6th, expect to be hearing from me.

Best Wishes,

Rob.

Oh, and I love your new website, by the way.

Documenting the Damage

To complement Clare’s pics of our trip to Amsterdam, here’s the full Flickr set of my photos.

Genieten, alstublieft!

Dammed If We Didn’t Do That.

The last time I was in Amsterdam was a bit of a blur. It was for a conference/trade show, and I made the most of it. In fact, more than the most of it. One enduring memory is of wandering around the waterfront in a vicious rainstorm, completely lost, trying to make sense of a map that was starting to dissolve in the deluge. At five in the morning. Blind drunk. Not my proudest moment.

Visiting the city again with TLC, as I’d promised her years ago, was always going to be a different experience. We promised each other culture, and sophistication, and the occasional beer. And that was exactly what we got.

Our approach to a city is always the same. We’re walkers, preferring to pace out the bounds of our territory. It’s the best way to see cities like Amsterdam, which is particularly strong on both architecture and street art. The layout of the city is particularly good for this kind of flaneury. It’s built like a web, or half a dart board. It’s highly conducive to unfocussed rambling.

The bulls eye of the town is Centraal Station, a cheap and easy 20 minute train ride from Schipol Airport. From here you can pick up trams, buses or taxis to pretty much anywhere in town. I can seriously recommend the smartcards that give you unlimited access to all the public transport options – ideal for those moments when you’ve walked yourself to a standstill.

For a place that prides itself on it’s friendliness towards the pedestrian, Amsterdam can be treacherous towards the unwary walker. The aforementioned trams are everywhere, and they sneak up on you. They’re electric, and quiet. A real contrast to the thumping, shrieking gallumphers we rode in San Francisco.

Then there are the bicycles. Boy, are there ever bicycles. Here’s a challenge for you. Take a few photos in Amsterdam, and try not to have a bike in any of them. It’s an impossible task. Bikes are chained to every railing, lamp-post and hydrant. And everyone rides them. They’re a cheap, simple and universal way of getting around Amsterdam and they absolutely have the right of way. Frame a lovely shot by the canal and I can guarantee that someone on a bike will spin through just as you hit the shutter.

They’re not pretty, either. People ride boneshakers here, and they’ve frequently been modified in ways that Heath Robinson would applaud. Carriers have been adapted from old crates, wine boxes, shopping baskets. Some machines have extended front forks with big boxes in them that tote everything from the week’s shopping to pets and children. Occasionally, the brave and foolhardy fit these contraptions with two-stroke engines. At least you can hear those coming. TLC and I were both nearly mown down by speeding bikes. It would have been our fault, too.

But the remarkable thing is how matter-of-fact people are on cycles in Amsterdam. No-one wears lycra and hi-vis. Hardly anyone wears a helmet. Everyone’s in their normal, everyday clothes and they rattle along without a care. Even the girls in the high heels and the tight, short skirts. The ones I definitely didn’t notice. It’s refreshing and cheering to see a whole town cycle in the same way that I do – without flash or attention, treating it as a cheap and easy way to get around. No need for special clothing or ugly fashion. Just get on and go.

We were in town for National Museum Weekend, a chance to see some of Holland’s extraordinary cultural heritage for cheap or free. We discovered a little too late that the two museums that we specifically wanted to visit were not participating in the promotion. Not cool, really. It’s telling that one of the few capitals that allows free and unrestricted access to it’s treasures is London. I won’t be so blase about popping into the National for a lunchtime amble after reflecting on the thick end of €60 that we paid to see the two collections.

The Rijksmuseum has even more of a brass neck for opting out of the free weekend when you consider that the majority of the building is closed for refurbishment until 2015. This means that you’re paying full price for a limited look of what is on offer. I should be fuming. But the fact is that the curators have been very clever, and have put on show a beautifully compact version of the full range. For your money you get a concentrated burst of the best that the Dutch masters had to offer. All the Rembrandts that I wanted to see were there, and displayed at their best. I didn’t walk out feeling cheated, which is a testament to the carefully considered choices that have been made. In fact, in it’s current form I can heartily recommend it. Just try and get a discount if you can.

We took the advice of the excellent Time Out Amsterdam guide, which pointed out that the best time to hit the busy museums was towards the end of the day. This gave us plenty of time to stroll as we liked through the streets, across the bridges and down the canals of this most labyrinthine of cities.

I said earlier that Amsterdam is weblike in layout. In practice, this means that if you’re not careful, a canal path that you think is leading you north-south can be leading you west-east instead. It’s easy to get lost in the maze of streets in the old centre, and we did. But somehow, it’s ok. Getting away from an accepted plan or route often means you find things you wouldn’t be looking for. We tripped over the cool shopping district of Nine Streets entirely by accident, and blundered across the amazing art design shop Droog while looking for something else which has completely slipped my mind. For the most part, we were content to mosey, or amble, or stroll, soaking up the atmosphere, gaping at the astonishing architecture that seemed to be around every corner, and finding mind-boggling examples of street art proudly displayed in places which would have British councils sending little men out with buckets of whitewash.

Did we indulge? Well, depends what you mean. We ate and drank royally, which is hard not to do in a town so stuffed with bars and cafes. If you’re on foot, it makes sense to take plenty of rest breaks. I love the Dutch way with coffee, short and strong without being an espresso. And of course, beer is a passion. The trick is not to drink in the English way, in pints. It’s prohibitively expensive. A large Heineken will set you back four and a half euros. Best to stick to halves, and savour the flavour of the stronger, more esoteric brews. I’m rather partial to Chimay, which packs an 8% punch and is not designed to be sloshed back like mouthwash. The point is to sit, linger, chat and observe. Once you get that slower pace into your head, everything else makes sense.

So, did we indulge? Well, no. We’re not smokers, hate smoky rooms, and wouldn’t know where to start in a coffeeshop. We had too much to do and see to waste a day getting baked. I know I sound like a prude but, sorry, not really interested.

As for the other side of Amsterdam – it’s everywhere and nowhere. The newsagents all have hardcore porn openly on sale, but then that’s the same all over the continent. I still remember a French school trip where Color Climax books were racked with the comics. Now that’s a way to spin a 14-year-old’s head off his shoulders. But unless you know where to look, or you wander down certain alleyways, you’re unlikely to see much smut.

The funny moment for me was approaching the Ould Kerk, Amsterdam’s equivalent to St Paul’s, only to be waved at by girls in glass-fronted stalls in the courtyards behind the massive old building. It’s like putting booths up in Paternoster Square. It’s that mix of the sacred and profane that makes Amsterdam such a great place to visit. It’s relaxed and uptight all at once, deeply religious and wildly secular. And it’s as tolerant a town as any I’ve ever seen. We had a brilliant, if exhausting time. Am I glad I went to Amsterdam?

A few recommendations. We stayed a little out of town, on the Vondelpark, and more by luck than judgment ended up a two minute walk away from one of the main tram routes into town. This is a good thing, and means that we ate at more local-style bars than the touristy joints.

We tended to breakfast at Brasserie de Joffers, on the Willemsbergweg at Cornelus Schuystraat. It has high white ceilings, and a calm, easy air about it that smooths you into the day. Further down Willemsbergweg, Bar Gruter is a tiny ramshackle place with bags of charm and a good line in strong Belgian beer. In town, Locaal ‘t Loosje is right by the Ould Kirk, and a cool place to rest your head after being confronted by women of negotiable virtue. Prinsengrach is one of the prettier canals, and we were lucky to get seats at Cafe Prins on Prinsengrach. Their croquettes are delish.

The shopping streets around there are part of the Nine Streets district, and there are plenty of design gems. If you’re really into that kind of thing, Droog on Staalstraat is as much an art gallery as a shop, and filled with good and strange pieces.

Speaking of which, Outland, heading back towards Centraal Station on Zeedijk, has a brilliant range of urban art and collectibles. I picked up a couple of incarnations of my spirit animal, that help sustain my inner life and make me smile. But Amsterdam is so full of sights and experiences that my recommendations only serve to show you the things I enjoyed. Everyone has their own inner Amsterdam. You should find out what that is for yourself.

(All pics have been taken from Clare68’s Flickrstream. Check the rest out here. Leave comments. She loves getting comments.)