Misandry - the acceptable face of discrimination

Most people reading this blog will, I imagine, be familiar with the term 'misogyny'. It's strict definition is a hatred of women, though its meaning has been broadened in the mainstream media to include any act of discrimination by males against females. It's something which ageing male television presenters seem to be accused of on a fairly regular basis, and of course a misogynistic attitude is wrong, plain and simple.

Who among you, though, is familiar with the term 'misandry'? Scholars of ancient Greek will recognise the fragment of 'andros' in there, the word for 'man', and so it should take no great leap of the imagination to discern that we're discussing a 'male equivalent of misogyny'. That is, after all, the term I put into Google to find 'misandry', though in my defence it's such an underused word that none of the spell-checkers on my computer include it in their standard definitions.

This is wonderful news, isn't it? A term so underused that it doesn't even appear in the dictionary. Surely, then, incidents of misandry are so rare as to be impossible to find. I wish it was so.

Misandry is woven into the fabric of modern popular culture. Don't believe me? Well, I can give you four common examples, and I'd be really surprised if you haven't come across at least one of these in the last six months.

• Diet Coke ads
  This is one which just keeps running and running, and has even been updated recently. If you're not familiar with the concept, allow me to explain; it's not very sophisticated... The idea is that a bunch of modern career ladies are working hard, and deserve a break. What better than a Diet Coke, because of course women are always worried about their weight, right? This advert is guilty of misogyny too!
  
  But of course, it's not that simple, because by some convoluted and not quite believable reason, there's a hunky guy strutting around their office performing some manual task or other, over whom they drool, thereby objectifying him in a manner which would cause outrage if the gender roles were reversed. But it's OK, because it's just a man, and they don't mind being made into sex objects, right?
  
• Silly Daddy Pig
  Peppa Pig is a very important part of many young girls' lives. I really can't object to the program as a whole - it's harmless, quite funny and moderately educational, and not even too annyoing for the parents (well, me at least. Can't speak for everyone here). However, one character takes a misandric bullet in almost every episode. Daddy pig is clumsy, lacking in common sense, prone to outbursts of anger and/or grumpiness, and generally seen as another dependent for Mummy Pig to look after.
  
  Wow. Stereotyped much? This falls squarely into a view of the world where the mother in any given modern nuclear family is the capable one, the one who manages the family, and the father is just another kid, albeit bigger. See also, the next point, regarding pharmaceutical adverts.
  
• Pharmaceutical and Pharmacy adverts
  What happens when winter comes? Daddy and the kids all mope around the house dying from a minor case of the sniffles, whilst mummy, who is suffering from real flu, period pains (their cliché, not mine) and possibly malaria, runs around doing everything. This usually includes the Christmas shopping, and Christmas dinner. All while holding down a big job in the city, making nativity costumes and curing cancer in her spare time. And how does she manage this? Well, apparently it's by taking Nurofen products and shopping at Boots.
  
  Really? Doesn't work that way in my house, and I suspect not in yours either. Mums are often amazing, don't get me wrong. But dads can be OK, too; they don't have to be (and often aren't) infantile dependents.
  
• Twilight moms
  Possibly the most disturbing case of double standards in recent times is the habit of middle-aged women screaming like pubescent girls over the teenage characters in the Twilight film franchise. I've used the American spelling of 'mom' since it's typically a US trend, though not exclusively so.
  
  Imagine this was a group of middle aged men getting hot and bothered about a teenage girl in a film. In public. With signs. And screaming. OK, that last part wouldn't happen anyway, one suspects, but just the very idea would have the Daily Mail up in arms about perverts. It's OK the other way around, though.
  
  Double standards are discrimination by exclusion - why should one group of people be allowed to behave in a certain way when another cannot? Or, rather, why should these women be allowed to get away with behaving in this (quite frankly disturbing) manner?

Why is this such an important issue? After all, haven't men been treating women in this way for centuries? Isn't it time for a bit of payback?

Well, no, not really. You see, even if misandry is deemed acceptable (and it certainly seems to be, according to mainstream media), that doesn't mean we should allow it to be part of our society. You see, following the logic of the 'payback' argument goes something like this:

1) Misandry is no different from misogyny.
2) Misandry is acceptable, because it's only fair.
3) Misogyny, being equivalent to misandry (see point 1), is therefore acceptable.

Um, no. No, it isn't. So, you see, if you make misandry acceptable, you're not only doing damage to the image of men, but serving to counter women's rights. Oops.

There's a second string to the 'damaging women's rights' bow, too - the idea that misandry is quite reasonable only serves to lower the tone of the argument. it says, "Look, we're just as bad as you are, now!" It serves only to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator. It's a race to the bottom, a fight to see who can be more discriminatory.

You might also be thinking to yourself that this isn't quite as important a fight as women's rights, or gay rights, or race rights, or the rights of any other oppressed minority. You're kind of right, I'll concede that. But, you see, if you blithely accept one form of discrimination, that leaves the door open for all of the other sorts. I'm not concerned that this misandry will have a significant effect on the role of men in society. What bothers me is that it is (and I really hate to use this term, because it's always used by those with a not-real-world view of the likely outcomes of anything) the thin end of the wedge. If this is OK, what else will be?

Dear Pan-European Advertisers...

There's a bit of a habit sprung up in our modern word, where brands are global, and it's indicative of a thorough misunderstanding of the average British person. You see, we're not like other Europeans, not really. Oh yes, there are significant cultural divides right across the continent, but there's one way in which a great number of our European neighbours are quite similar - they don't mind crappy adverts. 

You know the ones I mean, the 'humourous' ones with plastic-looking, very European families. He is slick of hair and clean shaven, she looks like she's just stepped out of a salon, and the kids are dressed by Gap, and one of them carries a perfectly unused skateboard. They're hip, they're happening, and nothing like them has ever been seen west of the North Sea...

Then the advert gets dubbed. Badly. Because it's the same brand, we'll definitely have the same values when it comes to advertising, right? I mean, it's just an advert, isn't it? Well, no. Not exactly...

You see, here in the UK we get a bit antsy about adverts. We didn't have them for ages, then this channel started up called ITV, and it was paid for by advertising, and the whole game changed. Those precious moments when we could be watching the program we tuned in to watch, but are instead watching a sales pitch, are something to be treated very carefully. We don't want to be watching the advert, but if we have to it had better be damned good. Funny is a good place to start, but merely cool-looking will do. Expensive in look and feel is a definite, unless you're selling something cheap, in which case we'll forgive you, and ignore your product.

Adverts are a battle ground in the British media, a place for rival ad companies to try to outdo each other with their genius. The adverts get better and better, and we can tell when someone hasn't bothered. We can really tell when someone has just dubbed over an advert they've already used in Spain, France and the Czech Republic. And we resent it. Resent the laziness, and the assumption that we're anything like that unwashed, uncultured bunch over there on the continent (etc., etc.). 

Adverts on British television are an intrusion, and as such had better give us a damned good party trick or we'll boot them back out the way they just came in. 

So now you know.

Should we ban tobacco outright?

Recent legislation in the UK has seen another blow to the tobacco industry, with retailers no longer allowed to display tobacco and tobacco products on their shelves. Instead, these products must be kept in shuttered cabinets, with the shutters only opened at the precise moments of need. This is a further attempt to discourage youngsters from viewing the purchase of tobacco as a 'normal' activity, and further legislation might well get passed which enforces the sale of these products in plain, non-brand-designed packaging, to increasingly de-glamorise the industry. This move is already being implemented in Australia from December this year.

Clearly we are heading towards the point where sales of tobacco are eventually eliminated entirely. Certainly the current direction of policy is to marginalise the practise of smoking as much as possible - it is becoming harder to buy cigarettes, and the ban on public smoking sends addicts (an inflammatory term I very deliberately use) out into the freezing rain to get their fix. It would seem, then, that we are moving toward a society where smoking is banned outright.

Let me go on the record now to say that I agree with this outcome. Smoking should be banned, because it is an addictive, harmful activity with no benefit other than to satisfy a craving which only exists due to smoking in the first place. It costs the NHS something like £5bn per year, as well as having a knock-on effect onthe family and friends of smokers, not least through second-hand smoke inhalation.

Pro-smoking lobbying groups (often sponsored by, if not officially part of tobacco companies themselves) will argue that to smoke is the right of the individual, and that it should be a personal choice. To some extent it should be considered thus - after all, who are we to prevent others from making their own choices in these matters? On the other hand, though, imagine if tobacco was introduced to the world for the first time in 2012 - it would instantly be legislated against as a harmful drug, probably in Class C of the UK system, much like cannabis. It is only our history of using this drug, coupled to a perceived lack of impact on personality (unlike, for example, heroin use), which prevents it being considered quite as harmful as perhaps it should be.

Of course, a total ban is probably an impossible dream. Tobacco companies know they can't win the war, but they're fighting all the way. They support both the Conservatives and Labour in the UK, and as such can guide policy towards measures which, while they appear to be aimed at curbing the uptake of tobacco, will have very little effect on existing users - if you need your fix, you'll get it. We must also consider the revenue from tobacco sales, which is predicted to be £12.1bn for the 2011-2012 UK tax year, a not inconsiderable sum. Pro-smoking groups would argue that losing this revenue would dramatically harm the UK economy, and to a point they have a decent argument - the revenue certainly outweighs the quoted cost to the NHS, though in my sums I'm ignoring costs to the economy due to time off for smoking-related illnesses.

I don't know the answer, but I suspect it lies in the re-invention of the tobacconist, a shop type which has morphed into what we would now call a newsagent. Further marginalisation of the sales process is probably the only feasible means by which we will continue to decrease the demand for tobacco and tobacco products. Eventually there will come a time when the revenue from smoking begins to fall (according to the figures quoted in the link above, they have steadily climbed since 1990, and probably before that), and we will see a decline in the power of the pro-smoking lobbyists. Only at that point will a complete ban be on the cards.

Very Cross Words

In an attempt to rebuild my ailing internal thesaurus (which was, at one time, not entirely useless), I've been spending a fair amount of time recently doing crosswords. The simple kind, you understand, but it's those simple ones which help flex the imaginary brain muscles upon the strength of which ones synonym-system operates.

Mostly, I am able to complete these with ease, with the exception that on each an every crossword there is at least one clue which utterly confounds me, and it is typically related to some obscure matter of what, for want of a more accurate (or even slightly accurate) term, I shall call general knowledge.

It goes something like this:

"Three across, 'finger', five letters, ends in 'T'. Hmmm, well, that must be 'digit'.

"Nine down, 'thing for remembering', six letters, blank-blank-emm-blank-arr-blank. Easy: 'memory'.

"Right, nineteen across, five letters, '17th century Taoist monk'.... what the f***?"

In case you're wondering, it would be Zhang, as in Zhang San Feng, the inventor of Tai Chi...

That's not even the most awkward of them. My current favourite clue, still unsolved, is 'Common febrifuge'. I don't even know what a febrifuge is! Well, I do now I've Google'd it; but before that? No chance. I'll bet none of you do either, without looking it up. In case you can't be bothered, it's a fever-reducing herb. When was this  crossword set, the 14th century?

There really isn't a point to this, other than to rant about the deliberate efforts of Telegraph Quick Crossword setters to catch us all out. You have been warned.

When debating goes south

Before I begin to get into things, let me just go on record to state that this article has nothing to do with any opinions I might or might not have regarding the role of religion in the world. This article is nothing to do with that, it's all about how some people who should know better allow themselves to fall into a mode of argument which weakens the foundations of their arguments. Anyway, on with the rant...

There's very much been a recent trend towards a cheap, unintelligent approach to the debate over the relevance (or lack thereof) of religion in the modern world. I'm not intending to debate the rights and wrongs of religion, but rather to discuss a prevalent habit for lazy argument which makes its proponents look rather absurd.

Leading the way in this field is the humanist Richard Dawkins; you may have come across his work. He is according to all available accounts a fairly intelligent man, but he does have at least one serious failing - his inability to discuss his anti-religious feelings without highlighting them as exactly that: feelings. Dawkins approaches his arguments with a zeal which, were it not painfully ironic to do so, we would happily liken to a religious fervour.

That he is enthusiastic about his subject is not in itself reprehensible - quite the opposite in fact - but when he claims to represent the cold, hard face of reason, he cannot afford to allow his feelings to interfere. He must be the Jedi, the Vulcan, the dispassionate warrior of logic and reason. By not being so, he cripples his own argument.

And there is another angle to the modern anti-religious argument which is self-corrosive: the "sneering" attitude, which aims to suggest that the owner of the attitude isn't even willing to get into a debate about religion, because it's somehow beneath them, or the argument is pointless because it's already been won.

I'm a huge fan of Stephen Fry, a witty, urbane, intelligent man with a sense of humour which can dissolve me into fits of laughter. But he is prone to a rather sneering attitude to the issue of religion, an attitude which can be summed up as "oh, I'm sure it's a lovely thing for some people, but come now, it's not really something serious, is it? Haha".

I'm not interested in having a discussion about whether his views are right or wrong, but his approach to the argument, which simply put assumes that it is impossible for an intelligent person to examine religion and subsequently wish to join in, is rather crass and unworthy of the man. I'm convinced there are a number of really rather intelligent people involved in religion all over the world, and to assume that their faith comes as a result of some sort of failure of reason really does insult that intelligence.

I suppose my angle here is that I dislike sloppy argument with weak foundations. The same accusations could, I have no doubt, be levelled at the religious communities of the world, but, and here's the fundamental difference, religions never claimed to be based on cold, hard logic. Opposing views often do claim to be logical, and therefore arguments submitted by the anti-religion lobby need to transcend any possible emotional colouring, or the laziness of the condescending "come, now". Without being beyond reproach, these arguments begin to look a little childish, and therefore lacking in fundamental validity.

Film Piracy - gaarrgghhh!

And no, I'm not talking about Captain Jack Sparrow... or, for the record, piracy of television programmes. 

I'm bored, bored of the same old arguments surrounding online piracy. Apparently, a study has just concluded that online piracy of films has risen by 29% over the past five years. This, my friends, is hardly headline news - the availability of high speed internet has increased rapidly in that period, removing the last serious barrier to the downloading of massive content, so what did they expect? The example set by music pirates was bound to be followed.

On the one hand, I disagree wholeheartedly with pirating. As an aspiring author, copyright is important to me, and I don't like to see an artist's income damaged by the activity of a group of people whose only defence is that it's too expensive to actually buy music or film. That's a little like trying to defend stealing a television from Dixons on the basis that you can't afford to buy it. It's ridiculous, and you'd never get away with it in real, physical terms, so why do you think it's OK to do it online?

On the other hand, the film industry kind of had it coming, and I have little sympathy. For years they have charged ridiculous prices to watch films in the cinema, and then they're upset that people are trying to find a way around having to take out a mortgage just to see the latest in a long line of rather average films. Seriously, guys? Come on. Cinema is, quite simply, fantastically overpriced. You can't even blame the cinemas themselves, as it's well known that the only way they make a profit is through food and drink sales. It's the distributors who set the prices in reality.

And it's not as though the production companies and the stars of these films are underpaid so that the distributors make a profit. Quite the opposite, in fact. Last year alone (2010), the top three earners in Hollywood (James Cameron, Johnny Depp and Steven Spielberg) earned a total of $437,000,000. That's a ludicrous sum.

Before you spit out your coffee, I'm well aware that most actors and producers/directors earn nowhere near those sums. In fact that disparity simply adds another string to the bow of my argument that Hollywood has nothing to complain about - only in a den of such thorough corruption could some individuals be paid so well and yet others practically starve.

Hollywood, it would seem, is beginning to reap what it has sown. For too long the industry has lived in a bubble, believing itself to be far more valuable and important than it really is. Will the world cry if the film industry collapses? Probably not. I certainly won't.

Two recent photographs

Alnwick Castle

Lucky poppy - nearly weeded it out the day before it flowered. Thought it was another yellow one...

Beautiful, wonderful interwebs

I've expressed my love of the internet before. I think it's great. There are so many genuinely life-improving elements to the web that even as a den of iniquity it is still a thing of wonder. It connects me with things I'd never have known about, and has expanded my interests and improved both my writing and my drawing capabilities. Fan-blinkin'-tastic.

It's also good for opening your eyes, be that in regard to political or social injustice or simply to the musings of a group of people who are genuinely convinced of the existence of extra-terrestrials among us. I'm not for or against the ET crowd, because it strikes me that I only know a very small corner of the world, the corner which I inhabit. Oh, I learn fragments of other things when I can, but I have hardly scratched the surface of the rich diversity of human life.

Whilst scanning around the Google Analytics stats for our company's website I found that we had been visited by the Navy Network Information Centre (NNIC). Curious about this traffic source, I popped over to Google and had a quick search. One of the first few hits directed me to a site called abovetopsecret.com, which appears to principally deal with the concept that the US government has a lot to cover up. Fair enough, they probably do. Perhaps it's their business, and they did what they did for the right reasons, and perhaps it isn't, and they didn't. Who am I to say? I've not seen the facts. However, from this website I followed a link to another site, ufo-blogger.com, and this page (clicky).

The page contains a traffic source report from the site highlighting the visit of the NNIC to ufo-blogger, having apparently followed a link from Google, generated by the search term "bob dean and wikileaks ufo". Apparently, this means that the NNIC is "Crawling Internet Ahead of Upcoming Wikileaks UFO Disclosure". Now, if like me you study the report carefully, you'll notice one visit for the day - and three in total - with the latest lasting 1m22s.

I don't really want to burst their bubble, but I can't help feeling that perhaps this was someone who works at NNIC having a surf of the internet over a coffee. You can almost hear the conversation now.

Jim: "Hey, Bob, those wackos on the internet reckon they're going to leak some filers about UFOs. Haha!"
Bob: "Really, Jim?"
Jim: "Yeah, Bob. Hell, all you have to do is search for 'bob dean and wikileaks ufo' and you'll see what I mean!"
Bob: "Haha! Yeah, I'll do that while I'm drinking this cup of coffee."

Somehow three hits hardly seems to be conclusive evidence that the US government is after our souls. Of course, it might just be cleverly designed to make us think that way...

The truth is out there. In a box set of the X-Files. 

"What news, good sir, of the hunt for the Lesser-Spotted Tigueg?"

VW cars are pretty good, let's be fair, but they can be guilty of a bit of confusion-making.

The principle source of this perpetrated upon the masses is the decision to bridge the gap between Touran (a proper MPV) and Touareg (a proper SUV) with the Tiguan (a mini SUV).

I don't have a problem with the product itself - it fills a bit of a fashion-over-function niche, which isn't my favourite reason to design a car, but that's economics for you. What I don't quite get is the naming convention. Not because I think they've made a huge mistake, but rather because it leaves an unfilled, unsatisfactory niche.

The gap they've created by filling a gap which wasn't there (still with me?) is for a mini-MPV. Some say the Golf Plus fills this niche, and again that's fair enough. But it's not called what it ought to be called; if one follows the VW naming convention, it should be called the Tigueg.

Should I tell VW, or are you going to?

On the Nature of Cursing

I was making a cup of tea this morning. Nothing too unusual there, I usually have one at work to get the day going. Bit of a habit, you might say. Anyway, I was making my tea, and I spilled hot water all over the counter. Typically, for me at least, and probably many others, this would lead to an expression of annoyance, ranging between mild (often) and furious (occasionally). Mild expressions of annoyance are a softly-spoken 'damn!'.

This morning, however, I remained silent. I calmly went to the paper towel dispenser, removed two paper towels  in a controlled fashion, and carefully wiped the surface dry. I made no outburst, mild or otherwise, and did not let this minor mishap affect my mood.

Buddhists would suggest (if I've understood correctly) that to remain calm will grant you calmness, that the expression of annoyance leads to the annoyance itself. That's neither as deep nor as far-fetched as some would have you believe, and it certainly seemed to work for me this morning. I remained calm and thus was calm.

There is an alternative belief, that to bottle everything up inside is bad for you, that you should let things out. The 'Latin temperament', it's often called. However, I've realised that to suggest this as an alternative viewpoint to the 'Calm-ist' way is to miss a point somewhere - to have an annoyance to voice, first you must be annoyed. A vicious circle if ever there was one. Remain calm and there will be nothing to hold back, nothing to bottle up inside.

So, is there a point to all this rambling? If there is, it's this: many things are worth getting worked up about. Spilling a little hot water is not one of them.

The British Tabloid Press = Unpleasant People

I've always had a bit of a thing about misrepresentation. I hate people saying things about me which aren't true, and I despise others telling me they know what's going on in my head - there's very little chance you actually do, unless you're my wife and thus psychic (in a nice way).

The British tabloid press are the very worst for this kind of thing. They simply make stuff up, all day and all night, and people buy it (literally and figuratively). They can't be hauled up on it because it's like a runaway train, gathering momentum, flinging aside the innocent and the guilty with equal measures of blatant falsehoods. There's no point fighting it, because you can't afford it unless you're very rich, and even then you'd have to really want to get stuck in, because it's not going to be easy. Just look at this article to see what I mean.

Oh yes, I'll support the freedom of the press to report the truth, and of course opinion articles are important, but the two so often seem to be confused in the minds of the desperate, money-grabbing tabloid editors' pathetic little minds (it is, of course, merely opinion that the minds of the tabloid editors are pathetic and little - they may well be as large as any normal person's mind. Just not as capable of moral rectitude, perhaps...). Often 'artistic license' is used as a by-phrase (like a byword, only longer) for 'making shit up and passing it off as fact'. This ires me in the way that any injustice does, especially when there's so little chance of comeback.

So, what's the solution? If you've read this blog before, you'll know I like coming up with an answer, and this article is no diferent. The answer is thus:

Newspapers will be required to hold documentary evidence of every single factual claim made in their publications. Should a claim be made that the newspaper has falsely reported, and the paper is unable to defend its 'facts', then it shall instantly be find £1000 for every false word printed.

There will, of course, have to be a panel of experts examining claims against newspapers - perhaps the fines could fund them. Judging by the amount of nonsense published daily in the British press, there should be ample financial support for several hundred of these people each year. And the great thing is the burden of proof is on the newspapers - go ahead, boys, publish what you like... if you can back it up.

Of course, this will lead to hundreds of thousands of claims a year. The papers will be inundated. Reporters will have to spend countless hours in tribunals, defending their false stories and not sitting around making things up. It would be a disaster for an important institution, surely? Well, no, it wouldn't, because all a paper would have to do is be able to provide evidence upon request that their story is based upon fact.

And to prevent spurious claims? A £1000 penalty on the claimant should the story turn out to be wholly true.

It's a self-regulating system. No more lies, no more need for libel lawyers to be paid a mint for very little work. See? It just gets better.

There, problem solved.

Crosshatchery

Officially rather nippy

Sunset of the week

Ironic that it should fall upon a Friday. Please excuse the terrible photography - no rule of thirds, no alignment, nothing! Still, you get the idea...

More Winteryness and some other stuff

Because it's still going on:

Yep, that's the moon in the gap (below), slightly blurred but still all crescenty. Probably a bit cold up there, too:

Icy lane, but worth it because it leads to nursery...

Other stuff - an epic version of Car Park Bingo around the corner from Marble Arch in London:

Other stuff - bit ironic for a company which deals in software to manage water pipes:

Other stuff - long scissors are very, very long!

Wintery-ness for you all

Hydrangea derrangea

Reflects my mood. Sort of. Fuck.

Karmic bus lane

Karma, or something like it, does seem to exist, if simply as a result of human intervention.

This morning, on my relatively pleasant commute to work, I was queued in a line of traffic next to an empty bus lane. Several cars had already whizzed past down the bus lane, but I refused to cut across and go where I wasn't meant to. I'm not a stickler for rules in every case, but when I can see they make sense, I'll happily follow along.

So there I was in the big queue of cars, approaching the end of the lane and ready to spread out into what had been the bus lane, but was now free for all traffic. Two cyclists (who are allowed to use the lane) had just gone past and filtered round in front of a car and a van, who had been cheeky and were now stuck in the bus lane by the same red light as I was currently stopped at.

As it turned green, and traffic moved off, one of the cyclists deliberately held up the illegal traffic in the bus lane so I could filter across, legally and easily.

Karmic cyclists made my day, or at least my commute.

People just getting things... wrong

There was, on the anniversary of Armistice Day, a protest by the group calling themselves Muslims Against Crusades in central London. They burned a poppy.

I support their right to peaceful protest, of course.

But burning a poppy is a bit of a schoolboy error, really. The problem is, if you want to be taken seriously you need to do something a bit smarter than allying yourself with the Nazis. Sounds a bit of a strange thing to say, perhaps, since as far as I know the Nazis weren't in the habit of burning poppies. However, the poppy, although it is worn in remembrance of the fallen in all military action, has a very strong association with the second world war.

To burn a poppy indicates that you don't support the people who fought against Nazism... whoops. Even if you feel that way, don't expect us to listen to anything you have to say if you go ahead and tell us! To support the Nazis and all they stood for is to abandon any hope of being taken seriously. Your call.

We must also consider that the poppy appeal has nothing to do with political issues. To burn a poppy in protest against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is rather akin to desecrating a fire-fighter's grave because you don't agree with the jail sentence handed out to the arsonist whose handiwork killed him.

Someone protesting with a match is never going to be taken very seriously in this country, even when they've already thrown petrol over you. You can't burn an ideal, just an idol. Most people in the UK tend to consider the former above the latter. "Sticks and stones...", etc.

I wonder if anyone will have pointed that out to the lads standing in the freezing cold with only the warmth of a burning poppy to stave off frostbite. A bin full of broken placards usually gives off much more heat...

Vegas, pt 2

Please, please read part 1 of this article first. Ok, done that? Good.

I didn't imagine that Vegas was perfect. In fact, I went knowing that it would be flawed, because there's no way that so much money can change hands without someone losing out. It was, as far as I could glean from the available media, a viper's nest of debauchery.

In some senses, I was proven utterly correct in this assumption. If, as requested, you have read part 1 of this twin article, you'll know that I was impressed by some parts of the city. However, there's plenty in Vegas for an anti-profligate such as myself to hate.

Wishful wastefulness is the catchphrase in the city. Why bother turning out the lights in your hotel room when doing so will only save a fraction of a thousandth of a billionth of the energy which gets wasted in the city every day? Of course, I believe in setting examples so I turned off the lights, but I was, I can assure you, in a significant minority.

Allied to this were two things which make the bile rise in me like nothing else - prostitution and destitution.

There were, I kid you not, men and women standing on every corner on the Strip wearing t-shirts and handing out flyers with the same slogan plastered across them - "Hot Girls To Your Room In 20 Minutes!". Don't even bother leaving your room, just give them a call and in 20 minutes you can be having your way with some poor girl who has to pretend to like your hairy, fat, pasty, BO-reeking body. Joys.

Let's not linger, though, there are far more enjoyable topics to discuss. Like poverty. Vegas is crawling with money. It flows through big pipes underground instead of water. It's the lifeblood of the city, it lubricates every cog in the great machine. And yet there is poverty all around you, both visible and invisible. The tramps on every street corner are an ever-present reminder of the fact that not everyone is here for a good time. But even worse that that was the run-down apartment block we passed in the shadow of one of the more impressive casinos.

We were being delivered home from an aborted trip to the Grand Canyon, and had been taken all around the houses by the driver in an attempt to avoid the Strip, the busiest place on earth. As we passed Stratosphere on one side, we also passed a run-down, dilapidated apartment block on the other side, straight out of the 1950s. Onto the balcony outside the front door of one of the apartments came a young boy, no older than ten years old, wearing what amounted to rags. In the midst of all of the money which was being spent there were children living in poverty.

I can neither understand nor stomach this discrepancy. In the world's wealthiest nation there is still room for poverty. What's worse, children living in poverty. How can the American public live with themselves when this is going on? Oh, don't get me wrong, there's plenty of work still to do in the UK, but at least we fucking try.

I've gone on too long already, and given my lead I'd go on for a lot longer. So I'll leave it there. Vegas has left me torn in two, impressed and disgusted, thankful I'd visited, even more so that I got out when I did. Now that's a trick...