"Your Little Poetry"

Dharma wheel.

The poetry I write might not be 'big' in terms of making money. It may not be 'big' because it reaches everyone, because everyone who reads it loves it, or because it's used in an advert. There are very few ways, apart from the amount of lines, that I could qualify the things I write as 'big'.

But never belittle it.

It has been the only thing available to me at times when everything else seemed to be coming down around me. It has created discussion and togetherness in those that have heard it, one of the things I prize most about life. Without it, I would just not be who I am. Indeed, I might not be at all, without something to focus on, something to say, something to simply stop me succumbing to the ultimate darkness.

Whatever your views on poetry, or me, or my work, don't, with a sweep of your hand so small that diminishes even the dismissiveness of your attitude, talk about my 'little poetry'.

You might not rate what I do, but what I do is what I am, so disregard my work and you disregard me. Do that, and I'll happily leave you to your 'important work' without looking back.

As always: peace, love and light.

'Negative Advertising'

Can you be a political party worth voting for if you rely on 'negative campaigning'? I'd like to make it clear that I'm not commenting on specific parties, if anything I'm apathetic about our current system, other than disliking the Conservatives and what they stand for, and racist parties.

This goes beyond the rather facile idea that 'if you say bad things there mustn't be anything nice to say' although, what with the current recession and many parties' reluctance to actually tell anyone what their policies are, there could well be something to that.

Negative advertising plays on people's  fear by encouraging them to take action lest their worst nightmares come true. By stimulating a human's fear, you are lessening their ability to make a reasoned judgement. When afraid, humans don't behave how they do under normal circumstances, they feel pressured and are more likely to rush a decision. It's bad democracy, let alone bad ethics.

Martin Sorrell on Thursday's This Week says that parties are more likely to use this tactic during times of a country's economic strifes. That's reasonable in terms of logic - there are more fears to exploit, after all. Hitler was one of many leaders who exploited existing economic problem for his own game, blaming groups of people for problems that are too wide-reaching and complex to be caused by those not in power. I think it's an awful tactic, so cynical and exploitative. I have no conception of what this was like in 1930s Germany, but now, I realise, given all the problems many people face in today's world and ceaseless messages of 'how bad it is for us all', how unfair it is to then put more stress on the country and its residents by stirring the fear pot further.

Although I realise how futile it is, I'd urge politicians to grow a back-bone. You should be going into the job because of how positive you feel about change and helping people, not how loud you can shout about peoples' faults, not about how much you want to cling on to money and power at all costs and not because you don't care about the plight and emotional state of the very people who (supposedly) control your future through voting.

I'm not saying politicians must be all happy, sunshiney, glass-half-full people all the time, I'm saying they shouldn't be so reckless and cynical as to tread on the backs of their electorates while they are already down. I'm sure a lot of it is down to the system - I believe it encourages people to put self-interest first, to keep political heads above water and to cynically compete with opponents that they could learn from if they listened. It probably makes people so bitter they don't have any positivity left in them.

Still doesn't mean they should spread negativity like anthrax over the country and pick the pockets of its dead citizens.

Monologous: Sports Students

Now, I'm not saying I don't like sports. I love a lot of them, football, badminton and swimming being my favourite. I play them. I watch them. I love them. How is it, then, that students involved in sports degrees are so god-damn annoying? There are so many of them around Edge Hill it's untrue. The uni is supposed to be pretty successful in teaching sports subjects and it bloody shows 'cause they flock here in their thousands.

I've got nothing against each one personally, really. I even know and like a couple of them. However, just because you like chocolate, it doesn't mean to say you'd like all of your things smeared with the stuff does it? Your TV would probably stop working. Your toothbrush wouldn't actually clean your teeth anymore. Your shoes would be all sloppy and sticky. The toilet would be really... brown and... sticky? Hmm, forget the last one then. The fact is, though, we're practically being smeared with sports students here.

Try and get a game of pool in the SU Bar and you can't. They're all there in striped trackie bottoms, hoodies with random cities and numbers stuck on (Osaka 84 being a personal favourite), stupid condom-shaped beanie hats and tufty douchebag beards (well, maybe I'm in no position to talk about the beard...). Try to go to the shop and you've got to weave in and out of them like an 80s pop icon on his way to get his 'Club Tropicana' holiday snaps developed after a toke or two on fine weed. I can understand this bit: if they see you trying to get somewhere and mover out the way for you, they'd be compromising their blessed masculinity. Aw, we wouldn't want to do that, would we? 'I'm big, I'm hard, you are beneath me! Rawr! Walk around me weakling!' It's obviously quite unreasonable of me to expect such a favour...

It even affects trying to write creatively. No, I don't mean that now all my fiction centres around marauding serial killers targeting sports students in a way eerily similar to those ones on TV. What I mean is that they're taking up precious 'state of the art' rooms with computers, projectors and board markers, while we writers get stuck with a broom cupboard on the roof somewhere... There's no-one using the running track right now, why not bugger off there? It appears Edge Hill isn't as highly rated in creative writing as sports degrees, for some reason, but it's obvious by past and current talent that we shouldn't be treated like dirt. We are a credit to the establishment, I'll have you know!

Ooh my wrist aches after this rant, I wonder if there are any physios about...