Like Hevon, but more fun

Inspired by those two fine wordsmiths Nind and Ray.

Previously on Barnflakes
Welcome to St Decay
Corn + Wall = Cornwall

Viva la lockdown!

For about half an hour in the middle of April 2020, a dozen editorial staff in The Guardian got excited about a once-in-a-generation opportunity for a greener, brighter, fairer future. Then McDonald's, Primark, car parks and offices opened up again and it was all over.

I already look back on lockdown with a half-forgotten, half-imagined nostalgic fondness as if it happened many years ago. Did I really walk outside and hear birds singing and children playing? Were there really no cars on the roads? Were car parks and offices really shut?

Most people I was in contact with were enjoying lockdown as much as me, appreciating nature, being productive and creative, spending quality time with loved ones – surprisingly, even those who are usually extroverts, who I'd assumed would go stir crazy, relished either some time alone or being with loved ones, usually a bit of both. Aside from being productive and creative, I enjoyed nature more than I have ever before in my life.

So it seems bizarre that, as a whole, the nation seems so keen to return to the moronic 'normal' of before. You know, people driving 100 miles to get to soul-destroying office jobs every day, grabbing a £3 milky bucket of hot liquid apparently called coffee; at the weekend spending it in a soul-destroying shopping centre. The queues for our local drive thru KFC, McDonald's and Costa, and for Primark and Sports Direct, have left me speechless. The morons are back.

Lockdown was a time of hope, reflection, creativity, love, support. We realised who we were and what we valued. We also realised who was worthless – our politicians, our CEOs, our celebrities (not counting Bob Dylan, naturally).

Cars, car parks, offices, jobs, shops, cafes, restaurants, gyms, sport, cinema, planes. Couldn't. Give. A. Damn. About any of it. I had nature on my doorstep; books and art materials at home; a flask for hot drinks; a phone for keeping in touch with family and friends.

I'll be like the Japanese soldiers in the holdouts after the end of World War II, unaware, or unwilling, to believe the war was over and continuing to fight. I will continue my right to fight – for lockdown!

Previously on Barnflakes 
Shakespeare in the time of Coronavirus, a top ten
Kill Bill(ions)
Top ten things to be positive about during the Coronavirus pandemic
Staying at home: a guide to enjoying lockdown
Armchair atlases

Kill Bill(ions)

 

Exciting news that Quentin Quarantino is to remake his classic 2003 movie Kill Bill by giving it a Coronavirus reboot. Tentatively titled Kill Billions, the film is to be shot entirely in Quarantino's bedroom. It will feature a star-studded cast of cardboard cuts outs, including Ben Affliction, Harrison Bored, Bradley Bupa, Nicholas Caged In, Tom Handkerchief, Brad Spit and Goldie Yawn. Not coming to a cinema near you soon...

Instagram hasn't heard of climate change

'Cause everybody hates a tourist
Especially one who thinks it's all such a laugh
– Pulp, Common People 

The paradox is that it is much easier to imagine the end of life on earth than a much more modest change in capitalism.
– Slavoj Žižek

As I pointlessly scroll through Instagram once a month I am amazed to see people are still travelling on long haul flights posting pictures of their moronic grinning selves in far flung parts of the globe*. Mainly, it seems, in order to make other people jealous. Which is generally praised with 'likes'. The hedonists don't look like they're too bothered about the state of the planet.

I would have to deduce that Instagram, and its one billion users, are climate change deniers. That's okay, it's apparently a weakness in the human brain; we're unable to conceive of (or do anything about) the global catastrophe as it isn't happening immediately right in front of our eyes. Climate change is slowly but surely inexorably coming but because it's gradual and not immediate our brains can't envisage it. We're both unable to look too far into the future (beyond the next holiday) and innately selfish – it's hard for humans to forego life's pathetic luxuries – cars, shopping, the next holiday – let alone admit or think about how they are destroying the environment and what the massive ramifications will be for merely living a very selfish life.

(I got very bored of Neflix's The Good Place but waded through it. When it was realised no human had got into heaven for 500 years, it made perfect sense – even the apprently good act of buying roses for your grandmother has become fraught with political and environmental issues – the flowers were ordered from a cellphone, which was made in a sweat shop, the flowers were grown with toxic pestisides, the migrant flower pickers were exploited and the flowers travelled thousands of miles, leaving a huge carbon footprint.

As I've occasionally written in this blog – and will do until the electricity goes out – the best thing anyone can do for the planet is absolutely nothing.)

Humans respond to threat or danger in essentially three ways – what is known as the fight-flight-freeze response. Since the dawn of humans this has been true, and it's still evident in animals (pet cats are great at doing all three) and humans today – though the danger is no longer saber-toothed tigers or bears, it's more likely to be some kind of social anxiety. In regards to climate change, we're still mostly in the freeze category – either we deny it or ignore it; it's too big, we can't do anything about it. Parts of the world where it has been immediate – flooding or the fires in Australia, for example, people have made flight. If we want to do anything about it, we will have to fight – i.e. tackle it.

The zoonotic COVID-19, otherwise known as coronavirus, is an example where humans have gone into fight mode (with a fair bit of flight) and taken immediate action, declaring it an emergency as it's a grave danger to human life. Action has been so over the top (as of today the death count of coronavirus is fast approaching... the annual amount of people who drown in their own bath) that I can only say it's the best thing to happen to the environment for a long time.

Flights are being cancelled. Coachloads of Chinese tourists have disappeared. Thousands of journeys, events and conferences (along with meetings, the most pointless and painful thing humans have invented to fill their vacuous, pointless lives to make themselves feel important) have been cancelled (meaning people aren't flying all over the world to attend them).

All precautions taking immediate effect because of coronavirus – quarantines, lockdowns, grounding flights, closing factories, roadblocks, cancelling events and conferences, advice not to travel or socialise – all these things (and a lot more besides) should be happening anyway to prevent climate change. 

So we've sort of half-heartedly declared Climate Emergencies here and there. Cornwall Council did, then immediately announced a Space Station and Heliport, apparently without irony. In fact, every day in Cornwall I see large tracts of fields and woodlands chopped down to make way for car parks, retail parks, houses and business centres (yes, I had a good moan at Cornwall Council recently so I won't go on). 

Reading news about the environment over the past month has been depressing reading indeed. 'Coronavirus wrecks havoc on global tourism' is the most positive headline I have read in a long time (you know what it is, Venice was up in arms last year about the hoards of tourists they get, threatening to ban them; now they're crying to their mamas about the lack of them). Otherwise, it's been something like this: 'Murders of monarch butterfly activists stun Mexico'; 'Thousands of sheep drown'; 'UK does not have clear vision for last ditch climate talks'; 'Loss of EU protections could imperil UK hedgerows and hedgehogs'; 'Sea levels rising in the U.S.'; 'Boris Johnson “doesn’t get cilmate change”'; 'A small government agency is supporting fossil fuel projects abroad with estimated carbon emissions of a country the size of Portugal'; 'Trees on commercial UK plantations not helping climate crisis'; '1,000 ancient woodlands at risk of destruction by projects like HS2'. You get the idea.

The world has become like The Matrix. Everything is shit, in particular the environment (yeah, and that virus I guess, and Brexit), yet we’re all pretending we're oblivious, still driving around in our stupid cars, Watching shit on Netflix, doing dumb pointless jobs so we can afford to go on dumb, pointless holidays and take moronic selfies for Instagram. Climate anxiety is an actual condition that Instagram users are immune from.

Travel sure has gone luxury since my day, when the only two essentials were a passport and a toothbrush. According to selfish website self.com, which ask questions like, Is “whelming” the new “negging”?, their list of 37 "travel essentials" includes slippers, 'microplane' (apparently a mini cheese grater), extension cords, mini steamer, facial sprays and eye drops. What. A. Bunch. Of. Complete. Wimps. Their shop sells books of cliched crap such as Paulo Coelho (when I went around SE Asia everyone was reading Alex Garland's The Beach, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and The Celestine Prophecy – probably no better than Coelho) – why do travellers still pretend they're doing it for 'meaning' and 'enlightenment' when they're obviously just hedonists showing off?

Tiny Atlas Quarterly is a photography-led lifestyle travel brand and social community that brings personal travel to life: in their magazine, through events and products and on immersive adventures. Meaningless bollocks. There are loads of sites like this now.

I half-read an interview with the apparently 'Phenomenal Woman' Emily Nathan (founder of Tiny Atlas) where she states, 'Everyone who cares about travel should care about climate change', even though air travel and tourism are a major cause of climate change (I actually commented as much on the post), and Instragram travel I would say is ruining the true spirit of travel. The travel of Tiny Atlas is the travel of cliched travel brochures – pretty young smiling white people being hedonistic in foreign countries.

Nathan was interviewed on traveldreamseekers.com, a site which "promotes female travellers with less than 10,000 followers" (I honestly think this should be a charity and that society is overlooking such a deprived sector of the population. Oh, hold on – what about men like myself with less than 100 followers?).

What gets me is these Instagram travel women always look like they're travelling with a professional photographer, a makeup artist and a wardrobe assistant. I mean, where's the dirt and the sweat? It's not proper travel. It's an illusion. She, looking stunning with a flowing Persil white dress, mock-contemplating the sunset from Machu Picchu, tranquil and at one with the world, as the photographer takes the same Instagram shot a million other people have.

(I had an argument with the ex-head of environment for Cornwall Council, who blamed her parents generation for climate change – you know, those ones who never knew it existed until a few years ago, like the rest of us. I blamed millennials, perhaps the most innately selfish generation ever, growing up as they have with mobile phones and the internet and crushed avocado on toast and brands and travelling – and thinking it's all okay. I mean, they don't question anything, right? Just crazy for those likes, and working for some shithole like Google. I don't just have a grudge against millennials – hedonists, capitalists, the rich and the poor are all equally useless when it comes to the environment.)

Talking of capitalism: neoliberalism justifies the world by Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest – well, his theory is flawed. Nature actually works best collaborating, when species help each other for the greater good. It's called symbiosis and there are millions of examples of it in nature; for a start, human bodies have thousands of species of symbiotic microbes inside them.

Unfortunately, due to human interference, the balance of nature is being destroyed. Sometimes humans are capable of symbiosis to each other and to nature – when they're not being moronic or selfish (stockpiling toilet paper and pasta is both) – and I'm not quite sure they yet realise that we rely on nature for our very survival (ants and bees are more important than humans). Anyway, the coronavirus is showing us that we can change our patterns quickly and easily if we want to survive.

Previously on Barnflakes
Letters of complaint
The cult of personality vs saving the planet
Boycotting buffoons
The world's top ten environmental problems (and how to solve them)
Barnflakes on Instagram 

Notes on dog poop bags

Don't blame us

Aspire to be average
In 100 years everyone in the world will be dead
Busy bein' busy
Blight of the plastic bag
Water as it Oughta
Gullible travels (*yes, I did a lot of travel in my younger days, from hitchhiking in the Sahara desert to getting caught up in a revolution in Jarkarta, at a time when we were all pretty unaware of climate change)

The cult of personality vs saving the planet

Historically, the cult of personality tag was reserved for more obvious tyrants like Mao, Stalin and Hitler but the term applies today more than ever. We are surrounded by personalities in the media, both social and traditional. From Kayne West and Kim Kardashian to Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg (Time magazine's Person of the Year – with Trump Jr. Tweeting that the honour should have gone to the Hong Kong protesters; my immediate thought wasn't that dissimilar – it should have gone to the hundreds of environmentalists who are killed every year – I guess what I'm – maybe even we, as in me and Trump Jr. are getting at is that it's the anonymous people who make the difference, who are actually out there doing good, fighting, putting their lives at risk – it's not the leaders or the social media darlings), we have to endure daily these people's opinions and actions. I couldn't give a damn about any of them.

You may think Thunberg's name sticks out on the above list of morons like a sore thumb, and anyone who Jeremy Clarkson hates, I automatically love, but putting so much faith in a person is dangerous. If she died tomorrow, then what? We worship at her alter and say oh well, she would have saved the planet. There are books about her and by her – the whole of my local Waterstone's window is filled with books of her – her name, but not, you know, how to actually save the planet – believe it or not, the books are there to sell books. If you look around a shitty bookshop like Waterstone's you will see innumerable non-fiction books about nature, more than ever, perhaps, as we continue to destroy it (hedgehogs are about to become extinct – but hey, let's write a book about them, and do some cool illustrations of them to sell limited edition prints and t-shirts and mugs!). There's been non-stop discussions with nothing happening for the 50-plus years we've been aware of climate change (global warming, as it was called back then). Putting our faith in any political leader, pop star, anyone at all really, is not going to change anything. Look what happened with the once-lionised Aung San Suu Kyi and how the media turned against her.

Greta Thunberg is a brand, like Naomi Klein used to be (to a lesser extent), with, ironically, No Logo (25 years old this year – and a book which makes no sense at all to today's youth where brands are king, and even imagining a world without brands to the youth with their Apples, Vans shoes and branded coffee is not possible), The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (published 2014, before climate change became cool) covering, respectively, the power of brands; neoliberalism and the rise of disaster capitalism; and, again, the rise of neoliberalism in relation to its flagrant disregard for the environment.

Shock! Horror! These youth with their Apple Vans are protesting for climate change because it's cool and they get a day off school. They don't understand the effects of climate change, as their parents drive them to the protests in their 4x4s and they wear and use products that either exploit or destroy the planet, probably both. Neither parents nor their kids can envisage a life where they have to give up their brands, their jobs, their holidays, theirs cars, their lattes and their whole way of life in order to save the planet – but a peaceful protest once a month eases their consciences (but won't make a blind bit of difference). The parents vote Tory and applaud neoliberal values that have blessed them with a 4x4, a Victorian terraced house, a widescreen TV.

I don't think anyone actually wants to see the planet die, but ask these youth what they're actually doing apart from protesting, and they will tell you 'erm, nothing'. Even I, I who does so little, was planting trees the other weekend. I still argue we need to do less – i.e. nothing – for nature to make a comeback (it's at its best when left alone to do its own thing). Many writers on nature agree with me (sort of), believe it or not. In her 'landmark ecological book of the decade', Wilding, Isabella Tree argues that even conservation in Britain has done more damage than good to nature, citing hundreds of examples, including wrapping plastic guards around saplings to help them grow (actually it strangles them; believe it or not trees grew fine on their own for four billion years or so before us, and natural, thorny scrub did a great job of protecting saplings from rabbits and foxes – before we destroyed it all).

The problem with humans is they all want to do something, good or bad (when it comes to nature – usually bad). Good people with good intentions feel the need to do something around climate change –  be it protesting or planting trees. All political parties are big on planting trees this election – who can plant the most? To me, it's still not the core of the problem – which is to change our lives and our relationship to nature. You can't actively pretend to save the planet whilst endorsing capitalism (i.e. having a job), driving your car, taking your holidays and then plant a few trees like it makes everything hunky dorey (besides, at least a quarter of those saplings are going to die before they reach maturity; those that survive, well, it takes decades to create a mature forest; meanwhile, vast tracts of land have been destroyed for housing or retail parks or car parks or roads or runways).

Presumably, we're still culling badgers, buying and binning plastic bottles, wasting food, building houses, car showrooms and retail parks, chopping down trees, using insecticides, making babies, buying wide screen TVs and everything else, eating avocados, going on holiday, driving cars, eating meat – and a million other things each contributing bit by bit to the destruction of earth. Well done you all!

So, Boris Johnson, who the Guardian say is "The man who doesn't give a fuck about anything is free to do whatever the fuck he wants", "the worst of men", "unfit in every way for any kind of office" and a "liar, racist, sociopathic, narcissistic, glutton for power" (and that's them being objective about him), wins the general election by a large majority. On Friday the 13th (not April Fool's Day).

Despite climate change being front page news every day for months now, the Green Party still don't get a look in. I pretty much despair. Labour had actually put out a great manifesto (to misquote Jerry Mcguire and its "you had me at hello" line – Jeremy, you had me at a four-day working week and free broadband), full of optimism and taxes for the rich and the energy firms, 1,000 Sure Start centres to open (I remember Gordon Brown opening them; I used to take my daughter to them regularly – then Cameron shut them all down), with a strong commitment to tackling climate change by moving towards green energy. Labour actually topped Friends of the Earth's climate and nature league table – scoring 33 out of a possible 45. The Conservative Party scored 5.5 out of 45, with environmental commitments "entirely absent or just plain bad".

The whole divisive election process is of course a popularity contest. The leadership debate took place in what looked like the set of the 1980s children's TV game show, Blockbusters, and indeed the whole affair has the immature atmosphere of school kids arguing in the playground. Leaders are compared and rated in terms like 'stronger', 'confident', 'likeable', 'trustworthy', and 'performance'. Some leaders lie and put on an act. Then a whole nation believes them. I'd like to see politics without leaders, where manifesto and policy comes first and personalities don't get in the way.

So the blame game starts – mostly falling at Corbyn's door, of course. A decent man who presents a fantastic manifesto with a strong green agenda – but perhaps he was never going to be forgiven, say, for not singing the national anthem in 2015. Because the Queen and the Conservatives have done so much for the country. It's probably a small amount of people who actually read all the party manifestos. We all knew who we were going to vote for well in advance, and it had little to do with specific policies and a lot to do with the personalities of the leaders.

Social media adds to the mix with fake news and getting so wrapped up in the small stuff – Diane Abbott's two left shoes going viral on social media or Twitter being besotted with Trump's latest obsession with, say, water efficiency or his attacking a 16-year-old girl. Thankfully Thunberg is more mature than the U.S. President.

If I was the Guardian, Friends of the Earth, Extinction Rebellion or Greenpeace (in other words, anyone trying to make the world a better place) I would probably just shut shop now. What's the point? You've got Johnson and Trump vs. a teenage autistic girl.

Previously on Barnflakes
Boycotting buffoons
The world's top ten environmental problems (and how to solve them)

Notes on dog poop bags

Don't blame us

Aspire to be average
In 100 years everyone in the world will be dead
Busy bein' busy
Blight of the plastic bag
Water as it Oughta

The world's top ten biggest environmental problems (and how to solve them)

Even though I hardly ever blog about the environment I'm probably more passionate about the planet and its wildlife than anything else. And it's pretty hard to ignore nowadays, with much of the news on a daily basis – if it's not about Brexit* – being about climate change, freak weather (whether it be flash floods, wildfires or a hot February – which the BBC bizarrely chose to celebrate with photos of daffodils and ice creams, somewhat missing the point that it's climate change in action. Enjoy it – but please do feel guilty about enjoying it), loss of wildlife populations, plastic waste and air pollution. So here's a top ten with pretty obvious solutions. Unfortunately humans are so selfish and stuck in their ways, nothing will ever change. Until it's too late.

These ten all link to each other – 'everything connects' – so apologies for any repetitions.

1. Climate Change
This is the big one, vying with Brexit on the front page of the Guardian on a daily basis. It's an emergency (one we have known about for decades and done nothing) which is happening right now... and still no one is doing anything. Yes, there's some peaceful protests and petitions being signed, and reports and articles telling us it's an emergency and we have to do something, like, now, and a 15-year-old schoolgirl climate change warrior and films and documentaries and there's government targets of too little too late and energy corporations saying they'll cut 20% of this or that by 2050... yet still nothing is really happening to prevent it.

So what is it? Climate change is the increase of global average weather temperatures and their effects on the planet's weather patterns. Temperatures have been going up steadily for the last fifty years, mainly due to man's reliance on fossil fuels and the resulting build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Chopping down the world's rainforests hasn't helped things either.

(Global warming refers only to the rising average global temperatures, whereas climate change refers to global warming as well as changes in weather patterns such as heat waves, droughts, melting glaciers, etc.)

The effects of this human-caused increase in temperatures can be seen in changing seasons, more frequent, severe weather such as droughts and snowstorms in temperate regions, and warmer, drier weather in other regions, which has caused wildfires. Glaciers – which store 75% of the world's fresh water – are melting at an alarming rate, which causes sea levels to rise. Warming oceans are affecting coral reef bleaching and ocean life. Any more increase in temperature – the now-familiar "well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels" of the Paris Agreement, which doesn't even come into effect until 2020 – will see potential cataclysmic problems.

Solution: Using more clean, sustainable energy like wind, wave, tidal and solar power. Use public transport. Stop using cars. Stop chopping down forests.

2. Wildlife Decline
Mankind has wiped out 60% of wildlife since 1970; that is, mammals, birds, fish and reptiles. This is mainly due to the destruction of their natural habitat to make way for farmland*. The UK has lost much of its wildlife, ranking 189th for biodiversity loss out of 218 countries in 2016. Bees – essential for a healthy environment – are in severe decline, in part due to neonicotinoid, an insecticide resembling nicotine.

Solution: Nothing, really. 

3. Overpopulation
The optimum world population is about 2 billion; we're currently at over 7bn – more than double the amount it was fifty years ago. We probably need a good old-fashioned war or virus to wipe out half the population (luckily war and viruses can be a result of overpopulation).

Solution: Stop having babies; natural resources to be redistributed from the rich to the poor.

4. Air Pollution
Vehicle exhausts are the major cause of air pollution, now said to cause 800,000 deaths in Europe alone and 8.8m worldwide, per year, which is more deaths than smoking (cars also account for 1.25 million deaths from road traffic accidents, making the total amount of deaths from cars over 10 million per year). Cars, planes, trains, factories, power plants, insecticides and pesticides from agriculture-related activities all contribute to air pollution, which is also a major contributor to global warming.

Cars, the largest cause of air pollution and one of the top ten causes of deaths in the world, consume much energy before they're even on the road: car production – whether an electric car or traditionally fuelled one – leaves a huge carbon footprint.

Unfortunately electric cars aren't the answer: they run on electricity produced by burning fossils fuels, and use precious metals. The extraction of nickel, a metal used to produce the battery to power the cars, comes at an environmental and health cost.

I've never got used to cars, and never owned one. I've never thought it right to have cars on roads with people on pavements walking beside them. I've never thought it energy-efficient to take a ton of metal to transport (usually) a single human being around. Cars are ugly and noisy. Roads are horrible and clogged up with cars. Roads destroy communities. And wildlife. I hate it that I've seen hundreds of dead badgers on road sides and never one alive (the UK Government's much-opposed badger cull – deemed 'ineffective' and 'inhumane' in 2013 but continuing to this day – is indeed ineffective when compared to badgers killed by cars: 50,000 a year in the UK, as compared to 20,000 killed by culling in 2017).

Solution: What can I say? Ban cars. Cycle, get the bus, the train.

5. Eating Meat
Aside from the cruelty aspect, meat production is one of the leading causes of greenhouse gas emissions. It contributes to the loss of animal diversity and is a major source of water pollution and deforestation (animals need a lot of land to graze). Meat eating isn't sustainable.

Solution: Become vegetarian.

6. Capitalism / Economic Growth
Capitalism's relentless pursuit of profit creates a disregard for planetary resources with no account for environmental impact. 'Growth for the sake of growth' is the mantra of all governments, companies and corporations. Economic growth is always presented as a great thing that can solve the world's problems. Unfortunately, growth actually increases both inequality and unemployment, and is disastrous for the environment: it leads to deforestation, loss of natural habitat and biodiversity of wildlife, increase in material and energy use and immense waste. Oxfam believes 'extreme capitalism' is to blame for poverty, with 82% of the world's money going to just 1% of its population.

Economic growth as we know it, measuring GDP, the capitalist-consumerist ideal; these concepts are barely 300 years old – since the start of the Industrial Revolution, yet they have already reached their peak. No one said growth was infinite. It's not. But capitalism without growth is apparently a sustainable possibility.

Solution: Socialism! Or something like it.

7. Consumerism / Waste
This is the by-product of capitalism and economic growth, of course. Crap gets made. Crap gets bought and consumed. Lots of crap is wasted and dumped. Hardly any of it is recycled.

We in the west had it so good for so long – houses, TVs, cars, debt, bad diets, unhappiness, pointless objects of desire in a disposable and throwaway society – but now the rest of the world, in particular the vast populations of China and India, want it too, and who are we to blame them or stop them and tell them it's all a lie (and disastrous for the environment)?

Solution: Stop producing and buying crap. Use less.

8. Plastic Waste
It's suddenly all over the news. Of course I've been moaning about it for years (like here and here; yes I wrote that a decade ago); I haven't accepted a plastic bag from a shop for years (despite every cashier asking me if I want one, every time I buy anything, even if it's just one item); haven't bought a bottle of water for years (been using the same old bottle for years); can't understand what's wrong with tap water. Recycling isn't the answer – it's to stop using plastic. Banning straws seems like a joke (like a tear in the ocean; a tip of the iceberg).

I always tell people I go days without drinking a drop of water (any drink, such as tea, does the same job water does), and then I might bore them with the story of when I walked 20 miles in the Sahara desert in Morocco with no water and a heavy backpack, chain smoking all the way. When I did eventually find a village with a cafe, I ordered a (glass) bottle of Coke. Tasted great. Nowadays people can't seem to go a ten minute train journey without glugging from their precious bottle of Evian.

Anyway, plastic waste is found everywhere, in our cities, countryside, seas and rivers, even embedded in Arctic ice. The waste harms the environment, pollutes our waterways and threatens wildlife. There's an island of plastic waste (now twice) the size of Texas in the Atlantic Ocean. The production of plastic also contributes to climate change.

Solution: Ban plastic bottles and reduce packaging in general; replace with glass and cardboard. Bring back water fountains. Ban coffee cups that can't be recycled. Friends of the Earth are calling for a ban on all non-essential single-use plastics by 2025.

9. The Cult of Personality
By which I mean people. CEOs, Jeremy Clarkson, Donald Trump (still denying climate change), Boris Johnson, professional footballers, celebrities, politicians – can't we just do away with them all? People are swayed by personalities rather than policies. I read some time ago about a theory to vote via the internet on policies without politicians or political parties to sway us one way or another.

The Green Party has the right idea – the environment is more important than any political allegiance. If you remember Green Party candidate Natalie Bennett's interview on Radio 4 a few years ago, it's probably only for what was called in the press 'a car crash interview' where, according to the Telegraph, 'she fails to recognise her own party's manifesto policies'. When I listened to it, I heard nothing of the sort, only things I agreed with: the Citizen's Income, legalising the sex trade and drugs industry, dismantling the armed forces, using weapons factories to build wind turbines... all sheer lunacy, according to Telegraph and Radio 4 readers and listeners, I'm sure.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is the environment should be above politicians and personalities. It's still not top of the agenda for any political party (except the Green Party), or still even barely mentioned. Brexit has consumed British politics for the past two years, to the detriment of more important issues like the environment, education, the NHS, and poverty.

The environment shouldn't be political – the recent climate change protests by school children held outside council buildings, people working for the council weren't allowed to show any support for the protest (and the UK Government was more concerned about children missing a day of school than saving the planet). Unfortunately the media still needs personalities to sell climate change: see the '15-year-old Swedish schoolgirl climate change warrior', Greta Thunberg. She's great. Unfortunately peaceful protest has a record of achieving nothing (remember a million protesting against Blair's invasion of Iraq?) but the children are the future. Thunberg managed to stop her mum from flying and persuade her dad to become vegetarian, so let's hope other children are stopping their parents from driving their SUVs, for example.

Organisations like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Extinction Rebellion (formed in 2018) are taking positive action to avert climate breakdown. If only it wasn't an uphill battle against governments and corporations (sometimes to an alarming extent: in 2017, more than 200 peaceful protesters and activists were murdered, mainly in South America). 

10. Doing Stuff
I often get asked what am I doing to help save the planet. Nothing, I reply. Absolutely nothing. I'm not driving a car. I've been on a plane once in two years. I'm not using plastic bags. I'm not buying plastic bottles. I'm not eating meat. I'm not buying new clothes, books or anything at all really (regular readers will know I'm all about the barngains in charity shops).

The problem is the world is full of people doing things. Some good things, sure, but mainly bad, selfish, pointless stuff: driving to places, having holidays, having babies, working, consuming: everything you thought was your birthright is harmful to the planet. There are too many people doing too many things. No matter what you do or eat or consume or watch or desire, somewhere, somehow, it's either exploiting someone, the environment, or both. The best thing is to try to do nothing at all.

I say – semi-seriously – we partially go back to pre-industrial times; that is, work locally, produce food locally, with an immediate ban of fossil fuels (and embrace renewable energy) and traffic (all this government crap of we’ll do this or that by 2025 or 2065 is pathetic; we need to make the changes now, and sort out the repercussions later). Obviously, the internet is a great tool for working remotely and keeping in touch with family and friends. Our current way of life is obviously wrong in many respects. It's time to try something different.

__________ 

*One of the few benefits of Brexit, believes George Monbiot writing in the Guardian, is leaving the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, a farm subsidy system causing widespread destruction of wildlife habitats by paying farmers and landowners for empty ground that's in 'agricultural condition'. This can be land that's unsuitable for farming but as long as it's empty it's eligible for public money (to the tune of £44bn a year). The payments have led to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of hectares of magnificent wild places all across Europe. It's a policy that benefits, surprise surprise, the rich the most: landowning billionaires and aristocrats receive the most money just for owning land, not for actually having to do anything with it. 

Previously on Barnflakes:

Notes on dog poop bags

Don't blame us

Aspire to be average
In 100 years everyone in the world will be dead
Busy bein' busy
Blight of the plastic bag
Water as it Oughta

We're all pretentious now

There was a time, many years ago, when we'd laugh and scoff at pretentious descriptions of wine that contained, say, 'aromas of rich dark currants, nectarine skins, gushing blackberry, but lots of fragrant tobacco, rich soil, white flowers, smashed minerals and metal' (actual review). Now that such descriptions are commonplace, meaningless and we ignore them completely, other products have got on the bandwagon. Nothing can be just what it is any more – it has to stand for something else, something more, something usually pretentious.

Coffee is the new wine. My pack of Taylors of Harrogate ground coffee, Rare Blossom Ethiopia, is a 'dazzling riot of honeysuckle, mango, blossom, whisky and spice' (what, no 'echoes of a Bach fugue in the background'?). It's been some years since I've been able to go into a coffee shop and ask for something as simple as a white coffee (it doesn't seem to exist any more); it would be easier asking for an Austrian goat milk double-half-caf-half-decaf-soy milk cappuccino – extra hot – with a dash of Madagascar cinnamon and half a tablespoon of caramel-latte-frappa-mocha.

A list of 'guest beans' on a coffee shop menu (handwritten chalk on blackboard, obvs) includes those from Brazil, Papua New Guinea, Guatemala, Colombia and 'Coeur D'Afrique' (a place or a state of mind? The name evokes Conrad's anti-imperialist Hearts of Darkness, set in the Congo; despite being a slightly dangerous place to hunt for speciality beans right now, the Democratic Republic of Congo is the 'future of coffee', according to the NY Times. The aforementioned Coeur D'Afrique bean contains huckleberry, violet and sugar cane, but might as well also give off a whiff of, say, earth freshly dug up by Fairtrade slaves). The list of exotic (yet poor, obvs) countries conjures up colonial images of seventeenth century explorers returning from the New World with plundered treasures such as gold, tobacco, spices, chocolate and, indeed, coffee.

If coffee is the new wine, chocolate is the new coffee. In the 1980s, Ferrero Rossier and After Eights were the ultimate pretentious chocolate but that's nothing compared to the new breed of brands where 'lemon, poppy seed and baobab' is an actual flavour. Chocolate from Ecuador is apparently 'flowery and fruity'; from Madagascar it's 'intense red fruit with cherry notes', whilst Southeast Asia has 'smoky and earthy flavors'.

(When it comes to hot beverages and chocolate, sorry, but I'm so happy with a Sainsbury's Red Label cup of tea and regular Kit Kat I can't even put it into words.)

If products such as wine and perfume were the precursors of this pretentious parade, nowadays many other once-average and taken-for-granted items such as coffee, chocolate, craft beer, vinyl records and bikes are revitalised as specialised and authentic, artisan products with the intention of making the buying public feel like connoisseurs. Niche has become mainstream. I mainly blame advertising and hipsters.

What's the next product to get the pretentious treatment? Speciality industrial-strength bleach sourced from uranium mines in Namibia? With shades of deadly nightshade, aromas of Agent Orange and the soundtrack to Apocalypse Now in the distance...

Previously on Barnflakes:
The agony of choice
Now serving flat white
Not for all the tea in China
Proud to serve

Generation 'X'

As reported in the Guardian, Oregon has become the first state in the U.S.A. to allow the third gender option for driving licences and IDs. So, instead of the usual 'M' for Male or 'F' for Female, gender fluid persons can now mark themselves with the letter 'X'. X seems a curious letter to use – wouldn't an S, U or W designate fluidity better? (When presented with a form that asked Sex? as an adolescent, and come to think of it still today, the immature desire to answer 'Yes please!' was almost overwhelming.)

The letter X has many connotations and meaning, depending on context, many of which are negative, from Nazi symbolism and poison, to pornography and death. Films used to be rated X, implying violence or sexual content, and the letter is still used to designate extreme forms of pornography (XXX); there's the X-Files, associated with mystery, the unknown and the forbidden; it is the sign of Satan; the crossbones of the skull and crossbones symbol is an X.

On the other hand, it has less nefarious meanings too: in maths, it is the unknown factor and the axis on a chart; to Romans it was the number ten; there's Christ on his cross; the X-factor (though to me it's the epitome of evil); XX and XY designate the male and female chromosomes; it's a size of clothing; X marks the spot on maps... the list goes on: in short, its broad array of meanings means it's a confused symbol (here's a blog from Psychology Today exploring the many meanings behind the letter X).

Anyway, the letter X is the least of the confusion. There's a whole plethora of jargon for third gender people. Not only is it confusing – for them and us – but many of the terms sound like the stuff of sci-fi (a mix of Burroughs, Dick, Ballard and The Matrix springs to mind; a line from a gender fluid person who "expresses multiple genders at the same time" sounds like it came from Philip K Dick's A Scanner Darkly): third gender, non-binary, intergender, agender, bigender, gender fluid, amalgender and xenogender are just a few of the terms...

And I have a strange feeling that technology is to blame; the loneliness, anonymity and avatars of the online world and social media, where we can be who we like, has spilled into 'real life'; politics and schools and traditional media have no choice but to follow suit.

(Bear with me – imagine a sci-fi film, called Battle of the benders genders, set 1,000 years in the future. Countries and borders have vanished, race is a thing of the past, the real battle is between the genders. There's a world war, men and women lose, the third gender is victorious. We all have to wear matching white outfits, we all look odd, bitter and unhappy. The Miss World contest is banned, as is Woman's Hour on Radio 4 and International Woman's Day; in fact books and art are banned and burned as the world embarks on its bland genderless future where we live in blissful unhappiness being told what to think.)

At the risk of sounding transphobic, all this third gender stuff is absolute nonsense (for the first time in my life I find myself siding with Piers Morgan, whose recent TV debate with Fox and Owl, two gender fluid young people who say "I never felt truly comfortable in my body. I struggled in my teenage years with puberty and was confused with myself and didn't know if I fit into this world", neatly summing up every teenager in the world, caused a storm on social media). Worse than that, it's dangerous.

In my day there were two genders, male and female. This is still a biological fact. I don't care if you wear blue (boy) or pink (girl) clothes, or are a truck driver (man) or work in marketing (woman), if you have a penis you are male, if you have a vagina you are female. Fact. (There are a small percentage (0.5) of people born intersex – though to me it's a congenital disorder, an anomaly akin to being born with three fingers, two hearts or one eye; blimey, even the term hermaphrodite is now outdated – presumably one day Jeffrey Eugenides' fine book Middlesex will be banned). What you choose to do with your genitals is your business (sex is another jargon minefield – are you androsexual or gynosexual)? If you have a strange feeling that you don't belong or never felt comfortable being a man or woman, that is an emotional feeling, not a biological state.

What if I've always felt uncomfortable as a middle class, British, white, male human (which, naturally, I have)? What if something inside me says to me I should have been born in the Galapagos Islands as a turtle in the year 1784? Can I get rights to live like a turtle, laze around on the islands all day, go swimming and become an Ecuadorian citizen? Nope. Tough luck. To a certain extent, we are what we are born and have to make do with that.

48% of trans people under the age of 26 have attempted suicide in the UK (compared with 6% of non trans people). No wonder – I'd be suicidal working out which category I belonged in. Probably just the one called 'depressed'. I don't think the statistic is even to do with them being trans or suffering from transphobia – it's do with them being mixed up, confused and weird. You know, being a millennial. But instead of simply being a frustrated and confused teenager full of angst for no apparent reason – aside from hormones, now they have an explanation – of course, it's the dissatisfaction with the gender I was born with.

It's a playground fad that has got out of hand – even my daughter (just turned 11) speaks of gender fluidity whereas twenty years ago she would have just said tomboy. Indeed, long before that, actresses such as Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn donned male suits and ties and would now be described as gender fluid – but back then they were being individualistic trailblazers. Today they'd just be part of the new in-crowd, getting categorised and pigeon-holed and likes on Instagram.

Political correctness is a form of censorship and fascism which rewrites the past and stigmatises those who don't adopt the latest correct jargon (almost impossible to keep ahead of with the latest race terms let alone gender). It's Orwell's Ministry of Truth where the past is rewritten or forgotten, and Newspeak which redefines language (though now it's in a more complicated form, rather than simpler). As Orwell writes, "language merely reflects existing social conditions". It's impossible for us to see out of our own epoch, to see the past for what it was, and the future for what it will be. We've been through this before, right? Rights for women, blacks, gays... wrong. This is completely imaginary and ludicrous, like teenagers wanting Jedi to be classified as an official religion.

I'm exaggerating? Hardly. Words get banned before our eyes; if you don't keep up to date you're blasted on social media. Germaine Greer gets banned from speaking at a university for her transphobic comments. This is the opposite of freedom of speech or expression. This is think what we think or else. This is the thought police, totalitarianism. And this is just the start. Be afraid. 

Previously on Barnflakes:
Satorial sexism
Gender bender
Portland & Austin: tales of two cities
Notes on afflictions

Elsewhere on the web:
It’s dangerous and wrong to tell all children they’re ‘gender fluid’
– The Spectator

Notes on the UK's recent terrorist attacks

Yes, this is filed under Controversial (Perhaps).

The three terrible terrorist attacks and their aftermath in the UK this year (so far) follow a similar pattern. First is the attack itself (more likely than not, a white van and guys with knives); chaos, confusion and terror ensue. Then the 'swift response' of the emergency services and the 'everyday heroes'. Next are Tweets by May, Corbyn, Khan et al, expressing various obvious and meaningless outrage: 'shocking', 'terrible', 'horrific' etc. Then comes the media (traditional and social) frenzy, followed by a vigil (with football players and pop stars if you're lucky) and perhaps a benefit concert.

(I get pushed and ignored on a daily basis in London; then there's a terrorist attack and we all love each other, we're all as one. It only happens in times like this. I don't see it any other time. Remember the Blitz? Oh, those were the days. I don't see it. On the day of the Westminster attack, there was a blind woman struggling along a tube platform; no one helped her, people pushed past her. Women on their own struggled up stairs with huge suitcases; no one helped.)

Despite the apparent random nature of the attacks, their aftermath is fairly predictable and follow a set script. It's become a bit like an episode of 24 or a soap opera. There are 'what we know so far' reports and 'live updates' for days; the reporting gets so bogged down in details. Someone three miles away from the London Bridge attack heard something and is interviewed; the editor of the Spectator informs us he got a cut-price taxi ride home after the attacks – yes, this was reported on Radio 4. The make and model of the van used by the terrorists is reported. Video footage and photos are examined in minute detail.

In other words it's all about the 'how' and very little about the 'why'. What drives a 22-year-old to kill himself and others (isn't it tragic that for a young person to get noticed, it is far easier to do something negative than something positive)? There's little debate on the wider issues of why it's actually happening – surely it's as tragic for the terrorist to die like this as for the victims, their families, the witnesses and the emergency services dealing with it. Like with paedophiles, daring to even think about a terrorist's motivation is tantamount to siding with them or being sympathetic. We do not want to understand the terrorist – they are pure evil and beyond comprehension.

Jermy Corbyn has recently made unspeakable (yet rather sensible) comments: he's blamed the UK's foreign policy in the middle east as the cause for the attacks (which I thought was obvious); he's said the war on terror isn't working; he's said he'd rather sit down with a terrorist and talk instead of shoot him. All this seems logical to me. Western intervention in the middle east has always been a disaster; the eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth mentality has never worked; understanding and getting into the mind of a terrorist is more productive and useful than a dead terrorist (as my ex-girlfriend said, if you turn around the mindset of a terrorist, and get them to act as an advocate and ambassador for peace and understanding, that's far more useful than murder. For example, most councillors working in addiction are former addicts). But of course, for all Corbyn's rational comments, he received a storm of abuse – in the Mail and the Sun ('Apologist for terror' and 'Jihadi comrades', respectively), you'd expect it, but even in The Guardian comments.

Also, around the time of the attacks at London Bridge, there was a truck bomb in Kabul which killed 150, many of whom were women and children. Hardly made the news here (I know, I know, when it happens here it's an affront to democracy and the western way of life). More important (most read on the BBC website, as of today) is Phil Collins postponing a show after a fall, grim reviews for The Mummy and a hairdryer gran being a 'national hero'.

Anyway, General Election here today. Almost touching, really, that at the polling station it's still an old guy with a computer print out, a pencil and a ruler to check the voters. This election has been about Brexit, terrorism, immigration, personalities, back-stabbing. Hopefully one day someone with give a shit about the environment before it's too late.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Notes on murders and sex crimes
The Paedo files

Banning bags on London transport

In a controversial move to ease congestion on London's over-crowded travel network, officials have announced the banning of all bags on trains, tubes and buses, estimating this will free up 39% of space on the networks. Rucksacks in particular take up the space of one person, a TFL official explained, and are extremely annoying, seeing as the oblivious owners whack other people with them when they turn around. "At worst rucksacks present a security issue and may contain an explosive device; at best they contain pointless clutter – either way they are a nuisance", the same official explained.

Free transport!

It would seem churlish not to take advantage of the endless engineering works besetting the rail network. So, travel for free! The replacement buses and coaches put on never check tickets, so hitch a ride for free, even if it's not to where you want to go, even if it does take four times as long as the train. 

A while ago I had to endure a bus replacement ride to Fleet in Hampshire. The train from Clapham Junction to Fleet usually takes 45 minutes; the replacement bus got lost and took nearly four hours. Still, it was a free journey, and I enjoyed seeing countryside I'd never seen before.

Previously on Barnflakes:
See it. Say it. Sod it
Public transport courtesy cards
Pet hates #1,287: the rucksack

The death of cigarette advertising

Is the earthy tone Pantone 448 C really the death of cigarettes? Doesn't seem so bad to me – but that's the colour picked by Australians as the ugliest colour in the world. And that's the colour they, and now the UK, has chosen to replace all branding on cigarette packs, along with 60% of the pack surface consisting of health warnings and photos, and the logos reduced to a small standard generic sans serif typeface. Whether it has or will reduce cigarette smokers is another matter, but one immediate outcome is the confusion cashiers have of trying to find your brand of choice – the packs do all look exactly the same.

The 1970s and 80s was the most imaginative decade for cigarette advertising – and the start of the end. Advertisers weren't allowed to show cigarettes as evoking youth or coolness or even display a person smoking a cigarette on their adverts so companies such as Silk Cut and Benson & Hedges devised creative and surreal methods to evoke their brands.

Cigarette advertising was banned on TV in the UK in 1991 (also lamented; for example, the famous Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet campaign is often voted as one of the top TV adverts of all time). In the early noughties cigarette advertising was banned from sport (snooker and Formula One used to display prominent advertising at its events); then advertising was banned altogether. In 2007 smoking was banned from enclosed public spaces such as pubs and restaurants.

So now with the advertising and branding gone, as well as the ever-decreasing places to smoke, there is more incentive than ever for smokers to continue smoking quit, I mean, obviously. The new No Logo non-branding branding is presumably intended to stop people (in particular, youth) smoking, as is the banning of packs of ten and small packs of tobacco (though smokers trying to stop always found the small packs useful; if you're trying to stop the last thing you want to invest in is a pack of twenty).

Long before I started smoking, I always admired the advertising and branding of cigarettes (maybe because I was an art/graphic design student going through a surreal phase). I remember one seminar on subliminal advertising at art college where the tutor tried to convince us of the skull in the pattern of the camel on Camel cigarettes and the words 'horrible jew' sort of spelt out in the Marlboro logo if you turned it upside down and backwards ('orlb jew').

Anyway, I guess it's a good move to make cigarettes less attractive. But why stop at cigarettes? Hopefully enlightened future generations will see alcohol advertising banned. Then car advertising. And certain food advertising banned (meat, chocolate). I'd like to see (or not see, as the case may be) crap films, music and TV advertisements banned too.

Previously on Barnflakes
Australia first country to ban cigarette branding
Cigarettes vs. smartphones
Surreal Silk Cut cigarette ads
Silk Cut anagrams
Life branded 'a health and safety risk'

See it. Say it. Sod it

Late last year the trite 'See it. Say it. Sorted' campaign was launched to encourage train passengers to report any unusual items or activity on major railway stations. Thankfully, the ads have already been banned but the announcements at stations are constant, and for some reason drive me crazy. Spoken by a slightly common, possibly regional, annoying female voice, the sort of woman who works in HR and doesn’t allow you that extra day’s holiday as it’s against company policy, and if she did it for you she’d have to do it for everybody, it comes across in a slightly condescending manner as if she's telling the message to children. "Now, if you see something that doesn't look right..." Like what? Litter on the ground? Trains so over-crowded trains I can't even open my Michel Houellebecq book? Broken toilets? Late or cancelled trains? Oh sorry, something that doesn't look right. You mean like a clean, empty train running on time? Gotcha.

Sartorial sexism

(or Gender bender II)

Within reason, women can wear what they like to the office in all seasons. In spring and summer it's skirts, dresses and sandals; in the autumn it's black leggings; come winter it's fur-lined boots and hooded coats with (perhaps) pink fluffy fur inside. Men have a raw deal – all year round, it's shirt, tie, suit and shoes (so we're sweating in the summer and freezing in the winter). All of which are either grey, black, blue or brown. Even men's umbrellas are always black whereas women's can be a riot of colour and pattern. Generally, women's office attire reflects the seasons of nature; men's reflects lack of imagination – his only means of expression is via tie, socks, pants and facial hair.

Gender bender

This year in the press there’s been a lot of coverage of the gender pay gap; from the boardroom to the tennis court women still earn a lot less than men. This isn’t the case in my experience at all, where I only seem to know women half my age earning twice as much as me for doing I have no idea what.

Women are obviously the main victims of domestic violence, but there is also a lot more men being abused by women than is thought, which is hardly reported at all, mainly not by the men abused, who are understandably embarrassed or ashamed by being mistreated by their spouses. Remember Rebekaha Brooks being arrested for physically assaulting her then-husband Ross Kemp in 2005? It seemed absurd for a beefy guy like Kemp to be beaten-up by a woman but aside from that it's not always physical, it can be psychological as well.

In the space of one hour travelling on a train I witnessed two conversations between two couples, in both cases the man in the relationship being belittled, undermined and generally embarrassed in public by his girlfriend. I felt sorry for both men.

Up until the 1940s, boys wore pink and girls wore blue. Pink was felt to be a more male colour, closer to red, a 'stronger' colour (in England at the time, soldiers apparently wore red uniforms) and blue a feminine colour. Aside from a brief period in the 1970s when unisex clothing was all the rage, it was retailers and manufacturers who decided that blue would be for boys and pink for girls. There's nothing psychological about the difference; just something we're taught.

Metrosexuals are just homosexuals in disguise. Men look at men more than women; women look at women more than men. We noticed one can still buy a 'Bender in a Bun' in the Wimpy Bar. We found it hilarious.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Rebekah Brooks resigns over her name

In 100 years everyone in the world will be dead

Recent research conducted by scientists has led to the discovery that, even with 353,000 babies being born today (UNICEF's estimated daily average), 99.9% of the world's population will be dead 100 years from right now. That is, the population of the world will be completely different a century from now. Miraculously, the next population will do pretty much exactly the same things as the previous population. This sobering, yet somehow inspiring discovery, has sent shock waves across the scientific community, with some scientists wondering what the point of it all is, and others figuring it's actually quite exciting, and a great opportunity to fuck up the world as much as possible until the next lot come along. The current population of the planet is just over 7 billion; there will be a lot more when the next batch comes along, in 100 years time. So far, 108 billion people have existed on planet earth; presumably, most of them have died at some point in the last 200,000 years.

This comes hot off the heels of scientists declaring – somewhat late in the day – a new geological epoch, the Anthoprocene, which they want to backdate to the 1950s. So for the past sixty-odd years we've all been happily existing in the Holocene epoch (or 'recent' – it began 9,700 years BCE), oblivious to the fact that we've actually been living in the Anthropocene epoch, or 'new age of man'.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Aspire to be average

"Women don't understand film"

Labelled under: Controversial (perhaps)

The views expressed in this blog are not necessarily the views of the author.

I mentioned on a previous post that women don't do top ten films and music, and that men do (because we're geeky and on the Asperger's spectrum etc etc). I asked a female work colleague what her favourite film was (I also asked her what her favourite album was; she said she didn't know the title of any albums). She said her favourite film was Run all Night, a terrible Liam Neeson action thriller from last year. Another (male) colleague said dryly to her, "You may want to rethink that answer" before uttering the immortal lines: "Women don't understand film".

An outrageous statement perhaps but a quick survey in the office reveals women's favourite films to be mainstream at best, terrible at worst: Child 44 (never heard of it; oh, it's a terrible Russian thriller), Steel Magnolias, Dumb and Dumber, Love Actually (there's a great blog post about Love Actually not actually being about love at all), Pretty Woman and "anything with Russell Crowe".

Recently some women at the office have seen Batman Vs Superman (at the cinema; it's had universal terrible reviews) and 50 Shades of Grey (on DVD; the book was dire; the film is worse). Male colleagues have seen High-Rise, Anomalisa and Victoria.

Here's the thing: the average guy, who wouldn't consider himself a film buff, at least knows a potted history of film: classics such as Citizen Kane, Vertigo and The Godfather; a few foreign films; they would have heard of David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Orson Welles. Most women wouldn't.

Mainly women don't care about film or its history (there are great female film critics – Pauline Kael and Dilys Powell spring to mind); they don't care for directors or cinematographers. It's not on their radar. They like sexy actors and a good story. They'll watch what's on. When they judge their favourite film, it's an emotional response which doesn't take in the history of cinema; usually, it'll be something they've seen last week and thought was great.

Now, I'm not completely pretentious (only a bit) and can enjoy a lighthearted film as much as anyone: recently I was in stitches watching Bridesmaids (so there; it's not even very good but I found it hilarious!). But my favourite films would be more along the lines of L'Atalante, Belle de Jour, Mean Streets, Eraserhead, Touch of Evil, Stalker...

Previously on Barnflakes:
Top 10 film critics
Sex and the City 2 Vs. Greenberg

Don't become a graphic designer

Towards the end of my foundation course at art college, one of my tutors tried to persuade me to go on and study graphic design and illustration. I was only eighteen but had a sneaking suspicion it was a boring career to follow. My actual words to him were, somewhat pretentiously, "the film industry needs me more", and at the time I was obsessed with film, and went on to make films and generally have a good time.

(He also said as a graphic designer, it's better to design something you're not interested in – the example he gave was Val Doonican album covers – in order to remain objective. Well, after years of designing car, technology, fitness and financial magazines – which have all bored me to death, I have to disagree with him.)

Years later, when reality hit and I reluctantly became a designer – literally, against my will – I was being interviewed at a design recruitment consultancy. The woman interviewing me, barely out of her teens, told me I wasn't passionate enough about my work. Well, for a start it was crap, but mainly because, well, graphic design isn't a passionate profession; it's measured and precise, and not very interesting. It's not like being a painter or filmmaker; you're not expressing yourself, you're fulfilling a brief and providing a visual solution.

Graphic design is a popular choice for young people. They all want to work in a Google-type office with bean bags and table tennis tables and create pretty pictures and imagine it's a glamorous, cool profession. But whether you're earning £18K designing catalogues or a local newspaper, or £80K at a hot design agency, either way you are essentially being told what to do and staring at a Mac screen (worse for your eyes than PCs, apparently) for eight hours a day, like I am right now when I should be designing a DPS for a financial magazine.

In short, being a designer is boring. We've (designers) got cool design books and magazines (Eye is the best), we've got blogs (design observer is good), we've got typography talks (actually quite interesting at St Bride in London), but on a day-to-day basis, and compared to other people doing completely non-skilled jobs often in the same office as the designer, it is a cheerless, underpaid, unrewarding, anhodonic profession.

I'd say graphic design is a skilled profession. It's not an art but it's a craft which takes years to learn. Sales and marketing (for example), by contract, from what I've observed, requires no skill or qualifications apart from the gift of the gab or being blonde and bubbly, yet they are lauded and praised like Gods. And paid twice as much as designers (if I owned a company, everyone, from admin assistant to CEO, would be paid exactly the same). Profit is king.

Sales guys get lunches and bonuses, commissions and conferences in Cannes and Vegas; journalists get to eat foie gras at Grade I listed houses and go to free football matches; marketing may get hampers from Fortnum & Mason. In 15 years as a designer I have literally yet to get taken out for a cup of coffee.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Top 10 graphic designers
Top ten jobs
The offensive office
In terms of moving forward
Wasting time
Aspire to be average
Absolutely famous

Graphic design work:
barnflakes.com

Public transport courtesy cards

You know how it is – you're on any form of public transport and someone, somewhere, on your train or bus, is annoying you by – say – blocking the doors, eating smelly food, speaking or listening to music too loudly, not moving along the aisle, tapping on their phone, spreading their legs out too wide on a seat or having their bag on an unoccupied seat.

Of course, being British, we've learnt to ignore such annoyances; though we may want to scream at them, civilised society suggests otherwise. Even asking someone to turn their music down would at best disturb the otherwise silence of the carriage and result in possible embarrassment; at worst it could (it actually has!) result in a stabbing.

The solution is these passive-aggressive cards – simply print and cut them out, then surreptitiously hand one out to the offending passenger as you're leaving the carriage, then leg it down the platform.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth

When an animal kills or maims a human, the animal in question is usually put down. This happens no matter what kind of animal – dog, shark, horse, lion, bull, elephant, bear. Indeed, the polar bear that killed Eton schoolboy Horatio Chapple in 2011 was also killed, even though the polar bear is in serious danger of becoming extinct (and Eton schoolboys are not). It seems a little unfair; the animal can't be taken to court and tried – if animals could talk, who knows what their reasons might be. They might have felt threatened, or scared, or been hungry. Or, most likely, could probably be excused on the basis that it's their animal nature to be a killer. Or if it's a pet, surely the blame lies more with the animal's owner, and they should be tried (and probably destroyed). Other times, it's just an accident, like a clumsy elephant sitting on someone. Whatever the reason, killing the animal is pretty harsh and doesn't really solve anything.

The paedo files

I make no excuses whatsoever for paedophiles but when I have mentioned to people the punishment and treatment of the affliction (unfortunate sexuality? Disease? Aberration?) seems to me barbaric and draconian, their response is always 'Well what would you do if someone was interfering with your daughter?', then my response is always, of course, I would track them down and murder them. It seems to be a condition we are very reluctant to understand or try to cure, with daily Daily Mail-style executions and the fear that there is a paedo on every street corner, similar to the urban myth that you are never more than four foot away from a rat (both apparently false). Indeed, you may even know one! He (always a he) may even be your best friend or your brother!

I really don't think (say) Ian Watkins, the convicted paedophile from The Lost Prophets, woke up on a daily basis and thought to himself, 'Oh frabuous joy, I'm so glad to be sexually attracted to babies'. In comments he and his band members have made, it seems his actions were more in tune with a drug addict: the denial, the lying and manipulation are all characteristics of an addict determined to get their fix. The public reaction to it – disgust, horror – is of course understandable, but there is zero attempt at understanding or sympathy (perhaps rightly so in his case). We want paedophiles punished rather than 'cured'. Is a cure even possible (jail certainly isn't the answer)? Once upon a time we tried to 'cure' homosexuals. Cognitive therapy is a possible solution, as with most paedophiles the reason for their condition will be shaped by their upbringing and not sexual preference.

The unrelenting witch hunt that has been Operation Yewtree has spared almost no one, whether guilty or innocent (it's generally been guilty until proven innocent – in other words, the opposite of what the law is meant to be). Childhood heroes have been mercilessly chopped down – and rightly so, of course, if they are guilty, but it's been less clear sometimes if a celebrity 'just' pinched a woman's bum in the 1970s. Out of all the arrested minor celebrities arrested, most it seems were found not guilty, including Paul Gambaccini, Jim Davidson, Freddie Starr, Jimmy Tarbuck and William Roache. Dave Lee Travis, though eventually convicted, was initially found not guilty of 12 charges, until he was retried and found guilty of one.

So seeing as death (ie Jimmy Savile; you can't wake the dead but you can say what you like about them – the last I heard Savile had been indulging in necrophilia in hospital morgues; who knows, next he'll be held responsible for the Holocaust) or era (ie forty years ago) doesn't seem to pose a problem, why not dig up Eric Gill's grave (1882-1940; typographer and sculptor whose fonts and sculptures adorn such institutions as the BBC and Penguin Books), who had a long sexual relationship with his daughter and liked to watch his wife have sex with farmyard animals. Or what about Michelangelo (1568-1629), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Caravaggio (1572-1610) with their suspect and probable sexual interest in young boys? Let's gather up all their paintings and put them on a bonfire, in a similar vein to HMV stripping their shelves of Lost Prophets CDs (because they are crap would have been a more valid reason).

Whilst minor TV personalities and celebs from the 1970s are being bought out of retirement and arrested and humiliated, rock stars like David Bowie, Bill Wyman and Jimmy Page have got away scot-free with similar – and a lot more – jinks. Them, and many other rock stars, indulged in sex with minors in the 1970s but Jimmy Page's behaviour takes it to a whole other level (and presumably a Whole Lotta Love). Page, guitarist in Led Zeppelin, kidnapped a 14-year-old girl, had sex with her and held her captive for years. There's something ironic about Top of the Pops presenters from the seventies all being prosecuted for molesting girls, whilst the rock stars they were presenting on the show were getting up to a lot worse. (I've never really understood in general how rock stars are allowed to get up to all kinds of illegal shenanigans – indeed, it's positively expected for them to indulge in sex, drugs and, well, rock 'n' roll and to somehow mostly live outside the law.)

There are, I presume, many people who suffer from the affliction but don't act on it, just as there are many lonely, frustrated heterosexual men who remain just that (and don't act on it). But I have a problem with every paedophile, when caught, always having thousands of indecent images on their computers. Surely this isn't the same for the lonely, frustrated heterosexual (do they all turn to porn/rape)? What is it about paedophiles that makes them so, well, perverse? Kevin Bacon in The Woodsman (2004; based on a play) made a brave attempt to present a sympathetic portrait of a paedophile trying to rebuild his life after a prison sentence. But this kind of portrayal and attempt at understanding is in the minority.

To me, and many I guess, it's on a par with murder as an act I just cannot fathom or understand, and not sure I want to. But to try to understand and treat it is a better answer than hatred and lengthy jail terms. Most forms of abuse stem from childhood experiences and it becomes a never-ending cycle until it can be broken.