Messages

I have just been the recipient of wonderful generosity having received a replacement copy after reporting posties mangling of my original.

A gentleman and a comic scholar. Thank you.

The contents are fantastic on first perusal. My only gripe is with the mail-man. Postie somewhere along the line managed to give mine a bit of a mangling. Stupid postie.

Got it and if you're undecided get it.

Ordered another one for a mate!

Prodigal just send a paypal payment to doomlord@eircom.net and your details and it will get to me, and cheers for all the orders!

I tried again and I think it has went through.

Great stuff.

Its not accepting my e mail address or paypal password!!!!

I'm doomed!!!!

I put UK because I am in Norn Iron. Have I erred? My e mail address has Ireland in it because I work for an all Ireland organisation-why does the world hate me?!

People say stupid things sometimes, we all do it and we always have: it's just now we do it in writing in a permanent public medium. 

Sometimes we say stupid things because we haven't thought through our opinion, sometimes it's because our opinion is based on poor information or unexamined sources, sometimes because it touches on a personal hobby-horse* and we just can't let ourselves back down from a stupid particular for fear we are undermining our wider belief. 

Is this tendency to say stupid things a major factor in the ongoing existence of racism?  You betcha. 

Does doing it make you a racist?  Not necessarily.  You could just be one of those people who said a stupid thing.

Which is, after all, all of us.



*e.g. a perceived agenda-driven reporting bias in the media, as in this case.

Wisdom.

Judge Dredd: Mutants in Mega-City One

Folks sorry for a repeat enquiry of sorts but the above trade-is it previously un-released material or stuff likely to have been covered elsewhere? Its due for release 10/12/13.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Judge-Dredd-Mutants-Mega-City-One/dp/1781081670

Previously published stuff, repackaged for the American market - it's like the 'Fatties' collection earlier this year or the previous 'Judges gone bad' book, a load of different tales from different eras of Dredd joined by a loose theme, in this case mutants.

Thanks DJ.

Judge Dredd: Mutants in Mega-City One

Folks sorry for a repeat enquiry of sorts but the above trade-is it previously un-released material or stuff likely to have been covered elsewhere? Its due for release 10/12/13.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Judge-Dredd-Mutants-Mega-City-One/dp/1781081670

Judge Dredd: Mutants in Mega-City One

Guys this one due for release in December-I'm finding it hard to find on line reviews. Same old question-worth picking up?

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/10/robert-webb-re-joins-labour-protest-russell-brand

Interesting response.

2000 AD Presents Sci-fi Thrillers [Paperback) released in December 2013.

Is this one worth mentioning as a Chrimbo present folks? It looks like a hefty chunk of thrill power.

I have this in my Amazon shopping basket as of yesterday. I'm told it's indispensable to anyone's collection?

Only on board since 2012 so I have never read any of it.

Every time I go round there, my old man says, "what a lovely geezer that chap is!"  He still doesn't know exactly where he comes from but now he thinks he's the best thing since sliced bread.  It's just fear of the unknown.

In some ways this truth is the most tragic part of the whole silly mess. 

My mother spent most of my childhood warning us of the sheer terror that is tinkers, literal bogeymen, with the notable exception of old Peggy who came to the door with her two grandkids every other month looking for old clothes and was the 'salt of the earth' and worthy of tea and a chat.  Then my mother through her job started working with Pavee Point (the main Traveller support/education/advocacy organisation here), and to our genuine amazement suddenly all the people she met there were great altogether too. 

But somehow after several decades if this she still bangs on about the evils of Travellers, as if 'they' were in some sense entirely distinct from the individuals she knows and likes.

Tordelback research around sectarian issues here in the north points to a considerable faculty on the part of many to create an "exception to the rule" narrative even after meaningful contact between communities through involvement in community relations programmes etc. I saw it in my own family.

Over a family lunch, discussion of Ramadan with my son (7) included the fact that three kids in his class (in one of the relatively few non-religious schools in the country) are Muslims, or have at least one Muslim parent. Instantly my mother comes out with: "I hate the way these Muslims are taking over everything". 

I'm used to this kind of thinking*, but the bald instantaneous venom of this remark, in front of kids and effectively  about kids, took me aback.

Where does this kind of thing come from?  How could anyone think that in the Republic of Ireland, of all the monotheistic places on Earth, Islam is 'taking over'?  Taking over from what, institutionalised child abuse and hospitals and schools run as the executive arms of some medieval cult?  How do three children (all of whom, it goes without saying, are really nice kids) in a class of 28, in a school specifically chosen by us because of its explicit commitment to diversity, merit such a response? 

Is this simply a picture created by the media (my mother reads the Mail and listens to talk radio), or do the media just cater to an existing perception?  How do you tackle this barbarians-at-the-gates mentality?




*Some context, no need to read: While in other respects a kind and selfless person who I love very much, my mother is an appalling bigot of the most parochial nature imaginable: people from other postal districts are to be pitied and feared in equal measure, never mind those with different skin tones, variant religious mumbo-jumbo or a hint of a divergent accent.  The laughable exceptions to this rule are anyone she has ever actually met, all of whom are presented as miraculous individual exceptions to the genetic-and-or-cultural cesspool they hail from.  It'd be funny if it wasn't so fucking awful.

Tordelback I have been involved all my professional life in work around prejudice awareness-primarily anti-sectarian work but also other related fields such as anti-racism and anti-homophobia. The work has un-covered some gems. A few years back a bunch of young loyalists advised me in alarmed tones how "pakis" were taking over their town. Further investigation revealed that 4 had been spotted observing a parade.