I felt sick for weeks after 9/11. A creeping sickness, as if something was rotting inside me. It may have been fear or revulsion, maybe a confused bodily reaction to the sudden and brutal restructuring of the world. I can still recall the uneasiness which permeated from my mind into my physical state. A decade later, I am not sure if the sickness ever left me.
That day is etched into my mind, I carry the snapshot memories in me and can recall them at a moment’s notice. Being told by a friend as I stood at the school gates, being part of the crowd in Dixons watching something unknown and terrible unfold, the endlessly replayed footage, the monotony of horror and the relief that came from finally turning off the television. The ceaseless rolling coverage of pain and suffering beamed directly into our homes magnified and intensified the event out of all knowable proportions. With every passing minute, every new second of footage, and every stilted, shocked recap America was humiliated. Humiliated at 24 frames per second. Humiliated but not humbled, not broken and not beaten. One thought was immediately obvious even as I stood with strangers and staff in that becalmed Dixons; that someone would have to pay. America would need vengeance and someone would have to be found, blamed, bombed and defeated. What I did not predict was the brutal, reductionist manner by which America would attempt to get its catharsis, and what I could never have foreseen is that a decade later it would still be seeking closure, bestriding the world searching for the one speck of solace that will make everything as it were.
Amongst the shattered concrete and gypsum that lay where the twin towers had stood, America and, by proxy, the world lost something it would not recognise the value of until it had disappeared. America’s identity; torn asunder by a few terrorists and their own airplanes. In its place was an aesthetic of terrorism that was to infiltrate, then dominate America’s culture emperors, Hollywood. Disaster didn’t look like it was meant to, it was filthy and messy, paper floated down from on high, the haunting, ceaseless beeping of emergency distress signals echoed through otherwise silent streets and the dust, the terrible, choking, all consuming dust filled the air. It rushed in clouds down New York’s streets, propelled by the collapsing Towers and plunging what was once vibrant and busy, into a monotonous, grey pall. Firemen emerged as new heroes of a new age. Men used to running into burning buildings had their unwanted Everest, not just a burning building now but a burning symbol, an edifice of America’s creation and someone else’s destruction. Whilst their president hid underground, their fireman marched into the heart of the disaster doing whatever they could, rescuing whoever they could in the forlorn hope that it would somehow be enough to undo what had been done to their city, their country.
A new wave of patriotism swept an already patriotic nation. America’s new heroes, their firemen, raised a flag over ground zero in an abject copy of glories past and America followed suit. Flags emerged everywhere, “United We Stand” they bellowed, affirming to themselves as much as the rest of the world, and their leader emerged from his cave brandishing a new rhetoric dividing the world into those on America’s side, and the terrorists. In the days following the event it was a useful ideal, and prompted small acts of bravery or goodwill that defined America’s reaction. Lines of people queued up to give blood, traders on the stock exchange deliberately bought and bought high to stave off a terrorism induced crash. A nation tried to rebuild is self confidence and shake itself free of its worry and confusion. A new found seriousness led to the cancellation of sporting events and the quiet dropping of celebrity gossip pages but it could not and did not last. Sports returned emblazoned in flags and draped with patriotic figures from the armed forces and emergency services. America questioned itself, Newsweek pondered aloud “Why do they hate us?” But its answers were symptomatic of a country that didn’t know what it stood for anymore; maybe it was America’s freedom, maybe its democracy, maybe its religion. America didn’t know what it stood for so it stood for everything. The situation lent itself to sweeping statements and grand affirmations of a new age from philosophers and reporters alike. Even the most prosaic of tabloid hack became conversant in the Clash of Civilisations theory as the world tried to define a new epoch. The attacks were transmogrified into an assault on the entire history of liberal democracy by a culture ill suited to anything but violence and authoritarianism. Fukuyama was brought to account for proclaiming the End of History, as if his complacency had allowed the new threat to arise. While its people reeled from the assault on its own territory, America’s leaders plotted. This opportunity was not to be missed and a new world order was to be unleashed. A world order built on an incorrigible faith in the converting power of democracy and an absurdist, cowboy lexicon that allowed no linguistic quarter to the nuanced, the fearful or the unconvinced.
America declared war on an abstract noun, a bravura moment for a nation that had lost previous encounters with Crime and Drugs, but the War on Terror would be different, it had an immediate, defined and palpably conquerable enemy, the first of an expected many. On September 11th itself, Bush had promised there would be “no distinction between terrorists and those that harboured them”. He was true to his word and in this black and white world Afghanistan’s Taliban regime was to find itself an enemy not just of America but of the West in the form of NATO. As would become typical of American foreign policy, the War in Afghanistan lacked definition and purpose. The War on Terror was to be a war without end, and as such it could not have goals or ambitions, only targets. Afghanistan became its first target and the War on Terror would consume it whole, deleting its diplomatic history with America and revising its bloody, poisonous past. America would become the War on Terror. What it wanted, what it needed was what America wanted and needed. It became more important that freedom, democracy, religion or any of the other proposed complaints of America’s enemies. Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance were once criminals, warlords, and murderers but became friends and allies as the battle for liberty and democracy took immediate comfort in the arms of some of its fiercest abusers.
Whilst abroad the War on Terror was wrathful and angry, at home it was fearful and scared. America had been attacked by people living within its own borders; its own infrastructure had been turned against itself. America could not understand the reasons for its attack so it could not distinguish between future attackers and true patriots. Everywhere it looked it saw more people plotting, more people waiting for an opportunity to strike. They may have been patriotic times but America could no longer trust itself and the War on Terror wanted to feed on this paranoia. Patriotic times would get their Patriot Act. Not a law, but an attack on its own people. Fear was encouraged, conversations were taped, neighbours referred neighbours to the FBI, and the War on Terror feasted on the rotting bonds of community that had once held a nation together. Suspicion breeds suspicion, paranoia breeds paranoia, new alarms were raised and dismissed, terror levels were heightened, and silence became foreboding. The lack of attacks became proof that it was working, not that it was unnecessary, and the feeding continued. The War on Terror was so hungry, it had fed on Afghanistan, it was feeding on America but now it needed to feed on people.
The War on Terror needed victims. Not just any people, the War on Terror needed victims on which it could enact its retribution, it needed to make people suffer, and it needed its enemies to be worth less than the American citizens that were killed. It needed victims it could humiliate, interrogate, rendition and torture. The combatants who were captured in this new kind of war were not to be termed soldiers and were not granted a soldier’s rights. Instead, a new definition was created, allowing the normal rules of war to be subverted and outright ignored. The War on Terror’s victims became trapped in a quantum superposition, inmates but not prisoners, combatants but not soldiers, held in a jail without a trial or a sentence, they were to be forgotten. Existing but not existing, in America but not in America, humans but without rights, they were Schrödinger’s prisoners trapped in a legalistic maze that had somehow robbed them of their self evident truths. Guantanamo Bay became America’s iron hand in its velvet glove, the images of wire fences, and orange boiler suits were the ever present threat to its enemies. Stories of waterboarding, stress positions and sleep deprivation were the tacit warning to all that America had succumbed to its anger. With policies like these the war could not be about freedom and encouraging democracy anymore, the sheer level of force brought to bear against a country with no ability to retaliate meant it could not be viewed as a simple man hunt, rather this was the first skirmish of a new age of global war. The West bringing the full power of its military might to enforce their long held belief that democracy was the end stage of civilisation, the inevitable product of the evolution of the state. Where once this belief was held on paper and expected to take its course, now it would be forced by arms and conflict. The people would be made to be free, they would be bombed for peace, and democracy was to be enforced. The War on Terror’s latest victim was the humble oxymoron, an innocent victim abused beyond all recognition in the service of other goals.
As America reshaped its world into two defined camps, friends and enemies, the dividing line between the two became murkier and murkier. While the mass murderers and war criminals of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance had become clearly marked friends, NATO members France and Germany would slide towards the enemies camp as the War on Terror’s attention turned to its next target. America was thirsty for more vengeance and eager to expand its narrative of Western liberal democracy staring down the terrors of the world’s most notorious nations. The rhetoric became ever more bald and divisive. The Axis of Evil was termed, implying a bond of brotherhood existed between three states who had at one time or another fallen under America’s gaze but survived. Suddenly whole parts of the world were embroiled in an imagined international conspiracy to attack America fuelled by a pathological hatred of all that America was and all that it stood for. America’s self confidence had dissolved, where once it had known that it was loved, now it knew it was hated. Worse this new Axis had access to devastating weapons, America imagined these weapons only existed for one purpose, missiles, bombs, and vials primed and aimed at her heart. While America had been hurt by planes, now it feared nuclear bombs and anthrax. The War on Terror knew what it must do, they had to be disarmed. The Weapon of Mass Destruction was added to the new lexicon of war mongering. It may have been a pretence, an excuse or a reason, maybe all three to different actors in the White House theatre but its power to possess the debate was as awesome as its destructive threat. The cowboy and his posse convened at the ranch and cooked up a new meal for the War on Terror. The time for settling old scores had come to pass. Lines were drawn, resolutions requested, gained or denied, speeches were made and protests were marched but there could be no stopping the War on Terror gaining its new front. It was hungry, having only partially digested its last meal it needed the sustenance of another fallen regime, more images of American superiority, and the satisfaction of completing a job half done a decade before. Iraq and the Bushes; the new love that dare not speak its name. While the War on Terror prepared its feast, some convinced themselves that only good could come of it. The suffering of That Day would be turned to hope, it would derive meaning and no longer be simply cold blooded slaughter, troops would be welcomed into Iraq, democracy would flower and the Middle East would recognise what should become its natural state. With hindsight it is hard to know if they were lying or genuinely mistaken but whatever was found in Iraq there were neither WMD, nor any peace. Only the next quagmire in which American military might would lose its lustre.
Saddam’s information minister reminded the world that it was not only the West that could abuse language with his increasingly desperate and hysterical statements lending an element of farce to what was becoming a tragedy. When the statues fell and Baghdad was looted no one was quite sure what would happen next, it seemed not even the War on Terror knew what it wanted anymore. WMDs had been not so quietly dropped, the mission was declared accomplished and Regime Change became the new hip phrase. In the void where a plan was once assuredly place, a new manhunt was rustled up. Men who had tortured, maimed, gassed and killed were reduced to hiding in holes as America’s enforcers roamed the Wild East, lasso in hand. Finally the Ace of Aces was caught, examined, and presented to a whooping audience. Paul Bremer could not resist lowering the moment to the tone of the times. “Ladies and Gentlemen, we got ‘im,” he remarked, verbally dumping the outlaw on the floor of his saloon. They were the words of an America asserting itself once again. They had conquered the West and now they would conquer the Middle East, this was the swaggering arrogance they had missed since That Day. One of America’s longest standing bad guys had been usurped, hounded, captured and humiliated. Now he would be thrown to the Iraqis to do with as they pleased. America; the righter of wrongs, the superman it had come to believe itself to be. But then the turn happened, the conquered refused to accept the facts. They had been defeated, routed, reduced but still they came with new weapons, not the WMD as was so feared but the IED. The bomb that could be anything and anywhere, the bomb that made even the most humble car, and the quietest street untrustworthy. A device that, in its simplicity, destroyed the relationship between occupier and occupied. America was fearful again. It had not meant to be this way. America was to be loved, feared and respected in that order. These new weapons made a mockery of their massive military spending and state of the art equipment, but what really hurt was that again America was bogged down, trapped under the weight of its commitments. This America was no superman; it saw itself reflected in a new Batman. A violent, fearful character determined to use the power of its own fear against its enemies, driven by spite and discontent to try and make a better world but spurned by those it thought would support it.
Stay the Course was the new logic, if America could just hold out long enough, just keep doing what it was doing then the world would recognise, then they’d see. But staying the course was tiring and debilitating, America was stuck, drenched in blood and unable to move forward or back. Stay the Course had been a choice, now it became an inevitability. What was America now? It was no longer the fireman leaping heroically into burning builders because it was too stretched to act, it had failed to be the world’s marshal by letting its biggest fish squirm off the hook, Iraq had rejected its role of as the bringer of peace and democracy and the world had rejected it as the moral torch in a murky world. The War on Terror had consumed all before it, people, countries, ideals and money but it had left nothing in its place. America was a lover spurned. Used, abused and discarded by a War that still wanted to be fed. Everywhere the West’s ideals were in tatters. From the feeble hearted opposition to Iraq, to complicity in extraordinary rendition and torture, the West was disrobed and revealed. It had sold its most precious possessions, its values and freedoms for the tiniest crumbs of comfort and security and was left with nothing to protect. Worse was to come.
Perhaps there should have been an air of inevitability, there was no other box left to tick, but instead the shock was palpable. America’s disastrous decade was to culminate in a home brewed economic collapse almost without equal. No buildings fell but companies came crashing down, hasty mergers were arranged which only served to pass on the mess and soon the debacle spread. Vast swathes of the world were plunged into full scale recession and mass unemployment. This would be how the world would truly end. Not in the fall of buildings and the wave of dust clouds but with repossessions, resignations and stock market boards covered in red. The West tried to stop the bleeding by jamming wounds with money, thrusting more and more in. The printed all they dared, they spent all they could afford but it was not enough, they desperately sought cash from outside. Their joy when it came was tempered by regret at whose kindness they had to appreciate. Communist Dollars dyed red from China, and petrodollars seeping with oil from the Middle East flooded into a market hungry for cash and starved of credit. America and the West were beholden to the nations they had mocked. Democracies went to autocracies with their begging bowls, the evolved state seeking help from those once deemed backward. The Civilisations were no longer clashing, they were banking.
America was lost and needed a new message and it was delivered. The message was Change, its power was awesome and its range was infinite. New dawns were declared and hopes were raised but no rain came. Instead the long desert days continued. America continued to bleed, continued to stagger and teeter toward a new precipice. The Tea Party tried to remodel America again. This time as a nation of winners, struck low by a generation of losers. In the midst of the continuing crisis America’s bête noire was shot twice and killed by a member of Navy Seal Team Six. “For God and Country” he had radioed his superiors as the villain of the piece slumped to the floor. America waited for the inevitable wave of catharsis, and waited and waited. Somehow it didn’t seem to matter as much as they’d hoped. America had long ago cast off its identity as avenger of wrongs, no longer did it desire to dispense globe spanning justice, now it just wanted to pay the bills. As the decade since That Day reached its conclusion America gazed into a financial abyss as its debt ceiling loomed, and while one crisis was averted, barely, it still cost their prized credit rating.
The War on Terror ate America from the inside out. As the 10th anniversary of That Day approaches, Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay stays open, and its detained non-soldiers stay outside the law. Imprisoned by a linguistic twist that shows all America has done to its ideals and values to feed its insatiable desire for vengeance, only to discover that there are greater demons out there. The war in Afghanistan has appeared to finally outlast the war in Iraq in their private contest. The Patriot act remains in law and has been extended by the man who would be Hope. A decade ago, America’s greatness was unquestioned, now even its credit is challenged. America and the West turned the world upside down, they made the worst kind of allies, restricted freedom at home, ran roughshod over basic human rights abroad, and bled themselves dry on wars in the Middle East all because of a single event and a subsequent idea. Maybe the sickness I felt on That Day was a precognition that whatever was to come would be worse than what had happened. The War on Terror has eaten so much, destroyed so much, and used so much. Its left us all sick, and all complicit, in an era that has been defined by Terror but not the terror imposed by others but the terror the West generated in itself.
Monday, 5 September 2011
Saturday, 18 September 2010
If You’re so Sceptical, Why Do You All Agree?
I went to my first meeting of the Westminster Skeptics (sic) on Monday to here a talk by Freedom of Information campaigner Heather Brooke and was impressed both with her enthusiasm for the topic and with her complete mistrust of any state institution. She was joined in both those qualities by a largely submissive audience who questioned her more on the practicalities of obtaining data than the benefit of her work. I feel it is impossible to deny the conclusion that in a democracy, particularly one in the middle of an information revolution, that information belongs to the public first and to the government second. But the talk was notable for not once touching on the limits of this freedom, for instance it was mentioned that spending on security for the Pope’s visit was not releasable but no discussion on why that was and whether that was acceptable. Nor was it discussed about what was beneficial to be released and whether any financial information should be secret. Is it ok for companies that fail to attain government contracts to know how much the successful company bid? Is it ok for them to FOI request the decision making process? There is an all too real chance that government spending could be driven up by having their criteria and current spend laid bare.
What the Skeptics seemed most unanimous on was that government is not to be trusted and anytime an FOI request is rejected it must be because someone, somewhere wants something hidden. It can’t be because the data is simply not collected, or is genuinely secret, or that it takes a huge amount of effort to collate it all, it must be ‘the man’ holding us down. It’s this attitude of complete mistrust that I find most objectionable and when the talk became less like a public meeting of adults and more like a group of sulky teens listening to Nirvana and planning how they would run the country. What the movement most forgets is that government is a collection of people doing their jobs, some well, some badly but no more badly and no better than most private companies and that some people stick to the minutiae of the rules of their jobs and some are more relaxed but everyone, everywhere is just doing a job. Even the name of the website Heather Brooke frequently referenced sums up the attitude, www.whatdotheyknow.com. In fact the main benefit anyone could name of uncovering information via an FOI request was simply that the information was now public. Not once in the meeting did anyone name a single example of policy being improved by this process, yet for the amount for of man hours spent recovering this information surely a justification is needed?
Similarly there was a question relating to the expense involved in collating information for publication of FOI and Brooke’s response was simply that she couldn’t believe complete information wasn’t collated. Indeed her only focus was on how you could then extract the information, not on the benefits of doing so. To peruse the annals of whatdotheyknow is to get a window into a sad and deranged world of vendettas and obsessions, as bad as any Have Your Say section. I would request the total amount of tax payers money has been spent on council officials responding to FOI requests but it would be depressingly counterproductive.
This information is also produced without context, how are we to judge how much is spent on the Pope’s visit if we don’t know the cost of other world leaders’ visits? Context is vital to understanding any decision, spending or otherwise, yet the FOI request system singularly ignores it. Similarly one FOI request is often copied to hundreds of public bodies and only the one result that turns up something mildly embarrassing is published.
The FOI request is not only a flawed system but a actively bad one, it inspires mistrust from the public, wastes officials’ time and only drip information into the public domain. Full disclosure is a necessary and inevitable policy, which the coalition government has made tentative steps towards with local council spending. However I doubt anyone will agree on the list of data to be published and whatever is published it is certain the Skeptics will question what’s left of the list, them and the person who has FOI requested information on ghost sightings and exorcisms from every public body in the UK.
What the Skeptics seemed most unanimous on was that government is not to be trusted and anytime an FOI request is rejected it must be because someone, somewhere wants something hidden. It can’t be because the data is simply not collected, or is genuinely secret, or that it takes a huge amount of effort to collate it all, it must be ‘the man’ holding us down. It’s this attitude of complete mistrust that I find most objectionable and when the talk became less like a public meeting of adults and more like a group of sulky teens listening to Nirvana and planning how they would run the country. What the movement most forgets is that government is a collection of people doing their jobs, some well, some badly but no more badly and no better than most private companies and that some people stick to the minutiae of the rules of their jobs and some are more relaxed but everyone, everywhere is just doing a job. Even the name of the website Heather Brooke frequently referenced sums up the attitude, www.whatdotheyknow.com. In fact the main benefit anyone could name of uncovering information via an FOI request was simply that the information was now public. Not once in the meeting did anyone name a single example of policy being improved by this process, yet for the amount for of man hours spent recovering this information surely a justification is needed?
Similarly there was a question relating to the expense involved in collating information for publication of FOI and Brooke’s response was simply that she couldn’t believe complete information wasn’t collated. Indeed her only focus was on how you could then extract the information, not on the benefits of doing so. To peruse the annals of whatdotheyknow is to get a window into a sad and deranged world of vendettas and obsessions, as bad as any Have Your Say section. I would request the total amount of tax payers money has been spent on council officials responding to FOI requests but it would be depressingly counterproductive.
This information is also produced without context, how are we to judge how much is spent on the Pope’s visit if we don’t know the cost of other world leaders’ visits? Context is vital to understanding any decision, spending or otherwise, yet the FOI request system singularly ignores it. Similarly one FOI request is often copied to hundreds of public bodies and only the one result that turns up something mildly embarrassing is published.
The FOI request is not only a flawed system but a actively bad one, it inspires mistrust from the public, wastes officials’ time and only drip information into the public domain. Full disclosure is a necessary and inevitable policy, which the coalition government has made tentative steps towards with local council spending. However I doubt anyone will agree on the list of data to be published and whatever is published it is certain the Skeptics will question what’s left of the list, them and the person who has FOI requested information on ghost sightings and exorcisms from every public body in the UK.
Sunday, 11 July 2010
The Art of the Post Match Interview
Its now a common feature of sports broadcasting; the shattered, out of breath, emotionally drained sports star responding to a, normally unsuccessful, former player with a microphone seconds after finishing their match. There are so many things wrong with them that the vast majority fail to live in the memory for even a second after their end and yet TV companies insist on their continued use.
Most of the time sport stars are too defensive to make genuinely insightful points, too tired to think clearly and too boring to say anything interesting, so the interviews appear almost pre-written. However, just occasionally, the right set of circumstances combine to produce something brilliant.
The very best interviews are always with the losers, just as their bitterness mixes with their misery it creates a potent cocktail for an interviewer willing to press the right buttons. Two fine examples were produced by the famously brittle Kevin Keegan as his two most important managerial roles imploded in front of his eyes. Firstly in 1996, after months of goading from the then plain old Alex Ferguson, he snapped on Sky Sports, yelling that he'd "Love it!" if his Newcastle beat Manchester United.
Ferguson had intimated that teams tried harder against his team because they were less popular. Keegan couldn't cope with the threat of Ferguson robbing his potential title victory of its lustre and a hard fought victory over Leeds pushed Keegan over the edge. The interview has gone down in football folklore, and created both Keegan and Ferguson's respective reputations. One the cool, arch manipulator, the other a passionate wild man, out of control and out of his depth.
So it was with some glee that a humble interviewer went to see Keegan following his England side's miserable defeat to Germany in the last international played at the old Wembley stadium in 2000. Keegan created another classic moment, drenched in rain, wearing a bedraggled track suit, he was the picture of misery declaring he wasn't "big enough" for this level. His tactical naivety had been brutally exposed as an outmoded and outplayed England had collapsed to its lowest point since failing to qualify for the 1994 World Cup. It remains a defining image of the fall of English managing.
But the very best post match interviews come when no one is expecting them. Roger Federer is famed for his total control during tennis matches, from a slightly fiery youth to the model of mature calm he dominated tennis with little more than a smile in anger. His dominance was unquestioned until the rise of Rafa Nadal, at first they were equal but in 2008 the power swung to Nadal as he obliterated Federer in straight sets in the French open before taking Federer's Wimbledon crown. By the start of 2009 and the Australian Open it looked like Federer was the lesser man.
After Federer lost again in the final to a dominant Nadal he was on the verge of tears when an interviewer tried the bland question "what are your thoughts on this man?" indicating Nadal. The ice man from Switzerland burst into floods of tears and managed between weeps "Oh God, he's killing me." This was one of the world's greatest sportsmen made into a broken man by the power and energy of his only challenger. But it when the greats reach breaking point they bounce back.
Nadal faltered in the French Open that year, losing to Robin Soderling, so Federer took full advantage. Winning the French for the first time in his career, completing the full set, followed by another Wimbledon title that beat Pete Sampras' record for most Major victories. He had become the greatest tennis player in history by any measure and the memories of his horrible day in Melbourne were banished.
It was the sheer unexpectedness of his breakdown and the honesty of his emotions that made the interview unmissable but it shows the inherent fallacy at the heart of these interviews. The interviewer's skills has little to do with the outcome because the emotion and exhaustion of the moment dominate the interviewee, not the questions. Hence the reason why its the weak link in every sport's coverage who get dispatched to pitchside with a mike and some mobile advertising hoardings.
Most of the time sport stars are too defensive to make genuinely insightful points, too tired to think clearly and too boring to say anything interesting, so the interviews appear almost pre-written. However, just occasionally, the right set of circumstances combine to produce something brilliant.
The very best interviews are always with the losers, just as their bitterness mixes with their misery it creates a potent cocktail for an interviewer willing to press the right buttons. Two fine examples were produced by the famously brittle Kevin Keegan as his two most important managerial roles imploded in front of his eyes. Firstly in 1996, after months of goading from the then plain old Alex Ferguson, he snapped on Sky Sports, yelling that he'd "Love it!" if his Newcastle beat Manchester United.
Ferguson had intimated that teams tried harder against his team because they were less popular. Keegan couldn't cope with the threat of Ferguson robbing his potential title victory of its lustre and a hard fought victory over Leeds pushed Keegan over the edge. The interview has gone down in football folklore, and created both Keegan and Ferguson's respective reputations. One the cool, arch manipulator, the other a passionate wild man, out of control and out of his depth.
So it was with some glee that a humble interviewer went to see Keegan following his England side's miserable defeat to Germany in the last international played at the old Wembley stadium in 2000. Keegan created another classic moment, drenched in rain, wearing a bedraggled track suit, he was the picture of misery declaring he wasn't "big enough" for this level. His tactical naivety had been brutally exposed as an outmoded and outplayed England had collapsed to its lowest point since failing to qualify for the 1994 World Cup. It remains a defining image of the fall of English managing.
But the very best post match interviews come when no one is expecting them. Roger Federer is famed for his total control during tennis matches, from a slightly fiery youth to the model of mature calm he dominated tennis with little more than a smile in anger. His dominance was unquestioned until the rise of Rafa Nadal, at first they were equal but in 2008 the power swung to Nadal as he obliterated Federer in straight sets in the French open before taking Federer's Wimbledon crown. By the start of 2009 and the Australian Open it looked like Federer was the lesser man.
After Federer lost again in the final to a dominant Nadal he was on the verge of tears when an interviewer tried the bland question "what are your thoughts on this man?" indicating Nadal. The ice man from Switzerland burst into floods of tears and managed between weeps "Oh God, he's killing me." This was one of the world's greatest sportsmen made into a broken man by the power and energy of his only challenger. But it when the greats reach breaking point they bounce back.
Nadal faltered in the French Open that year, losing to Robin Soderling, so Federer took full advantage. Winning the French for the first time in his career, completing the full set, followed by another Wimbledon title that beat Pete Sampras' record for most Major victories. He had become the greatest tennis player in history by any measure and the memories of his horrible day in Melbourne were banished.
It was the sheer unexpectedness of his breakdown and the honesty of his emotions that made the interview unmissable but it shows the inherent fallacy at the heart of these interviews. The interviewer's skills has little to do with the outcome because the emotion and exhaustion of the moment dominate the interviewee, not the questions. Hence the reason why its the weak link in every sport's coverage who get dispatched to pitchside with a mike and some mobile advertising hoardings.
Monday, 3 May 2010
The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone
“Hello Sweetie”
River Song is back and much, much more than simply a reverse companion, now she is a very significant event in the Doctor’s future. Both episodes threw all manner of suppositions and questions on their relationship and River’s murky past but most of it seemed complication for complication’s sake. Very little of it drove any character or plot development forward and a lot of it relied on the tired trope of characters deliberately not finishing their sentences. Father Octavian was the worst for his “I can’t tell you what she did, also she killed a man.” I still like the River Song character, and I like her reverse development, but that is enough for me. The incessant need to over complicate good plot devices with forced intrigue and bad writing was a hallmark of this two parter, the second part of which is the first bad episode of this series. I look forward to more of River, but mostly because next time it looks like all will be revealed and we can just enjoy the character and her storyline without schoolboy mystery writing.
“It’s the 51st Century, the Church has moved on.”
Father Octavian and his Clerics was classic Doctor Who, normal, recognised terminology applied to something very alien, very odd, and it worked beautifully. They acted like an army but spoke and justified themselves as a church, not enough weirdness to sustain an episode but certainly enough to add intrigue to a story such as this. It also opens the possibility of them coming back in future episodes where their piety and motivations can be explored more, whether the Doctor will still be on their side when they’re not fighting something as malevolent as the weeping angels. Father Octavian at their head was a well realised military commander in the Doctor Who tradition, unflappable, and courageous but never grasping the situation as clearly as the Doctor.
“Don’t look in the eyes.”
The Angels were simple, they touch you and you jump back in time. Simple. You look at them and they cease to exist, turning into stone. Simple. One of the problems with this episode was the manner in which they gained powers and broke their old rules about once every 10 minutes over the 90 minute running time. They can turn people into Angels, can’t be contained in images, can use dead bodies to communicate, and can now move when in their stone form. Also they do not automatically turn to stone when seen, but when they believe they are being seen, and they seem to define being seen as being lit. Over the course of the second episode the director, Adam Smith, clearly ran out of ideas of how to generate tension with the angels and the set pieces became increasingly poor. The angels got usurped as the main threat in the second episode as everyone ran from the crack, making the threat of the angel army dissipate and waste much of the fantastic setup of the first episode. Surely the way to write a 90 minute two parter is to imagine it as a 90 minute Doctor Who film, and yet in this one the first 45 minutes was spent developing a threat that was then ignored for the second 45 minutes, it was one of the worst structured Doctor Who stories I can remember even if the content was still mostly good.
“It looks like the crack on my bedroom wall Doctor”
So the second part became, in effect, the first part of the end of season finale as the time rift opened and swallowed all before it, clerics, angels, plot, suspense, and character development. The idea of the Doctor battling to escape a crack in time that he could stave off if he sacrificed himself is good, that’s why Father’s Day was such a good episode, the idea of the Doctor battling an angel army is good, that’s why The Time of Angels was an excellent episode. To battle both was to ruin all tension, as the cast quickly became reduced to only those who could not die and the angels ignored the Doctor in fear of the crack. Indeed the angels running from the crack could have become a neat plot idea, if Stephen Moffat had used the Angel Bob much more over the course of part two. Ultimately, both literally in the story, and for the viewer, the threats negated themselves, distracting from each other and weakening the threat of the other. It was a story where too many ideas were used at once, River, Angels, Time cracks, clerics, spaceships, and, finally, laughably, Amy as The Most Important Person in Time. They each in turn struggled and died, starved of oxygen and eliminated from the plot to save time, an episode that needed the harshest of script editor’s rewrites was instead consigned to the first bad episode of this series.
“I need to fix you right now Amy.”
Never a truer word spoken by the Doctor but perhaps not as he meant it. In the last 5 minutes, Amy ceased being a companion, a character or a useful addition to the Tardis, instead she is now a sex crazed plot device, an arc to be resolved, another female character fawning over the Doctor’s approval. Five minutes has rarely done such damage to my enjoyment of a series, not only has Amy become over sexualised for the context of the show but so has Doctor Who for its time slot and audience. But even in a post watershed adult Sci Fi drama the dialogue and sexual hunger would be cringingly bad as Amy attempted to force herself on a bewildered Doctor. If the series can come back from this lowest of low points I will be intensely surprised as it did massive damage not just to Amy’s character but to Moffat’s reputation as the resolution to the RTD era. Now his series arc has eaten its principal characters, now his companion is little more than an avatar for the writer’s repressed sexual envy of time’s greatest adventurer, now his only idea is to throw more and more stuff at the screen in the hope that some of it works. New era Doctor Who has eight episodes to convince me that anything will change.
River Song is back and much, much more than simply a reverse companion, now she is a very significant event in the Doctor’s future. Both episodes threw all manner of suppositions and questions on their relationship and River’s murky past but most of it seemed complication for complication’s sake. Very little of it drove any character or plot development forward and a lot of it relied on the tired trope of characters deliberately not finishing their sentences. Father Octavian was the worst for his “I can’t tell you what she did, also she killed a man.” I still like the River Song character, and I like her reverse development, but that is enough for me. The incessant need to over complicate good plot devices with forced intrigue and bad writing was a hallmark of this two parter, the second part of which is the first bad episode of this series. I look forward to more of River, but mostly because next time it looks like all will be revealed and we can just enjoy the character and her storyline without schoolboy mystery writing.
“It’s the 51st Century, the Church has moved on.”
Father Octavian and his Clerics was classic Doctor Who, normal, recognised terminology applied to something very alien, very odd, and it worked beautifully. They acted like an army but spoke and justified themselves as a church, not enough weirdness to sustain an episode but certainly enough to add intrigue to a story such as this. It also opens the possibility of them coming back in future episodes where their piety and motivations can be explored more, whether the Doctor will still be on their side when they’re not fighting something as malevolent as the weeping angels. Father Octavian at their head was a well realised military commander in the Doctor Who tradition, unflappable, and courageous but never grasping the situation as clearly as the Doctor.
“Don’t look in the eyes.”
The Angels were simple, they touch you and you jump back in time. Simple. You look at them and they cease to exist, turning into stone. Simple. One of the problems with this episode was the manner in which they gained powers and broke their old rules about once every 10 minutes over the 90 minute running time. They can turn people into Angels, can’t be contained in images, can use dead bodies to communicate, and can now move when in their stone form. Also they do not automatically turn to stone when seen, but when they believe they are being seen, and they seem to define being seen as being lit. Over the course of the second episode the director, Adam Smith, clearly ran out of ideas of how to generate tension with the angels and the set pieces became increasingly poor. The angels got usurped as the main threat in the second episode as everyone ran from the crack, making the threat of the angel army dissipate and waste much of the fantastic setup of the first episode. Surely the way to write a 90 minute two parter is to imagine it as a 90 minute Doctor Who film, and yet in this one the first 45 minutes was spent developing a threat that was then ignored for the second 45 minutes, it was one of the worst structured Doctor Who stories I can remember even if the content was still mostly good.
“It looks like the crack on my bedroom wall Doctor”
So the second part became, in effect, the first part of the end of season finale as the time rift opened and swallowed all before it, clerics, angels, plot, suspense, and character development. The idea of the Doctor battling to escape a crack in time that he could stave off if he sacrificed himself is good, that’s why Father’s Day was such a good episode, the idea of the Doctor battling an angel army is good, that’s why The Time of Angels was an excellent episode. To battle both was to ruin all tension, as the cast quickly became reduced to only those who could not die and the angels ignored the Doctor in fear of the crack. Indeed the angels running from the crack could have become a neat plot idea, if Stephen Moffat had used the Angel Bob much more over the course of part two. Ultimately, both literally in the story, and for the viewer, the threats negated themselves, distracting from each other and weakening the threat of the other. It was a story where too many ideas were used at once, River, Angels, Time cracks, clerics, spaceships, and, finally, laughably, Amy as The Most Important Person in Time. They each in turn struggled and died, starved of oxygen and eliminated from the plot to save time, an episode that needed the harshest of script editor’s rewrites was instead consigned to the first bad episode of this series.
“I need to fix you right now Amy.”
Never a truer word spoken by the Doctor but perhaps not as he meant it. In the last 5 minutes, Amy ceased being a companion, a character or a useful addition to the Tardis, instead she is now a sex crazed plot device, an arc to be resolved, another female character fawning over the Doctor’s approval. Five minutes has rarely done such damage to my enjoyment of a series, not only has Amy become over sexualised for the context of the show but so has Doctor Who for its time slot and audience. But even in a post watershed adult Sci Fi drama the dialogue and sexual hunger would be cringingly bad as Amy attempted to force herself on a bewildered Doctor. If the series can come back from this lowest of low points I will be intensely surprised as it did massive damage not just to Amy’s character but to Moffat’s reputation as the resolution to the RTD era. Now his series arc has eaten its principal characters, now his companion is little more than an avatar for the writer’s repressed sexual envy of time’s greatest adventurer, now his only idea is to throw more and more stuff at the screen in the hope that some of it works. New era Doctor Who has eight episodes to convince me that anything will change.
Monday, 12 April 2010
The Beast Below
Stephen Moffat’s second episode of the series owed a large debt to the Russel T Davies style of storytelling and perhaps suffered for it. Here was a world based loosely on ours but with a significant twist, a heavy dose of modern parallel, followed by a choice and a heroic solution that leaves no one hurt. However there was a sharpness and a quality here that was missing from RTD’s usual episodes. The dialogue snapped and there were better laughs, side characters were well developed, the world was better realised than any I can remember from the RTD era.
Starship UK
Modelled on a rundown Seaside resort, the boulevards of Starship UK, covered in bunting and the kind of union jack laden miscellanea eagerly snapped up by modern day tourists, pines for the comforts of old cruelly destroyed in the fires of the sun. Its enforcers, the Winders and Smilers are equally nostalgic. Smilers evoke the amusements that delighted Victorian sun seekers, whilst Winders recall the heights of Tudor England’s terror. Cycles and hand wound devices are the order of the day, adding a delightfully steam punk esque look to the episode. There is much left to be seen of the starship and I imagine it will be revisited, something I look forward to.
Liz Ten
Starship UK’s enigmatic leader is a touch of sillyness at the heart of a serious story about choice and the value of life. The reveal of her character is the height of writer’s wish fulfilment, a black cockney queen, magic. She believes she is a benevolent leader, a saviour for her people, but ultimately she is revealed as the creator of the demonic police state. This reveal is at the heart of the episode and it adds a tremendous weight to her character, and demonstrates Moffat’s penchant for playing with perceptions of time. Liz Ten is a fun character but adds to the sheer ridiculousness of the plot, thus detracting from the drama of the episode. There is clamour for more episodes featuring her, I’m not sure I agree but it is nice to have a three hundred year old queen not played by John Barrowman.
The Voting Booth
By some distance the best sequence of the episode, Amy Pond faces a terrible choice and proves herself unable to see past the myopia of her humanity. The choice is a wonderful invention, an uncomfortable question that probes at your psyche, to forget and continue your life or to protest and end your nation. Amy’s message sets up a beautiful conflict for the episode that is never fully played out but plants a seed of doubt in the Doctor’s mind about how much his new companion can be trusted. She has already chosen humanity over an alien once, and tried to prevent the Doctor from making the same choice. The part of the video that is shown layers intrigue on the plot and opens the reveal up to any number of possible solutions.
The Doctor and Amy
This is, as tradition dictates, the companion’s story. She goes from wonder, to intrigued, to direct conflict with the Doctor. If the first episode hinted, this episode states it, this is damaged companion. She is untrusting, distracted and on the run. Her investigative personality is a natural fit with the Doctor and is shared with nearly all her predecessors but her anti authoritarian streak is a mile wild. She ignores the Doctor’s instructions by not asking Mandy about the Smilers, then Mandy’s by investigating the “hole”, then everyone’s by hitting the abdicate button. By the end the Doctor and Amy are closer, a partnership but there is little Amy reveals that companions haven’t previously. Perhaps this is just the Doctor remembering why he has companions.
The Doctor himself is angrier than before and noticeably more anti-human. Carrying on from his disparaging comments about video phones last episode now the Doctor unleashes his anger at Liz Ten and Amy. It is enough to honestly believe that if the Doctor drops Amy now he may never take another human. What strikes this episode and this doctor out as different is the speed at which he works out what is going on. He knows well beyond his anger bubbles over, and it is the slow burn of his rage that makes it interesting. Also to note is the further sexual development of the Doctor where it is stated even more obviously than previously that he slept with Elizabeth I.
Other notables:
Magpie Electricals, just a throwaway, or a hint at the damage wrought by the cracks in the universe?
The crack in the starship at the end of the episode. Obvious but not overwhelming, this year’s arc.
Best line: The Doctor, “This isn’t going to be big on dignity.”
Starship UK
Modelled on a rundown Seaside resort, the boulevards of Starship UK, covered in bunting and the kind of union jack laden miscellanea eagerly snapped up by modern day tourists, pines for the comforts of old cruelly destroyed in the fires of the sun. Its enforcers, the Winders and Smilers are equally nostalgic. Smilers evoke the amusements that delighted Victorian sun seekers, whilst Winders recall the heights of Tudor England’s terror. Cycles and hand wound devices are the order of the day, adding a delightfully steam punk esque look to the episode. There is much left to be seen of the starship and I imagine it will be revisited, something I look forward to.
Liz Ten
Starship UK’s enigmatic leader is a touch of sillyness at the heart of a serious story about choice and the value of life. The reveal of her character is the height of writer’s wish fulfilment, a black cockney queen, magic. She believes she is a benevolent leader, a saviour for her people, but ultimately she is revealed as the creator of the demonic police state. This reveal is at the heart of the episode and it adds a tremendous weight to her character, and demonstrates Moffat’s penchant for playing with perceptions of time. Liz Ten is a fun character but adds to the sheer ridiculousness of the plot, thus detracting from the drama of the episode. There is clamour for more episodes featuring her, I’m not sure I agree but it is nice to have a three hundred year old queen not played by John Barrowman.
The Voting Booth
By some distance the best sequence of the episode, Amy Pond faces a terrible choice and proves herself unable to see past the myopia of her humanity. The choice is a wonderful invention, an uncomfortable question that probes at your psyche, to forget and continue your life or to protest and end your nation. Amy’s message sets up a beautiful conflict for the episode that is never fully played out but plants a seed of doubt in the Doctor’s mind about how much his new companion can be trusted. She has already chosen humanity over an alien once, and tried to prevent the Doctor from making the same choice. The part of the video that is shown layers intrigue on the plot and opens the reveal up to any number of possible solutions.
The Doctor and Amy
This is, as tradition dictates, the companion’s story. She goes from wonder, to intrigued, to direct conflict with the Doctor. If the first episode hinted, this episode states it, this is damaged companion. She is untrusting, distracted and on the run. Her investigative personality is a natural fit with the Doctor and is shared with nearly all her predecessors but her anti authoritarian streak is a mile wild. She ignores the Doctor’s instructions by not asking Mandy about the Smilers, then Mandy’s by investigating the “hole”, then everyone’s by hitting the abdicate button. By the end the Doctor and Amy are closer, a partnership but there is little Amy reveals that companions haven’t previously. Perhaps this is just the Doctor remembering why he has companions.
The Doctor himself is angrier than before and noticeably more anti-human. Carrying on from his disparaging comments about video phones last episode now the Doctor unleashes his anger at Liz Ten and Amy. It is enough to honestly believe that if the Doctor drops Amy now he may never take another human. What strikes this episode and this doctor out as different is the speed at which he works out what is going on. He knows well beyond his anger bubbles over, and it is the slow burn of his rage that makes it interesting. Also to note is the further sexual development of the Doctor where it is stated even more obviously than previously that he slept with Elizabeth I.
Other notables:
Magpie Electricals, just a throwaway, or a hint at the damage wrought by the cracks in the universe?
The crack in the starship at the end of the episode. Obvious but not overwhelming, this year’s arc.
Best line: The Doctor, “This isn’t going to be big on dignity.”
Sunday, 11 April 2010
Supremely Undemocractic
Obama isn't even halfway through his first term, and his re-election is by no means certain but he is set to appoint his second Supreme Court Justice. Not only that but he will have a remit to appoint the most liberal justice on the bench. Supreme Court Justices shape the ideological framework of the law for decades after their appointment, and decide the fundamental rights of American citizens. This seems a phenomenally large impression for a potential one term President to make on his nation.
Imagine a scenario where Obama fades massively over the course of his term and is embroiled in scandal. Even if he loses every state in the next election his legacy will still affect American politics for years, potentially decades. This is the madness of the American system of law, to have a Supreme Court that are accountable to no one is debatable enough but to have it's appointments dominated by politics is quite another. Unanswerable power coupled with the faux legitimacy that the appointment process brings creates monsters out of judges. They believe they can rule any way they want, whether they get appointed as a conservative and then turn into arch liberals the second they take the vow, or ignoring centuries of legal precedent to determine a ruling only counts once.
Above the law and yet in control of the law, the Supreme Justice is a relic of a time when no one could see past absolutism. The law is not beyond politics, it is the substance of politics, to attempt to separate the two as America have tried is to lie. The Supreme Court is an overtly political body, its rulings have a direct impact on the acts of elected legislatures, by falsely separating them the American system has created a supreme power, beyond accountability but mired in realpolitik.
Imagine a scenario where Obama fades massively over the course of his term and is embroiled in scandal. Even if he loses every state in the next election his legacy will still affect American politics for years, potentially decades. This is the madness of the American system of law, to have a Supreme Court that are accountable to no one is debatable enough but to have it's appointments dominated by politics is quite another. Unanswerable power coupled with the faux legitimacy that the appointment process brings creates monsters out of judges. They believe they can rule any way they want, whether they get appointed as a conservative and then turn into arch liberals the second they take the vow, or ignoring centuries of legal precedent to determine a ruling only counts once.
Above the law and yet in control of the law, the Supreme Justice is a relic of a time when no one could see past absolutism. The law is not beyond politics, it is the substance of politics, to attempt to separate the two as America have tried is to lie. The Supreme Court is an overtly political body, its rulings have a direct impact on the acts of elected legislatures, by falsely separating them the American system has created a supreme power, beyond accountability but mired in realpolitik.
Thursday, 8 April 2010
Tulisa Contostavlos, You’re a Moron
It must be near election time, all the usual stories creep out of the wood work, from ill conceived gaffs suddenly blown into national significance to idiot popstars whose barely intelligible views are represented as speaking for their generation. This election Tulisa from N-Dubz has been appointed spokesman for the yoof, which is worrying for two reasons, firstly it means someone, somewhere believes a person that incoherent and that stupid should be a spokesman for anyone, secondly it means someone, somewhere honestly believes that she is representative of the 18-25 year old bracket.
She begins by arguing that Politicians, for here they are a homogenous group of faceless individuals, have done nothing to reach out for her vote. Odd really, given that one of Labour’s election pledges is to offer a job or training to everyone under 25 who has not been in either for more than 6 months. But then poor Tulisa wouldn’t know if that was the case because “Knowing about politics seems to be a bit like learning a foreign language - unfortunately it is one I was never taught.” Yes, lucky I caught those lessons on how to speak and read that tricky English language the politicians use, because without it I’d be quite lost. So firstly its Politicians’ fault for not reaching out to her, but even if they did she wouldn’t understand because apparently English is beyond her, which if you’ve read even a page of the N-Dubz book you’d know is quite possibly true.
But have no fear because Tulisa has some suggestions to fix all these problems. Firstly politicians should flyer outside clubs, because that’s a place where people really want to think about politics, and everyone knows the most read form of literature are flyers. Secondly Tulisa believes there should be some TV programme or website that explains in simple terms how elections work and who the parties are. BY GOD, WHAT GENIUS, its such a brilliantly simple idea that its already done by thousands of sites, including voteforpolicies.org.uk that presents part manifestos in easy to read chunks and lets you judge the parties side by side. Alternatively, why doesn’t Tulisa read the fucking paper she is writing in, I mean it’s the Sun so it’s not exactly hard to read and it does write about politics. It even analyses the Chancellor’s debate on Channel 4, and better yet, its published daily so you can keep up to date all the way until election day. It’s almost like someone, somewhere is making it incredibly easy to keep informed, as if to be truly ignorant of politics actually requires effort. In fact from accusing Tulisa of laziness, as she fears people might, I think she is the perfect example of active apathy. The willingness to push beyond normal ignorance of politics and delve deeper, to actually rid yourself of all willingness to learn. Tulisa has decided to turn how own uselessness into a virtue, now she defends the rights of all morons to remain morons, as if resistance to reading a paper is a good thing. Tulisa is not actually retarded, she hasn’t grown up in a third world country, she’s been taught to read and write, there is only one person to blame for her ignorance, her apathy, and her myopia, herself. Tulisa get over yourself, read a paper, google how an election works, read some Wikipedia pages, whatever, just stop fucking whining.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/columnists/2915566/Tulisa-Kids-who-dont-vote-need-MPs-help-the-most.html
She begins by arguing that Politicians, for here they are a homogenous group of faceless individuals, have done nothing to reach out for her vote. Odd really, given that one of Labour’s election pledges is to offer a job or training to everyone under 25 who has not been in either for more than 6 months. But then poor Tulisa wouldn’t know if that was the case because “Knowing about politics seems to be a bit like learning a foreign language - unfortunately it is one I was never taught.” Yes, lucky I caught those lessons on how to speak and read that tricky English language the politicians use, because without it I’d be quite lost. So firstly its Politicians’ fault for not reaching out to her, but even if they did she wouldn’t understand because apparently English is beyond her, which if you’ve read even a page of the N-Dubz book you’d know is quite possibly true.
But have no fear because Tulisa has some suggestions to fix all these problems. Firstly politicians should flyer outside clubs, because that’s a place where people really want to think about politics, and everyone knows the most read form of literature are flyers. Secondly Tulisa believes there should be some TV programme or website that explains in simple terms how elections work and who the parties are. BY GOD, WHAT GENIUS, its such a brilliantly simple idea that its already done by thousands of sites, including voteforpolicies.org.uk that presents part manifestos in easy to read chunks and lets you judge the parties side by side. Alternatively, why doesn’t Tulisa read the fucking paper she is writing in, I mean it’s the Sun so it’s not exactly hard to read and it does write about politics. It even analyses the Chancellor’s debate on Channel 4, and better yet, its published daily so you can keep up to date all the way until election day. It’s almost like someone, somewhere is making it incredibly easy to keep informed, as if to be truly ignorant of politics actually requires effort. In fact from accusing Tulisa of laziness, as she fears people might, I think she is the perfect example of active apathy. The willingness to push beyond normal ignorance of politics and delve deeper, to actually rid yourself of all willingness to learn. Tulisa has decided to turn how own uselessness into a virtue, now she defends the rights of all morons to remain morons, as if resistance to reading a paper is a good thing. Tulisa is not actually retarded, she hasn’t grown up in a third world country, she’s been taught to read and write, there is only one person to blame for her ignorance, her apathy, and her myopia, herself. Tulisa get over yourself, read a paper, google how an election works, read some Wikipedia pages, whatever, just stop fucking whining.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/columnists/2915566/Tulisa-Kids-who-dont-vote-need-MPs-help-the-most.html
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