The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘current events’ Category

Hey fuck­ers! I’ve signed up for Twit­ter again, this time for real!

If you want to fol­low me, please feel free to add @nthlondonhippy. Fuck knows what I’ll be post­ing; I guess we’ll all find out together!

I can rec­om­mend fol­low­ing Stephen Fry (@stephenfry), the British actor, tv pre­sen­ter and genius. He’s both pro­lific and enter­tain­ing, 2 things I aspire to be!

I tend to read tweets on my iPhone, as their bite sized nature makes them per­fect for enjoy­ing on a hand­held device.

Ok so I’m late to the Twit­ter party, but at least I’m there now. Where’s the bar? This hippy could use a stiff drink. Or even bet­ter, a big fat juicy spliff!

(Blogged from my god­damn mutha­fuckin’ iPhone, yo)

Our stu­pid gov­ern­ment went ahead and reclas­si­fied weed today, against the advice of the sci­en­tists, med­ical experts and drug advi­sors. Cannabis has been returned to Class B, which means penal­ties for sim­ple pos­ses­sion have increased, but penal­ties for deal­ing and pro­duc­tion remain the same, sort of…

While not in place yet, a 3-strike sys­tem is to be imple­mented later in the week. On your first offence, you will be given a warn­ing, on your sec­ond, you will be fined 80 quid and on your third, you will be charged. Nat­u­rally, this new penalty sys­tem is not in place today and won’t be until at least mid­week. The gov­ern­ment couldn’t even co-ordinate the change in clas­si­fi­ca­tion and the new penal­ties so they started on the same day and they’ve had over a year to plan it. Losers!

So why did they change the classification?

I don’t know, there isn’t a sin­gle good rea­son for the change. Laws regard­ing cannabis are even more mud­dled and con­fus­ing now than they ever were!

The advice from the var­i­ous gov­ern­ment advi­sory boards was to leave it in Class C, but if they did that, they couldn’t score any polit­i­cal points with our poorly informed electorate.

Check out this BBC report for more details.

No one in the UK gov­ern­ment is inter­ested in the truth, or doing the right thing where cannabis is con­cerned. I am so dis­ap­pointed and depressed by this stu­pid out­come, words can­not begin to express my distress.

I found this list of Cannabis Myths from a drug organ­i­sa­tion in the US state of Indi­ana. Even they know more about weed than Gor­don Brown and his idi­otic cab­i­net. Please read it so you can be armed with the truth being denied us by the media and the gov­ern­ment here.

Gor­don Brown may still not be long for pol­i­tics as the cur­rent eco­nomic depres­sion (some­one has to say it) may sink his career yet. If it does, it will be the one good thing to come from an oth­er­wise bleak finan­cial out­look. Here’s hoping!

Hey fuck­ers! I’m blog­ging from my iPhone again.

I am hav­ing a rather dull and dreary night at work with pre­cious lit­tle to actu­ally do.

Cov­er­ing a war is lively at first and then you set­tle into a rou­tine. Yes I am as cal­lous and jaded as I sound. I have been cov­er­ing wars for around 20 years, they’re all pretty much the same. Peo­ple die, lots of them.

Life is so frag­ile and we are all so break­able. Its a won­der more of us aren’t killed more often.

The thing about cov­er­ing wars from a dis­tance, as I’ve mostly done, is you get to see some of the most har­row­ing scenes of suf­fer­ing. By the time it arrives on the tv in your liv­ing room, its been san­i­tized and cen­sored, to pro­tect you from images you are likely to find distressing.

I strongly dis­agree with that. You have just as much right to see the uncen­sored hor­rors as I do and my media col­leagues should not be deny­ing you from see­ing the truth.

I don’t find strong images offen­sive, but I do think war and the need­less slaugh­ter of civil­ians is extremely offensive.

I guess I picked the wrong job. Or rather the wrong job chose me!

(blogged from my iPhone)

Seven days into the brand spankin’ new year and I am already filled with opti­mism and hope. And by opti­mism and hope, I really mean depres­sion and despair.

All my tv wants to show me is that nasty shit going on in the mideast. Why do they keep mak­ing sequels to that movie? I’ve seen it all before. That said, there’s some­thing more upset­ting about it this time. Its whole­sale slaugh­ter at an indus­trial scale and it sick­ens me.

I just wish I could change the chan­nel but I really wanna see how it all turns out. Maybe some­one could tip me off just before Rambo arrives and illus­trates the point­less­ness rather than glory of war­fare. And by Rambo, of course I mean Gandhi.

I’m bored to the point of dis­gust at see­ing chil­dren mur­dered and maimed. I can’t be the only one who has seen more than enough of this shit. Why don’t they all just stop?

Closer to home, or rather right here at home, north Lon­don has been sub­merged in sub-zero tem­per­a­tures for what seems like a few weeks now, with each suc­ces­sive night pro­vid­ing another record-breaking low. Brrrrrrrrrrrr!

The ther­mome­ter in my car hit a rather chilly –2 yes­ter­day, which was an all time record low for me and it hasn’t gone above +1 in over a week.

We’re not used to this sort of cold here in Lon­don and its bring­ing every­one down, espe­cially with no respite in sight. All we need is some snow to com­plete this win­tery hell and trust me, I’m not wish­ing for it.

And the econ­omy is so far into the toi­let it can taste the salt in the ocean.

Weed is going be returned to Class B from its present posi­tion in the more appro­pri­ate and rec­om­mended by gov’t advi­sors, Class C. That really sucks.

Things are indeed look­ing dis­tinctly bleak as 2009 begins.

Even Apple let me down yes­ter­day, with a Mac­World keynote devoid of any new toys for me to pur­chase. My credit card was revved up and ready, but it had nowhere to go.

Remem­ber, if it weren’t for cool con­sumer elec­tron­ics and soft drugs, I would have no joy in my life.

And its my birth­day in a cou­ple weeks, I could really do with­out that.

Oh moan, moan, moan, moan, moan!

While I can’t say I am filled with the joys of the sea­son, I still wanted to take a moment to wish every­one out there in inter­net­land the hap­pi­est of happy new years!

Decem­ber 2008 was another record-breaking month here at northlondonhippy.com and as a reward to my loyal staff, I’m tak­ing them all out for a slap up meal and open bar evening at a fancy-pants restau­rant in cen­tral London.

Oh wait, I don’t have any staff. I bet­ter can­cel that reser­va­tion. I won­der if I will get my deposit back?

Yep, last month broke November’s record. Cool, thanks.

I’m not doing any­thing to adver­tise, I don’t know where all these new peo­ple are com­ing from. They’ve just appeared and they’re stay­ing. I bet­ter set up the sofa bed!

I also want to thank those of you who sent kind emails to me fol­low­ing my pre­vi­ous post. When I’m up to it, I’ll reply to you all individually.

2009 will be the year all your hopes and dreams come true. If any­one asks you how you know, tell them some hippy wrote it on the internet.

And every­one knows, every­thing pub­lished on the inter­net is true!

Its only a few more days till xmas and you can feel things grad­u­ally wind­ing down. The schools are clos­ing, mil­lions of peo­ple are trav­el­ling and the shops are try­ing to shift their last bits of tat.

I’m wind­ing down too, though not quite in the same way. I’m work­ing all week, straight through until Box­ing Day morn­ing. Somebody’s got to!

There are loads of peo­ple who have to work over xmas, even in the west­ern, Chris­t­ian world. Spare a thought for us when your tuck­ing into your turkey and curs­ing your relatives.

No nos­tal­gic trips down mem­ory lane for me this year, I’m just going to grit my teeth and get through it as quickly and unevent­fully as pos­si­ble. I’m off for the New Year though, which is a good thing because I do like to party more than I like to eat turkey.

To say my hol­i­day will be low-key would be an under­state­ment. Aside from work­ing, I’m ready to hun­ker down. I’ve got all my sup­plies in or com­ing, thanks to an Ocado deliv­ery on Mon­day, my lim­ited amount of xmas shop­ping is com­plete and I am ready to draw the cur­tains, lock the door and not do any­thing for around a week.

I’m mak­ing it sound a lot bleaker than it really is. I chose to spend my hol­i­days this way.

I hope you’ve had the good for­tune to choose how you’re spend­ing your hol­i­days too. If you’re lucky, you will be sur­rounded by fam­ily that you don’t hate or maybe even like just a lit­tle bit.

Just because I’m not cel­e­brat­ing xmas, doesn’t mean I don’t remem­ber what they’re like!

Wher­ever you are and what­ever you find your­self doing, I want to bid you all the hap­pi­est of hol­i­days. I hope all your wishes and dreams come true!

With apolo­gies to the Marx Brothers.…

Check out this photo I took of a shop­ping mall Santa Clause:

Santa Clause has a giant rub­ber head!

Did you notice Santa is wear­ing a giant rub­ber head?

Why do you think that is?

When I was a kid, Santa was an old man, with a fake beard, smelling faintly of booze and piss. And when you sat on his lap, it some­times felt like he had a pep­per­oni in is pocket.

Gross.

Today’s mod­ern Santa is noth­ing like that, with his giant rub­ber head, clean cloth­ing and A WOMAN play­ing him!

That’s right, my money is on a per­son of the female per­sua­sion inside that par­tic­u­lar Santa suit.

It makes sense hir­ing a woman, no booze, no piss, no erec­tions and no expen­sive defence lawyers to defend against costly civil law suits.

And if Santa wants to take a break from the air­less rub­ber mask, no prob­lem, she can just switch cos­tumes with the Elf. Every­body wins.

Except your kids, who will for­ever think Santa has a giant rub­ber head. How will he ever fit down the chimney?

There’s was an avalanche of media bull­shit this week over a doc­u­men­tary aired on SKY REAL LIVES which showed a man with motor neu­rone dis­ease tak­ing his own life at a Swiss clinic in 2006.

Switzer­land is cur­rently the only coun­try in the world which allows for­eign­ers to visit and par­take in a spot of assisted sui­cide. Go Switzerland!

I say the media was full of bull­shit because most out­lets con­cen­trated on the issue of whether or not you should show the “moment of death” on tele­vi­sion, for fear of “glam­ouris­ing death”.

WTF?

I haven’t seen the entire doc­u­men­tary, but I have seen some clips and how could show­ing a man with an absolutely hor­ri­ble dis­ease end­ing his life in any way glam­ourise death? There were no Hol­ly­wood films stars or strip­pers cheer­ing him on, the room he did it in wasn’t kit­ted out in fur rugs and leather sofas and they didn’t even have a live band.

There was no glam­our at all, but then there was absolutely noth­ing glam­ourous about it.

Tak­ing your own life is a seri­ous deci­sion, cer­tainly the most seri­ous deci­sion any indi­vid­ual can take and it was clear this poor man delib­er­ated for a very long time before mak­ing this final decision.

The debate should not have been about whether or not they should have shown this on tele­vi­sion, but why more coun­tries don’t have sys­tems like they do in Switzerland.

Why is it against the law to pro­vide the ulti­mate relief and end the suf­fer­ing of another human being? We do it for dogs and cats and horses — do they mat­ter more than people?

There are some rather hor­ri­ble mal­adies and afflic­tions out there which are hor­ren­dous and could cause immea­sur­able suf­fer­ing and pain to the per­son affected.

A slow, pro­tracted death is one of my big­ger fears, but that fear is expo­nen­tially exac­er­bated by the fact that I know if I wanted to choose to end the suf­fer­ing, it would not be pos­si­ble because of our archaic view of euthanasia.

The peo­ple most unsur­pris­ingly opposed to euthana­sia tend to be reli­gious nuts who believe only god’s will can decide when your life ends.

What a fuck­ing bunch of fuck­ing bull­shit. If that’s true, then any­one with a gun is god, because they can choose to end anyone’s life with rel­a­tive ease.

I have a real prob­lem tak­ing any­one seri­ously who is deeply reli­gious to the point of it cloud­ing their every thought and opin­ion, espe­cially when those mis­guided views increase the suf­fer­ing and pain of others.

That’s one of religion’s spe­cial­ity though, caus­ing oth­ers to need­lessly suffer.

I’ve recently been in touch with a dis­tant rela­tion of mine, who was in charge of dis­pens­ing a small stipend to myself and all my cousins fol­low­ing the pass­ing of a beloved aunt of mine.

When she wrote to me, her let­ter was pep­pered with all sorts of reli­gious ref­er­ences. I half expected her clos­ing salu­ta­tion to be “Yours in Christ” and was relieved that it wasn’t.

I had to really reign myself in when I replied to her, by keep­ing my sec­u­lar human­ist views at bay, though I couldn’t resist wish­ing her a “happy hol­i­days” in response to her “merry xmas”. Of course, she wrote out the entire word and cap­i­talised it.

I have noth­ing against my dis­tant rel­a­tive, the fact is I don’t really know her, hav­ing maybe met her twice before the age of 13, but its the way in which reli­gious peo­ple think every­one else should be equally reli­gious, and not just that but we should fol­low their reli­gion, because the other ones, even vari­a­tions on Chris­tian­ity, will send you straight to hell.

There is no hell. Hell is other people.

No, hell is being forced to live with a debil­i­tat­ing and ter­mi­nal con­di­tion, need­less suf­fer­ing a long, drawn out death because the law won’t let one be the archi­tect of one’s own fate.

The law is an ass. Or is that asshole?

The idea of my mind, my per­son­al­ity, the inter­nal bits of my brain con­tin­u­ing to func­tion as they do now, while being trapped in my body, wracked with pain, or worse paral­y­sis is a fate worse than death. Com­pared to any of that, death would be a trip to Disneyland.

And for all you reli­gious nuts out there, let me ask you this: If heaven is so god­damn great, why can’t we let the sick peo­ple arrive a lit­tle ear­lier than expected? Surely a just and lov­ing god would wel­come them with open arms.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t make us suffer.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t let us die.

If there were a god, there would be no need for heaven, because heaven would be here on earth and we would all already be angels.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if some­one chose to end their life because of an intol­er­a­ble existence.

If there were a god, I wouldn’t get to post all of this on the inter­net and he’d have a stern word or two for me.

There is no god.

Why not be your own god? Why not deter­mine your own fate?

They say you make your own luck and I believe that’s true. I believe in self-actualisation and the power of an indi­vid­ual to over­come obsta­cles and suc­ceed in anything.

If the obsta­cle you’re encoun­ter­ing is insur­mount­able, then the only path to suc­cess is retreat.

If you’re dying a hor­ri­ble death, the only way to min­imise death’s vic­tory over you is to limit the amount of time you spend dying.

I thought about this a lot when I was ill last sum­mer, espe­cially when I could hardly walk and spent over a week try­ing to sleep sit­ting up on my sofa.

I imag­ined quite vividly that my con­di­tion could have been per­ma­nent and degen­er­a­tive, and what I would do in that situation.

I think you can work out the answer.

President-elect Obama just fin­ished speak­ing. It was pow­er­ful and mov­ing, he’s quite an orator.

His mes­sage was one of hope, for the future of Amer­ica and the world. He even addressed the rest of us, not in Amer­ica. That’s unprece­dented. The cur­rent occu­pant of the White House only made threats to the rest of the world.

I felt a bit sorry for John McCain when I watched his speech. I don’t think he is a bad man, I just think his poli­cies were bad. Peo­ple clearly wanted change and that wasn’t on offer from the Sen­a­tor from Arizona.

I hate to piss all over the party, but the feel­ing I have right now reminds me of the day after Tony Blair was elected the first time, back in 1997. Strangers smiled at each other in the streets, peo­ple seemed so happy by the prospect of change. It was really amazing.

And we know how all that turned out. Not well.

I think it will be dif­fer­ent with Obama. I hope so, anyway.

Obama has a lot to live up to. Many peo­ple will be dis­ap­pointed with him when he doesn’t turn all the water into wine.

The changes Obama has promised won’t hap­pen overnight, but they will hap­pen. We need to be patient and let him do what he can. Don’t be dis­cour­aged if the happy feel­ing you have today wears off.

Trust me, it will wear off. It always does.

But for today, just enjoy it. Bask in it. Revel in it.

For today, for the first time in the bet­ter part of a decade, things have never looked brighter.

That’s it for me, tonight. I hope you’ve enjoyed my sur­pris­ingly pro­lific live-blogging this evening. I’ve enjoyed being able to com­ment on actual his­tory as it unfolds.

the northlon­don­hippy
0535gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008

They may have been an hour behind me, but the Amer­i­can net­works have now called the elec­tion in favour of Barack Obama.

That’s right, I beat every­one else.

This is a his­toric moment. I never thought in my life time I would ever see a black man elected pres­i­dent of the United States.

It’s an amaz­ing achieve­ment for Mr. Obama, and an amaz­ing achieve­ment for the Amer­i­can people.

No mat­ter who you are, or where you are in the world, you can’t deny the sig­nif­i­cance of this moment in time.

Or as Bob Dylan said a long time ago, “The times they are a changing”.

the northlon­don­hippy
0410gmt — 5th Novem­ber 2008