Poor Man About Town

Great News! You will now be able to babble inanely into your mobile while travelling on the tube. Transport for London has seen fit to allow mobile networks to install this facility on tube stations and in the tube tunnels later on.

Time was, you could take a bus or train, read a book, look out of the window or have a conversation with your friend or companion without some idiot butting in saying "I'm on the train...be reaching Ruislip in 10 minutes...oh stick it in the microwave..." Sometimes, you'd get to hear some quite intimate details of the caller's life - you can't but help eavesdrop - I think that this is intrusive and damn right rude to the inadvertent listeners.

What really makes me laugh is that Orange dole out a book prize every year. This has to be the biggest load of commercial crap in the UK. A mobile phone company encouraging people to read? They're having a laugh. Many people like to relax by reading a book to and from work; yet they have to the intrusions of the users of mobile phones. It's really frustrating trying to read Anna Karenin while hearing some idiot talk to his wife about how the builders have let them down yet again, the bugger can't wait to get home and discuss it, he has to fucking talk about it while in transit, and there's fucking Orange doling out prizes for books. Oh, Fuck Off!

I note that Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has been made by Disney - so the entire concept has been corrupted by love interest and something for the kiddies. They have messed around Zaphod Beeblebrox - gave him two faces instead of two heads. Although I have not seen the film, I smell turkey roasting, mark my words it will be on the telly in two years time. Don't get me wrong, Hollywood can make some very good films - Meet the Parents and Meet the Fokkers are good examples of this, but when it starts plundering the past, other films and concepts it just falls flat on its face. The Ladykillers is a good example of this. How can Tom Hanks be compared to the acting genius that is Alec Guinness?

Grolly God came in around 9.00pm last night - the usual ritual of clearing his throat and nasal passages in the toilet which is next door to my room. Either this guy does an awful lot of coke or he is doing this to get on my nerves. 1.30a, he wakes me up by loudly going to the bog. Bastard.

Near to where I work, there is an alley way; the entrance of which has become a dumping ground for all and sundry; the rubbish varied - old furniture, putrefying food, clothing, newspapers, tv sets anything that can either go in the bin or in a recycling dump finds it way there. The site is reminiscent of the "Winter of Discontent" al a Thatcher, only thing that is missing is a discarded corpse. One has to complain to the council fairly robustly for them to come and collect this vast collection of detritus - declaring it a health hazard will not do, you have to tell them it's bio-hazard for them to send a truck around two weeks later with a gang of very brave men to come and collect the pool of life that has formed there.

We have to learn to get used to these things otherwise the Mayor of London will become even more sick and tired of such criticisms. Today, however, took the biscuit; among the usual rubbish was a massive turd! It was fucking huge! It was the size of a rat. Now, this thing could not have been created in the digestive system of a dog, not even a Great Dane could have achieved such a magnitude. No, it had to be human. The creator of this object must have stored it up for around a fortnight for it be this size. The size of it was so remarkable that it caused my colleagues to comment on it.

I was in Central London today, I left the car behind and travelled by bus. This can be not so much an ordeal but a rite of passage on a daily basis - the tubes and buses can get so incredibly crowded that Transport for London must flout every single Health and Safety Law that's going. Not only can you be injured but you stand the risk of catching some horrible, and possibly tropical, disease by having to stand face to face, back to back and shoulder to shoulder with people. There is no personal space whatsoever. Ken Livingstone promises us an excellent transport system funded by the congestion charge, yet TFL congestion charged commuters by hiking up fares by 20% earlier this year for the privelage of learning to be a battery hen - is Ken Livingstone trying to emulate Heinrich Himmler or what? (any irony here is purely unintended, ahem).

My return jouney was relatively better. A group of rather loud schoolgirls on the bus and went upstairs, the noise coming down was akin to a battery farm. Eventually they got off the bus rather hurriedly but left in their wake a smell of one of the choicest farts that I have not encountered since my early teens. The buggers had let off a stink bomb. I found it quite funny and could not help but having a smirk on my face. People started to look at me as if I were the culprit and I found this even more funny. One woman was even holding her nose and others were looking quite disgusted.

I thought that this was quite innocent fun and why can't most kids be like this nowadays. These girls had a laugh, they did not hurt anyone or rip anyone off; they were getting up to the mischief in which I used to indulge.

Lonely Planet Tour Guide criticises London for being dirty. I am realised that it has taken so long for the litter to drop. London is filthy! There are mountains of litter and smells of piss in doorways, telephone boxes and public stairwells. Yet we have a mayor in London, is he doing anything about it? Nope! His response is that he is sick and tired of London being called the 'dirty man of Europe'. Expressing exasperation at such a criticism is a great strategy to deal with the litter, piss and filth that plagues the city. You go to Paris, the street are hosed down in the mornings, there are people beavering away keeping the streets clean throughout the day with "Properte de Paris" emblazoned on their uniforms and livery. No such thing here. Paris also has pissoirs and public toilets. It also has a great public transport system, where the metro and buses don't seem to be run by people who are dab hands at battery farming. Yet, there are some bozos out there who sincerely believe that London should be awarded the Olympics! They're having a laugh.

Somebody wants to have his snout firmly in the pig trough known as London, it seems that the Southbank Centre wants to hike up the rent from around 60k to 2m a year.

Although I think that the London Eye is a bit of an eyesore, it is the nearest London has to the Eifell Tower. It may lack the elegance and the design principles of the Eifell Tower, but it carries out the same function, giving people a decent view of London. This is under threat by the proposed hike in rent.

I can't help thinking that greed is the only motivation behind it. The South Bank Centre clearly wants a large piece of the business action.

Because of the noctural activities around the house of some our Albanian guests, I have invested in a pair of ear plugs. They can be quite effective, but I wake around four in the morning with a searing stereophonic pain throughout my head. Sometimes, I take them out during my sleep and lose either in the bed or around. Why can't they make earphones that don't cause pain?

Found a programme on BBC's listen again on Alan Moore, the famous comic book writer. It was a really interesting programme - he comes from Northampton, he sounds relaxed and laid-back. Recounts when he asked his mum to make him a costume with a cape; said costume came with wellington boots. Friends recognised him. He felt perplexed because there is nothing to conceal Clark Kent's identity other than glasses and his distinguishing feature was that he and Clark are the people in town with blue hair!

He spoke of his creation V for Vendetta, pointed out that many British heroes are socios and that "we love a love a gallant rogue and that we also love a gallant, psychotic travesty of a human being".

He got Swamp Thing by virtue of the fact that he had won some obscure British award. Swamp Thing was at all time low and he described him as "Hamlet covered in snot", he found much scope in "this big animate manure pod". Used him to describe "perhaps, if they (the USA) did not generally have so many hand guns, it would be a nice to place to live and they went beserk (US audiences when Moore went on tour)"

Batman: motivation for superheroes "...there aren't any really sensible motivations for dressing as a bat...your parents get killed in front of your eyes that's tough...no one is saying that's difficult and that's traumatic but a bat!"

On Hollywood and its treatment of his work, Lawsuit suggesting that there was plagarising on "The League of Extraordinary Gentleman", it was alleged that the plot was actually the work of some Hollywood scriptwriter. Moore became quite annoyed that he did not want anything to do with film work. He overeacted "no more Hollywood" and that if they do want to do something with his work, he wants his name taken from the work and that the money be given to his team. This is where Moore disowns Constantine and Watchmen in terms of his name been attached to any film made in Holllywood.

I guess you will have to watch those films at your peril.

I noticed this ad in a shop window "Sales Consultant Requred - Apply Within", what happened to good old 'shop assistant'; 'sales staff' etc. Working in a shop can be badly paid, employers do not want to change that version of reality; so what do they do? They change the language, give the job some status but not much in the way of financial incentive to reflect this. Shop staff work extremely harm and sometimes have to put up with an awful lot of crap from irate customers, most move into better paid jobs with better status; I should know I was one of them.

The weasling of the English Language can be found in the lingo and jargon of the real estate industry. Take a look at these word:

• Stunning new apartments
• Exciting development

Now would you like to go home after a hard day at work to a Stunning New Apartment, no, you want to relax, have your tea, pour yourself a drink and flop out in front of the telly. You don't want to be stunned by the place in which you live, you want to relax.

Exciting developments usually occur close to railway lines, social housing estates, motorways. Yep, I guess you can expect a little excitement in such developments. It happened to me when I moved out of London into an Exciting Development.

Then we have further weasling around with the language, I read in today's Observer:

Crime czar: stop calling children 'yobs'

Somebody needs to tell this guy that no-one calls children yobs, people call yob children yobs. There he is in a well-paid job hoping that changing the language will make the problem go away. He ought to go and live on an Exciting New Development close to a social housing estate and see whether his view will change. I read in yesterday's Guardian about how youths are terrorising an entire district of Manchester and where "grown men" are frightened to confront the problem because they feel they may have their house "bricked".

Yet in today's Observer we have this. Is this guy a bozo or what?

What went wrong was this -

Prior to the advent of Thatcherism, numerous juvenile delinquents were looked after by the state in Approved Schools or Community Homes - the purpose of their existence was to house, socialise and educate the more deprived and criminal elements of the community. Children who came from what was termed broken homes. There was recognition of the social and psychological causes for their behaviour. They were housed in large houses with massive grounds, it was like a holiday camp - this was designed to give these kids a sense of space. For their communities they had the respite of not having to put up with their horrible behavious, indeed this was confronted within the confines of the school. I guess it was a form of exile, but better than the penal system in that they were not deprived of their freedom, got well fed and asylum from really horrible homes. Having said that, the more extreme delinquents were either placed in Borstal Training or Detention Centre. Remember that you could walk down the street in the 60's and 70's relatively unmolested.

The Thatcher administration did not agree with this approach, ideologically it was namby-pamby, economically a waste of money. There was a wholesale shutdown of these homes. The Thatcher Administration replaced these places with the Short, Sharp, Shock - The Administration discovered that the juvenile crime wave was escalating and the Detention Centres were proving far too costly. It shut down the Detention Centres and addressed juvenile crime with Criminal Justice Teams whose existence was to look at ways and means of keeping kids out of prison (far too costly - remember, this was a time when moneterism called the shots). Options for sentencing were probation, community service, attendance centre, fines, conditional discharge, anything apart from custodial (this was reserved for more serious crimes such as murder and robbery of your local Abbey National).

Well, you can imagine - there was a period of economic downturn, younger people were leaving home and had children to get council housing - these are the children with which we are having to deal. Numerous communities are having to shoulder this burden, the quality of their life is being affected.

Now some overpaid Czar tell us not to call such children yobs!. Stop trying to shape the world by language - the only way you can shape it is by spending some money, open up some community homes for these children, give them the chances they need and hopefully turn them into contributors to their communities rather than their destroyers.

Eurovision song contest, I am forced to watched it because B has taken over control of the TV. Gosh it is shit!. There is nowhere else to sit and read a book apart from in the lounge; reading requires concentration and having the Eurovision blaring in your ear is not conducive to reading. Anyway, this is entertainment to which I have become accustomed. It has always been trashy and competitive and I always end up supporting one act. The German Act was not too bad, they were rather rocky, gutsy and vibrant. There must have been a dozen entries with the lingua franca chorus of "la la la laaaaa, la, la, la, laaaaa, la laaa..." The Greeks won the prize with the usual pappy entry, complete crap. Not only that, the Greeks voted 10 for the Albanian entry!. Did not vote anything for Turkey even though Turkey gave them mucho points.

The declaration of points was ruined by B switching channels to Celebrity Love Island, now this is televisual shit par trashiness, the programme consisted of watching non-entities who have become celebrities for one reason or another babbling about their lives. I think that the objective of the show is for someone to end up in bed with someone else, apparently there is prize money. Sandi Toskvig on her LBC radio show, on Friday, pointed out that this was prostitution because people would be actually selling sex for (prize) money! How trashy can you get?

Interesting point is that a social housing estate has just been built in the area. No prizes for guessing what I am going to write next. Yep, the estate has a generous supply of delinquent youths, all complete with baseball caps and hoods. I was in Sainsbury’s and there were three children around the age of twelve, one was a girl wearing tracksuit emblazoned on her backside was the word ANGEL – she was hardly angelic, she remonstrated with her male peers for been “too fahcking scared” to nick “ennyfink”. I noted that the oldest member of this motley crew was wearing baggy denim jeans with the crotch down to the knees, the denim was tastefully offset with the back pockets in Burberry design.

And here is one of life's rich ironies:-

On the way back to C’s flat, I noted this wee brat, approx aged ten, been dragged along by a staff member of the local Chinese takeaway, “fahcking leggo of me…fahcking leggo of me…”, the wee brat obviously guilty of some crime against the establishment was taken back, by force by fierce looking Chinese employee, saying “get in the shop kid” – it was like watching a kung-fu movie where the hero, as part of his training, has take on some unruly monkey. I guessed that he broke numerous laws: common assault, child abuse, blah, blah…but what the heck, China possesses a surviving civilisation as old as the Ancient Egyptians; a little bit of Confucionism never did anybody any harm.

I did note that the normally well-maintained path to C's flat was adorned with two empty fried chicken boxes - there are dozens of waste paper bins in the area!

C lives in a fairly well heeled area in North West London. There are private flats with nosy neighbours who will make you aware of parking violations on their turf. There is one neighbour, who is a vigilant busybody, she looks buzzard like, has beady eyes with a hook nose. She is perched on her balcony and will demand to know from visitors whom they are and whom they are visiting. Apparently, she is quite vociferous at Residents’ meetings and will demand that the dustbins are cleaned on a regular basis and that more “no parking” signs are put up. I have baptised her Mrs Buzzard.

While driving to see C, there was a programme on Jean Paul Satre this morning, it was quite interesting. I have never read Satre, but am familiar with his work by a serialisation on BBC2 in 1970 – The Road to Freedom. My pubescent curiosity made me tune into such programmes when my parents were out. To my surprise, I was only thirteen at the time, I got interested in the story. The programme was repeated in 1977/8 and I was able to watch it in more detail. Sartre lived and worked in a hotel on Rive Gauche, interesting to note that he used to smoke and that his café of choice has now banned smoking; photos of him have his cigarette airbrushed out. There was a recording of him speaking about liberation and freedom – I must say that his diction was beautiful, each word spoke in clear crisp French. I must start to read The Road to Freedom trilogy.

Blunkett is back in the Government. This guy was a self-proclaimed big socialist, used to fly red flags from Sheffield Town Hall. Now he is and back in charge of the DSS. Blair is out to chop benefits and what he needs somebody quite vicious to do it. Blair, it seems, makes the sound bite that he must learn from the British People and their voting this time around. Like fuck he has, it’s only going to be more of the same but worse.

It’s nearly summer time and the Burgers of London have plans afoot to turn the city into a theme that will rival Disneyland, Paris. Central London ground to a halt today, they decided to close off the Strand for some reason. There are a number of crucial things missing in London – public bogs and a decent transportation. The plan was for us to go to London Bridge and check what is on at Shakespeare’s Globe.

Borough Market, to all intents and purposes, is a shopping mall that sells food au natural a la prix grands! People buy into this crap because the high street has disappeared due to huge supermarkets taking over the retail industry and muscling out the smaller shops. What we have in Borough Market are these ponsified shops selling ye traditional fayre at prices that are way out of any ordinary budget, what is actually being flogged is the the life style of sterilised rusticity, ruralism without the smell of pigshit wafting in through the windows. Bollocks!

The walk along the Thames is getting so bad that the paving is becoming uneven and hazardous due to so many visitors. We have the ponsified wine mart of vinopolis, on the opposite wall was scrawled graffiti with guys in suits running amok, the written explanation read “Cheque book vandalism”. This shit is happening throughout London. Places are brought up and the community bought out. This is the suburbanisation of London.

Further along – Tate Modern, in the forecourt of said building was a trail of horse manure, it said it all. Modern art has its place, but Tate Modern is popular destination; its ethos making art accessible to the plebs. It takes the sting out of its tail somewhat and it gives a home to conceptual art.

There were two guys busking under a bridge, the music was crap – one guy was singing some mournful cold play song while accompanying himself with a guitar and his friend accompanied him on the cello. Coldplay is fucking dreadful music, Moanpop – the odd thing about this kind of shit is that these guys make money from making shit.

Some performance art further down, drunk on a low-level wall falls into the bushes behind, I do not know how he managed it, it seems that his intention was to lie on the wall but this went wrong, he miraculously fell on his back and even more miraculously, his bottle of beer was still pointing upwards, it seems that years of practice have perfected a gyroscopic control of alcohol in this man’s grasp. More ponsey shops and restaurants – the National Theatre, oddly empty, which was a bit of a relief. The National Film Theatre appears to be showing nothing but crap for the next couple of months.

Royal Festival Hall. The Hungerford Bridge. Trafalgar Square, London attracts the tourists with Morris Dancers, for some reason it appeared to be contrived and part of London’s development to become a theme park. Only thing is that you will not be greeted by Mickey Mouse but a Morris Dancer!

Heard the German Ambassador on the radio give an impassioned view of how the British treat the Germans. Made some good points. Britain has done nothing to encourage links between the nations. It reinforces the culture of Hitler “Ask an English person to name a famous German and he would reply Hitler”. He pointed out, quite rightly, that Hitler was an unfortunate part of Germany’s past, things have changed since then. Come to think of it, Britain has an unfortunate history in the slave trade. Speaking of Germany, I was taken by a passage in Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin:

There are now good many summer visitors to the village. The bathing beach by the pier, with its array of banners, begins to look like a medieval camp. Each family has its own enormous hooded wicker beach-chair, and each chair flies a little flag. There are the German city flags – Hamburg, Hanover, Dresden, Rostock and Berlin, as well as the National, Republican and Nazi colours. Each chair is encircled by a low sand bulwark which upon have set incriptions to fir cones: Walderruh, Familie Walter, Stahlhelm. Heil Hitler! Many of the forts are also decorated with the Nazi swastika. The other morning I saw a child of about five years old, stark naked, marching along all by himself with a swastika flag over his shoulder singing “Deutschland uber alles”.

Zoomed home this evening, zoomed up so much that I triggered a speed camera – flash, flash – moi? Oui, toi! I think that I was doing 39, hope it is the old fashioned one, but I doubt it. This stretch of road is normally blocked with traffic in the early evening but not tonight.

Meanwhile in the Albanian Embassy – Fuck Bros seems to have left his aura. I am wondering whether he has shacked up in Grolly God’s room. I’m not sure if the cunt has completely left. Heard some noises come out of Grolly God’s room in the early hours. Heard some git get up to go for a piss and was humming away quite merrily at 3.00am this morning (shithead). Good news is that I don’t hear any of Fuck Bros’ horrible pop music imported from that region, what really got on my tits was the (c)rap music.

I looked at the state of the cooker tonight. It was covered in grease, the adjacent area was likewise. This is Fuck Bros’ handy work, every night the smell of grease would flood the entire house. The bugger must live on a live on a kilo of it every day.

Going to the shops can be a bit of a pain on a Sunday, everybody else goes. Masses of newspapers under their arms, only to be taken home and divested of the business, money, property, crap, crap, crap, crap, supplements. The task is made worse by the paper being mummified in polythene cases. Designed to stop people nicking the free CD or DVD. What we have, however, is the vast contribution that the press makes to the mounting yet to be realised ecological nightmare. It’s making me very sick.

The headlines in the press say that the Blair’s mp are not very happy with him. It seems that, according to the press, the knives are out. This is what happened with Thatcher.

I was in Sainsbury’s, the queue (“line” if you are Amerikana-English minded) was long with people carrying these vast encyclopaedia sized daily newspapers, thought “fuck it”, I’m going to the newsagent. Newsagent was open. Joined the queue (line). There was this woman with a Polish accent at the head of the queue. Quibbling over the paper delivery “should be this price, not the price you say”. Indian newsagent says that Polish woman had ordered an extra magazine. She gives in after much quibbling. Then she has a large envelope. Asks newsagent “do you sell stamps”, he does; she wants sixty two p’s worth of stamps. Newsagent says that he only sells in 10p units, she will have to go to the Post Office if she wants stamps in lower denominations. More quibbles. At the end of this bullshit, she asks whether she can pay for all these goods with a cheque!.

Tube, further into London, more Eastern Europeans board the train. Fucking hell, the place is flooding out with these ponses. The French are voting “Non” against the European constitution. Doubt if this country will do so; Eastern Europe is a source of cheap skilled labour.
Returned to bedsit. The Fuck Brothers have left their room, but the cunt still seems to be around. His crockery is still around and the heavy fat in which he cooks still permeates the atmosphere. My guess is that he is staying in Grolly God’s room. Fucking bastard.

I am North West London today. Not much going on; went to a big Cash and Carry place open to the public. The most surprising thing about this place and large supermarkets is that many people who go there do not have any vestige of good manners or civilisation. They just barge around with their trollies acquiring and gathering and not paying any mind to those around them. They barge with the trolley with expectation that you get out of the fucking way. It’s not a place where one can easily. You can get cheap pizza, hot-dogs, coffee etc in the canteen and the surroundings are very industrial.

Car Park at work – there is this catalogue delivery company based here. Various bods come and collect items to deliver to various houses in the area. I get the feeling that a good few of these people are doing the double with the DSS. Anyway, there was this guy who was collecting from the firm. His car radio was on loud and there was this plinkety-plonkety music been played on it. It was sort of sickly sugary music. Now, here’s the clincher, the lyrics – they consisted of one word “baby”. This woman was singing “baby, baby, baby, baby…baby, baby, baby, baby…” this was real cak music. The only thing is that some bozo was seen to play this shit on his radio.

Woke up, Blair was re-elected; although the majority was considerably reduced, it is still workable to around sixty seats and he still has carte blanche to completely kill off the last vestiges of socialism and the welfare state in this country. The good news is that Oona King, fashion victim and Blair toady, has been unseated by George Galloway. It was originally a safe labour seat, but Galloway knew that its vulnerabilities and took advantage of them. The biggest vulnerability was Oona King herself, not very vocal in the House and very toady with it. Diane Abbott, for all her faults, could have certainly held her own in this seat; King just does not have the charisma or the power to stand up to George Galloway.

Speaking of Albanians, the Fuck Brothers appears to be still a guest of Her Majesty. The plug outside his room remains disconnected and the window to his room remains open. One disconcerting point is that there was that there was this unmistakeable smell of his cheap cooking fat permeating the house tonight. I also heard this Albanian singing and the door slamming. I wonder if the Fuck Brothers has been released from prison. Maybe it’s Grolly God, but I’m not sure. Oh fuck, such people make my life insufferable.

I was driving my way home. I noticed this group of mainly hooded adolescents on bikes cycling on the pavement opposite, there were around fifteen in all. Fuck me! These little shits were up to no good. I noted that they appeared to gang around the station, possibly to cross the road. They hardly looked innocent and some of their crew looked Albanian. Fuck, what is the world coming to? My hackles were well and truly raised.

5th May 2005

It’s election day! Blair has been zooming around the country getting increasingly tanned and attempting to look convincing and honourable. Likewise for Howard and Kennedy. Oh fuck! The triumvarate of power dominates. I was in a bit of a crisis as for whom I should vote. I thought “fuck it, give some minority party some support”. There was not much choice on the ballot paper – apart from Lab, Lib and Con, there were Christian Alliance (oh fuck off!), UKIP (let’s face it our future lies in Europe and the Europeans, get fucking real), and a far right candidate (if you want a shaved head rabble to rule the country, then vote for these gorillas) and the Greens. I voted Green.

The really laughable thing about the campaign in my area has been the New Labour Party blurb that they sent around. This is a proclamation of their political bankruptcy:

The Lib Dem are soft on crime. They failed to support the introduction of
anti-social behaviour orders and opppoesed fixed penalty notices for drunken
louts. They also want to end all jail sentences for drug possession and believe
teen criminals should never end up in court. How can they expect hard working
families to vote for them when they are constantly soft on crime…

I really like the last this statement, it’s as if New Labour has stolen Tory Party Literature on the Labour Party and made it their own vis-à-vis the Liberal democrats. Wankers!