A Tribute to Prince

Growing up in the 1980s, there were huge pop megastars. There was Madonna, Michael Jackson, and there was Prince. Madge and Jacko were total tabloid favourites. Madonna for her colourful private life and ceaseless assaults on hypocritical sexual conventions. Michael for his eccentric behaviour which, as we know, later took a darker turn. And there was Prince, whose aloof and controlled persona who managed the trick of object-of-media-fascination but without having his life splashed across the front pages. Of the three, he arguably preferred to let the music do the talking, and the image rode to popular consciousness off the back of their power.

Like Bowie, I wasn't what you'd describe as a fan. But like the aforementioned, Prince was always in the background, a celebrity deity who'd remind you of his existence on occasion, and soundtrack the odd YouTube or Spotify splurge. This is why his premature passing will be a wrench for a lot of people, regardless of whether music plays a big part in their lives or not. 

What a terrible shame.


Prince - 1999 (1982)

Do Violent Games Cause Misogyny?

See Breitbart, the noxious US import that has kept James Delingpole's career on life support? You can? Okay. Now imagine taking the Breitbart concept: unhinged right-wingery, stupidity, and dishonesty, and sticking it in the food processor. Get a face, say Louise Mensch, to front it up. And then people said product with content too dumb and churnalists too lazy for Breitbart. The end result is the political comment equivalent of what my cat has just visited upon her litter tray.

Heatstreet is Murdoch's latest go at being "relevant" to the tech-hungry, celeb-bothering, video-gamin' 20-somethings heavily into rabidly right-wing politics. Uncle Rupers might be happy to have Vice on the balance sheet as long as the cash keeps flowing, but he'd much prefer a successful brand that can do the business hawking repellent views similar to his own. Still, I'd managed to ignore this doomed venture until my Twitter feed tossed up this: No, Grand Theft Auto Doesn’t Make You Sexist. Video games and sociology, right up my street.

In a scholarly paper, 'Acting Like a Tough Guy: Violent-Sexist Video Games, Identification With Game Characters, Masculine Beliefs, & Empathy for Female Violence Victims' (read it here), the authors say "We hypothesized that playing violent-sexist video games would increase endorsement of masculine beliefs, especially among participants who highly identify with dominant and aggressive male game characters. We also hypothesized that the endorsement of masculine beliefs would reduce empathy toward female violence victims ... We found that participants' gender and their identification with the violent male video game character moderated the effects of the exposure to sexist-violent video games on masculine beliefs. Our results supported the prediction that playing violent-sexist video games increases masculine beliefs, which occurred for male (but not female) participants who were highly identified with the game character. Masculine beliefs, in turn, negatively predicted empathic feelings for female violence victims. Overall, our study shows who is most affected by the exposure to sexist-violent video games, and why the effects occur." They go on to argue in the paper itself that lack of empathy is the most significant predictor of violence against women, and so games that depress empathy could well be problematic. More specifically, broken down into variables there were statistically significant relationships between reported "masculine beliefs" and level of violence, and more specifically between those values and identification with a masculine player-character in what the research team classify as 'violent-sexist' games.

Now, remember, correlation isn't causation. At best it indicates that a relationship *in all likelihood* exists, but it doesn't necessarily point to the direction of these relationships. Was it the case that the young men reported a more sympathetic attitude toward masculine values after playing the likes of Grand Theft Auto because these views were already in place, or that they had been "caused" by the game they had just played. In all likelihood, as the authors claim, the former is more likely to be the case. At best the sorts of tropes on show in GTA would merely confirm and reinforce pre-existing dispositions. Nevertheless, there are some problems, not least being that the observed correlation only involved the 22 who played GTA (out of a total sample of 154 Italian high school students who played a variety of games). Because the group is so small it's not wise to draw any sort of conclusion beyond "more study needed".

None of this makes it into the dimly-lit consciousness of our HeatStreet writer. Instead of addressing, or even polemicising against the results, he writes "Is Grand Theft Auto sexist? Is killing a woman in a video game somehow inherently worse than killing a man? Well, maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but if women are tough enough to be president, fight in war and kick my ass ... they’re probably tough enough to be included in video game carnage, just like the men." This is not so much as missing the point as doing a very deliberate body swerve to avoid it. Where women feature as video game adversaries, historically speaking there is a tendency to represent them as overly-sexualised. In 1990s beat 'em ups, like the otherwise wonderful Streets of Rage 2, women typically appear in fetish wear as you smack them in the mouth. When things moved into three dimensions, Lara Croft of Tomb Raider fame led the way in svelte bodies and generous hips and boobs, and so did the baddies. And today there is not much variation in female body types available. How often do you spot overweight or small-breasted women in a game?

This isn't to suggest portrayals of women in games cause sexism. They don't, they reflect, feed back, and naturalise already existing views and assumptions - an effect that's quite subtle but nevertheless real. If there was no effect whatsoever, then why would a mainstream game centered around Nazi battlefield exploits, such as my Call of Duty: Heroes of the SS thought experiment, be hugely controversial? Might it have something to do with normalising and rendering banal a regime long-associated with truly foul crimes? 

In the real world, it is rarely a matter of something causing something or not, it's a matter of degree. If it applies to the in-your-face, it's also the case with the commonplace.

McDonald's and Labour "Snobbishness"

What kind of company should be allowed to have a corporate stand at Labour Party conference? Should all-comers be taken provided they stump up the readies, or as a minimum are they expected to subscribe to a set of standards around employment relations, trade union recognition, and ethical practices (whatever they are)? I ask because a row is being stoked by the usual moaners about Labour's decision to refuse a stand (worth £30,000) at this year's conference in Liverpool.

In a typically dishonest article, The Sun says McDonald's have been "banned", and Wes Streeting is called upon to denounce the "snobby attitude towards fast-food restaurants and people who work or eat at them." It's worth stating at this point there is no suggestion whatsoever that the "banning" took place because NEC members disapprove of fast food. That has been made up by The Sun, and it is disappointing - to put it euphemistically - for Wes and others to join one of our movement's fiercest enemies in dumping on our party.

In my years on the left, I've occasionally encountered snobbish attitudes towards McDonald's, albeit indirectly. One of my erstwhile Socialist Party comrades told me he had to argue down a SWP proposal at his local trades council to boycott and picket several city centre branches. Likewise, cast your minds back to the anti-capitalist protests of the early noughties. If there was a McDonald's along the route, it could expect to have its windows smashed. In both cases, it was lifestyle leftyism of the most cretinous kind, of appearing super-radical and being seen to offer no quarter to a prominent manifestation of global capitalism. I suppose having scant regard for the (low paid) people who work there, and the families for whom a Maccy's is a cheap way of eating out is another sign of revolutionary grit.

Most people with a scant interest in politics know there is an element of lifestylism to Jez's politics, including a good section of the new party members. In the absence of an explanation why the NEC decided to not grant McDonald's a stall The Sun's view is superficially plausible. However, as he piled in surely Wes could not help but be reminded that many of his PLP friends on the "trendy" right of the party are more likely to indulge a quinoa smoothie than a McDonald's milkshake.

There are many good reasons why a business like McDonald's shouldn't have a space at Labour Party conference. Refusal to offer permanent full-time jobs is one of those, even though it is moving away from zero hour contracts. Not recognising a trade union is another. And that's before we start talking about its toxic environmental record. Note to moaning Labour MPs who think it's madness to turn £30k down: it's hypocritical and politically stupid to take money from businesses whose practices are at odds with the values and objectives of the movement of which you're part. And for those PLP members who find walking and breathing at the same time difficult, it's quite possible to have this position without being "snobbish".

Of course, there might be a more mundane explanation. Labour Party conference this year is set to be the biggest we've seen for many a year as thousands of new members visit for the first time. More visitors = a larger audience strolling around the exhibition centre, and the more the party can ask exhibitors to cough up. It's not beyond the realms of that McDonald's were unwilling to pay more than £30k. Not everything is a nefarious conspiracy.

As this was a NEC decision the details will be out in a forthcoming report.

Privacy and the Public Eye

Two stories involving press intrusion into the lives of the rich and the powerful. Is this ever justified?

Let's have a look at the first story. Well, as much as our friends at the injunction-happy Carter Ruck will let us. As reported everywhere else in the world except England and Wales, a celeb has been caught with their pants down in a threesome behind their spouse's back (apparently) and there are added claims of extra-marital jollies in a £500-a-night hotel. In other words the kind of story that is the gutter press's stock-in-trade, and one bound to linger in the collective memory for as long as it takes the next scandal to come along.

Then we have the tale of John Whittingdale, the government's so-called Minister of Fun and leading figure in Vote Leave. Whittingdale, as everyone knows thanks to this week's disclosures, was previously in a relationship with a sex worker. The question therefore arises whether we, as punters who read the output of our wonderful British press, have a right to know about the comings (ahem) and goings in celebrity and politicians' bedrooms.

The unsatisfactory answer is it depends. As someone who grew up in the golden age of Tory sex scandals in the 1990s, in hindsight no one really needed to know about David Mellor's affair, or the unfortunate circumstances attending the premature passing of Stephen Milligan MP. Everyone has the right to a private life, regardless of the peccadilloes and moral hypocrisies that inhabit it. In my view, what is private is fair game for scrutiny if a clear public interest beyond prurience and gossip can be demonstrated. Being in the public eye should not make you fair game. For our "anonymous" celebrity and their family no such public interest justification exists. Whittingdale, however, is a different matter.

You could argue that his relationship is nobody else's business, and that argument would be correct. Not that that prevented hacks from three different papers from prying into his affairs. Yet for all three of them to then sit on the story? Hmmm. For three papers to sit on a story they had invested time and resource in investigating, especially when two of the titles ordinarily dress up tittle tattle as news is a touch suss, shall we say. Were the papers uncharacteristically reticent because they feared Whittingdale would implement Leveson's recommendations if they stung him, or were the stories saved up as leverage to hold over the minister? That in itself becomes a matter of public interest trumping Whittingdale's right to privacy. The disclosure is a necessary casualty of the public interest.

And then there's today's splash in the Mail on Sunday about another of Whittingdale's relationships. Hardly scandalous, but claims that Stephanie Hudson - a woman on the fringes of celebrity Z-listdom - was privy to confidential cabinet papers is also a matter of public interest. As such, The Mail were right to publish. Whittingdale has a serious case to answer, and the longer his stays schtum the more it will add to Dave's growing encumbrance of woe.

Markus Schulz feat Ana Diaz - Nothing Without Me

Pity the poor souls I'll find huddled in the classroom 9am tomorrow morning. Not only do they have to listen to me drone on for three hours about a select topic (Week 11: Sexual Harassment), I am cruel enough to subject them to my music taste. Each week I pick out a video and in a quick exercise they're invited to tease out the plot, specify how gender and sexuality is performed, and note anything else of interest. This was going to be tomorrow's choice but, meh, while it's a great song (my number four of 2012) the vid is a touch depthless. I'll park it here anyway.

A Sociology of Sexist Trolling

Women with a public platform get more shit than their male counterparts. And now what's long been known through anecdote and, in some cases, unpleasant direct experience now has some numbers behind it. In a study of the 70m comments made on its site since 2006, The Graun has found that of the ten most abused writers, eight are women and the remaining two men are black. This is despite women and BME writers being underrepresented overall. Meanwhile, no prizes for guessing that the ten least trolled scribblers were all men.

How to explain this? The first reflex is to blame it all on a few sad sacks. Undoubtedly there is something lacking and maladjusted about someone who specifically targets women for having the temerity to share an opinion on a popular comment platform. However, that is also a deeply unsatisfying explanation. According to friend-of-the-blog Emile Durkheim, when a phenomenon crops up regularly in certain settings then there is an underlying cause or set of causes that are fundamentally, irreducibly social. Basement dwellers if it's one or two people, but something else if this is getting repeated across comment sites more or less everywhere, and traversing different nations and different languages. If there are a lot of individuals abusing women online, then that is a social fact, as Durkers would put it, and therefore a social problem.

The question is where to start coming to grips with this. In her Cybersexism, Laurie Penny suggests that one of the drivers is the opening of computer mediated public space that had previously been coded as male. That isn't to say women haven't always been using the internet, but the nerd culture that staked out the digital frontier was predominantly masculine, even if it was positioned as the domain of the so-called beta males who found the real world a touch too tough. Similarly the gamer cultures growing up online after 2000 were overtly, outrageously masculine (and definitely, definitely super straight as well). Therefore for a layer of men who identify with these cultures and are invested in them, the increasing public presence of women as something other than porn fodder threatens to, well, spoil their manly-manly safe spaces. Flick through YouTube and see the hysterical male in action because women and some men (who happen to not fall into the straight/white defaults of these cultures) have dared to critique sexism, racism, and other things in video games. It's as if the digital parasol allowing them to "safely" perform masculinity while sheltered from the too-powerful rays of hegemonic maleness proper is being taken away by, eeew, women and being told they cannot use it any more.

This has been well-documented, not least by Laurie herself and forms the basis of the backlash to the so-called GamerGate controversy, which has seen women in the video game industry repeatedly harassed, doxed, and threatened. Historically, sexual harassment and violence has policed demarcated social spaces between the genders, and this is all the old crap updated with proxy servers and iCloud hacking. This, however, doesn't stand alone. There are deeper structures at work feeding into the anxieties of these cultures. A few years ago, this blog noted how

we also have a more level playing field when it comes to jobs. This isn't to say there are no gender divisions at work - it would be stupid to pretend men and women aren't treated differently. But increasingly, especially at entry level, workplaces are increasingly mixed and young men and young women have to compete for the same jobs. And yet hegemonic masculinity - that complex of ideologies, values and expectations inculcated by socialisation and reinforced through family, friendship and media networks - hasn't caught up. A real man has a well paid job, has disposable income enough to buy all the mod cons and fashions, might *have* (in the property sense) a woman, or, at the very least, has women hanging off his arm, and, of course, has the time and inclination to play or watch sports, and/or indulge in masculine-coded pursuits like video gaming, drinking, gadgetry, or fishing. Women are too well aware of the mismatch between how society expects them to dress, look and behave, and their individual lives. But now that mismatch is being felt more by men too.

In 2016 this is pretty much the new normal. Girls generally outperform boys at school, do better in post-16 education, and more young women will be enrolling at university this September than young men. There are still disparities here. Despite the gender gap in education, women will tend to gravitate toward subjects that are "soft" and lead to what you might call gender normative career outcomes. The overall dearth of graduate jobs also means young men are increasingly competing for these roles too. At the other end, seeing as the government has, newspeak-style, abolished youth unemployment by banning benefits for the under 18s and encouraging apprenticeships in unskilled work, here too there is strong competition as gendered demarcations of work are blurring (unevenly, it has to be said) across different sectors. Yet masculine norms inculcated through the family, reinforced in the everyday, and transmitted by all kinds of broadcast media have yet to catch up with the lived reality of many millions of men. Social consciousness has the tendency to lag behind social experience, so it will come in time but whether that manifests and fuels this new misogyny of which The Graun findings are part or undoes it remains to be seen.

There is one glaring problem with this explanation. This is the lot of young people, of young men. Yet chances are our Graun trolls are a touch older than those scrapping over entry level jobs. Attacking women who write about politics is not likely to be the preserve of your average 23 year old GamerGater. So what's going on here then, why would men over a certain age choose to single out Graun writers (or, for that matter, women commentators in general) when they're not subject to the same pressures as younger men are? Here, the case is slightly different. The dissolution of the kinds of masculinities inculcated as natural (and permitted) for the post-war generation is just as real, but is felt differently. If you would allow me another indulgence from another old post:

... before primary industry and manufacturing went into a tailspin, you knew exactly where you stood. The rich man was in his castle. The poor man at his (factory) gate. Tearing this world away was tantamount to emasculation for a generation of men, and now feeds into a wider alienation from British culture. The vast majority of jobs available to the sons of these men lack obvious markers of masculinity. Office work, retail, call centres, caring - the economic dominance of service industries are simultaneously read as symptoms of the feminisation of working life and national decline. And with this has come the butchering of the armed forces, 'elf and safety' culture, political correctness, women doing "men's jobs" and, horror of horrors, gay marriage.

These are unforeseen consequences of breaking up the solidarities that underpinned the post-war consensus and propped up the parties that oversaw it. All of this is premised on atomisation. There was and always will be such a thing as society, but Thatcher tried her damnedest to boil it down to individuals and their families. Her successful attacks on the labour movement and the much-reduced ability of the working class to reproduce itself semi-independently of the state has thrown matters into a flux that are still to settle. With a weakening of solidarities and the throwing of many families (and individuals) onto their own resources, combined with the disappearance of many masculine-coded jobs there is a coterie of middle-to-old aged men who are deeply resentful that what was theirs by right has gone, and its replacement is a society and set of official values they're disengaged and feel alienated from. Naturally, like most forms of reaction it kicks against what is regarded as the most visible symptoms of a social problem. Immigrants of all kinds, BME communities, minority sexualities, and, of course, women. For a subset of this strata a sense of power, control, superiority and, yes, manliness is recuperated every time they traduce an articulate woman beneath an article. And doing it again and again, one can build up camaraderie with others who do the same, recapturing a simulacra of male solidarity and potency raging against the feminised machine.

Processes like these are underway in all of the advanced countries. The specifics may change, but at root is the collapse of social democratic compromises, the erosion of working class culture (and with it a certain kind of male authority and gendered performance), and consequent restructuring that has conditioned and reconfigured gender relations. None of this excuses men, young or not-so-young from the responsibility of their creepy, unacceptable behaviour. They still make the conscious choice to anonymously abuse, after all. But it puts those decisions in a context, and hopefully this post has demonstrated some of the ways in which class conditions masculinity and the ranty, entitled outbursts attending its dissolution.

Science in The Martian

The Martian has two very unique features not shared by your average big budget blockbuster. First, it has Sean Bean in it and his character lives. Second, as a science fiction piece it is virtually alone in projecting forward a non-dystopian future in which scientific endeavour comes out smelling of roses. Before you read any further, this review is a touch spoilerific, so stay away if you're saving The Martian up for a rainy evening.

That said, I don't think there's any need to dwell on the plot as it's not a particularly deep film. Set at some unspecified point in the near future, Matt Damon gets left for dead on the Red Planet as a dust storm swoops in on a NASA landing site. The next couple of hours are spent trying to get him back home while Damon has to "science the shit" out of his meagre supplies and technology to stay alive. Okay, scraping up vac-packed faeces and mixing it with Martian soil might not produce the kind of potato crop we see in the film, at least not straight away, but it has enough pseudo-realism for it to be plausible. And puncturing one's space suit to use it for propulsion is a bit iffy, but again, it sounds just about right for it to work.

It goes without saying that the wide panoramic shots of the Martian desert (i.e. Jordan) are stunning, yet the sense of desolation doesn't overcome the film, nor is Mars the "real star". Throughout Matt Damon does a good job of playing Matt Damon, so don't expect much in the way of brooding and existential angst. Thankfully his ubiquity doesn't get tiresome as his adventures in the habitat and on the rover are interspersed with ground control action. Overall it's very watchable. Not a masterpiece by any means, but an entertaining enough update of an Apollo 13 (and an Apollo 13)-style space disaster scenario.

The real hero here has to be science. When it suits, which is often, NASA likes to dress its organisation and its mission up as the repository of all that is best about our species. Its official discourse evokes essentialist notions of exploration, that it is in our very nature to strap ourselves atop a rocket and blast off into infinity. And when it's not reworking old American frontier ideologies, it's presented as an instantiation of the absolute, of a manifestation of reason straight from a late 20th century misreading of Hegel. As such, any film that has official NASA involvement - and this does - the agency has to come out of it looking good. Hence Matt Damon was never in any danger.

Putting that aside, anyone whose politics aren't hitched to the primitivist bandwagon has serious respect for the space science NASA does. Even I follow them on Twitter. And that is shown in the best possible light, here. Matt Damon applies his botanist know-how and astronaut training to grow crops, establish communications with Earth, improvise habitat and suit breach repairs, and lots of other gadgety-things. Meanwhile NASA get their heads together to formulate a rescue plan which, in the best tradition of American schmaltz, a lowly underling at the Jet Propulsion Lab manages to come up with. Whenever a problem presents, all concerned apply ingenuity and the scientific method to arrive at a solution, even if the bounds of credulity take a little stretching.

Nevertheless, this is more than just pro-NASA propaganda. The Martian sets its face against the contemporary wave of dystopian sci-fi that delights in creating misanthropic situations to subject our descendants to. Much harder is to produce a compelling, successful, believable film that ignores the zeitgeist. It shows we have the tools and know how to fix seemingly intractable problems, and that our efforts can be successful. In a world haunted by social problems and looming environmental disaster, give me that message over fashionable fatalism any day.

Dave, Panama, and the Press

As readers know, I'm not a politician and when I worked in politics, it wasn't at the spaddy level where you're actually listened to. Yet me, a lowly ex-bag carrier responsible for caseloads in an obscure constituency knows the first rule on resolving a political crisis is to wrap it up as quickly as possible. The longer a story is attracting headlines, the more it becomes a talking point in the broadcast media, and the greater the likelihood you and/or your party will suffer reputation damage.

These basics have proven foreign to our beleaguered PM and his coterie of expensively clueless advisors. The self-inflicted difficulties Dave has faced over Daddy's offshore doings was excruciating, and has proven to be his most painful week in office. Yes, worse and more damaging than budgetgeddon and their disingenuous hand-wringing about the steel industry. Dave knew his offshore offloading was going to look bad, so he should have dumped it all at the start of the week rather than let political enemies take chunks out of him. Some PR professional he's turned out to be.

There are a couple of things worth noting about the coverage. Over the last six years, the majority of the press and broadcast media have given the Tories a relatively easy ride, at least compared to that received by Labour. Because the environment was relatively benign to them, it has allowed top Tories - particularly Dave, Osborne, and Johnson - to inculcate complacent habits. Johnson thinks he can turn up to an interview unprepared and dribble oh-so comedic inanities and get taken seriously. Osborne can't resist kicking the poor and disabled, because he thinks the media are forever onside. And this week Dave made a similar calculation over his tax affairs and was found wanting.

What he doesn't get is the priorities of the Tory-supporting sections of media have shifted. They will always cheer him against the Bolshevists on the benches opposite, but right now, little else. Dave has forgotten there is a referendum about Britain's EU membership on, and the majority of the Tory press for their own sectional reasons want Britain out. They also know a good chunk of the electorate who don't pay close attention to politics, but lent their votes to the Tories last year quite like Dave and are inclined to take what he says at face value. He is the Prime Minister, after all. In this respect, his person is an asset to the Remain campaign. For the ragbag of outers, the Panama story is a God send. Damage Dave, damage the chances of us remaining in the EU.

Will it work? If it doesn't, it won't be because the far-outers like The Mail haven't had a damn good try. Yet their scorched earth approach presents them with not a few problems too. If the Tory press want to go hard on offshore stories and tax dodging, bring it. The people damaged by this line of attack aren't just Dave, but our chancy chancellor, a lot of Conservative MPs, the various interests who bankroll the party and, not least, the proprietors of the Tory press themselves. What can you say? Privilege makes you stupid.

If Dave is wondering when this is going to stop, someone will have to break it to him that it won't. Between now and referendum day he's slowly discovering what it's like when the gutter media have got it in for you.

Life In the Slow Lane

Regulars will have noticed the drop in output of late and, I'm afraid to say, that's likely to continue for the time being. As I'm fond of lists, here's my rundown of reasons why.

1. Blogging constantly is a massive drain. Last year, I managed 366 posts, most of which were original articles/think pieces/rambling rambles (delete as appropriate). All of these were written in my own time and mostly in evenings after a day at work. It inevitably meant evenings out were passed up, the rare decent television offering was ignored, and too many books were left glowering at me, unread. I'd like to be a veritable opinion machine capable of churning out flawless and excellent articles all the time, but I can't. The pace has to slacken because I fancy doing other things. Occasionally.

2. I don't think I've been as bone idle, politically speaking. This year I've managed to get two leafleting sessions under my campaigning belt, a feat truly worth the old Soviet 'Hero of Socialist Labour' medal. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is work. Since September I've taken on more responsibility, which has meant a never-ending stream of emails requesting reports about this and that. Rewriting three modules as I go along has hardly helped matters either. Still, I'm not moaning, I enjoy my job. But it does mean time and energy previously reserved for the hard graft of talking to "real people" has found itself allotted to other things, unfortunately.

3. Ah yes, the second reason. There's no point beating about the bush. The Labour Party might be stronger organisationally speaking than it has been for many years, but nothing has happened these last six months suggesting that a) the labour movement (not just the party) has strengthened over this period and that the "new politics" is winning adherents beyond the already-converted, and b) we stand a chance of winning in 2020. That's alright if you're of the leftist stripe who thinks power flows from the barrel of extra-parliamentary activity, but it doesn't. Historically, in Britain, it has tended to be a dialectical fusion of the two. Street politics and committee room politics shape and condition one another, and occasionally conspire with events to create opportunities for lasting political and social change. Jeremy is a good leader from the extra-parliamentary point-of-view, but he has proven not so stellar in the daily cut-and-thrust. While a lot of this is filtered through some of the most disgraceful media coverage a leading British politician has ever received, his programme at present (and I would contend in the immediate future) is not going to appeal to sufficient numbers to win. Unfortunately, when activists are convinced they're losing it's not terribly common for them to redouble their efforts in the hope sheer voluntarism can turn the situation around. This is especially true when time and energy is in short supply. De-motivation is usually the norm, and in my case if you're not feeling inspired to pull your finger out, writing about it regularly is difficult too.

There we have it. Three reasons for taking this here blog and steering it into the slow lane. There will be regular new stuff, but at a lower, gentler frequency.

Super Aleste for the Super Nintendo

Let's have a brief video game interlude. Super Aleste, or Space Megaforce if one hails from North America, is a stylish 1992 vertically-scrolling shooter developed by Compile. For retro game aficionados, they were a byword for quality shooters in the vintage era of eight and sixteen bit systems. Their Aleste series of games were known for fast, frenetic action, imaginative game play gimmicks, and superlative programming. This was a developer at the top of their game and knew how to make symphonies on the machines of the day.

Naturally, Super Aleste is no different from its NES, Master System, PC Engine, and MegaDrive forebears. The plot is some nonsense about a metal sphere emerging from the depths of space to lay waste to the Earth, and only one ship can succeed where the combined might of humanity's air force and space fleet have failed. Thankfully, the plot is the only banality where this game is concerned. You ship flies up the speed with endless waves of baddies flying at you kamikaze-stylee, occasionally letting off a bullet here and there. To complicate matters there are various gun, missile, and laser emplacements that get really annoying as the game wears on. And come the end you can find quite imaginative and unusual bosses hanging out and concerned with stymieing your progress.

I know I'm still not doing it any justice, but there were more fresh ideas (then) packed into Super Aleste than virtually any other shooter. Take the power-up system, for instance. Lifted from preceding Compile games, it allowed selection from eight available weapons by picking up relevant icons as they drift down the screen, and their power can be increased via orange or green orbs left behind by blasted enemies. The problem is not all weapons are equal - some are awful, especially the multi-directional shot. But the variation between the levels mean you can't just power up to the max and breezily steamroller a way through. Also attached to this is a little mechanic that was copied, sorry, "inspired" similar in subsequent games. Super Aleste wasn't the first to link level of power ups with the number of hits the player character ship can sustain - get hit and you're knocked down four power levels, cop another bullet and you're cat food. But it was the first, as far as I know, that linked it to spawning locations. During the course of the game one acquires extra lives (standard) and "special" extra lives (not-so-standard) that restart you at the moment of your destruction. Once these have all gone it's back to the checkpoint, which is very annoying when boss-related pugilistics are the order of the day.

Unfortunately, this is a mechanic you're going to have to get used to because some of the levels are very tough. The one that used to drive me to distraction was the graveyard of humanity's battle fleet. Not content with kicking our asses, the dastardly aliens have booby trapped and turned those ships' weapons against you. Sauntering along and having  a huge laser beam appearing from nowhere to slice you up is not helpful. Nor is blasting away right next to a bit of scenery which then decides to explode. It's tough, but not impossibly tough. A little bit of skill, patience, and copious smart bomb usage is enough to plow through.

It also has to be said that Super Aleste is a stupendous technical achievement for the SNES. Considering its CPU was super weedy by the standards of the day, unlike the debacle of Super R-Type there isn't a hint of slowdown in this game. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to think both ran on the same machine. Dozens of sprites and bullets fly about the screen with gay abandon, and often times there's some very nifty mode 7 taking place in the background. The second level is most superlative in this respect. Hordes of enemies seek you out as a scaling rotating station, which doubles up as half the level and the boss, spins and zooms in and out in the play field background. It's impressive now, what gamers must have made of it in 1992 ... Pleasingly, the sound is no slouch either. Effects are standard blaster fare with a bit of badly-articulated trash-talking by the bosses, but the music is among the best on the SNES. I've never been a fan of the sound chip's faux orchestral reverb, but this time mixed in with pretty fine techno tracks it was definitely pleasing to my refined/snobbish ear.

Overall, Super Aleste stands out from the pack as being one of only two really good vertical shooters on the SNES, and is the apogee of a genre that has long become a niche pursuit. But for unthinking, reflex- sharpening, instinct-driven gameplay, the sunny old 16-bit Nintendo has few that can top this.