Suck On This: Another Collection Of Minor Atrocities

Woke panic, pub destruction, Hate Monsters and Klaxon chaos – another round-up of life’s minor annoyances and major irritants.

More Pubs, Less Offices
To Woke or Not to Woke, That is the Question
Hate Crime Monsters
Klaxon Klaxon

More Pubs, Less Offices

The Ned Ludd pub in Nottingham used to be a regular haunt of your editor, back when he lived in the locality. When it opened in 2013, it was a breath of fresh air, a civilised attempt to do something new, with 2/3 pint options, an impressive and ever-changing array of craft beer and table service – not exceptional in the rest of the world but in a British pub, revolutionary. Of course, that didn’t last – the pub’s trendiness ensured that it was quickly crammed with the most appalling oafs and soon enough, you had to fight your way to the bar just like everywhere else. But it remained a cut above the average, especially during the day or on mid-week evenings. So I was aghast to hear that it would be turned into offices.

PKL Investments – and doesn’t that very name make you shudder? has applied to the local council for the plans, and the council has approved them. Nottingham City Council is reliably awful as ever and not just financially bankrupt but culturally too. PKL has said – and you might want to make sure that you don’t have anything in your mouth before reading this, lest you spit it out in disbelief – that the plans will create “a more diversified city centre”. We’re talking about offices. No one has ever said that faceless office buildings create diverse and vibrant city centres unless they have a stake in building and renting offices.

The local community and pub regulars have rallied around to fight the plans, though it seems a losing battle. Pubs are important – so much so that laws exist to have them declared community assets, something I would suggest campaigners in this case look into (though they would have to go through the council, so good luck there). Office buildings are not.

To Woke or Not to Woke, That is the Question

In the daily flood of press releases about things that we will never be interested in, an email header caught my eye this week: “Gen Z muzzled by woke culture, says new research”. Well, that must be good for a laugh, I thought.

It turns out that 48% of people between 18 and 35 – at least those surveyed by STRAT7 Jigsaw – are reluctant to say what they really think about touchy subjects (which is everything these days), lest they be judged for not being Woke enough. Or, as it turns out when you read on, for being too Woke. These kids just can’t win. Though astute readers will note that 48% is less than half, and as we dig in further, it turns out that only 40% consider themselves to be Woke at all and, confusingly, 41% didn’t know if it is a positive or negative thing. A fifth had, somehow, not even heard the term before. What does this tell us? That, shock horror, the discourse of socio-political Twitter is actually the hysterical shouting of a small minority, perhaps given undue credence by the media? That divisive arguments and people looking to ‘cancel’ opponents – something that both sides of the political divide do equally ruthlessly – are less about free speech and intersectionality as they are power-plays by egotists? Well, yeah.

The one thing that we can probably say – which should come as no surprise – is that the power of Woke culture is wildly exaggerated by its opponents and adherents alike. For most people, it seems that it is possible to show simple human decency towards others and their identity without treating it as some sort of horrendous personal imposition on your free speech, while also not expecting to be howled down and demonised for accidentally using the wrong word or making a minor criticism. In other words, most of us are happy to have genuine diversity – of culture and thought – rather than enforced conformity.

For me though, the most interesting point of all this, buried in the mix, was the fact that increasing numbers of people are avoiding any form of political discussion or even watching the news because of its effect on their mental well-being. Well, we’ve told you about that already.

Hate Crime Monsters

The new Scottish hate crime law has caused considerable consternation, with good reason. Like many an authoritarian law that is dressed up as being in the public good, it sounds fine on the surface, strengthening existing laws about hate speech. But you don’t have to dig down very far to see how this can – and almost certainly will – be used to silence debate and criticism rather than deal with extremism.

The law criminalises abusive or threatening behaviour designed to stir up hatred against any individual or group based on age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and variations in sex characteristics sometimes known as being intersex. Now, can you see the odd one out there? Unlike the other characteristics, religion is a choice – at least in theory, and if it isn’t for someone, perhaps that is a crime worth investigating in itself. Hatred of religion – any religion – should not be a criminal offence and to make it so is to effectively reintroduce blasphemy laws. The supporters of the law say that it allows dislike, ridicule or insult of religious bodies (though not necessarily of religious individuals) – but who gets to decide where that line is drawn? I somehow suspect that it will not be at the point of violence, discrimination or harassment – for which there are already existing laws in place that, if necessary, could be tweaked. The courts, ultimately, by which time someone’s reputation, career and finances might have been decimated. Given that this law covers books, theatrical performances and comedy, it feels like deliberate overkill.

Of course, Police Scotland has announced that it will investigate every reported hate crime. Well, fair enough you might think – that’s their job. But this comes just a week after stating that they would no longer investigate every ‘low level’ crime, including theft. Is being insulted online worse than being robbed? I’m not so sure. They seem to be sending out a message here and it’s not one that most people will feel comfortable with. They even produced a video featuring ‘The Hate Monster’ as a way of both talking down to people and scaring them out of saying anything critical, lest they transgress an extremely vague law. This childish bit of cartoon authoritarianism was met with ridicule – luckily, criticism of the police is not yet illegal. Mockery of the Hate Monster crossed the political divide, so perhaps Police Scotland has accidentally done their bit to bring everyone together after all.

Klaxon Klaxon

Am I the only person in the world with an irrational hatred of Klaxons? Not the actual horns, but the people who make announcements online using the word as some sort of alert, almost always for something entirely unimportant. Oh, so a not-especially obscure film is being shown on TV? Better send out the Klaxon for those people who can’t be bothered to look at TV schedules and can’t access catch-up services. Imagine if we sent out KLAXON messages every time there was a new post on this site. It would get old pretty fucking quickly.

The most annoying thing about this is that klaxons are supposed to be warnings – the thing that a chappy in his jalopy would honk as he barreled down on you at 10mph. They are not a summoning of the faithful but rather something that you want to avoid. Yet here is it, used endlessly by people who think – equally mistakenly – that they are the height of wit. I might be wrong but I always imagine the sort of person who writes KLAXON at the head of their tweet to 46 people to be the ones who consider themselves to be ‘wacky’, the sort who will tell you “I’m mad, me” because they wear loud ties or have green shoelaces. Someone should tell them that silence is golden.

DAVID FLINT

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