Tag: politics

Partially Reformed Content #5 (More than) (Over) One Year On…

Well! It’s that time of year again when I remember I have a blog section on my website and curse myself, yet again for promising to be more regular, then completely failing to be regular. I wouldnt mind quite so much, but I initially planned to make this a christmas blog, then it became an end of year blog, then it became a “New year” blog and now as it’s the week of my birthday, it’s kind of just a “This is a special time of year, I havent updated in a while. So I better do an update of some kind” blog. Happy whatever! Lets get started.

So my last blog was September 2021 and things were ticking over at that time, but what happened in the the mysterious gap between then and now? Well…in some ways, a lot. In others…not so much. I suppose it makes sense to break it down into sections rather than go through the year as…well, that’ll get a bit messy. SO! With that in mind, im drinking Amaretto…lets go!

Youtube:

Kicking things off, the channel continues to go from strength to strength. 2022 was a HELL of a year online in almost every possible way, for a starters this really was the year where my friendships and relationships with my fellow creators really flourished. I made quite a few appearances on other channels and podcasts, which was an absolute blast. We produced 40 reviews for the channel, We started uploading in 4k for the first time plus we nailed a TON of commentaries (which also got a 1080p boost) AND at least one or two special documentaries…Oh AND in the last few days of December 2022 we hit 1000 subscribers after roughly 5 and a half years of uploading content and over 6 years of the channels existence. 

Honestly, even after a few weeks to get over it, im still kind of lost for words, Waaaay back in 2017 when I first started uploading content, I only set myself 3 goals:

*To inform, entertain and educate while being fair

*To hit 100 subscribers

*And to hit 1000 subscribers. 

Its a weird feeling to be here at this point now, I genuinely and sincerely never thought i’d get here, I figured youtube would terminate the channel before i’d get there or i’d just stay small forever honestly. I appreciate i’ve been going on about it now for a while, so Im hoping this is the last time I get to say it, but THANK YOU to everyone who’s supported me over the years, commented, shared my videos and helped support me, even at my lowest points the comments and kind words you guys have left have been honest to god lifechanging. It makes me think, if one person can enjoy what I have to say, maybe I should keep going. So thank you for that.

At the same time however, I do kind of feel a bit of a sense of loss. Like a dog chasing a garbage truck, i’ve spent the last 3 years at least searching for my white whale, and now I have it harpooned and mounted on my mantle (I have a big mantle) I honestly don’t really know where to go from here…the next number in my head that I’d consider a recognisable milestone would be 5k, which im not hitting anytime soon. So im left with a bit of a calmness that im not really used to. 

Where do I go from here? Well, im working on the new season as we speak. Thats taking up quite a bit of my time. It’ll be a little while till I hit 2k subs, im just over halfway towards getting the watch time I need to get into the partner programme…but other than the ability to directly contact someone at youtube, at this point the monetisation isnt really worth it…that and I don’t think they’ll even have me on the programme…so theres no point in shoooting for that…I dunno..I suppose all I can keep doing is meeting my deadlines, getting the weeklies out and continuing to enjoy my time with all the cool COOL people i’ve had the pleasure of hanging with recently.

Other Online Shenanigans:

While the channel has been going from strength to strength, I feel its also kind of appropriate to quickly run through a few other changes that have been happening both on the channel and on the wider internet. Some good! Some…not quite so good.

First and foremost! I started using Letterboxd properly! I set an account up at some point in 2021, but completely forgot it existed/couldnt be bothered with it until around Summertime in 2022, when I figured I might as well give it a go. I’ve REALLY enjoyed it! While I don’t go anywhere NEAR as in depth as my actual video reviews. It’s a really great place to just get immediate first impressions nailed down (AND a good excuse to post the transcripts of my video reviews online in text form from time to time) I post under the same name as my youtube channel, so if your on there and want EVEN MORE reviews from me EVEN MORE often. Then yeh, head over there and drop me a follow. Im currently in the midst of a first time watch through of the original “Twilight Zone” and im ranking them on there at the minute alongside the occasional film when I can get round to it. 

On the less so good news. 2022 marked the start of an indefinite hiatus for “The Comedy Dining Experience” which was a bit of a blow. When we first started the show, me and Ben would record whenever we had availability and it was a bit of an odd treat to sit down and take apart a movie, have a laugh, eat some good food and drink some good drinks. At some point around 2019 we swapped to monthly uploads and the party continued from there. We had guests on, we started to cover TV and PIF’s. It was a good time. 

Unfortunately though, a few things have come up that makes it increasingly difficult to get together to record. Around late 2021, Ben found himself in a new role at his job, which made his availability VERY fragmented. The amount of editing the commentaries were taking was getting longer and longer each time, to the point that I was spending almost as much time editing the commentaries as I was editing full feature reviews (I originally started the Comedy Dining Experience as a quick and easy way to get longer form content up on the channel when I didnt have time to edit full blown reviews). 

Which wouldnt be a problem if it wasnt for the fact that the commentaries were ALSO getting significantly less views than my fully edited videos. If a weekly review gets 60 views in a week, a comedy dining experience episode would get 15. The Comedy Dining experience was always put out more for the love of doing it than the reception it got. But it got to a point where I just couldnt justify sitting editing non stop for 5-8 hours (not including actually prescreening the film, or the recording time itself both of which could easily add anywhere between 4 hours and 7 and a half hours depending on the movie)    

For a time, recording the commentaries online seemed like a sensible solution as we could do it whenever we were both free, we didnt have to arrange travel and it allowed for much easier editing as we had separate audio tracks to work with. But due to spotty internet and varying kit quality, sessions could become a little frustrating (try recording a commentary for 2 hours and then having the film reset randomly because of an internet issue AND the audio go AWOL because our recorders crashed) Ben equally didnt seem as keen on online recordings as in person ones, I cant speak for him, but I think he preferred being in the room with me over talking to a blank screen. I

In either case, Availability for recording time for the commentaries started to get thinner and thinner as 2022 went on and it kind of got to a point where we both ultimately ended up too busy to organise getting together to record more. As such, our last commentary was recorded in the Summer of 2022. It was part 2 of our “Drug stories” series, it was released around September 2022 and an edited version combining parts 1 and 2 is releasing late in January 2023. This does rather raise the question; Whats going to happen to “The Comedy Dining Experience”? 

Well…The honest answer is, I don’t know. At the time of writing, Bens still incredibly busy on his end, Works got me by the balls (more on that later) and at this point the only thing I can say with any certainty is, I don’t think we’ll be going back to monthlies any time soon. I can tell you what i’d like to happen with the show going forward. I think it would be nice to maybe treat them more as “Specials” that happen throughout the year that  occupy the times when im “off air” with the main reviews (I figure maybe 2 or 4 in the summer when im on a break, 1 or 2 when im off during January and maybe another 1 or two randomly dropped in across the year if we get time) But at this point…I cant honestly say. I can tell you with relative confidence that “Drug stories part 2” wont be our last episode (we AT LEAST will be finishing the classic bond run at some point) I just couldnt tell you when our next one will be. So if you are one of the 15 people who support the Comedy Dining Experience…this isnt good bye, this is GREAT bye. 

This of course did somewhat create a bit of a scheduling black hole for the channel. Mercifully, around that time, Triv from Trivial Theater invited me to help her co-host a couple of live streams she was planning (a games night and a commentary) and seeing how easy and fun it was to do, it got me into it! We now host (at least) one monthly “games night” stream on both of our channels where we shoot the shit, have a bit of a laugh, hang with the audience and just have some fun. It’s a decent time! And a really fun way to let off some steam at the end of a busy week! Its so much fun to connect with people who watch the show or who have similar outlooks and want to just chill and chat. I’ve really gotten into it! Not to mention it’s SIGNIFICANTLY easier on the editing front (basically whats broadcast, is broadcast…no edits necessary) Which leads me onto my final piece of news.

We opened a discord this year! For those unfamiliar with it, Discord is a bit like the old message boards of yesteryear, the only difference is theyre a bit more curated and built a bit like an instant messenger than the old way of forum posts. I put off opening one for ages through fear of it not really bringing anyone in, but we’ve built a rather small but brilliant community over the last few months, on there we talk about a wide variety of things, from music and film to strange youtube videos,ongoing movie sales and discussion around the channel. We host watchalongs periodically AND it’s the base for our games night streams. So if you ever want to join in live on our games nights, or just hang out, share some music and talk about the subtleties of “Nukie” be sure to head over to our Discord and introduce yourself! We’d love to have you aboard! 

Work: 

Outside of the internet, probably the most hectic thing going on in my life at the minute is my work life, it’s the thing thats eating up most of my time and causing me the most frustration…and it hasnt always strictly been this way. When I last blogged Work was a bit turbulent, but was ultimately manageable. I cant go into too much detail about what I do, but at the time of writing in my previous blog I was working in global communications and it was kind of a “wavey” time for lack of a better word. Sometimes it would be quiet and very pleasant, other times it could be very intense and a bit overbearing. But I was being paid an alright amount of money, the team I was in was both supportive and decent and most importantly, I was part of a respected area of a larger business who were noted for their excellence. It was never perfect, but it was a fantastic position to be in.

Well, less than a month after that blog was published I was informed by management that they wanted to move my skills to a new area within the team, rather than working in global communications, they wanted me to take a look at improving their current global training processes. I had been working on several optimisation projects that had gone quite successfully and they basically wanted to apply what i’d done to their training portfolio to see if I could improve it any. 

What followed was a period of around 8 months that I (at the time) playfully described as “Stepping on landmines” the process I inherited was fairly straightforward on the surface but LITTERED with idiosyncrasies that basically meant that unless every single item submitted to us was scrutinized intensely and heavily there was a constant risk of things going very VERY wrong very VERY quickly. We would regularly get requests that would be like “This item of training can only be delivered on the 3rd and 4th week of any given month, and only on mondays or wednesdays, but maybe sometimes on tuesdays after 2pm if staff are available. Unless its a monday in an odd numbered month in which case it needs to follow a completely different set of guidance, and if you don’t follow this exactly for the next 18 months the whole thing is going to go to shit” You’ve got to imagine, as a newcomer to the area…having to deal with half a dozen to 2 dozen live examples of that kind of bollocks on a near continuous basis was stressful and made me feel quite uncomfortable.

Not helping matters, my boss at the time didnt want me to do any changes or optimisation to the process unless I could demonstrate that I was competent in the field. Not a particularly unreasonable request. But when I was pulled in specifically to optimise the process, spending 8 months having to deal with the mine field was beyond difficult for me to stick with. In fact I spent most of October ‘21 to May ‘22 quite unhappy with the situation, while also being continually pushed to stick at it.

Then, around May/June 2022 the boss finally let me get onto improving things, and between then and October ‘22 we really went from strength to strength. There was still the occasional issue here and there, but for the most part, I kind of hit a level of serenity. If something had been bothering me, I just improved it, binned it or reworked it to make it as least painful as possible. It was an intense 4 and a half months or so. But we moved mountains in that time and really made a difference. It was a nice feeling. 

It actually kind of upsets me to note that this was only a very narrow window. The company that I work for was rocked with several issues through October of 2022. First and foremost was a large dip in the stock market and the second was the impending cost of living crisis. After consultation with the companies shareholders. It was decided reorganisation and restructuring was required in order to streamline the company as much as possible and to maximise profits to the shareholders. 

As a result, the area of the business I worked for was dissolved, my boss was unceremoniously made redundant and our award winning team was essentially dissolved and split up to be merged in with other teams. I found myself moving from a team of 7 down to a team of 2 (myself and one other member of my team) with a first time manager and almost no sympathy for the situation and the best we could be told about our futures was that “we were safe…for now.” and between late October ‘22 and the present day, well…it’s been unpleasant. Thats probably the best way I can describe it. 

The new management are surveillance types who have a VERY specific way of running things and frankly, I don’t feel comfortable in my skin. I’ve gone from a job where I was a key recognised player in my field, with the freedom to work on and develop projects freely, to have open collaboration with other teams and the freedom to be flexible on appointments and meetings (basically only attending things that I felt NEEDED my attention) to a role where I don’t get to do project work, where im being called on randomly at no notice to run around like a headless chicken for missions to make the boss look good (and thats it) told what to do constantly, often with little to no notice and constant monitoring. Where changes are happening weekly with little to no notice and no consultation either and im being forced into unecessary meetings that add no value to my day. Essentially; I’ve gone from a job where I was leading active change, to a  job where I have no certainty, no security and no choice in the matter. It sucks. 

Now, at this point it could be an idea to consider a career change. At the end of the day, whether the job was pleasant previously doesnt matter, its crap now…so getting out makes sense right? Well…it’s complicated. Y’see, the company I work for have an initiative for employees in which they can offer up some of their monthly salary and get it converted into shares in the company. They do 3 or 5 year stints and basically when your times up, you can either close your account and take whatever pot you have, or you can claim in back as shares meaning when the price is good, you can offer them up and not only get your cash back, but a tidy profit too. 

Well…Im currently in one of those, its set to expire relatively soon. And I don’t want to miss out on that “tidy profit” part of the deal. So regardless of my feelings on the issue. I’ve basically got to play nice for the next few months at least and hope I don’t get fired/let go between now and the tail end of THIS year. I also want to AT LEAST make it to June of this year without incident as that’ll be my 5th anniversary with the company which would also mark the longest job i’ve ever held down. Which given how turbulent everything is, is very much easier said than done. Basically, im asking for your thoughts and prayers on this one until at least around October time. After that I should be in the clear no matter what happens. 

At this point, Work is probably the most stressful, difficult part of my life. Which wouldnt be *so* bad if I wasnt stuck there 5 days a week for 7 hours a day. I really REALLY hope it improves because this is the first time in around 5 years that I’ve felt properly *pit of my stomach* unhappy at this place, a feeling I didnt think I’d feel again after my last job ended up hyper toxic and I left by any means necessary to get away from it. But here we are. Hopefully by this time next year when I do another blog there’ll be good news either way on this front. 

Home Life:

My home life over the last year and a bit has best been described as a mixed bag. Since my last blog I’ve had 2 christmases. Christmas 2021 which I would consider one of the best christmases i’ve ever had, and one of the most peaceful and relaxing ones to date. And Christmas 2022 which was pretty much a split room, with everything leading up to christmas being an anxiety ridden stressful and awkward time generally, and everything christmas day through to new years being surprisingly relaxing and “enjoyable enough.” So kind of meh and a bit underwhelming all things told.

I bring that up initially because I think it’s the best doorway to sum up where things are on the home front, for most of 2022 things have been kind of sort of okay, but in decline. On the downsides, both my Dad and my Mums physical health has deteriorated quite badly in the last 12 months. My dads not been the healthiest person in the world for a VERY long time now. And for most of 2022 he’s slowly gotten worse, his speech has deteriorated, he’s been falling over (a LOT) and he just seems constantly out of sorts. Which is very disheartening to say the least, my mums also having a few health issues and over christmas this year, at her job, a large number of unexpected absences due to covid basically left her on the line for 3 staff members workloads AND her own right up to more or less Christmas day. 

How does this tie into me? Well…apart from it being a rather unfortunate situation, it also meant that pretty much the entirety of my families christmas this year fell to me and my partner to sort out. We spend 3 days with my folks over christmas and despite repeated warnings against it as early as October this year, because of the health and job issues mentioned above, my family decided to “Put it all on red” and tried to go entirely for an “online” christmas this year, they ordered all the food, all the presents, the decorations…pretty much everything online. Aaaaand as predicted by me and my partner, on the 22nd of December we got a phone call off them panicked because all their decorations had been delayed due to postal strikes and *almost* all of their online food shopping had either been substituted for items that didnt cut the mustard, or were refunded due to being out of stock entirely. It meant that basically for most of the time between the 16th and 21st of December I was helping to sort mine and my partners christmas stuff out, then the 22nd right up to 11pm on the 24th of December me and my partner were basically on all day hunts for everything from christmas lights to sprouts.

We did it, just about. But it meant ultimately everyone at my place over christmas was either exhausted, unhappy, irritable, or a combination of the three. We shalnt be doing it again this christmas…I can guarantee that. 

BUT! This year wasnt purely a year in decline on the home front! It was actually a pretty good year for my partner, who after years of various mental health issues and a severe case of “not wanting to be alive anymore” was actually fully and formally diagnosed with EXACTLY what it is thats been causing her severe issues over the last 17 years or so. Shes receiving medication now and we’re hoping for some further treatments across 2023. Shes seen a MASSIVE quality of life change, and while we’re FAR from being out of the woods on that front and there still very much is a struggle. Shes at least feeling and functioning day to day better than she has in years. 

Its a kind of a given that with drastic changes on that front that there would be a little bit of tension here and there while things settle into a new routine, but it’s really given her a new lease of life and made things a lot stronger for it. 

Outside of the above however, lifes been pretty quiet on the home front. With the pandemic still raging (We’re apparently at the ‘Oh get over yourself’ stage of it now as hundreds continue to be hospitalised and die daily from it and China is staring down the barrel of a predicted 6-8 million deaths incoming) I’ve not really been up to all that much other than online stuff, going for the occasional walk (it’s good to touch grass sometimes) and at a VERY rare push, a trip to the cinema if I can find an empty enough screening. 

Part of me hopes that things will pick up over the next couple of years…part of me thinks it’s all about to kick off again…only time will tell. As for how things are right now. I find myself in a tremendously serine place honestly…like, where I am, for better or worse Im happy and comfortable. And have the means around me to remain so for a while yet *hopefully*

Technofear:

The only other thing really thats happened on the home front since the last blog is that 2022 really was kind of the year of the upgrade. With an impending recession/financial crash/technocratic dystopia on the horizon. I figured now would be the best time to upgrade as much of my regular kit as possible because, well…after the year thats just gone. Theres a distinct feeling of uncertainty in the air, and I’d rather tackle that with kit thats as up to date as possible, than go into a recession and potentially see the prices spike (or production slow) to such a point that I lose the chance to upgrade for the better part of another 3-5 years (being GENEROUS) 

So! To that end, I upgraded my TV, jumping from a 50 inch 1080p set I bought in 2019 to a 55 inch 4k bastard that can cut glass, I FINALLY retired my old PS4 after 6-7 years service, it made a noise like it was taking off and the controllers battery life was *roughly* 35 seconds on a full charge, but replacing it was a proper dedicated 4k bluray player, and a region free one at that! So importing movies? Not a problem anymore! This was the year I also finally took the opportunity to refresh my desktop. Which was a particularly sentimental moment. 

I’ve had a bit of an iffy relationship with computers for most of my life. The first computer I had was  LONG out of date and heavily used windows machine that was basically good for word processing and MAYBE playing the occasional CD on a good day if the planets were aligned. I was with Microsoft for the longest time, mainly on desktops for most of the 90s and 2000’s before finally moving on to using laptops around the mid to late 2000’s and almost every single ONE of them was absolute dogshit in terms of capabilities. The absolute worst being a 2007 Medion laptop I was gifted 2nd hand in 2010 which lasted (approximately) 12 months before it basically became impossible to use. When powering on, it sounded like an exploding jet engine. The boot up took AT LEAST 20 minutes. Long enough to go for a shower, make a cup of tea and have a good long stare at a wall. After about 3 months in university, random keys on the keyboard stopped working, meaning I had to copy and paste letters I was missing for a time and use “l33t” shortcuts where possible (My ‘I’, ‘O’ and ‘T keys all stopped working) it couldnt connect to external hardware (even when plugged in) it had to be wired in for internet access because the wifi card died, and after about 1 hour of solid use it would start making an alarm sound that was piercing before switching off for (at minimum) 15 minutes because it had overheated. But! I had no money at the time…so it was basically the best I could do (fuck using the university library computers) 

The reason I detoured so hard there was because it leads me to my actual point. Which was that as soon as I started to make actual money…like…money where I could actually go and buy things and DIDNT need to immediately spend it on rent/bills/food. The first thing I wanted was a reliable machine that WASNT absolute dogshit. So I saved solidly for around 7 months and picked up an imac. It was a 2013 model, at the time it was a decent little runner. I didnt go fancy with the customisations, but it was more than enough for what I needed it for. I used that imac for 7 years solid, battering it pretty much every day with everything from complex edits to live recordings and everything in between. And after 7 years of VERY heavy use, it still ran pretty decently. I mean…it was slow compared of the machines of today, edits would take over an hour to export for full reviews (and anywhere between 4-6 hours for commentaries) but; it worked. There was nothing fundamentally wrong with it. It just started to show its age a bit on what it *was* capable of. 

Which was why, this year, I decided to retire it. In part because of the above mentioned oncoming dystopia, and in part because I won a competition where the prize was £350 of apple store vouchers. SO! I grabbed one of the newest apple mac studios, and a decent 4k monitor to match, it BLOWS past edits. It can turn out fully cut reviews in under 25 minutes in 4k and it can do commentaries in as little as 45 minutes. I also grabbed a full license for Da Vinci resolve in the process. So barring incident or accident, I should in theory be set up now for the next 7 to 10 with a bit of luck. 

The last of the upgrades came over christmas when I decided to grab a new bed (I went for an ottoman bed, SO much more storage!!!) and I finally decided to retire my old 2nd monitor, which was a very temperamental 720p TV/DVD player combi machine that my sister gave me, free of charge which she herself had had since 2014. I swapped up to a huawei 1080p slim monitor that has MORE than done the job so far! As it stands I probably wont need to update anything else now until the end of the decade…which is a surprisingly nice feeling.

Politics:

Lets not go there shall we? I’ve never been a fan of saying “They’re all as bad as each other” but at this point, there isnt even a hint of one of the main parties pulling ahead on taste or decency, we’re burning through PM’s at a rate that could be registered in MPH, The bloody Queens Bloody dead, the conservatives are basically on death row and trying to rince the public purse as fast and diligently as a fat cat scarfing down as much of the christmas turkey as it physically can scarf before the family find it and eject it from the house via a boot to the arse from a 2nd story window. And the best the opposition can do is try and be as close ideologically to the conservatives as possible while occasionally somehow managing to out-Tory the tories. 

Theres a general election on the horizon (at some point in the next 12-18 months) and I literally have no idea who Im going to vote for at this time. In my area theres never really ‘Green party’ representation, not that im particularly pleased with them housing transphobes. But they’d be the ones i’d feel most confident going for given the current shower. Instead; in my area the representation will no doubt be: A Tory, Labour, Lib dem, UKIP, Reform UK and a smattering of independents who range from “Britain first” supporters to absolute loonatics who want to bring back public square executions or ban radio broadcasting because it turns people gay. 

Generally; when general elections come up, I’ll factor two things in, who is my local representative and who is my national representative. If I don’t like the national rep, i’ll vote on behalf of the local candidate and vice versa. In this election NON of the national candidates are suitable and while the local ones havent been confirmed yet, all the people who ARE currently listed as being the local reps for their respective parties are the same ones who ran at the 2019 election. And they were pretty much all a shower of shite as well. 

So at this point, im genuinely staring down a rather desolate barrel of either voting (somewhat reluctantly) for the greens (IF they bother to field a candidate in my area) OR spoiling my ballot (which is currently my most likely option) The only certainty in all of this, is that no good can come of this, and the next few years are going to be fairly interesting if you have to interact with it. 

Wrap up (predictions):

SO! Thats everything thats been going on in my world for the last 12-18 months. In some regards it’s been a pretty mundane run. I havent really gone anywhere, I havent really done anything and outside the world seems to have all but gone mad and collapsed. Into civil unrest and war. 2022 was a bit of a mixed year for me, with the opening half starting mixed to positive, moving to pretty much the perfect balance by the middle of the year, before slowly declining into stress and absurdity into the new year. 2023 almost seems like the mirror of this, starting, at first peacefully before getting a stress sledgehammer to the nards when I returned to work…Who knows how this year is going to turn out? Honestly, at this point? I havent a fucking clue. From where im sitting, 12 months from now I could be in a completely different situation, discussing completely different topics and non of this will matter. Equally I could be here 12 months from now saying everything stayed the same. 

Whatever 2023 brings, the only certainty is uncertainty, but…I hope that regardless of what happens…That both you and I find ourselves in the places we need to be, doing what we need to do and enjoying what time and freedoms we have while we have them. The one thing thats been on my mind now for the last few months is, this summer, I’d like to visit a beach. I havent been to the seaside in well over 2 and a half years at this point. I miss the sea. I miss the sand, I miss the change of scenery. Im hoping this summer to correct that. 

Whatever your hopes are for this year, go for it, start today if you can, and you’ll almost certainly succeed. A belated Happy new year to you all and, see you on the other side.

Dan.

by tytdreviews

Partially Reformed Content #3

So…It’s been a quiet year so far eh?…alright alright; it was an obvious gag but fuck me if we dont need SOMETHING a bit lighter going on around here…Jeez. between a worldwide pandemic, riots in the streets, murder hornets, waves of cicada’s, an almost super majority Tory government, the rise of white nationalism and the complete collapse of the economy. I find a lot of us are on the verge of a full blown Clark Griswold style meltdown…and at this point frankly; I dont blame anyone who does. We are quite literally the closest to the threshold of hell than almost any other generation currently alive. We’re a pressurised tank of pain and anger and at the time of writing (the 3rd of June 2020) and we’re on the verge of a full blown explosive outburst (If that hasnt happened already by the time this actually gets published.)

(VENT! BY GOD IT’S SO HEALTHY!!!)

So given that my last Blog was in February, a rosier time when the pandemic was barely on the radar (If it was on the radar at all) I thought now would be as good a time as any to flip my chair around, grab a beer and catch up with you guys via a good old fashioned “Partially reformed content” blog. To new comers (As I realise my site has had a bit of a spike in viewers of late) these blogs are a little bit of everything. Just a verbal stream of consciousness where I let you know where we’re up to with the show, whats going on in my life, a little bit of politics, a little bit of film making stuff…it’s the SPAM of blog posts, a bunch of shredded up loose threads compressed together into a solid slab of meat.

(It’s rich in mystery meat goodness…)

So! Kicking things off! Channel News! And Season 7 is almost over! Assuming this blog goes live when I intend it to then our newest review of “Sleepaway Camp” should have gone live on Friday! It was one I was particularly happy with and I think we’ve had a really solid run of Red Triangle episodes this season. In fact looking at the analytics this season has arguably been the most successful season I’ve made since I launched the channel back in 2017 and we’ve still got another 3 weeks or so to go! So thank you so much to everyone who’s supported me through the good times and the bad. I really genuinely could have done non of this without your continues support and love. It helps make every difficult edit, every multi day recording session, every stagnated upload totally worth it.

https://media.daysoftheyear.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=cover,f=auto,onerror=redirect,width=866,height=434/20171223125340/thank-you-thursday.jpg

(And I really genuinely and sincerely mean that!)

 

The season is set to end at the end of June at which point we’ll enter a 2 month hiatus while I continue to work on new material and for other reasons I’ll get into shortly. In the mean time work on Season 8 continues to pick up pace it’s looking like a 17 week run at this point (With scope for a couple of collaborative “off channel” reviews also scheduled in pending the current global crisis.) running from September to December. At the time of writing I’ve completed 15 of 17 scripts (Plus 2 collab scripts) and im hoping to write one of the final 2 scripts over the next fortnight. The 17th script is a bit of a bigger scoped project than usual…but it isnt due until the end of November so for now. That ones on hold while I work on other things.

Of the 15 scripts I have completed 14 have been recorded and of the 14 recorded 10 at the time of writing (15 by the time of publication) will have been fully audio edited and processed. Meaning I’ll be spending a good chunk of June and July video editing September and early Octobers content. Honestly? This seasons been one of the hardest to write for. It’s been quite ruthless and relentless just purely for the amounts of “Fixed” content I’ve had to work on. With the March to June run the whole things on me; I can choose what I want to watch, when I want to watch and how. September to Decembers a bit different as we have Halloween and Christmas demanding fixed content, thats 8-10 weeks worth of episodes (10 out of 17) that I had very little say over in terms of film selection or genre. Its arguably the only truely hard part of doing this channel, having to watch movies of a specific genre that you just arnt “Feeling” at that time, while also trying to maintain a level of professional critique.

(Not feeling the movies you need to review IS SO NOT A VIBE!!!)

Watching Christmas films in June or freebasing 5 Halloween themed movies one after the other can be seriously draining at times, but it’s a necessary evil, doing them now gives me time to make sure they’re super polished for release. PLUS it means I greatly appreciate the chance to talk about the genre movies I want to when the opportunity arrives. So while at times writing the newest season has been hard. I hope ultimately it was worth it as there are some absolutely KILLER titles coming up!

(Spoilers)

In terms of the Comedy Dining experience; Lockdown has been both a blessing and curse to it. On the one hand we’ve been able to record more commentaries during this lockdown than at any other point since we began working on the show (We now have commentaries lined up right the way up to December). The downside is that Ben (My cohost) is unfortunately a 70s bohemian by nature and as such doesnt really have/use a lot of technology. He has a laptop that by his own admission is over 10 years old at this point and overheats/switches off after 30 or so minutes use…he has a smart phone…thats about 5-7 years old with minimal to no features and the biggest issue? His internets shocking in terms of connectivity.

(Like this…but MUCH less Hipster-ey and MUCH more in tune with 70’s Dayglo)

 

As such while we’ve been able to record around 6 commentaries together over the last month, only 3-4 have actually been usable. Mainly because of drop out, bad mic quality and the fact that I’ve had to rig up a seperate machine on my end to record both mine and Bens conversations as He cant record any of his audio on his side. So as of the time of writing we’ve kind of put a bit of an unspoken hold on recording anymore until we can find a more solid work around. Though we’ve been talking about some new film ideas while this hold has been going on so as soon as we’re back up and running we’ll be hitting the road with wheelspin! Also; to close. Even though the latest Season of TYTD finishes at the end of this month, The Comedy dining experiences (Amongst other goodies) will continue to be published throughout July and August to help tide you guys over! So keep an eye out for them!

So thats the formalities out of the way; Dan! What have you been up to since the last time you spoke to us properly on December 31st 2019!? Well; Im glad you didnt ask! Home life’s honestly been a bit dull really; I was told by my place of employment to stay at home and to “Stay the fuck away from the office” in early March and about 2 weeks after that the country entered lockdown meaning other than shops and pharmacies everywhere is shut. As my parents and my partner are all classed as “Vulnerable persons” I’ve been spending most of the lockdown juggling work, the youtube channel and making sure they’ve got food, medicine and anything else essential they may need. That hasnt stopped my Dad (who’s arguably the most vulnerable of all my family) from regularly flouting lockdown to go to the shop himself…but I’ve warned him as much as I can and he’s chosen to take the risks. There isnt much more I can do there.

I’ve been trying to help out the wider community also while all this has been going on, helping provide shopping to the elderly and making sure that vulnerable people are not suffering in isolation. While I havent done as much as I’d have liked. I’ve done what I can. And now that the governments botched the lifting of lockdown restrictions my help is seemingly no longer needed…well not until the next wave flares up inevitably…

(He’s been warned…They’ve all been warned…ahhh…Goddamnit.)

Anyway! In terms of other events in my life, as regular readers may recall my partner is unfortunately not in the best of health. This was one of the reasons season 6 and 2019 ended up the way it did as I spent a large chunk of that year in hospital waiting rooms. Well so far this year she’s been holding relatively steady. There have definitely been ups and downs and right now we’re definitely in a down. But the extremes have definitely narrowed and she seems to be managing things at least a little bit better…which im incredibly thankful for. While we’re nowhere near getting her back to her old self at this point and the lockdown has definitely been quite detrimental to her progress in some regards. Theres a distinct feeling right now that things are moving in the right direction. Equally! We have a hamster now! His name is Newt and he joins our cat Zelda as being the joint 2nd cutest thing in our house (just behind me obvs.)

90263335_10156669644196650_4911334505005973504_n

(Just look at his lil face!)

Apart from DESPERATELY wanting a haircut (Seriously; I only have a few things that make me feel uncomfortable and during this lockdown i’ve learnt that long hair is one of them) everything else has been relatively stable. I’ve spent a lot of time catching up on my “To Watch” pile and working on the show. It’s been a bit like a mini vacation really as I havent had nearly as many people trying to drag me away from the things I love! In fact i’ve finally had such an abundance of free time I’ve finally been able to pull the trigger on a massive project that’s been at least 3-4 years in the making. My media room is getting upgraded.

(And Sweet merciful Jesus it’s about time!)

Im going to do a separate blog at some point documenting the transformation (And Im even hoping to stream some of the sorting through my films, records and books when It comes to repopulating the room) but the long and short of it is the room itself hasnt been totally ground up renovated since the 1970’s and hasnt been redecorated (Repainted) since 1998 because of the 70’s aesthetic I’ve always kind of been reluctant to do anything major with the place (As…well it’s 70’s aesthetic design…why on EARTH would I want to) but having now spent the majority of 2020 in here, It’s become clear to see that the place REALLY needs to have something done to it, faded wallpaper, holes in the wall, mould, burn marks, dust, dirt and cobwebs are just. EVERYWHERE. And the current layout and tech choices in here are dated to say the least. So from the middle of July I’ll be completely stripping the room back to the brickwork and over July and August we’ll be completely renovating the place both to modernise it and to make the place more film and media friendly. Im SUPER excited about getting started on this project as it’ll mean I’ll finally be able to pull out a good chunk of my stuff from storage and after 5 years of false starts and umming and ahhing I’ll finally have a room thats a bit more “Me”. I have no idea how long it’ll take to TOTALLY turn the room around and have it finished but the bare elements should all be in place by the end of the first week in August, Im ETA’ing that everything should be totally finished by early October. 2nd pandemic and lockdown permitting.

So thats everything personally relevant to me, what else….hmm! Well politically im starting to feel evermore homeless! Thats always a good feeling (Aside; it’s not) after nearly 5 years as leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn finally stood down as the leader of the Labour party in December 2019 after an election defeat so monumental it pretty much handed the keys to the country to a load of alt-right fascists for the next 4 years…seriously; they were just shy of a super majority based on the results and at this time there is NOTHING that anyone can do. Even if all the opposition parties united against the conservatives all it would result in is a comfortable victory to the tories…thats how fucked we are collectively right now. At the time of the defeat a majority of the reports claimed it was Corbyn himself and his radical lefty ideas of treating everyone as fairly as possible and not letting people literally die in the streets that led to the monumental defeat. Though it’s clear at this point that Xenophobia and Brexit were the main things that led to this defeat. In the interim while a new leader of the opposition was being selected a report was released into the antisemitism claims that have plagued the labour party since 2016, and while the report itself was kind of “Meh” in terms of actually saying anything we didnt already know. What WAS absolutely damning was that between 2016 and 2019 it was revealed right leaning members of UK Labour worked against the leader and the left wing of the party to purposfully throw the vote. This includes ringfencing members membership fees in order to run anti Corbyn propaganda and purposefully throwing the local and general elections in areas they had control in order to try and shake Corbyn off.

(…)

Yes. you heard me right; one side of the labour party, tried to purposefully ensure the other half lost and guaranteed a Boris Johnson victory because they didnt like the idea of a socialist government. When this document was released I was apoplectic. Blinded by rage and this hasnt been resolved even now nearly 3 months after it was initially revealed. And thats partially due to the fact that the new leader of the labour party was Keir Starmer. A member of the more right wing side of the labour party who CERTAINLY wasnt going to rock the boat over this because: A: He won and B:he needed to keep the people who got Corbyn out on side or else they’d do the same to him. As such we’ve now got a limp labour party that seems to be agreeing with the conservative party more than opposing it. Which at any other time would be horrendous. But NOW…JUMPING JESUS ON A POGOSTICK…its a wonder I havent become an alcoholic.

1476

(Pictured: Sir Keir Starmer QC)

At the moment theres been a lot of people banding about the idea that because of the lockdown Starmer hasnt really begun to flex his muscles…and some even bigger cretins who are actually trying to make out that he’s an effective leader of the opposition (Despite not getting his own house in order yet OR doing anything to actually oppose the current government charnel house.) I promised I’d give him a fair crack of the whip before giving up my membership. He’s got till September for me personally…so far. Im going to be saving quite a bit of money year on year if he carries on the way he has been. I certainly wont be voting for my local labour MP in the next election if he’s standing as the leader. Fuck that noise.

And that pretty much leads us back here to June 3rd 2020. The worlds on fire. Racism has been unbottled and we’re on the brink of a civil war which may or may not have gotten underway at the time of this publication. The whole situation is tragic, awful and barbaric. But ultimately not surprising. 400+ years of systemic oppression was eventually going to boil over at some point. People can only be held back, degraded and kicked for so long. And under a Trump presidency 4 years was the perfect catalyst and combination of elements to lead to these riots. To my US readers. I say support the protestors where possible. Donate money if you can, and do ANYTHING you can to take down the fash. Here in the UK I’ve resigned myself to the fact we’re a lost cause. 50k+ deaths, a know lying, philandering, racist, homophobic PM and 300+ MPs’s who are nothing but wadding to support the unsupportable have shown me over the last 12 months that the UK population is either too dense to accept change or too malicious to want it. But you guys in the US, with this act you’ve just rolled the dice. And I REALLY hope that meaningful proactive and positive change is born from the ashes of this horrible moment. Until then the world continues to burn, I continue to work…and well…im hoping that by December SOMETHING good will have come from all this.

 

Till Next time.

(The 12″ Mix of this has been stuck in my head now for the best part of 3 months…if I have to suffer; so do you…enjoy the middle 8.)
by tytdreviews

We’re all going to Die!!! – Part 2

With the European elections literally upon us I thought I’d take the opportunity to do a blow by blow through the political parties give my own political opinion on those parties and then finish off by telling how im most likely to vote (Given the availability of candidates in my area).

I’m in a bit of a difficult period of my life politically…not in terms of my affiliation. That’s easy. I would describe myself as a Left winger without a doubt. The difficulty arises in just how left wing I think I actually am. I first got into politics in the early 2000’s and having grown up in the north of England to a working class mother and a disabled but previously hard working father you’d think that they’d have drilled an affiliation into me from the off. And yet surprisingly they left me to find my own way for the most part. Which was kind of them though In hindsight I realize this is probably due to the fact that myself and they grew up around the arrival and departure of John major and the Rise of Blair and that, my parents having been raised to believe that the Labour party represented the people, had fallen for the Blair “Razzle Dazzle” hook line and sinker. And subsequently when the Iraq war happened they simply became disillusioned with politics on the whole and apart from the occasional Thatcher kicking never bothered to talk about it around me…

I would say I first properly became a fully active participant around  a year before the 2010 elections. Before that I’d been aware of politics…I’d followed it fleetingly and I knew the people I liked and the people I didn’t. it was the 2010 elections that set me into action because at the time the conservatives had a good chance of getting in and due to what knowledge I had at the time I knew if they did get in it would be a hell of time before they got out again (10 years and counting!) at the time I was still in latter day education but I tried my best to speak to as many people as I could about the dangers of voting conservative. There was a sweet girl I knew back then and her words rang like a death toll for me when I spoke to her about it. I asked her who she was going to vote for and she said “Im voting for the conservatives, they’re brilliant” I tried in vein to convince her otherwise…at the time I felt like I was living in a remake of “They Live” but instead of it being aliens it was bastards. Honestly I think it’s been a slow decline from there really…

I agreed with Kinnock at the time, I agreed with Blair for the most part at the time (Unaware of exactly what happened RE: Iraq until well after the fact) Brown I agreed with to a point, Milliband I considered radical. And I liked it…and then. There was Corbyn. And it was a bit like someone had pulled back the curtain to reveal a ton of options that had never been properly on the table before. It wasn’t so much that they were original ideas strictly…but they were policies that had only previously been offered by fringe groups, to hear it not only on the main political stage but that it was a viable option that had been costed and could equally actually be executed was like someone had connected directly with how I had been feeling. For years I’d voted either Labour or Green depending on who was standing or what atrocious acts were being committed. After Corbyn, I’ve been exclusively Labour.

At current I think I’d stop short of declaring myself an out and out socialist…I feel that’s a level of political affiliation that’s achieved rather proclaimed. And to that end I wouldn’t say I was a communist (Though I have been accused of that before now by a few people) I think Im quite far to the left…but I just cant quantify exactly where…I don’t know where my political identity properly sits at the minute…but honestly I don’t feel im really alone in feeling that way these days.

That leads us nicely into the European elections. For roughly 20 years we’ve utterly ignored it and now it’s come back to bite us on the arse like the crack in the side of our house we’ve been neglecting to the point that the house is on the verge of collapse. This ones quite an important one as it’s the last chance that the general public will have (Outside of a general election or a 2nd referendum) to tell the government and Europe at large exactly what we as the UK would like to happen in terms of our relationship with them both in the short and long term. So with that in mind I thought I’d pop my thoughts here both as a snapshot of my own thoughts at this time for reference (Because I cherish these so.) but also for anyone who would care what a random person on the internet thinks about the current shower of shite to grace our political spectrum. Im going to work from right to left because I feel that I have some bile I can spew right away that if I wait till the end of this blog may have dissipated by then. So!

 

(Oh yeh…this is going to be a musical journey)

UKIP: 12 months ago UKIP were dead. A party that was uninteresting until Nigel Farage got involved with them has now become the bannermen for the nastiest, vitriolic and cuntish kind to ever scar the face of this once beautiful land. This is in part due to Farage apparently being the lesser of two evils. Realising that racists, bigots and misogynists don’t often win the support of the majority, while he was never able to fully reign in the bastard force he was able to manage it better than anyone before or after him. When he left it created a power vacuum which has seemingly been filled by Ex-EDL member and all round Twunt Tommy Robinson who’s harnessed his connections within social media to pack the party full of uneducated and woefully pretentious youtube and twitter celebricunts such as Count dankula and Carl Benjamin (A.K.A: Sargon) in many ways I don’t know whats worse really that the party was dead 12 months ago and has somehow pulled itself back from the brink…or that it’s been able to pull itself back from the brink by filling itself with Xenephobes and White nationalists. Either way I sure as hell wont be voting for them. and unless I suffer an extremely severe brain injury that renders me incompetent I’ll be unlikely ever to. theres literally no incentive to vote for UKIP in these elections because…

 

The Brexit Party:  You’d think with a name like that I’d have put this on the furthest end of the right wing spectrum. But in all honesty from what experiences I’ve had with speaking from people affiliated with this party…they seem confused more than anything else. Genuinely their plans for what they want to do when they seize power seem to consist of:

Step 1: Get in power, leave with no deal ASAP.

Step 2: ???

Step 3: 1940’s Cockney Knees Up around the Johanna.

Which is funny because the EU elections will have almost 0 influence over Brexit and even less impact over the day to day legislation of this country…It mainly seems to be a protest vote party…and in much the same way that UKIP was destroyed the day the referendum result came in in their favour it’s fair to say that should this party get anything close to what it wants (Which is basically leave and nothing else)  that it too will be destroyed. Farage is once again working his magic to hide most of the more sordid elements of racism within this party (Its not really all that successful)

 

(This was arguably the weirdest thing I’ve seen in a very long time…let that sink in for a minute)

but they are (As of the time of writing) the most likely to win (Though I don’t think it’ll be quite the landslide people think it’ll be) and so theres a very real chance the message being sent to the EU from here would be a firm “We want out” which could prove quite unfortunate…

The Conservatives: They’re fucked. Right and royally fucked. As the government they’ve overseen some of the biggest falls in standards of living since wartime, they’ve killed thousands of people through cruel benefits means testing and embarrassing assessments (Both me and my partner have both been the victims of) and they’ve spent the last 3 years pissing up a wall and blaming everyone else for mistakes that they themselves are solely responsible for… and that’s only 2 of the many many many devastating things they’re personally responsible for over their 10 year rawdogging of the british public. We’re a country on the verge of collapse and it’s solely their fault. Anyone who supports them at this point is a cunt, deluded , selfish or so detached from politics that they literally don’t know it’s the tories that’ve been damaging the country beyond repair…which…if that’s the case…they probably shouldn’t be voting in the first place.

Change UK: So a few disgruntled Ex-Labour MP’s decided they wanted to try and dust of Blairism 2.0 and now we have this party…they have no policies (Other than they want to remain in the EU and they don’t like Jeremy Corbyn) they barely have a social media presence due to several issues with trying to secure their own name. and they don’t yet really stand for anything…I put them here purely because we don’t know what they stand for, they’re clearly not happy with a strong left wing ideology and they seem quite content with the center ground…it doesn’t help that the majority of their membership is made up of disgruntled tory MP’s who don’t like the conservatives current plan of just trying to leave with any deal they can muster.

The Liberal Democrats: pre their collaboration with the conservatives I almost considered voting for these shower of bastards at least once…then the coalition happened. Then the tripling of student fees happened, then the hollowness of all the things they promised for the last 2 elections happened…then Tim Farrow happened…then Vince “Mr. Burns” Cable happened…and finally then in 2017 the rampant attempt to demonise the labour party by any means necessary happened…and now I honestly have no feelings for the Lib Dems in any way shape for form. They’re nothing to me. they’ll always be nothing to me and I almost certainly will never vote for them for as long as I draw breath. In a twist similar to the Brexit party they’re seemingly running on a single platform which is to revoke article 50 and cancel Brexit. Which…I mean, is more in line with my own beliefs to a point. But then in the same breath they’ve said they’d happily form a coalition with the conservatives again over labour if they had the chance…so Fuck’em.

The SNP: I mentioned in my last blog that I Didn’t really know where the SNP stood…and that’s probably with good reason…I live in the north of England, I’ve never voted for an SNP candidate and frankly unless I move further north Im unlikely to ever vote for one. They’re a Scottish only party…so what I see and hear from them tends to be reported to me via English journalism…which more often than not describes them as “Tartan Tories”  they seem somewhat more sincere than the conservatives and do genuinely seem to be striving for things that will make Scotland a better place on the whole…though quite how convicted they are to those decisions I susppose no one will really know until they get anywhere near a wider scale of power…So honestly…I don’t know…I don’t 100% trust them, they have a lot of good ideas…but I trust them more than any of them jizz weasles that I’ve mentioned so far.

Plaid Cymru: I have literally no idea…Literally haven’t the foggiest we here in England only ever hear from these lot during election  season and quite honestly non of the representatives I’ve seen have ever been charismatic enough to leave a lasting impression…they just seem like a fairly mild mannered inoffensive party…I don’t distrust them…but I don’t know enough about them to make a call on them in any way shape or form…they’re a gray party in every sense of the word. (for similar reasons I’ll be missing out the DUP and Sinn Fein…only the DUP are a bunch of absolute fucks)

The Labour Party: Currently paralysed by the mercy of it’s leader the labour party is in a mixed place right now. the majority of labour party members want at minimum a 2nd referendum on Brexit and at most it’s revocation. The leadership however is stuck in a game to try and maintain it’s strong leave base in the north with it’s strong remain base in the south. There are elements of Brexit that would suit a socialist agenda (Predominantly centred around the idea of re-nationalisation of public utilities) As a result it’s come across as a bit half hearted…even though realistically the idea of playing the long game to find out exactly what the best port of call in dealing with this is seems like the most sensible option. Not helping matters the party is still in the midst of Soul searching as a result of years of “New Labour” changes the party is full of Center left people when the parties front bench is considerably more left wing…as a result theres a healthy back catalogue of incidents of infighting and anti-semitism aligations (Some of which I must stress are actually true) that have allowed the party to appear to many as incompetent…I will concede this party has had problems over the last couple of years. Though at the same time I do distinctly feel like it’s moving in the right direction overall…it needs a few firmer stances but ultimately I think they’re the most realistic choices out of everyone I’ve mentioned so far to be votable.

The Green Party: Probably the most left wing group that has any chance of making gains in this election and usually my fallback vote when the entire systems been fucked. the greens are a sensible and fairly rational choice. They have decent leadership  though while I agree with most of their policies that I’ve heard so far. I wouldn’t be the first person to accuse them of maybe being a bit fanciful in their requests…not that they’re wrong in what they want to do. Quite a lot of what they’ve suggested would improve the planet, peoples lives and improve our preservation rates…I just think trying to ask our current crop of people to make the adjustments needed to meet their policies just wont realistically happen. I have voted for them in past and I never say never…unfortunately in my area they very rarely field these candidates…though they’re always a safe 2nd option whenever they do field.

Independents: Fucked if I know mate. They run a full spectrum of actually quite reasonable (But largely untested) candidates who may actually do a pretty good job given the chance, through to absolute lunatics who think that radio signals can be used as a form of mind control…no seriously im not joking…below is the (Genuinely real…as if I could make this shit up…) actual manifesto of the “Abolish the magna carta” party…which ran in 2017…AD.

Our Manifesto is thus:
  • The Unsigned Illegal document, The Magna Carta, will be Abolished.
  • As good business people, our Queen or King will be head of Government and will attend Parliament as required, or as they wish.
  • Abolish Magna Carta, Reinstate Monarchy Party, fully intends to Nationalize and make profitable the Coal Industry, Electricity, Gas, Water, BT, National Lottery, Royal Mail, Post Office, BBC & Railways.
  • Abolish Magna Carta, Reinstate Monarchy will stop All Foreign Aid, and use this money to pay toward the National Debt.
  • Age discrimination will be punished with imprisonment.
  • V.A.T. Returns are time consuming and costly to business. It will be drastically altered along with Import and Export Taxation.
  • Council Tax will be abolished.
  • Unions will be outlawed.
  • Income Tax will be rearranged to make it fair to all and sundry.
  • Employment Law will be reduced to give Employers their right to choose whom they employ and how much each employee is paid.
  • Maternity Pay, Paternity Pay, and Sick Pay will be abolished.
  • Employment linked Pensions will be abolished, and Employees will be encouraged to make their own Retirement Savings Plans.
  • Maternity Leave will not guarantee future employment.
  • Government Pensions will be paid only to those who work and pay National Insurance Contributions.
  • The Workhouse will be reinstated for vulnerable people.
  • Grammar Schools will return. Sex education will be abolished.
  • All Schooling and Education will be paid for by parents.
  • All Police Officers will pass tougher exams before recruitment.
  • Many Royal Mail workers will be recruited from Ex Servicemen.
  • Nuclear Power will be banned.
  • Fracking will incur imprisonment.
  • Laws, Courts, and the Prison Service will be reformed.
  • All Benefits to Asylum Seekers and Immigrants will be stopped, and All will be repatriated back to their country of origin, All other Nations will be encouraged to repatriate their English, Welsh, Irish.
  • Asylum Seekers, Immigrants, Their Ancestors & Descendants will be removed from
  • All Banks, NHS, Government & All Security positions.
  • Human Rights Laws will be abolished.
  • Churchill will be charged with Treason and causing the deaths of thousands of little German School Children when he bombed Dresden.
  • The ethnic origins of All members of Government will be checked.
  • The Israeli terrorist Karl Marx will be charged with Treason and causing the Paris Revolution and the end of the French Monarchy.
  • Blair family Assets will be confiscated & paid to Hussein’s family.
  • Compensation will be paid to Dwarves created by Thalidomide.
  • Dentists, Optitions & Hearing Specialists will be taken out of the NHS. Doctors & Surgeons will have pay reductions, & many restrictions as regards dangerous medications to patients.
  • All child Benefits will be abolished to restrict society burdens.
  • Every Nation on this planet needs Ethnic Cleansing as the terrible Israeli Karl Marx, Winston Churchill, Sigmund Freud, Abu Hamza etc., proves.
  • Radio, TV, Films, Writers & Reporters will be regulated.
  • The Death Penalty for anyone using a Radio Signal to kill or control another human being or animal, except in warfare.
  • All Pornography, Homosexuals, Transvestites etc. will be removed from Films, Plays, Radio, Television etc.
  • Asylum Seekers, Immigrants & their descendents will not be allowed to own or work in any British Radio, TV, Newspaper or Magazine.
  • Asylum Seekers, Immigrants & their descendents will not be allowed to work in any food preparation, Medicine or Pills or Vaccines manufacture or preperation, to prevent sabotage.
  • Chemical Castration for Paedophiles and Murderers.
  • Asylum Seekers & Immigrants, their ancestors & descendents, must not be allowed to assess or check any school, college or university exams in the UK as this may be detrimental to Welsh or English students.
  • All Company Law will be drastically altered in favour of the Employer.
  • Unemployment Benefit claiment time will be cut to a minimum.
  • All disabled parking spaces will be banished.
  • Blue Badges will be obsolete and cancelled.
  • Housing Benefit will be discontinued.
  • All Irish Traveller sites will be closed, and All Irish Travellers, their ancestors and descendents will be repatriated back to Ireland.
  • We will Not sell Arms to other nations.
  • The British Armed Forces will be for our defence of the UK only
    British Armed Forces will Not interfere in other nations disputes.
    The British Armed Forces will Not train other nations in warfare.
  • British Armed Forces can be hired, Payment first, at their discretion, to help in natural disasters, rescues, etc, as they see fit.
  • British Armed Forces will be manned by indigenous English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish Nationals only.
  • Judges will no longer be able to promote their friends, colleagues, or favourites to be judges. The vacancies will be applied for as ordinary jobs and an IQ test will be used to assess the suitability of the applicants.
  • Psychiatrists and Mental Health workers will have a higher IQ than the patients they pretend to be superior to.
  • Drug addicts will no longer receive free treatment via the NHS for their addiction.
  • The NHS will be abolished, along with all the scams that go with it.
(Fuck me…)

All I know is I very rarely if ever have ever considered them…and with an exception where one of my relatives ran at my local council I’ve never really voted for any.

So that’s a quite biased but general run through of all the parties I can be bothered to talk about, how will I be voting myself?; Well. It depends on how many candidates im allowed to vote for. Had this been any other type of election I’d have probably put a lot of thought into things and chosen people based on their merits. However; in the current climate tribalism is everything so I’ll most likely be voting Labour straight through in this election. If I can choose multiple candidates and the green party are on there, as a person who voted remain I feel like I may spare a vote for them too, But  i’d say im predominantly labour driven these days. But their stance on Brexit while reasonable does somewhat disagree with my own views which is that we should be trying to stay within Europe at all costs. And while I’ll never vote LibDem…I may be tempted to spare one for the greens because of this.

So happy voting day everyone. I hope you all go out and exercise your democracy in whatever way you see fit. If you dislike my opinions posted here…please remember that they are only my opinions and that im some twat on the internet…so don’t worry about me too much. Just get out this season and vote! And till the next election! I’ll be trying my best to keep my head down and hope this all. Just. stops.

(Yay…Democracy…I guess…)

 

 

by tytdreviews

We’re all going to Die!? – Part 1

I always debate doing political blogs. I’ve had a few ideas mooching around now for the last few months but ultimately they’ve always come across as a bit malformed or they wernt worth the potential controversy that publishing them would create. Not to mention that this is a Film website that predominantly deals with awful movies. But I am quite politically minded, it plays a part in my life and these blogs tend to be a bit more personal and a bit less filmy…so with that in mind and with the European elections rapidly upon us this seems like as good a time as any to take a general look over the political landscape.

(Speaks for itself)

This will of course be a biased breakdown because I think it’ll make for tremendously boring reading if I just impartially rattle through whats going on. So without further ado!

Overview:

We’re fucked.

Real Overview:

Okay, okay…well…being in the UK is pretty grim right now politically. Since the vote that must not be named In 2016 the media and even our current government have tried their absolute damndest to radicalise the people pressing for us to leave Europe. (Under the guise that those crazy liberals who’ve been ruining everything by being PC now want to press for us to stay in a system that’s taken away your bendy banana’s and want to ban conkers being played in school) While Simultaneously trying to splinter the people who want us to remain part of the European Union via demonization of certain politicians through the media and by giving off the appearance that some parties are “More in favour of remaining than others”.

The combined anarchy of the rabid frothing masses on both sides was entertaining at first but the more you dig into it the more deeply troubling it becomes. It’s effectively become a smokescreen to our democracy, with the majority of policies that arnt related to us leaving Europe being pushed to the back of the cue, while less savoury bills are passed under the radar without note. Party politics has taken center stage in a game of chicken where the loser is disintegrated. I could have written that overview at any time in the last 2 years but quite recently we’ve seen the launch of the…Ugh…”Brexit Party” led by Nigel Farage; the personification of the stereotypical corrupt politician bought to life. Hell I could dedicate an entire blog post just to his sordid and strange history but for your sanity and mine I wont here.

(#Suffering)

Note that I purposefully haven’t decided to assign Leavers and remainers “Right” and “Left” titling here and that’s because our leaving the European Union runs deeper than political affiliation. It’s a social issue more than anything else, it’s been dressed up, dressed down, simplified and purposefully complicated and yet no matter how much people pontificate about what it actually means the reality is that it boils down to 2 very clean cut issues that are:

*Do I want people from Foreign countries in my country

And

*Do I want people outside of my direct electoral control to tell me how to live my life.

Now. The former of those questions is just a clean cut question of racism. Considering we emigrate (345,000) out more people than we immigrate (283,000) in here in the UK this really shouldn’t even be an issue. But unfortunately it is… My own opinion is that while basic checks on anyone wanting to come into the country should be carried out there should be no limit to the amount of people who want to come in to or leave the UK. Equally I can understand the mindset of people who suggest setting a reasonable quota on immigration and emigration. I don’t necessarily agree with those people, but I understand them.

The people I don’t understand are the “Drawbridgers” the people who’ve been saying “Britains full” since about the late 70s and if anything have only got more isolationist since then. I also tend to bundle the “Unreasonable quota” people in with these lot too as they seem to believe that saying “Only allow 100 immigrants in” seems like any kind of a justifiable way to run a country. You’d think these kind of people were in small numbers but the reality is they’ve been steadily increasing over the last 4 decades thanks to the absolute Arse rag that is The Daily Mail fabricating stories about immigrants taking jobs, killing and raping people and generally being an shit trumpet to anyone who doesn’t vote conservative. Combining this with the recent rise of groups like “The EDL”, “UKIP” and individuals like Farage, Boris, Robinson and Reese Mogg.

(Group Selfie Guys!)

A lack of education and engagement and an unwillingness to try has ultimately left a large swathe of the public terrified of anyone non british through fear that they’ll either offend someone and face criminal charges, or that these people plan on stripping the country of anything that isnt nailed down. Which is of course ludicrous given that the british themselves are a mongrel nation in terms of our ethnic background.  But unfortunately until theres some kind of seismic shift in favour of getting to know thy neighbour it’s a mess that’s only going to get worse unfortunately.

The latter question is a bit more understandable but still falls down after the slightest bit of scrutiny. Politics in the UK as of 2019 is arguable one of the most fractured and diverse seen in this countries history since the world wars at least. If not earlier. And this is a problem. Under any other system of voting diversity would be fantastic. But due to a total lack of equal representation in our parliament it effectively means that we’re somewhat stuck in a two party system where it’s either a case of “Conservatives” or “Labour”, Blue or red and anything else doesn’t really matter unless we end up in a hung parliament in which case ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING MATTERS.

(You guys need to get into “It’s always sunny” if you havent already…it’s amazing)

As a result a lot of people feel terrifically unrepresented because while there is pretty much a party to suit every flavour and taste these days, your votes worthless because unless you vote for one of the two main parties noone else is likely to win. And even when smaller parties do make marginal gains, the government (who actually win generally) choose to ignore that because they didn’t win enough to actively challenge them. This is predominantly where the left find themselves. You have Labour, the lib dems, the green party, Change UK, Plaid Cymru and to a lesser extent the SNP (a party I still haven’t really got the full measure of, but that just seem a bit…off…)

Because there are 6 parties that would claim to “Represent the left” all on a sliding scale of “Socialist” through to “Well…We’re not the conservatives!” the biggest issue that the left has always faced is splintering of votes. In fact if even 3 of the more left leaning parties pooled their support together there would be an overwhelming majority left wing government in power right now (And this would have been the case for a majority of the countries history). Unfortunately due to infighting and disagreements over minutia this hasn’t happened in decades and is unlikely to happen any time soon. And as a direct knock on of this watering down of the votes it means that the left is in a perpetual nightmare of forever wanting to change things for everyone for the better but being too principled to sacrifice any ground to anyone who doesn’t agree with them entirely on even the smallest policies.

The Right by contrast don’t tend to have that issue as much. They have the inverse issue really. They actively want to make their own lives and the lives of the immediate people around them better while sacrificing any ground they can to ensure that happens to the further right but not an inch to the left. anyone else? Well they can “Get fucked”. The current government is the right wing “Conservative party” and their biggest issue at the minute (And one that seriously threatens to demolish them) is 2 fold.

*The Rise of the “Brexit party” and “Ukip” has started to leech them voters in droves. Because:

*There current policy on leaving the European union has gone down about as well as a turd in a swimming pool with the far right of the party leaping over to “BP” and “Ukip” while the more middle ground of the party have fled to the Lib Dems.

Why is their plan such a bad one? That’s down to how brexit was defined in the referendum. The binary “In or out” approach has ultimately led to people claiming they voted for every shade of brexit feasible. People voted for unicorns and are now mad that they didn’t get the exact unicorn they were promised (Even though no unicorns were ever described to these people). As a result the conservatives (Tories to our US readers) are effectively frozen in an even worse perpetual nightmare than the left. petrified to do anything firm lest they accidentally cause an uprising of people who want to leave or people who want to stay. On the one hand they face a revolution that will likely see them out of power near permanently and the installation of pure facism at the heart of government. On the other they see an uprising likely to completely segment the country, equally destroy them near permanently probably resume some level of peace and ensure arguments are had back and forth about what is to be done for generations.

How does this tie into the second point I raised earlier? Well the people who no longer wish to be part of Europe who claim that it isnt a racist thing usually point to the fact they don’t want to be “Bullied by Brussles” the idea being that they don’t like the idea of being told by bureaucrats in Europe what they can and cant do in Britain. They believe the UK should govern itself in the sense that the only people who should be allowed to make the rules are the government, the queen and sometimes the public (Unless the public give the wrong answer…whatever the hell that means) and that “Unelected” representatives are converse to british values. Forgetting of course that we do have elected representatives in Europe and that theirs literally a vote on who gets to go in next week (the 23rd of may)

This has been a long misunderstood element of Europe. We have MEP’s…people who represent us in the European parliament, who are (In principle) supposed to carry british interests at heart. The problem is in typical british style, noones been bothered about them until this one that’s coming up. Most people didn’t bother voting in them in the past and as a result for the best part of a decade  (If not 2 decades at this point) we’ve allowed the ardent Europhobes to conquer these elections on a regular basis. And as a result we’ve been sending a violently anti EU party (UKIP) to represent us in Europe… and you can imagine how well that’s gone down over the years.

To that end, we as a nation have pretty much spent 15-20 years refusing to work with Europe in favour of working against them, purposefully proposing changes to legislation that will only benefit a few of the wealthiest in society and effectively giving them the finger whenever they ask anything of us. We have only ourselves to blame for the utter disdain Europe has for us from a political standpoint.

Am I going to say the European union is faultless? No. it has issues and there are corruptive elements at play. But our own government make them look like choir boys in comparison and ultimately I’d say it’s better to try and rectify issues while working with Europe, than to say “Au revoir” and get into a system under a conservative government that’s shown to be actually fatal to people…as in the government are aware they’re killing people…but are choosing to do nothing (Or almost nothing) about it.

The Reality of the situation is that years and years of persecuting minorities have finally taken their toll on the very government who attempted to weild it as a weapon. Like a version of the Midas touch but instead of gold it’s turds everything any party currently tries to do now is set to cause pain suffering and trouble for anyone involved one way or another…

Or to put it more succinctly. We’re Fucked. At least for now.

(Well…things cant get much worse…)

I intended to actually go into detail about the European election parties and how I was going to vote in this blog but I got so distracted on the backstory that I actually never got round to it…so in the next blog I’ll pretty much be talking about that. Bye!

 

by tytdreviews

Partially Reformed Content – #1

This ones going to be more of a ramble than an actual full formed blog today. The truth is that I’ve had a lot of small things on my mind recently and no one thing is fully formed enough to make a full formed post out of it. As a result this one may flit a little bit from topic to topic. But reformed blog content is a bit like reformed meat. It might not sound appetizing but damnit if it isn’t somewhat delicious as a sandwhich with a bit of tomato and salt. What im trying to say is; Im not exactly the most coherent person at the best of times. So this will actually be even more of a step down in terms of structure from my usual content.

(For anyone curious about what “Reformed Meat” is…)

I say that both as a warning and as a bit of a reassuring way for me to be open. Some people get annoyed by my chronic misuse of grammar and spelling, my flyaway structuring or my generally chirpy (If not slightly moany) attitude. So I completely appreciate it if you come here expecting even more film talk only to find me rambling about my Job or about anime or (As is the case here) a load of half thoughts that don’t really fit together. That kind of leads me into my first point really…

When I started this site There were three real motivations to do it. First and foremost I liked the idea of being able to blog about things that were off the beat and path of my regular content. While I love making the content that I do on my youtube channel I will admit that it can occasionally be a bit creatively stifling in the sense that I don’t really feel entirely comfortable making “Non film” based content on there. I’ve been umming and Ahhing about making some video game related content for a while but one of the big things stopping me is that I know that you dear reader (Along with a large chunk of the people who watch my stuff and arnt reading this) appreciate my film stuff and probably wouldn’t appreciate me badly talking over a video game play through I even considered making a separate channel just for gaming videos but when I realised that I barely have enough time to work on my other shows like “The comedy dining experience” or “Short film Spotlight” that it would be way too much trouble to try and grow an entirely separate channel (At least not until I’ve grown my main channel a little bit more).

The Second reason was that I thought by setting this site up I’d probably be able to have a better line of communication with you guys. I can talk to you through youtube comments but here it’s kind of a home turf. It means that I can engage with you all directly and hopefully be a bit more personal with you all about my life and where im going. Just watching my videos will give you one impression of me, I don’t want to be too personal in those videos because you come for the reviews not to hear about my life! That’s why I decided having a little space on the internet where I can talk to you all directly (Like this) would be a good way to give you a more well rounded idea of how things are going behind the scenes…That and I’d like to think that you lot would be equally fairly open with me because of this.

The third (And this is probably the most corporate reason) was that it gives my content a bit of a boost search wise. Im not gonna lie. Being a small channel on youtube has its highs and lows. On the one hand it means I don’t have pressure to produce content; Im not battling a tide of messages on social media and im given a lot of free room to shape my content. On the other hand though it means that the youtube system is set to work against me in terms of pushing my video out there and while my traffic is very good in relation to my sub numbers at this point; im still about 15 subscribers away from breaking 100 after 12 months on the platform and that can be a little bit draining when you spend a large amount of your downtime pushing your videos across various social media and when im not doing that im editing. So I figured that by setting up a site where I can publish my videos somewhere different from my youtube channel it gives the “Stumble upon” factor a bit of a boost while at the same time increasing the odds of people finding my content. Currently I share to 5 or 6 message boards, 2-3 facebook groups, 2-3 reddit feeds and here. that means that instead of my video just being hosted in one place (My youtube channel) it ends up being hosted on 13 places a week potentially. That gives me quite a bit of extra reach and can make the difference between someone subscribing and somebody never seeing my channel.

Screen Shot 2018-06-17 at 18.08.11

(While it isnt the highest figures n the world, since starting this site and pushing more on social media I’ve slowly started growing.)

I’ve only ever had 1 goal in terms of growth for my youtube channel and that was 100 subscribers. I had a couple of soft goals, I quite liked the idea of hitting 50 subscribers before I made my first year on youtube (Which I Succeeded in) and I also would have quite liked to have done better with my new channel than I did with my old channel over 10 years ago (Something I achieved last month). But they were spur of the moment goals really, Not something I aspired to from the off. The 100 sub goal was something I always wanted to achieve. Mainly because I wanted that sexy custom URL. Most youtubers moan about wanting to get monetized and wanting to be able to work full time on youtube. And while I can see an appeal in that I know that its both something im not majorly interested in currently and also that its something that’s completely off the table at this point anyway. I can take my time growing past 100 subscribers, but to hit 100 to me at least would be a sign that what I do is viable, that people DO want to see the kind of thing I put out. Not of course to diminish the wonderfulness that my current subscribers have bought me. Seriously if you’ve subscribed to my channel im tremendously grateful and I’ve made some wonderful friendships out of doing what im doing. But once I hit that goal I’ll feel somewhat legitimized I think. (It’ll also mean that I can finally start advertising my channel URL directly to people because at the minute having to share “Youtube.com/SIUFNHWIOUWijnijunbadspIOHNIUD242390” is a damn site less professional than being able to share something a bit shorter and neater looking…

Screen Shot 2018-06-17 at 18.10.20

(Its getting very very close now! If your reading this and want to help a guy out I’d be tremendously appreciative!)

As an epilogue to the recent blogs I made “A new career in a new town” parts 1 and 2; Tomorrow I finally start my new job. I’ve been kind of hesitant to talk about my last few days with my old company but now that I’ve left I do feel a bit more comfortable talking about it. When I told my Boss I’d got the job he was surprisingly calm about the whole thing…Maybe even a bit surprised that I’d actually decided to up and leave. In hindsight I’ve taken it as he was either caught off guard and didn’t really know what to say about it so he had to try and keep it professional by being overly polite about it. Or that he was genuinely sad that I was leaving and wanted to keep things as amicable as possible. The remaining 4 weeks I spent at the company were pretty much quiet. My Boss and the remaining senior staff said very little to me during this time and whenever I needed to talk to them (Regarding holidays, sick leave, my P45) they were overly accommodating. Again im not sure whether this was because they were genuinely being nice or whether they were maybe trying to make me feel bad by trying to demonstrate what I was walking away from (i.e killing me with kindness) They let me have additional time off, they were happy to let me leave 4 days earlier than my notice period would allow and on the day that I left they told me I’d be welcome back at any time and that I’d be getting an invitation to there next works Christmas “do”. In short they made me feel very sad to be leaving them…whether this was intentional or not though I couldn’t honestly say. On the last day they told me they’d written my reference “But they wernt sure what the definition of serial murderer was” they laughed as did I but I couldn’t help again feel there was some malice in what was being said (One of the main reasons I was leaving was because of problems I’d had with them defining parts of there contract…so I wasn’t sure if this was a jab or just them having a joke) Equally there parting gift was a book entitled “Stories for boys who dare to be different” again. I wasn’t sure if this was supposed to be a coded jab at the contract issue or just a comment on the fact that in real life im a bit of a jittery eccentric sort. I shook everyones hands, I had a raft of facebook friend requests and then I stepped out ready to start my “New career in a new town”.

(Love this instrumental. while it’s no “Sound and vision” its one of my fave tracks off this album)

I have fond memories of working at my old place. I’ll miss it terribly in terms of my co-workers, the ease of the job and the routine. But at the same time I don’t think I’ll ever be able to separate those happy memories from those tinged bad times which is a real shame. It was inevitable that would have to leave there at some point. I just wish it had kind of been more definitive rather than several reformed arguments and stress inducing moments coagulating into a slab of not wanting to be there anymore. Im excited for the challenge that my new job will open up but at the same time Im right now dealing with some internalised issues. I wonder whether I’ll take to the job. I wonder whether I’ll make any friends or whether ill be the loner of the group. I wonder how im going to sort out the situation with Parking (my new employers have a deal with the local council to enforce a permit based system for parking in the local area and if you park anywhere within a 2 mile radius of the main office without a permit you can get into serious trouble apparently)Which is going to be fun as I don’t really have any direct means of getting in if I cant park there. I have some stress around finances at the minute because over the next 3 months my pay is going to become a bit strained (I’ll get half a pay check at the end of this month, half a paycheck in the middle of next month and then a month and a halfs paycheck at the end of August…which is going to be bitty and difficult to manage (Though I know in the long run, if the job takes, that I’ll be significantly better off) It’s the usual first day jitters but in these turbulent times I really just want things to work out as much in my favour as is possible. In short while my old job had some set in rot that slowly made the position untenable, the new jobs got a load of instant problems that’ll be resolved slowly over 3-4 months one way or another. I just hope that in 3 months time when I’ve properly settled in I’ll be able to blog on here about my wonderful situation and how I made the right choice…

(Pictured: Hopefully, me.)

On to more positive things however! Labour Live! A big festival held in London celebrating art, creativity and most importantly Jeremy Corbyn. Now. being up front and honest I think that music and politics should go together like Church and state (I.e: they shouldn’t) And I wasn’t particularly enamoured to the idea of this when they first announced it. However at the same time I realised that there are some people out there who’d really enjoy this kind of thing and im not going to stand in the way of a good afternoons entertainment. I thought £35 was a bit steep mind. And I did think the line up was a bit less than steller. But overall “Eh; it’ll do as well as it’s meant to do…” initial reports looked very sketchy about how many ticket sales there had been for this festival. Indeed as of a fortnight before the event itself papers like “The Mail” were reporting only 3000 of the 20000 tickets for the event had been sold and they were laughing it up good and proper. I kind of felt a bit embarrassed and in some ways I still do about the fact they had to slash ticket prices and offer them for free to people who were in Unions. But at the same time as I live in the north of England I was left kind of thinking “Well what did you expect!?” they held an event in a rather obscure part of London, charged a fortune to get in and hired bands that were fairly low key and then were worried it didn’t sell very well…

(If it had been closer and cheaper i’d have probably gone…Labours a northern party traditionally so holiding a festival in the south seems a bit counter productive to me…)

The reality of the day was quite a bit different. Instead of 3000 unshaven sack wearers turning up there was actually closer to 13000 people. All of whome were ramped up for some good old politicking! Which was a nice turnaround as I was expecting something closer to an absolute disaster. Everyone seemed to have a lovely time and everyone seemed to be hoping there’d be another one next year. And while that didn’t stop the right wing papers from turning up the second the doors opened, snapping an empty field and going “AHAHAHA!!! See! Empty! AHAHAHAAA!” the pictures from later on in the day definitely showed that while there may not be a market for a “Labour Live 2” there was an appetite still for the kind of politics that prompted something like Labour Live in the first place.

(What the Daily mail reported as “The Turn out for Labour Live” vs what the actual turnout was like)

I think generally at this point everyones fed up with the sniping and political conniving that has taken place over the last 3 years. We’re fed up of trump, fed up of Brexit, fed up of the left wing, fed up of the far right wing. And in these times I think it would be quite easy to think that it would be better off if we just retreated back to the homoginized lump that was center ground politics. That now mythical time between 1997 and 2005 where yes both the UK and the US were going down the toilet still. But at a significantly slower rate than we were under thatcher and an exceedingly slower rate than we currently are under May. Its easy to forget however that in the UK specifically we haven’t had a far left leaning government now for approaching 50 years. And that if you keep voting for right and center field candidates, then complaining that the countries going to the dogs. Your kind of answering your own question. Nowadays the working and middle class are fed up. They’ll vote for the option likely to cause the most damage to the country not because they believe it’ll benefit them but purely because they know that in doing so they’ll give the government a bloody nose. Maybe even make them leave…at which point the public will inevitably end up voting in another right wing government thus making the wheel spin once again ever out of there favour…its madness really…

I think the main problem we currently deal with lies in the fact that we’ve effectively polarized the population. Its either a case of you think people should be able to say and do whatever they want with no ramifications whatsoever or you think that you should sacrifice some of that freedom in order to make the world generally a much nicer place to live in, and that’s it. Theres no budging on that. Your either happy endorsing racist, mysoginistic and homophobic beliefs because you think free speech at any cost is necessary. Or your living in 1984 and you don’t think anyone should be allowed to say anything offensive because everyone should be allowed to have a safe space. Its all bollocks if you ask me (And one of the main reasons I retreated to the safety and comfort of the internet where I can hang around with people who are tonally on my level and experience both ends of the political spectrum on my own terms as and when) I don’t agree with the far right because. Well I don’t think unfiltered free speech has ever been a good idea. Equally I don’t agree with the far left because I don’t think being 100% accommodating is a practical endeavour to strive for. As for the center ground?…well I don’t agree with them because I don’t think they’re left wing enough and the right wing elements put me off…so I kind of drift in and out of the far left of the spectrum. Tentatively labelling myself a socialist though not feeling like I’ve done enough to earn the title. Its because of the last 3 years that I’ve stopped judging people on there political beliefs and started judging them by there actions. And I’ve found my life somewhat more enriched for it. I have friends now who are conservative but who do extraordinary things for charities, wouldn’t hurt a fly and are constantly out trying to help the homeless and minority groups. Equally I have a bounty of friends on the left who couldn’t be more considerate human beings. By judging a person on the contents of there heart over the contents of the ballot box I’ve been able to make more meaningful relationships in my life. and yes we don’t have to agree on everything politically, and yes there’ll be heated arguments at times. But It doesn’t matter when, after all is said and done, we can put that aside and enjoy a nice night above politics.

(These Twunts need to go away mind…I have neither the time nor the patience for them…)

Other bits of news…well I recently did my first Dumpster dive for VHS tapes. a house a few doors down from me was chucking out a load of stuff as they are in the process of moving and one day while walking down to my car I noticed a massive bag of VHS tapes sitting in there. I tried to get permission to take them but they were out so I quickly skimmed through the contents and came away with 2 tapes (Most of them were football tapes or films I’d already got). In many ways its kind of a “Right of passage” in the VHS community to dumpster dive. Charity shops don’t accept tapes these days so trying to get your hands on them outside of the trading community can be kind of difficult. I hope it wont be my last Dumpster diving experience. Though equally I hope that I find more next time than dog ear’d sell thru copies of “Resevoir Dogs” and “From Dusk Till dawn” .

(Hardly the biggest and best find in the world. But hey for a first dive to find at least 2 things I like in amongst a load of football tapes was quite a plesent feeling…)

I recently sat down with my good friend Ben to once again record some new “Comedy Dining experiences” we intended to do 3 full commentaries and while the first 2 came out fine, the last one was a mess. It was nearly 3 in the morning and we were both very tired. So I may end up supercutting that one just to get the best bits out of it. We’re hoping to do another one in July sometime though in the mean time it’s a bit more of a case of “Watch this space” than anything else.

(Heres our first episode together if anyones interested…)

After writing this blog post im pretty much going to spend the rest of tonight working on the last script of season 4, and script editing/recording 3 new episodes of my show to go out some time in August. Im currently working on a collaboration that’s proving to be a lot of fun and I cant wait to share it with you guys as and when it gets finished. Then its just a case of filling in the last of the paper work for my new job, getting my outfit ready and trying to get an early night in so I can be as bright eye’d as possible for tomorrow.

And I think that’s everything for now. im sure I’ve missed some points I really wanted to talk about but for now I think this is a good place to leave you on. I’ll probably do another one of these in a couple of weeks but in the mean time thank you for taking your time to read this and I hope you have the best week it’s possible to have in June.

(While not entirely relevent to this blog I’ve been listening to this for the last 2-3 weeks constantly…that guitar hooks waaaaay too damn catchy!)
by tytdreviews

Socialist Training Wheels (Part 2) The Harvest

So this was a long time coming, and now totally irrelevant but I’ve finally been able to get some time together to sort out Part 2 of my promised look into the Local elections. The last time I wrote about politics like this I was slowly nursing an alcoholic beverage and I feel that by the time I was at the end of it, I was probably a bit too far gone to be able to meaningfully convey my feelings about the local elections.

(I probably wasnt that far off this by the end of part 1…)

I feel now however that the time to talk about the elections in an analytical way has somewhat passed me by. Obviously its no secret that Labour (While not overachieving) more than held there own and made overall gains in large swathes of the country. The conservatives made a few gains and the liberal democrats seemingly cleaned up quite nicely in the wake of  the collapse of the UKIP vote. However to read the papers the morning after the polls closed you could be led to believe that the labour party had completely disintegrated overnight. They failed to seize several major targets and as a result the night was a failure for them. Except…it wasn’t really…y’see, those “Major targets” wernt initially set up by Labour, they were set up by the newspapers. They were the ones who were right off the bat publishing that Labour would be able to seize control of local councils that hadn’t been run by the Labour party in decades. When the situation was put to the Labour party they said the equivalent of “Well we’re aiming high!” which is a bit different than saying “We’re going to smash it and we cant wait to bring in big bad Galloway to kick arse and impose renationalisation”

The newspapers whipped up such a frenzy about how well Labour were going to do that realistically they could never have achieved the levels of success that the media was predicting. Equally they played out the idea that the conservatives were going to do terribly, to the point where when they didn’t absolutely burst into flames we were told they’d had a good night!

(A similar set of front pages from 2017’s general elections…notice the flies on the front of the sun clearly illustrating where that rag of a newspaper belongs…)

This has been a recurring problem now for a couple of years at this point. The newspapers make an untrue or unrealistic statement about the labour party, its proven false or it doesn’t pan out in quite the way it should have, and then they seize on that with the force of me trying to get into my precert copy of Halloween 3.

Anti-Semitism has been the flavour of the day recently, with most of the major news outlets, the conservative party and even some of the labour party itself admitting that the party had a problem with anti-Semitic rhetoric. As a member of the Labour party and someone who’s regularly engaged in political debates both with leftwing and rightwing representatives;  I cant honestly say I’ve seen anyone from the party use Anti-Semitic sentiments on any of the social media pages I frequent nor have I seen anything while at Labour party meetings. Im almost certain there are Anti-Semites in the labour party. Statistically its almost inevitable. But at the same time I don’t think theres nearly as many as the mainstream media would have you believe and I think a major issue is that the right and even some members of the right of Labour are purposefully conflating “Anti-Semitism”  with “Anti-Zionism” and the two are completely different.

Now forgive me if im incorrect on this (and im more than happy to be proven wrong here) but I’ve been led to believe that originally there was Palestine, then the UK colonised parts of the middle east, before giving chunks of our colonised land to the Jewish people in what became Israel…and over the last 60-70 years Israeli forces have slowly but surely seized more and more of Palestine and oppressed the Palestinian people. Not that Palestine’s been entirely innocent either, they’ve given as good as they’ve got. However I feel it necessary to reiterate that it was there land originally and that they do have every right to be a bit pissed off at the fact that large chunks of there land have been taken and that the Palestinian people and government have been painted as brutal…in real terms it would be like if you owned your own house and one day you had a visitor who bought a friend over for the night, but the next day your friend had vanished and his friend was now saying that the bathroom is his and that he was eyeing up your kitchen…by the end of the week you had your bed and the skirting boards all the way to the door and your friends random associate is screeching at you for being unreasonable that you dared keep the bed.

(Its been doing the rounds on social media but its a pretty decent illustration to be fair…)

Now for having those opinions I would be considered Anti-Zionist. But to some people that would be enough of an opinion to label me Anti-Semitic. I would disagree with those people and I’d add that there really needs to be a concerted effort to make clear distinctions between the two groups because they’re very different groups.

Obviously though that something that the conservative party and the mainstream media have no interest in facilitating. As long as this Anti-Semitism thing continues to push on it continues to put the labour party on the back foot and it continues to make out that anyone who supports Jeremy Corbyns policies automatically hate Jews. Which is simply not the case. And this is before we get anywhere near the constant stream of racist, misogynistic, homophobic and anti-Semitic bollocks that the conservative party members and even there MP’s have come out with over the last 40 years (Seriously there are too many photos of Conservative MP’s dressed up in full nazi uniforms for my taste)

To conclude I’d like to say that I think we’ve finally entered a period in our political history where we are about to see the death of the current system. Democracy used to be run on base principles. If you lied while in office, if you misled the public or damaged the country, you’d be thrown out of power and shamed out of the position never to be seen again. As of 2018 we have a government who are propped up by a group of radical right wing northern Irish MP’s , stabilised by the media who have finally decided to give up the pretence of looking like they know what they’re doing. They can say the sky is purple and when they’re shown proof its blue they’ll silently walk off, wait till something bigger than there lie crops up and then use that as an opportunity to bury it. There most common current tactic is to simply abstain. If theres a vote or an urgent question or there asked to give a statement in relation to something that they’ve said or done. They’ll either just refuse to acknowledge it or if they do they’ll send an back bencher or an underling to give a generic statement. In doing this they’re effectively saying “We do not accept the legitimacy of what your doing” there have been several votes more recently in parliament that have effectively been rendered meaningless because the entire conservative party has just abstained from turning up and voting. In doing so they can then question the legitimacy of the vote and I don’t want to invoke “Godwins law” here but im angry just thinking about it so fuck it. That’s what the actual Nazis did just before world war 2. When votes or narrative wernt going there way they’d just up and leave and then refuse to acknowledge that a vote happened or implement a bastardised version of the asked policy before the vote could happen effectively making it meaningless because “We’re already putting similar legislation in place” it’s a dick move that erodes trust in the political system and its considerably nastier and thicker than anything that Thatchers government would have considered (And they’re seen as pure evil by most people above the southern border)

(Well its good to get a futurama meme into one of these blogs somehow)

How do we fix this? Well, I don’t know. I like to think that Socialism will win out ultimately but the question becomes a matter of “Will we see this change before or after we’ve been totally and utterly broken beyond repair?” The honest answer is: I don’t know…im not going to lie things arnt quite as awful as they were in 2017 so far. But they’ve only gotten marginally better largely because the EU have decided to just ignore America and the UK in terms of there leaders. I’ll give them this. The EU arnt perfect, but at least they’ve acknowledged that for the foreseeable that they’re on there own and that the US and UK are slowly eating themselves.

Maybe things will work out…maybe they’ll get worse…honestly at this point I’ve gone from having faith in my fellow man to constantly plotting out how I’ll survive the next inevitable downward drive in living standards. I like to think things will get better soon. But till then I guess im still stuck with my socialist training wheels.

by tytdreviews

Socialist Training wheels (Part 1) The Quickening

This one’s going to be a political blog. I kind of feel like I should open with that kind of a statement whenever I talk about politics in general partly because I feel like if I didn’t mention that this was a political posting that people would immediately dive into posts like this, get violently triggered and take it out on both me and my channel. But also because I realise there are some people out there who really don’t care that much for politics and don’t want it to get in the way of a good cult movie.

So consider this a “Trigger” warning. Not because Im going to say anything particularly controversial; But rather because if you don’t want to know my political affiliation, if you don’t care or if you think it would change your opinions of me fundamentally mentioning it now will give you ample time to click away or go and do something different. As it stands it’s a boiling hot Sunday night on the 6th of May, I have a white rum and Dr Pepper on the go as I write this, and I’ve spent the day pretty much getting my house straight as the bank holidays are really the only time I have to do that kind of thing. Last night me and my partner watched “Liquid Sky” and “A nightmare on elm street” the former was very strange and about as erotic as a cold cloth to the gunnels the latter was like stepping back into a well worn pair of shoes. What im trying to say is if you don’t want to faff around with hearing me waffle on about pie charts and various other political bits and pieces I highly recommend you go and check those films out. Let me know either in the comments here or on Facebook or my Youtube channel if you do go and watch them. I’d genuinely love to hear what you thought of them…

(My comments sections after this blog post gets read by anyone who cares)

…Right; So Im assuming if your reading this your invested. Good. So, a bit about myself. I was born in the North of England, my father was disabled (blind in one eye, damaged spinal cord and he’s missing a kneecap) and my mother worked minimum wage jobs up until about 10 years ago when she finally moved into a position she currently works in that pays above minimum wage and is very happy with. I’ve never known true struggling but I realise that my parents have done there absolute damndest to both protect me from that and to build the lives they currently have, and im incredibly grateful that they’ve given me the life they have. In many ways they’re both an inspiration to me. They had no handouts, they had no help and they’ve made themselves a very comfortable existence. They never talked to me about politics and I spent a good chunk of my childhood and early teens blissfully unaware of the political landscape mainly because I had no need to know about any of that stuff.

I find myself in a bit of a political quandary these days. As a citizen of the UK we’ve had a bit of an interesting couple of years politically. I myself first got involved in politics around the fall of Tony Blair. The “Happening” of Gordon Brown and the “Awakening of the Milliband”.  At the time I just kind of described myself as just “Left wing” really. In the vaguest sense I kind of thought “Well; Labour help people, the Conservatives help businesses and the libdems…well they don’t know what they want…BUT THEY WANT IT NOW!”  and that was pretty much how my political views went until about 2014…

(Changes were very much on the way)

In 2014 around the time of Ed Millibands general election run there was a sudden sort of change in politics in the country. Newspapers were chiming on about how Millibands policies were “Radically” Left wing and that he was effectively a “Loony leftie” trying to drag the party towards Socialism. But what the papers were saying and what I saw Ed say were two very different things. I didn’t honestly see all that much difference between Ed Millibands policies and the policies that had been generated during the Blair and Brown years. But for some reason the papers and the media in general were absolutely rabid at trying to tear the man down. That I’d say was my first introduction to the ideas of Socialism, but at that point I had no idea what socialism even was nor did I really have any interest in following it up. At the time I just thought that “Socialism” just meant “Very left wing” or “Not being a total arsehole” and left it at that. Little did I know at the time that Socialism would go on to effectively punctuate the next 4 years and is set to continue to define the UK political undertones for the foreseeable.

The General election didn’t quite go to plan and as a result there was a leadership election and in that leadership election a certain “Jeremy Corbyn” was entered into the running as a Joke candidate by members of the Labour party. In short; they were trying to be cruel. They put his name on the ballot in the same way that School kids would nominate the ugly guy and girl to win Prom king and queen. They never expected him to win and they thought it would be a funny way to give the far left of the Labour party a good kicking for a laugh. Little did they know that they’re “Cruel Joke” would go on to change the political landscape in insurmountable ways.

(10 years ago if you’d told me this man would change british politics as we know it i’d have laughed you out of the building)

Corbyn won. Corbyn won by a majority that was unheard of in modern political times. And this made the center left of the Labour party who put him on the ballot in the first place collectively cack themselves. They were terrified. It had all backfired on them, and what at first was supposed to be a way to remind the far left of there place very quickly became an empowering pandoras box of left wing ideology. Over the following 3 years the center left of the party, enabled by the right wing and the newspapers would do everything short of “Jeremy Corbyn ate my hamster” to try and dethrone the man. But as of writing he’s still firmly in seat and his popularity continues to grow at a previously unheard of rate. They’ve tried to smear him, it’s failed. They’ve tried challenging his leadership by putting up a new candidate with more center ground political values. He beat him increasing his share of the vote (Meaning that he broke the record for the most votes a labour representative has ever received in a leadership contest and then broke that record again with an even larger majority) When a snap general election was called the center left couldn’t contain themselves at looking for opportunities to try and tell people to vote for MP’s and not for Corbyn as leader. Hell even Tony Blair came out of the woodwork to decree that Corbyn would destroy the country if people voted for him…And then Corbyns vision of labour increased the majority of there party in parliament. Quite substantially really. He secured more votes than Tony blair did at the height of his campaigning (Tony Blair in the UK is often seen as the benchmark of how to be a left winger and succeed in politics) and even though he didn’t become prime minister, he gave the conservatives a bloody nose, sent right wing pundits into a tail spin and but the center left on notice.

It was a great feeling. For me; I’d always assumed that the kind of policies that I wanted to see implemented into the country; Proper funding for the NHS, UBI, greater care taken for people with mental health issues, a modernisation of the economy and a greater restriction put on shady business practises and media regulation in terms of promoting false or incorrect news. We’re all just wishful thinking. I never actually thought someone would come along and say  “Yeh mate; we can do that no problem”…And yet with Corbyns vision of labour it all seems quite possible.

(Cornwall under Corbyns version of labour in 2033)

I now feel a bit of confusion really about where I lie politically. Realistically my politics align with what would be considered modern socialism. At the time of writing theres been a tremendous gulf in the political landscape, with the conservatives absorbing a good chunk of UKIP (The party that put out the idea of Brexit in the first place…Far right wing and typically racist) back into there vote share they now have a robust arsenal of people ranging from the quite reasonable and ultimately decent just straddling a line of politics that I disagree with right the way through to racist thugs who pine for a country that never existed. The left wing consist these days of people who actively detest the party in its current form but refuse to move to the conservatives out of pure red blooded hatred of there past misgrieviences. Through to the full blown Communist left wingers who wake up to the USSR national anthem every morning and go to bed to the Internationale every night. Myself? I agree with what Jeremy Corbyns Labour Party has to offer to a point. It’s mainly there stance on Brexit that I disagree with. Im a firm voter of remaining in the European union though I accept that there needed to be a much needed conversation about the direction it was heading in…an opportunity that’s very unlikely to come about now.

But my opinion is that “Well; I agree with 99 things that the Labour party are currently offering, I think I can swallow my pride over the 1 thing I don’t agree with” Brexits a really big thing admittedly, but we currently have so many home grown issues that Im not going to split hairs when I agree with a majority of what the party is putting out there. These opinions and views have been labelled “Active communism” by the modern press and are ridiculed by the right as “A load of students who don’t know any better trying to vote in a communist government”…but the thing is “A load of students” isn’t enough to make the kind of leaps that the current labour party have in the UK. This is a genuinely growing movement and the ideas that I thought were “Wishful thinking” have never actually been closer to coming true before. Both parties, left and right, have lurched to there relative extremes. And for the foreseeable future it would appear that, barring a tremendous incident, The entire countries at a stalemate.

 

(British politics in 2018 in a nutshell)

*Believe it or not; this blog post started with the intention of being about the recent local election though it appears I’ve rambled a bit. I’ve gotten quite carried away. I think im going to make this a “Part 1” if you will. Im going to broach the subject of the local elections in my next blog post all being well. But I thought I’d share my political affiliation with you lot because some people are really interested in that kind of thing. Equally I’ll end this post by saying that as a TLDR on my political affiliation. While Im aligned with modern socialism I don’t feel comfortable calling myself a socialist. Mainly because I kind of feel I haven’t “Earned” that right just yet. I’d feel like I was living a lie to start openly calling myself a socialist because I feel I’d be piggy backing on a current trend. I look at the people who weathered socialism in the 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s who sat there silently whilst being mocked and I think “I cant really say Im with these lot. These lot have suffered for there beliefs and I’ve just rocked up at the 11th hour” maybe someday I’ll lose my socialist training wheels. But for now I’m just a “Left winger”…and im happy to talk.

Addendum:

There’s a bit I wanted to put into this blog but I just couldn’t fit in anywhere. It’s a bit of a clarification more than anything else. I don’t care what your political affiliation is. Im not going to attack you for being left wing, right wing or center ground. What I will pick you up on is whether your a nice person in your day to day business and whether your hearts in the right place towards your fellow man. I have friends from the Far right and Far left side of the spectrum and while we may not see eye to eye politically on a number of things I realise that a persons politics does not define them anymore than the car they drive, the partner they marry or there choice of beer in a bar (Unless you drink Heineken in which case fuck you.) As a result I’ve had many interesting conversations with people, sometimes I’ll change there minds, sometimes they’ll change mine. Im a great believer in diversit of opinion and while I’ll admit this blog post is very promotional in its left wing values. The left are far from perfect and the day they make the “Perfect political party” is the day that I eat a car out of sheer surreal bafflement. What Im trying to say is; Believe whatever you want to believe Im not going to judge you whether your Labour or Democrat, republican or conservative. Its whats in your head and your heart that define you. And I realise that’s one of the hippiest things I could say. But I find it very true.

(Yeh theres going to be more of this…hopefully more coherent as well)

(In The next part! I work out my feelings a bit more and hopefully finally get round to talking about what I wanted to talk about in this part!)

 

by tytdreviews