Author: James Aylett

I think we can comfortably assume that, at least in the eyes of the government, the freedom to not be blown up is more important than the freedom to not be shot at. Not only are we supposed to swallow this rather dubious point of view, but we’re being asked to happily accept that not only are we not free to not be shot at, but we are going to be shot at. It’s just inevitable. Better get ready: we’re all potential targets. (And think again about wearing body armour, because that will just make you more of an obvious target – everyone knows that terrorists wear kevlar to disguise themselves – any anyway, in this country we shoot people in the head to make sure they’re dead, and it’s difficult to wear head-protecting armour and not walk into things, like lamp posts and undercover police hitmen.)

What’s probably most appalling about this unfortunate event is that many papers – and not just the viciously right-wing ones – are starting to talk about de Menezes as a victim of terrorism. Jean Charles de Menezes is as much a victim of terrorism as Ahmad Wail Bakri was a victim of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Or, to put it another way, he’s isn’t. He’s a victim of an unfortunate error, but he’s a victim of a British error, and we should all stand up and say that now.

If we’re actually going to fight a war on terror (and let’s assume for a moment that this is both desirable and actually possible), then we have to think for a moment about what that means. A war on terror is waged not by reducing the acts of terrorism, but by reducing the fear of terrorism – reducing the terror. If we’re not afraid of people blowing us up even while they are, then the terrorists have lost. London was doing pretty well with this until last Friday, perhaps in part because of the IRA bombing campaigns last century (we still haven’t got all those litter bins back), but now increasing numbers of people will be wondering if they’ll be one of the other innocents who must die in the hunt for terrorists.

Facing up to what’s actually going on here may not make people sleep easier at night, and it might not even reduce overall levels of fear, but it would at least make it possible to have a reasonable discussion about the correct response. While we brand every innocent victim of the police force’s crusade as a terror victim, we make it impossible to oppose the current policy. The words simply aren’t there, because as things stand the terrorists are so powerful that they are killing more people without doing anything. To argue against the status quo we have to be able to label these people as victims of the approach by the British government, police and security forces.

Of course, that kind of attitude is probably seditious. Almost certainly immoral. In fact, I’m a monster for even thinking it. Yes – they’re not even my thoughts at all, they’re terrorists’ thoughts. I can hear the heavy tread of a policeman with a brainsaw already …

Steven

I want to make a big film … something huge, something epic.

David

What about Exodus?

Steven

I just knew I should have kept that one for myself.

Josh

How about War of the Worlds?

Pause.

Steven

Aliens are big.

David

Right. Really big.

Steven

Actually, we could make them bigger.

David

Really?

Steven

With special effects and stuff.

David

Cool.

Steven

So what else happens in the book?

David

Aliens come down … I dunno, I never read it.

Steven

Me neither.

Josh

I have …

Steven and David

Shut up, Josh.

Steven

Can it have a dysfunctional family in it?

David

Yeah, and they can be reunited at the end!

Steven

Survival through adversity!

Steven and David

It’s about the human spirit!

Josh

No it’s not, it’s about unwarranted aggression by a superpower.

Steven and David

Shut up, Josh.

Steven

It’s about the human spirit.

David

And there’s got to be a kid.

Steven

Make it a girl this time, boys freak me out.

David

Okay – a super-smart girl who pays attention to everything.

Steven

And screams.

David

And we can have a bit where they all have to be really still because if they move the monster will know where they are.

Steven

I like it – and people can be plucked off the ground by the monsters –

David

Bellowing monsters.

Steven

– bellowing monsters, right. And sliced in two, yeah.

David

Can it have someone killed while they’re on the toliet?

Steven

This is, like, a national emergency! No one’s going to the toilet in this film!

David

Right, sorry. Oh, this is going to be so cool!

Steven

It’s missing something, though.

Josh

Hope?

Steven and David

Shut up, Josh.

David

A train! It needs a train, where people are trying to get vital information out to, to – to the military. But it’s being attacked by the monsters, and the phones keep on going wrong –

Steven

Can’t it just be on fire?

David

(Grumpily) Okay.

Steven

So we’ve got an underdog hero guy, with a broken marriage and kids who can’t stand him, he’s attacked on all sides by huge monsters that kill people indiscriminately and can’t be stopped. He’s got to get his kids through this – I don’t know, this huge part of America where these monsters are, and back to the safety of the kid’s grandparents.

David

And at the end, the kids respect him.

Steven

Cool. Thanks, guys.

Josh

Erm … what about the monsters?

Steven and David

Shut up –

David

No, he’s right. We’ve got to get rid of the monsters, otherwise like New York belongs to the aliens.

Steven

Is that such a bad thing?

David

I like New York. (Shrugs)

Steven

Okay … how about they die.

David

Well duh.

Steven

Don’t ‘duh’ me, David.

David

Sorry. How about they die because … because there’s something they need to eat, but they can’t get it on earth.

Steven

Something essential to the life process …

David

I’m thinking something chemical. An amino acid?

Josh

In the book they get killed by bacteria.

Steven

I knew I should have read the book.

David

That’s great! It’s like not eating something you need, but the other way round. And it kills them off just in time for our hero to get his kids home. No, wait a minute – that sounds too quick, too clunky.

Steven

I like it.

David

How about he gets the kids to safety, and then the creatures start to die, and we see the lead characters flying away from the wreckage as the military starts the cleanup operation?

Steven

I said, I like it.

David

(Grumpily) Okay.

Steven

So, who do we get to play the lead role?

Josh

Tom Cruise?

Steven and David

Shut up, Josh.

I’ve just taken part in an enforced two minutes’ silence. An email went round stating that the group we’re a part of “is observing the two-minutes silence at noon today”. It’s no wonder that as a nation we’re fairly maudlin but slightly weird when these things get foisted on us as part of our jobs. (I’d rather have spent a few minutes quietly in the church down the road, but that wouldn’t have been culturally resilient of me, or something – we’re fiercely proud of standing together, then getting on with it, no matter what happens. Sometimes I wonder if the Blitz hurt London more than it helped.)

Also, why is it two minutes? What makes something worthy of two minutes? We gave only one minute to Bali – but two to New York (rather stingily, as everyone else was giving three). Apparently three minutes were observed following the Madrid bombings, but Buckingham Palace suggested only one for Diana. (Mind you, only one was suggested originally for Armistice Day in 1919, and the King had to step in and make it two.)

I was wondering, as I meandered across Parliament Square earlier (round the tourists, try to avoid the lost people trooping out of the DTI) why I was so … well, sticky. Particularly my legs.

Then I realised I’d made the questionable decision today of wearing boxer shorts made out of lycra. I might as well have shoved a hot water bottle down my trousers, frankly.

I’m beginning to wonder why I bought the things in the first place. Yes, they have a picture of Mr Happy on, but that’s not really enough of an excuse. Perhaps I’m going mad.

Meant to write about this a week or so ago, but got distracted.

A couple of Fridays ago I watched the new Batman, which I have to say was great fun, superbly dark, and packed full of good actors – all very much of the good. Of the bad was that it took ages to get going. As my sister pointed out to me, it really did need Christian Bale’s prettiness to get through the slow ninja bit at the beginning. “You must waste fifteen minutes of the film climbing this mountain.” I mean, really.

Of course, it’s really two films – how he became Batman, and Batman’s First Exciting Adventure. The first one is more dramatic, but turgidly slow, and so needs the second for anyone to bother watching it.

Full marks, however, for the starring role given to Katie Holmes’ nipples (penultimate scene). Her future, warmer, films will feel a let-down.

A couple of days later I watched Moulin Rouge. Wow.

Having just returned from Istanbul, I was somewhat shocked when I went to buy a sandwich today and wasn’t offered anything else at the same time, such as a snow globe of the Blue Mosque, or a tile depicting Ataturk pretending to be British.

This has come as quite a culture shock, although to be honest I can happily do without any more upsell from street corners, something the Turks seem to have perfected. It’s not so much the Amazon.com “you might also be interested in” style of upselling, but more the “you’re here, why not buy” style. I admire their inventiveness for doing it, but most of all I admire the fact that they manage to get away with it without becoming annoying. A quick brush off and they’re happy to move onto someone else – in fact, they were all quite lovely, with the exception of the rather grumpy flight attendants on the flight home (although to be fair they weren’t Turkish, as they belonged to the Airborne Sisterhood of the Orange).

And no, I didn’t buy a carpet. I’m not entirely certain what I’d do with one.

We’ve seen a fair amount of the new series of Doctor Who, and while it’s pretty good, it needs to get better for the second series. Here are some of the things that seem obvious to me.

• Write three times as much plot in every episode. There have been several episodes – even the Dalek episode, which was generally very good – where special effects, or protracted sequences of people doing nothing in blind panic, have been used instead of having more going on. Even the best episodes take a while to get going, and they all seem to have this appalling bit about thirty minutes in where everyone is about to die, and the camera cuts back and forth between all of them until someone remembers to press the “don’t die” switch. Write much more plot and this won’t need to happen.
• When writing an episode, don’t assume you’re smarter than the audience. The two-part aliens-invading-earth story had a lot of painful hints that the female MP was going to go on to be Prime Minister – really, only one was needed. Get lots of ideas going, and trust the audience to keep up.
• Learn the difference between comedy and humour, and don’t try to do comedy. There’s a bit in the first episode that is presumably supposed to be farcical, where the Doctor keeps on failing to notice the London Eye as the big circular thing he’s looking for. The joke isn’t bad, but the execution was terrible. (Actually, perhaps it was so protracted because they thought the audience needed time to get what was going on, in which case: see above.) Humour is a vibe that helps relieve tension and allows drama to be darker; comedy is something light and frothy that people forget by the morning. We don’t want people to forget Doctor Who.
• Have a single person who oversees everything from story inception to post-production – Russell T Davies has made it obvious he doesn’t see this as his job as lead writer, but it’s a job that needs doing. This is what Doctor Who producers used to do, before we went all pseudo-American with executive producers. Interestingly, this is exactly what executive producers do on the best shows. The job of the creative mind behind an episode, or the series, is not done on delivery of the script.
• Drop the minor characters and let Rose carry the weight of the human factor. Billie (and presumably her successor) is more than capable of carrying the human perspective in stories (indeed, The End Of The World had only one real human – Rose – but considerably more humanity than the episodes set on Earth have managed). Instead of half an hour of soap-style bickering and moaning to get the point that Rose isn’t sure whether running around with the Doctor is the right thing to do, one ten-second shot of her looking at a photo of her mother would be more effective. Trust in the actors.

And while I’m here, a technical niggle:

• There’s something wrong with the process used to make the digital footage look like film – it looks stretched, and the colours are weird. I don’t know what actually needs doing here, but there’s something not right, and it needs fixing.

From the Blogger blog:

Not sure if you knew this already or not but we’ve got a couple different styles of Blogger tee shirts in the Googlestore. One of them looks like an old gym shirt-good for doing exercising between posts. Highly recommended for active bloggers.

I’ve never seen exercising used as a gerund before – is this just an American (ie: SAE) thing? We have the perfectly good word exercises which would have done here, and would have sounded a little more normal. Imagine what would happen if we all went this way:

Now we all have knowing of his doing exercising with his young lover.

It strangely sounds like German (but then right now everything sounds like German, because I’ve just returned from a Romance country).

Every election has its winners and its losers: the new MPs, fresh-faced and keen to take up their representative duties; and those who have heard the division called for the last time. I remember watching a Spitting Image special after the 1992 general election, where they carted away the latex puppets of the old characters we’d see no more, to melt them down and make more Norman Lamonts.

This year, we had our fair share of spills and thrills – Trimble out, Galloway taking Oona King’s seat, and Stephen Twigg disappearing back to wherever he came from. However I honestly didn’t expect Michael Howard to do anything other than battle on to the next general election, no matter what happened on the night. But no – he is standing down, probably by the end of the year, and with him goes a small piece of political history.

The Michael Howard Song.

My enduring memory of Fringe 2003 was – despite my best efforts – the pervasive strains of the “Standing on a Podium” song, murdered every day on the Royal Mile by a group we have all sworn never to mention by name. For Fringe 2004, I’m afraid to say it was probably James’ song about Michael Howard. I’ve been looking forward to Howard’s departure from frontline politics ever since.

So farewell then, the Michael Howard Song. And Michael – if you’re listening, please don’t change your mind.

Congratulations to David Howarth, the new MP for Cambridge.