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When is an outrage not an outrage

We’re fond of a nice bout of outrage every now and then, us humans. It’s not a particularly new or modern trait. Human communities the world over, and throughout history, have shared a tendency to proscribe certain activities. The resulting shared exclamations of indignation when the rules are transgressed are one of the things that bonds societies together.

However, we live in a society with newspapers and television and websites and blogs and social networking, and somehow, it does seem to me, that we might have let our outrage-ometer get a bit skewed. We are bombarded with scandals, shocks, and, apparently offensive behaviour. So in a given week or month you might have to choose whether to spend your affrontedness quotient on ill-judged comments by a motoring presenter on a tea-time talk show, a youtube video of some ranting on a bus, or polar bears being filmed in a zoo for a nature programme. It’s a lot to think about, so, for the sake of all our mental health, I’m suggesting we should just calm down, and learn when not to bother getting outraged.

 

Here are my top three situations where it’s really not worth getting worked up:

1. When you didn’t actually see the thing you reckon you’re offended by.

So Jeremy Clarkson said a ridiculous thing? So Rhianna wore a tiny tiny amount of clothes on the telly? If you didn’t watch it, then you weren’t offended by it. If you click on the link to watch it after the event on youtube because you’ve been told it’s shocking, then you’re choosing to be offended, and normal rules cease to apply.

 

2. When the outrageous thing only affects a tiny group of people directly involved in said outrageous thing.

So a footballer has an affair. Are you his wife? His child? The partner of the person he had an affair with? You are? Ok then. Continue to be outraged. You have every right. If not, then really, this behaviour is absolutely none of your concern. Please feel at ease to continue with your day undisturbed.

 

3. When you can only tell the thing is outrageous because the describing words in the newspaper/website report tell you it is.

If you need the describing words around the actual story to explain that it’s outrageous then, believe me, it’s really not. Genuinely shocking things don’t need to be dressed up. For example:

Around 4000 children die every day because of lack of clean drinking water and sanitation.  (Save the Children; http://www.savethechildren.net/alliance/media/newsdesk/2010-03-19.html)

Do you see how there’s no need to jazz that up to make it sound horrendous? It just is.

Now take for comparison: “‘Organic’ celebrity gardener sparks eco row after saying ‘it’s good to use peat in your garden'” (Daily Mail; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2074027/Celebrity-gardener-claims-organic-sparks-eco-row-saying-good-use-peat-garden.html#ixzz1gWWJyoU9)

This story is about Gardeners’ Question Time regular, Bob Flowerdew, who has come out (so to speak) as a user of peat-based compost. The key phrase in the headline is “eco row”. Clearly there has been some sort of big outrage over whatever Flowerdew said. I care about the environment. Maybe I should be outraged as well? Let’s read on.

“One of the country’s leading organic gardeners has outraged green groups by championing the use of peat.

Bob Flowerdew, 58, has admitted that he relies on peat-based compost to grow plants.

But his comments have outraged conservationists, who complained that they would encourage the destruction of wildlife-rich peat bogs by amateur gardeners following suit.”

Right. Well in three short paragraphs we’ve heard twice that conservationists are outraged. This must be a big deal. Otherwise they surely wouldn’t have had to note the outrage twice in such a short piece of prose. If this was mere mild irritation, we could have taken that in with a single mention.

I wonder what those conservationists actually said. And, if you’re reading along with the article, you’ll be wondering for a while. It’s a full 11 paragraphs before we get any specific comments from a representative of the environmental lobby, and then a spokesperson from Friends of the Earth says they are “disappointed” by Mr Flowerdew’s statement. Disappointed. Not outraged. Not livid. Not obviously spoiling for a fight at all. Simply disappointed.

If you thin this article down to the actual quotes alone, what you have is some people who disagree about peat-based compost. They don’t even disagree that extremely. No-one is advocating sprinkling peat liberally on your cornflakes. Mr Flowerdew’s original comments also touch on issues of sustainability. This isn’t a row. You’d struggle to call it a spat, but somehow the story has still made it into more than one major national newspaper. The Daily Express version of the story is, if anything, more sensational.  

Why? So far as we can tell no-one is actually outraged here. There might be a genuine story for the environment or lifestyle pages about peat-based compost. How environmentally damaging is it? Is any level of production sustainable? What are the alternatives for gardeners? etc But that’s not what either of these versions of the story are about. They’re both about a fight, a row, in the Express headline writer’s terminology, “A Big Stink.”

The underlying problem is that confrontation and outrage are seen as selling papers, so if no outrage exists it’s in the interests of the press to create one. Then other papers and broadcasters can report on the outrage that’s been reported, creating further outrage, which can itself be reported. Social networks feed into this process. As a journalist, you no longer have to wander into the street to find a person to express consternation at a given event. You simply open your laptop and do a little search. Between Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere you can pretty much guarantee that someone will have said something about the subject you’re writing up. There’ll probably be at least one comment that suggests disagreement. Ta-dah! Instant row generated. Now you just have to type it up and wait for the outrage to spread.

So let’s all agree not to play. Let’s all agree that the next time a TV personality says something stupid, or a popstar wears tiny shorts, we’ll just roll our eyes and not comment. If you must comment I’ll permit a non-commital sounding, “Meh,” noise, but nothing more. And then let’s get really outraged about something that matters. I don’t know if you’ve heard but, across the world, 4000 children die every day because of lack of drinking water and sanitation. 4000. Every single day.

In which democracy isn’t working

There is a well-known political saying, variously attributed to Joseph De Maistre, George Bernard Shaw and Alexis de Toqueville (if you’re a proper pedant, I *think* Toqueville is right, but feel free to correct me in the comments) that “In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve.” Looking at our current rulers I find this depressing. So just in case any of you were feeling prematurely bouncy with festive cheer, I thought a nice little blog post about the inadequacy of government might bring you all back down to earth.

Here’s how a representative democracy is supposed to work. Some people have ideas about how stuff should be and make those ideas public for the masses to consider. The ideas are scrutinised by other people with different ideas who point out the potential pitfalls. All of these people’s ideas are further scrutinised by an independent and rigorous free press, and by an informed and interested electorate. That electorate then pick the people whose ideas seem least likely to bankrupt the country. The winning people form a government and have a go at putting their ideas into action, all the time having their most foolhardy excesses checked and exposed by the opposing people, the judiciary and that lovely free press we heard about earlier. To break my own rule about never quoting a talking advertising animal in public, “Simples.”

But that whole system seems to have broken down. Rather than having politicians who believe stuff, we have a generation of politicians who see their role as being to identify what voters want and then present an impression that they agree, regardless of whether they do or not. We have no bravery in politics anymore, no willingness to say “I think this. Here’s why it’s a good idea,” and accept that if people don’t agree you won’t win.

We have reached a position where the suggestion that a politician has a definite ideology is seen as a weakness. Ed Milliband, for example, was elected Labour leader largely because he was seen as being willing to move the party back to the left of UK politics. That viewpoint won him considerable support amongst the trade union wing of the party, but he’s spent the months since trying to disassociate himself from the “Red Ed” tag. He hasn’t supported public sector unions on strike action. He’s been largely absent from the debate on cuts in areas like welfare benefits and legal aid. Reading his press coverage it is increasingly difficult to identify what Ed really thinks.

I’ve picked on Ed Milliband here. I could just as easily have gone for Dave or Nick or George or even Tony. None of these are politicians interested in standing out, in looking or sounding different, in making an impassioned case for a particular set of ideas. They’re interested in being elected. They may have passionate ideas about what they’d do if they were elected, but they don’t us to know what those ideas are.  

And that’s not entirely their fault. They are the babies of an informal system of political education that irons out difference and passion at every turn. We have a generation of politicians who attended the same schools, the same universities, worked in the same politics-related consultancies, and entered parliament with little or no work experience outside the Westminster bubble. They sound bland and samey because they are bland and samey.

A generation ago our Prime Minister was a grammar-school scholarship girl, who studied Chemistry and worked as a research chemist in the food industry whilst unsucessfully candidating in Dartford. Somewhere alongside the job and the political campaigning she also managed to qualify as a barrister. Voters also knew where she stood. She was, in my opinion, pretty much as wrong as one can be about most things, but at least you knew what she thought.

But that’s all changed. Telling voters what you think is no longer considered important. Getting the most favourable coverage, causing least offence and not making a gaffe are the new priorities. In political debate, meaning has been the primary casualty of the new media-savvy approach. Politicians are concerned about things like “hard-working families,” “the squeezed middle” and “creating a Big Society.” The broader the brushstrokes, the less specific the message, the less likely it is to offend.

And political reporting isn’t helping. Rather than questioning and scrutinizing politicians, journalists often simply copy and paste the pre-approved quotes from the press release and crack on with the rest of their day. There are reasons for this, ranging from commercial pressures in the newspaper industry to individual networks of friends and contacts too precious to displease, but too little political journalism is currently focussed on scrutinizing policies and ideas. (There are some exceptions – I know I’ve bigged it up before, but please allow me another quick plug for C4’s rather brilliant FactCheck blog). 

Where people outside the mainstream political parties attempt to throw open the discussion, news coverage still tends to engage more with the people and the side-controversies, than with the content of any real debate. Thus, coverage of the Occupy London camp focusses on whether the protestors really are using their tents overnight, which members of the St Paul’s clergy have resigned, and what legal action is being proposed/taken, rather than on what the protestors are asking for and how/if politicians are responding.

There are options to how we fix this inadequate state of affairs. We could jettison the whole democracy thing and just have a dictator. I’m more than happy to volunteer for the role, providing I can be known as Queen Alison, rather than President or Prime Minister. It just sounds so much foxier, and implies ownership of good jewellery, which I like.

However, populaces all over the world are currently rising all up and getting a bit fighty to try to win for themselves the voting rights we have taken for granted for too long, so maybe we should give democracy another shot. To make it work you all need to agree to make yourselves informed voters. It’s tricky but doable. Google will help you. Even mainstream newspapers will help if you teach yourself to read them with a critical eye (Andrew Marr’s book My Trade has a great section on how to sift the content from the fluff in an average newspaper article.) I’d also warmly encourage you to ask questions of your own representatives. We can all do this. Come the revolution I’ll be at my computer sending a tersely worded email to my MP.

At the same time, journalists need to start doing some actual journalism. Between us we might be able to start to pressure our elected representatives into saying what they really think.

Finally, our politicians need to collectively agree that, on balance, they probably ought to get out more and talk to people who don’t look and sound just like them. They could all agree to get jobs for a few years and only stand for future election after a full decade of doing something completely different. That might give them time outside the Westminster pressure cooker to grow a personality and, maybe even decide what they really think.

The Unromantic Romance Writer

So here’s a curious thing, dear internet, a much adored friend of mine recently pointed out to me how odd it is that I’m currently writing romance, because, she said, I am the least romantic person you could hope to meet. She’s not the first person to observe that I’m slightly lacking in the hearts and flowers department. My sister-in-law, much more recently married than my husband and I, oftens makes fun of our habit of marking shared emotional triumphs with a high five. She considers this unemotional in the extreme. She is equally bemused by the fact that she will share a heartfelt reminiscence from her wedding day, and then ask about memories of my wedding, only to be met with a blank face and a vague excuse about it having been a frightfully long time ago.

We don’t do Valentine’s Day. We don’t do anniversary gifts. For the first 2-3 years we had a competition to see who could buy the other the most ghastly wedding anniversary card, but that petered out after I refused to spend a fiver on objectively the most hideous card ever produced (about 8 pages of “rhyming” verse, much glitter, many badly drawn flowers). It would have been a surefire contest winner, but it cost five whole English pounds, which might otherwise have been spent on important accessories.

The most romantic gift my husband has ever bought me was a dictionary and thesaurus. The most romantic gift I’ve ever bought him was… no, actually I’ve got nothing to offer there.  He’s bought me flowers about three times in 15 years. If he started buying them regularly I’d probably think about getting him checked in for a brainscan. And flowers are wasted on me. They’re lovely when they’re fresh, but the following 3 weeks, where they slowly die and then begin to rot in the vase before I get around to chucking them out, does rather take the shine off.

However, I don’t think any of the above means I’m not romantic. I’d argue that it just recognises that romance isn’t something you can buy off the shelf in a one-size fits all package. To be truly romantic a gesture has to be individual. So, in our special little world, high fives are romantic. The act of mildly winding up people who think we should be more lovey-dovey is a personal, specific shared joke. The dictionary and thesaurus present really was romantic, because it was based on a very vague comment I’d made months earlier about wanting a nice dictionary and thesaurus, because I thought that maybe one day I might like to try to write stories, and a dictionary and thesaurus seemed like the sort of thing a Proper Writer ought to own. That’s personal, and personal, I think, is romantic.

So in a very individual way, maybe I am romantic, but even if I wasn’t I don’t think that would preclude me from writing romantic stories. It’s so common for writers to be asked whether they base stories on real people and real situations, and the answer, if we’re honest, is probably both “Of course,” and “Of course not.” In the bigger sense, you can ultimately only write from the brain that you have and that is entirely conditioned and created by the life you’ve led and the influences you’ve been exposed to. Having said that, I’ve never sat down and conciously based a story on a person or situation from my own life.

As a writer I don’t want to be tied to only writing about what I’ve directly experienced. I want to make stuff up. So even if I’m not romantic, there’s nothing to stop me from writing a character who is. In the story I’ve just begun my heroine is uptight, has an overblown sense of duty and is terrified of losing people she cares about. My hero is impulsive, loyal and focussed on living life to the full. When I write about those characters, I’m not thinking, how would I react in this situation? I’m thinking, how would this character react in this situation?

Your characters aren’t you. You don’t have to live their lives. If you did, there would be no fantasy novels, no historical stories and scary crime fiction would be even scarier, knowing how many people the writer had to dismember for the purposes of research.

So, in conclusion, I don’t need to be romantic to write romance. And anyway, I do think I’m romantic, but probably only in a way that 1 other person on the planet would appreciate, and in real-life, as in fiction, you only need 1 other person to make the romance work.

Reading that last sentence back I’m finding it a bit uncomfortably mawkish, so I think that’s a good place to stop. You can scurry off and follow me on twitter, or subscribe to the blog, or leave a little comment – are you romantic or does the notion induce a mild nausea? If you write, to what extent do you draw on your own experience? Or you could not comment and run along and crack on with the day. I shall go and do something bracing and emotionally unengaging. Good-day to one and all.

Some short thoughts about blog prizes

Over the last few weeks I and my tiny corner of the interweb have been absolutely blown away to be nominated for a couple of different blog awards. It’s beyond super lovely when anyone likes the blog enough to comment favourably, let alone nominate me for any sort of award. So, thank-you Anita Chapman, Sue Fortin, Clare Wartnaby and Juliet Greenwood. Great bloggers all and freely recommended, particularly to those of you with an interest in writing.

Both the awards, The Versatile Blogger Award and The Leibster Award, ask recipients to do certain things in accepting the award. You’re either asked to blog on a particular subject (7 things about yourself for the Versatile Blogger) or link back to your nominator and make a certain number of nominations yourself. Now I wouldn’t put those requests (which you are entirely at liberty to refuse or ignore) in the same category as the sorts of internet chain letters and the like I had a little rant  about a few weeks ago. I think these awards can offer a benevolent and practical way for small bloggers to support each other and encourage a little bit more web traffic to one another’s sites.

However, I won’t be participating in the recipient’s end of these awards. It’s not because I don’t appreciate them. It might actually because I’m a tad miserablist as a personality type. I want you, my small in number, but much valued, readers, to know that if I recommend a site or a blog it’s simply because I think it’s great, and not because I’ve commited myself to recommending 17 blogs in return for accepting an award from someone else. I also enjoy the individuality of my little blog. It is a corner of the internet that is very much devoted to whatever I happen to be musing on at any given time. It doesn’t have much theme beyond the fact that it’s all stuff I thought. It’s a little self-obsessed of me, but I am slightly reluctant to post on a topic because I’ve been instructed to do so. Perhaps it’s a little odd of me, but I am protective of the eclectic and spontaneous nature of the subjects I talk about here.

So if I’ve linked you to this post because you kindly nominated me for an award, thank-you. I really deeply appreciate you liking the blog and taking the time to tell your own followers about it. If I don’t accept and pass on the award it’s not because I’m not grateful, and it’s definitely not personal. I’ve simply decided to keep both my posts, and my blog recommendations sparing, independent and heartfelt. And thank-you again. Yes. Thank-you. Really, you are kind.

Where I muse on weight loss and dieting and shaking the fat off one’s child bearing hips

I am obese. I want to lose weight.

Now I would never dare to make assumptions about your reactions, dear reader, but I do know from experience that commonly people respond to those two statements in one of two ways. Either something along the lines of: “You don’t need to lose weight. You look fine. Society wants us all to be skinny. You shouldn’t listen to the pressure…” or “Oh my god! Me too. I am sooooo fat. It’s just disgusting.”

The interesting thing is that those two reactions don’t come from different groups of people. They can come from the same individuals at different times (different times sometimes being different moments within the same conversation). And I’ve had both of those reactions myself, both to other people’s claims to need to lose weight and (more worryingly) in my own internal monologue. BTW, any of you who don’t have an internal monologue should really get one. They’re marvellous fun. You never have to be lonely again.

Anyhoo, why is it that we don’t seem to respond to our weight in a rational way? If I was a smoker who told you I really wanted to give up, you would probably be encouraging. You would recognise that this is a decision with benefits. You would understand that smoking, although marvellous fun, is fundamentally a deeply unhealthy habit. Well, actually, so is overeating, but somehow dieting can come to feel like we’re giving in to pressure rather than doing what’s best for us. Here are some thoughts on the subject. I shall probably number them and put them in a list. Regular readers of this blog will have noticed how I do like a numbered list. I find them very soothing.

 

1. Yes. The diet “industry” is totally repellent.

I have a lifelong commitment never to give them any money. Working from home I get to enjoy the full gamut of weightloss advertising. Weightwatchers, Jenny Craig, Slimfast, “Click here to find out how some random off Big Brother lost 4 stone in 28 minutes.” I have ignored them all (and suspect that once this blog is published I shall have a flurry of new weight loss spam to ignore further). I will give Weightwatchers a slight exemption for being one of the few marketed weight loss systems that does have a fairly strong evidence base for it’s efficacy, but actually I know I’m overweight, and I know why. I’m not generally keen on paying to have someone tell me the obvious. And I’m definitely not paying for a snake oil solution. There is no magic pill, and, however well it’s marketed, there’s no such thing as a (calorie) free lunch.

 

2. Yes. Magazines, popular culture, tv, film and all that jazz, put ridiculous pressure on people (particularly young women) to look a certain way.

This isn’t just the obvious areas of skimpily clad popstars and computer game characters clearly drawn by someone who thought Barbie was a tad on the hefty side. When’s the last time you saw a fat newsreader? That’s really not a job requiring a high level of physical fitness. Sit on a chair and read this out. Even at my biggest (especially at my biggest) I think a sitting and reading based occupation would have been acceptable.

And, certain sections of the press still run a fairly constant feed of “X celeb has lost weight – hurrah!” or “X celeb has gained weight – she’s a witch! She’s a witch! Burn her!” stories. All of which equates your weight with your worth as a human being, and that’s a problem. It would be patent insanity to decide that all blue-eyed people were outwardly jolly but secretly self-loathing and deserving of ridicule. Substituting “fat” for “blue-eyed” doesn’t make the thought any saner.

 

3. Yes. If you diet there is a good chance you will gain weight again later.

I’ve done this one myself. I lost over 4 stone in my mid-twenties and promised myself that that would be the only time in my life when I would diet. It’s now 8 years on and I’m probably only about 10lbs less that I was at my highest weight before that big diet. In the meantime I’ve been up to within a couple of lbs of my highest  point and down again to within a stone of my lowest.

But this isn’t because of any inevitability of regaining weight. It’s because I went back to eating too much and eating too many high calorie foods. It was entirely within my own control. I just didn’t control it.

 

Losing weight is a health decision, and the practicalities of doing it aren’t hard. Eat less. Exercise more. That really is it. You can spend hours trawling the internet or watching daytime tv for specific diet plans and particular views on whether it’s sensible to eat carbs after 4pm (it’s totally fine, by the way), but the only outcome that reliably leads to weight loss is to eat less calories. And when you’ve lost weight, you keep it off by continuing to eat less calories than you did before. You got fat because you ate too much. You get thin by eating less. None of this is complicated, and none of it needs to be an emotional issue.

But there is an emotional element, and for more and more women that I talk to it goes like this. Society says I have to be thin. I’m an independent strong woman. If I lose weight I’m giving into society rather than celebrating my individuality and accepting the woman that I am. I can understand that feeling.  I actually think that sometimes it takes more confidence to say, “I don’t like x about myself. I’m going to change it,” than to say that everything is fine. All I can say is that you have to do what is best for you. For me being thinner is better. I feel fitter and stronger. I get out of breathe less quickly. I can walk up hills without feeling like I might vomit up a lung. In the long term, hopefully I will have a longer and healthier life, which I want. There is so much cool stuff in the world. I really want to give myself the best possible shot at seeing as much of it as I can.

And if I’m honest, society has got to me too. I like being able to try on size 10-12 clothes, rather than being on the cusp of sizes that the “normal” stores don’t stock. I like going out in a floaty top and feeling confident that no-one is going to ask when the baby’s due. I like being able to count my chins without having to use the fingers on the second hand. I do feel prettier when I’m thinner.

So for all those reasons I am going to lose weight again. And I’m really going to try to make this the last time I go through it. For my height I should be somewhere between 8 stone 10lbs and 10 stone 10lbs. From past experience I know that too far under 10 stone and my hip bones and collarbone start to stick out a bit worryingly (maybe Grandma was right all those years she told me I had childbearing hips, which are sadly completely wasted on me). 

The target is 10stone. That’s 3.5 stone to lose. Gosh. I’d say wish me luck, but that would miss the point. I don’t need luck. I just need to eat less calories and workout more, which is hard because exercise is fun once you’re doing it but a pain to motivate yourself for, and food is lovely, like really really lovely, but not quite as lovely as a life without heart disease. So lovely scrummy food in moderation only from now on.

Eat less. Exercise more.

Eat less. Exercise more.

Eat less. Exercise…

Where I get all sci-fi and fantasyish and do a bit of reviewing.

Sometime ago I commented on this very blog that I’m in favour of doing what every teacher I’ve ever had advised and reading widely. I think I said it here. I definitely said it though, and it was definitely right-headed thinking when I did say it.

In that spirit I tend to read a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, and of different genres of fiction. Recently, though, I seem to have been stuck on a bit of a sci-fi/fantasy roll, and so I thought, “Hey!” (Yes, I actually thought “Hey!” with the exclamation mark and everything) “Why don’t I write a sci-fi/fantasy themed book review blogpost?” And I could think of no good reason why not, and there are no responsible adults around to stop me, so here it is.

Generally, I can swing either way on sci-fi and fantasy. I’m properly quite addicted to Terry Pratchett (to the point of wondering whether there’s a boxed set of all the Discworld novels that I could pass off as a single volume if I’m ever on Desert Island Discs). On the opposite end of the scale I don’t think I’d manage to finish Lord of the Rings even if I was marooned on a desert island and it was the only book. Doctor Who, I have adored since Peter Davidson’s incumbency. Star Wars (whisper it quietly so as to avoid actual physical violence) I can pretty much take or leave. Obviously, I’m talking original trilogy here. The prequels serve no purpose at all beyond providing an emergency Ewan McGregor fix and there are better ways to get that (Moulin Rouge, A Life Less Ordinary & Shallow Grave would be my picks). Even with the originals, I see that they’re culturally iconic, but I’ve watched them all, right through once in the cinema. I’d have no actual hard objection to seeing them again, but it wouldn’t obviously enhance my life.

So that’s where I stand on fantasy and sci-fi generally. Love some. Hate some. Tolerate others. Before I descend into separating all fantasy into Howard from Fresh Meat – if you’re not watching it, you should – style Good and Bad lists (Buffy=Good, Heroes series 1=Good, Rest of Heroes=Bad etc.), lets move onto some actual reviewing.

I’ve read three books with a fantasy vibe lately: The Untied Kingdom by Kate Johnson, Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde and American Gods by Neil Gaiman. They’re probably all more fantasy than sci-fi, but I don’t really have the mental energy to debate the difference. I could term them speculative fiction, but that sounds a tad unnecessarily wordy. Let’s just call them books and be done with it.

 

First up – Kate Johnson’s The Untied Kingdom

This novel is essentially a fantasy romance. The plot hangs off a regular girl from contempory Britain slipping through a crack in time and space and finding herself in an alternate version of reality, where the country is economically and technologically backward and in the midst of a civil war.

Judging from the acknowledgements, Johnson’s a bit of a fantasy fan herself, as she credits Terry Pratchett and Joss Whedon amongst her inspirations. There’s certainly more than a little bit of Discworld’s Sam Vimes about her male lead, and a big dollop of Bernard Cornwell’s Napoleonic Wars hero, Richard Sharpe. Nothing wrong with that – both are good templates for the tough working class boy made good character at the centre of this story.

I applaud the writer’s ambition. There’s a lot of advice given to writers about what you can and can’t do within a genre. Romance is a genre seen as being aimed squarely at women. Sci-fi has more of a teenage boy reputation. Putting the two together takes nerve, and it’s a risk which is largely sucessful. If anything I’d have liked a bit more of the alternate reality woven in around the central romance plot, but it’s a good read, and it’s brilliant to find a contemperary romance that feels original and has such an interesting premise. This novel is also one that demands a sequel. Without giving away the ending, I really do want to know what these characters do next.

 

Second up, Jasper Fforde and Shades of Grey.

Fforde is one of the big hitters in the comic fantasy market. He’s the author behind the successful Nursery Crimes and Thursday Next series. Shades of Grey is the first in a potential new series, and is based around the premise that people can only see certain colours, and colour perception is attribute around which society is organised. Good writing should engage a reader’s senses, so writing about characters who don’t perceive the world the way the reader does is hard. Two thumbs way way up to Fforde for absolutely pulling this off. Rather than alienating the reader from the characters, their world feels immediate and real.

In a sense this novel is 1984 with an magnified sense of the absurd. You have a dystopian society, an everyman protagonist who is starting to doubt the society he’s living in, and perhaps the beginnings of a relationship with a more rebellious politically aware woman. It’s intended to be the first in a series, and I think it’s probably the first time since the blessed JK hung up her Hogwarts quill that I’ve finished a book feeling bereft at the wait for the next installment. For me Fforde’s earlier series took a little while to warm up – the later books are much better than the earlier ones. This time he’s hit the ground running. Loved this book.

 

And finally, in my little fantasy reading phase, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.

Gaiman himself is a bit of a god in the sci-fi/fantasy world, and he’s done some truly fabulous stuff. His Doctor Who ep in the last season was a stand out, and Good Omens (co-written with Sir Terry of Pratchett) is a proper pageturner. The premise of American Gods is intriguing – people from all over the globe populated America, so what happened to the gods they brought with them? Have those gods survived and what has been lost in translation to their new home? And how will they respond to the new “religions” of modern life?

I did struggle to get into this book – it’s not that I wouldn’t recommend it, but it’s a Big Book. I think it is one to take on holiday or on a long train journey – somewhere where you’re going to be able to settle down and read for a couple of hours at a time. It’s one that you need to read your way into. It took me a while to get going with, I think, because I was pushed for time and reading only a few pages at a go.

We do also need to talk about the length. The edition I have is labelled “Author’s Preferred Text” – words which I naturally greet with the same trepidation as the phrase “Director’s Cut.” Sure – it could mean that the evil corporate sales people bowdlerised your work and you’ve now been able to restore the fully glory of your artistic vision. More often I just think that writers and directors need to know when to step away from the thing they’re working on and move on. Anyway. Gaiman acknowledges that this edition is 12000 words longer than the originally published version. I haven’t done a comparison, so I don’t know which words were added, but my feeling is that this book is slightly longer than it needs to be. So, I would recommend this book, but I would probably suggest seeking out the shorter original text and saving it for a day when you can really settle down with it and immerse your brain in Gaiman’s world.

So that is what I have been reading of late. Next up I’m going into a Crime phase (reading, not doing). It was quite rightly pointed out to me, by my very wise senior sibling, that for all my “Read widely” waffle I very rarely read crime fiction. To right this wrong, she has also provided me with a shelf of crime fiction to get my teeth into. CJ Sansom, Minette Walters, Harlan Coben and Michael Rowbotham here I come.

Cuts to Legal Aid (or how to kick people when they’re down).

The Coalition’s snappily named Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill will be debated in the House of Commons tomorrow.  Now, as an opening sentence, I appreciate that that wasn’t the most inspiring you’ll ever have read, or even that I’ve ever written, but stick with me. Legal Aid isn’t glamorous, but it does matter.

I’m going to witter on about civil legal aid, and I have to start by declaring a possible bias. The last 6 years of my career have been largely spent in Citizens Advice Bureaux so I do have a bit of an interest in how civil legal advice services are provided and paid for.

Essentially at the moment, if you have a sufficiently low income you can get legal aid for advice on debt, housing, welfare benefits, and employment issues (amongst a whole host of other stuff – I’m concentrating on the areas where my expertise lies). This isn’t money that you as the person getting advice ever see – it is claimed by your advice provider and, for these areas of law, is generally paid at a fixed rate whatever the complexity of the advice you require. Some clients will receive only advice, but many will also be assisted with practical actions like negotiating repayments with creditors, applying for bankruptcy, appealing an incorrect benefit decision, or challenging liability for a debt.

Under the new proposals, there will be no legal aid available for welfare benefits cases or employment, and housing and debt advice will only be funded where there is an immediate risk of a client losing their home. This seems to me to be insane for a whole set of reasons.

Firstly, think about a situation where you’re in a medium amount of debt. You’re managing to pay your rent, but you’re behind with the utilities. Your credit cards are spinning out of control. Maybe you have a personal loan for a car that you’re struggling to pay. People find themselves in this situation for all sorts of reasons. The loss of a job, a sudden health problem, the loss of a partner, or simply spending more money that they have in their bank accounts. The point is that it happens, and when it happens people can find themselves bombarded with different advice and information from a whole set of people who either don’t have a clue themselves or are completely biased. So your bank says, “Take a consolidation loan.” Your credit card company threatens to send in bailiffs so you feel pressured to pay them first. Your utility company offer to install a prepayment meter to stop you getting further behind, but the tarriff looks much higher than you’re paying at the moment. Your mate says, “I borrowed from this website. They’re brilliant… oh, I’m not sure what this interest is, but they give you the money really fast.” What you need is some impartial advice, so where do you go? Maybe your local CAB or Law Centre or an Advice UK centre in your area? And what if they said, “Sorry, we can’t help you until you stop paying your rent, and your house is at risk”? That doesn’t sound like the best approach to me, but looking at the new Legal Aid proposals, that seems to be what the government is advocating. Good advice is very often about avoiding a crisis; in the new system you need to be having a crisis before any advice or assistance can be offered.

Welfare Benefits is another area of law where the coalition bill cuts provision. Actually, it basically gets rid of Legal Aid funded advice in welfare benefits alogether. The rationale here seems to be that the benefits system is significantly straightforward for people to navigate themselves. This is a belief that can only possibly have come from a group of people who have never had to worry themselves about actually applying for or living on a benefit in their lives. The British benefits system is labyrinthine in it’s complexity. The “basic” textbook on the subject used by most advice agencies (CPAG’s rather weighty Welfare Benefits and Tax Credits Handbook) runs to 1500 pages and is by no means a compete overview of the subject. And the Department of Work and Pensions, who administer the bulk of the system are by no means above confusion themselves. So where they make an error and refuse a benefit incorrectly, good advice on how to appeal is essential. This isn’t a luxury. This is about people’s basic rights and entitlements to a subsistence level of income.

To take the example of Employment and Support Allowance, which is paid to people with reduced capacity for work because of health problems. It has been estimated that around 40% of claimants who are refused benefit have it reinstated on appeal. The appeals process can be daunting and requires detailed evidence of claimant’s health conditions. To suggest that vulnerable claimants, some with multiple complex health issues, should navigate the process without advice is, at best, naive. At worst, it’s a cynical attempt to cut the benefits budget by discouraging claims and appeals.

We live in a country where access to certain basic services is accepted as a right, and we are immensely lucky to be in that situation. We expect our children to have access to education. We expect to be able to access healthcare. Changes to those basic services are highly controversial and, rightly, hotly debated. Somehow, we don’t seem to view access to justice and access to advice as having the same level of importance.

I’ve heard politicians characterising legal aid as a scheme for putting money into the pockets of already wealthy solicitors, and suggesting that, in true Big Society style, the voluntary sector is ready and waiting to fill in the gaps. That’s absolutely not my experience.  Much of the sort of work I’m describing is already done in the voluntary sector. Voluntary sector doesn’t mean free. Even volunteers need buildings, resources, heat, light, supervision, training, administration. A lot of the work described is highly specialist, and to ensure continuity of service and the required level of expertise, very often has to be done, at least in part, by paid workers.

The main reason a lot of this work is already done in the voluntary sector is that legal aid funding doesn’t allow for much (any!) profit margin. It’s only practical if you are operating on a not-for-profit basis. And these cuts will hit the not-for-profit sector hard. The Minstry for Justice has estimated that the voluntary sector will lose 97% of its current legal aid funding. That’s potentially catastrophic for free advice services across the country. You may never have needed to use one of those services. You may be in a position where you can afford to pay for a solicitor, but not everyone is, and I don’t believe in a society where justice is only available to the rich.

There’s lots of other worrying stuff in this bill – potential cuts to no-win, no-fee agreements jump out. The potential effects on victims of domestic violence are another big concern. If you agree that this is a worry, there is still stuff you can do. You can contact your MP directly – you should be able to find their details here: http://findyourmp.parliament.uk/. You can either ask them to vote against the bill altogether, or perhaps support one of the Lib-Dem amendments which aim to protect legal aid for the most at-risk people.

You may not agree with me. You may think that the level of austerity cuts needed justifies these changes. You’re wrong, but totally entitled so to be. And so, I shall desist.

Come back later in the week (or, you know, maybe next week) when I’ll be getting all sci-fi/fantasy-ish and reviewy. I’ve got books by Neil Gaiman, Jasper Forde and Kate Johnson on my “just read” pile and I’ll be telling you what I thought about them all. From legal aid to fantasy fiction in a single bound. As ever, if you like eclectic in your bloggers, do feel free to subscribe.

The downsides of writing too much too fast (or why I don’t do NaNo).

Tuesday is the 1st November, and, as such, marks the start of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month – although it’s actually totally international). NaNo is a fixture in many a writer’s calendar. The idea is that you commit to writing 50000 words during the month of November. It’s all about getting the words out, and it has become a valuable annual kick up the butt for many  writers. Some, such as Julia Crouch, have even gone on to get published with books they started during NaNo.

NaNo can be great. As a creative writing teacher, I get bored out of my brain from hearing, “I’d love to write a book but…” NaNo gets rid of the fatal ‘but’ and forces you to just get on with it. 50000 words in 30 days is 1667 words per day, or somewhere near the 2400 mark if you allow yourself weekends off. 50000 words still isn’t  a full-length novel (although it’s not far off one of the shorter formats, such as a Mills and Boon romance), but it’s an awful lot of white paper that you’ve killed off and an excellent starting point.

But I don’t do NaNo. Here’s why; it’s because I know I can write 2-2500 words per day. I’ve done it before. I wrote an 80000 word first draft of my current work-in-progress in jut under 8 weeks, writing 2000+ words per day Monday-Friday. I didn’t go back and correct. I didn’t edit as I went along. I just got the first draft out and onto the screen. I didn’t allow myself to leave the computer until at least 2000 words were done, and I did them every single weekday, whether I felt like it or not.

And that draft was terrible. Really truly terrible. Sure – there were odd sparkles of diamond amongst the manure but overall it was Not Good. And that will be true of most people’s 50000 NaNo words too. It’s not necessarily a problem. Editing and rewriting are a massive part, probably the main part, of writing a novel. I suspect that most writers’ actual first drafts are never seen by another living soul. The thing they call a “first draft” and send to critique partners or editors has had at least one vigorous tidy up before it’s deemed fit for other human beings to take a look.

But for me, where I feel I need to develop my writing is not in the area of just getting going and banging the words out. It’s in banging better words out. That’s why I’ve decided to write my second novel more slowly, to read back yesterday’s writing before I start todays, to make obvious revisions as I go along, to plan the outline of my plot and my different character’s transitions a bit more clearly. The first draft will still be terrible, but I’m hoping it will be marginally less terrible and feel a little tighter and more rounded.

So if you struggle to get started with your writing and maintain your motivation, then NaNo can be a brilliant spur. You can use the target to force yourself to get your words done every day. And it’s only a month so if the housework slides or you miss some overtime or your sleep patterns go out the window or you eat a lot more takeaway than is good for you then the sky won’t fall in. The only caveat is to remember that what you have at the end isn’t a novel. It might be a strong starting place for a novel, but you’ll need to find your own ways to maintain the motivation through the months of rewriting ahead.

For me getting the words out isn’t my particular writing problem. So, for my novel-writing at least, I’m trying a new mantra. Write less. Write slower. Write better. What do you thnk?

Where I think about whether referenda are ever a good idea…

This afternoon in parliament MPs will be debating whether to offer the British people a referendum on our future in the European Union. There’s minimal chance of the pro-referendum group winning the vote, and if they did it wouldn’t necessarily be binding on the current government, so the debate itself is only really interesting to political nerds of the highest order, who can work themselves into a state of geek-frenzy debating whether the number of votes against the party line should be viewed by the respective leaders as an irrelevance, an irritant or an actual embarrassment.

The whole debate does raise a bigger question though. Are referenda themselves a good idea? Referenda – a single vote on a single issue – can in many ways be seen as the purest form of democracy. There’s a decision to be made. People vote. The majority view wins the day. Everyone has a chance to have a say, and everyone’s vote is weighted equally.

But I have some reservations. The UK is a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. We have opted for a system whereby we all go out on an appointed day and pick people to represent us. We then get periodic opportunities to get back together and pick someone new, just in case the first one turned out to be a useless, unimaginative, expenses-fiddling, faceless party drone. To switch between one form of democracy and another seems problematic, and it seems problematic for reasons. Those reasons are fourfold.

1. MPs get to avoid responsibility

And this is probably the main thing that drives governments to have referenda in the first instance. It’s not that they genuinely can’t decide. It’s that deciding is difficult and any decision will be unpopular with someone. A referendum means that Prime Minsters and cabinets don’t have to be responsible for the decision. In 1975 Harold Wilson supported continued UK EEC membership, but much of his cabinet and his wider party disagreed. The referendum saved them from having to make a decision, allowed Wilson to placate his anti-European colleagues and also strengthen his own position by demonstrating public support for his stance. Britain was already in the EEC, so nothing was actually changed by the exercise. Similiarly with this year’s AV referendum, David Cameron needed to form a coalition, but knew that electoral reform was a dealbreaker for both sides. Agreeing to a referendum parks the issue over there somewhere, where it’s no-one’s actual responsibility.

2. The public don’t have to take responsibility

There are a few constants in political opinion. Generally we would like better quality services at lower costs. If you ran a referendum on the question “Would you like to pay less tax?” the answer would be a clear “Oh yes!” Similarly if you asked “Would you like to wait less time for a hospital appointment/be able to send your kids to a better school/have your bins emptied every twenty minutes?” the answer would also be “Yes.” If you’re a member of the public your ideas and wants do not have to be consistent. If you’re the government you have to make the sums add up. If you want to offer more in one area, you need to either spend more across the board or spend less on something else. Voting in a referendum, simpy putting a tick in a box for YES or NO on a single  issue, you don’t have to worry about the knock-on effects. That potentially makes for really bad policy.

3. What question do you ask?

The current debate about an EU-referendum gives us a really good example of this problem. The proposal is for a three question referendum with options to: a) Stay in the EU as we are at present, b) withdraw from the EU or c) renegotiate our settlement with Europe. It’s hard to know where to start with the wrongness of that approach. Firstly, if it’s a three option referendum it’s perfectly possible that no option will see a majority, in which case you’ve really not moved forward. Secondly, what do the options mean – if you don’t really want to be part of a formal political union but do see some advantages to a broad free trade agreement, do you vote b) or c)? If you are actually a big fan of the whole united Europe concept and would like to see more integration and greater political control from the centre, then logically you should vote c), as at no point is a specified what the aim of a renegotiation would be. To hold a referendum the issue has to be stripped down to ideally two choices – it has to be black or white, no complexity, no debate, no qualifications or amendments. Again, I would suggest, over simplifying makes bad policy.

4. Where’s the scrutiny?

Parliamentary democracy is built on scrutiny. It’s the less sexy, more workmanlike element of being an MP. It’s all the select committee processes and debates on multiple amendments to bills, which is designed to mean that by the time laws are passed the majority of the inconsistencies and practical difficulties have been identified and amendments made to strengthen the bill. Referenda take out the potential for scrutiny. The issue has been pared down to a simple Yes or No and all the complications and debate is stripped away. Simplicity wins over accuracy.

So there are my four reasons that I’m deeply dubious about the usefulness of referenda in a Parliamentary democracy. Sorry it wasn’t particularly amusing. I promise I shall try to find something funny for my next post, and knock all these political musings on the head. I can’t imagine they’re doing anyone any good.

Where I muse on compliments, chain letters and not liking cancer.

Not so long ago the lovely Sue Fortin included me in her list of Friendly Blogger award recipients. The Friendly Blogger award is a generally nice, happy, caring, sharing way of bigging up blogs you love. Us little individual bloggers scibbling away in our tiny corners of the modern Interweb appreciate all the support and links we can get, and so a bit of sharing the blog love is always welcome. The Friendly Blogger award invites you to “pay it forward” if you will, and when you read down to the bottom of this post you will see that I’m sharing a few of my fave blogs for your delectation. The award also invites bloggers to share seven interesting personal things about themselves. Sadly  my fundamental British/Northern/middle-class ness prevents me from doing that. Seven things? About me? Seriously, I’ve been with my hubbie over 15 years now, and he probably only knows about four things. I consider that a sign of a worrying level of emotional outpouring as it is.

The Friendly Blogger award also got me thinking about some of the downsides of my modern uber-connected life, the main one being that, although being easily connected to masses of people all over the shop opens you up to equivalent masses of loveliness, it also brings a whole world of opportunities to get irritated with humanity. Here are a few of my main InterWeb things that make me go Grrr.

1. Just for the record, I think that cancer is a Bad Thing. But here’s where I’m setting myself apart from those annoying Facebook status updates on the subject. I’m just going to assume you feel the same. Frankly, if you don’t, you’re a bonker and any further discussion would be pointless anyway. What I’m not going to ask you to do, is copy and post my view that cancer is a Bad Thing onto your blog or status update. I’m not going to imply that if you don’t do that, you’re a living embodiment of evil. I’m not going to suggest that failure to comply with a copy & paste instruction suggests that you are somehow in league with cancer and in favour of your friends and family suffering painful and premature deaths. I’m definitely not going to imply that if you fail to copy & paste as ordered you are not a True Friend.

For future reference, valiant status updaters, please assume that, when it comes to cancer, I’m against it. I’m also opposed to many other major life-shortening illnesses and pretty much anything that can be shown to kill children, puppies or kittens. Thank-you.

2. Secondly, internet, I would very much like you to learn to do simple maths. This would stop you, for example, from tweeting comments about how a month with five Sats, Suns & Mons in it only comes along every 800 years. This is obviously preposterous. Every month with 31 days (of which there are 7 every year) will have three days which appear 5 times. As a rough guestimate I’d figure that any given set of three days must appear around about once a year. And yet, every time there’s a 31 day month I see one of these tweets or status updates. That means I’m irritated unneccessarily at least seven times a year. So why not think about the numbers before you click on post and save me the mental effort of checking your working? 

Now I know that lots of people struggle with maths. I’ve taught adult numeracy in the past, and fully understand that maths is a subject that lots of people find intimidating and a bit overwhelming. That’s fine (well, it’s not fine really, but I’ll save the discussion of the bigger failures in education that have created that situation for another day). What I would suggest though, is that if you’re one of those people who suffers from a touch of Maths-blindness you shouldn’t write status updates or tweets that rely on a mathematical oddity for the point they’re making. There’s a high chance you’ll be wrong, and that will irritate me. And it should be clear by now, lovely internet, that I do feel that you need to be dedicating a higher percentage of your time and brainpower to not irritating me than is currently the case.

3. Actually, it’s not just the maths, I’d actually like you to think more right across the board. So, when you get an email that alerts you to a specific crime wave that is spreading across the globe, what I’d like you do to is pop over to Google, copy in a couple of key phrases from that email and click search. What you’ll probably find is that the email is a hoax, and you’ll have saved me the time of searching myself and then deleting the email, and you’ll have saved yourself from looking like a gullible fool. And again, I’m less irritated. Win:Win:Win.

4. Finally, I would just like to remind you internet, that, back in the old days of mail being delivered by a man (or indeed lady) who had to physically carry stuff to your house, there was such a thing as a chain letter. That was a letter that carried the promise of much reward if the receiver passed on the letter to x people, and, often, the threatened dire consequences for those who did not. Those sorts of chain letters were a fairly revolting attempt to prey on the superstitious and the vulnerable. Status updates/emails/tweets that demand reposting, or which promise great luck for those who repost, are exactly the same thing, only now they get reposted by people who would have thrown away a paper chain letter (and who would never have dreamed of starting one).

So don’t do it. Don’t repost messages that promise great riches for those who continue the chain. Doing so is manipulative. If you wish your friends luck and happiness contact them directly and tell them that. Don’t post it to a general audience with a veiled threat against those who don’t participate included. That is Very Bad Internetting indeed.

Ok. I think that is all. I’m breathing normally again and my little fists are starting to unclench after good venting of irritations, but please tell the world about your internet irritants in the comments (or indeed tell me why I’m wrong and facebook statuses promising to make me rich if I repost are beneficial to society).

As promised I’ll finish with a handful of blog recommendations. These are mostly of the writerly variety. As noted back here I don’t very often write about writing, so here are a few suggestions of some people who do, and do so rather well:

Talli Roland: http://talliroland.blogspot.com/ Talli writes a bit of general journal stuff about what’s happening in her life, but also about her writing and publishing experiences. As she’s just announced that she’s self-pubbing her next novel I’m watching her blog with interest to see how that goes.

Raw Light: http://rawlightblog.blogspot.com/?v=0 Jane Holland’s Raw Light blog is celebrating it’s 6th birthday at the moment. A mix of writing about poetry, prose writing and anything else that crops up.

Hollyannegetspoetic: http://hollyannegetspoetic.wordpress.com/ A poetry blog – this one generally has 2-3 new poems every week, so not even writing about writing, just actual writing. And (for those of you in Worcestershire) you’ll be supporting one of my fave local poets too.

Sally Jenkins: http://sallyjenkins.wordpress.com/ Good stuff on here on all different sorts of writing, including articles and short stories 

So there you go, four writerly blogs to make up for the fact that I can’t focus my brain enough to blog about what I actually do. As ever, if you like please subscribe either as an email subscriber or via NetWorked Blogs (and, yeah, I know that RSS feed isn’t working quite right at the moment – I’m working on it, promise.)