As a postscript to my previous blog I thought I would post a pic of the Daily Mail’s smirking front page in light of the BBC’s prostration before the forces of intolerance. They are the spirit of decency aren’t they those Mail writers. I am glad that they showed the decency to print humiliating pictures of Kate Moss looking past her best (for the edification of the moral standards of the nation of course), right there on the front page. 

Littlejohn can fuck off too. He will end up in prison one day, the nonce.

This has got out of hand. As I speak, the controller of BBC 2 has just resigned over what was a very minor crossing of the line by two comedians who have said far worse things in the past.

Andrew Sachs should know better than top allow this witch hunt to continue. He himself made his name with one of the most controversial of comedians, John Cleese. And now the prudes and fascists who campaigned against ‘The Life Of Brian’ seem to be scoring major points on the back of this complaint.

Sure, Ross and Brand should not have left the answer phone message, and the producers should have been wary of the possible legal issues. Perhaps they thought Sachs was good for a laugh. And truth be told, Sachs seemed only to be annoyed by the event. But this is not about Sachs or his granddaughter (who clearly is enjoying the limelight her dalliance with Brand has afforded her). This is about the BBC and its freedom.

There is a large faction in the British press that constantly burns with self-righteous outrage. When I worked at Channel 4, I remember doing the daily press cuttings and always being stunned by the amount of homophobia, racism and prejudice masked as tv criticism was put out by the Mail and other fascistic newspapers on a daily basis. The Mail talked about ‘Queer as folk’ as being disgusting moral corruption, and seemed to set itself an agenda to sweep out the smut (black, pink or otherwise) from culture.

Now they have the ball rolling against the BBC. On the night of the fateful broadcast, only two people complained. Now they have nearly 30,000 complaints. Very alarming – these complaints are people signing up to a campaign, not responding to the original offence.  This mob is outraged at Ross and Brand. They hate their success, their rudeness, and their pay. Now they see it is their time to collect some scalps for the cause of getting back to good old-fashioned traditional values, good manners, and blood-curdling intolerance.

But the BBC has itself to blame for this. It is so paranoid about being accused of being biased that they have gone over-board in their coverage of this story. They leave it as the leading article on the BBC news website for far too long, it leads tv news reports, and they have not come out with any balanced views of the episode. And worst of all, when they first broke the story, the BBC made the message out to be far worse than it actually was. They made it sound malicious. It was not, it was a joke taken too far.

The BBC needs to learn how to stand up for itself. It has shown itself to be vulnerable to tabloid mob campaigns, and susceptible to the partisan pressures.

I don’t mind one outraged tabloid, but when they bring their prejudiced red-tops over wiv em and start taking our media spaces, thinking they can change our country, well I say send em all back bloody bastards

*None of the above people are connected to terrorism in anyway. Any resemblance to any terror worker living or deceased (even if so for martyrial purposes) is purely coincidental. 

The combination of crisp blue skies and gold leaf-fall has been really uplifting me as the nights draw in. The last few Autumns have been really grey and sombre as far as I can remember, so the bright colours this year have been a welcome change. I love the sound of the leaves from Chiswick’s London plain trees rattling across the windy roads.

Here is picture of leaves being mashed into a bus-lane on Chiswick high road.

We were driving through Finsbury Park recently, on our way to a friend’s birthday party. We had to stop off to buy booze as decorum requires of a guest. We spotted and appropriate looking corner shop and nipped in.

Now I always find going into these shops a vaguely weird experience. The neon strip lighting glazes the scene with that other-worldly, alway-open wash; they smell of warm cardboard and dried cleaning fluids; despite the owner’s best (or most paltry) efforts to make the shop look appealing you can always tell that the largest part of their revenue comes from selling booze, especially single cans of Super; and the dazzling array of different tins, packets, bottles, and boxes makes me feel like I have walked in to a budget Aladdin’s cave. It is often late at night or in moments of unfortunate insobriety that I venture into these shops, which enhances the odd feel of these liminal shops hovering on the edge of the consumer dream.

Anyway, I always like to do a quick circuit of a corner shop when I visit just to briefly appreciate the dilapidated and un-homogeneous charm, when it struck me that I was getting a strangely wholesome feeling. Quite at odds with the usual bargain-booze posters in the front window. I then realized that the whole food section had been organised and aranged with stunning care, nay love. All the cans were perfectly stacked, the labels were all exactly turned tot he front with even a thought spared to colour co-ordination: just look at those bags of rice on the bottom shelf. Lahrvely.

That is pride in your work for you. It was like I was regarding a nostalgic scene described by Dickens.

Maybe there is a ‘Best Stacked Shelf 2008′ award, or perhaps the shopkeeper was bored out of his skull. Or simply out of his skull. At any rate, I really enjoyed taking in this bizarre sensual experience like a refreshingly demotic art gallery. There is a special kind of beauty to be found in the corners of this world.

Gobbledegook.

I just sent an email to o2 regard poor call quality on my iPhone, and that is what I got in reply (suspiciously quickly). Bloody nonsense.

Their suggestions for ameliorating poor call quality were:

[mercifully abridged]

1. Check to see you have enough signal
2. Turn the phone off and on again
3. Remove and replace the sim card (!! How this could help I don’t know. Probably they should have said “Try step 2 again”)
4. Make sure airplane mode is not on (See my note to 3)

They missed out point 5: “Check to see your hands are not stuck in your mouth and that you are not quite as much of a fucking spastic as o2 believe you to be”

GAchc!

Incidentally, I fixed the problem before they responded by simply turning off 3G, in case you are interested or have an iPhone that makes you sound like you are talking with your head stuffed up a thin animal

Here it is. You can see my gaff. 

I love seeing how London used to be so countrified. Ahh, you can almost smell the wildflowers and the dung.

This is a drawing of my local park. It is skirted by tall poplars. There is one beautiful little tree in the middle and the poplars standing guard around its borders make it seem important somehow. The park is generally filled with stupid happy dogs and very few yuppie wankers.

I have been meaning to start painting pictures of the park for a while. The paths make it compositionally pleasing from many angles, and I love the way poplars stretch themselves up all wonkily.

I think that Lucien and perhaps Camille Pissarro actually painted it. I would be curious to find out and see what they did.