You Don't Live Like I Do

For a while now various friends have been talking about UTAW, the United Tech and Allied Workers Union. Technically it's a branch of the CWU, with a focus on the tech industry, and attempting to organise online rather than through geographical branches.

I've never been a member of a union, and slightly sceptical of them. We had a bad time when mother_bones needed employment support from her Unison branch but they were too busy running a high-profile campaign. And I saw the way some unions backed Labour over the National Identity Database when I was campaigning against it. I did look into UTAW but their campaigns seem worthy but not particularly relevant to the issues facing the UK tech industry. There's nothing there about AI/LLMs, nothing about return-to-office mandates and the associated risks of Covid and Long Covid.

But the people I know who are members are adamant that I would be pushing at an open door if I raised these issues on the UTAW members-only Discord, so today I signed up. We'll see how it goes and whether this is a useful activism outlet for me.

Tonight, me and V went to the People's History Museum for Solidarity Forever: 40 Years of Lesbians & Gays Support the Miners. We got there in time to see the original LGSM banner in the second floor exhibition hall, and to tour the pop-up exhibition of artefacts from the archives.

The main draw of the evening was Mike Jackson and Jonathan Blake, two of the original LGSM activists, doing a Q&A on stage. They set the background by talking about conditions for gay men in London in the 80s, and the founding of LGSM. There were anecdotes about skint LGSM activists entertaining striking miners in London, including Richard Coles playing piano at the then-new London Gay & Lesbian Centre for a sing along; a gay pub put on a vegetarian buffet but the miners got fish and chips because they thought it'd just be lettuce leaves!

There was an interesting discussion about the difference between solidarity and charity. LGSM were oppressed queers raising money for oppressed miners, but they integrated into each other's lives and built friendships which have lasted for decades, rather than being in a position of power over them and just handing over money with no personal involvement. And when the miners' strikes ended, the miners continue to support queer people at the TUC and Labour conferences, using the National Union of Miners bloc- vote to support LGBT rights, which is why Labour started supporting these issues (some 5 years after the Liberals).

There was a lot of ahistorical praise for Labour here. Civil Partnerships didn't happen because the UK finally got a Labour Government in 1997. It happened many years after, when that Government fought and lost a case in the European Court of Human Rights. Having previously rejected a Lib Dem private member's bill for French style civil unions, Labour introduced the bare minimum "separate and kind of equal" civil partnerships required to comply with the court judgement.

It's important that we get this history right. Same with the Gender Recognition Act. Same with serving in the UK military. Happened under Labour because the Government lost cases in ECHR. No Government in the UK has been on our side without the pressure of the courts and the public. If we want to stop the UK backsliding on LGBT+ rights, and maybe even make some forward progress, we need to build that support. We need to create the bandwagons that political parties can jump on.

There was really interesting discussion about where to draw hard lines and where you allow yourself to be flexible to build partnerships and solidarity in activism. No hard answers other than listening and going with your gut. But it was great to see these two old cis gay guys utterly committed to trans rights.

There was final question about disability representation and exclusion in LGBTQ+ spaces. It's been a problem for decades, because the people with the money don't listen. The final summing up was by new PHM director Clare Barlow. It's the museum's first major exhibition since she took over and she's thrilled it's about solidarity, class and queerness.

Another project I've been getting excited about is setting up a Pixelfed server for roller derby people. P, and other roller derby friends, tell me that there's a desire to get away from Instagram and other Meta technologies, after they decided to openly discriminate against LGBT+ people and women. Pixelfed is self-hostable image hosting software which is part of the Fediverse meaning it interacts with Mastodon, Friendica and so on.

So P registered a domain, scrim.social, and pointed it at my colo server. If you click the link about the time I post it, it'll 404 as I'm having a bit of trouble getting the software up and running. It's not very mature software which isn't great, but it's there and I'm trying not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Next Saturday there's a pair of fixtures in Salford with two Manchester teams, Durham and Hull. Ideally I'd like to have it up and running by then, with backup + restore tested, so I can print off some flyers and start getting people interested. P has a proper artist friend involved, but I also scribbled a few logo ideas at the last Queer Club.

Over time I'll need to look at how performant the hardware is, and consider alternatives if it gives me too much trouble. And there'll be the day to day hassle of moderation which comes with every Fediverse server (I've got a copy of my Mastodon instance's blocklist to give me a head start on blocking most of the Nazis out there). But still, giving a bunch of queer people an escape from Meta seems like a good use of my tech skills!

After my holiday to Fuerteventura with cosmolinguist, I've been feeling a bit more energised about some activist projects so I thought I'd talk about them here.

A long time ago I had the idea to build some Corsi-Rosenthal air filter boxes, which I could loan out to LGBT+ groups for their meetings to make them less risky and more accessible. I did a lot of prep work for this, including coming up with a brand name ("Breathe Out"), some talking points (us queers should be used to the Government ignoring epidemics) and so on. But as I started reaching out to groups I found that nobody was interested and got disheartened.

This weekend I went to the Onion Social Centre, a squat in a former Sure Start centre in Longsight. A couple of friends of mine are helping out there and they'd asked me and cosmolinguist for advice on Covid risk reduction. I ended up writing a reasonably long case study / briefing for them, suggesting that the best starting point is providing free masks (possibly courtesy of the local Mask Bloc) and education. Ideally they'd have C-R boxes in each room but that's a big ask as they have a lot of rooms. Natural ventilation is a bit of a non-starter - they're already struggling to keep the place warm in January, and to make sure the ventilation is effective you need moderately expensive CO2 monitors and the time to take readings.

Anyway, when I got home I took the plunge and bought a bunch of parts to make two 100W 20-inch C-R boxes. They work out at about £60 each. They should be able to filter pretty big rooms, so I'm thinking of providing one for the "main room" at the squat, and maybe another for the reception. In future I can look at smaller boxes (maybe using 8" or 12" fans instead of 20") which might be cheaper, for the smaller rooms. And hopefully I'll get them back if / when the squat folds, which means I'll have them on hand to provide to other spaces.

It's not exactly world changing, but it seems that making small corners safer for my fellow queers might be something I can actually contribute, and I'm pretty excited about that.

This weekend just gone was pretty quiet. We had a few plans but just didn't get round to them due to a lack of energy all round.

I did take cosmolinguist to the gym on Saturday morning, but I couldn't go myself as the session was fully booked. Turns out that only about 6 people showed up so I totally could have gone. I'll bear that in mind for future sessions.

I had slept really badly so I crashed out when I got home. We ended up missing the last day of the David Hockney exhibition at Factory International. On Sunday, E wasn't feeling up to going to Sparkle Sanctuary and V didn't want to go on their own.

The trouble with weekends like that is that they don't feel like much of a break when you're back at work on Monday. And we don't even have any plans for the next one. I worry that this is a reinforcing cycle where we're too tired to do anything so we don't feel like we've had a break and end up more tired...

Back in April I went to a friend's birthday picnic, and some of the other people were wearing Solovair boots. They're basically old-school Doc Martens, nothing fancy. But unlike Doc Martens, they actually come in my size. Occasionally. I could have bought some 11-hole boots back then, but I decided to hold out for 14-hole which were out of stock. I signed up to be informed when they came back in, and got an email just before Christmas.

Obviously with everything else going on, it took me a while to notice the email. But once I did I rushed to the online shop and bought them. I have been a good boy and deserve a treat! They arrived today and they look great! Since this photo I've done a bit more work to tension the laces properly. They have side zips so I don't have to unlace them every time to take them off.

And yes it hasn't escaped my attention that there are certain clubs full of gentlemen who would really appreciate these boots. Nor the risk of being mistaken for a neo-Nazi TBH, but I'll be extra queer and camp to mitigate that.

( Pet Death )

Alabama 3 at the Ritz in Manchester tonight was an excellent gig. A little bit under-rehearsed in places perhaps, but the band were on strong form with a more country-rock oriented take on their back catalogue of sweet, pretty, acid house country music. Sadly bright_helpings couldn't make it, but I met up with a dear old friend from my Oxford days a quarter century ago.

First up as support, we had Sonny Eriksson performing his "cyberbilly" - a mixture of electronica and psychobilly. It sounded a bit like Lux Interior fronting KMDFM, with heavy use of samples. The specific use of samples for crowd interaction reminded me of Public Service Broadcasting too. Weirdest revelation of the night is that Sonny E. is a pseudonym of the artist also known as Adamski. Yes, that Adamski.

With the unfortunate passing of the Very Reverend D. Wayne Love in 2019, it's kind of weird to go to a gig which is a retrospective of their first two albums without one of the singers on stage (though his recorded voice did lead us during Hypo Full Of Love among other songs). What we got instead was a more stripped down version of the songs, with a country rock edge courtesy of female vocalist Devlin Love.

It didn't sound like the albums, and it didn't sound like the last time I saw them, shortly after D. Wayne's death, when they had adopted a more gospel-focused sound. But the power of the music shone through, particularly on "Peace in the Valley", a gloriously minimal "The Thrills Have Gone", and personal favourite "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlife". They bravely knocked out their most famous song, "Woke Up This Morning", early in the set to leave the audience wondering what would come next.

Larry Love's banter was on good form, asking us to petition Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham for an "acid house country" category in the Country Music Awards, and dedicating "The Old Purple Tin" to the Spice addicts of Manchester. Apparently the song is named for the purple cans of Tennent's Super lager. They ended that number with a musical segue into Prince's "Purple Rain" which was good fun.

I moved a lot during the gig, shouting through my FFP2 mask, singing along and waving my hands in the air. I left the venue feeling in some way refreshed and restored. In the words of "Ain't Goin' to Goa", my consciousness expanded by singing at the local tabernacle.

They're playing Bristol on 13th December and London on the 14th, catch them (and their support!) if you can.

The local Queer Club had their Halloween party last night. They meet in an old library - it's a big room, and they have an air filter, so it's relatively low risk activity. I've been once or twice before and had a nice time - there's usually enough structure that it doesn't feel awkward. The Queer Club had a "costumes optional but welcome" thing on their party flier, and I've not dressed up for Halloween since I was at Uni. I always end up over-thinking it and not managing to do something that lives up to my expectations, or to get around to organising things. I've been planning to do a really good Hellboy cosplay for about 20 years now...

So I thought about doing something deliberately low-key and mediocre - getting one of the boxes out of the loft from when we moved house, and making a robot costume out of it. This is a proper five year old kid level of costume, so I picked up some cheap poster paints from B&M for decoration. I happened to crack open a large cardboard box full of Diet Coke cans, which I could repurpose as a helmet. As it happens, work was too busy (or rather, I slacked too much earlier in the week) to even decorate as minimally as I had planned and I ended up largely scribbling with a few markers. Also, I got down two boxes in case I messed one up, and cosmolinguist claimed the other for his own robot outfit. He put more effort into decoration than me, as I was focussed on putting enough sellotape on the cardboard shoulder "straps" to make sure the outfits didn't collapse around us.

About half the people at Queer Club had dressed up, mostly as various characters from film etc. One of the club hosts was dressed up as Section 28, having literally printed out the relevant legislative clause in really big text on a A1-sized board around his neck. Our robot costumes were well received, and I added "beep/boop" to the pronouns on our name stickers. About halfway through the evening I took the costume off, because I couldn't sit down and I was getting too hot. We mingled and chatted and snacked.

Just as we were about to leave, the organisers called for a group photo so we put our costumes back on for that... then they reminded us that the flier had also talked about a prize for best costume, and E won for his better-decorated robot! All in all, it was a good evening. I felt good about the costumes - about having actually done something, however imperfectly.

Since the start of the pandemic I have been to very few gigs. Gigs last for several hours, in poorly-ventilated venues, and it's simply not worth the risk most of the time. But the balance with my mental health is precarious, particularly with the dark nights drawing in, and some of my very favorite bands are playing gigs this autumn.

I had failed to get tickets to see Godspeed You! Black Emperor at the Ritz before they sold out. But on the evening of the gig, about an hour before the doors opened, a friend mentioned on Facebook that she had a spare ticket. Which was fine but I didn't really want to go without cosmolinguist. Usually one ticket would be enough for this - I can often be his PA for the gig and get in for free myself, but this needs prior discussion with the venue (and isn't really cheating; I don't think he'd go to gigs without my help). But one of her friends said he also had a spare ticket! So we made the appropriate requests and jumped on a bus. After food and a pint we got into the venue on just one ticket - they looked at E's white cane and him taking my arm, and just waved us through! I wouldn't want to count on that though.

Inside, the CO2 numbers were predictably horrible, but my new AusAir mask is comfortable for longer durations. We ended up sat at the side on the balcony, with no view of the stage but it didn't matter too much. The support act whose name I didn't catch started slowly and quietly, just an acoustic guitar and a lot of effects pedals. The crowd was talking loud enough to impact the music, and I was worried this would end up like the time I saw GYBE at the Manchester Academy, where hipsters chatting and filming on their smartphones rather spoiled things for me. Fortunately the artist seemed to pick up on this as well, and got louder, bleeding into the resonant frequency of the building in a way that made my trousers vibrate. It was fairly experimental at times, pushing at the envelope of what can be considered music, in a way that I enjoyed.

Then Godspeed You! Black Emperor came on, and I spent two hours blissing out. For all I hadn't wanted to go without E, we mostly sat next to each other in silence, often with eyes closed, barely touching and just vibing with the music. I found myself moving at times, almost involuntarily, and trying to follow patterns within the music. It was beautiful. The claustrophobia of wearing a mask throughout the gig wasn't great, but it was definitely worth it. I wasn't moved as much as the Academy gig, and I doubt any performance of theirs will match up for me to seeing them in Birmingham, blissed out on the wooden floor of the Q Club, leaning into a dear friend. However, I felt a kind of peace by the end of the performance, and I'm very glad I went.

Afterwards we went back to the Thirsty Scholar with our friend who'd originally posted about the spare ticket, buying her a Red Bull as a thank-you. She gave us a lift home and stopped in briefly to pet Gary, but it was around midnight at that point and we were all knackered.