Chris Page's Blog, page 9

Tweety tweety tweetvert

Tweetverts for the recent book, Sanctioned.

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All my own work (the tweetverts and the book).

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I tracked down the actual fonts used by The Sun and copied their typography for maximum tabloid effect. (Any echoes of Barbara Kruger may not be entirely accidental.)

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Engagement with my tweets has noticeably gone up since I started bleeping out these.

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Made with InDesign, Photoshop, and lots and lots of tea.

Yes, you may commission me for graphic projects. Tweetverts for the recent book, Sanctioned.

 

So, has someone been posting stuff on social media without checking its authenticity?

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This ominous ‘Welcome to Australia’ image has been doing the rounds on social media, posted and liked by people I would normally consider to be humane and intelligent, who clearly feel — though none of them are actually Australian — that the message has something to say that resonates with them.

One problem here: this photograph isn’t real. The photo isn’t real and the issue behind it isn’t real.

The fact that the ‘sign’ for migrants is posted on a country road in Australia, a nation that has no land borders, probably ought to set those critical thinking bells ringing.

The posters might also have asked themselves why the Australian government would put up such an inflammatory sign at all, let alone on a country backroad. Not very governmental, is it.

Yes, the image is a Photoshop job. No such sign was ever made by the Australian government.

The image was apparently created and disseminated by an Australian race hate outfit called Freedom of Speech Productions (you can see their logo imposed on the picture), which is associated with the Australian Tea Party (still no alarm bells ringing with the people who posted it?)

It’s a shoddy fake too. The quality of the graphics (the perspective is off, too many full stops and there’s a general realism issue) tells you that this was cobbled together by a chap who is disabled by an awful skin disease in between desperate wanks over some not-quite-legal site.

Clearly the image taps into the myth that there are hordes of people coming over ‘here’ (insert name your country) to sponge off ordinaryhardworkingpeopleeveverywhere, and bring the state to its financial knees, steal the gold from your grandmother’s teeth, etc., etc.

You might be interested to know that not so long ago there was a study done to identify these foreign scroungers in the UK, and find out just how much they were costing the country. You might be even more interested to know that the study was unable to find any of these alleged spongers. The problem is, you see, they don’t actually fucking exist.

Not only are they not a millstone on the necks of ordinaryhardworkingpeopleeveverywhere, they just are not.

The scrounging hordes were made up by the tabloids and UKIP and the right wing. Funny how we didn’t hear about that study in the Telegraph, the Mail, the Sun, the Express, the BBC, etc.

Reality check: you can’t claim benefits in the UK if you are not British or an EU citizen. Simple as. Even simpler than that, you can’t claim benefits in the UK even if you are a UK citizen if you are not ordinarily resident in the country. Yes, I know that arcane little nugget because I am a UK citizen not ordinarily resident in the UK. The fact that I actually pay (albeit modest) taxes in the country is irrelevant to the bureaucracy. I don’t live there, so fuck off me!

Still more basic than all that, my children — kids of a UK citizen — cannot use NHS services without paying because they have non-EU passports. Yes, I found that out the hard way too when one got sick on a trip to Britain.

So, if non-resident Brits can’t use Britain’s health and welfare services, what chance does a random scrounger from Foreignstan have?

All this talk of sponging, freeloading, scrounging hordes from other countries is bollocks. Absolute bollocks. And then more bollocks. It is the absolute Platonic form of bollocks for fuck’s sake. It’s all as real as the fake sign.

Of course people admitted as refugees will get limited state support. But it is very small, as is the numbers of people — small handfuls — admitted to the country is minute and will have no discernible impact on the economy (except to contribute to it when they start working).

If we want to talk about freeloaders — and there is a conversation to be had about freeloaders — perhaps we could start with tax avoiders. Google, Starbucks, Amazon, are foreigners who do come over here cap in hand and then pay little or no tax on business done within the UK. Look at the recent deal done between the Conservative government and Google, which let the company off something like 80 per cent of its tax bill. Imagine if you or I went to the tax man and said I don’t feel like paying all this, so let’s do a deal.’ Yes, we’d end up in prison.

While the UK admits fewer than 20,000 refugees per year, most of whom will work for a living, tax avoidance by big companies comes to £120 billion per year. Which do you think is the bigger problem?

So welcome to your reality check. If you want to be taken seriously check your facts. Credibility is not free.

Bollocks to summer!

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Sanctioned!

[image error]The first shipment of copies of Sanctioned (the new novel by Chris Page, for those one or two of you who don’t yet know) has arrived chez Page.

Anyone who wishes to get a copy direct from me, rather than from Amazon, just please let me know on psipook at psipook dot com

Oh, by the way: woo hoo!

Witch dunking #GE2017

The Conservative party of the UK seemed intent on dragging the country back to the 19th century.

Now with it’s alliance with the DUP it seems to be taking us back to medieval times.

Tell ’em about it.

An innocent and sincere question about the Conservative alliance with the DUP

[image error]OK, I would like to know — and this is a serious question to all of you who voted Conservative — why do you think it’s OK to hook up with group that, apart from being completely backward, is also the political wing of a terrorist organisation?

I would really, genuinely like to know. How do you feel that your vote has essentially gone to supporters of terrorism?

When I say ‘supporters of terrorism’ I could be referring to both the Conservatives and the DUP, but for today’s conversation, in the interests of simplicity, let’s just talk about the Conservatives. No, I mean the DUP. (Freudian slip!)

One of the main Conservative attacks on Corbyn and Labour in recent weeks was an entirely fictitious story that he was in cahoots with IRA terrorists, that he was unpatriotic, that he was soft on defence, soft on terrorism and just generally soft all through. Like, don’t touch this guy, you’ll get goo all over your hands. But when it came down to the wire, the fucking Tories ran off to the DUP, notorious representatives of a terrorist organisation and asked for help.

(In case you’ve been in a coma for the last two days, or read the mainstream newspapers in the UK, the general election resulted in a hung parliament and the Conservatives ran off to the Dumbfuck Onionist Party of Northern Ireland to snatch the MPs they needed to get to the majority threshold. Which she achieved with a margin of zero.)

So far, so fucking shabby.

But let’s catch up with the DUP in objective terms. The party is endorsed by terrorist groups the UDA, UFV and RHC. The DUP has vetoed gay marriage in NI, and is anti-abortion. Oh, by the way, wasn’t gay marriage legalised in the rest of the UK by the actual Conservative party as such? This would suggest that the Conservatives have again got into bed with people who do not share the same values. No matter, on we go. In this time of austerity, one DUP MP was last year ordered to pay back £14,000 in falsely claimed expenses. The DUP has previously said that climate change ‘doesn’t matter’, and their education spokesperson believes the world is less than 10,000 years old. Apparently, a large number of their members believe in creationism. Oh, and the party believes in ‘ethnic nationalism’, i.e., if you’re not white and Protestant, you’re, you know, not quite human.

Nice work if you can get it.

I mean, the Conservative party has always sold itself on being tough on law and order and terrorism and being the holders of the moral high ground.

So, to go back to my question, why exactly do you think it’s OK to hook up with these guys? Really? Do they represent what you think?

If you don’t want to respond in a public space, you can email me: psipook@psipook.com

Really! I’d very much like to know.

That DUP-Conservative alliance in full

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Sanctioned now available in Kindle

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Yes, Sanctioned is now available in both paperback and Kindle.

The paperback can be ordered from any outlet in the world (in theory) or direct from Amazon.

If you order the paperback from Amazon.com you can get the Kindle version free.

Unfortunately, this offer is not available on Amazon’s regional sites. (Amazon’s decision, not mine.)

Eventually, you will be able to order the paperback direct from the author (hi!) but there is no stock available yet. Watch here for updates on that.

 

 

Ode to that magical money tree #2017

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Please vote my new book into obscurity on Thursday

Please make my book irrelevant on Thursday.

It’s taken me nearly two years to produce, it was published only last week, and on Thursday you have your chance to render my effort all for nothing.

And I hope you do.

In fact please, please, please, pretty please condemn this new book, this offspring of the sweat of my brow, to become a silly relic, a cowflop of futility just a week after it came off the press.

The book is called Sanctioned — hey, I have to plug the thing so you know which book to cast into the darkness of literary irrelevance.

Those of you in Britain might already have guessed something of the book’s themes from the title. Sanctioned — yes, that kind of sanction.

You see, for decades, British governments, following their masters, their baiters, their master baiters in the boardrooms of big companies with vomit-inducing brands have been waging a war on the unemployed, the vulnerable, the sick, the poor, those people in precarious circumstances, inculcating a belief that they are lazy, scrounging, work-shy, feckless, malingering, skiving leaches.

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Dispel all reason to read this book when you vote on Thursday June 8th, 2017

At the same time, the same governments have waged a war of attrition on any area of public life that can be considered useful or communal or not strictly for profit. They have demonised doctors, nurses, teachers, and even the police as a drain on public resources. In short they have blamed all society’s ills on the unlucky, those trying to help them, and those who are trying to help society as a whole.

So, these knobs in suits in London have eviscerated communal Britain, implementing the most callous campaign against ordinary people we have seen since Thatcher, and carrying on the sociopathy of Blair and Cameron.

Meanwhile, these grey non-entities have been funnelling money out of your pockets into the pockets of the faceless, unaccountable corporations that pull their strings. They do that through bailouts and privatisation and tax deals for megacorps and tax avoidance for the super rich.

And they call it responsibility. They call it austerity. They call it good housekeeping.

We call it bollocks. This corporate welfare is the real sponging.

Now, against expectations, we have a chance to get rid of the fuckers and change the conversation.

That chance is Thursday, the general election.

Sanctioned exists to take the piss out of these knobs in suits so if the Tories lose, then my book is likely to become pointless overnight.

Please make it so.

I’d swap the two years and all the hours and the frustration and the brain-ache, to have that conversation changed.

Let’s be clear, I’m not just talking of a change in government, swapping one bunch of bloodsuckers for another, I’m talking about the beginning of a whole other way of doing things, a different vision. Yes, I know, change doesn’t come overnight and disappointment is the normal outcome of hope, but we have to get rid of the corporate parasites, clear the air and talk about possibilities not fatalism.

Perhaps my book and what it rails against can be consigned to the dust of some time-forgotten cave to be wondered over by future generations, an artefact of a barbaric past, like something dug up by Charlton Heston and his furry friends at the end of the Planet of the Apes.

So go on, make my day, trash my book, vote those grasping motherfuckers out.