John Walker's Electronic House

Cartoon bunnies are clearly the way ahead.

This incredibly beautiful strip has a few sample images on this site, and the books can be ordered via email.

It brings me joy.

Change The World 7

I recently wrote an essay discussing how I believe our attitude toward matters of social justice is driven by an unchallenged capitalist mindset, whereby we donate money in return for product. It’s something I wanted to write about here as well.

I find it easiest to explain and refer to as “Comic Relief Syndrome”. Comic Relief raises a fair amount of money. It’s tempting to see the number 37 million and be overwhelmed by it, but we are a generation caught between “million”‘s shift from vastness to mundanity. Look at house prices – it is only a short time before most home owners will be “millionaires”, and the number loses the rest of its power. However, compare that to the response to the tsunami, and Comic Relief’s figures start to look a lot smaller. I’ll come back to that.

Comic Relief says, “We will dance for you, if you give us your money.” But no one watching falls for this. They know the dancing will continue whether they donate or not. The reality is, “If they will dance for me, I might give them some money.” It’s cash in return for product. Then Comic Relief says, “Look at the dying people, give them your money.” But few watching respond to this. Instead it is, “If I pay some money, you will take the images of the dying people away.” We are paying for the unpleasantness to be removed, so we do not need to feel guilty about it. And it’s no secret – Comic Relief knows this and works toward it. Alternating popular celebrities and one-off sketches from comedies of the zeitgeist with films showing intense poverty and hardship ensures the audience is kept in a constant emotional turmoil, until eventually some money is donated or the television is switched off.

That works – it raises money. I don’t condemn it for this. However, what it is the result of, and what it results in, I now think I do. I have attempted to teach issues of social justice in my youth groups. When trying to think of a way to approach the subject, the most immediate and obvious method was to encourage the young people to organise fundraising events for causes that meant something to them. My instinctive choice was to approach the problems through money. But not only that, the next stage was to find a way of raising money that the young people would find entertaining and involving. I have been teaching the same model: cash in return for product.

Money is needed, obviously, and my argument is not to condemn fundraising. It is, however, very much to condemn fundraising without education. I keep returning to Comic Relief as it is both recently in people’s minds and enormously typical of the problem. Comic Relief could not be more guilty of failing to achieve this. There is no education whatsoever. Just guilt, entertainment, and spending. The films show the deprevation, the misery, the pain and the suffering of people all over the world. But they never explain the causes. Why are those people starving to death? Why isn’t their government feeding them? Which war with which nation is diverting funds? And how many pounds worth of arms are the UK selling to that country? Here’s betting it’s more than £37 million.

What I want to argue for is a massive step away from fundraising, and a massive step toward education. I believe that if people knew the realities of the situations, they would find themselves reaching for their wallets anyway. Think this is delusional? Look at the response to the tsunami. Certainly there are dozens of factors that need consideration, but at some point it must be recognised that a world was educated about a situation, and fought to find ways to respond. Far more than £37 million was raised in the UK, and without Lenny sodding Henry’s shrieking gibberish, or Graham Norton’s squealing at Jack Dee’s bored face. Billy Connolly didn’t need to not-quite-swear from a shanty hospital. People just did stuff, shops did stuff, charities did stuff, and eventually the celebrities found ways for them to do stuff in public. And more importantly, people didn’t only respond by throwing their wallets at the problem. Oxfam were having to issue press releases asking people not to volunteer themselves to the project unless they had previous disaster-recovery experience. They were inundated with people wanting to give up their time and skills.

What if Comic Relief included education? What if everyone involved in social justice focussed on consciousness raising, rather than fund raising?

Because giving money is applying bandages. Bandages are necessary. But far better than putting on bandages is preventing the wounds in the first place. And that doesn’t happen by donating a fiver because Jonathan Ross looked quite serious for a moment. It happens by changing lifestyles, changing attitudes, and making a very loud noise in the right place.

We surely must stop perpetuating the notion that charitable donations require a product in return, but even more, we need to learn why the money is needed in the first place. Oxfam will tell you. Tearfund will tell you. Shelter will tell you. Amnesty will tell you.

Meanwhile, this gets halfway there. The new Sarah McLachlan video, World on Fire, cost $15 to make, from its budget of $150,000.

The video explains where the money would have gone, and where it did go. Yes, it’s still about the money, but crucially this video specifically states, “Don’t worry, we are not asking for money”, and indeed they do not. There is no, “How can I donate” button on the site, but instead a list of the organisations their money went to, and their contact details. There’s no easy, ‘pay to make it go away’ option. This is education.

Here’s some good news, especially if you’re MHW and hate the bunnies.

Thanks to some really hard work by Nick, I now have a place for Brian off of this blog.

There’s lots of work to do yet, including activating all the buttons, and making the archive more attractive. But it’s working now, so I may as well make it public.

I’ll post reminders on the blog when it’s updated, but it should be every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, unless I don’t. Please bookmark it, and if you like it, recommend it to friends. The more people reading, the happier I feel. That’s a combination of ego, and the reason for creating things in the first place: so other people will enjoy them.

Which means I shall hopefully be driven to remember to write things here, as it will no longer look all busy with cartoons.

There’s an email button on the Brian site, and I’d really appreciate feedback. Maybe it’s my weakness, but I find the interaction to be really helpful. And post comments on the links here. Love me. LOVE ME. Or something like that.

I was rescued by firemen today, from the raging fire of annoyance of locking myself out my flat, with no way to get back in until Monday night. There was a fire engine, and a long ladder and everything, and it was really exciting.

A really nice app was linked from AB’s forum, and I had a go.

Also, check out this beautiful one by Mark.

Unashamedly lifting the majority of its format from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, BBC4’s The Late Edition is the Corporation’s latest attempt to recapture the elusive topical satire that it thinks it remembers doing so well in the past.

The Daily Show is certainly the finest satirical comedy on television anywhere in the world. It would be nice to suggest it beats all the competition without trying, but the sad reality is that there just isn’t much else out there.

My (hopefully) first contribution to the excellent www.offthetelly.co.uk. It’s an especially good site, with years of archives to read through. And now me as well.

“Do you get to keep the games?”

That’s the question I get asked the most about my odd little job.

“Yes,” I reply, “but only to remind myself of the torment.”

I’ve just reviewed Legacy: Dark Shadows for PC Gamer. I can’t say anything just yet, because the review won’t be out for a bit, and people at PC Zone might try and copy, because they are like that. Especially Will Porter. He’s the sort. I dunno, something big might slip, and this Croatian point and clicker might get the cover. The attitude to writing games magazines is a lot like curling your arm around your exercise book and leaning your face an inch away from the page as you write. “Get off! No copying!”

The game’s already available, and I think there’s little that could advertise it better than having a listen to what could vaguely be described as the theme tune. The reality is it plays when you click on ‘Quit’ (a not unlikely event), over some credits that appear. This loops eternally, unless you click the mouse, which crashes the game providing a handy error message on your desktop.

So make your way to the game’s site, here, and have a listen to this.

I don’t want to be presumptious, but I’m thinking: I Love Horses for 2005.