The power of grassroots poetry

 The poet Benjamin Zephaniah has died from a brain tumour, diagnosed only eight weeks before his death. He was 65.

As always when a well-known person dies unexpectedly, I was quite taken aback by this news. I don't as a rule glorify celebrities (as I've documented in this blog, I think celebrity culture is extremely toxic) and I will not be glorifying Benjamin Zephaniah either - I did not know him, I don't know what he was like as a human being, and I don't think it's my place as a complete stranger to weigh in on the grief experienced by those who he was close to.

However, I don't think it's celebrity glorification to say that I have the utmost respect for Benjamin Zephaniah's work, and I think we could all learn a bit from what he contributed to this world. He struggled at school due to dyslexia, which eventually led to him being expelled at the age of 13, unable to read or write, which makes it all the more awesome that he eventually became known for being one of the world's most inspirational writers (my partner is a YA novelist and also struggled a lot with reading and writing whilst at school, so that story has a bit of a personal connection with me).

It seems to be around that time that he started writing poetry. I personally love poetry and I think poetry is something that is taught in a really harmful way in schools actually. It's quite rare to meet a young person nowadays, particularly a young person from a working-class background, who says that they love poetry, and this is because of the way it's taught. Poetry is generally written to be performed; it's not meant to be photocopied out and read silently, with every metaphor analysed for all it's worth. Worse than that, I feel as though poetry has come to be seen as a particularly highbrow outlet, a pursuit of the upper-middle class, something that is not designed for the masses in the same way as films, television or music. I don't believe this is true or fair, and in fact I believe that poetry is one of the most grassroots forms of media out there, something that really has the potential to make a difference.

As always, the British establishment approached Benjamin with an 'If you can't beat them, join them' mentality - or possibly the other way around: 'If you can't beat them, invite them to join you and neutralise them that way'. This is a technique that has been used on many outsiders who have managed to achieve support from the sidelines. They will crush you if they can, but sometimes, if you have great support from your own local community as Benjamin Zephaniah did, this won't work. If it doesn't work, their next trick is to go in the opposite direction - to promote the person like hell, make them an absolute national treasure, and by doing so tempt them with promises of milk and honey. I believe this has worked on many, many people; I wouldn't like to speculate on who, but I think there are quite a lot of establishment figures who perhaps in their early days may have had something interesting to say. But their message has become diluted. They've been invited to the big parties, been able to shake hands with important people, and have forgotten where they from and who it is they're doing this for.

But it didn't work on Benjamin Zephaniah. In 2003 (the same year as the invasion of Iraq), then Prime Minister Tony Blair recommended him for an OBE, which Benjamin publicly rejected with these words, which I think we could all learn something from:

'I get angry when I hear that word "empire"; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised. It is because of this concept of empire that my British education led me to believe that the history of black people started with slavery and that we were born slaves, and should therefore be grateful that we were given freedom by our caring white masters. It is because of this idea of empire that black people like myself don't even know our true names or our true historical culture. I am not one of those who are obsessed with their roots, and I'm certainly not suffering from a crisis of identity; my obsession is about the future and the political rights of all people.' (He wrote a full article about it here, if you'd like to read his opinions on this matter in more detail.)

There are so many things I respect about this, but the one that really sticks out to me is the fact that he was offered this OBE 'in strict confidence'. Clearly, someone who rejects an offer like this isn't meant to talk about it. But realistically, why shouldn't they? Why shouldn't we express publicly our dissatisfaction with the British honours system, and more importantly the outrage one may feel at said honours system trying to embrace one despite the fact that one objects to everything it represents? I feel that in speaking out, Benjamin highlighted some things that people weren't aware of, and brought this to public consciousness. I remember a few years ago, when the poet Carol Ann Duffy's Laureateship was coming to an end, my family was speculating on who would replace her, and my father said, 'It's bound to be Benjamin Zephaniah, isn't it?' I responded, 'He'd never accept it.' And this is something I just knew. I wouldn't say that I've ever been the biggest fan of Benjamin or his work (not because I dislike it, just because I've never got around to reading very much of it with everything else I want to read - although I definitely intend to remedy that in the future) but still, in spite of not knowing a great deal about him at that point, I knew enough to know that he would never agree to be Poet Laureate. I just knew, because it's common knowledge, and Benjamin made it common knowledge just by speaking out.

Benjamin Zephaniah cared about all the same things that I do. He was a vegan from the age of 13, and in favour of the promotion of disappearing British languages such as Welsh and Cornish. He was a supporter of people of colour, LGBTQ+ people, the working class, the dispossessed, the oppressed, the underrepresented... and, right now particularly importantly, he was a supporter of Palestinians.

I haven't updated my blog quite so much recently, and one reason for this is that Palestine is all I want to talk about, and I find I don't actually have the words. The last few months have seen the most horrific attack on any oppressed people that has occurred in my lifetime. The reports on what has been happening have caused me quite significant levels of distress, to a point that I haven't really got to before. It fills me with great fear to see what human beings are capable of - not just on an individual level, but on a systemic level. There's a big part of me that wants to turn it off and pretend it's not happening - but I don't think I can ethically do that. Being able to look away is a privilege, and were I to do that it wouldn't really help, because I'd know that it's still happening and that I can't stop it. At least if I continue to observe, I may be able to help, in some small way - be that by writing, or arguing with someone about it. I did have one conversation with someone the other day, not even a particular Israel supporter, who said, 'How could Hamas be that stupid?' And I responded that they weren't stupid. All of this was intended. I believe that for Hamas, Palestinians are collateral damage in the aim of humiliating Israel; but for Likud, Palestinians are not collateral damage. They are the target. What we are seeing in the Gaza Strip is nothing short of genocide, and our politicians are refusing to acknowledge that.

But the most horrific thing about all of this is that I feel guilty for even feeling distressed. I feel like my own feelings are pretty minuscule in the grand scheme of things, bearing in mind the experiences of the thousands of people in Palestine. Those who are lucky enough to still be alive, if 'lucky' is the right word, will live with this trauma for the rest of their lives, and I find that I can't even express my own feelings without feeling that I'm making it about me, rather than about them. Essentially, the only word to describe my feelings about this is 'overwhelmed'. I just really hope the international community is waking up and is able to see all of this for what it is.

But perhaps this is the ultimate power of grassroots poetry - the ability it has to say something that you were struggling to quite find the words for. For this reason I'm going to conclude this blog with one of Benjamin's poems that really made me feel something - one that at this time of year feels extremely important and poignant.

Christmas has been shot

Christmas has been shot away this year,
There are too many choppers chopping up the sky
Too many bullets in the air for good tidings,
There will be no Christ and no mass
And darkness has fallen upon the land.
No one shall make a joyful noise unto the Lord
Or serve the Lord with gladness,
No one shall come before his presence with singing,
And Palestinian Christians who want to declare
The name of the Lord in Jerusalem
Or glorify the boy in Bethlehem
Have been told to piss off to Jordan,
Syria or Iraq.

All the saints have been told
To wait for the resumption of peace talks
And the angels of the Lord have been told
To wait until the Americans are ready
Because Zion means something else now,
And yes it was written that the truth shall flow
From the mouths of babe and suckling,
But babes and sucklings beware
The soldiers have orders to kill,
And the spirit of King Herod is alive.
They’re not doing Christmas this year,
It has been shot away
‘And anyway
Christ is no messiah,’ said the soldier
‘This is our Promised Land.’

What we see over Bethlehem this year
Is a spineless, skeleton of a Christmas,
A Christmas that has been occupied, strangled
And driven to tears, crying tear gas and burning,
It’s a Christmas that has no songs or sermons
Except the song of the bomber;
As loud as dying
As quiet as death.
Welcome to the birthplace of his holiness
Welcome to the humiliation of the natives,
Here even flowers are shot down
If they fly the local flag,
You will not hear the bells of Christmas
And you will not hear the women sing.
‘And let me tell you something else,’ said the soldier
‘No virgin gave birth here – we wouldn’t allow it.’

Sorry gentiles
It looks like it’s gonna be a cold Christmas,
Ain’t no spirit of the Lord moving over the manger
Just a nuclear power
Flying in from Tel Aviv via Washington DC.
The power of the almighty has come for sure
To suck Christmas dry
And to blow Christmas away.
There will be no mercy
And no rejoicing
And no worshipping any little Black Palestinian boy,
And no crosses
And no three wise women or men
And no Arab shepherds,
Because Christmas has been done in
Christmas is coughing and choking
Christmas has been hit by bullets from the west,
So if you want to do Christmas this year
Take a bible,
Sit indoors,
And do your own thing,
Just don’t do it in Bethlehem.

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A response from Thangam Debbonaire MP, regarding Early Day Motion 1685, and my response back

This response from Thangam Debbonaire is in response to this letter that I sent her on 21 October 2023, asking her to sign a motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Her response came on 7th November, but due to personal commitments it has taken me until now to respond.

Thangam's email:

Dear George

Thank you for your email and for sharing your thoughts about the horrific situation in Gaza and also for telling me about your campaigning. I appreciate you coming directly to me with your concerns. I share your desperate desire for an end to the conflict, which cannot come a moment too soon.

I have set out some thoughts here on the crisis, and in particular on what we in the UK can and should be doing to alleviate the suffering in Gaza and chart a path to peace.

You may have already seen Keir Starmer’s speech last week setting out his position in detail and the rationale behind it—again, focusing on finding a viable path to peace. Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s article this weekend calls on Israel in strong terms to end siege conditions and respect international law, as well as reiterating Labour’s commitment to work towards a two-state solution.

As a member of the Shadow Cabinet I do not sign EDMs (these almost never result in a debate) as I am able to work directly with my Shadow Cabinet colleagues to engage the government on their response to the crisis, and engage with the Labour leadership on our position as this crisis continues to evolve. I will certainly keep your points in mind as I do so.

Thank you again for taking the time to share your views,

Yours,
Thangam

My reply:

Dear Thangam,

Thank you for your response. I will start with an apology for the fact that it's taken me so long to respond myself. I've been tied up with moving house over the last couple of weeks (more on that in my final paragraph) and I haven't had the spare time.

I don't wish to be rude, but frankly, what you've said is simply not good enough. I'm going to start with what you said about not signing EDMs because you're a member of the Shadow Cabinet. Firstly, whether an EDM results in a debate is not always really the point - obviously it's great if they do, but in a case such as this, when what is at stake is essentially whether our elected representatives will stand up to genocide, these motions are quite important to demonstrate the values of the people we elect. Even if they can't actually prevent what has been happening and continues to happen in Gaza, merely the signing of something unequivocally condemning it would show me as a citizen that you care and are willing to say so. Furthermore, there is a member of the Shadow Cabinet who has signed (or at least, someone who was a member at the time they signed) - your Labour colleague Imran Hussain, the MP for Bradford East who until earlier this month was Shadow Minister for the New Deal for Working People. Earlier this month, Imran resigned from the Shadow Cabinet in protest over Labour's current position on the Gaza ceasefire, saying, and I quote, 'It has become clear that my view on the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza differs substantially from the position [Keir Starmer] ha[s]adopted. I believe the party needs to go further and call for a ceasefire.'

If this is not your position, why is it not your position? I've read your comments on the link you sent, and I am not impressed at all. Keir Starmer is not finding a viable path to peace. Hamas may be awful, but support for extremism in every country in the world (including in ours) tends to come as a result of people rightly, rationally and intelligently being very unhappy in their circumstances. Palestinians are right to be unhappy with the circumstances they are in, and have been kept in, increasingly so, since 1967. The Labour Party's position has not been to recognise these circumstances for what they are. It will not criticise the Government of Israel in its own right. The closest it ever comes is to say that the elected leaders in both Israel and Palestine are bad - which I'll acknowledge is technically true, however the power that Likud and Israel hold is not in any way equivalent to the power that Palestine and Hamas hold. This has to be acknowledged if we're to have any hope of social justice.

I was told today that the Palestinian death toll has reached 14,532. More than 7,000 people are missing, believed to be trapped under the rubble. More than 4,772 men, more than 3920 women, more than 5,840 children. 205 medical staff, 64 journalists, and 26 out of 35 (74%) of hospitals out of service. The source for these numbers is the Government media office in Gaza - although I'm not sure how often it's updated, so it could be even more than that at the time of writing or by the time you read this. Just look at these figures. Look at them. Every single one of them was a real person, with a family, friends, hope and dreams, and they were murdered as part of a political choice. There is no justification whatsoever for this. Starving civilian populations from food, water and healthcare is against international law, something that Keir Starmer has failed to acknowledge when challenged - in spite of the fact that he's a former human rights lawyer. Of course, every innocent Israeli who has been killed in the crossfire was a life that had value as well just as equal to that of a Palestinian life. Qualitatively they are equal, but quantitatively they are not. There have been so many more Palestinians killed than there have Israelis. This is a glaring elephant in the room.

The prospect of a two-state solution being agreed amicably is dead in the water. You know that, and I know that. If it was going to happen, it would have happened by now. I've been campaigning on this issue for nearly ten years, and we aren't any closer to it happening than we were then - in fact, we're further away from it. Israel will not stop attacking the Gaza Strip unless they are made to by the international community. Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted as saying this year that Israel should crush any hope of Palestinian statehood. I very strongly recommend you read this interview with Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who leads the Palestine/Israel Program at the Arab Center Washington, DC - it spells out very clearly what the situation is, what it isn't, and what it could be.

I have one more thing to say, which is that in some ways this email is a goodbye message as well. As I said at the beginning, I moved house last week. I am now no longer your constituent, and as a result this will most likely be the last interaction we have. I will miss Bristol West very much. In the interests of being polite and civil, I should say that I wish you all the best in the rest of your career. But I will also say that knowing Bristol West as I do, I'm not sure it will be an easy journey for you. I've been heartened to see how many people have come out in support of Palestine, and I think a lot of people will likely be just as upset by your position as I am. I voted for you in 2019, in part because of Labour's position on the Palestine situation. I have been horrified to see how starkly that has changed, and how you individually as an MP have gone along with that. The truth is that I deeply regret voting for you. I don't think you're a bad human being, and I believe that people who are wrong can change their ways. I genuinely hope that at some point you will see quite the level of harm you are endorsing by taking the line that you have done - hopefully before it's too late.

All the best,

George Harold Millman

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The current events in Gaza could be a game-changer - but it's a ceasefire, not a game-changer, that is needed

We live in a world of war. There are no bones about that.

I was born in 1993, four years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, two years after the collapse of the USSR, and the Gulf War, and the Cold War. It's against that backdrop that I, and everyone else of my generation, has grown up in. I was nearly eight when the attack on the Twin Towers happened, and I was nearly ten at the time of the announcement of the Iraq War. I vividly remember talking about this with my peers in the primary school dinner queue. I remember being taken to the anti-war protest on a Friday afternoon in Bristol City Centre (and not getting home until past ten o'clock because there were hardly any buses that day). I remember learning of our own Government's involvement in these terrible decisions; this was my introduction to politics and the concept of Government.

I remember every few subsequent years, hearing about more attacks in the Gaza Strip, feeling like I didn't understand any of it and could do nothing to help. I remember setting up camp outside the BBC in the summer of 2014, in protest against their coverage of the Gaza situation. I remember being asked by my then friend David, 'George, because you support Hamas, does that mean you support Isis?', being completely taken aback by the question and not being sure how to begin answering (I thought I was just on the side of ordinary people not being killed). I remember the heightened security at Colchester Institute, where I was studying at the time, when I returned for my second year - suddenly we all had to wear lanyards identifying us, there were constantly guards at the gates, just in case there might be a terrorist attack (although personally I always suspected that they were there more for show than because they actually had any relevant experience with domestic terrorism).

I remember my generation's excitement about Jeremy Corbyn standing for Labour leadership in 2015, in part because he actually spoke out about this constant world of war we were living in. I remember that his being so anti-war was constantly used as a smear against him by the very people that helped bring us into all these wars in the first place. I remember not understanding any of it, being completely baffled... wondering, 'Am I just too stupid to understand then?' And I remember the horror of the terrorist attack at Manchester Arena in May 2017, during a concert by singer Ariana Grande - a fun and exciting time for so many, that was destroyed in the most horrific possible way.

This has been the world in which I've had to grow up and come to terms with who I am and my identity. It's commonly stated that there is typically a lot of hostility between my generation and the baby boomer generation of the 1950s - they think we're really arrogant, up ourselves and entitled, and we tend to think the same thing about them. There are many, many complex reasons for this, and obviously I don't want to generalise because my parents are of that generation and so are many other amazing and lovely people - but I think that this war backdrop is a big part of the reason why so many people from across these generations struggle to get on well. The baby boomer generation were also born in the aftermath of a war - but from what I've seen of history, the 1950s was a real time of hope and of rebuilding. That war was still in recent memory, and had been on such a big scale that there was a collective attitude of 'never again can this be allowed to happen'. There was a feeling of wanting to give their kids a chance of life that wasn't full of war and conflict. My generation hasn't had that. We've had wars shoved at us constantly. And, unlike in the past, rises in technology, social media and news coverage have meant that this information is presented to us pretty much all the time. No wonder there's such a mental health crisis amongst the young... this is what we live with. I myself have no concept of living without continuous updates about wars, and I've struggled with severe anxiety partly as a result. (My first major mental health crisis was in 2003. I didn't know at the time that this was mental illness, and I wasn't aware of it having any particular connection to big global events - but I don't think it's a coincidence that Iraq had been invaded just a couple of months previously. Kids absorb these things, and it is reflected in their moods and behaviour.)

For these reasons, I absolutely dread events like the ones currently going on in Gaza. Obviously I dread them just on a human level - there has been so much blood shed over this, from people who are completely innocent, that I find my emotional capacity stretched to the absolute limit trying to feel for them and their loved ones. But I also dread it in a very personal way. I'm really frightened. I'm frightened by what human beings are capable of doing to one another, I'm frightened by the seeming inevitable escalation of all of this, I'm frightened by what it will all lead to and I'm frightened of where it will end. It gives me such crippling levels of fear that sometimes I can't bring myself to write about it - even though I know I have to, because writing about it does help emotionally, and I really hope that it helps educate others as well.

This is why, when people say that these most recent events are a game-changer, I find it very hard to be especially hopeful. I have been quite heartened by the amount of positive support I've seen for Palestine from people on social media - it's substantially more than usual, and I will acknowledge that it does feel like something may improve soon. But as far as I'm concerned, this is just not good enough. In the words of Bob Dylan, 'How many deaths will it take 'til he knows that too many people have died?' I think we've long surpassed that number already. It doesn't matter if Hamas' strike against Israel on October 7th ultimately proves successful and we eventually get peace in the Middle East over this - because none of this horror will ever be undone. Even in a best-case scenario, the suffering of the people living in both countries will never be over. They will live with this for the rest of their lives. And for those of us fortunate enough to live a long way away, we will continue to experience the fear and anxiety that war causes, forever most likely.

Even this is assuming that we'll get peace quite soon, which was by no means guaranteed. Today someone sent me this interview with international relations analyst Scott Ritter, which was very illuminating. I learned a lot that I didn't know already about the precise nature of the political status quo in the region and also its history, so it's worth watching for that. I also found it interesting that he was formerly an Israel supporter, and in some respects still is - it's always good to see that people won't turn a blind eye to everything Israel does, even if they're naturally inclined to back that side.

However, I also found it a really uncomfortable conversation to watch, and in particular I found Ritter's attitude really distasteful. He talked about these events being a potential game-changer, and to me his tone of voice sounded excited and enthusiastic about this. I didn't think this was appropriate in the circumstances. What do you think? Here's the video so you can make up your own mind:

I really hope that he's right in saying that this will inevitably lead to a Palestinian state, and also that the USA will be successful in de-escalating the situation. I have some degree of solace in the fact that he is a good deal more knowledgable about this kind of thing than I am, so as much as I fear for the future of myself and of mankind, I feel relatively secure in thinking I can take his word for it, for now at least.

But there was a fair bit that I felt was wrong, and the bit that really stood out to me is his insistence that Palestinians want a Palestinian state so badly that they're willing to die for it. I'm sure that they are desperate for a Palestinian state - but that doesn't mean they're willing to die for it, or for their children to die for it. Moreover, being willing to die for something implies that the person is in that situation by their own free choice, having weighed up all the options. Palestinians are not. They are, as Ritter himself acknowledges, living in the world's largest open-air concentration camp, being deprived of food, water and medicines. They aren't there because they are willing to die. They are there because they are being kept there, and the reason they're desperate for a Palestinian state is that they want a better life, for themselves and their children. Constant war does not achieve that, no matter who its victors are. I found this comment, and Ritter's whole attitude here, insanely insulting.

As odd as it may seem, I am actually an optimist. I sometimes wonder if it's right to be an optimist, if this world actually warrants optimism with all these awful things that happen. But the main reason is because I am immensely proud of my own generation, and the generation that's come immediately after us. I feel like we're far more moral than many of those who have come before us, and perhaps that's the consequence of growing up in great fear of war all the time. I do think mankind has a chance of improving the world, with the ideals that we hold - although there will be great challenges ahead. But in order to make those changes, I think it's really important that we acknowledge that continuous war is just not worth it. I'm a supporter of Palestine because I always try to support the underdog. It gives me just as much grief when Hamas hurts innocent civilians as when Likud does. No one, whether they're Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish or Muslim, really wants to live like this. No one is better off as a result of living like this.

Perhaps, if you were born in 1961 and have a military background, as Scott Ritter does, it's easier to take a step back and look at things from a cold rational standpoint without much empathy for the people involved. But I can't. More than that, I won't. I think it's completely at odds with our goals to achieve peace to not remember that every single person who loses their life in conflict is someone's child, someone's parent, someone's sibling, someone's friend. It doesn't matter what the outcome is - these actions are never worth it, whomever they're committed by.

And by the way, here in the UK we're still waiting for the leaders of both our main political parties to call for a ceasefire, even after being urged by the UN. It's somewhat heartening to me that it seems senior politicians in many countries in the world are calling for this - but that's also depressing, to learn that your own country is so many miles behind. We can do better than this, and we should.

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The five YouTubers keeping me sane in my thirties

 Today is 1 November, which will be the first full month of my thirties - I feel old! But still, I think thirties are probably a bit underrated - by this point in life I feel like we're all a little more settled and a little more emotionally secure.

To celebrate my entering a new decade of my life, I've decided to write something a bit more positive. A few months back I wrote this article about the declining quality of the news blog The Canary, something that has really disappointed and upset me, and to be honest still does. But recently I've been trying to find new media sources that fill the hole in my life that The Canary used to fill. And I'm delighted to say that I've recently come across five people on YouTube whose content keeps me sane, gives me hope and causes me to remain informed and aware. Each of them focus on a slightly different aspect of what I'm interested in, but of course there's a fair bit of crossover.

Without further ado, let me introduce these five people - some you may have heard of before (I don't like any of them any more than any of the others, so to be fair I'm just going to do this in alphabetical order of surname):

1. Rowan Ellis

Rowan Ellis is a vlogger on the subjects of feminism, LGBTQ+ issues and representation in the media. She deals particularly with the depictions of female and minority characters within television drama, but her work expands on multiple strands of these subjects, including LGBTQ+ history and the way that these things are presented within schools.

As a writer of character-driven stories (particularly one who works in collaboration with their same-sex partner) I've started being quite critical about a lot of what I watch and read, and I think it's important to be so. I've found Rowan's analysis of things to be incredibly informative and engaging, and she often has takes that I myself haven't thought of. Also, I like that she has a really nice way about her - she's certainly more diplomatic than me!

Check out Rowan's website. Her book Here and Queer: A Queer Girl's Guide to Life is available to order.

2. Owen Jones

If you're the kind of person who likes reading left-wing blogs like mine, you probably already know who Owen Jones is. He's a well-known journalist and writer, has been in the public eye regularly for more than ten years, regularly writing for The Guardian and The Independent (amongst others) and has books out including The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It and Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class.

I like Owen because he talks about politics and the world today, and always in a way that is clear, accessible and concise. He's incredibly knowledgable, and unafraid to use that knowledge in a way that speaks truth to power. I consume Owen's content when I want to know what's going on domestically in the UK, with the Tories and the Labour Party.

For some reason, it's become somewhat fashionable on the left to despise Owen Jones, and I've never fully understood why because I've always really appreciated his content, and find it well-researched and clearly explained. Perhaps he's a bit too mainstream for a lot of us. I understand that feeling very much - when someone apparently left-wing gets as big a platform as Owen does, it's natural to think 'What's the catch?' and maybe in a few years I'll find out something that will cause me to take back this recommendation. But for now, I really haven't seen what a lot of my fellow lefties apparently have, and that's why I firmly recommend Owen Jones' YouTube channel.

3. Adam Levy

Dr Adam Levy, known professionally as ClimateAdam, is a climate scientist from Oxford University. I can't remember exactly how I came across Adam's work, but I've found it to be really helpful in discussing climate issues again.Have a look at Adam's website as well.

Like a lot of other people, I often find climate anxiety so crippling that I'm unable to talk about it. And the worst thing about this is, online searches for climate-related content often bring up precisely what you're looking for in search terms. This is the problem with the Internet - that it's too robotic. This is why health professionals often advise against googling your symptoms, because much of the time it just comes up with literal scenarios. Likewise, with climate searches - searching 'Are we doomed?' will come up with articles that say we are, because the algorithm is looking for things that match with the word 'doomed'. And if you search terms like 'optimism' or 'hope', a lot of what comes up will play down the seriousness of the problem. And then there's the problem that a lot of the research itself is presented in ways that sound particularly dramatic so that people will click on them.

I find that Adam's work provides freedom from this. He creates videos that are easily accessible, that don't play down at all how serious the problems with global warming are but also put it in perspective, in a way that doesn't induce panic and that makes the viewer feel empowered to do something about it - and being an actual climate scientist rather than a mere armchair commentator like the rest of us, his word does carry weight. Weirdly, he also has a great sense of humour. It's hard to have humour when talking about something that threatens all our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren, but Adam manages it. There's a fantastic ongoing sketch he has (in which he plays all the characters) involving a character being repeatedly punched in the face and calling for help from a nearby onlooker. The onlooker is saying, 'Don't worry, we'll make sure we cap it to twenty punches.' After a while, the onlooker says, 'Unfortunately, we've now exceeded twenty punches' - of course, completely ignoring that they could prevent the person being punched right now. This is such a great metaphor for climate change - the more punches we receive, the more damage is caused and the more difficult it will be to reverse the damage, but preventing further punches will still be more beneficial than allowing the punches to carry on.

I've decided to only consume climate-related content from two people, as everyone else is just either overly reassuring or so doom-mongery that they aren't helpful. One of the two channels is Adam's...  the other is...

4. Leena Norms

Leena Norms is the other person I'll listen to on climate change, because I find she always cheers me up and gives me a fresh perspective. I do remember exactly how I came across Leena - I was suggested a video by YouTube's algorithms called 'Don't join the climate movement'. As a climate activist I was very doubtful, but for some reason I decided to click it, and I was glad I did. The title was slightly facetious, but I found it really useful on the themes of hope, personal power and the fact that although the climate movement exists for a good reason, you don't have to join it if you want to change things. There are other ways. This video made such an impact on me that I think I have to embed it. Take a look, then come back:

Personal power is what Leena is all about, and I respect that very much. A lot of her work is built around creating positive change where you are, particularly when it comes to fashion and clothing - she has many videos based around building a sustainable wardrobe. But she talks about lots of other things too - she has a lot of videos on books (which I haven't actually watched yet, but I will soon) and a lot about our own personal journey on this planet, friendships, life, political feelings and remembering who you are. I find her so engaging, personally and spiritually, and I cannot recommend her highly enough.

5. Ed Winters

Ed Winters, also known as Earthling Ed, is a well-known animal rights activist. You may have come across him before as his videos are often shared on social media, and his book This Is Vegan Propaganda (And Other Lies The Meat Industry Tells You) has been promoted quite heavily by retailers. Most of his videos involve debating with meat-eaters and encouraging them to follow a plant-based diet.

Although I'm a vegan and I agree very much with Ed's mission and viewpoints, this is not the reason I enjoy his videos so much. The thing that inspires me about Ed's videos is that he's an incredible debater - probably one of the best I've seen. I've found that a lot of people like to avoid debates because they like avoiding confrontation - and to me, debates are actually not meant to be confrontational. I don't think anyone should get angry during a debate. If you keep calm and rational in what you're saying, you can make so much more progress, cause the other person to learn something (and perhaps learn something yourself, as no one is right 100% of the time).

Ed's easy-going, polite, diplomatic approach really epitomises what I think debate should be like. I think whatever our opinions are on anything, we could all do with taking a leaf out of Ed's book.

--

So there we have it. Rowan, Owen, Adam, Leena and Ed. Five different YouTubers, all focussing on a slightly different topic, but with significant and important levels of overlap.

Is YouTube the future? I think, possibly. My disappointment with The Canary is something that has still not been resolved - I had a very kind response from their editorial team on the day I published that article and at the time they seemed keen to talk to me and improve (which I was very pleasantly surprised about). However, I have so far not had any further communication with them, so who knows?

My mission to find out what went wrong at The Canary is not over - I'm still eager to find this out, and sort it out. However, I also wonder if any media organisation run by multiple people is doomed to lower its standards over time, because this seems to have happened to every cutting-edge organisation in history. And YouTube is hardly cutting edge - it's owned by Google and extremely corporate nowadays, with the amount of sponsorships and so on involved. However, it still gives people a chance to raise their voices and speak out - and if you're following the right people, that can be pretty useful in hearing things that will be beneficial to your own life.

I think the most important thing for any media or news source is that it isn't handled from a top-down position. It should never be the case that one person is talking and everyone else is listening. This should be about dialogue. Whatever you're following, you should feel that they're as interested in you as you are in them, and that you're part of the conversation. That is how we make a change.

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An open letter to my MP Thangam Debbonaire, urging her to sign the Early Day Motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza

Dear Thangam Debbonaire MP,

My name is George Harold Millman. I'm an actor, scriptwriter and political activist.

I am writing to you in relation to Early Day Motion 1685, your Labour colleague Richard Burgon's call for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Gaza, and to urge you to back this motion immediately.

The text of the motion states as follows: 'This House utterly condemns the massacre of Israeli civilians and taking of hostages by Hamas; agrees with the United Nations Secretary-General that these horrific acts do not justify responding with the collective punishment of the Palestinian people; expresses its deep alarm at the Israeli military bombardment and total siege of Gaza and the resulting deaths and suffering; believes that the urgent priority must be to stop the deaths and suffering of any more civilians in Gaza and Israel; welcomes the joint statement from 12 leading aid agencies, including Oxfam, Christian Aid, CAFOD, Medical Aid for Palestinians and Islamic Relief, calling for the Government to use its influence to help protect civilians, to ensure adherence to international humanitarian law and to guarantee civilians have access to critical life-saving humanitarian support; and to this end supports their call for the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary to urgently press all parties to agree to an immediate de-escalation and cessation of hostilities, to ensure the immediate, unconditional release of the Israeli hostages, to end to the total siege of Gaza and allow for unfettered access of medical supplies, food, fuel electricity and water, to guarantee that international humanitarian law is upheld and that civilians are protected in accordance with those laws.'

This is a cross-party motion. The current list of signatures is available on the Parliament website - many wonderful Labour MPs have supported it, as well as various MPs representing the Conservatives, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Green Party, the Alba Party, the SDLP, the Alliance Party and several independent MPs as well - but I was disappointed not to see your name on the list. As your constituent, can I count on it being added soon?

I've been an active campaigner for the freedom of Palestine since 2014; I've communicated with people who live on the Gaza Strip and am frightened by the tactics that Israel has gone to in order to suppress them. Cutting off food, water, medical supplies and humanitarian aid to civilians is a war crime, and there is NEVER any political justification for these actions. On October 12th, Human Rights Watch confirmed that Israel has employed the tactic of the use of white phosphorous in military operations, which can 'burn down houses and cause egregious harm to civilians.

I'll be upfront about the fact that I have been utterly appalled by Labour's position on this. I voted for Labour for the first time in 2019, in part because at that time the official Labour position on the Palestine situation very much reflected my own. I was dismayed and shocked to see both Sir Keir Starmer and Emily Thornberry refusing to say publicly that these actions are wrong, in spite of the fact that both of them have backgrounds as human rights lawyers. The closest they come is suggesting that Likud and Hamas have both done bad things - as indeed they have - but most of the time, the suggestion is that Hamas is the only one in the wrong and that it's fine for the Israeli military to do whatever it feels like to the people on the Gaza Strip. From what I've seen, I don't think people in either Palestine or Israel particularly approve of the actions of their respective governments, just as I as a UK citizen frequently disapprove of the actions of our Government. Neither should be held accountable. As human beings, our priority should be to support those in the most horrific situations, which at the moment is those on the Gaza Strip, and I would hope that Labour would hold this view as well. It is presumably what the Labour Party is meant to stand for.

It's important to stress that I do not extend my current negative opinion of the Labour Party to every single Labour MP. I was heartened to see that most of the signatories of the Early Day Motion are Labour MPs, and my heart goes out to every single one of them - in particular, to the primary sponsor Richard Burgon and the subsequent sponsors John McDonnell, Grahame Morris, Beth Winter, Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome. I really hope that I will soon see your own name added. I urge you to at your earliest possible convenience.

Yours sincerely,
George Harold Millman

This was an email I sent to my MP. You can write to your MP about this issue as well, and please do - although check the link to the Early Day Motion first, you may be fortunate enough to have an MP who has already signed! Some suggestions on what to say can be found here. If you are unsure who your MP is, you can check on https://www.writetothem.com - type in your postcode, and then it's very easy.

If and when I receive a response from Thangam Debbonaire MP, I will post it on the blog along with my own thoughts.

A vote for the Conservatives OR for Labour is a vote for genocide

 In August of this year, former neonatal nurse Lucy Letby was sentenced to multiple counts of life imprisonment, and ordered to serve a whole life tariff, for the murder and attempted murder of high numbers of babies that had been placed under her care (it's believed that she killed more than she was convicted for). I wrote a bit about this case at the time, focussing in particular on how I felt politicians of all persuasions took advantage of the suffering that Letby caused, and the empathy we as human beings have for her victims and their families, to bolster their own popularity with the public. I still believe that, and it still sickens me.

But in the context of recent developments in the Gaza Strip, and the reaction of politicians to such developments, their haste to look compassionate in the face of Lucy Letby's crimes is even more obscene than it was two months ago. Letby's actions were undoubtedly horrific, her sentence was absolutely justified and I hope to never have to mention her name on this blog again - but at least as a sole practitioner committing murders undercover, the reach of her power was somewhat limited to the relatively small number of unfortunate souls that happened to find themselves in her specific hospital, in her specific ward. None of that is any consolation to her victims, of course.

But in the last few days, almost 3,000 innocents (perhaps even more, it's increasing so rapidly that I've struggled to find a reliable source) have been killed in the Gaza Strip. This includes around 500 children. The comparison with the case of Lucy Letby occurred to me when I read about babies having to have their life support machines turned off purely because the hospitals were running on backup generators and running out of power. Qualitatively, this is no different to the murders that Letby was jailed for. The only moral distinction is quantitative; these situations in Palestine have occurred to far, far more people, and are continuing to occur - unfortunately, with the world's blessing.

The Home Secretary Suella Braverman has instructed police to arrest people waving the Palestinian flag and suggested that chants like 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free' could be incitement to violence and racial hatred (there's also a suggestion that support for Palestinians is equivalent to support for Hamas, which isn't true and I will talk about that more below). The leader of the opposition Sir Keir Starmer had this to say on the subject:

As the video clarifies, there isn't a way to do what Israel is doing in line with international law, so he's talking a load of baloney there.

Meanwhile, the Shadow Attorney General and former Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry had this to say when quizzed by journalist Victoria Derbyshire over whether cutting off food, water and electricity is acceptable within international law:

'I think Israel has an absolute right to defend itself against terrorism.'

Needless to say, these politicians and their parties were amongst the ones who rushed to show solidarity with the victims of Lucy Letby. Clearly, in their minds, the lives that she took were worth more than the lives of children abroad.

I've come to expect this from the Tories. But I do not expect it from the Labour Party. What is particularly egregious is that both Starmer and Thornberry were human rights lawyers before they were politicians. They do not even have the excuse of being ignorant. They know that these things are not allowed within international law. There is no possibility that they do not know this. Therefore, they are deliberately being dishonest with the media and the general public. Worse than that, they are complicit in human rights abuses so shocking that I don't actually have words bad enough to describe them. (Truthfully, this is one of the hardest blogs I've ever written in the thirteen years I've been doing this. I am physically shaking with anger right now as I type this.)

--

I need to make a few things extremely clear, for the benefit of anyone who just doesn't know:

1) Support for Palestinians does not equate to hatred of Jews. This is not a debate about religion, this is purely political. I've met many Jews in the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanction; a movement devoted to avoiding Israeli produce and services in protest at war crimes). The Jewish members are often the ones whose voices are the most powerful actually, and for good reasons - they know more than most how it feels to be a victim of racism.

2) Support for Palestinians does not equate to support for Hamas. If it did, following the same logic would expressing empathy for anyone who suffered in this country would equate to support for the Conservative Party. I don't think anyone would go along with that, because it's ridiculous to. Hamas is a political organisation, and like most political organisations does not really represent the feelings of the people it claims to represent.

3) Support for Palestinians does not equate to lack of support for Israelis. There are plenty of people who are from or live in Israel who fundamentally oppose what their Government does, and I shall paste something written by one of them at the end of this blog. It is my view that Palestinians and Israelis generally aren't that different from each other and have more things in common than either of them have with their elected Governments.

Conflict is ALWAYS stirred up by those in power. Ordinary civilians have little to no say in it, just as we couldn't stop Tony Blair okaying the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (not that we didn't try). I have just as much compassion for people in Israel as I have for people in Palestine, and just as much sorrow for anyone who has lost a loved one to Hamas as I have for anyone who has lost a loved one to Likud. But the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of civilian casualties are Palestinians. This isn't a matter of morality; this is a matter of power, and of prioritising the people who are suffering most.

--

It has become apparent to me that there is actually nothing Israel could physically do that would convince world leaders that its actions are in the wrong. World leaders are fundamentally welded to Israel as a source of morality, and this is ideological; it's not based on any of Israel's actual performance on the world stage. It is entirely political. This, my friends, is a fundamentally dangerous position to take, on Israel or on anything else. Even just in our personal lives, considering your friend or your family member to be a beacon of all righteousness, irrespective of anything that they theoretically might do in the future, makes it impossible to view them with any form of logic or reason. And it's important to do that, because if someone does something wrong they're more likely to change their behaviour when being called out by someone they consider an ally, rather than an enemy.

I have noticed that people defending the actions of Israel are unable to really fairly justify what they're saying. On a recent Sky News interview, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was confronted about the situation with babies on life support specifically, and his response to this question was to shout at journalist Kamali Melbourne, 'What's wrong with you?' and then continue to shout at him without addressing any of his points. (The video is here, if you can stand to suffer through it.) Here's another video from Sky News, this one of Owen Jones and Margaret Hodge, where Jones starts out by making some very salient points and Hodge is unable to counter them. All she does is put words in his mouth and accused him of being obsessed with Palestine, and she's not even able to string together a coherent sentence - you can see her stumbling over her words, including repeating the words 'At this moment in time' four times in a row. These people know deep down that they are defending the indefensible. But stubbornness is ingrained in them. They will stubbornly go on trying to divert attention from the issue as much as they possible can, no matter what Israel does. As a Palestine supporter, I've never particularly defended Hamas; I'm not in the business of defending political organisations, I am in the business of looking out for the most vulnerable people in the world.

I'd like to leave you with this fantastic article by Ricky of Council Estate Media - really worth reading. (I very much hope he's wrong in thinking this is a vote winner - I don't believe it is, I don't think anyone likes war really.) But he makes some incredibly important points - most particularly the fact that actually, refugees can't win, can they? If they try to escape, we have the Suellas of the world pulling up the borders and the media calling them 'economic migrants'. And if they stay and try to fight, they're called terrorists. If you support Israel, I ask, what can a person living in Gaza actually do to protect themselves?

--

And finally (my God, this blog has taken me a long time to write) here's a piece from the Israeli comedian Daphna Baram wrote, following a visit to her family in Israel (shared with permission). This is an example of what I was saying about Jewish, even Israeli, voices sometimes being the most important on this. As I said - I think people in both Palestine and Israel just want peace. They could unite on that, if politicians would let them.

'Thank you for the supportive messages, and for the requests for information and for contextualisation. I am not used to having my words fail me, but they did this time. I read incisive words in Hebrew from wiser friends and I am in awe. I just want to crawl under a rock and cry. But I can try and tell you some stuff.

I was in Jerusalem on Friday night, and my niece Maya, 11, wanted to host me for the night in her newly decorated room, across from my mother's flat. I woke up in the early morning from the sound of an alarm going up and down. That's the sign of a true alarm, we all know that; Maya does too. She pulled a face and waved her hand dismissively but then, almost automatically, got up and led the way to the "safe space" on the stairs, where my family, together with the other neighbours in the 8-floor development, gathered, and we waited for the explosion sound that told us we can go back to the flat. It happened six more times throughout the morning.

My aunt, who was visiting us, was silently mouthing at me that we should look after my mum, who had lost her arm in 1967 in similar circumstances, but my mum just took the washing out of the washing machine and went to hang it on the roof, as one does.

Meantime news started streaming in from the south. Horrors that defy belief, insurgents in kibbutzim and towns on the Gaza border, families hiding in safety rooms, families being killed en mass, hostages being taken into Gaza. Some people I know, some relatives of friends. A friend's uncle hiding under a capsized boat, a friend's friend who was at my show what felt like years ago, at the beginning of the week, listened over the phone as her sister's whole family was murdered, a friend's nephew killed in a rave, a cousin's daughter escaped the same rave by the skin of her teeth.

Message by message the catastrophe unfolds. What we couldn't imagine, but always knew: that if you keep two million people in the largest concentration camp on earth and bomb thousands of them to death on occasion, you create a volcano that is bound to erupt in your face one day, causing horrid atrocities in its wake. But this was only half the reckoning.

The other had hit most Israelis much harder: the state's apparatus failed. People in the south were hiding in safe-rooms, under beds and in wardrobes, hoping and believing that help was forthcoming; that in this kind of situation, the army and police would come to their rescue within minutes. But no one came.

They had to wait for a whole day, calling television newsrooms and whispering in their cries for help; many did not survive. The army was nowhere in sight. A few regiments were obliterated by the invading Palestinian forces, but most of the army was stationed far away in the West Bank, securing settlers' provocations at the heart of Palestinian villages.

The prime Minister had taken his time to return from his holiday in the North. He has shown his face on television only in the early afternoon, promising vengeance, rivers of blood and balls of fire to people who were still being held captive and whose loved ones were taken hostages without even mentioning what he was about to do in order to save them from this plight. Ever since, the huge mismanagement of the country under his reckless government is being exposed with every minute that goes by. The army lacks supplies, soldiers have no shoes, civilians volunteer to prepare food for them and to provide supplies for fellow civilians who were uprooted and abandoned. The governments now wants to provide a "victory image" of distraction in Gaza, as if we have not been shown the outcomes of such massacres thousands of times, to no avail.

Cabinet ministers call to "flatten Gaza regardless of the hostages". The "Hannibal routine" - normally referring to shooting at soldiers who are captured - was often mentioned in relation to the taken citizens, including children and elderly people.

But feeding the desire of some Israelis for revenge is not going to save Netanyahu and his cronies.

This day of reckoning, like that of 1973, will be their day of doom, too. The protest that engulfed Israel over the last few months, and which now turned into a determined spirit of helpfulness and volunteering, will turn back at them. Would it come with a new understanding of the futility of the occupation and the blockade of Gaza is another question, but experience tells us that it would be a mistake to think that the murderousness of the current attack makes such conclusions impossible. Israelis often say that Arabs only understand the language of force, but this is, more often than not, a sad reflection of our own nature.

My flight back was booked for Saturday night, and I made it, leaving my family behind with a heavy heart. While waiting to board, there was another alarm. Who knew the safe-space at the airport was the duty-free shop. While I was wondering whether this was just a clever marketing ploy, I got a message from my other brother, and another friend. The rocket we were sheltering from has landed just between their houses.

Attila the cab driver picked me up at Luton and was, as ever, full of chat. Mainly he wanted to know why people hurt each other. Had I known, maybe I'd have had the heart to quote Rihanna to him: "shut up and drive".

Sunday was all about doing the washing, distracting myself by watching the football with friends, and calling my father to tell him the one good news of the weekend: West Ham drew against Newcastle. I am grateful that the care home is in an underground floor. He is safe there. "Describe that second goal it to me", he asked, and again came the tears. I am terrible at describing goals; And at holding back tears.

My friends and family are still struggling to shelter their children from the more graphic and distressing bits of news, and to monitor what they watch and consume on their telephones; but they all know that this is a losing battle. This same building where my brother and I grew up was a young couples' development in the early 70s. Everybody had young children. I remember meeting my mates in the building's shelter in 1973. Now my nephews meet their friends in the "safe space" on the stairs. In-between, they enjoy my brother's lax attitude towards "screen times". He lets them play as much Xbox as they want. Anything to make sure they do not accidentally stumble upon a news channel.

On Wednesday I am to speak and perform at a conference in Brunel University about my PhD research, which is about Immigrants' stand-up comedy in the UK. I have no idea how I am going to do it. The only thing that comes to my mind are the words of Emanuel Levinas, which I found in my search for what is it that makes the "other" able to communicate with those who view themselves as "us", whether through laughter, or any other embodiment of our own experience: "The face of the other in its precariousness and defencelessness is for me at once the temptation to kill and the call for peace, the 'thou shall not kill"'. May we finally be able to hear that call.'

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It's possible to have good political views and still be an awful person

 Right. I didn't want to have to write about this subject, but the story isn't going away and someone has to say something, so it looks like it's going to be me.

I have quite a lot of friends whom I agree with on absolutely nothing. Some of them have views that I consider horrific actually. There have been times when it's been hard to separate my personal feelings from my political opinions. There have been times that I've lost friends over political disagreements, although it's nearly always been the other person that's cut me off. This is because I actually like talking to people I don't agree with on things. Not only that, but I think it's vital to. I really dislike echo chambers; I find them exceptionally toxic, and although it can be a breath of fresh air to hear someone say something that you agree with, it doesn't always change very much. What changes things is dialogue. I think all of us can remember a time when someone put something so well that it completely changed how we felt about something.

I also think that if someone has bad views, there's always a reason for that. A lot of the time, it eventually comes back to something quite reasonable. A good example of this is the amount of racism that surrounded the Brexit vote in 2016. There was a lot of harmful rhetoric around that 'all these immigrants came over here and stole our jobs, and we want them gone'. This is a racist and untrue statement, and in addition it didn't have the slightest thing to do with EU membership anyway. However, there is still some kind of logic behind it. The people saying it were generally people for whom the corporatist and capitalist system wasn't working (and in truth, it doesn't work for anyone apart from the super-rich). Their grievances, their lack of financial security, their fears for the future, were completely grounded in reality. The only thing that was wrong with how they were feeling was that they were casting the blame for that at the wrong people. But can you really blame someone for coming to this conclusion, when we have politicians who are scapegoating immigrants to take the heat off their own failures, a broadcast media that's letting them get away with it, an education system that doesn't reward any kind of critical thinking and a financial system that relies on working people so hard they don't have the time to stop and consider the truth of what they're being told? On a psychological level, and particularly if they're surrounded by people of the same social class with similar experiences, it is completely natural for someone to come to these conclusions. The establishment knows this; this is why they scapegoat people so much.

I myself voted Remain, but I was quite ashamed by quite a lot of my fellow Remain-voters, because we spent the following three years antagonising Leave voters and calling them ignorant and racist. Far from an organised campaign against racism, this was one of the most profoundly stupid displays of classism I have ever witnessed. More than that, we really shot ourselves in the foot with that, because the result was a very hard Brexit under the most rabidly right-wing Government the UK has had in the whole of its history. We could have used that time productively, by reaching out to people, establishing what they really want (mostly the same as what everyone else wants) and uniting under a mission for freedom, justice and human rights. We didn't do that, we succumbed to the establishment's desire to make this factional, and now we're all in the shit because of it.

What I'm getting at here is that if someone has awful views, a lot of the time it's not really their own fault. As humans, we are a product of our experiences, and we are all susceptible to believing things that are wrong. I've held opinions in the past that I no longer hold, as has I think everyone. This is why I try to create dialogue. If things aren't antagonistic and we can discuss them openly, we can see one another's feelings a lot more starkly and work together to reach a solution. A lot of people with horrible views actually turn out to be amazing and kind people in their personal lives; they just haven't realised how to extend that to their political actions.

But, of course, the opposite is also true. Just as it's possible to have horrible views and still be a good person, it's possible to hold really good strong progressive views and still be an utterly terrible human being. Over the last week, the case of Russell Brand has permeated UK media. I don't really want to go into the actual allegations about him because I don't think it's really my business to - that's a matter for himself, the alleged victims, the courts, the police and social workers, not for the general public. But what I would like to do is share a story that a friend of mine experienced with Russell Brand (reposted with permission):

'Over a decade ago, when Brand had re-branded himself politically, a few friends and I went to see his show (I know, why?!)

He very disappointingly began the show by commenting on women's breasts in the audience- asking the men they were with what sex with her was like and other inappropriate vulgarities. We began to get pretty angry.

When he came out in to the audience to continue this tyrade of sexual remarks, he walked past our aisle so with the encouragement of my friend, I shouted out "less of the mysogyny Russell". He stopped and said, "you what?", and proceeded to push past people's legs in the aisles to come to where I was sat. He straddled me and thrust the microphone from his crotch in to my face. He then asked me something I can't recall amidst attempts to shame and embarrass me in front of the room. I was trying to formulate thoughts but he grabbed the mic away before I could answer and said I was too late. I stood up next to him and covered my mouth with my hand as I felt silenced.

Most of the room bood me for interrupting their evening, blinded by their idolatry of this sexist idiot, but a small part of the room cheered. As he walked away he commented "well she was brave you've got to give her that" or some such comment. My friend was in a few rows back and her and some other audience members were shouting at him whilst he was doing this to me, and I had a message from a woman afterwards who was there with her 2 sons, who were all horrified at how he treated me.

It was an intimidating act, to tower above me like that and shame me in front of a packed out auditorium because I'd challenged him. But I'm really glad I had the guts to do that. If you don't challenge perpetrators, they keep getting away with it. And that's what happened with him. Years of people allowing him to say such utterly vile things about women live on stage/air. His interview with Jimmy Savile says it all.

No amount of attempts by Brand to suggest this is part of a co-ordinated media attack against his quest for truth-telling, can cover up the very words that came out of his mouth and the very behaviour that he himself enacted. I just hadn't realised how awful it was.'

I can't imagine how upsetting it would be to have an experience like this at a show that you've paid to see, at the hands of someone you'd previously respected. I have so much admiration for my friend for speaking out about it.

Russell Brand has always engaged in awful behaviour. I was a teenager when he and Jonathan Ross publicly harassed then 78-year-old Andrew Sachs (who incidentally, was a Jewish refugee during World War II). I garnered a bit more respect for him in the mid-2010s when he aligned himself strongly with the left - but now I'm a little older and more mature, I've come to realise that someone having similar political opinions to me does not mean I have to like them, just as someone having different ones does not mean I have to dislike them.

Because I have more respect for other people's dignity than Russell Brand obviously has, I'm going to assume that he was truly genuine in the progressive opinions that he expressed. I will say that I appreciate the fact that he was involved with the mid-2010s 'youthquake' that led to the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour Party leadership - a youthquake the political establishment is now doing its utmost to undermine. But that does not mean he is a nice person, or a respectful one. Suggesting that someone can't be a sexual predator because they support progressive policies is just as unreasonable as suggesting that someone must be a violent thug because they voted for the Tories. People's political viewpoints are not indicative of their personalities generally, and never have been.

And incidentally, as a progressive person, I actively do not want Russell Brand representing my cause. I think his support is actively harmful to our chances of success. And, being the cynic that I am, I suspect that this may be the reason he was given such a big platform to supposedly promote our cause in the first place - because he's a terrible person, and having him on our team gives the establishment the ability to say, 'Look at the sort of odious individuals the left associate themselves with.'

We don't have to accept it. We don't have to ally ourselves with violent sexual predators just because they believe in the same thing as us. I actually think a lot of the time, it's more important to call people out who are in our own camp - because otherwise, things just get covered up, and coverups are how most political movements fail.

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It's not hard to speak out; it's only hard to be the first person to do so

'I used to think if I wanted to get somewhere I had to impress the right people. Then I realised that if you impress enough of the wrong ones you can do whatever you want anyway.' Grace Petrie

'No one is too small to make a difference' Greta Thunberg

It's very hard to speak out in the face of injustice. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and so on still doggedly pursue us on our journey through this life, and I think it's important to sometimes take a moment to acknowledge to ourselves how enormously difficult this kind of this is to speak out against.

Acknowledging it means putting our thought processes down on paper (or on a screen) so here goes:

1) I feel bad for that person that's being oppressed.

2) But maybe the oppressor has something of a point? Let's listen to both sides.

3) Okay, yeah, I don't really agree with what that person's saying.

4) But hold on, aren't I in favour of free speech?

5) Maybe that person just knows more than I do?

6) Maybe I should just stay out of it.

7) No, I can't do that. That's not fair.

8) But the thing is, I don't want to draw attention to myself.

9) No one else is saying anything.

10) God, I have so much to do today.

11) I don't really have the energy.

12) I'll give that person a hug when everyone else has gone. That will at least help them emotionally.

Points 9 and 10 are the most crucial in understanding the psychological phenomenon behind it. The urge to conform is a highly powerful one within society (I used to study psychology, and this was the first part of it I was ever taught about - it hooked me right from the start), and in addition to that, most human beings are loaded with too many priorities in life to really have time to look at the wrongs in the world - the wrongs that in fact, they themselves may be propping up.

I work in the entertainment world, and things there are immensely weighted in favour of the powerful (which is why there's such a high instance of popular entertainers being accused of things like sexual assault - another one came out yesterday, and perhaps it will be the subject of a different blog, I don't know yet). Nowadays, there's a lot of talk about higher representation of things like people of colour, the disabled, LGBTQ+ people and so on - but from what I've seen, a lot of this is just for show. I wrote a bit about my experiences of this being just for show in this blog that I wrote back in January, but it also backs up my overall point about conformity. There is more talk about it nowadays, therefore in some respects it's easier to call out - but in other respects it isn't. It's only easy to call out if your view is in line exactly with what everyone else is saying. If it contradicts the dominant narrative, it's quite hard to get up on your pedestal and call it out, as I found with my objection to the notion that only LGBTQ+ actors can play LGBTQ+ parts. I argued that this is actually harmful to LGBTQ+ rights, and I was quite taken aback by the levels of hostility I got for expressing this viewpoint - even though it's an injustice I've experienced myself as an LGBTQ+ performer.

The entertainment world is where I witness most of this stuff first-hand because that is where I work - however, it's something that applies to the whole of society generally. Particularly in relation to the Labour Party at the moment, what I see of what they're doing, what with ruling out wealth taxes, ditching promises to axe tuition fees and expelling numerous members for calling anything out, is an attempt to reduce the level of opinion that it's acceptable to express. This kind of thing, unfortunately, works. There are so many examples throughout history of it working. When none of the leading political figures are willing to say anything remotely radical, it becomes very hard for any regular person to say or do anything radical as well. If they do, they're likely to be either mocked or get into trouble - and they know that as well, and the fear of losing social legitimacy is often a very strong deterrent.

But, I won't be entirely scathing about conformity either. Like every human function, I do believe that it has its place and can be used for good rather than harm. It's not hard to speak against injustice; it's only hard if you feel that no one's on your side. Once the first person has done it, it's so easy for others to get caught up in it. I can see no better example of this than Greta Thunberg, who never expected her small one-person protest outside the Swedish Parliament to catch on as much as it did. Human beings have a tendency to create a snowball effect with one another, and this can be a good thing as well as a bad thing. What I would advise though is that we always think rationally about what we're doing - whether it really helps, or whether we're just jumping on the bandwagon. Many, many times it does help, and climate activism is an area where I believe it is helping - however, this is also how people join cults.

Dialogue is always the cure for this dilemma. If we're open to talking to one another, even if some of us are expressing opinions that we really don't agree with, we can make so much progress. I have some friends who have some views that I really don't agree with - but I always think, there's a reason they think that, and that reason is probably somewhat legitimate. I think even people who hold racist views, if you really probe into why they think that, eventually just come back to feeling oppressed within society themselves. And they're allowed to feel like that, because most of us are oppressed in some way; and part of the nature of oppression involves turning people against one another. This removes their only weapon; the ability to talk, engage and collectively fight back. There are so many more oppressed than there are oppressors; we could come together and change the system in a single day, if we decided to.

What doesn't work is toeing the line in the hope that eventually you'll be in a higher-up position in which to change things. No one is EVER allowed to change things by the political class. Change only comes from lower down. I won't ever criticise someone who compromises their principles in order to get by, because in this world it is very hard to get by and we all do what we can - but I will say that it doesn't really work. All that tends to achieve is a headache. If you're someone who isn't sure what they can do to help deal with the problem they're most concerned about, I'd advise just chatting to your friends about it. There's so much of a culture of 'let's not bring politics into things', but what if there wasn't? What if we could talk to our friends about things going on in the world that were worrying us? When we can do that, even if we can't immediately come up with a solution, it just feels like there's a weight off our shoulders. I'm witnessing this myself quite a lot at the moment in relation to the day centre in Abergavenny my partner is fighting to save. We've harnessed the strong feelings of so many people, people who perhaps felt it was a losing battle before we started talking about it, and there's such a feeling of hope and optimism amongst the group now. It's a feeling of strength. This is what the oppressors most fear.

I started this with a quote from Grace Petrie, who is one of my absolute favourite protest singers. She said this at a concert I saw her in last year, before singing a song called 'We've Got An Office In Hackney'. It's essentially about being a protest singer getting a bit more attention, and whether that would compromise one's principles. Have a listen - it's a lovely song:

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Tips to balance good activism with bad mental health

I'll be frank, my mental health has been pretty poor lately.

I've had two bereavements this year, some quite stressful work to do, intense disagreements with people, just low energy generally... and awful things happening in the world. I sometimes think that the cruellest thing is that the more you care about changing the world, the more fatigued it makes you feel. This is the reason why many activists experience such burnout. It's often said that you lose your idealism as you age, and there's some truth in that statement. Most of us start off with the motivation that we're going to sort the world out quite quickly, and then if it doesn't quite happen like that it can be quite demotivating. I found after the 2019 General Election in particular, the huge numbers of people who were keen to achieve decent socialism in the UK kind of disappeared (although I think they are still out there, and can still be reached).

I've been having these problems for years, and I've written a bit about them on previous blogs. Unlike other occasions when things have been difficult for me though, I have actually been making more effort to keep my blog updated this time. This is one way that I've been coping... a lot of the time in the past I've gone through long periods of failing to bother updating this, and then that spirals. The more time passes, the more I have to write about, and then I don't know what to write first. Continuing to make myself write has had the benefit that I look out for interesting things to write about and create new perspectives on them... which is beneficial for my state of mind as much as anything else.

So that would be my first tip for staying sane in a world that seems like it's against you - to give something to focus on on a regular basis. It's not always easy to motivate yourself, but you feel so much better after you've done it. My second tip would be to find a specific project to work on. There's a theory that the only thing you need to improve the world is to improve someone's world, and I really relate to that. As regular readers will know, I'm actively involved in a campaign to save a day centre for vulnerable adults in Abergavenny (I've written about this here, here and here). It's obviously not something that's massively world-changing in one respect - but in another, I think it's one of the most world-changing things I've ever done. This campaign might win, and if it does it will have an extremely positive impact on people's lives. Isn't that all we want as activists - for the quality of people's lives to radically improve? The fact that my current campaign has a relatively small group of beneficiaries is not the point - it's quality that matters over quantity.

My third tip is to be aware of your triggers. This does NOT mean avoiding your triggers... I actually think it's quite beneficial to trigger yourself sometimes, as that stops your triggers from having so much power over you. But if you're going to trigger yourself, you do need to know when is the right moment and when isn't. Personally, I'm extremely triggered by depressing comments about climate change, to the point that my anxiety over this has started giving me physiological reactions. And with my state of mind at the moment, I just cannot engage. But that doesn't mean I'll never be able to engage. I will engage, one day when I feel more able to, which is what I'm working towards at the moment. And when I do engage, the people I will engage with will be the ones who make me feel capable of contributing towards solving the problem. I cannot stand climate doomers, and I agree with the scientists in this article that there's actually an argument that they're doing more harm than climate denialists these days. One of the problems with talking about climate change is that it's really hard to find a middle ground - information is either so terrifying that it makes you freeze with panic, or more reassuring than it should be (and it doesn't help if we don't know the complexities of the science behind it, which most of us don't). So I will recommend the two YouTube channels which I think have struck the appropriate balance. Dr Adam Levy is a climate scientist who uses the name ClimateAdam - I find him great at giving the information behind the headlines in a clear, positive and accessible way, which focusses on creating ideas that people can do to help. Another YouTuber I really like is Leena Norms - she talks about other things besides climate change, but I find her logic very original, intelligent and thought-out, and I always feel better after a blast at her content. So thank you Adam and Leena if you ever read this blog - you've helped me through some dark times!

Talking of help through dark times, my final tip (and arguably the most important one) is to find your community. One of the most difficult things about the fatigue of being someone who cares is that so often you think 'Why am I the only one?' You are not. There are so many people out there who feel the same way as you, and most likely think that they're the only one as well. All you need to do is find them. My most recent blog prior to this one was mourning the decline of the quality of The Canary, and the main reason I've felt so upset about that is that in 2017, The Canary was my main source of companionship. It was my reminder that I wasn't alone. The Canary sadly no longer serves that purpose (I have been in touch with them and they seemed interested in working with me on improving, but so far there have been no further developments on that front) but that doesn't mean there aren't groups of people that are helpful, whether they're activist groups, discussion groups, campaign groups... a different kind of group will work for each person depending on your personality and what you're most into. I think this is a big part of the reason why groups like Just Stop Oil have taken off so much... it's not just about sitting in the road and damaging paintings, it's that those groups have a companionship to them, a group of like-minded people who are willing and able to fight. That is so incredibly valuable in today's world, which seems desperate to turn us apart from one another. Find your companions.

I hope that this blog has helped anyone who might be struggling. We are in this world to improve it, we are capable of improving it and we can improve the lives of others as we do. We just have to believe we can.

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The Canary's song is no longer sweet: what on Earth happened?

 In early 2017, I just couldn't cope anymore.

I was 23, had just graduated from the University of Essex, an experience that was very difficult and had taken a severe toll on my mental health. The confident person I'd been at the beginning of my degree had been replaced by a shell; I felt unable to look for a job or do much of anything at all, and I was wondering if it had been worth going at all. Outside of me, the world was in deep, deep shit. Theresa May was the Prime Minister, Donald Trump was the President of the USA, we'd voted to leave the EU, we had a decent Labour Party leader but everyone was demonising him, and the country and world seemed to be descending unstoppably into fascism. I was depressed and fed up, seeing no way out of my situation.

But, there was something that really helped... the left-wing news blog The Canary became a real haven for me that year. I got hooked very quickly on this incredible website, run by intelligent and knowledgable people, which told me the news stories I was properly interested in. I read it so often I found I could usually predict which writer had written which article without looking. There were ideas for protests to get involved with, recommendations of good radical musicians like Lowkey, the odd bit of satire in John Shafthauer's occasional Off the Perch segments, editorials by Kerry-Anne Mendoza, James Wright talking about regional politics, Ed Sykes' analysis of what was going on around the world, Steve Topple documenting being the partner of someone with ME (since then, I've entered a relationship with someone who has a close family member with ME, so I'm learning a lot more about it - it's a horrible illness)... I came to learn so much about what was going on, why Jeremy Corbyn was so hated in the mainstream press and why that was unfair, how politicians on TV talk shows were deliberately misleading the public, how the Brexit situation was more complex than just 'in' or 'out', and most importantly of all, that there was hope for the future. I listened to The CanaryPod podcast, exploring the news stories in more depth. Every single article was finished off by a 'Get Involved!' section, listing practical things that I could easily do to help with whatever they were talking about. I've been an active blogger since before The Canary started, but the quality of its writing did definitely improve my ability to write decent and intelligent blogs (my earliest ones are super-cringe!)

The Canary felt like a friend to me - or, more accurately, a wonderful group of friends, a collective of amazing human beings who were standing up against the status quo and sharing information and ideas on how to improve it. This increased in the run-up to the 2017 election, when The Canary held an event at Watershed in my home town of Bristol. I went to it; I was so incredibly depressed at the time, but Kerry-Anne Mendoza's speech actually made me feel more positive. I'll always remember what she said about how humans are brilliant at adapting to their circumstances, but very bad at picturing themselves out of them. However things are at any particular time, it feels like this is how it's always going to be from now on. In the late nineties, before the Iraq War, it felt like the left had won and that 'this party's never going to end' - which of course it did. She then made the comparison to this time period, the one we were in, and how it feels like nothing would ever be hopeful again... but it could be, if we all came together. These words struck a chord with me in a way that very little else ever has; I've wondered if Kerry-Anne knows how much it meant to me. I met her afterwards, and proudly told her that 'I read The Canary all the time, like literally all the time!' (I actually did very little else in those days, I was too depressed to focus on much.) I also spoke to James Wright, John Ranson and plenty of other Canary writers... I felt like a part of something.

And then, we did something amazing. Against all the odds, Theresa May actually lost her majority in that election and Labour made huge gains. All right, it wasn't QUITE enough to bring Jeremy Corbyn to power, but it was close, and it felt like we did that just by being honest, sharing news and making people feel hopeful. It felt like we were on track to winning.

And now it's six years later. It's been a few years since I've read The Canary regularly, I'm doing a lot more with my life now and I simply don't have the time anymore to devote as much energy as I once did, but I still dip in and out from time to time. The management has changed a fair bit since then - Kerry-Anne left in 2021, citing the need to concentrate on her own mental health recovery (which I respect very much respect, mental illness is the worst and I've been there). It's also changed its business model, becoming a co-operative rather than a top-down venture - another thing I respect, it takes a lot of guts to admit that things were wrong before. But something more distasteful has happened to The Canary as well... the quality of journalism has become toxic.

My realising this has been a bit of a long-time coming. I started noticing it when was a little bit disappointed by the lack of actual discussion in this article about Roald Dahl's racism. I have some issues with the way we approach Roald Dahl - he was racist, and it's important that that's addressed, however he was also a complex figure and ahead of his time in some ways (for instance, being staunchly opposed to corporal punishment in schools). Moreover, I find it problematic how we edit his works, supposedly to make them more suitable for a modern audience, and yet continue to promote them like hell. If we really think his legacy is that harmful, we should take the advice of Philip Pullman and just let his books fall out of print, let modern authors get more limelight instead - but of course we won't, because they sell, and we're capitalists at heart. I would have hoped The Canary would explore this side of things a bit more, but they didn't. I was a little disappointed, but not exactly offended - not everything has to be explored from a complex angle.

Then there was this article by John Shafthauer - 'The problem with Just Stop Oil (and how to start fixing it)'. I thought this article made some interesting points, but the thing that really bothered me was that in spite of the headline, there is nothing about how to fix it at all. The whole article is just a list of issues with Just Stop Oil's tactics, before the final sentence 'I’m not going to say how we achieve that, but it won’t be through traffic jams the rich (including politicians) can simply avoid in their private jets.' It's fine to disagree with someone's tactics, including Just Stop Oil - but saying 'I agree with the cause, but not with the method' is what the likes of Piers Morgan and Richard Madeley do. You have to explain what's a better way of doing things if you're going to have any argument at all, and this one just didn't, in spite of saying that it would in the headline. I really didn't think this kind of 'blame protesters for trying to do something' journalism was what The Canary was for.

However, this pales in comparison to how appalled I was by what I read last night. The Canary published this article discussing how killer nurse Lucy Letby was a beneficiary of white privilege. To be clear, I agree that she was, and I even said as much in my previous blog - 'she's an attractive middle-class white girl, which highlights our inherent racism, sexism and classism as a society'. I clicked on this link because I was genuinely interested in this angle. But the article, by Afroze Fatima Zaidi, isn't really about white privilege or how Letby was a beneficiary of it. The overwhelming majority of it is devoted to attacking Novara Media, and in particular the journalists Aaron Bastani and Ash Sarkar, for suggesting that making the issue solely about racism overlooks all the other systemic injustices which meant Letby got away with it for as long as she did. Which is also true - one injustice being in place doesn't mean other injustices aren't.

The article is extremely dishonest. It pretty much says that if Letby had been black, she'd have been spotted and dealt with straight away. This is not provable. There is no example given of a black nurse who did the same thing and was dealt with faster (I don't know if there's ever been a case like this) and even if there was, that doesn't by itself prove that this would happen every time. It may suggest it, but that's not the same as proof. The article also suggests that the journalists it's criticising are saying that racism wasn't a factor. If you actually look through their Twitter feeds, it's quite clear that this is not what they are saying, just that it wasn't the only factor and that it's harmful to suggest that it was. Zaidi also invalidates the experiences of the journalists involved by claiming that they aren't black. I'm not sure what definition of 'black' she's using here - if it's just about skin tone, perhaps they aren't. But Aaron Bastani and Ash Sarkar are both people of colour - Bastani is the son of an Iranian refugee, and Ash Sarkar is of Bengali heritage and is also a Muslim. I think both are more than qualified to talk on the subject of racial discrimination - not that one's individual experiences are the most important, of course, otherwise Suella Braverman and Priti Patel would be more worth listening to on the subject than Jeremy Corbyn.

But it's the last line of this that really filled me with shock. It ends with 'With allies like this, who needs serial killers?' In this line, Zaidi has likened Ash Sarkar, one of the most feminist, anti-fascist, anti-racist journalists around today, someone who's stood up for Palestinians, for political prisoners, for transgender people, with Lucy Letby, someone who did the worst things imaginable to the most vulnerable people. This is something I'd be appalled by if it was in The Sun, never mind in a news outlet that used to be cutting-edge and prided itself on standing up for the most vulnerable. Even if I'm wrong, even if Aaron Bastani and Ash Sarkar have messed up this time, it's obvious from their past work that they're good people. You can criticise them honestly and politely, rather than this vicious attack-dog style. This kind of article actually makes me wonder if Afroze Fatima Zaidi is on the far-right. It reads like something that the far-right think that the left believe, rather than what we actually campaign for.

Why is there no decent analysis anymore? What happened to the fearless organisation that highlighted the stories the mainstream media were scared to print, that did exposés on the way mainstream politicians were silencing the left, that spelled out the plight of junior doctors, that talked about mental health, racism, sexism, climate change, protest, campaigns - and hope? What happened to all of that stuff? What happened to the 'Get Involved' side of The Canary (none of the articles I've linked to have this anymore)? What happened to The Canary's Facebook page? Why is it posting articles from years ago, rather than about what's happening now? Why is it trying to turn us against other left-wing outlets like Novara Media? Why do we have articles that read more like they're in The Sun or The Daily Mail?

I've tried to find out, and I can find very little discussion about this online. Maybe it was Kerry-Anne Mendoza personally who held it together, and since she's gone the passion has too (I hope not, as there were so many Canary writers I used to appreciate). Maybe the mood in the news room has gone down now we no longer have a decent leader of the opposition. Maybe it's the Facebook algorithm meaning it gets less traffic. Maybe they've been threatened by someone important and they don't have the energy to stand up to it. Maybe it's a combination of all these things. Maybe it's something I haven't even thought of. Or maybe it's just inevitable that decent news outlets decline over time.

I don't know what it is, But if anyone who works for the Canary reads this (and I'll be sending this article to them, as well as to Kerry-Anne Mendoza) - I beg you, please, please get your act together. The world is even worse now than it was in 2017. More urgently than ever, we need something like what the Canary used to be. Not just for the quality of journalism and the importance of knowing what's going on, but for the hope. In 2017, the Canary gave me hope and helped me manifest it. It doesn't do that anymore.

Realising how bad the Canary has become, when it meant so much to me in the past, is almost like grieving for someone who's died. I'm sad, and I feel quite angry. But I think I will not let that emotion dominate. I'm stronger now than I was in the past, and I'm more capable of making my own way and trying to make a difference. So I'm going to leave you with the Canary's old motto, something that I haven't heard in a long time: 'Don't get angry, get involved.'

Update: Since writing this blog, the editing team at the Canary has been in touch with me. It was only a short message and didn't go into much detail, but they were very kind and seem keen to talk to me about these issues and work to improve. I must admit I wasn't expecting them to be as open and co-operative as this, but I'm glad they have been. I really hope it leads to something positive.

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