which reminded me of an article I wrote a while back. A friend was putting together a zine about population issues and asked me to write summat about having a vasectomy.
It’s A Snip
Anyone who has heterosexual sex is prone to pregnancy scares. And sometimes the fears are founded.
When it comes to deciding about going ahead with the pregnancy, the man is put in a strange and unwinnable position. If he says what he thinks then he’s pressurising the woman; whose body is it anyway?
Yet if he assures the woman that he respects her autonomy and will support her whatever she decides, he’s abdicating his share of the responsibility and making the decision and any blame all hers.
When my lover was pregnant, we were fortunate that we were both 100% certain that we did not want to be parents. We were doubly fortunate that we knew early on and lived somewhere with good abortion provision. The experience was enough to make me actually do something about the idle thoughts I’d had about having a vasectomy.
I don’t want any woman to go through an unwanted pregnancy, and especially not a woman I like enough to ejaculate into. Scarier, what if she wanted to have a kid and I had to support her decision and lose this life I love to parenthood?
I’ve never really wanted children, and as I’ve got older the experience of seeing my contemporaries become parents had only convinced me all the more. I love many of the children I find myself around and relish the part I play in their upbringing and supporting parents. But that’s different to wanting to do it full time. I love curry but if you gave it to me every day for every meal I’d hate it within a month. I love my flat, but lock me in here with no chance of release for two decades and I’ll be insane within a week.
From a personal perspective, I treasure the freedom of my time, I treasure the ability to stay up late with friends or working, and having lie-ins. Parenthood takes those away, and for me it’s not worth it.
But far more importantly, on a political level, the world already has too many western consumers. We all know there needs to be less. You don’t get less by making more.
My grandparents were born into a world of one billion people. I will die in a world of ten billion.
I look at a picture of my grandparents and imagine nine people stood behind my gran, another nine behind my grandad.
Then do the same for all their friends, family, neighbours, taking that multiplication right out across the entire globe. It’s no wonder we’re hastening into ecological crisis. No matter how much we reduce the consumption of individuals, we’re not going to make it all sustainable if there are too many of them.
If we accept the health care, sanitation and guaranteed food supply of modern life then we have to lay off the procreation. We understand this principle with pets whose puppies and kittens all get to live, and we neuter them. We somehow blind ourselves from making the same connections with humans.
I went to my doctor and slightly exaggerated (very long term stable quasi-marital relationship, never wanted children, blahblahblah) and he referred me to the clinic. I was slightly taken aback by the ease of a 31 year old unmarried non-parent getting the appointment. I asked him that if he wasn’t going to talk me out of it then did he think the clinic would. ‘Maybe ten or twenty years ago, but not these days,’ he replied.
The clinic sent a letter giving me the date of my consultation and saying ‘as you will be having the operation the same day, please ensure…’.
Wow, nobody was going to try to talk me out of it. I was lucky in that respect. A friend with similar circumstances had his doctor refuse to refer him until there was sperm indefinitely and expensively deposited in a sperm bank, in case he changed his mind.
Asking around before the operation whether I could be sure I was doing the right thing, that was the only serious question that came up, ‘what if you change your mind?’.
Of course, I could never be totally certain I wouldn’t change my mind. But I’d never had that deep emotional urge for procreation, and experience and political understanding had only hardened my opinion.
And what if someone did have children and then changed their mind?You can’t stuff them back up yourself.
At least if I were sterilised and changed my mind, it would only affect my life and not mine and an innocent unwanted child’s.
Plus, there are thousands of babies and children going for adoption and fostering who are destined for miserable, unloved and shitty lives if people keep having their own children instead. If I got turned down for adoption and fostering, I know several excellent men who’d donate sperm. An unforeseen change of heart wouldn’t be that big a deal.
So there I was, in a waiting room with four or five other men all looking slightly nervous. The professor called me in and gave me a whistlestop explanation of the procedure. It’s a local anaesthetic, they make an incision about 3mm long on each side of the scrotum, they cut out a section of tube and stitch up. After a few months, you bring in a semen sample, then a month later another one. Once you’ve had two blank ones in a row, you’re safely considered infertile.
After another loiter in the waiting room I was taken through. I am one squeamish bugger, but frankly if I had to go through this every month to be infertile it’d be worth it. It was, at its worst, a little uncomfortable feeling something shift in my abdomen. There was nothing I’d call pain, and it was all over within five minutes.
The surgeon was chatty. ‘So, how many children have you got then?’ he asked as he was working on the second tube. When I told him none, a serious and downward pitched ‘oh’ was the response. I hurriedly assured him that really, it was fine.
One of the great advantages of being a bloke is having your tackle on the outside. It might not seem an advantage when someone kicks you in the knackers, but when surgery’s required it makes it simple and swift. Sterilisation on women involves much more delving, and many women having hysterectomies had their clitoral nerve severed by doctors who didn’t realise how far back it goes. Lose your fertility and your sexual pleasure? What’s the point in that?
It was so easy. An excuse for a night in with some fuss, but really it was nothing. I was riding my bike the next day, no problem.
Once I was declared clear, I felt the weight lifted from me. It felt like I’d been purified. It was like I had been carrying this virus to which I was immune but which could infect women I cared about. But now my blood is clean and I am no longer contagious.
I’ve taken responsibility for the overpopulation of the planet, the overconsumption of our society, the life I love and the welfare of my lovers. No matter how drunk, deluded or unlucky I get in future, no more pregnancies from me.
Commercial TV stations do not exist to deliver programmes to audiences. They exist to deliver audiences to advertisers.
They research their audiences well so that they can better sell their advertising space. You can tell who's watching a show by what's advertised in the breaks.
Mark Thomas wondered why his appeared to be the only show to unfailingly have Canesten ads. I suspect that, being intelligent political exposé dressed up as comedy, it has sod all viewers and was just the cheapest slot available, but I suppose it's possible that there's a spike in the incidence of thrush among lefties and anarchists with a sense of humour.
By the same token, flyers left under car windscreen wipers tell you a lot about who's living round there. Where I live it's mainly for club nights. Genres of dance music I've never heard of and couldn't tell apart, with DJ names that read like adolescent bus stop graffiti. Andy K, Johnny Space and Lindsey playing the best in obstreperous house and coruscating funky doom beatz.
But, you know, fair enough. It's me not them. It's a high student population area and I'm sure lots of them like it, and even more understand what the hell it means. I like living around the Leeds 6 vibe, it feels vibrant, really running headlong at life.
But imagine living - as a friend who gave me this does - somewhere where you come back to the car park and someone's left these under all the wipers.
Oh my fuck, the local elections are looming again.
The Conservatives are running national billboard campaigns with the slogan taken from their theme song, Jimmy Cliff's classic You Can Get It If You Really Want. Bastards.
I doubt too many Tories were listening to Trojan reggae when it came out. Too busy listening to one of their MPs making the Rivers of Blood speech. That's progress for you. Forty years to move from a snarling 'send em all back' to a fraternal 'I suppose they're alright but I wouldn't want one living next door'.
In keeping with local election tradition, the main parties are insulting our intelligence by issuing leaflets that look like a concerned frequently published local news letter.
To add insult to, well, insult, the Chester Tories have come up with a winning slogan. Forwards, not Backwards. Their explanation features a flock of them holding placards. In case it's too subtle for the reader, and to remove the great ambiguity inherent in the phrase, the placards underline 'not'.
It's even more blatant than Labour's meaningless and stupid 'Forward With Britain'.
Our direction is forwards. There are no other alternative routes forwards. Any other direction is backwards. You wouldn't want to go backwards would you? Of course not.
In case belief were not already beggared, the Chester Tories are using that 'Vote Blue Go Green' logo we first saw last year. Over the page they have a piece about how they are introducing policies to encourage more people to visit their city by car.
There is one towering green issue of our time, climate change. The science of it is clear. In order to have a good chance of avoiding runaway climate change, we need a global cut in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 60% in 30 years. For the overemitting nations like us, that's at least a 90% cut. It is possible with technology that already exists. But not if we play by Tory policy.
They're very big on talking about environmental issues. Indeed, their Blueprint For A Green Economy report may contain some predictable freemarket guff but it also includes extraordinarily radical stuff.
The social cost of material growth is becoming increasingly clear. Even as the global economy continues to consume beyond its ecological means, the long-assumed link between increased financial wealth and increased social wellbeing is showing signs of stress.
Levels of income and consumption have soared over the last three decades in most developed countries. Yet consistently, the people of those same countries report no increase in their sense of contentment or wellbeing. In many cases they report a decline. It seems that in wealthy countries, a continued increase in economic growth, is not increasing wellbeing.
Here in Britain, the signs of this are everywhere. Levels of mental illness, drug abuse and ‘binge drinking’ are rising even as our economy continues to grow. The Samaritans report that five million people are ‘extremely stressed.’ Unicef research suggests that British children are the unhappiest in Europe. Crime levels continue to rise.
Meanwhile, surveys show that nearly nine out of ten members of the public think British society is ‘too materialistic’, and that a quarter of 30 to 59 year-olds have voluntarily ‘downshifted’, accepting less income in exchange for more free time.
Yet, according to standard economic and political thinking this ought not to be. Economic growth, measured as an increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) should bring a correlating growth in our happiness and wellbeing and any attempt to prioritise environmental social health over economic growth is widely supposed to make people less content.
The truth, though, is beginning to seem more complex. Evidence from many quarters suggests that human wellbeing does not rise indefinitely alongside gains in material wealth. In fact, that once we reach a certain level of income and material wealth, gains beyond that level can actually begin to exacerbate social problems, from ‘status anxiety’ to a deteriorating work-life balance. These findings challenge the assumption that environmental and social wellbeing parallel economic progress and raise questions over the very nature of economic growth and its role in society.
Our increasing awareness of the need to phase out fossil fuels rapidly is accompanied by an awareness that economic growth based on them is only part of what improves human lives. The real questions now are beginning to focus on what defines 'progress’, what is ‘quality growth’ and what determines a ‘good life’. [p12-13]
greening of economic growth does not just involve a series of green tweaks to the ‘business as usual’ model. Human activities are ultimately constrained by environmental limits. The problem with relying solely upon ‘green growth’ is that it deals primarily with mitigating the relative impacts of consumption, but fails to respect absolute environmental limits. Putting a price on environmental damage is important but it can only take us so far. Other mechanisms must also be used to protect and enhance the environment. We may, for example, need regulations to set aside crucial areas or vulnerable habitats.
A fixation on the idea that the market can manage all things if ‘externalities’ are 'internalised’ is wrong, firstly because of the scale and urgency of the challenge which means that we simply do not have time for the market to ‘adjust over time’, and secondly, because we have a far from perfect understanding of the complex interactions between the climate, biosphere, soils and other elements which make up the delicate balance of the Earth. We know too little of the potential implications of the changes in sea p.h., temperature and salinity. We don’t fully comprehend how these interact with climate or how climate impacts on sea life and the fish stocks upon which large sections of the global population rely.
It is areas of debate such as this that it is clearly not possible to put a value and ‘price’ on the natural world. Simply to ignore anything of which we are not certain would be irresponsible so we have to protect where we cannot be utterly certain.
If, however, our appetite for material goods continues on its current trajectory, it is unlikely that resource-use efficiency in and of itself will halt or reverse our impacts on the planet, and in particular its ability to maintain a stable climate. It is also crucial to understand that in some circumstances increasingly efficient or ‘greener’ production processes can lower the costs to business and thus, paradoxically, ultimately lead to higher total rates of production and consumption.
Simply cleaning up existing lifestyles and patterns of economic growth will not take us far enough, not least if we are to achieve equitable global development within the natural limits of the planet. After all, if everyone on Earth equalled the resource consumption of our citizens here in the UK, it would take three planets to support us. If we all aspired to US patterns it would demand five planets.
The issue is not whether but when we recognise that fact. The current economic model, relying on universal cheap energy, is bust. There are sticking plaster solutions but, in the end we have to find an alternative way forward. Sensibly, we should do that before we damage the environment irreversibly. If we are stupid, we’ll fail to act now and then seek the solution in extremis when, even if an answer is still possible, it will be immeasurably more difficult and infinitely more expensive. If society at large can shift its thinking away from ‘what can I buy?’ to ‘what do I want from life?’ or ‘what needs do I have?’ then perhaps we can decouple economic growth from resource input. This is our challenge. [p24-25]
Really talking the talk there aren't they? If I'd asked you who wrote it, how many guesses would you have needed before you got it right?
But forget about them ever trying to walk that talk. They can't even come out against aviation expansion. The Tories are still directed by millionaire bankers, and they are still committed to freemarket capitalism and its need for perpetual economic growth.
Their actual policy - let alone what they'd do once in power - hasn't taken on board any of that nettle-grasping stuff their own report tells them. Their green talk is just that. It is posturing with as much meaning as the Chester party's vacuous slogan.
I've made no secret of my opinion that, in the words of Bill Hicks, advertising is the most evil concept ever.
As we slide into a world where ever greater numbers of genuinely talented people become mere endorsers and salespeople for whoever will write them a cheque, it's gratifying to see some people hold fast, such as film director David Lynch.
But even higher marks to Swedish directors Claes Eriksson and Vilgot Sjöman. They sued a TV company for putting ad breaks during their movies. They argued that this is effectively inserting new material and as such breaches copyright law.
They won their case two years ago, but it went to the Supreme Court. They just decided that yes, advertising does infringe the movie.
Even if a break is placed at a scene change, it disturbs a director’s intended interplay between scenes, said the court.
Furthermore, commercials can result in a film being longer than a director intended, which isn’t insignificant, according to the court’s ruling.
The Supreme Court also affirmed that the commercial interests behind advertising don't outweigh the copyright holder’s right to decide how his work is reproduced.
Sadly, the judgement only affects the films of those two directors being shown on TV4 in Sweden. Still, well the fuck done guys.
Anyone familiar with Brass Eye's drugs episode, an especially the use of Cake, may get a sense of deja vu as life imitates art.
If you're not familiar with Cake, check this:
The mighty officers of Thames Valley Police recently sent out a warning to schools about 'strawberry meth', a strawberry flavoured version of crystal meth being given away outside school gates by dealers.
It was, of course, a load of arse. The cops retracted it and apologised.
Chief Inspector Dennis Evernden said: "One of our officers, who is new to his post, received the e-mail internally in good faith and forwarded it on to the schools in West Oxfordshire to warn them"
I love the last line in the report that tells us 'the force would not be holding an internal inquiry over the incident'.
Shouldn't they be curious about how such blatant Cake twaddle could be taken seriously by someone in a position of power? And hopefully go on review what else they tell people about drugs, with an eye to whether that's a load of made-up bollocks too?
Not content with committing us to a new generation of nuclear power stations, the government has decided to ignore all the common knowledge about climate change and build a new generation of coal fired power stations too, starting at Kingsnorth in Kent.
Mr Hutton also told the conference organised by the Adam Smith Institute that coal fired generation was needed as backup for when the wind did not blow.
To have it as backup, you'd need to have the wind turbines as your main source. As opposed to not building those turbines and using the coal day in day out.
The station would be "carbon capture ready," though the technology for pumping the carbon dioxide it would create into disused oil or gas wells under the North Sea has yet to be either developed or installed.
OK, let's assume that carbon capture and storage actually existed (which it doesn't).
Let's assume that corporations will choose to store it in places that don't flush out lucrative bonuses of otherwise unrecoverable oil and gas (which all plans so far put on the table do, even when they mean a tenfold increase in the emissions from the project).
Let's assume that there is some pipeline leading from Kingsnorth to somewhere to store it (which there isn't).
If the government really believes this is the way forward, why isn't there any obligation on Kingsnorth to use capture and storage as soon as its available?
Because the government isn't serious. So we have to be.
The opposition to Kingsnorth will be huge. If we can show huge opposition to this one, the other - count 'em - six coal-fired power stations already under consideration will be harder to approve.
Last week the Camp for Climate Action decided to hold their annual ballyhoo at Kingsnorth from 3rd-11th August. Put the dates in your diary.
The very words 'new build coal' should be enough to make anyone realise that the government and corporations are not going to come up with effective solutions. There needs to be pressure, there needs to be action from elsewhere. That means you.
Harry Hutton's blog, Chase Me Ladies I'm In The Cavalry, remains one of the funniest things I ever read. Usually - but not always - making a point and - always - with a great comic slap. His recent post on the cost of the Iraq war observed
If Bush had spent that $3,000,000,000,000 on shoes, no American child would ever have to wear the same shoes more than once. Or he could have bought everyone in Iraq an Aston Martin. Those would be the actions of a madman, of course, yet still more sensible than what he actually did do.
In turn, Hutton's taste in other people's work is superb. He posted an embed of a Sunday Drinker wine review without comment, as it needs none. However, there are a further two Sunday Drinker wine reviews of equal comic calibre, so I hereby give you the lot.
Trawl all you like through the murky pit of emetic sludge that is Chris De Burgh's repertoire, can you find anything that'd make you want to get pissed with your mates and mosh about?
Chris de Burgh concert was marred by people vomiting and falling down a bank. A man was knocked unconscious in a brawl.
This is clearly beyond lively japes. It is the actions of people whose brains have fulminated and burst because the Lizard King is trying out his alien mind-control techniques.
It's surely no coincidence that this starts in New Zealand, the country whose media reported Oswald's arrest before it happened, clearly the centre of the plan to take over the world. It is quite plainly a sign.
The almost interesting hoo-hah about the Speaker of the House of Commons allegedly falsifying his expenses has brought up something more worthy of our attention. As he entered the House of Commons on Monday he was enthusiastically greeted by MPs from all parties. Normally any knock is a chance for the other team to throw a punch. So what's different here?
This cross-party support is understandable when you see it from the MPs perspective; they all enjoy the opulence of their position, and it's a fair bet that even if they're not outright crooks then most, if not all, have had personal benefit from some dubious gratuity.
But more than that, as Simon Hoggart observed, 'there is something queasy-making about journalists complaining about other people fiddling their expenses'.
Because we all know that reporters are in the main liars by trade, uninterested in truth or integrity, only in making their story please their even more snidey editor.
When Heather Mills-McCartney made a pro-vegan speech saying drinking cows' milk was as unnatural as drinking rat or dog milk, she was clearly implying we should drink none of these things. However, it was reported as 'Drink rats' milk, says Heather Mills'.
Juliet Gellatley, founder & director of veggie pressure group Viva!explained
The reporters who filed this story about Heather advocating rats’ milk knew it was untrue because I amplified on what Heather had said. One actually admitted that he understood precisely what she meant but the ‘drink rats’ milk’ claim made a damned good story. What this reveals is an utter lack of any integrity in most of the Press – sadly not just the tabloids but the so-called quality papers, too.
Every event I have attended with Heather has been grossly misreported by the Press and has involved spiteful and vicious personal attacks on her integrity and her sanity. The irony is that one of the most common accusations about Heather is that she is a fantasist and a liar – by people whose stock in trade is fantasy and lies.
That this was part of a wider campaign against Mills, (the media never forgives anyone who marries a Beatle and speaks), in itself highlights the deliberate twisting or ignoring of facts.
This week saw Greenpeace activists do a banner-drop on top of a plane at Heathrow, followed the next day by people from Plane Stupid on top of the House of Commons labelling the hallowed building as 'BAA HQ'. The actions were timed with the government's consultation on whether to expand Heathrow.
Underneath the activists, Gordon Brown told MPs decisions had to be made 'in the chamber of this House and not on the roof of this House'.
Yet the point the protesters were making was that the decisions were not being made in either place.
They threw down paper planes they'd made of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act proving that airport operator BAA wrote parts of the consultation document. This should surely be a big story.
The reporters mostly concentrated on the security at parliament aspect, but the corruption is a clearly story for a proper political reporter to get their teeth into. Especially if, as with the Daily Mail's Political Editor Benedict Brogan, it falls literally at your feet. Yet he said
I picked up one of their 'planes': it's a photocopy of an email from someone at BA to a Dept of Transport official about something complicated that I can't be bothered to read.
It's a real dilemma for climate change activists. The issue is so urgent that there isn't time for the whole world to find its information from SchNews. There has to be a large element of spectacle and engaging with the mainstream media. Yet they invariably write the story to fit their idea, rather than report what you say or what happens.
It's even worse when our glimmers of hope, such as The Guardian and The Independent, take hours of your time and really understand it all then, as we saw at the Camp for Climate Action last summer, just go and file some shit about Swampy (Independent) or about how it's OK because you can offset your flight's emissions (Guardian). Even ignoring the depressing element of such deliberate misreporting, as a simple cost/benefit sum it can feel like there's more useful things to be doing.
The one true spark of hope is that people are increasingly media-savvy and know how to read through the lies and get to the core of truth.
My first real political awakening was seeing Greenham Common women on the news. The story was all about what a bunch of irresponsible de-domesticated feral mothers and/or deranged lesbians they were. (These days I count several irresponsible de-domesticated feral mothers and deranged lesbians as personal friends, but that's another matter).
It was plain that the Greenham women were making an informed intelligent choice and were heroes, and that the media were just lying. They're so cynical and self-interested that anyone who takes an idealistic stand or makes a personal sacrifice for a political cause freaks them the fuck out and they respond with ridicule.
As we live under an ever increasing weight of mass media information it can feel like we're being taken over by their perspectives, but maybe it's teaching us how they work so we can see through it. We're so close in we can see that the daunting Wizard of Oz is in fact a deceiving charlatan behind a curtain.
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UPDATE: How weird, Jim Bliss posted a really similar post less than half an hour before this!
