Goodbye Michael Foot.

I was saddened to hear of the death of Michael Foot at aged 97, the former Labour leader from 1980 to 1983, yesterday morning. He is often remembered as the eccentric looking, shock white unkempt haired, nutty donnish duffer looking man whose leadership of Labour, brought about one of the most crushing defeats for that party of all time. the Labour manifesto under his leadership was considered so damaging, it was referred to as the "longest suicide note in history." Then there is the incident of when he supposedly wore a donkey jacket (actually an expensive overcoat that the Queen Mother complimented him on) to lay a reef at the cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday for which he was pilloried mercilessly by the press, as an out of touch socialist buffoon. But I think to remember him for just these things is really not to do; perhaps one of the cleverest men to sit in the commons, justice.








He never really had a chance at being prime minister. Thatcher was at her most powerful -before '83, from the successful outcome of the Falklands war. Foot, even leaving this aside;- couldn't compete in the TV age, physical appearances had started to matter by this time (he looked 90, 30 years back.) He was perhaps the greatest parliamentarian of the last 35 years, possibly 40, but this was a debating style obsolete by then. It's kind of ironic that he was too good a speaker, half the population probably couldn't understand a bloody thing he was talking about. Not going to win you elections any time soon. His Methodist upbringing, alongside his extraordinary broad literary knowledge, and 19th century socialist rhetoric (his dog was even called Disraeli) just didn't have the capacity to spread his popularity to the masses.





Despite what you may have thought about his trenchant socialist views, or his staunch opposal of the nuclear deterrent, it is unarguable that he spoke with such conviction and passion about issues close to his heart. I would challenge anyone to not be moved by the various anti - nuclear speeches he made. Though he wouldn't budge on nukes, he always defended the Falklands conflict as defending the islanders from the unpleasant Galtieri junta. Almost everyone who knew him said that he was one of the nicest men in politics, and the nicest person ever to lead a political party in the UK. (self admittedly a rare virtue in politics.) Although he held a lot of responsibility for the Labour rebels splitting to form the SDP, it is testament to his character that he could manage to keep the various factions (Bennites and Healeyites) together in a hollowed out party, when it seemed that the internal fractures and the sudden loss of the liberal arm of Labour should have condemned the party to oblivion.

It is unfair then to say Michael Foot was a disaster for the Labour Party. Yes he had some iffy economic views, and looked like so old, that he could have gone to school with the Flintstones, and really had lost the election before it was even called. He was in one sense a success. Few would have been able to keep Labour, even slightly together in the early 80's but somehow Michael Foot succeeded in this and that is no small achievement. At the very least it should earn him a more suitable epitaph than "that old guy who wore a donkey jacket at the cenotaph."

Stuff about Blog Layout.

I am in the middle of tidying up and adding a bit more meat to my blog layout. Wouldn't it be nice if it would actually do the changes I want it to make, in the way I want to make them? I don't want my labels of posts at the bottom for GODS SAKE!! This blog hates me. My computer hates me. Everybody hates me.

(Which is just a rant by a frustrated and incompetent user. When in doubt. Blame on the machine, not garbage in and garbage out.)

Psychic Healer didn't see prosecution coming. (What a surprise. hmmm)

There are many things in life that I find depressing and irritating, but I have resigned myself to the knowledge that they will always be around for as long as I live. Motorway congestion, stupid adverts with meerkats and pretend opera singers, astrology, tax returns, and the fact that my wireless mouse keeps conking out, about every 7 seconds, and last, but by no means least (and handily the theme of this post, the world of psychics and alternative medicine, and their bizarre level of popularity.

Most of the time my feelings toward this kind of thing is a kind of bewildered puzzlement. I admittedly feel slightly depressed that lots of folk take stock in, and actively endorse quackery that should be self evidently be classified as "bullshit some people just made up on the fly." if anyone took more time to bother analysing the lofty claims of others with a more soberly objective eye. To see these "spiritual gurus" with their TV shows (why are they given such an easy ride for the spurious claims they make?) and the ear of magazine editors, and the well paid columns that go with that. It riles me that people are often being taken for a ride, often handing over large sums of cash to; at best, "spiritual" kooks and at worst con men guilty to a form of pseudo scientific extortion. It's depressing that people are so willingly taken in by this. That they will pay handsomely for a homeopath to give them a phial of mineral water. Science education has taken a kicking in modern Britain, this sort of stuff will flourish if you have a public who have a blotted knowledge of the discipline. But there are occasions when pseudoscience stops being irritating and can actually become harmful to the point of jeopardising lives. Like when a guy says he can cure cancer by touching people, who has fallen foul of a 1939 law which prevents people from advertising unsubstantiated treatments for the disease. Self proclaimed "visionary healer, energy worker and psychic" Adrian Pengelly faces 3 months in the clink for positive testimonials, posted by his "patients" on a website he claims not to have ever seen (some fucking psychic). He cheerfully says the contributors:

"The people on my website have done it for free, out of the goodness of their hearts."

I'm sure such kindness of spirit should be reciprocated.

"13,700 waiting for his [Pengellys] services at up to £30 a session."

Or maybe not then.

He's also been subject to a negative slot on TV consumer show "Watchdog" last September.

Now I'm sure many proponents of this kind of "healing" are going to think that Pengelly is a victim of a witch hunt by the "acolytes of orthodox medicine". But I think, No! Let the case go ahead. Lets see if his treatments would stand up to general clinical analysis. Would his case studies; or indeed, the testimonies stand up to the rigour of medical cross examination? How would his treatments fare in double blind tests? If they do, Ill be the first to say this post is out of line. If alternative healers want the "respect" accorded to "real medicine" then they should play by the scientific method.

*He makes an interesting comment that needs highlighting for what it says.

"I'm just a healer. I can do things most healers only dream about."

That may be so. But if you have medical methodology behind you, healers dreams often stop being just dreams.

Oh Peter Hitchens, when will you learn?

I want to start off by saying that I don't have a Peter Hitchens obsession. I don't hang around his house. I don't want to steal his clothes off his washing line to keep as little souvenirs. I have no intention of turning this blog into a line by line rebuttal of everything he ever commits to his word processor. However when he starts pulling these articles out of his arse. I feel honour bound to step in.

More sex education means more teenage pregnancies. Always.

A pretty bold statement of fact if ever there was one. He goes on to say.

"Sex education has failed. So the Establishment decrees that we must have more of it, and in fact that there shall be no escape from it"

He means in the context of these figures from the Office of National Statistics, that in 2007 the number of teen pregnancies in the UK has risen (albeit very slightly. 1 baby born per 1000 to mothers aged 15 to 17.). However the figures seem to contradict some of what Peter is saying, by showing that overall teen pregnancies have been dropping since 2002, with 2007 being a slight blip in the trend. (see the graph below, orange line.) His claim perhaps carries some validity if you take into account that the government wanted (but didn't reach) to halve teenage pregnancy by 2010. (from 1999 levels) An ambitious goal, but in all fairness, reducing teenage pregnancy requires concerted long term effort, and ground root social shifts. This will be a long time on going work in progress.

This has obviously been pounced on by elements of the press as concrete evidence of council estates brimming with a huge army of slaggy chavettes, popping out sproglets and being paid a million pounds in benefits, free fags and cider, and YOUR paying, do you hear middle England? In fact it only really shows that the numbers of conceptions, which are in a fairly stable declining trend since 2002, have fluctuated upwards for 2007, before regressing back to trend. But as we know statistical analysis will always take a back seat to Fleet Street sermonising about this issue. Sermonising like this.

"Despite the casual massacre of unborn babies in the abortion mills, and the free handouts of morning-after pills (originally developed for pedigree dogs which had been consorting improperly with mongrels), and the ready issue of condoms to anyone who asks, and the prescription of contraceptive devices to young girls behind the backs of their parents by smiling advice workers, and the invasion of school classrooms by supposedly educational smut, the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy has failed, is failing and will continue to fail.
In the week that figures clearly showed that the Government’s supposed target for cutting teen pregnancy by half is never going to be reached, compulsory smut education – a key part of this ‘strategy’ – was forced on all English schools by law for the first time."

I don't really need to paste much more. It's the same old straw man, slippery slope, their having abortions in assembly these days type of article that have been duly trotted out in the press, since as long as I can remember. The dogs comment is irrelevant anyway, all mammals produce the same sort of reproduction based hormones, so yeah they work pretty well across the spectrum. It seems there may be undertones that he thinks that teenage girls who get pregnant are somehow bestial and "improper". All this is beside the point of the article if we are really honest. The last two words are what it is really about.

"Some years ago, I wrote a short history of sex education in this country. I didn’t then know about its first invention, during the Hungarian Soviet revolution of 1919, when Education Commissar George Lukacs ordered teachers to instruct children about sex in a deliberate effort to debauch Christian morality."

I thought he directed "Howard the Duck". His opening statements are so falsifiably shoddy, and the reasoning in the rest of the article is so convoluted, I am pleased that he gets slammed in the comments to the article (and boy there can be some real mindfuckery on display there sometimes.)

"Mr. Hitchens is disingenuous when he argues that sex education in schools has failed to stop the national illegitimacy rate climbing to 46%. Classroom sex education is designed to stop childhood pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted infections, not to dissuade or stigmatise the many stable cohabiting adult couples whose families are presumably acceptable to Daily Mail readership in all but their lack of church and/or state approval.
As for sex education being advocated exclusively by "militant Leftists who loathe conventional family life", this could only be believed by someone who prefers manufactured simplification to reflecting on the real world. Most parents I know prefer schools to teach their offspring some of the biological basics. Sometimes this is due to haziness about some of the finer points of biology (the same reason why we are also sometimes happier about the teaching of first aid and cooking in schools). Sometimes it is sheer embarrassment. These reasons may well be deplorable on other grounds, but they are not evidence of militant leftism. A further reason, laudable from virtually all caring and responsible viewpoints, is that should parents' attempts to instill a sound sexual morality fail, they would rather deal with the emotional fallout without the added disaster of pregnancy.
Oversimplification is usually required to fuel the baser emotions of political reaction, but hopefully most readers will in this particular case have developed an immunity to it through contact with everyday life"

"This column on sex education contains so much misinformation, bias, and slanderous opinions stated as fact that I would hope that most readers would reject it, but I will comment anyway. Notice that he credits a nasty reign with dreaming up the idea and blames liberals for pushing the idea and offers only his own opinion, no references, that the programs always fail. In fact, here in Texas, we have no sex education (or actually are only allowed to teach "abstinence" if anything is taught and we have the highest teen pregnancy and highest second teen pregnancy rate in the country. This program was rammed through by people who believe Hitchen does (along with trying to get creationism into the biology books while already keeping evolution out.) States, such as Wisconsin, which have good well balanced sex education programs have much lower teen pregnancy rates (and lower abortion percentages in the population.) About the only statistic Hitchen actually offers is that the "illegitimacy rate" for one area rose from under 8% to over 40%, but he fails to define whether that applies only to teens or omits the likely fact that as time has passed an increasing number of people of all ages are living in an unmarried but permanent joining, so he may be reporting on a population 10 or 20 years ago that has now grown to adulthood (beyond teens) having children without "benefit" of marriage while those that thought "illegitimacy" was humiliating have grown beyond baby producing age and thus out of the statistics.
And like our abstinence-pushing, information-denying folk, it does not make it clear when young people who plan on holding off until marriage and then not having children immediately are going to learn that birth control is a possibility in arranging their family growth. Or is that a liberal "sin" also?"

"The annual number of teenage pregnancies in the UK has fallen by 13% since 1998, so more sex education clearly doesn’t “always” mean more teenage pregnancies.
The government has indeed failed to meet its own very ambitious target, but there has nevertheless been a significant move in the right direction.
The country with lowest rate of teenage pregnancies in Europe is the Netherlands, which has plenty of sex education in its schools.
No doubt there are many reasons for the differences between the UK and the Netherlands, but sex education does not seem to be one of them.
Everyone learns about sex from a variety of sources, and a country’s attitudes to sex have many influences. Sex education in schools is just one aspect of this, and almost certainly not the most significant."

"Peter, sex education has indeed failed but not for the reasons that you state. In my view its failure can be seen in the number of men who die unnecessarily of bladder, prostate and testicular cancer because they are too embarrassed to see a doctor and so leave it to late. My brother works in a comprehensive school and recently they had to take a teenage boy to hospital; he was in agony with a strangulated testicle (caused by a sporting injury) and had done nothing for days because of embarrassment.
If sex education was working boys and girls, men and women would have no problems seeking medical help for problems "down there". I am a middle aged man who has to attend regular urology clinics and have done for 20 years. I know the frustration that staff feel when cancer is left untreatable because of late diagnosis. I believe that gynaecologists and obstetricians and constantly amazed at the ignorance of women and what has to be explained to them. Again a sign of the failure of sex education.
For those who say there should be no sex education and that it should be left to parents should look at the story of the Rev Chad Varah and why he set up the Samaritans. The main reason was that he and his clergy friends were fed up of carrying out the funerals of teenage girls who had committed suicide after menstruation; the girls wrongly thought that they had some terrible, shameful illness. The Samaritans started as a sex advice line; dealing with more general causes of suicide came much later.
So to be against sex education per se I can not agree with. Wanting it to be more about health, understanding medical issues and having a moral element I can agree with."

Now don't get me wrong. I not being flippant about teenage pregnancy. (nor do I condemn them all as sponging slags either.) Even the staunchest advocates of sexual libertarianism will agree that at the very least, 15 and 16 year old girls should go and live life for a while before faffing around with bottles and shitty nappies. Then there's the psychological burden of parenthood/pregnancy at a young age, and the disruption to studies and work that a baby brings. I have no problem with anyone highlighting these to teenagers. But that isn't what Hitchens is concerned with. (He doesn't seem concerned with evidence to back his claims up either. But what's new there?) He is hiding behind a legitimate (but smaller than many actually think) social issue, to promote his fundamentalist Christian philosophy. Attacking those who teach sex education as "educational smut" peddlers, and Marxists, is particularly objectionable. It has nothing to do with genuine concern for teenagers, and everything to do with his own evangelical baggage. We must remember that "sex education" is a broad term anyway. You could argue that teaching the Karma Sutra (I doubt very much this happens in the PSE lessons of secondary schools) is sex education, but then so is explaining the general biology of sex organs, and STD's (I'd think most 16 year old lads would flinch at what a male smear test entails.), and even womens rights. It's amazing how sex education is malleable enough a term to mean whatever a pundit wants it to mean. My own take is that in the real world, teenagers are going to get their info either from unsolicited playground gossip, pornos, or from sex education lessons by professionals. I know which I think is the best source.

Is this proposed BBC trimming a bad sign for Aunties future?

In the Rupert Murdoch owned Times, there has been an article apparently leaked to the paper that outlines a proposed budgetary shake up of the BBC by its director general, Mark Thompson. He will be undertaking a strategic review of the entire corporation next month, and the Times article suggests that he will largely be focusing on budget allocation, and attempting to bring costs down, a priority he believes is all the more urgent due to the licence fee being frozen in 2013 (there is a good chance the Tories will be in power then, and that brings perhaps extra worries to a BBC director general. More on this later.). The - I must emphasise: proposed cuts can be boiled down to the following:

1. HALVING THE SIZE OF THE BBC's WEBSITES.

2. CLOSING RADIO 6 AND THE ASIAN NETWORK

3. POSSIBLY AUCTIONING OFF BBC WORLDWIDE MAGAZINES (i.e Top Gear and Radio Times.)

4. CUTTING THE BUDGETS OF SPORTS AND IMPORTED PROGRAMMING

5. A SHIFT TOWARD MORE "QUALITY FOCUSED" TV AT THE EXPENSE OF "RATING PULLERS"






The Times article and the Big, Bloated and Cunning comment piece (I wonder how much influence Murdoch had in the wording of the editorial? Hmmmm.) is typical "News International" fayre where Auntie is concerned, and with all these types of commentary, there is more half said, than actually said aloud. Murdoch seems to have an obsessive, almost pathological hatred of the BBC. Perhaps for such a profound control freak, the fact that the BBC and its licence fee are ring fenced (for now) from News Internationals grasps on the UK media market is too much to bear. It also makes his attacks so brazenly hypocritical. Attacks like these:-

"In times of uncertainty, of maxed-out credit cards and job cuts, we all seek the comforting embrace of Auntie Beeb."

"The real giveaway in the proposals is that the BBC seems to have no plans to give anything back to licence-fee payers."

"The best way to make that happen would be to make a substantial cut to the licence fee and give money back to people to spend as they like."

The problem with this argument is it is a "how long is a piece of string?" argument. Like any sort of publicly funded thing that, it can seem too rapacious if you don't approve of it. The problem for the BBC is, if they do fall into the trap of cutting back, their enemies can always say cut more.

"It is an empire that schedules TV programmes to wrong-foot its rivals. Proposals seen by The Times look like a welcome recognition that the empire has gone too far,"

This is a bit rich from a news paper group that tried to undercut it's broadsheet opponents in the 90's with a cut price Times, that nearly brought down the Independent, threatened the Guardian, and even created ripples for the Telegraph.

"The BBC ought to be a creative force for entrepreneurship. In reality it stifles innovation. It has planned to expand local news services when local papers are struggling to survive."

The only thing being stifled that News Media really cares about is Murdochs profits. As for the second half of the quote, read the above paragraph.

"The new proposals were written to serve the best interests of the BBC, not the public. The next government will need to take on what Channel 4’s chairman last year described as “the most powerful lobbying and effective organisation in Britain”. Until then, Auntie Beeb’s warm embrace will simultaneously be a stranglehold that is unpleasant and untenable."

It's a typical piece by the Murdoch media. Attack the BBC as a bloated out of touch, cash guzzling black hole that stifles all it's opponents in it's wake. Suggest that the government (presumably David Cameron's Tories) do something to reign it in. It is essentially a call to arms to hack the BBC down to size, (I'd imagine Murdoch thinks that it should be a non-existent size.), and it looks like they are only too willing to oblige.

"Conservatives wanted "a smaller BBC", but did not want "to beat up the BBC". He added that proposals to close digital stations 6 Music and the Asian Network and cut back the BBC website, reported in today's Times, were "intelligent and sensible"."



"We want a smaller BBC because it is doing down its commercial rivals and this seems to have addressed a number of issues".

However, Vaizey called for greater "transparency" on BBC spending."

I don't know if that a tacit admission of a conflict of interest between Murdoch and the BBC by the shadow culture minister, but a potential Tory government cool to the BBC doesn't look promising to those of us like myself who think the BBC is a valuable asset to both quality broadcasting and the nation as a whole and needs preserving.

Now I'm all for responsible monitoring of budgets, but a lot of qualms about the BBC that are often bandied about are ones about it having to reach niche audiences (see BBC6 and Asian Network) (who incidentally pay the licence fee like everyone else.) The BBC by the virtue of its diverse licence payers will always have to be a mixed bag, and this point has to be emphasised, not perhaps to the critics of the BBC, who don't want to know, but perhaps hammered home a bit more, and I think that this is what Thompson doesn't want to do, by the proposed axing of the aforementioned radio stations. I'm not entirely enamoured with Mark Thompson as D.G, and think he may be setting up the BBC for bigger falls - by shedding the types of networks he thinks the BBC critics might like to see go. BBC 6 and the Asian Network are seen as "the trendy pet projects of an out of touch media elite" and "PC" by many of the more vocal (and largely middle aged, middle English pub bore variety) critics, that are (unintentionally I admit) summed up by the prize plank and I'm sure as night follows day, a dead cert for a future repeat offender on here, MP for Shipley Philip Davies, who describes BBC3, which he wanted to be axed in an interview in 2007 as:

"They don't serve a purpose and nobody watches them."

It seems that Mark Thompson appears to be planning a two pronged defence against a hostile Murdoch media, allied to a possible Tory government, that will freeze the licence fee, or worse will place the fee at a lower rate than the the relative levels of inflation. I can assume he; on the one hand wants to stave off attacks of dumbing down with licence payers money, by looking into increasing "quality broadcasting", and then trying to quell the critics by reducing or strimming "niche and unrepresentative" BBC outlets like R6. I have sympathy for him, it's a rock and a hard place to be really. I just feel that like throwing lambs to a hungry wolf, in the hope that it will get full up and lose interest. It will just encourage the attacks on the BBC, get rid of some of the less popular stuff, why not get rid of more? Not showing popular viewing figure boosters? How can you claim to be representing licence fee payers then? I don't think that most of the low level grumblers about the BBC, want to see it abolished totally. It does on some level seem to permeate into the national psyche. (notice how Radio 4, a very costly radio station, seems to escape criticism. This absolutely not dumbed down station does seem "out of bounds" to the low level critics.) It would be a real tragedy if we let short term grumbles about the BBC allow its more determined enemies to use them to hack it away to long term oblivion.


PS. If you do think as some have suggested that privately owned media, and profit based viewing figures make for better quality news programmes, than BBC news, then I put this to you. I once saw two news broadcasters commentating on the appallingly gruesome murder of a 5 year old girl by a relative. The grandparents of the child wanted the details of the post -mortem, for the sake of their dead grandchild's dignity, and the respect of the family in their grief to be spared from having them made public, on the news broadcasts. The news reporters disagreed, saying it was in the public interest that the warts and all account of the post mortem be divulged on the news (the evening news I might add) for all to see. Now I ask, which of the two outlets; BBC or private news network, do you think that was broadcast on? I think we all know.

Bye Bye to Dicky Dawkins Politics and Current Affairs Forum

The closure of the Politics and Current affairs forum on the Richard Dawkins Net is a bit of a sad occasion for me. It seems that in the run up to the upcoming revamp on every ones favourite God bashing site, the P&CA forum was for the chop (in its current form of course), with a 30 day deadline for posting the last comments that would ever grace that entertaining, often frustrating, profound and clever / silly forum. But it seems, that like every unexpected and unwelcome parting, there have been tantrums and fireworks. The 30 day deadline has had to be pulled, with an instant moratorium on any more comments. There have been some commentators who have taken to using this event to finally, really tell other commentators what they really thought about them and their postings. Some of the moderators, released of their burden have been delivering their big electric "fuck yous" to those they were charged to oversee. It all sounds like the plot of, an online version of a comedy film about a well established company staffed by eccentric old placemen, who released from the conventions of their positions, decide to let off all that bottled off steam in an oh so amusing manner, when they discover that their entire outfit is being shipped off to China this coming Friday.

There comes a time when these type of things have to revamp. The nets just one big work in progress anyway. But I will be sorry to see the end of the P&CA forum, even though at times it felt like some of it was being deliberately infiltrated by the religious community to create cipher posters who confirmed all the flaws they associated with the new atheist movement (Brights, are you kidding me!! What sort of names that?) Or that it often felt like some "Who's Who" for the terminally pretentious. Or that reading some of it made me feel that I had an IQ that was roughly in line with the contents of the vegetable isles in ASDA, in comparison to some of the posters. I even have fond memories of when it seemed to attract those barmy free market libertarians, those ones who made fricking Skeletor look like a kindly old granny who gives out buns to local children. But most of all I feel it is a tremendous shame that, when at its best; one of the most literate, interesting and sometimes downright profound forums out there has been forced to come to such a petty and undignified end. But there we are.

Retro Movie Review. Forrest Gump (1994)

As it's still on my DVD hard drive, and as I am now going through a period of low level writers block, here's my take on the very popular, but somewhat polarising 1994 Robert Zemeckis film, Forrest Gump.

Lenin once sarcastically quipped that he couldn't listen to music as it made him want to pat folk on the head and say kind things to them. His point being that certain emotional stimulants can give you a warm, slightly mushy feeling, despite yourself. I find Forrest Gump has exactly this affect on me, when perhaps it really shouldn't have any right to do so. It is no secret this Robert Zemeckis film was a huge hit when released. It is also a controversial hit, with many plaudits, and also many critics as well. It’s sort of the film equivalent of a Concorde that is painted bright pink. Or, if Cheryl Cole’s parents had called her Doris Grimyflanks. The end product is an almost technically flawless in every way, however there is that one glaring problem that if you let it bother you, can and will overshadow all the things they do very well. Well almost.

It isn’t difficult to see why this film won 5 Oscars. It is quite simply, just about technically flawless. There isn’t any one / thing misplaced or out of the general tone in the whole of the movie. Hanks plays Gump, the kind hearted but mentally challenged (IQ a lowly 75) mommy’s boy who through a sense of greater destiny and through the kindness of his own heart embodies the American dream to the fullest. His low IQ begets a contrary BIG CV, successful business man, sports college graduate, decorated Vietnam veteran, using some clever FX, and voice overs to superimpose Hanks into real life footage of US presidents, we can see Gump interacting directly and humorously with the shakers of history, world famous ping pong champion which indirectly leads to him providing John Lennon with the lyrics to “Imagine” and giving us “Shit happens” and the yellow smiley along the way. Hanks rises to the role, counter balancing knowing where to draw the line between parody and pathos, a realistic portrayal of a mental disorder, without straying into the realms of crude, clichéd and weakly observed caricature. This is immensely difficult to pull off and Hanks never falters at all in succeeding. I really think we can forget how difficult this is, and how it could have easily gone awry. The scene where he meets his son for the first time for me are the most well acted scenes in the film. The supporting cast is also universally great. I have to give particular kudos to Gary Sineses superb performance as Lieutenant Dan, the career military man who loses his legs in Vietnam, as we see his parallel journey from bitter and drunken dropout to a sense of quiet catharsis on a beautiful summer day on his and his kindly friends shrimping boat, without ever resorting to Pollyanna type shmuckery from Forrest to reach that moment. I also enjoyed the solid, focused pacing of the film. The humour is generally funny and not laboured. The pathos and emotional aspects compliment this beautifully. This is comedy drama, with equal emphasis on both sides of the coin. The general thread of the plot is how Forrest, Jenny (Robin Wright Penn.) and Lt. Dan experience the rough and tumble of US society from the 50’s to the 80’s. We see a sort of narrative tapestry of postwar US history which interacts alongside and with our characters, sometimes they alter and affect it, sometimes it affects them for ill and good, sometimes it’s palpable to them, other times they seem dimly aware, or not aware of how their society affects and creates them, or vice versa. This narrative sense of changing history, and how it can feel a huge and distant force, and sometimes close up and embracing our characters disparate lives back to the whole again, and changing ideas and norms is almost tangible and almost seems like a living character itself. Quite a lot of Gumps “fortunes” of destiny are stretching plausibility to absolute breaking point, but it is done with good, tongue in cheek humour, the Nixon scenes are a great example. We drop our cynicism and buy it for the ride. And this is perhaps why the films faults are to coin a relevant phrase – whitewashed.

There is a feeling amongst some that this film is (perhaps unwittingly) promoting a right wing agenda, show piecing conservative and conformist, small town values, and portraying the counterculture and civil rights movements in a negative light. I feel a review of this film requires me as a (very amateur) critic to address this, and I feel it does have some basis in truth, but it is not as clear cut as that. Any film that also rewards the kindness of a protagonist can’t be too shifty in my eyes. Yes the film massively overstates the accessibility of the American Dream (emphasis dream.). But the film does showcase the murkier side of the supposed right wing values it embraces. (Lt. Dan being let down by the nation he gave so much for. Jennys awful childhood explaining how she fell by the wayside for a while. Gumps Mom resorting to sexual procurement. The bigotry shown to Gump by his townspeople) and ignores the many obstacles that someone like Gump would face in reality. There is something both touching (and probably why the film was so popular.) and ultimately perhaps condescending in believing that with a kind heart and determination, even the most obstinate hurdles can be overcome. When in reality we need as a society to recognize and alter collective goals and idioms to accommodate the most vulnerable. That I think may not give us the instant gratification we actually do get watching this, but as is life.

Forrest Gump, a feel good film that enriches our well being by telling us that even the most disadvantaged can make it to the top by keeping the faith alive, which is great as we don’t have to change much. It warms the heart, but the head??