Just for the Bants

Many women of my generation were strongly influenced by ideas coming from the feminist movement, they had a huge impact on Western culture and although it’s been railed against again and again has seen a marked change in the general attitudes in society. 

Not many men think it’s okay for a woman to be paid less for doing the same job as a bloke. Not many men think women shouldn’t have the vote or should be covered from head to foot in public.

Not many people in our current world think it’s okay to be racist. Okay, a few footballers and their fans, but even that is now so out of order we all know about it and are duly appalled by such ignorance.

However, my generation of women gave birth to a generation of sons, some of whom have grown up to feel comfortable in the company of women, but some, as we are seeing more often, not.

‘Lad culture,’ if it exists outside the minds and headlines of shallow journalism is the childish boy kicking agains the mother. It’s nothing new, it’s been going on since we grunted about in caves. There was a recent story doing the rounds in the UK of a student magazine called ‘UniLad’ which ran a very offensive article describing the ‘sexual mathematics of, essentially, how to rape female students and get away with it. I’m sure who ever wrote the piece will claim it was a joke, it was for the bants. I don’t believe that for a moment, virtually every heterosexual man I have ever met, myself included, has said or thought similar things. Maybe not quite so overtly, certainly not so publicly, but the complexity and emotional maturity of young women is, and I say this from experience, very challenging to young men.

Boys love their mums, they’re scared of their mums, when they grow up they go out of the cave, meet other mum type people (women) who don’t behave as they expect, woman who have opinions and don’t stay still in an attractive pose like in a cave painting or a pornographic picture.

Women require men to access the more vulnerable parts of themselves, this can be disturbing if you are emotionally mature and stable, it’s bloody terrifying if you had a bitter angry mother and a weak retiring father and you don’t know what you’re mean to do and the women keep criticising you for being immature and stupid.

Suddenly it’s a great relief to hang around with other similarly befuddled young men and do all the things your feminist mum would really hate, getting drunk, shouting loudly at football matches, referring to women as ‘it’ or ‘that.’ Using the word cunt as a term of abuse, they’re just letting off steam, having a laugh, probably not at the expense of your black or Asian mates, but definitely at the expense of women.

And it’s just for the Bants. For banter, it’s a joke when you tell a woman you want to tie her wrists to her ankles so you and your mates can gang bang her, don’t get all moody love, it’s a joke. 

‘I could spit roast that.’ 

I heard that choice phrase spoken by a well educated married man when he saw a pleasant looking young woman walk past. It’s for the bants. I laughed when I heard that, the laugh that says ‘that is so wrong.’ The laugh that leads to the question ‘What if someone said that about your daughter.’ The well educated married man’s confident face then folds into a mass of contradiction, then anger. ‘I’d kill anyone who touched my daughter.’

It’s nothing new, Russian soldiers who raped every woman they found as they invaded Berlin in 1945 would have been loving and respectful sons to their mothers, would have fought to defend the honour of their sisters. They were probably doing it for the Bants. 

So what I have realised over my 55 years of interaction with women is men need to change. To put it simply, men need to finally, in the 21^st century, actually grow up. Not cling to their childhood with all the strength they can muster, making tragic little boy excuses for their offensive behaviour and claiming it was a joke. 

We’ve almost done it with racism, we are on the way to doing it with homophobia although I think we’ve got another 100 years or so before being gay truly isn’t a problem for anyone who isn’t.

We have, as the article in UniLad so aptly illustrated, haven’t even started to sort out how to live with women.

Living with a woman you love but will never understand is a constant challenge, it’s a never ending journey which challenges every fibre of your being. You can retreat into childish cruelty, that’s what most men do and women have had to learn how to tolerate such moronic attitudes, or you can grow up and be different but equal.

Pie in the sky fantasy? Sadly for some time yet, I fear the answer is yes.

Gambling

Out of all the classic sins of humanity, there’s one I really don’t understand.

I readily admit that at one time or another I have indulged in most of them, greed, gluttony, envy, spite, bullying, lying, cheating, stealing and fornicating.

The only biggie I’ve never done is murder, thought about it though.

However the one vice, or sin, or, as I heard it referred to this morning, ‘fun leisure activity’ I’ve never dabbled in is gambling.

By gambling I mean the specifically understood activity of making a bet, playing a slot machine or card game with the aim of leaving the experience with more money that you started.

The reason I’ve not indulged is not some moral repugnance for the activity, not some higher calling from which I take strength to resist the temptation. I just can’t be bothered. It holds no allure for me.

I spent some time in Las Vegas last year, although it’s a fairly insane place I had a great time, swam in the luxury pool, went out for fabulous meals, met extraordinary people, stayed up late and got a bit tipsy (for me that’s the same as most blokes getting totally bladdered, I’m a massive lightweight)

But never once did I feel the slightest temptation to gamble and the opportunities, as anyone who’s been to Vegas will verify, are ubiquitous.

So today I hear that due to the changes in the way we shop, the proliferation of absurd out of town shopping opportunities created by large corporations bribing easily swayed local councils, and the advent of online shopping, traditional British town centers are rapidly dying. Now the only businesses that are opening new outlets particularly in poorer areas, are betting shops, bookies, gambling dens or ‘fun leisure activity centers’ as I’m sure the soulless, crass management would refer to them.

I actually heard some dodgy sounding geezer say, out loud, with his mouth ‘fun leisure activity’ when describing the hundreds of new gambling pits being introduced. Imagine this man’s soul, no don’t, you’re will be tainted by the act.

But I believe in the human spirit, I believe it can be enhanced or soiled. I believe therefore that the very act of naming the activity of gambling as a ‘fun leisure activity’ will eat away at that spirit, turning it dark, ugly and full of self-loathing.

The more brutal side of this tragedy, much like the national lottery, is that generally speaking only the very poorest among us indulge on a regular basis. Sure, I have seen very wealthy gentlemen in high waisted red corduroy trousers have a flutter on the nags at the Cheltenham races, I’ve met an extraordinary maths genius who played poker for 3 months a year and that’s how he earned a very good living, but these are the exception. The vast majority of people who bet, with a fervent desire and need to win are among the poorest. And of course they don’t win, 99.99% of the time they don’t win. They don’t have a chance.

It makes me very sad every time I walk past a bookies shop, which let’s face it from an aesthetic point of view is a fucking ugly place, because it’s a dump which promises the very poor the tragically small chance of getting very rich.

I’ve thought about it a bit as you may be able to surmise, and I’ve realised I do in fact gamble all the bloody time.

I’ve gambled with my entire life and career, not twenty quid in my back pocket. I have spent my creative life punting ideas, plays, books, sketches, stand up comedy routines in the hope that they will catch on, that people will like them and I’ll earn a crust, maybe even a whole loaf.

I’ve lost and won, but thankfully, I’ve won about 45% of the time. Imagine if I’d spent my life doing what I’ve done and won .01% of the time as the poor sods who use the crappy bookies shops now soiling our once interesting high streets.

And just in case you’re wondering, no I don’t want to ban them, but I’d love there to be a general popular movement that spread the knowledge that they are leeches, pointless rip off artists who fleece the very poorest in our society and contribute negatively to our general well being. I’m all for that.

The Energy Debate

The debate about renewable energy/ energy use/ energy independence and all the associated anxieties is clearly growing in importance. Many people are just now becoming aware that there even is a debate, it’s a topic I no longer have to bring up. Anyone I meet, if they see me get out of an electric car or they see my solar panels will immediately express an opinion.

However, just as it is with me, these opinions are highly fluid, it’s a really complex debate, there is no right and wrong, no left or right, no simple, easy solution.

Doing something about our dependence on stuff we extract out of the ground and burn by the trillions of tons and gallons is seen as a good thing across party lines. How exactly we achieve that is obviously a lot more complex.

Yes, solar panels are almost exclusively used by middle class people who, as George Monbiot rightly says, own their own roof.

Wind turbines almost exclusively benefit the upper middle classes who get paid to have them on their extensive lands. The Royal family are a very good example of this. The lovely old Duke of E recently ranted on about how pointless they were, conveniently forgetting that HRH the Queen gets many £100’s of thousands a year in rent from off shore turbines (She owns a lot of sea.)

The easy dismissal of wind turbines is very popular among the certain sections of society, however over 2 weeks around Christmas and New Year, a full 12% of the UK’s electricity was from wind turbines.

Wind turbines are already on a par with burning gas to generate electricity and will soon be a far cheaper alternative. Why?

Because the cost of ‘natural’ gas which we mainly get from Russia has gone through the roof. We’ve already burnt through the stuff we found in the North Sea; in terms of burning fossils, only one thing is certain, it’s going to get more expensive.

All fuel costs have increased and the sources are at best unstable and at worse, highly volatile. This has had a huge effect on what we pay for electricity. But that’s complicated and awkward, wind turbines are much easier to criticise because if you’re posh and you live somewhere nice you don’t want them near you.

If you’re not posh and live next to an oil refinery (like my sister) and you’re not allowed to put glass in your windows (has to be heavy duty Perspex) and there are evacuation procedures you have to display in your house in the event of a massive fire or explosion, well, that’s just normal, we’re used to that.

In a recent ITV program many mentions were made of how the increasing use of renewable energy was going to increase our electricity bills. Not one mention was made of the traditional methods by which we produce the vast bulk of our power.

There is a classic moment in the program, it looks almost staged by a subversive researcher with a secret green agenda. A fairly posh land owner was sitting by his 17^th century barn saying he’d had offers to install turbines on his land, he and his wife then went through the standard Daily Telegraph, James Dellingpole nonsense about how they don’t work and are an eyesore.

As they were speaking a massive domestic heating oil truck entered the scene behind them and very slowly worked its way toward the no doubt substantial oil tanks tucked discreetly behind the dovecot. So having heavy oil, extracted in Saudi Arabia, pumped, stored shipped, pumped, stored, refined, shipped and delivered is a sensible way to use our resources? Is it maybe time we questioned such insane behaviour?

In 2004-5 we did a lot of work on our house. I was cursing and sulky because I didn't fit grey water storage, ground source heat pumps, solar PV, solar water heaters and on and on. We had a nice kitchen instead. The one thing we did do that I’m very proud I fought for was install a staggering amount of insulation.

Our house is very warm, we've actually had the central heating on for 3 days so far this year. I do have a wood-burning stove we use at weekends and that's a CO2 nightmare but the logs are local, from coppiced woodland.
I do now also have solar PV that so far (fitted last May) has produced 1678.47 Kwh. The average UK house consumes 1,500 Kwh per year, so they have made a difference. 
However the biggest difference of anything we've done is the insulation. Not just cavity walls, also windows and doors, triple glazed and they seal very tight. 
It is, without question, just as important to use less energy as it is to generate your own, ask my kids, I'm obsessed with it.
'Turn out that light, and the telly! No one's watching it!'
My record number of lights turned off when I got home (this is very common with dads) is 12. 12 lights on for no reason. No one was affected by this action, I didn't leave my daughter weeping in the dark.

Knowing how much energy you use and trying to reduce it is as important as any other measures you can take, we all use hugely more than we did even when I was a kid. This year, I plan to install more solar PV, a domestic hydrogen fuel cell and a central isolator switch that kills all the standby electronics in the house at night. Imagine how popular I am with teenagers.

Oh, and notice that I didn’t mention climate change once. As the wonderful cartoon said, ‘What if we go to all the effort of making the world a better place and climate change is a hoax!’

SOPA so not good

As you can possibly imagine the topic of illegal downloading, file sharing and piracy has been a a low level hum in the background of the recording of the new series of Red Dwarf.

There is no doubt that ‘online piracy’ has had an impact on our income. There was a time about 10 years ago when our meagre slice of Red Dwarf VHS and DVD royalties was a clearly measurable part of our income. It has without doubt, diminished considerably. Sales of DVD’s have dropped, not just Red Dwarf ones, I’m talking DVD sales across the board.

Red Dwarf holds a peculiar place in the pantheon of sales of traditional broadcast TV shows, it stands shoulder to shoulder with Mr Bean and Blackadder as being one of the first TV shows that were released as VHS cassettes during their broadcast lifetime which sold by the truck load.

There is a long and complex history of how the performers in these shows, including the esteemed Mr Atkinson were, for a while at least, completely cut out of this considerable income but I’ll save that sorry tale for my upcoming autobiography, ‘Embroidery for Boys.’

I know about the reduction in DVD sales from both sides. I don’t buy them any more, I subscribe to Netflix and rent films on iTunes, it’s so much easier and there are no plastic boxes to find a home for.

I will, I have been assured, receive an income from legal downloads of Red Dwarf episodes but it’s far from clear how much that will be, I think it’s safe to say it will be less than we once got from DVD’s.

Therefore you might imagine that someone in my position would be all in favour of clamping down on online piracy, chasing those pesky pirates into the sea, closing down the loopholes and introducing legislation that makes illegal downloading and distributing of copyright material impossible.

Well, we’ve just seen what a mess that could make of this world we’ve all entered with such eagerness. The SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) which well funded big media companies are trying to bully through the American political system is supposed to do just that. Put an end to these pesky kids watching films and TV without paying for it.

You don’t have to be a nerd or geek to know it’s going to do two things, one is utterly fail to stop illegal downloading, and two, place massive restrictions on what is perfectly legal and above board. It’s going to negatively affect law-abiding citizens and  (Lord I hate this term) ‘content providers’ and leave criminals completely unaffected and able to continue ‘stealing content.’

Basically, the old model is broken, not just a bit scratched and in need of a re-spray, the old model is already written off. It does not work. It’s swerved off the road, tumbled down a ravine and is lying upside down in the river.

The old media corporations cannot find a solution. Their existence is dependent on control, restricted access, release dates, locking code and severe warnings to their customers, us.

When I watch a DVD I’ve bought in a store, the first 5 minutes of the experience requires me watching a litany of warnings, all of them assuming I am a criminal and I need to be told again and again that what I could do with this film is illegal. Being a guilt-ridden-over-privileged-middle-class-middle-aged-white-man, I feel guilty. I haven’t done anything wrong but I feel guilty, for buying a product from a corporation, paying tax on that product and using it in the way it was intended.

Here’s my point, make the act of buying the ‘content’ simple, realistically priced, based on a fair return. Make it easy to find, not locked behind endless layers of ‘security’ needing endless repetitions of proof of identity. Make it as simple as buying an apple in a market, give the man some money, he gives you an apple. We do have the technology to do this, safely, securely and fairly to both parties.

It is up to the (forgive me) content providers, people like me, to find new and simpler ways to distribute our creative endeavours in a whole new market place that could not be conceived when I was young. This is not the end of music, film, books, TV, radio. In fact it is the opposite, it’s opened up the whole creative process.

I predict we will look back on the last 100 years as literally a previous species of highly restricted mass communication. We are currently going through the death throes of one model and seeing the birth of a new one. There will be plenty of mistakes along the way, I’m sure I’m going to make some, but slowly a new way will emerge. This will create new corporations who will become just as powerful and blinkered as the ones we see failing now. The cool thing to know as a humble individual is that somewhere out there, there’s a little spermy fella and a little egg lady, and when they meet they’ll create someone who will put the kybosh on Google, Apple, Netflix, Microsoft etcetera. They in turn will fight to the death to protect their corporate ‘rights. Hey ho.

Happy Christmas to all Llewblog visitors

I started this bloggy thing about a year and a half ago, I'm not in the least professional about regular updates or 'sticky' features to ensure constant returns, but it's somewhere I can have a moan, a think, a rant and a ponder. Thanks so much for ever bothing to click a link to here, I'll continue to post stuff a bit haphazardly every now and then.

2011 has been a wibbly wobby but creative year for me, starting out a bit bleak but getting warm and productive as the months passed. My lovely son has grown up and left home, but he's coming back for Christmas. My gorgeous daughter is also just a bit damned clever, runs rings around her befuddled dad but she is very lovely too, and finally my lovely wife has just remained steadfast, insightful, complex, challenging but above everything else deeply lovely.

I'm really enjoying making a new series of Red Dwarf, I'm embarrassingly excited about my book, News From Gardenia being published in February, I'm very excited about doing a new series of 'Fully Charged' which will be a proper, sponsored online series with some proper clever young people helping me explore electric cars and the future of energy, and likewise, a new series of Carpool which has some truly awesome passengers lined up. Oh, and then there's all that running, jumping , swimming, pole vaulting, beach volleyball business in the summer.

In the meantime, I hope you have a great Christmas, midwinter break/ holiday, snooze, what-ever-floats-your-boat type experience and fingers crossed that 2012 will be a great year for you.