Belated birthday wishes to the UK National Health Service on its 60th Birthday.
I happened to chance upon the following article about the experience over in the US when browsing Wikipedia.
I've always been fond of Steven Wells' writing in the NME since the 1990's, in particular his relentless baiting of miserablist self pitying bigot Morrissey, his championing of Daphne & Celeste and Atari Teenage Riot and the casual way in which he'd bandy about such heartwarming notions as 'stringing Gary Bushell up by his tiny Cockerneeeee bollocks and battering him about the head with a breezeblock'.
He even printed my letter urging pre-emptive strikes and warning of the threat to international stability posed by Chris Moyles. Did they listen? No. And now look where we are.
Swells subsequently went to Americaland and recently had the misfortune to fall ill. The sum mentioned above seems to be his initial payment of a total of $180000 total medical debts.
Weeks later—weeks during which I nearly die, become hideously deformed and then spend entire days crying like a baby—the wife and I are in the elevator in our apartment building when she opens the bill from our bat-shit crazy American insurance company.
"How much?" I giggle.
"$51,000," she snorts.
It might as well be 51 gazillion billion bazillion trillion. We both start laughing like hyenas on helium.
The ghastliness of the US healthcare system is well known but it should also be noted that the Indian healthcare system is also -in effect - totally privatised. It is not uncommon for families to be bankrupted by medical expenses, and even if cash is readily available, the equipment and organisation is dire, causing people to die in hospital for want of adequate oxygen, pills, etc. If a prescription is made, it has to be purchased from the hospital pharmacy - if its open (what? You think the nurses will just GIVE it to you? Who do you think you are?). Another spectre looming over proceedings is that of bribery - often at least floated as a consideration by Doctors who really see no reason to bother treating you in far far too many cases. And they don't do call outs either.
Sadly Tony H Wilson didn't survive his cancer diagnosis, but he wrote a very sweet love letter to the medical team who looked after him.
I realise of course that this sort of inane shit is only going to add further publicity to some shitehawk writer eager to release another snoozesome collection of pisspoor cuurrrrrrrrrrazzzy reminiscences about comedy parents and sub-Carrie Bradshaw witterings (fucking A, Countdown AND My Family), but it can't be helped. Well done, I've bitten.
First, an anecdote from that bastion of insight into modern gender politics, Mid Week with Libby Purves. Interviewing guest Sofia Hayat about how she escaped the strictures of a corner-shop running Pakistani family who wanted her to become a Doctor to pursue her dream of being a minor-league titjiggler on Zee Tv, Purves remarks that "it's quite strange really, isn't it, as most western working class families it would be the other way round with you having to struggle to want to be allowed to study medicine and being expected to take higher-paying work". Hayat pauses. To date, la Hayats' achievements are listed as having been a written a song for Pakistani earthquake victims (see? she cares) and killing off her Bollywood film career after turning up to a film premiere with her arse hanging out of her dress (pointedly omitted from her website).
Is De$i bebes Sexy? Or Not Sexy? Forfuckzake, "sexy" has become the most overrused adjective in Bollywood. Everyone does a sexy now (gone is the Barbara Windsor sweet-natured strumpetry of old), the industry having recently re-located its' clitoris. Witness kiddy singing contest Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Lil' Champs where the contestants (genuinely gruesome) were singing the usual racy ditties about wanning yer baaaadddies and parrrrrtying being commended by various judges as "you are so SEXXXYYYY!!!!" UGH.
No, there is no shortage of generically fair skinned supamoddul body-fascist (privately educated, plastic surgeried, wheatish, upper caste, wealthy, tediously smug ) hunneyz to induce tumescence in the spunk-flecked chuddies of herds of unmarried men across the subcontinent. As a recent article on Indian Independence noted, films seem to have got more explicit (or bold as the Indian press put it) as women in the population seem to have declined.
Less an appreciation of wimmin being 'sexually visible', as CiF would have it, more a tantalasing glimpse of an increasingly rare commodity.
This desperate need for approval from FHM readers though, doesn't it smack of servility? "See??!!?! We asians babes can B sexy too! aren't we special!!!!!!! seeeeeee?"
And just look at the resounding response: "Personally I find Thai women some of the most beautiful in the world. " "So graceful, so dignified" (translation: "Uggghhh, Uggghh! Give me purity! GIVE IT TO ME!!! Not like those ugly gobby demanding dirty white women!!!")
"Ok, since I am a connoisseur of Asian women, here is the most objective report you will ever read on the planet.
1. Korean Women - when they are good looking, then they are stunning. Downside is that they can be very materialistic. 2. Burmese Women - this is one notch up from Thai. Hate to be judgemental, because I love all women, but Burmese have the edge. 3. Indian Women - for humour, the women from Mumbai are hard to beat. For looks Dehli has the edge. 4. Pakistani Women - Lahore is the great gene pool of the world, where Greek mixes with Indian, Saka Iranian and Chinese. Beautiful women with blue and green eyes. 5. Malay, Indonesia and Pinoy - more or less the same people. Warm, cuddly, great sense of humour. Downside ... sometimes magnificently crazy. Love the women of the Philippines, especially Cebu, but occasionally they verge towards soap opera psychotic. 6. Chinese - personally I love the Taiwanese and Hong Kong ladies - great characters. Singaporeans are great lookers, but again very materialistic. Also like the women from Beijing and Chengdu ... but Shanghai women .. they just scare me. Great lookers, but they devour men. 7. Japanese women - various layers waiting to be discovered. 8. And finally what about the Iranians ... if we are to include them as part of Asia. Such beautiful eyes ... "
Please note, the flipside to all this wanking over the alleged charms of females of South Asian is usually scorn - if not open contempt - for the percieved lack of hunnyness amongst females from europe/ america, in particular the barbed comments about british (white) women. Seems the commenters of CiF cannot quite bring themselves to jism over the merits of many African women either. I'm sure Rosa Parks would be disappointed if she was here.
Still, I'm sure that this could be a useful ploy to target the endemic infanticide in the sub-continent.
Hey, don't put that salt in your young daughters' mouth, just think, one day she could have some cunt in London making weak puns about her being really spicy and hotter than a vindaloo. Wouldn't you want that?
And then they wonder why more British Muslim women are choosing to wear the Hijab.
Isn't Dubai Brilliant? They've got, like loads of rich people and they all have really nice hotels and stuff and the people who are being employed as servants are really really nice to you and everything! BRILLIANT! And they've got, like a reallly reaaaaalllllyyyyy reeaallly big indoor ski slope, and like this Hotel, but - you'll never guess - right. IT LOOKS LIKE A SAIL BOAT AND IS SURROUNDED BY WATER! BRILLIANT! And then when I was over there they even had famous people like that tennis player - and she's western and a blonde and everything so its not just got Arabs in it and they didn't kill her or tell her to put some clothes on or anything at all! Brilliant!
Aren't paying people as servants Brilliant? Like there's loads of bad things like exploitation of workers and things like that, and someone said they have that in Dubai.
*pause*
But there's at least one other place I can think of that's worse so that's alright then.
BRILLIANT!
Wouldn't it be brilliant if everywhere in the Middle East was like Dubai? They could have Anna Kournikova and Bollywood film stars staying there for publicity and they could employ loads of asian workers and stuff and they could pay them fuck all money and house them in labour camps outside the main city so no one could see them but they'd be grateful for the work what with asians being good little workers. Aren't asians brilliant? They do loads of work everywhere and run shops and clean houses and stuff and that helps disaffected monied Middle Eastern dilletantes from wanting to join Al-Quaeda because it shows how nice people who aren't from the Middle East are! And they haven't got any of them Musliamist Fundalkoranic Literalists (Islamofascist is such a silly term, *lol*) because ... er..
everyone is just Really Really nice and everything.
At the moment, and for the past couple of years, virtually every asian tv channel has been running ads flogging property and buy-to-let opportunities in Dubai, on an almost back-to-back basis.
Its Seaview Dubai, and this is not to mention the myriad other property companies, flogging computer generated images of fantasy housing developments, or ones flogging plots of land in the UK as development opportunities such "panning permission not guaranteed, not regulated by fsa".
I'm sure, however, that the prices they quote for the plots in Dubai, have come down in recent years, compared to a short time ago.
They couldn't possibly have trouble selling. Could they?
Just how bad has the state of the Indian film industry got?
So bad that even the Maoists in Nepal are protesting about the quality of the film output.
Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag", Bollywood director Ram Gopal Varma's much-talked about remake of the blockbuster Hindi film "Sholay", has come under fire from Maoists in Nepal, who say the film has obscene scenes that would pollute society.
The controversial remake, which was released in four cinemas in Kathmandu Valley Friday, has been especially taken to task for a sizzling dance number featuring Bollywood star Urmila Matondkar.
The film - a jazzed up jump-cutting remake of the 70's 'masala' film(itself a version of the Magnificent Seven/ 7 Samurai)has bombed in cinemas across India and sucks cock on an epic scale by all accounts.
The dance scenes (Item numbers) themselves are as grisly as expected. Urmila Matondkar was something of a starlet in the late 90's, and like Shilpa Shetty before Big Brother was reduced to these - essentially titjiggling interludes to keep their name in the headlines with a flagging career. Both her and Shetty also have this antiseptic quality that also make the bump and grind feel extra wrong. They are all attractive women (in that Fair and Lovely generic way Bollywood produces starlets nowadays) but their appeal was in being slightly wholesome and girl-next-door rather than absolute maneaters. Its like watching Felicity Kendall give a lapdance.
Whilst there have always been these item numbers the marked difference now is that the dancing is notably raunchier, and it is often at odds with the rest of the film. Dance routines in serial killer films? Plus, with all this added rutting all the sheer demented joy has gone out of the filmi world, replaced by leaden 'making of' films where increasingly pretentious actors and actresses (nearly all now from the modelling world and therefore bland as fuck) gabble on endlessly about their groundbreaking work.
This is what they can't manage any more: sheer bonkers genius dance routines like from Helen in the 1969 film Talash:
the industry has been criticized for producing low-quality films whose only appeal is that of sex, violence, or melodrama
My ears are burning!
These are outright falsehoods. I have recently developed something of a mania for Bangladeshi films. Bangladesh. Most denseley populated country in the world. Birthplace of writers, thinkers, artists and directors such as Tagore, Amartya Sen and Satyajit Ray (Ok they are from West Bengal but still). Producers of epic bonkers-genius action films and a new artform as a by-product: The Electronic Programme Guide Haiku.
In particular, the channels that cater for the Bangladeshi community on Sky satellite are all free to air (something conspicuously absent for channels for the Punjabi, let alone Gujarati community).
This means that its quite usual to stumble across feature films playing on the main channels (Bangla TV, Sky 791, Channel S (Sylheti TV), Sky 814, and two Bangladeshi channels on Sky 826 and 827 whose names escape me).
Its GREAT. Because the prevailing culture is still conservative, the films have not yet lapsed into flesh-flashing shit softcore rutting of their pretentious neighbours in India. (Alas, modern-style progressive films don't mean women who can make their own decisions about where they work and live their lives in Bollywood cinema, but they do tend to mean women prancing about in Bikinis and being exactly as servile to their menfolk as the days of the bouffant and dupatta). Also. The women in these films...
How to describe?
For a start, they ain't having nothing to do with this superwaif shit. Bangladeshi lasses are well fed, and there is something glorious about watching them in dance routines and love scenes completely unfazed by any comparisons with Bollywood ex-models.
Watch them and the thing that strikes is just how stunningly violent these women are.
I mean they are fierce.
I've lost track of the number of Indian films (this being a culture that supposedly venerates women where apologists prattle on about Indian godesses) where the basic plotline is:
Indian woman moping
Its true that Bangldesh suffers appalling violence against women, but I've seen far more fights (proper headkickings) involving women battering men, and generally being shouty (and crucially not being punished for it) than the standard helpless Fair and Lovely maiden rescued by action hero of Bollywood.
These are normally labelled Social films in the Electronic programme guide (EPG).
Which is where Bangldeshi cinema truly excels.
I don't know who it is that has drafted the EPG descrptions of these films, they tend to be repetitive, but they are wonderful to read:
For the Film Shopner Bhalobasha (shown June 2007 on ATN Bangla):
This is a story about a rising singer entangled in the trap of social discriminations and triangle love..
The film Mone Pore Tomake (Ch 814, May 2007):
It is a beautiful story of triangular love. Passion struggle and sacrifice for love have been depicted here with a great emotional view.
The action epic Adhihar (May 2007):
This movie portrays the protest againstcorruption in the society
And then there is existential oddness:
Rajdhani (ch 827 June 2007):
In this mysterious world, anything can happen. Gratefulness could have opposite meaning. Love could be fake. This movie depicted the fact with an artistic view.
and the films Protishodh and Gang Chill both have the following cryptic note:
If you want to be something special, you must have to keep your eyes open. Are you ready? Keep watching the movie and get the answer.
And how comforting to have it reaffirmed after viewing tonight's Qustion Time (special edition for middle class 6th form pricks from the Home Counties who do debating competitions and London kids who've read No Logo).
I long ago gave up on Question Time when I realised that it merely consisted of various parties throwing out punchlines to get the most ooohs and Aaaahs from the audience. Charlie Brooker has written at length about 'bellowing cow people' on shows like Jeremy kyle, but in effect you have the same thing here, except its people who would like to think they are above all that sort of thing. Hamas likened to the Suffragettes? God almighty.
As I mentioned on DrinkSoaked Trots, Shirley Williams is essentially rehashing the 6th form laziness of Marcus Brigstocke's stand up act by bashing americans, foreign policy, americans, etc for the laughs & "yeeeaaaaaaaaahhh"s it gets with the crowds. This was merely made more evident by the pantomime booing of tonight's shower of cunts. I've always loathed Davina McCall (every hardened Big Brother addict does. Honest). And now to see her spewing out so much horseshit about Hamas... well, its not a surprise is it? She's famous for fuckwittery. So BBC: Why couldn't you get Lauren Laverne? She eloquently described the Spice Girls as 'TORY SCUM' in her Kenickie* heyday and does actually seem to know something about politics.
Never mind.
The one thing I like on QT is unpopular guests. The people who definitely DON'T get the quick applause. David Starkey on a few years ago caused disquiet in a debate over the NHS by pointing out that actually the NHS had to ration its resources, and no you couldn't be seen instantly by a doctor if you didn't want to pay for it one way or another.
On Afghanistan. Note the eerie silence as he singularly fails to rouse approval for his statements about how the UK will probably need to keep troops in Afghanistan for the very long haul (and that the UK would probably need troops who've seen combat), as opposed to 'why can't we let them all kill each other?' from the Hitchens Minor. Its not comforting news but it has the unvarnished truth about it, which never goesw down well on a tv show. Nicked from Drink Soaked Trots, who are good at finding this sort of thing.
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Name: Barbara
Born in a windowless room in a country that no longer exists.
Barbara Meinhoff has no friends. Barbara Meinhoff collects plastic bags and piles them up in her room to block out daylight.
