Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Nirpal Dhaliwal - Watch Part Fifteen
Parts One to Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen, Part Fourteen.
Things have slipped past me a bit, I was on holiday when the last NDW was due and haven't had much of a chance to catch up until now. So this is what your favourite pair of journos did in August and I'll try to bring things up to date later in the week. How's that for service?
I'd rather be a 'coconut' than cling to race
Evening Standard (London); Aug 1, 2007;
I'M BORED with multiculturalism. Your colour, the food you eat and the God you worship are considered to be your defining characteristics. But I think that someone's choice of pizza topping says more about them than their choice of religion. And for stating this, I'll be called a "coconut" brown on the outside and white on the inside by those who cling to their race for their identity rather than making any effort to develop a genuine personality.
A new BBC survey shows that a third of young Asians in Britain think you have to be a coconut and "act white" if you want to get ahead in this country. A lot of black people hold the same assumption, using terms like "selling out" and "Uncle Tom". It's an attitude based on ignorance and resentment, expressed in empty playground taunts. Rather than acknowledge that someone's achievements have required talent and hard work, they dismiss their success as a reward for sucking up to Whitey.
Except no one really knows what "acting white" means. Morris dancing, binge drinking and dancing like a clown to Abba at office parties? And how would "acting white" get you anywhere in any case? There are plenty of white-skinned deadbeats in this country whose colour hasn't given them any advantage over anyone.
In fact the coconut complex is the ethnic equivalent of the old colonial fear of "going native". I've known many people who've made an ostentatious display of their ethnicity wearing loud ethnic fabrics or changing their English names to African ones to build a persona that is no more than skin deep. It's the same kind of neurosis that compels chavs who've relocated to the Costa Del Sol to create a Chigwell-on-the-Med, replete with trashy boozers and fish- and-chip shops.
Given that your colour is a biological fact that you have no choice over, being proud of it is as stupid as being proud of having lungs or eyebrows. Yet many Asians and blacks still think that this is what defines them. They look down at those who share their pigmentation but don't live by their clichs. And they're encouraged to do so by cheesy white nerds who think that being ethnic equals being cool.
I've been called a coconut many times for dating white girls, for liking indie bands, even for eating cous cous. For daring to live a life that's a bit more interesting and varied than the norm, I've been accused of selling out and trying to be a white man.
Sure, wearing a burka or speaking raggamuffin street patois won't fast track you up the career ladder; but they don't prove how strong your identity is, either. They only reveal how little exposure you've had to others and show the world that you are a someone who really ought to get out more..
Try as I might I can't see anything in this article that's a dig at Ms Jones. Is this the end of an era? A week later and Nirpal is still choosing to attack other people...
Face it, fatty - you're just greedy and idle
Evening Standard (London); Aug 8, 2007;
WHY is it that the NHS is reportedly spending 1 million a week on fat-fighting pills for the overweight? Increasingly, doctors are prescribing expensive quickfix treatments that do nothing to change people's diets and lifestyles. But the truth, as Dr Hamish Meldrum, head of the British Medical Association, admitted last week, is that people are fat simply because they're greedy and lazy.
I was a fat kid who lost weight in my teens; in my twenties I put a lot of it back on. I shifted it again by the only method guaranteed to work: eating less and working out.
My exercise routines were so hard they often left me wanting to vomit. It was a hellish experience, but it worked.
Ever since I have had no sympathy for fat people whatsoever.
Are there any parts of society that Nirpal does have sympathy for? Parts that aren't middle-aged British Asian authors with the initials NSD?
I was fat for exactly the same reasons that every fat person is: because I ate like a pig and slobbed out on the couch when I should've been going for a jog.
Almost a fifth of Britons are obese. That figure is set to triple over the next 20 years, making Britain the indisputable Fat Man of Europe. And if we want to avoid that fate, the message should be clear: we must stop mollycoddling the overweight and pandering to their sensitivities and start telling them painful home truths instead.
If only fat people were told, on a daily basis, from a young age, they were fat. Why, that would surely put them straight!
Unlike racism and sexism, discrimination against fat people is entirely justifiable. It is one form of prejudice that is beneficial for those discriminated against and society as a whole.
Looking up 'prejudice' on Dictionary.com, I see the first definition is 'an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason', which pretty much fits Nirpal to a tee. I also like his clear separation of 'good prejudice' such as that against groups he's not a part of, and 'bad prejudice', such as that against groups he is, such as ethnic ones. Alright, so he puts sexism in there too, so it's nice to know that he's only concerned about himself 90% of the time rather than the full 100%.
If fat people faced obstacles in employment and other areas, they'd think twice before stuffing their faces. We would then have a trimmer, sexier society, and save billions currently wasted on stapling the stomachs and treating the heart complaints of the overweight.
I wonder how much money is spent on treating those who started smoking trying to stay skinny? There's also the assumption in there that only skinny is sexy which, of course, if Nirpal pulled his head out of his skinny arse for a second he'd see wasn't reflected in society. Still, he's spent years living with Liz Jones, it's not surprising he's picked up the fashion industries fucked up attitudes towards body size.
Fat people should be ashamed of themselves but our society stupidly celebrates their condition.
When? Where?
Mika has a top 10 hit with his song Big Girl (You Are Beautiful), and Dove's ad campaigns have famously featured busty, broadhipped models, proclaiming they represent "real women". Most of those women are not "real", they are merely fat albeit much prettier than most fat women.
Nirpal doesn't believe fat women aren't real. I'm not sure what basis he's using for this claim but it would be nice if one of the biggest champions of his writing, plus-sized Julie Burchill, was just a figment of someone's imagination. I also presume that Nirpal did not study history, that most societies except recent ones did not hold up the Kate Moss physique as the final word on beauty.
And don't start me on those Dove adverts, I suppose it's another sign of how fucked up the fashion industry is that those women are considered freakishly different, so as to be held up by Dove as being examples of 'real beauty', one of the more headachey advertising campaigns of the modern age. Where are the disabled women? The women with cleft palettes? Why haven't Dove told any Down's Syndrome girls they are beautiful? Argh! One fight at a time, let's focus on the bigot in the room for now.
Those ads help to normalise obesity in the public consciousness, and make it acceptable.
God forbid that we should try and live and love as one.
Despite all the junk excuses given for why people are fat their genes, or that they comfort eat because their mums never hugged them enough
Or when scientists explain natural biological processes...
the fact remains that they can all lose weight if they grit their teeth and take charge of their lives. Telling the same old lies about fat being a disease or the fault of the fast-food industry will only create a catastrophically overweight society. Fat people have to accept that they are the only ones to blame for the state they're in and just stop passing the buck.
The paper received a letter a few days later.
Disabled - and now demoralised
Evening Standard (London); Aug 10, 2007;
I WAS aghast to read Nirpal Dhaliwal's column (Face it fatty you're just greedy and idle, 8 August).
I was born with a dislocated hip.
For a long time I could lead an active life, but my hip suffered progressive deterioration and for about five years, until I had it replaced, I could barely walk 100 yards because the pain was unbearable. As a result I gained a significant amount of weight, despite eating healthily.
I am now rebuilding an exercise regime, including swimming half a mile four times a week, but would still fall well outside Dhaliwal's trim ideal. He may be correct in thinking some fat people could do more to help themselves, but could he consider the demoralising effect his comments might have on those larger members of the population physically unable to do the hard workouts he recommends?
How bloody dare you 'name and address supplied'? How dare you suggest that Nirpal thinks about anything he writes? Are you aware of the neurological trauma and overheating of the head that occurs if Nirpal tries to engage even one of his neurons? Have you seen the film 'Scanners'? Are you really willing to take responsibility for the consequences?
The following week Nirpal writes about how he was lazy at school until he came round to doing his exams he says:
Exams are the fairest way of measuring ability. The affluent might be able to pay for private tuition for their children but kids with a desire to do well if properly encouraged can make up for it with individual hard work. I went to a nuthouse of a state school but I breezed through my GCSEs because I did a ton of revision on my own.
There was no way I would have done so well if it all been coursework. My school was so anarchic that it was impossible to behave in class; the mob mentality meant that any pupil who was obviously bookish was despised. It was easier to join in the mayhem and revise crazily in the run-up to exams than to perform consistently throughout the year.
To be fair to him he was, as he admitted the previous week, a lazy fat kid.
Exams are an excellent preparation for adult life, which is full of stress and expectations to deliver results while under pressure.
Nirpal Dhaliwal is an author who took some six years to write a novel, supported in that time by his then-wife. It's important to keep these facts close to hand when reading his columns.
Come August the 22nd and Nirpal is telling us how he tried cocaine once and didn't like it, and why Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse are arseholes (nice try Nirps, but you can't win me over that easily).
I have one friend with a drug problem and never show him any sympathy. I'm honest and tell him how tedious he is, unlike his fawning girlfriends whose mollycoddling has helped keep him an addict. He respects me for being straight and holding a mirror up to him.
He doesn't appear to have made any effort to encourage his friend to kick the drugs habit, he just calls him a boring idiot every now and then.
Exodus from London? I just couldn't live anywhere else
Evening Standard (London); Aug 24, 2007;
THE UK is experiencing the biggest exodus of Britons for a hundred years. Some 385,000 people emigrated last year, many of them from London, with Australia, New Zealand and Spain topping the list of most popular destinations. Some doom-mongers regarded these figures as evidence that Britain has gone to the dogs and that people can't leave the country or the capital fast enough.
But if Australia's so much better, why do one million Australians five per cent of the population live outside of Australia? As many as 200,000 Australians expats opt for a life in London rather than in their own country.
Nowhere else on earth has the energy, creativity and sense of possibility that London has. Sure, very few people ever hit the big time in this city, but anyone with dreams of living an interesting life and making something of themselves will visit this town at some point in their lives, adding to the city's electric atmosphere.
Whether you want to write novels, sell samosas or become the hottest drag queen since Ru Paul, nowhere else offers you the scope and freedom to explore your personality and ambitions as London does.
Which estate did RuPaul come from? Which Old Compton Street bar was it kicked off the Gay Liberation movement? Did the Beatles come from Liverpool Street?
It is the most tolerant, open-minded and accepting city on earth.
Insert 'why does Nirpal live here then?' joke here.
Yes, I know New York is a great metropolis. But it's nowhere near as cosmopolitan as London. It's a city of ghettos, determined by class and race.
A black friend of my mine recalled being patronisingly congratulated by a New Yorker for holding hands with his white girlfriend on the subway.
Compared with London, in many ways the Big Apple is still Hicksville. The demographics and housing situation in the capital force rich, poor, black, brown and white to live cheekby-jowel. In east London, you find gay fashion-addicted hipster couples, burka- clad Bangladeshis and middle-aged media types living in the same streets. They might not be the How not to do best of friends; but watching people who look very different from you bringing home their shopping and taking their kids to school humanises them, and makes rabid bigotry absurd.
People lament the anonymity and loneliness of life in London, but that is precisely what makes this city unique. You can be whatever you want here no one cares. Free from the stifling prejudices of curtaintwitching busybodies, London is a city where you can try to become the person you always dreamed of being.
No one is too outrageous (trust me, I've tried pretty hard). Though born and raised here, I never feel like I truly know this city.
It moves with the times too fast for anyone to grasp. Its neighbourhoods change colour and culture every few years, absorbing people and influences from around the world. Londoners are probably the most globally aware people in the world.
I know that the property ladder, problems finding good schools and the stress of city life do drive rational people to forsake the capital. But I don't feel a shred of envy for their new lives. Nowhere else could keep me as interested in life as London does. And that's why you won't find me living anywhere else.
Damnit!
Life passes by but I'm in no hurry to join in
Evening Standard (London); Aug 29, 2007;
HAVING enjoyed such a glorious bank-holiday weekend, most Londoners will this week be moaning about being in the rat race again. But slower-paced people like me childless and working from home can see the modern obsession with busyness for what it is really is: the new religion for a godless society.
People whine about being too busy and nurse absurd illusions of how they'd paint watercolours, do t'ai chi or learn Persian if only they had more time. But the truth is, they deliberately pack every available hour to ensure they don't get a quiet moment.
Busyness is the new mark of self-worth. People publicise how active and stressed their jobs and children keep them in order to maintain the faade of having a meaningful life. The Protestant work ethic is so deep-rooted in our culture that even in an age of affluence and technological quickfixes, people are still compelled to live like hyperactive drones.
They might say they envy my time-rich existence but regular nine- to-fivers barely conceal their disapproval when I tell them I lie in each morning and work at a snail's pace while eating cereal dressed only in my underpants.
I can string a whole day out with a couple of basic chores such as buying milk and cleaning the toilet. When I tell people this, they look at me as if I've done something grossly immoral. The fact that I earn a living and pay my taxes doesn't matter; nor does the fact that much of their officebound time consists of surfing property sites and watching gonzo clips on YouTube. They are disgusted because I have committed the cardinal sin of our era: I do not worship busyness.
When travelling in the Third World, I was always amazed by the locals who could sit impassively during long bus and train journeys without a book, iPod or even a fidget. Now, living alone and without stimulus, I have the same ability to stare into space and literally watch life go by rather than fool myself with a hysterical pretence that I'm in charge of it. It's a lovely feeling, like snoozing with your eyes open.
I'm comfortable with myself and don't feel I'm missing out. People wilfully choose hectic family and professional lives in order to avoid their own company. Give them the time to think about it, and they would be driven mad by their existential emptiness. Children and careers give you too many responsibilities to contemplate big questions about the meaning of life.
I do miss working in an office, but not the sense of mission.
I only long for the gossip and flirtations that come with offices, the fundamental human interactions that are the most fun things in life. But busyness is strictly for the bees.
And yet earlier in the month Nirpal was claiming people were too lazy and fat. Now he's claiming that he does almost nothing and is on his own. He must obviously be living a life of monkish self-abnegation.
Towards the end of August there is that rare beast, a decent article from Nirpal about being an Asian indie music fan in the early Nineties.
I'm not sure whether my database is bust, or whether the only articles that Liz Jones wrote in August were on fashion. So, I'll finish with this article from the Western Daily Press:
Jilted Liz has scared off house sellers in the West
Western Daily Press 31 August 2007
She's the columnist who's left no stone unturned when it comes to revealing the secrets of her love life.
But now journalist Liz Jones has announced she may be moving to Bath to get away from it all.
Liz Jones has become a household name for her weekly column in The Mail on Sunday in which she talks frankly about her disastrous four year marriage to writer Nirpal Dhaliwal.
Before even reaching the sevenyear-itch milestone, the marriage fell into difficulties, with Dhaliwal said to have embarked on seven extra-marital affairs.
Jones has written explicitly about her husband's infidelity, labelling his mistresses 'cow whore bag trollops' or CWBTs for short, and said that last September he celebrated her birthday emailing another woman for a date.
The couple separated this year but not before she had put his name on her house deeds.
She has long talked in her column about moving to the country and revealed that Bath is one of the places that's high on her list. But she fears her honest approach led to her losing a house near the city as she made the vendors uncomfortable when being shown round.
"I have made offers on three properties - two romantic wrecks with parkland in Norfolk, and an immaculate William and Mary house near Bath - none of which has been successful (I think I was so enthusiastic walking round the house near Bath that the owners had second thoughts about selling)," she said.
"I am beginning to despair of finding somewhere perfect, ie, down its own lane, Georgian or thereabouts, with the original stable block, at least 10 acres, and nowhere near an airport or motorway."
Back in May Jones said she had finally decided to divorce Dhaliwal although her latest column said he has moved back in. But the on-off saga doesn't look near to being resolved with Jones saying she can't bear to sleep with him and hates having his clutter in the house.
She said: "I know it is an awful thing to admit but I find having sex with him quite boring; I actually watch Sex and the City over his shoulder' In her columns, which have become compulsive reading, Jones has revealed he has since signed the house back to her, been abusive by calling her an old hag - he is 14 years younger than her - and accused her of having a compulsion to tell everyone all their secrets.
Nirpal Dhaliwal has hit back with an article saying that following the break up, Jones got him dropped by both his agent and accountant.
Hopefully when I get round to the September review they'll be back to slagging each other off in that way we love so much.
Things have slipped past me a bit, I was on holiday when the last NDW was due and haven't had much of a chance to catch up until now. So this is what your favourite pair of journos did in August and I'll try to bring things up to date later in the week. How's that for service?
I'd rather be a 'coconut' than cling to race
Evening Standard (London); Aug 1, 2007;
I'M BORED with multiculturalism. Your colour, the food you eat and the God you worship are considered to be your defining characteristics. But I think that someone's choice of pizza topping says more about them than their choice of religion. And for stating this, I'll be called a "coconut" brown on the outside and white on the inside by those who cling to their race for their identity rather than making any effort to develop a genuine personality.
A new BBC survey shows that a third of young Asians in Britain think you have to be a coconut and "act white" if you want to get ahead in this country. A lot of black people hold the same assumption, using terms like "selling out" and "Uncle Tom". It's an attitude based on ignorance and resentment, expressed in empty playground taunts. Rather than acknowledge that someone's achievements have required talent and hard work, they dismiss their success as a reward for sucking up to Whitey.
Except no one really knows what "acting white" means. Morris dancing, binge drinking and dancing like a clown to Abba at office parties? And how would "acting white" get you anywhere in any case? There are plenty of white-skinned deadbeats in this country whose colour hasn't given them any advantage over anyone.
In fact the coconut complex is the ethnic equivalent of the old colonial fear of "going native". I've known many people who've made an ostentatious display of their ethnicity wearing loud ethnic fabrics or changing their English names to African ones to build a persona that is no more than skin deep. It's the same kind of neurosis that compels chavs who've relocated to the Costa Del Sol to create a Chigwell-on-the-Med, replete with trashy boozers and fish- and-chip shops.
Given that your colour is a biological fact that you have no choice over, being proud of it is as stupid as being proud of having lungs or eyebrows. Yet many Asians and blacks still think that this is what defines them. They look down at those who share their pigmentation but don't live by their clichs. And they're encouraged to do so by cheesy white nerds who think that being ethnic equals being cool.
I've been called a coconut many times for dating white girls, for liking indie bands, even for eating cous cous. For daring to live a life that's a bit more interesting and varied than the norm, I've been accused of selling out and trying to be a white man.
Sure, wearing a burka or speaking raggamuffin street patois won't fast track you up the career ladder; but they don't prove how strong your identity is, either. They only reveal how little exposure you've had to others and show the world that you are a someone who really ought to get out more..
Try as I might I can't see anything in this article that's a dig at Ms Jones. Is this the end of an era? A week later and Nirpal is still choosing to attack other people...
Face it, fatty - you're just greedy and idle
Evening Standard (London); Aug 8, 2007;
WHY is it that the NHS is reportedly spending 1 million a week on fat-fighting pills for the overweight? Increasingly, doctors are prescribing expensive quickfix treatments that do nothing to change people's diets and lifestyles. But the truth, as Dr Hamish Meldrum, head of the British Medical Association, admitted last week, is that people are fat simply because they're greedy and lazy.
I was a fat kid who lost weight in my teens; in my twenties I put a lot of it back on. I shifted it again by the only method guaranteed to work: eating less and working out.
My exercise routines were so hard they often left me wanting to vomit. It was a hellish experience, but it worked.
Ever since I have had no sympathy for fat people whatsoever.
Are there any parts of society that Nirpal does have sympathy for? Parts that aren't middle-aged British Asian authors with the initials NSD?
I was fat for exactly the same reasons that every fat person is: because I ate like a pig and slobbed out on the couch when I should've been going for a jog.
Almost a fifth of Britons are obese. That figure is set to triple over the next 20 years, making Britain the indisputable Fat Man of Europe. And if we want to avoid that fate, the message should be clear: we must stop mollycoddling the overweight and pandering to their sensitivities and start telling them painful home truths instead.
If only fat people were told, on a daily basis, from a young age, they were fat. Why, that would surely put them straight!
Unlike racism and sexism, discrimination against fat people is entirely justifiable. It is one form of prejudice that is beneficial for those discriminated against and society as a whole.
Looking up 'prejudice' on Dictionary.com, I see the first definition is 'an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason', which pretty much fits Nirpal to a tee. I also like his clear separation of 'good prejudice' such as that against groups he's not a part of, and 'bad prejudice', such as that against groups he is, such as ethnic ones. Alright, so he puts sexism in there too, so it's nice to know that he's only concerned about himself 90% of the time rather than the full 100%.
If fat people faced obstacles in employment and other areas, they'd think twice before stuffing their faces. We would then have a trimmer, sexier society, and save billions currently wasted on stapling the stomachs and treating the heart complaints of the overweight.
I wonder how much money is spent on treating those who started smoking trying to stay skinny? There's also the assumption in there that only skinny is sexy which, of course, if Nirpal pulled his head out of his skinny arse for a second he'd see wasn't reflected in society. Still, he's spent years living with Liz Jones, it's not surprising he's picked up the fashion industries fucked up attitudes towards body size.
Fat people should be ashamed of themselves but our society stupidly celebrates their condition.
When? Where?
Mika has a top 10 hit with his song Big Girl (You Are Beautiful), and Dove's ad campaigns have famously featured busty, broadhipped models, proclaiming they represent "real women". Most of those women are not "real", they are merely fat albeit much prettier than most fat women.
Nirpal doesn't believe fat women aren't real. I'm not sure what basis he's using for this claim but it would be nice if one of the biggest champions of his writing, plus-sized Julie Burchill, was just a figment of someone's imagination. I also presume that Nirpal did not study history, that most societies except recent ones did not hold up the Kate Moss physique as the final word on beauty.
And don't start me on those Dove adverts, I suppose it's another sign of how fucked up the fashion industry is that those women are considered freakishly different, so as to be held up by Dove as being examples of 'real beauty', one of the more headachey advertising campaigns of the modern age. Where are the disabled women? The women with cleft palettes? Why haven't Dove told any Down's Syndrome girls they are beautiful? Argh! One fight at a time, let's focus on the bigot in the room for now.
Those ads help to normalise obesity in the public consciousness, and make it acceptable.
God forbid that we should try and live and love as one.
Despite all the junk excuses given for why people are fat their genes, or that they comfort eat because their mums never hugged them enough
Or when scientists explain natural biological processes...
the fact remains that they can all lose weight if they grit their teeth and take charge of their lives. Telling the same old lies about fat being a disease or the fault of the fast-food industry will only create a catastrophically overweight society. Fat people have to accept that they are the only ones to blame for the state they're in and just stop passing the buck.
The paper received a letter a few days later.
Disabled - and now demoralised
Evening Standard (London); Aug 10, 2007;
I WAS aghast to read Nirpal Dhaliwal's column (Face it fatty you're just greedy and idle, 8 August).
I was born with a dislocated hip.
For a long time I could lead an active life, but my hip suffered progressive deterioration and for about five years, until I had it replaced, I could barely walk 100 yards because the pain was unbearable. As a result I gained a significant amount of weight, despite eating healthily.
I am now rebuilding an exercise regime, including swimming half a mile four times a week, but would still fall well outside Dhaliwal's trim ideal. He may be correct in thinking some fat people could do more to help themselves, but could he consider the demoralising effect his comments might have on those larger members of the population physically unable to do the hard workouts he recommends?
How bloody dare you 'name and address supplied'? How dare you suggest that Nirpal thinks about anything he writes? Are you aware of the neurological trauma and overheating of the head that occurs if Nirpal tries to engage even one of his neurons? Have you seen the film 'Scanners'? Are you really willing to take responsibility for the consequences?
The following week Nirpal writes about how he was lazy at school until he came round to doing his exams he says:
Exams are the fairest way of measuring ability. The affluent might be able to pay for private tuition for their children but kids with a desire to do well if properly encouraged can make up for it with individual hard work. I went to a nuthouse of a state school but I breezed through my GCSEs because I did a ton of revision on my own.
There was no way I would have done so well if it all been coursework. My school was so anarchic that it was impossible to behave in class; the mob mentality meant that any pupil who was obviously bookish was despised. It was easier to join in the mayhem and revise crazily in the run-up to exams than to perform consistently throughout the year.
To be fair to him he was, as he admitted the previous week, a lazy fat kid.
Exams are an excellent preparation for adult life, which is full of stress and expectations to deliver results while under pressure.
Nirpal Dhaliwal is an author who took some six years to write a novel, supported in that time by his then-wife. It's important to keep these facts close to hand when reading his columns.
Come August the 22nd and Nirpal is telling us how he tried cocaine once and didn't like it, and why Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse are arseholes (nice try Nirps, but you can't win me over that easily).
I have one friend with a drug problem and never show him any sympathy. I'm honest and tell him how tedious he is, unlike his fawning girlfriends whose mollycoddling has helped keep him an addict. He respects me for being straight and holding a mirror up to him.
He doesn't appear to have made any effort to encourage his friend to kick the drugs habit, he just calls him a boring idiot every now and then.
Exodus from London? I just couldn't live anywhere else
Evening Standard (London); Aug 24, 2007;
THE UK is experiencing the biggest exodus of Britons for a hundred years. Some 385,000 people emigrated last year, many of them from London, with Australia, New Zealand and Spain topping the list of most popular destinations. Some doom-mongers regarded these figures as evidence that Britain has gone to the dogs and that people can't leave the country or the capital fast enough.
But if Australia's so much better, why do one million Australians five per cent of the population live outside of Australia? As many as 200,000 Australians expats opt for a life in London rather than in their own country.
Nowhere else on earth has the energy, creativity and sense of possibility that London has. Sure, very few people ever hit the big time in this city, but anyone with dreams of living an interesting life and making something of themselves will visit this town at some point in their lives, adding to the city's electric atmosphere.
Whether you want to write novels, sell samosas or become the hottest drag queen since Ru Paul, nowhere else offers you the scope and freedom to explore your personality and ambitions as London does.
Which estate did RuPaul come from? Which Old Compton Street bar was it kicked off the Gay Liberation movement? Did the Beatles come from Liverpool Street?
It is the most tolerant, open-minded and accepting city on earth.
Insert 'why does Nirpal live here then?' joke here.
Yes, I know New York is a great metropolis. But it's nowhere near as cosmopolitan as London. It's a city of ghettos, determined by class and race.
A black friend of my mine recalled being patronisingly congratulated by a New Yorker for holding hands with his white girlfriend on the subway.
Compared with London, in many ways the Big Apple is still Hicksville. The demographics and housing situation in the capital force rich, poor, black, brown and white to live cheekby-jowel. In east London, you find gay fashion-addicted hipster couples, burka- clad Bangladeshis and middle-aged media types living in the same streets. They might not be the How not to do best of friends; but watching people who look very different from you bringing home their shopping and taking their kids to school humanises them, and makes rabid bigotry absurd.
People lament the anonymity and loneliness of life in London, but that is precisely what makes this city unique. You can be whatever you want here no one cares. Free from the stifling prejudices of curtaintwitching busybodies, London is a city where you can try to become the person you always dreamed of being.
No one is too outrageous (trust me, I've tried pretty hard). Though born and raised here, I never feel like I truly know this city.
It moves with the times too fast for anyone to grasp. Its neighbourhoods change colour and culture every few years, absorbing people and influences from around the world. Londoners are probably the most globally aware people in the world.
I know that the property ladder, problems finding good schools and the stress of city life do drive rational people to forsake the capital. But I don't feel a shred of envy for their new lives. Nowhere else could keep me as interested in life as London does. And that's why you won't find me living anywhere else.
Damnit!
Life passes by but I'm in no hurry to join in
Evening Standard (London); Aug 29, 2007;
HAVING enjoyed such a glorious bank-holiday weekend, most Londoners will this week be moaning about being in the rat race again. But slower-paced people like me childless and working from home can see the modern obsession with busyness for what it is really is: the new religion for a godless society.
People whine about being too busy and nurse absurd illusions of how they'd paint watercolours, do t'ai chi or learn Persian if only they had more time. But the truth is, they deliberately pack every available hour to ensure they don't get a quiet moment.
Busyness is the new mark of self-worth. People publicise how active and stressed their jobs and children keep them in order to maintain the faade of having a meaningful life. The Protestant work ethic is so deep-rooted in our culture that even in an age of affluence and technological quickfixes, people are still compelled to live like hyperactive drones.
They might say they envy my time-rich existence but regular nine- to-fivers barely conceal their disapproval when I tell them I lie in each morning and work at a snail's pace while eating cereal dressed only in my underpants.
I can string a whole day out with a couple of basic chores such as buying milk and cleaning the toilet. When I tell people this, they look at me as if I've done something grossly immoral. The fact that I earn a living and pay my taxes doesn't matter; nor does the fact that much of their officebound time consists of surfing property sites and watching gonzo clips on YouTube. They are disgusted because I have committed the cardinal sin of our era: I do not worship busyness.
When travelling in the Third World, I was always amazed by the locals who could sit impassively during long bus and train journeys without a book, iPod or even a fidget. Now, living alone and without stimulus, I have the same ability to stare into space and literally watch life go by rather than fool myself with a hysterical pretence that I'm in charge of it. It's a lovely feeling, like snoozing with your eyes open.
I'm comfortable with myself and don't feel I'm missing out. People wilfully choose hectic family and professional lives in order to avoid their own company. Give them the time to think about it, and they would be driven mad by their existential emptiness. Children and careers give you too many responsibilities to contemplate big questions about the meaning of life.
I do miss working in an office, but not the sense of mission.
I only long for the gossip and flirtations that come with offices, the fundamental human interactions that are the most fun things in life. But busyness is strictly for the bees.
And yet earlier in the month Nirpal was claiming people were too lazy and fat. Now he's claiming that he does almost nothing and is on his own. He must obviously be living a life of monkish self-abnegation.
Towards the end of August there is that rare beast, a decent article from Nirpal about being an Asian indie music fan in the early Nineties.
I'm not sure whether my database is bust, or whether the only articles that Liz Jones wrote in August were on fashion. So, I'll finish with this article from the Western Daily Press:
Jilted Liz has scared off house sellers in the West
Western Daily Press 31 August 2007
She's the columnist who's left no stone unturned when it comes to revealing the secrets of her love life.
But now journalist Liz Jones has announced she may be moving to Bath to get away from it all.
Liz Jones has become a household name for her weekly column in The Mail on Sunday in which she talks frankly about her disastrous four year marriage to writer Nirpal Dhaliwal.
Before even reaching the sevenyear-itch milestone, the marriage fell into difficulties, with Dhaliwal said to have embarked on seven extra-marital affairs.
Jones has written explicitly about her husband's infidelity, labelling his mistresses 'cow whore bag trollops' or CWBTs for short, and said that last September he celebrated her birthday emailing another woman for a date.
The couple separated this year but not before she had put his name on her house deeds.
She has long talked in her column about moving to the country and revealed that Bath is one of the places that's high on her list. But she fears her honest approach led to her losing a house near the city as she made the vendors uncomfortable when being shown round.
"I have made offers on three properties - two romantic wrecks with parkland in Norfolk, and an immaculate William and Mary house near Bath - none of which has been successful (I think I was so enthusiastic walking round the house near Bath that the owners had second thoughts about selling)," she said.
"I am beginning to despair of finding somewhere perfect, ie, down its own lane, Georgian or thereabouts, with the original stable block, at least 10 acres, and nowhere near an airport or motorway."
Back in May Jones said she had finally decided to divorce Dhaliwal although her latest column said he has moved back in. But the on-off saga doesn't look near to being resolved with Jones saying she can't bear to sleep with him and hates having his clutter in the house.
She said: "I know it is an awful thing to admit but I find having sex with him quite boring; I actually watch Sex and the City over his shoulder' In her columns, which have become compulsive reading, Jones has revealed he has since signed the house back to her, been abusive by calling her an old hag - he is 14 years younger than her - and accused her of having a compulsion to tell everyone all their secrets.
Nirpal Dhaliwal has hit back with an article saying that following the break up, Jones got him dropped by both his agent and accountant.
Hopefully when I get round to the September review they'll be back to slagging each other off in that way we love so much.
Labels: fatism, journalists, Liz Jones, Nirpal Dhaliwal
