Tag: mature

Time For The Leathers

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Something exciting has happened today. Well not really but we bought a scooter for the pizza takeaway. In reality after the initial excitement of starting up and being the only takeaway here open, we have quietened done a bit. Apparently though this seems to be a common thread for all the takeaways in the village. The rumour is everyone heard we were doing well and decided to open again too but now we’re all just fighting over the scraps and surviving. Even the local caravan site has started selling pizzas, interestingly enough with similar prices to ours but a fraction cheaper. They do though put hardly any filling on and charge quite a lot for extras which we don’t bother charging for at all. It’s interesting this business thing, I can see why people allow it to take over their whole life. It doesn’t mine and I only intend on doing it until the end of the summer once these mythical tourists disappear but still it’s an interesting little experiment. I’m all about the experiences. I’ve dropped the anti-capitalist and become an entrepreneurial money maker, or at least attempting to become a money maker. I’m still not sure I’m taking it quite seriously enough to go full madman and that’s why it’s all a bit of fun. I want to make it a collective but my non-anarchic friends are refusing to countenance such a thing. Can’t quite make it a collective of one and I suspect they would have even more to say if I actually tried.

Anyway the important thing and the reason I started this piece was that we have bought a scooter. My friend who does the deliveries is not keen on it unfortunately and is refusing to drive around the village on it, he’s a car man. That means it’ll be down to me to put our logo on it and become that comedy idiot looking silly on a scooter. I can’t wait. I find scooters ridiculous, probably just as my mate does, but I’m always fine with looking silly. Secretly I’ve always wanted a motorbike and have resisted this far as I suspect I would probably have killed myself but I’m older now and arguably slightly more mature. If I resist my more ridiculous instincts I should be fine but certainly I see this as the first step on the road to buying a motorbike. A cool one mind, not some racer, something that looks a bit beat up and simple. My ego is picturing the intellectuals motorbike whatever the hell that is. I’m also happy to start at the bottom though, and by the time I’m ready for my midlife crisis I should just be good enough to drive an actual real life motorbike. In the meantime I can’t wait to make that ridiculous noise scooters make. Ah village life.

We Have A Trac(k)ing App

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

How exciting. We have a contact trac(k)ing app. Do you see what I did there? As if this whole pandemic wasn’t contentious enough they’ve only gone actually released the app that tracks everything you do. Well not quite but it’ll know where you’ve been, who you’ve met and what consistency your last poo was. Trust in government has been eroded to such an extent that there is justifiable fear of something which has the potential to save lives. If everyone downloaded this app and used it as recommended, it would most likely stem the infection rate. But then so would testing everyone and providing nurses with PPE, and despite their attempt at creating an imaginary world in which that has been happening, they have instead not fulfilled their end of the social contract. It’s down to us yet again because our leaders are an unfortunate mix of incompetent and corrupt. Incompetent at doing the job we request of them but highly competent at their actual one of being corrupt.

“Downloading the app will save peoples lives” says a Health Secretary who routinely shows he doesn’t give a shit about peoples lives but tries to guilt the populace because he knows generally we do. Fuck him, but it’s not about him. Am I selfish for not downloading this app. I don’t know. I have no answer for that because I guess it depends upon how much of a real danger you believe people are in. Does that trump the very real danger of corrupt authority? Probably not and that’s the overriding argument for me.

And I’ve still not heard talk of what I believe to be the elephant in the room. Hypothetically, what would happen if you downloaded the app, discovered you had crossed paths with someone who has the virus, were instructed by the app to quarantine for seven days but didn’t and someone you then crossed paths with in the supermarket potentially caught it off you and died. Surely that’s manslaughter, or at the very least some kind of negligence. Someone died because of you actions. What is the legal liability? It’s not enough to say people should know better, or right from wrong. Are there legal protections? Are people blindly entering a situation in which they’re risking committing a crime and having it recorded. It would be a criminal offence and at the very least the family of the deceased could take you through the civil courts. This seems like something people should be discussing. This could become a very real issue.

Let’s be honest though, governments and bored teenagers in their bedrooms have been able to follow your movements for years through your phone. The idea that we’re not being tracked is naive. Most people have their location services on and those who don’t can still be followed if people want it enough. That’s nothing new, though risks like this are and maybe I’m being selfish but fuck that, I am not entrapping myself because I was desperate for toilet roll. It’s not what being a responsible member of a grown up and mature society would do though, but that’s not realistic as I’m neither responsible nor is society grown up and mature. At least we’re all going down together.

Adult Debate

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

There was an article on the BBC today about a now former referee who eighteen months ago was sacked from his job for making a video in which he mocked a disabled person. The issue has surfaced because the man decided recently he would explain what happened, and why he hadn’t quit because ‘he had decided to relocate due to a change in his personal circumstances’ as his employers said at the time but had been sacked because of this video. He states that in the video he was making fun of himself and saying he may have a chance of winning an adults race at his child’s sports day despite being a fat man – which had been the banter between him and his friend – because, and its not clear here, another person or people racing were either disabled or so bad, an impression of a disabled person could relate to them. This video was sent to a friend who he later fell out with, who sent it on to his employer, was sacked and we find ourselves here.

The reason I bring this up is not to defend him. I have not seen the video and doubt many have, but I can imagine what it is like as I have seen that type of thing or joke plenty over the years. I doubt it’s very funny and for a full grown adult to have made it must be quite embarrassing. I am not offended by it, and don’t believe someone necessarily has the right not to be offended, however it will be offensive to some people and them being offended is most likely justifiable, as he himself admits to it’s crass nature. The reality is he is in the public eye and with public perception so important, these organisations are desperate to maintain the veil of public decency at all times. There are people not in the public eye though who have suffered similar fates for similar actions so arguably the consequences are no different.

My reason for bringing it up then is that by saying it’s bad, discriminatory and worth losing your job over, it arguably deals with the issue without any real debate over why or how bad it is. We seem so determined to either have trial by media or to sweep something under the carpet that it doesn’t allow us the opportunity to debate these issues properly and have any adult conversations. The world is not black and white. This man made a stupid and offensive video and he lost a job at thirty-two years old which he had wanted to do and trained for since he was six years old. We need to move away from the antiquated concept of good and bad, right and wrong, and be able to discuss these issues; which if we view objectively vary along the spectrum of acceptability. I’m not giving an answer to any questions here, merely suggesting we need to be mature enough to not only ask reasonable questions but be willing also to try answer the ones that don’t necessarily have an easy answer.