Political Mainly

  It's nice to be back after the summer break, I needed that break to get my head right and just enjoy being a Dad, and it was the last summer holiday before my son started secondary school, he's been back a week and he is thriving. During this little break, I have been thinking a lot about how race and political thought are linked, and I ended up asking myself, is it so ridiculous to think that people of colour or the LGBTQIA community are committing an act of self-harm by lending their voice to groups that ultimately want to restrict their freedom? Or does it come down to an individual's political beliefs shaped by their environment? When I was a kid, I was the only mixed-race kid in my school, I didn't meet another mixed-race kid until I went into secondary school, so all through primary school, I was the only mixed-race kid around, there were white kids, black kids, Asian kids, even a Chinese girl, that was very rare in 1970s West Bromwich, so I had no one who...

  So, the BBC news presenter at the centre of the recent mass guess who game that has played out on twitter, has been named as Huw Edwards, perhaps one of the most recognisable faces of broadcast news in the last 20 years, a 61 year old father of 5 who will forever be a part of British history as the news presenter who broke the news of the death of Queen Elizabeth II to the nation. Now I'm not here to defend Huw Edwards, I think the things he did were creepy, it's not the first time or the last a middle age man is going to do creepy shit, but I think rather than use the Huw Edwards story to score points morally and politically, we must now look at what causes a man who is so recognisable and so famous, to seek sexual gratification with people young enough to be his child, or even grand child, and what made him think he could get away with it? Police investigating the incidents have concluded that no law was broken, by Mr Edwards, but that doesn't mean that w...

  Yesterday, My Xbox stopped working, no signs of life at all, it is an ex-Xbox, and being the sentimental type, I started thinking about all the fun I have had with the little black box of tricks under the TV from playing Call of duty Ghosts and dominating in a team deathmatch, through to the unpredictable interactions with other players on DayZ, and I realized that my Xbox was a part of my survival. You see I bought that Xbox at quite a low point in my life, I found myself in the situation of being a single father looking after my 3-year-old son, we had just moved into a new place because at the same time my relationship broke down, we lost our home, but that's a story for another time. The nights were the worst, the loneliest time, with my son being still young and sleeping from 7pm till 6am every night, I found myself alone for long periods of time, I have never been a TV-watching type, but being able to access Netflix and other streaming services through the Xbox me...

  If like me you spend a lot of time on social media (I know, I should touch grass once in a while) you may have noticed a pattern when it comes to the Tories, and that pattern involves guilt, shame and general gas lighting, the exact same tools employed by abusive and controlling partners. Now I am in no way suggesting that Conservative party members all abuse their partners, in these litigious times I want to be perfectly clear on that, and I also don't want a Tory snowflake clutching their pearls, pointing to me as one of the “kind left”. Take for instance the trope employed by conservative followers who have gulped down the kool aid, that labour can't be trusted with the countries finances, they will spout this without a hint of irony as they conveniently forget the 37bn wasted on track and trace, and the 29mn that went to a Tory peer for PPE that was as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike. The way the Tory's operate is to try to make us all forget the...

  “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—” “Sir?” “—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Harper Lee-To Kill a Mockingbird For the past few weeks I have been in talks not only with the subject of this interview but with myself as well, I have had some reservations about this interview, not least the reluctance to give a platform to someone with very far right views, but as the person I am interviewing is adamant that they don't want to be named, I thought I could use the opportunity to get an insight into the mind of a self proclaimed racist. "I prefer Pro white, but Racist doesn't bother me." This interview took place over a Skype call, because neither one of us really wanted the other in their home, I was expecting Gary ( we'll call him Gary to protect his true identity) to be cagey, and argumentative, but as you will see, he was surprisingly frank and forth coming with his answers. "You t...

  The media likes to make things simple, on/off, black/white, in or out, its easier to make an attention-grabbing headline if you can polarise the readers, and force them into one of two pigeonholes , you see we now live in a world that rewards extreme viewpoints, the middle ground has long been deserted as the centrifugal force of identity politics and woke/anti woke culture spins us out to the extremities of the political spectrum. But let's look at that middle ground for a second, if the middle ground was where we all chose to live the world would be a much better place to live, our ideas would be flexible according to our environment and compromise would be a lot easier to achieve. If you look at the political spectrum as a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being far left, and 5 being far right, its easier to get someone who is a 2 or a 4 to be a 3 than it is to get a 1 to be a 5 or a 5 to be a 1. It's not about making people compromise who they are, it's about mak...