Stand By Me

It has been an eventful twenty four hours. Last night, my wife and I watched Lucy Porter who was at the Colchester Arts Centre. She was great and watching her talk about being middle aged and her past put things in perspective for both of us. The music before the show was soundtrack’s that we grew up with. If anyone has not watched her I would recommend doing so, especially if you are above the age of 40!

During this, she talked about the film Stand By Me. I remembered bits of it from when I had watched it in the past, my wife had never seen it. So when we got back from seeing our parents, we watched it. My Mum had not seen the kids this year. She was meant to see them at New Year’s, but that did not happen as she had declined to see us. Things have been busy since then and while I saw her last weekend, today was the first time in a while. She told them about what was going on in her life, which is quite a bit as she has been spending her retirement keeping her mind and body very active. My parents-in-law have not seen the kids for a while as well, having just come back from being abroad. My kids noted that their grandfather was being more affectionate than normal and my son loved getting a late birthday present.

When we got back, through terrible weather, after resting and eating my wife and I watched Stand By Me. I could remember bits, but not much, so really it was like watching it after seeing a trailer (I tend to only watch trailers of films I am not going to see, or of films after I have seen them). It is odd watching a film about people who would grow into straight white men, and I am not sure such a film would be made now, but it has to have no diversity considering where and when it was set. I have lost touch with most of my friend group from back then, but that was my fault. I will have to message one to see how he is.

Cocaine Bear

What an interesting film. The plot has a few holes, but as a gore fest with humour, this is great. I feel it balances humour and horror very well, and although the film has a few issues, this may become a classic along the lines of Braindead. 

Fulham 0 Arsenal 3

The weekend was tiring. I had a full day at work on Saturday, which in a way was a more tiring day than a normal day at work due to the way the day was set up.  In addition to this, I went to visit my mother yesterday.  She rightly got annoyed that I kept looking at my phone (another Twitter argument) but I did start to behave and stopped doing that. 

Watching Match of the Day was odd considering that there was no commentary and no analysis.  While there are those on the right who said it was better, it was not.  I did watch the highlights of the Arsenal game on Sky yesterday and it was great to see another victory.  Of course, I am getting more nervous as the season goes on as I pray that we will win the league.  Based on the highlights, the game was fairly one sided, but we need to keep winning against all teams and seeing us win was one of the many highlights to the weekend.  

I did get to spend some time with my son which was great.  My daughter who had friends round who apparently said that I was quite good looking when I was younger.  However the downside was that they also said that I aged very badly! 

Hitler and the right wing Nazi party killed those who were left wing

There is an argument, spread by those on the right that the National Socialist German Workers' Party, i.e. the Nazi Party were socialist. But they were not. Looking back on the interwar history of Germany, while they initially spoke against big business, they were against the works of Marx. I had posted on this back in 2017 but back then, I had forgotten the support that Nazi Germany gave to fascist Spain in the Spanish Civil War with The Condor Legion, support recorded by Pablo Picasso on canvas when it comes to the bombing of Guernica.

In addition to the support for the right wing forces in Spain, once in power, Hitler and the Nazi party cracked down on socialists resulting in many being sent to Concentration Camps where they would be allocated red triangles to distinguish them from other prisoners. I have seen threats against those on the internet who criticise the far right on the internet, a concern as if given the chance, I am sure they would lock people like me up for my political views.

This has been brought up again due to a right wing revisionist. I may be being unkind as they may not be aware of history as opposed to trying to rewrite it.

King Charles comes to town

King Charles came to town yesterday (or rather the city). My son was at school, but my daughter, being at the Sixth Form College, saw him as she waited in the centre and he passed by her. She, and her friends, waved at the snipers who were in town as well.  She wore a burger king crown and waved a flag. I found all this out when I had sent a text on the family group chat asking if she had been with the banner crowd or had been using the megaphone.

 

Many do not like the King, but I admire his views on Climate Change and also the deportation of refugees which he has has to remain silent in now he is our monarch. I do wish he had spoken out about the racist double standards his daughter-in-law had been subjected to however.

Issues about racism and refugees were in the news today thanks to a tweet by Gary Liniker. I think that a better choice of words would have made things clearer, but there is no doubt that the language used about asylum seekers is designed to incite hatred and has resulted in lots of the electorate blaming them for many issues in our nation.

In PMQs, the government reminded us how many refugees were taken in from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. But the fact remains that many crossing the channel to get to the UK, have no safe and legal route to get here. It would be easy to process applications in France rather than housing asylum seekers in hotels in the UK, and once there is a decent safe and legal route, then we can deport those crossing the channel. Instead many are now blaming this issue for the way the government have underfunded the NHS (and other public services).

Needless to say, issues of asylum and refugees were brought up in PMQs, the government who has failed to deport failed asylum seekers has been stating that it is Labour that are in favour of open borders. One thing that many Labour supporters will not like, will be the way that when this is sorted out when Labour come to power, deportations will take place.

Smokers are patriots

Smokers are patriots.  They are risking their lives to keep the tax bills of non-smokers down.

There is help for people to stop smoking, but for people to access that, they must want to stop smoking.  And let us face it, it is an addiction and many smokers do not see themselves as having a problem. 

Being a refugee is not a crime

I have heard plans that our government intends to crack down on those crossing the channel in boats.

Let me remind people that I am also in favour of this and deporting those crossing the channel to Rwanda. But only once we have an asylum system that works and that involves decent safe and legal routes to come here to claim asylum

The sad fact is that, as seen in the video, we do not have safe and legal routes for them to come.  

I suspect that the government is allowing a backlog of asylum applications to build up so that it can claim that the system is being swamped and that the action that is needed is to ignore claims and deport asylum seekers.  Yes, they are to process certain applicants quickly, and so long as this is done in a fair manner, that is a good idea. 

But let us look at how thousands of Afghans who helped British forces remain stranded by by inaction by our government and many journalists who face persecution are also being left as well. Last month, only 22 Afghans had been resettled in UK under a ‘pathway’ to help vulnerable refugees and many who have fled to Pakistan face injustice there. 

I am proud of how we welcomed Ukrainian refugees to our nation, many of whom were in safe nations outside Ukraine.  I am ashamed how we are not doing this for others. 

Edit - another video has been published showing that there is no safe and legal route for many asylum seekers to get to our nation.