No Flags Please

I am a Miners son, you remember the Miners I suppose, those people who did dangerous work and spent most of their lives buried alive, I come from Sheffield where heavy industry reigned – my mother was a ‘Jolly Buffer’ (someone who polished knives) and we made steel, we were fiercely Socialist but also Royalist – I never worked out the contradiction I just accepted it -  I was brought up my Grandma who was adamant that ‘Royalty’ had special blood in them – no dirty jokes please, at least not in the same sentence as my Grandma!

We adored the Monarchy, they were special and they did add colour, and I think were above politics and this is something that people who do not have a Royal Family can fully understand, and I would defend them; I actually like that our national anthem celebrates a person and not the country.  They are the personification of noblese oblige.  So with all this indoctrination why am I not waiving my flag on 29 April 2011?

It started a year ago when I began to realise that the wedding seems ‘convenient’ to shore up an unpopular government, I believe it was suggested a wedding in April 2011 would be good after we have slashed social services, give the plebs something to take their minds of the real issues – bread and circuses and all that.

 Then there was the thing about the ‘cheers in the Cabinet’ when it was announced - it just sounded so ... Tory (God Bless their gracious majesties, forelocks touched and medal shone!), I have this image of a scene from the ‘Planet of the Apes’ with the Gorillas and Chimpanzees jumping up and down on the table, and swinging from the chandeliers - rather disturbing.  

The guest list to the wedding is the he good and great, the despicable and morally corrupt, everything the Republicans hate about the Monarchy, they couldn’t invite Gordon Brown and Tony Blair because they were not ‘Knights of the Garter’ but can invite the ambassador of Uganda who’s country nearly passed a law issuing death sentences to people living with HIV, and only at the last minute have we rescinded the invite of the Syrian Ambassador, but still the Ambassador of Zimbabwe, North Korea and Iran will be there, but not our former, democratically , elected leaders – this is just plain wrong!  Seeing Cameron and the Cabinet, dressed in their aristocratic monkey suits, is just nauseating.  It is just an exercise in power and privilege.

Funnily enough the people protesting against the war in Afghanistan and Iraq are not allowed to protest because they are obstructing the pavement, but people who can camp out for five days to wave their flags.  

The wedding is an exercise of privilege and political spin and I'm not waving my flag

Please like me, I want to be your friend ...

Looking at my daily Twitter stats I get dismayed when I get unfollowed, sometimes even when it is a 'spambot', it as if I am being rejected, that I am not popular anymore; the same with Facebook when I look at the 'De-Friended' App on my iPhone - I am less loved, I am less interesting, I am devalued.
But why?

It seems to me that we live increasingly by what others think of us, and derive our value from others opinions of us, the juxtaposition is that the people I admire did not, and do not, outwardly give a tinkers curse about what others thought of them, other than that they had sense of 'doing right' and being true to themselves.  This global and technological insecurity is further articulated by the advertising, the slimming plans, the 'lifestyle' models we are given; our identity is more and more mediated by capitalism and by social networking rather than an sense of individual identity.

Being an openly gay man, from South Yorkshire there are all sorts of tensions going on in my head, my political beliefs about social justice, and doing what is right (thanks to my Grandmother the Church I went to!) and also about taking a stand - well in 'my day' being gay was a political statement and not a lifestyle choice. Being a socialist and gay do inform each other, we should judge less, forgive more, and tolerate and embrace culture, but this is being constantly mediated by how many Facebook friends I have, or have not.

It's true we all derive, and strive for, affirmation from our peer group, but with Facebook and Twitter (and I suppose all other social network sites) our peer group is now extended, not unlike an extended networked family, in an age when the biological family is contracting - no more 300 guests (and the village) at the wedding now - or are we trying to recreate that familial extension with strangers.

My goal, which I seem to have relented on, is to create my own identity; being gay is part of my identity but not a big part, being a socialist is more part of it now, and now I am trying to adapt into all this being a 'partner' and with the savage cuts being a little more political (which so far as amounted to drinking Cocktails with friends on Hoxton!); there is no ready made identity for me, for any of use, and I must contintually construct it under the spotlight of the internet (if I so choose).  Somehow I am going to have to accept that not everyone is going to like that the construction, c'est la vie!

To end, abruptly I know, I want to leave you with something Woodie Guthrie said 'the problem is that you are too old, too young, too fat, too thin ...'