On hold, again

Ummm, so obviously this is on hold until I figure out what I'm doing with it. Or possibly start again. I'll let you know. I know it's not the same but I update twitter reasonably regularly, so follow me there. 140 characters at a time is somehow more manageable....

Rainbows in dark skies - some election thoughts

Not even the election has called me back to this blog recently - it seems there's enough words being written about it to over fill our ears. Tweeting felt like it had a point - almost like voting - you pitch your 140 character opinion into the mass and maybe just maybe it'll be part of a wave... and who knows how these twitter waves have resonated beyond our tweetdeck screens. (I can talk about this because anyone who hasn't yet 'got' twitter will almost certainly still have been told about its part in our election.)

But, it does feel necessary to say something right now. Even just to be another person recording that yes, the last few hours have actually been fairly momentous and emotional. Not exactly Shakespearean, but definitely a couple of drama cuts above soap opera.

I've read quite a few people say that they felt a bit 'teary' watching Gordon's final speech. Well my first moment of 'teariness' was watching Cameron drive up to Buckingham Palace to be accepted as PM by the Queen. It was a rather different sentiment - one of complete disappointment in my country. Angrily, I pictured all those election maps with their swathes of blue England and thought jealously of the yellowness and progressiveness outside of England, in Scotland and Wales. Those MPs had been part of making a genuinely progressive alliance seem possible, but in the space of a few hours today, it all came crashing down and just as we'd anticipated, Cameron - smooth faced (as an airbrushed poster) and as concerned for us (as a car salesman) - got into number 10.

Looking out of my window at that moment, there was a rainbow in a very dark sky. I smiled at it. Really, outside of rare moments of the ridiculously optimistic belief that Nick Clegg would perform a miracle, this was the best I had hoped for. And it's much better than the worst which I had expected. Not only do we NOT have the Conservative majority government we all completely anticipated only a few weeks ago, but they've had to make concessions to the Lib Dems, who it sounds like will have cabinet seats, and already (it seems) are managing to change Tory plans regarding how to tax the wealthy and how to tax the poor... To everyone bitter with Clegg and the Lib Dems for his 'pact' with the Tories - surely to believe that a Tory minority government, hopefully doomed to failure, would have been better is to succumb to party political interests? This way, the liberal left has much more of a voice than otherwise.

And Gordon... Over the last few days I've felt almost guilty about my post-election affection for Labour, my too-late memory that they do actually stand for 'the people' in so many ways. Not that it would have changed my vote to remember this sooner. Tickbox, big brother culture scares me for a start....

I think I'm still on a tiredness lag from staying up all night for the election. Can't imagine how those politicians are feeling. I hope they sleep well tonight, they deserve to. They've had a difficult few days of it, trying to work out how to form the 'stable, reliable government' that is most 'in the nation's interest'. Guess that means all of us. This evenings shenanigans seem to have made a lot of people more disillusioned with politics. In general I'm torn. But right now, I think it has actually had the opposite effect on me - Gordon's speech about the honour of holding the PM office because of the possibilities it brings to make things better actually ring true. Knowing that Caroline Lucas being elected to parliament could make a difference, is empowering. And I do actually believe that politicians DO want to make the world a better place. It's just a shame that some of them can't conceive of how radically different and difficult a world without their privately educated advantages can be. (I think of Cameron's words about helping those who do the 'right thing' and I shudder everytime.) And of course, none of them really have radical enough ideas to solve the major problems we face on a global scale (like, climate change.) Oh no, now I'm going to go to sleep not just depressed that Cameron and the tories are in charge but about everything. Pah. Best in life to focus on the rainbows, I find.

Journey In Darkness

Looking forwards inevitably leads to looking back. I just came across this short film I produced as an undergrad at uni. No budget, no training, no nothing. Watching it now, I'm proud to have helped make it happen. All artistic credit goes to writer and director Rahim Bagheri. At the time I think I found it hard to see the film beyond the director's requests for doves (seemingly not to be found in York) and non time or place specific looking prison cells (not many of these either). He (the director) thought I said 'not possible' too easily. I tried to remind him that quite a few others had tried to produce his film and given up. And besides, I never let my pragmatic explanations of the difficulties stop me from still trying to find ways round them. I do remember though, not liking being cast in the role of the 'no' person.

It was around this time that I thought that film production might be the right path for me - if only I could make sure that I worked with directors in as involved a way as I did on this. But that was no-budget filmmaking where you all 'get' to do everything. Watching this has in many ways reminded me that I'd like to make a film again. But it hasn't made me wish that I'd kept going down the path I set off on post graduation - and followed through on those first tentative footsteps into the 'real' filmmaking world (with money and big crews and the like). Nope, increasingly, 'getting to do everything', armed with a little digital camera and a laptop, is where it's at...

ps it's a slow film, and quite a long-short one at that. I recommend watching it in a quiet and calm place, not one where you're waiting for things to happen quickly. I'd be interested to know what you think though.

*NOTE 3/5/10: I've edited this since first posting. For various reasons. Mainly, I'm trying to cut out overly personal rambles from a blog that isn't actually meant to be about me.*

Food Inc. (the Movie)

Compared to a conspiracy thriller or Batman movies with their bad guys intent on evil domination, the stories of corporate control shown in Film Inc actually still seem rather far fetched. Made into a fiction film, you'd perhaps think that a storyline that involved the greed of a relative few rich men controlling a whole nations supply and choice of a substance as necessary and supposedly wholesome as food, was a bit too far fetched. The fact that this then resulted in the unnecessary deaths of small children would seem unnecessarily sentimentalized. And also far fetched. The heart wrenching aside to the severe food shortages caused by these greedy men in the rest of the world, and the insert clip of third world countries rioting, would be like the nod to the devastation (the aliens/disaster/war) caused to the rest of the world that is obligatorily added to disaster movies for the sake of viewers not from America.

Unfortunately sometimes the real world is more horrible than we want to see in the movies. (that's a whole topic in itself but not for now)

Anyway, it may 'just' be a documentary but go see Food Inc.

For some reason (a mistake on their part I think), I can't embed the trailer.

If you want to see it, it's here:
Official Food, Inc. Movie Site - Hungry For Change? - Trailer and Photos

On the other hand, I got a lot more from the film than I'd expected to from the trailer. (I was expecting a run of the mill documentary)

So here's the beginning of the film, which may intrigue more. (Because it is a very very good documentary)

The meaning of bank fairness

(We can't do that because....)

'To be fair to all our customers we'd have to do the same for everyone.'

Said the man from the bank's credit card collection service, when I asked him to reduce my interest charge so that more than 50% of my payment each month would go towards reducing my debt rather than into their pockets. (Only what other credit cards have agreed to)

I laughed out loud and asked him to think about what he'd just said.

So you admit then, that being fair to your customers, would mean doing this for all of us?

No no no.

He of course meant the kind of 'fair' that is treating everyone the same.
Which includes, it seems, treating everyone equally badly.

(He had no sense of humour about this, just scrabbled to define what he meant)

Dictionary definitions I've just consulted say that absence of bias, is indeed the first meaning of 'fair'. But closely followed by the idea of 'justice'. The OED adds 'appropriate in the circumstances'. Dictionary. com  adds 'free from dishonesty'.

Mr credit card collection man.
It may be 'fair', as in non-biased, to treat all your debtridden customers equally unhelpfully.
However. That doesn't make it just, honest, or appropriate given the circumstances.

(Luckily, after writing this last night I didn't post it which has given me a chance to delete a whole section about why my experience with banks does not show them to be just, honest or acting appropriately. However 'of the moment' this topic is, it's hard for me to separate my subjective anger from the objective analytical anger I'd need to write well... so I should probably give it more time than I normally give my blog posts. It's a whole can of worms I'm going to leave for another time.)

Music sweet music

4 days coughing in bed left me with too much time to dwell on things and I am getting myself into a bit of an existential stew. However the one thing that consistently revives me (far more than films or books - perhaps because I keep choosing ones that takes me further down the same paths) is music.

Here's a couple of things I've found recently:

museradio.com - which has some lovely and at times surprising playlists for all types of mood. Discovered a wonderful J.J. Cale song called Cherry and a bizarre bollywood version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Much of this has me bopping in the office with my headphones on. Kudos to the makers for keeping it simple - when overwhelmed by unlimited access to music through spotify and last.fm it's great to discover gems of recommendation like this.

And this, which is considerably darker and perhaps not likely to change the nature of my thoughts too much, but I find its dark poetry and beats rather addictive. Especially in tandem with the video. Can imagine this stunning everyone in the right moment at a club.

The Billion Pound-O-Gram

Y'know how once a number goes above a million it's very hard to work out whether it's a lot or not?So 5 billion spent on aid sounds like a lot, until compared to Roman Abramovich's 7 billion.
And 1 billion lost to tax fraud could be a huge amount, until you compare to 12 billion lost to tax havens...
There are plenty of fun and games of that kind to be had with The Billion Pound-O-Gram.

Just (whatever you do) don't start playing around with which boxes fit into all the bank bail out related stuff or you might get seriously angry.