Terminal Terminal

I don't want to trivialise the horrors of inner cities blighted by lack of investment and the intentional abandonment of a newly created underclass.

I don't want to make light of the despair endured by those who live in communities blighted by misguided sixties modernist ideals of town planning.

And I certainly don't want to let Pontins in Prestatyn of the good burghers of fucking Rhyll off any kind of hook. But in its own way, Terminal Five at Heathrow is the ghastliest, most hateful part of the UK in which I’ve ever had the misfortune to endure a couple of hours.

This is my second visit. So I can confirm that the harsh rudeness of the security staff was no one-off. They bark and shout a constant stream of commands at you, seemingly for their own amusement. The official at the front of my queue roared every ten seconds that we had to take off our belts and shoes. The people in the next queue were allowed to keep their belts and shoes on unless said items were a bit silly. So clearly this is not a hard and fast regulation, but something to be imposed at random, possibly for the sake of humiliating passengers. I kept expecting our man to scream, "Now dance magic monkey. I said DANCE!"

Once you're through security, you can laugh at the signs lining the conveyor from the x-ray machine which read "Trays will stop automatically" while straining with all your might to hold your tray as the conveyor attempts to shoot it out into the central concourse.

The first thing it would hit if you let go is one of the luxury cars, slowly rotating. You could win one of these. You don't have time to get your bearings before being assaulted by commodity fetishism, aspiration, longing.

When this place opened a lot was made of the designer shops here. As with St Pancras International, what was once a diversion if you had a few minutes to spare before embarking on your journey is now an obligation - you WILL shop. That is why you are here.

There's no pub here: we're too posh for pubs. The first thing you see looks like a pub, but it's not; it's a dreaded 'bar and kitchen' where you have to wait to be seated. Here and at the tapas cafe on the first floor (£5 upwards for the smallest tapas dishes) Inbev have a depressing monopoly on the beers on offer: Stella, Staropramen, Becks Vier, Murphys instead of Guinness, and a smoothflow abomination of Bass ale. At the tapas bar they don't even list the beers on the menu - even each brand of soft drinks and mineral water gets its own listing alongside the wine, but there's one line advising you that 'a range of beers, lagers and ciders are also available at the bar' (if you're that pikey).

Even the Wetherspoons – when I eventually find it – calls itself a bar and restaurant, not a pub, as evidenced by the fact that the beer is almost a quid a pint dearer in this branch than in my high street.

WHSmith, Dixons, Wagamama compete with Tiffany Prada and Paul Smith.

Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Plane Food’ sells a bacon and egg roll for £7.

A Christmas tree seemingly designed by cybermen, a horrid, silver skeleton of a tree, dominates the main atrium.

And if you don’t want to buy things, there are fewer places to just sit than I’ve seen in any other terminal.

In the first terminal built after we all started carrying laptops and mobile phones that need charging, there are fewer plug sockets visible than I’ve seen in any other terminal.

This is a nightmare vision of what the more upmarket British high street will look like when large chains and greedy landlords have succeeded in squeezing out every last drop of individuality, charm and character, when everything has been reduced to basic prerogative of consumption for its own sake and when we no longer even blink at paying five quid for a cardboard panini, three quid for a coffee, and four fifty for a shit beer dispensed like slop. When local influences are suffocated and stamped on in the drive to global homogeneity of aspiration.

I’ve seen the future. And it fucking sucks.

Pop Music's Natural Life Cycle

It may not be the most noteworthy death in the history of rock and pop, but today Al Martino, the American crooner who had the first ever number one hit in the UK, has died aged 82.

What struck me about this is that rock and pop were founded on young rebellion. The NME may have first published its chart in 1952, before Elvis, Bill Haley and Jerry Lee Lewis torched the musical script, but the introduction of the chart recognised the growing cultural role that popular music had among young people.

The 1950s was the decade when the word 'teenager' first came into popular use. With growing affluence and material prosperity, those hormonal surges everyone feels at that age were set free in a broader cultural context, and the idea of young rebellion, symbolised by music, drugs and fashion coming together in youth subcultures, became something to scare adults with and help people create their own identities, horizontal generational identities rather than vertical family identities, en masse for the first time. Subsequent generations terrorised their parents with the Beatles, the Sex Pistols, Acid House and... well, maybe it got a bit tame after that as it became corporatised.

The point is, the first generation of teenagers is now dying old, of natural causes. Pop culture has, in some ways, reached the end of its natural life span.

Where will it go from here? Is there life after X Factor? When the drummer from Coldplay talks excitedly of how the new album is going down in focus groups among key demographics, and the NME increasingly resembles Heat magazine with added black eyeliner (on the blokes), can music ever be dangerous and exciting again? In a society increasingly obsessed by youth and scared of its children, is there anything left for teenagers to rebel against? When X Factor has a special category for "over 25s", has teen rebellion won the cultural war or been suffocated?

And should I still even care now I'm in my 40s?

Oh dear

May 2009 - feeling abandoned by the Labour Party, swathes of its traditional working class support vote for the BNP and England elects fascists to the European parliament.

29th September 2009 - Gordon Brown sets out his stall for a last desperate bid to remain in power - fighting on behalf of the 'squeezed middle classes'.

June 2010 - Britain elects Nazi MPS?

I know Europe was proportional representation and the election is first past the post - making it harder for minority parties to be heard - but seriously. Brown has learned nothing. He's prioritising people worrying about their house prices over people who will never have a house, or a job; over child poverty and appalling living conditions for the poorest in society. Labour has abandoned the people it was supposed to represent, and now the only politicians who will even talk to those people are the fascists. Can we be surprised if they get in?

Brown learned nothing from the shame of the euro elections.

So now lets all look forward to a generation of Tory rule with nasty racists as the only real dissenting voice.

Cheers.

Can I have a large tea please?

More tales of consumer madness...

While promoting my new book I've been up and down the country quite a lot, spending more time than I would like in coffee shops and service stations.  And I've noticed something quite odd.

Increasingly, when you look at the drinks menus in these places, you can order a variety of coffees in small, medium and large sizes, but if you want tea, there is only one size available.  Why?  The cups are there.  It's simply a matter of choosing this cup, not that cup, and putting a little more hit water in.  I'd even be prepared to pay more for those 200 extra milliliters of hot water, but it doesn't seem to be an option any more.  Every single time I ask for a large tea, and I get a medium one.  A couple of times I've pointed out that I asked for a large one, and the staff have looked at me with complete incomprehension:

"I asked for a large tea."

"Tea. Yes.  There it is."

"No, but I ordered a large one."

"Large?"

"Yes."

"You wanted tea.  There is tea."

Anyone have any idea why tea drinkers are suddenly being coralled to medium sized cups?

Look on the Bright Side

A reminder, courtesy of The Daily Mash, that when the Tories get back in next year for a generation, at least the comedy will get funnier. THATCHER TRIES TO CLOSE HER OWN WARD

BARONESS Thatcher was under sedation last night after trying to close the ward where she is being treated. The claw has injured four nurses The former prime minister threatened to sack medical staff at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital after they refused to give her a choice of dressings for her broken claw. Consultant Denys Finch-Hatton said: "She was initially amused by the karmic forces that brought her under the care of an organisation she fucked sideways with a melon for over a decade. "But then she became very agitated, got on the phone to Norman Tebbit and told him to sell the hospital to some Chinese gangsters." He added: "We've made her as comfortable as possible which means, thanks to the enduring effects of her 11 years in power, she's currently propped up outside the gents." Although Lady Thatcher is in a stable condition, her accident and her advanced age has created a dilemma for the New Labour politicians who have continued her work while simultaneously begging the trade unions for money. A Downing Street source said: "In the event of her popping off, we'll have to say something that is statesman-like but does not alienate traditional Labour voters. Then again there is only about four of them. "What about a full state funeral with a 21-gun salute, but at the end we drop her down a disused coal shaft?" Meanwhile Martin Bishop, a former Liverpool dock worker, said he remained in a permanent state of readiness, adding: "I've got my fireworks, my bunting and two crates of Stella. It's going to be fucking mint."

Ashamed to be British. Ashamed to be from Barnsley

The Hitler-Loving Nazi elected to represent Yorkshire in Europe.  I want to die.

We used to call it the People's Republic of South Yorkshire.  It was so Labour, so socialist, there was hardly any point anyone else campaigning.

And now we see for ourselves, in our lifetimes, how fascism can take hold.  Even with twenty-first century communications, we see how lies and distortion can be allowed to stand, if faced by total incompetence and a sense that voters are being ignored by those in power.

16% of voters in Barnsley voted BNP.  

One in six of the people I grew up with, had a pint with, went to school with, voted for a fucking Nazi.  

This cunt used to be the leader of the British National Front.  He's an 'academic' who has attempted to develop a 'scientific' rationale for racism.  He led marches where people shouted "we've got to get the blacks out" and was once arrested and convicted of behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace after being heard chanting "death to jews".  

If you call your party the National Front, it kind of suggests you agree with everything Hitler said and did.  If there's any doubt, the party was founded on Hitler's birthday, for fuck's sake. 

And this is who the former socialists of Yorkshire have elected as their ambassador to Europe, while Hitler's actions are still well within living memory. 

Shame on the people of Barnsley.  Shame on a supposedly Labour government - this happened not because of "mass immigration", which doesn't exist, but because you've spent so fucking long licking the arse of Daily Mail-reading 'middle England' you've completely forgotten about the people who were once the backbone of your support.  Hang your head in shame Brown - and you Blair.  I want to throw up.

Once you pop a revolting mixture of corn starch, flour and fat you can't stop!

Delighted to read this morning that Pringles lost a court case in which they were trying to avoid paying VAT, and in the process revealed what we suspected all along: they're fucking revolting.

After years of marketing, you may have been under the impressions that Pringles were a particularly moreish type of potato crisp.  Well now the makers have strenuously argued that they're not - because they're only 42% potato.  33% of a Pringle is flour and fat.

They lost, and the court thinks they are a potato crisp (how did they reach that conclusion)?  So Pringles now face paying back £100m in VAT.  But after these revelations, they may not have this problem in future - would YOU buy them again knowing what you know now?  No sales = no VAT.  Everyone's happy.