The Griper's Times

I'M aware that I've written a lot recently about why we're all totally fucked, so in the interests of balance and blood pressure I've decided to start a regular posting on positive/you've got to laugh stuff. I originally had the idea for something like this during the dark days of the pandemic, but the idea of writing something satirical in my spare time somewhat withered on the vine when my day-job consisted of documenting the Chancellor's plan to bribe people to visit crowded restaurants in the middle of a pandemic. I mean, why do something for free you can get paid for? Returning to the idea five years later - when I'm not much getting paid for anything - and I've decided to make it more of a review of good stuff I've come across, somewhat in the vein of Stewart Lee's "I Arrogantly Recommend". Except Lee includes a year-to-date obituary for esteemed public figures and I've left that out. I've kept some of the jokes, although ...

WHAT properly put a stop to the riots last summer was not necessarily the police or even the fast-tracked court hearings. It was a massive show of strength. After a week or more of mobs attacking refugee centres and abuse being hurled at people who happened to be a different colour pissed-off progressives mobilised in force. In Liverpool "Nans Against Racism" locked arms to form a human barricade around a church which offered advice to immigrants. In Brighton meanwhile, eight racist agitators found themselves entirely encircled by some 500 counter-demonstrators and ended up cowering behind a police cordon. Even The Daily Mail, in a front page the following morning, seemed to recognise where the balance of power lay. "Night anti-hate marchers faced down the thugs," read the headline, which also echoed the Prime Minister's own language in describing the protests as "far-right." It's helpful to remember these scenes when, some 12 months on, we're...

FIVE summers ago Britain appeared to have side-stepped into a dystopian sci-fi novel. Bus stops flashed warnings for walkers to keep two metres apart and people had to dowse their hands in Dettol before entering the pub. It was a sobering reminder that almost every aspect of daily life can be upended by something we'd long assumed could no longer shake civilisation. Yet plagues and quarantine - the very stuff of 14th century folios - were among us once again. From the earliest days of the pandemic, there was a desperate desire to know when things would be back to normal. Tabloids would scream for an orderly timetable to take us away from the chaos, shrill as a child in the back of a car crying "are we nearly there yet?" Press releases promising the reopening of bowling alleys or easing of rules around socialising often offered false hope, only for the virus and restrictions to rapidly return.  And then finally with jabs in our arms we were hurried on past the horror of mo...

IT was 20 years ago today - well tomorrow actually - that Doctor Who returned to TV screens after almost a generation off air. At that moment there were plenty of questions marks about whether a show which had a less than stellar reputation at the time of its cancellation could be made a success. I remember reading a Radio Times preview in the school library - at a time when I probably should have been revising for my imminent IB exams - and mostly just being glad that there was finally going to be a British science fiction show broadcast. At that time - before Life on Mars or Afterlife or Primeval or Being Human (many of which were green-lit on the back of Who's revival - genre shows barely got a look-in in this country. CBBC had always done a decent trade, with dramas like Aquila and The Demon Headmaster, but after 5pm the only shows you were likely to see were American imports. And don't get me wrong, Buffy et al were brilliant, but now and then I had a hankering for a show ...

IT is fair to say that in the current political climate respectful disagreement has becoming increasingly impossible. In America in particular both conservatives and liberals have come to see one another as an existential threat and the insults exchanged on social media reflect that growing schism When Trump was first elected in 2016 I was at that point loathe to overreach and use the "f" word to describe the US President. I mean, sure, he was a fuckwit - crude, corrupt and corrosive - but that didn't in itself make him a latter-day Hitler. Some of that instinct to moderate my response was probably down to my frustration around that time about the increasingly deranged depiction of Corbyn's Labour as being a party one step away from opening gulags in North London. The hyperbole may have reached its height in a bizarre piece of speculative fiction, printed in one of the grottier tabloids, which had the newly-installed Prime Minister Corbyn skulking behind the curtains ...

IT has always been the case that those with wealth and power often attempt to exert their influence in politics. In the past perhaps the efforts have not been as obvious because someone like Rupert Murdoch or Lord Rothermere worked behind the scenes. We would perhaps hear of meetings with party leaders and the mogul's worldview was apparent in the stories their journalists would write. But for the most part the media baron himself remained in the shadows. Elon Musk is different in that his increasingly forceful interventions come directly from him; the world's wealthiest man owns one of the biggest platforms on the planet and screams out his inklings and obsessions on an almost hourly basis. Perhaps never before have we seen so clearly how those people with clear agendas and nearly limitless resources bring pressure to bear on elected politicians. He is lobbyist, outrider and donor all rolled into one.  For all the anxieties among the populist right about nation states being he...