Sexism and Racism.

First World War Soldiers

(Guardian photo)

There is a lot of talk about the first world war as it is the centenary of the start of it this year – August I think – and what a lot of people don't realise is that most of the men who fought and died in that war didn't even have a vote – here are a few facts/dates:

1884 Representation of the People Act. Any male occupying land or property with an annual rateable value of £10 could vote. 24 adults out of every 100 could vote.

1918 (End of the war) Representation of the People Act. All males over the age of 21 were given the vote. Women over 30 got the vote. Women could sit in the House of Commons as MPs. 75 adults out of every 100 could vote.

This discrepancy was intended to ensure that men did not become minority voters as a consequence of the huge number of deaths suffered during the war.

1928 Representation of the People Act. Uniform voting rights were extended to all men and women over the age of 21. 99 adults out of every 100 could vote.

99 adults out of every 100? I wonder who the 1% were – convicts?

There is also a lot of talk about female suffrage, when we can clearly see that men got a bad lot too so it was more a class things than a sexual preference.

This arrest is of a suffragette arrested in the street by two police officers in London in 1914 doesn't say anything about the male vote or lack of it.

 Neither does this poster and it was from 1911:

But I love the photos.

However, women have fought for their rights and in my lifetime I have seen a huge difference both in attitudes and law. 

When I worked for the post office, after I left the motor bikes and before going to college, I worked in a postmans office in Birmingham with about 60 or 70 other postmen who delivered the 60 or 70 'walks;' there were supervisors (PHGs) and a couple of Inspectors and drivers etc.

Out of all those people there was one middle aged male Sikh, one male West Indian and about two women. 

 

When it came to allocating overtime there was an attitude that the women didn't need the over time as they were only working for 'pin money' and they didn't like the Sikh working overtime either as the general feeling was 'those blokes work till they drop where they come from.'

Men would also complain that women never loaded or unloaded the vans – well neither did I if I could get away with it!! They would also wonder who was cooking the dinner!

I wrote a post about 18 months ago here about the publicity my mother attracted when she was made a company director – the same questions about house work were asked; have a look: http://storytelleronamazon.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/my-mother.html

Now those are terrible attitudes both sexist and racist; I find it hard to believe that they even existed and I know that some people still think that way – that the woman's place is in the kitchen and other antediluvian attitudes. 

 

I expect everything – pay, opportunity, workload, - to be equal. I don't know whether women should be in the front line but there again, I'm not sure if men should be there either! (100 years ago my granddad was newly married, my 18 year old grandmother was expecting my mother and as they were hard up in Dublin my granddad joined the British Army and was gassed in The Somme for his troubles and although he survived, it did prevent some of his sons coming over and joining up for the second world war.)

So it's really crazy isn't it that in some countries it appears to be the 'norm' to gang rape young girls, stone women to death because they have married someone of another faith, lost their faith or even been gang raped by enemy soldiers; yes stoned to death and mostly by their own families.

The other thing that kind of gets to me is that at a time when over 200 girls have been kidnapped in Nigeria, The Guardian newspaper, my favourite newspaper, a paper that prints everything from the 'F' word to the 'C' word, the 'N' word (but won't print the word actress) published an article about the use of the word 'girl' in a BBC programme which attracted 1298 comments before the comments were suspended. Yes that's right GIRL; isn't this word fascism?

The last one comment, by the way was this:

'An old work colleague - female and I'm male and we're both long retired - has stayed in touch with a number of other female colleagues. When I asked her a few years after retiring "How are the girls?" and then said "Oh I suppose women's lib means I shouldn't call you 'girls'", she nearly became apoplectic.
"We are 'the girls'; we were always 'the girls'; everyone knew who 'the girls' were. I'm not having other women saying they've liberated me and then telling me what I can call myself!" '

It's all barmy though, isn't it – racism, sexism, prejudice. It isn't against the law anywhere for you to not like a group of people – women, Jews, Irish, Latinos – but it is against the law for you to make professional decisions based on that prejudice, either positive or negative. You can hate them if you wish, although that would be paranoiac and delusional and – come on such a waste of time.

Because of the recent UKIP earthquake in Britain a survey was carried out to see how many people here consider themselves racist (although they'd probably call it racialist!); it turns out at an alarming 30%. 

 

By the way it turns out that the broken hearted man whose wife was stoned to death in Pakistan by her relatives strangled his first wife to death to marry the 2nd one.

Politics.

Grab yourself an adage

Farage is a cabbage.

Now politics – or politics now!! What do I know about politics? Well not much more than the next man – I look next to me and there is a small child; I'm in Starbucks; he looks and stares. 

 

Does he know more about politics than I do?

Probably.

I hear him whisper to his dad 'a real pirate!'

He's seen my patch; he has a little sister with him and she asks me where my ship is.

I tell her – 'on the south coast.'

The dad tells them 'it's near the beach.'

The boy would like a photo taken with me but when his dad asks him he goes shy so I ask him if I can have a photo with him; he sits next to me and his dad takes rather a good photo; maybe I should have asked for a copy as it was better than some of my head shots.

Off they went and the boy was a lot happier than when he came; in fact they all were.

Someone complained that the country had changed; all the old traditions have gone!

They were referring to immigrants, of course and of course I didn't agree – but then; if the traditions have changed here they have been for the better but I know what they're getting at.

Being out of the country for 17 years in America I return and I see that if the traditions have changed or are changing they are influenced by America.

Instead of hanging around in pubs all day men tend to go to a coffee shop. I was in Starbucks the other day and a really big Irish Labourer came in and asked, in a broad Cork accent, for a grandé skinny mocha. Before I emigrated he would be in a pub.

That to me is an improvement in fact people take food into Starbucks to eat with their coffee – they don't seem to mind.

Going back to immigrants – before the Uganda Asians were kicked out of their country, settling in Britain, in the seventies you couldn't buy an evening newspaper after about six-o-clock. Most of the grocery shops, as well as the newsagents, closed at that time too – now you can shop quite late; so that's another plus, as far as I'm concerned.

I could go to the doctors without an appointment – free – go to railway stations and get on any train without having to book way in advance, mail a letter at the post office without any fear of my reply being lost by a private mail company (lots of letters are getting lost by a private company every day) and not have to pay council tax or poll tax but the rates – which had to be paid if you owned a house AND could afford them.

My three year course at drama school was paid for with a government grant – fees and living allowance.

I could go on, I suppose, but that's what I know about politics – none of those things are available any more.

And whose fault is that?

Well this is the time I play the 'blame game.' Or is it? No!

It's about time we stopped finding things or people to blame and tried to fix things and look to the future and that doesn't mean warning people that there might be an influx of undesirables coming in to the country. I for one welcome everybody here so they can pay tax and keep me in my old age in the custom I have become used to.

I have paid enough tax both here and in America – ah America! The land where everybody is an immigrant; a land of milk and honey where hundreds of people die every year trying to reach; in fact I think it's thousands.

They perish in the desert when there is a little walk between Tijuana and San Diego; the weather is so hot in the desert that they become disorientated through dehydration and die.

And this is because the Americans built a big wall to stop them but do you know one thing: the so called 'illegal' immigrants who make it are like the strong sperms that make it to the uterus so maybe they should be welcomed; because they'll do all the work.

There's a fella called Nigel Farage in Britain – Farage rhymes with the way you say garage but I have noticed on the BBC they are saying it like cabbage – he is the leader of a right wing political party called UKIP; they (or he) has caught the imagination of the population as they are fed up with the posh boys who are the leaders of the 2 main parties here and the Deputy Prime Minister who's party is holding the Conservatives up.

Right Wing I said – they are to the right of the Conservatives and maybe even to the right of the Republican Party and the Tea Party in America.

They have one policy and that is for Britain to leave the European Community and to curb immigration; right wing, I said, and right wing means privatisation (the NHS, the post office, the prisons, the railways etc); capital punishment and the jack boot – let's face it that's where it will end up.

Or will it?

Mr Turner at Cannes . . and a bit of eye trouble!

Mike Leigh's Mr Turner.

Do you know I used to love to go to Cannes; I can hear people say 'lucky for some' but it was one of those recreations that I jumped at; okay it was supposed to be work but I relished it; and I went four times for at least a week.

I was there to try and sell my short film as a TV pilot but it wasn't to be – or not to be!!

This week the Cannes Film Festival is taking place and it is a part of our business that some actors hate; well more fool them when they are sitting around in their dotage saying 'I could have . . .' or more likely 'I should have . . ' - personally I have no time for actors like that; actors are story tellers and meeting people – and the press and paparazzi – is all part of the job.

This year I would love to be there to see, what I think, will be an amazing film; I am talking about Mike Leigh's Mr Turner starring Timothy Spall. It's about the painter, of course, (JMW) and will probably win all the awards – from now on right up to the Oscars.

Mike Leigh is one of the great directors and his muse, Timothy Spall (who looks a lot like him; well the same type) fits in well with Leigh's filming technique.

I know this will fill some screen and TV writers with horror, but Leigh gets his actors to improvise as he devises his piece. That's what he does; even his classic stage play, Abigail's Party, was devised as an improvisation.

I am not talking about the improvisation you see on TV sometimes or the things they do at The Groundlings in Los Angeles but the kind you see Robert de Niro doing or Al Pacino. The building of a character through that technique.

I have worked on a short film for the BBC where we devised the film over a period of some days and improvised the dialogue. After a week or two of doing the same thing the improvised dialogue gets honed and shaped till we more or less know it without losing spontaneity; that is the secret as actors we are not reciting.

I have seen some of Ken Loach's films, who I also like a lot (but not as much as Mike Leigh's) and who is also at Cannes this year but the actors in his movies are not always professionals. Sometimes this works but they wouldn't be able to go through the process of devising and doing it over and over again.

I met Timothy Spall a year or so ago in Soho; I was having coffee with a pal and he poked his head around the coffee shop door and said 'what's going on here?'

He had come to see the owner of the place, as they had a gallery in the building, and he wanted to exhibit some of his work; so he can paint and I wish him, and the movie, a lot of luck.

Now then: since last week I have had a few emails and phone calls to see how I am after my surgery. Well I'm fine and really grateful for people's concern. It was an eye operation which was carried out using a local anesthetic (they just froze my eye).

The reason I didn't want a general anesthetic or sedation is 1): I don't think people of my age should 'go under' too much no matter how much of a thrill it is and 2): I wanted to find out what went on.

The surgery lasted two hours, which was longer than I thought, so I felt a little bit of discomfort – some pinching and stitching – but there was an amazing sensation at the end of surgery.

Because there were some tears I needed stitches and they put gas in to my eye (don't ask me why); this caused a bubble which temporarily blinded that eye.

I always thought that blindness would be dark; it isn't! It's dead – no sensation not brightness or darkness just dead. It was about a day before some kind of light came back.

The surgery was to straighten out a membrane on my retina rather like the skin on rice pudding or a fold in some Sellotape (Scotch tape in America).

That's all I want to say about it apart from what I see at the moment which is fascinating; the gas is still in my eye and it's slowly going.

At the bottom of my eye is the gas and as I walk it moves as if it's water – through a gold- fish bowl – I had to lay on the right side in bed and bow my head forward whenever I could for five days.

Now what I see is this:

See the gas at the bottom like a magnifying glass and the top being clear – ish! And when I walk the bottom moves so it's like walking through water - and that curve goes vertical when I lie down.

I took the photo through our sitting room window putting a close up mirror in front which is a good representation of what I see – and that's why I have to wear a patch.

Let's hope that by the next time I write Nigel Farage has been forgotten about; I live in hope.

Great rock song - Shakin' All Over.

I had eye surgery earlier this week; I'm not going to go on about it, it wasn't for cataracts but for an epiretinal membrane scrape; you can look it up if you wish.

So I sent the photo (above) to the kids to show them daddy as a pirate and it reminded me of one of the greatest rock'n'roll records ever made; by this bloke:

That's right! Johnny Kidd of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates and his great record was Shakin' All Over – here it is on You Tube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n327ncoU_ZU

I hope you can click on to that.

As you will see, his right eye had the patch, and mine is on the left.

Shakin' All Over wasn't really a hit outside Europe but it was covered in Canada by a group from Manitoba called The Guess Who – and I know someone from Manitoba – where it reached number one in 1965.

Johnny Kidd's original version (which he also wrote) was released in 1960 and it was one of those records which was totally original; in those days all British singers tried to sound like Elvis – well not all of them but most did – and Johnny Kidd really sang from the heart.

They had other hits – I'll Never Get Over You and Please Don't Touch – the latter being their first single, but sadly, the life and career of Johnny Kidd was cut short when he was killed in a road accident on October 7th, 1966 near Bolton in Lancashire when he and his "Pirates" were driving away after a performance.

The guitar part on Shakin' All Over was played by the session guitarist Joe Moretti and whilst it is not a great piece of guitar playing it is, and was, for the time, original. Just the right amount of echo, reverb and wow wow, on the opening guitar picking, which I think might have influenced Hank B Marvin playing guitar for the Shadows track Wonderful Land.

I remember when I went to the various 'Caverns' that sprung up in the British cities after The Beatles made the one in Liverpool famous, groups playing 'Shakin' All Over' nearly every night and I suppose thinking back that Johnny Kidd was the link between the teeny bop of the sugary British pop songs of the late 50s to the Beatles and the hard rock and blues that came later.

Johnny Kidd sang Bo Diddley songs way before The Rolling Stones.

Johnny Kidd and the Pirates – a group that preceded Alice Cooper; they were as theatrical as AC - and as Johnny didn't play an instrument on stage groups like Led Zeppelin and The Who felt they could have a solo singer who didn't carry or play an instrument; there's also footage or recordings of Led Zeppelin playing Johnny Kidd songs.

Click on to the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n327ncoU_ZU