Hack & Slay

In the last fortnight we’ve been witnessing the spectacular unravelling of one of the largest media corporations on the planet and the exposure of the gutter practices of certain sections of the British media. But let’s face it, we’ve known about this all along haven’t we?

I’m not going to bore you with background because what with the saturation in the UK press recently if you don’t know even the basics of this ever growing story you must have been living on Mars or something. The thing I want to look at is the reactions of not only those at the centre of the scandal but those around it as well.

First up, the Big Cheese himself, Rupert Murdoch. The once untouchable media baron who held the British Parliament by the short and curlies has almost overnight been transformed into what looks like a frail, troubled old man. I’ve seen him on TV recently and he’s almost resembled a human being. Now of course I know this is most likely a crocodile tears act to try to salvage something of his empire, but I’ve had to snigger derisively seeing the once god-like Murdoch reduced to grovelling apologies.

Then there’s his son, James. A man who had the world at his feet and now has nothing but a large pile of fetid shit beneath them. The look on his face during the interviews he’s given recently has been priceless; like a kid who’s been told he’s been too bad for Christmas presents, didn’t believe it and then has woken up on the day to find nothing under the tree. ‘Huh? What happend?’

Then there’s Rebekah Brooks. My god I better keep this short because I have so much venom I want to send that hideous woman’s way I could be here all night. This is the woman who, when she was boss at The Sun, ran anti-domesic violence campaigns and then was promptly arrested for assaulting her then husband, Ross Kemp. Yeah, the hard man from the tele. And again, when she backed Sarah’s Law – a controversial proposal to reveal the names and addresses of paedophiles to parents – which spectacularly backfired when innocent people were targeted by brain-free, tabloid reading morons. In the fallout of the hacking scandal did Mrs Brooks resign? Did she even apologise? Not as far as I know. No, instead she was kept on while Murdoch made hundreds of people redundant by cynically closing the News of The World.

Brooks eventually resigned, then was arrested by the police, and the statement she gave through her lawyer has to be one of the funniest and yet bizarre things in the scandal so far. In the statement the lawyer says that the police “will in due course have to give an account of their actions, and in particular their decision to arrest her with the enormous reputational damage that this has involved.” How arrogant is that woman? Does she honestly think that her reputation hasn’t been damaged already? Sheesh.

Then there was Tory MP, Nick Boles on last night’s Newsnight on BBC where he referred to the hacking of a murdered schoolgirl’s voicemails as, ‘a little local difficulty puffed up by Labour.’ What a callous bastard, who votes these disgusting people into office?

And in all this where’s David Cameron? In the wake of all this it’s almost been like a Where’s Wally book. Is our glorious leader in the UK answering questions about his dodgy relationship with News Corps or his employment of the disgraced former NoW editor, Andy Coulson? Is he leading the enquiry into phone hacking? Nope, he’s off round Africa trying to tell them how to run their countries, ironic how he can’t do that for his own. I heard the best description of Cameron I’ve heard so far earlier today. A friend of a friend apparently referred to him as looking like ‘a wanked off penis.’ Genius.

But best of all I’ve been following George Michael’s Twitter posts in the last couple of weeks. As you may well know, George has been on the sharp end of the tabloids in recent years due to him repeatedly making stoned cock ups in his car, culminating into him crashing into a branch of Snappy Snaps for which he was jailed. Since then he’s come back stronger and you can hear the glee in his tweets as he laps up the way the powerful are squirming in the face of bad publicity. If you’re on Twitter I suggest you follow him because he’s hilarious.

So, in the last few years we’ve found out that politicians are corrupt (expenses scandal), and more or less in the employ of the media. We’ve found that the Metropolitan police are corrupt (receiving payments from Media agencies for information) as well as killers (Ian Tomlinson) and are still institutionally racist (which began with the report into Stephen Lawrence’s murder in 1993). We’ve found that the tabloids are guilty of hacking the phones of celebrities, the Royal family (but those two don’t really count do they?) murder victims and dead servicemen among others. And then yesterday we hear that Sean Hoare, a former journalist for News Corps and whistleblower, has been found dead. The police are saying it isn’t suspicious. Of course, like David Kelly’s death wasn’t in the slightest bit suspicious in the run up to the Iraq War.

My question is, with all of our public institutions proved corrupt – the people who are meant to protect us, the people who are meant to represent us and the media that is supposed to unearth truth – why the hell are we still doing nothing? This should be a catalyst for whole scale change but you know what? I don’t think it’ll change a thing. So long as the British masses have Eastenders, flat screen TVs, cars and tits on page 3 nothing will change. And because of that I think we deserve everything we get.

Time Waits for No One

It’s been a hectic few weeks in my Small little world with another fantastic and memorable time passing into the annals of memory. I said annals there by the way if you read that wrong. It all began with a party, which is always a good place to start I’m sure you agree. It was to celebrate Charlotte and I being together for ten years and we were lucky enough to have many of our friends and family come to help us mark the occasion.

We had people living all over the place come along; Nottingham, London, Bristol, Madrid and even as far flung as Seattle. Our Seattle contingent, Stacy and Jerry, have been close friends of ours for over ten years. Whilst they were over here we spent a little time reminiscing about some of the amazing things and wonderful places we’ve been to over the years. From travelling around Washington state, camping in British Columbia, Canada, road tripping from Seattle to San Francisco and back, meeting up in Barcelona and Berlin, staying on a boat in Amsterdam, we’ve been lucky enough to have some fantastic trips and experiences with our Seattle friends.

While we were getting all nostalgic, looking at photos and laughing at how much thinner I was and how young we all looked it struck me that the last ten years has flown by. It seems like only last year that Charlotte and I got on a plane and went to Seattle together for the first time when in fact it’s been the best part of a decade. The older you get the faster time passes it seems.

While I think using the phrase carpe diem can sound a bit pretentious, there is certainly a lot to the meaning behind it. There’s shitloads of stuff I still want to do but I’m more than easily led down the path of indolence by the likes of games consoles, alcohol and a general tendency towards procrastination. I want to write music, write a book, go travelling, lose weight even, but I need to get onto these things soon because at this rate I’ll blink and be sixty next week.

These feelings of not wanting my life to slip by without having a good crack at the things I want to do were made even more poignant today when I learned some shocking news. An old friend has been diagnosed with stage four cancer at the age of thirty‑eight. She’s a wonderful person I hung out with in my late teens and early twenties who made me laugh a lot, sharing my dark sense of humour and love of rock music, particularly the band Soundgarden. She’s staying positive and meeting the challenge of getting well head on, something that doesn’t surprise me about her in the slightest. Where I admired her before I admire her even more now, given how she’s dealing with things. I wish you well my friend and have all my available bits crossed you’ll make a full recovery. Kick that fucker into touch.

So one thing I urge you to do, as the saying goes, is don’t put off until tomorrow what can be done today. Time really doesn’t wait for anyone and before you know it you could be staring back at a life of unfulfilled potential or be hit by something that changes the life you know. Start that book you’ve always wanted to write, have those guitar lessons, learn that language you always said you would, or even just stop shovelling someone else’s shit for a while and take time for yourself. We’re not here long, some have less time than others so we really should make an effort to do the things we aspire to do. And remember to make time for the people you love, don’t put things off until next week, month, year, it may be too late to by the time you get around to it.

To quote the character Chip from the Taco Cart Productions film Girl Trouble, ‘you gotta take this bitch by the balls.’