Graffiti Mondays No. 19

A Metro train, Paris

A disgruntled passenger seems to have decided to leave a comment on the service.

Idiotic Letters in the Metro No. 19

There is absoutely no evidence to suggest that the legalisation of cannabis would cause a ‘mental health meltdown’. But, you know, fuck science with its in-depth studies and genuine sources. You must be a ‘Nutty Professor’ to believe in that nonsense. Let’s just believe in good ol’ Common Sense! Get a griiip!

No, the goverment sacking advisers who criticise them is not called ‘democracy’, you absolute fucking moron. You have failed Political Theory 101. Come back when you’ve read a book.

Of course! If you’re a scientist, you can’t possibly ever leave your laboratory. David Nutt, in his research into drugs, depression and addiction, will obviously not have any education when it comes to society at large (despite having written an article on drugs and society). Only politicians (and the highly enlightened public who write in to the Metro) know anything about society. What’s that? There are ‘Social Scientists’? Who aren’t politicians? *head explodes*
Perhaps, just perhaps, we could tackle the social problems which lead to this ‘tendency to excess’ rather than sitting back and assuming that it is ‘hard-wired into our national psyche’. I wonder why our ‘expert’ politicians haven’t really succeeded in doing this?

You know, it probably wasn’t cannabis’s ‘fault’ that your brother died (I assume that’s what you mean). I’ve known plenty of alcoholics, but again, aside from addictive properties it’s not alcohol’s ‘fault’ that they feel the need to abuse that substance and live their lives in a continual state of unreality. There are far, far wider and deeper reasons and I think mentally stable people should make more of an effort to understand this rather than scapegoating everything they can think of in order to avoid facing up to the situation.

Graffiti Mondays No. 18

Queen’s Crescent, off Great Western Road

Idiotic Letters in the Metro No. 18

Okay. Because you, personally, don’t normally get your post until after 1pm this means that no postal worker in your area could possibly have an early start? Have you stopped to consider that it might take some time for the person who delivers the post to work their way around your area, or that there might be a lot of post to sort in the first place, which also takes time? No, you haven’t, because you’ve decided that you’re an automatic expert on the postal system because you receive letters sometimes.

Thanks for filing this ‘what people are holding and wearing’ report with the Metro, Del. Since when were listening to music and wearing high heels considered to be vices? Having a coffee isn’t necessarily a vice either, unless you’re caffeine-addicted. For all these people love to complain about the Nanny State and PC-gone-mad, they really do love to poke their noses into other people’s business.

Wait wait wait. According to the Terrance Higgins Trust ‘the majority of people actually diagnosed with HIV in the UK in 2007 (55%) had been infected through heterosexual sex’. They state that since 1999 there have been more diagnoses of HIV acquired through heterosexual sex than through homosexual sex. They do say that ‘the overall risk of acquiring HIV through heterosexual sex in the UK remains relatively low’ since most cases of heterosexually-transmitted HIV occur overseas and therefore gay men having sex in the UK are more vulnerable to HIV transmission, but this situation is nowhere near as black-and-white as some would make out. Surely there’s a better way of dealing with this rather than just sitting back with your complacent common sense?

‘T. Bradley, what part of Glasgow do you stay in where people actually smile? I must know! And they can speak too! Amazing. The Glaswegians I’ve seen are very primitive and nothing like these specimens you mention. Although you must come from England to call Glasgow a ‘friendly’ place. Only in England, the pit of misery, are people more torn-faced than here. Oh, yes, I just went there. Bring on the Scotland v England debate!’
ShutYerGob, Glasgow

When ShutYerGob writes that they live in Glasgow, it’s only natural to assume that they live in Glasgow, isn’t it? But something isn’t quite right…

‘I love your paper, I really do. I’m so loyal to it that I refuse to buy any other paper (this could partly be because I’m a stingey Scot), so I reckon it’s about time we award the area with the most obsessive Metro fans. I’m nominating the folk at Whitecraigs train station – even when the train doors are about to close, crazy Metro addicts (who are always late for the train, I might add) run to fetch your wonderful paper before jumping on. And yes, Whitecraigsers. This is indeed a hint. Stop delaying the flipping train.’
ShutYerGob, Glasgow

You get the train from or through Whitecraigs in the morning? But ShutYerGob, Whitecraigs isn’t in Glasgow! You don’t live here! When T. Bradley wrote about people smiling in his part of Glasgow I’m sure he meant a part of Glasgow, not a distant suburban town. I’ll tell you what, I’ll fucking smile at you when you pay some tax towards the amenities in the city that you use every day. Anyway, from the look of most Metro letters pages most of the miserable cunts you see walking about the centre of Glasgow are commuters from Ayr or Paisley. And as for ‘oh, yes, I went there!’ – what, a debate that every other thick pleb has brought up at some point? Well fucking done.

‘ShutYerGob, you are so right. Glasgow is so simliar to England in its total rubbishness that it is the only place in Great Scotland that still wants to be part of miserable, oppressive England. This is clearly a result of the evolutionary dead-end that these ‘weegies’ have followed, leaving them with an inferior intellect and very poor grasp of what we humans call language.’
Mikalos Furios, God’s Country

Well, Govan has an SNP MSP and Glasgow East has an SNP MP. Let’s have a look at the rest of Scotland, shall we? Edinburgh? Hmm, it’s represented by a fully Unionist set of MPs and only two SNP MSPs – the rest are also Unionist. The constituencies in the Borders? Every MP is Unionist. Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire? Their Scottish Parliament constituencies are half SNP and half Unionist. In fact, Glasgow has one of the few constituencies in Scotland with an SNP MP. So what the fuck are you babbling about? Your superlative intellect and grasp of language really haven’t come into play when attempting to understand politics. It’s best not to insult people’s intellects when you don’t have a clue about what goes on outside ‘God’s Country’ (presumably just ‘Fantasy Land’).

‘I agree with Steve that Nick Griffin has managed to take the heat off the deceitful, greedy politicians at Westminster, but what is going to happen when they realise that he also leads the only party that has been out on the streets asking people what they want changed in this country instead of sitting in a middle-class ivory tower just deciding what might look good in the press? No wonder support for his party is growing while the other parties stagnate.’
Bananabananabanana, Thrusk

Perhaps his party is going out and asking people what they want. However, I think it’s obvious to anyone with a scrap of intelligence that the BNP aren’t going to be interested in any answers which aren’t ’send the bastards home!’.

Graffiti Mondays No. 17

Union Street

I believe this says:

‘I LUV U
MARTIN WEST
TILL DEATH DO WE PART
PLEASE DONT HURT ME OR PLEASE
DONT LEAVE ME I WILL NEVER
EVER LEAVE YOU NO MATTER WHAT
SO PROMISE [squiggle] I LOVE U’

with a fucking scary picture of a watchful eye.

The days before internet.

When I was thirteen we finally bought a television which didn’t pre-date Ceefax and Teletext (I never really questioned why it had the name ‘Ceefax’ – according to Wikipedia it is ‘phonetic for “See Facts”. Except it isn’t really, is it?).

Every day after I had trudged through the door and thrown my schoolbag down I would make a cup of tea and read the music and teenager pages. I didn’t really like the ones on Ceefax; the letters sent in tended to consist of one or two sentences displaying the submitter’s uninteresting opinion and nothing more i.e. ‘Steps suck!’ ‘Steps are cool! People who hate them are just jealous!’

This did, however, introduce me to the still-incomprehensible ‘you’re just jealous’ argument. I never did understand the idea that if I didn’t like Steps it was because I had a secret burning desire to line-dance to a backing track on Top of the Pops.

Teletext, on the other hand, had Planet Sound and Mega-zine, which held far more appeal for an opinionated teenage Manicsfan. Planet Sound allowed each letter to take up a whole page, giving me more opportunity to nod along or restrain myself from throwing something at the television in a fit of passion. Mega-zine was the pixellated haven for the ‘alternative’ teens where it was safe to make fun of ‘trendies’ and ’sheep’. All very charming, but I’m glad I didn’t end up buying a t-shirt emblazoned with ‘YOU LAUGH AT ME BECAUSE I’M DIFFERENT I LAUGH AT YOU BECAUSE YOU’RE ALL THE SAME’.

Leaving home for university with my little Teletext-free television put an end to my Teletext adventures. I would read it now and again on visits home during the holidays, but I gradually forgot about it, especially with increasing internet access. However, my heart had a little leap this evening when I found that Mega-zine moved online before ending in March this year and Planet Sound has a section on the Teletext website! It’s not the same as the old days; there’s no blocky picture of Saturn at the top and the old-skool vibe has gone, but it’s nice to see. Apparently it will be closed down in January 2010. It seems silly to be sad about it when I didn’t realise until now that it or Teletext still existed at all, but I still feel a twinge at losing another of the things that I enjoyed as a teenager, especially since when I hear songs from that time period today it still gives me flashbacks to sitting on the couch open-mouthed at the latest diatribe from Rebecca Nahid or Peter Pinsent.

Here is a diverting interview with John Earls, now the sole writer for Planet Sound (why is it that seemingly everyone with a career in the creative arts has had something published in Doctor Who Magazine? Is it the key to unlocking success?).

Idiotic Letters in the Metro No. 17

Perhaps all of the non-smoking people I see throwing their litter around and spraying their mucus onto the pavement are just hallucinations. What sort of mentally regressive idiot uses the word ‘litterbug’ past the age of ten?

I wish people would regard your no-doubt smug face as their personal toilet.

Was your son supposed to have been going on a guided tour of the sorting office for his birthday? I mean, I assume that all of his presents and cards would have been posted well in advance, rather than friends and relatives leaving it as late as possible and taking it for granted that the post would arrive on the precise day that they want it to.

This isn’t all that bad, apart from the line ‘all of us use the postal services and are grateful for them’. I think it’s pretty obvious that the public are grateful for nothing. In my dealings with the public it is apparent that the majority of them expect people to be grateful for having a job, yet won’t return that gratitude when workers help them and provide a service. It’s because they know it all, you see.

I wish I could put myself in a box in order to avoid the general public. Perhaps the next time anyone encounters Marianne from Brighton on a train they should stare at her for the whole journey.

Oh, no! Not disintegrated ash! How unsightly! Let’s all get worked up about invisible particles, which are definitely the worst litter on our streets!

Oh dear, yet another person who doesn’t realise that tax money isn’t some sort of sacrifice to a vengeful god.

Probably the people who find pink cowboy hats and t-shirts which say ‘IF FOUND PLEASE RETURN TO THE PUB’ endlessly amusing.

People get undressed when asked to by a doctor because they need the doctor to look at their bodies and help them with their problems. And who the hell has naked conversations in changing rooms? With the exception of my boyfriend, if anyone wants to have a conversation with me one of my basic demands is that they are clothed. But okay, let’s all have a big naked orgy because people have their bodies examined by the doctor.

‘The continued demonisation of the BNP gives them power. I can buy lefty papers without a problem, attend lefty public meetings if I so wished. My assumption is the “left” isn’t a threat to the establishment hence they’re tolerated. The worry will be if the “right wing” has appeal or resonance with the working class.’
Andrew, Edinburgh

If you think you’re unable to walk into any newsagent in the country and pick up a right-wing paper espousing many of the same views as the BNP then you’re fucking deluded. Also, the BNP do hold public meetings, though if you’re not white you probably would have trouble attending their public meetings if you so wished. But sure, Andrew, everyone who disagrees with the BNP should jolly well stop criticising them and ‘demonising’ them. But obviously it would be curtailing their freedom of speech to stop them from demonising large swathes of people. Oh, and you’re right, the BNP just love threatening the white male middle-class people who make up the vast majority of the ‘establishment’.

‘Did you know the greedy postal workers are on strike? I’d write to my MP to complain if I could!’
Steve, Drylaw

I just can’t tell if this is satire or not. Surely if Steve was able to figure out how to use this electronic mail thing to fire off a couple of lines to the Metro, he would be able to do the same to contact his MP? Surely?

‘So a Commons committee gave Brown and Cameron a grilling on the number of females, coloureds etc in the Commons. Frankly, I do not give a damn whether my MP is male, female, white or any other colour. Equally, I have no preference as regards the sexual orientation but what I do want is an MP to represent me and my area who is 100 per cent honest and dedicated to the needs of the constituency Is that too much to ask?’
Jock, Ayrshire

Well, Jock, I’m sure you’re very noble in your determination to see past the fact that someone running for parliament might be a ‘coloured’ (the British ability to use adjectives as nouns is remarkable), but traditionally this country has never been quite as tolerant and prejudice-free as you and still isn’t, hence the need for scrutiny and I can’t believe that this has to be explained to a person with any experience of the world.

Graffiti Mondays No. 16

The toilets in Mono

Sometimes even vegans grow weary of philosophy.

Idiotic Letters in the Metro No. 16

Send an e-mail or look at their website, find out where your nearest donation centre is and go along. You live in a fucking city; it really shouldn’t be difficult for you to find a blood donation centre. Or do you think that you can only give blood over the phone?

PERHAPS YOUR ANCESTORS WERE NOT ENSLAVED BY BLACK PEOPLE AND DIDN’T HAVE TO SUFFER YEARS OF PREJUDICE, DISCRIMINATION AND ABUSE. ‘Lighten up’ does seem like a fucking horrendous choice of words here, too. Oh, to go blundering through life with no self-awareness and not a care in the world. And, Steven? Someone who thinks that White Chicks is ‘fun’ in any way doesn’t have the right to social commentary.

‘X Factor fans deserve to know who they are voting for’ – sorry, since when did slobbing in front of a reality television programme give people the right to know everything about someone’s personal life? And here I thought X Factor was a simple programme focusing on people with no charisma wailing over backing tracks.

‘Now reporters are saying Stephen Gately’s death was a result of choking on his own vomit, maybe people will take heed of the dangers of weekend binge drinking. Just because you make it home every drunken weekend, it doesn’t mean it’s okay to do it every weekend. Tragic accidents like this happen.’
Brytak, Irvine

Ooh, the ~reporters~! They are SUCH an authority on everything, of course. These would be the same reporters who decided that they knew how Stephen Gately had died before any forensic tests had been carried out. They are so clever! I do love believing everything I read in the Sun. Wait, what? Stephen Gately didn’t die of choking on his own vomit? Natural causes, you say? You mean… the Sun was… making shit up? HOW CAN THIS BE? Now my petty moralising just looks fucking stupid!

‘I was delighted with the massive response from readers wishing to join PARP (People Actually Resembling Places) but also was saddened to hear of wee Jimmy’s catherine wheel capers which he blames on my bad advice. Jimmy it seems you have learned a valuable life lesson the hard way; don’t trust everything you read in the papers! By coincidence Catherine Wheel presides over an offshoot of PARP called Folk Actually Resembling Things. We don’t tend to abbreviate that one, but members include Tommy Gun, Paddy O’Doors, Shaun D’Leer and Carol Vodaphone.’
Devon J Buckfast, cyberspace

F… A… R… oh, FART! That’s absolutely HILARIOUS*! Go on, abbreviate it! You’ve been pretty damned wacky so far so why don’t you just throw caution to the wind and be really fucking risqué! FART? PARP? Oh, my aching sides! I’d better not go and read Nemi now or my sides might split altogether!

*Horrifically Inbred Laughing Arseholes Reigning In Odious Uncouth Shitpile

Jan Moir and the Career-Destroying Article

A note to Jan Moir: let’s be clear about one thing. You are stupid. Very stupid indeed. I don’t know who on earth has been encouraging you to think that you are anything other than stupid but I imagine that they were laughing at you. All of your back-pedalling and claims of being a ‘victim of an orchestrated attack’, as if people who follow Stephen Fry on Twitter are some sort of hive mind, will not fool a single intelligent person and you are merely making a further disgusting display of your own lack of wits. I find it hard to believe that any sensible, compassionate person who read that article could feel anything but loathing for the sentiments contained within. You do not deserve the career that you have, but if there is any decency left in this world it will surely come to a swift end.

Now, onto your repugnant article.

The sugar coating on this fatality is so saccharine-thick that it obscures whatever bitter truth lies beneath. Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again.

Actually, this is entirely possible. You have no medical training whatsoever. You critique restaurants. Don’t make uneducated speculations.

Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this. All that has been established so far is that Stephen Gately was not murdered.

So the only thing which has been scientifically established is that Stephen Gately was not murdered, but you, a restaurant critic sitting roughly 834 miles away from his body, can conclusively reveal that there was nothing natural about his death? Please tell us more!

And I think if we are going to be honest, we would have to admit that the circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy.

After a night of clubbing, Cowles and Gately took a young Bulgarian man back to their apartment. It is not disrespectful to assume that a game of canasta with 25-year-old Georgi Dochev was not what was on the cards.

Cowles and Dochev went to the bedroom together while Stephen remained alone in the living room.

All of these events are completely irrelevant to a person dying as a result of fluid in the lungs, so kindly stop clouding the issue. Though ‘kind’ is not an adjective which I would ever apply to you.

What happened before they parted is known only to the two men still alive. What happened afterwards is anyone’s guess.

So you admit that you know nothing about the situation but you refuse to sit back, shut up and allow the experts to carry out their jobs.

A post-mortem revealed Stephen died from acute pulmonary oedema, a build-up of fluid on his lungs.

Gately’s family have always maintained that drugs were not involved in the singer’s death, but it has just been revealed that he at least smoked cannabis on the night he died.

Nevertheless, his mother is still insisting that her son died from a previously undetected heart condition that has plagued the family.

From the website Patient UK (‘comprehensive health information as provided by GPs and nurses to patients during consultations’):

‘Pulmonary oedema occurs when fluid leaks from the pulmonary capillary network into the lung interstitium and alveoli. It forms when there is:

* Imbalance of Starling forces (increased pulmonary capillary pressure, decreased plasma oncotic pressure, increased negative interstitial pressure)
* Damage to the alveolar-capillary barrier
* Lymphatic obstruction

It is frequently caused by disease affecting the left heart but there is a wide range of other possible causes that should be considered.’

Therefore, according to medical professionals, Stephen Gately’s mother’s hypothesis is quite likely.

Another real sadness about Gately’s death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.

Does it really? I don’t remember hearing any myth about gay people in civil partnerships being immortal.

Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael.

Of course, in many cases this may be true.

Well, how generous of you to concede that, possibly, every gay person might not be a raging slut!

Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately’s last night raise troubling questions about what happened.

Kevin McGee is a man who committed suicide as a result of personal problems. Stephen Gately is a man who died from acute pulmonary oedema. I fail to see how the two deaths are related. Just being in or having been in civil partnerships isn’t much of a link. Could you explain exactly what you mean by this?

It is important that the truth comes out about the exact circumstances of his strange and lonely death.

As a gay rights champion, I am sure he would want to set an example to any impressionable young men who may want to emulate what they might see as his glamorous routine.

For once again, under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see.

Apparently not. At this point you end the Stephen Gately article and begin whittering about Tara-Palmer Tomkinson’s dress. I also don’t understand why you began the article by saying that Stephen Gately was, on the surface, a clean-living, lovable individual, and end it by saying that he lived ‘under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity’. And what is this ‘very different and more dangerous lifestyle’ to which you refer? It surely can’t consist of smoking a joint on holiday in Mallorca. Why are you talking about civil partnerships and ‘a very different and more dangerous lifestyle’ in the same metaphorical breath?

I have finished reading your ridiculous article. Now I shall turn my attention to your pathetic response to its critics.

the point of my column – which, I wonder how many of the people complaining have fully read

I’ve fully read it several times! Do I get a prize for enduring this filth?

Yes, anyone can die at anytime of anything. However, it seems unlikely to me that what took place in the hours immediately preceding Gately’s death – out all evening at a nightclub, taking illegal substances, bringing a stranger back to the flat, getting intimate with that stranger – did not have a bearing on his death. At the very least, it could have exacerbated an underlying medical condition.

According to some unknown source who leaked information to The Sun (which is the subject of a new documentary concerning how tabloids accepted and printed fake stories about celebrities, incidentally), Gately had smoked one illegal substance. There was no mention of any further illegal substances being present in his body. Also nobody has said that Stephen Gately was intimate with this stranger. Nobody has even said conclusively that Stephen Gately’s partner was intimate with this stranger. You know nothing about the situation, which you admit in your article (‘What happened before they parted is known only to the two men still alive. What happened afterwards is anyone’s guess’), so why exactly do you feel qualified to comment on what went on and how this could perhaps have had an effect on any hypothetical medical condition? Nobody with a brain in their head, and without an agenda to push, would have written this article.

In writing that ‘it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships’ I was suggesting that civil partnerships – the introduction of which I am on the record in supporting – have proved just to be as problematic as marriages.

Nobody has ever said that civil partnerships would not have the same problems as heterosexual marriages (you wrote in this very article that ‘gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages’) and the fact that you said ‘gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael. Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately’s last night raise troubling questions about what happened’ clearly shows that you did not intend to suggest that civil partnerships and heterosexual marriages have the same trials and tribulations. You appear to doubt the gay activists’ claims that civil partnerships are the same as heterosexual marriages.

In what is clearly a heavily orchestrated internet campaign I think it is mischievous in the extreme to suggest that my article has homophobic and bigoted undertones.

I don’t ’suggest’ that your article has ‘homophobic and bigoted undertones’. I, along with many more educated people and several companies who have demanded that their advertisments be removed from the vicinity of your article, am saying emphatically that your article has homophobic and bigoted overtones.