Poor Man About Town

We are living in a time when economics and the market have become the driving forces behind how we live and how are culture is defined. A good example of this is around accommodation or dwelling. Property developers and many companies who flog or rent properties no longer use the words home, flat, house, dwelling - they now use the word "development", "luxury apartments", "property", "investment" etc. It's as if these bastards are doing a splendid job in alienating people - being without a decent home. A really good example of alienation. House and home no longer exist. When more well-off people buy a house, they no longer buy a house they buy into greed - buy to let, buy to exploit. We shall have to wait and see how this very nasty development will pan out on the social and cultural landscape.

On an indirectly related note, I went past a Foxton's Estate Agent today. I thought it was a coffee bar - coffee and ice cold soft-drinks available to customers. The decor looked like a fucking multi-coloured nightmare - furniture in cardinal colours - all brightly lit with neon - you would need a welder's mask to walk into the place. The place looked as if it suffered too much interior design - panache and style were conspicuous by their absence. The employees appeared to be twelve year olds in suits. My suspicions were confirmed - Foxton's exist solely to encourage people to flog their property through other better established estate agents.

Labels: culture, Economics, Estate Agents, Greedy Property Developers, property, Society

It seems that the Jeremy Kyle (Vyle) show has started to court controversy. This show appears to select some very messed up people who seemed to have been seduced into believing that the airing of their dirty washingis of great therapeutic value. Jeremy Kyle and his production retinue appear to me like 21st Century Snake Oil Salesman who will help messed up people to face up to being cuckolded; helping people and their families coming to terms with their homosexuality, frigidity, gambling,alcoholism, substance abuse, violence, rape and the entire menu of ills that plagues the lumpen proletariat.

By stark contrast, we have the middle classes portrayed as stable, mainly heterosexual, living in nice houses and having dinner parties or having friends around for supper. No sign of dysfunction anywhere. Everything clinical and spotless. No family psychodramas; no fights; no noise apart from the clinking of wine glasses.

I watched this dreadful programme on some woman who wanted a house makeover and she was angst-ridden about access to her backyard (the commentary actually said "patio" but it looked like a backyard to me). We were regaled with door fittings, floors, decking and loveliness. The woman was shown into one house where the owners had a specially commissioned modern art painting to hang in their kitchen. It was a framed rectangular brown mass - bullshit?. Costs to convert her property were quoted in thousands, it was bollocks - who the fuck can afford that kind of money.

When you compare the middle class with the people who appear on the Jeremy Kyle Show, the middle class must lead incredibly boring and shallow lives!

I thought about the audience of this silly programme - the unemployed, the lumpen proletariat, women imprisoned by family life and people who have nothing better to do with their lives.

Labels: bullshit, daytime, Lifestyle, lumpen proletariat, middle class, Television

Hazel launched into a tirade against Boris Johnston at the New Labour Conference struck me as a "don't look at me...look at Boris" kind of speech. The woman is to New Labour what Boris is to the Tories; furthermore, Ms Blears does bear a striking resemblance to Ronald MacDonald

"

Labels: New Labour, the Labour Leadership

On a recent visit to Germany, I discovered the supermarkets do not give out plastic bags, you have to bring your own or buy a long-life one available at the check out. The litter bins are compartmentalised for cans, paper etc. The streets in Berlin are quite clean apart from the highly available dogshit, where the generous dog owners will donate their dog turds to the immediate community.

Although we have litter bins and recycling bins, relatively few people seem to take part of the service. Not so much dogshit around, but plenty of litter. I have come across quite a few M & S Bags - I get really pissed off with M & S and the market it targets.

So here is antidote that I found on Youtube

Hope you will enjoy

I know bullshit when I see it, I know bullshit when I have to pay for it. Because I pay council tax and have an Oyster Card, Transport for London publish this magazine at the expense of those who pay council tax and its passengers. Not only that, they shell out a horrendous amount of money on postage to send me its fucking rag "London Loop". What you get is this glossy extolling how wonderful London's transport is and the splendid job that Transport for London is doing to meet its passengers' needs. Propaganda! at our expense.

The magazine is like circus programme - full of face painting extravaganzas, unicyle, clowns etc. You just get the feel the feeling that your commodified and corporate leftist Ken Livingstone has complete editorial control over it - a mini-Murdoch

"Splash out on some 'Black Gold' without guilt - Caviar House and Prunier (What the fuck is a prunier?), sells farmed caviar saving the sturgeon from extinction"

The mag advertises gives write ups on restaurants where admission is only permissable on presentation of a bank statement indicating that you have £2 million quid in your current account otherwise fuck off.

Here is a splendid example of commidified and corporate leftism al a Livingstone - the magazine suggests a visit to the Marx Memorial Library - I don't know who funds this - is it a theme park?

Then we have the fucking "Day of the Bicycles" London goes traffic free - in order to allow cyclists to zoom down the road and mount the pavement and intimidate pedestrians.

Article on Marylebone, oh fuck - as if you could really afford to live there.

Then we have Borough Market - oh fuck off - what you get are these stalls owned by rich middle class people who import extra virgin olive oil from little village in Sicily at 1p a litre and flog 10 000 times that amount. What you are getting here is just another shopping mall that merely flogs images and gastronomic fashion accessories - exotic knick-knacks for display in the kitchen when people come to a dinner party or supper - "...that is a Patagonian bull penis salami, we bought when we were in Buenos Aires..." - not so much keeping up with the Jones's but grinding them into the dust. Borough Market just sells middle class style weaponry.

I get to the end of the rag and despair that my money, my council tax and my fares are spent on producing and posting out this shit.

You go to Paris - superb public transport - nice buses, nice metro

You go to Berlin - superb public transport - nice buses, nice U-bahn

You come to London - and you have a transport system that would not be fit for battery hens and a management that could not even run a kiddies' merry-go-round. Yet, we get this expensive glossy magazine mailed to us at expensive postage to tell us an awful lot of bullshit. Why?

Labels: bullshit, London, transport, transport for london

A few months ago, some man representing the TV Licensing Authority came to my door. He said that if I had a television, I needed a tv licence to watch it. I admitted to having a television and he gave me the chance of buying the television which I duly did - I got a card where I go to the newsagent and pay £5.50 in instalments each week. Ever since I have started to pay for the television, I have made an important discovery - I am paying for crap. I am paying for twelve year olds who present television programmes but do not have enough intelligence to dig holes and fill them again. Let's look at what I am paying for:

BBC1 - shit - complete shit - unwatchable - despite its pedigree of being the first tv channel in this country - it cannot even come up to the poor standards of Channel 5. As for its news coverage - Mickey Mouse and Goofy may as well be presenting the news.

BBC2 - Promising start and evolution then turned to the contents of a blocked toilet in order to ape Channel 4's trashy output.

BBC3 - Who the fuck watches this channel. I don't think twelve year olds watch this.

BBC4 - Excellent, Excellent, Excellent - worth every penny of my licence fee.

Radio 1 - well the yoof listen to it.

Radio 2 - good programmes, I really like Johnny Walker.

Radio 3 - great programmes, good classical output, good source of musical education.

Radio 4 - can't imagine life without it, if it were compulsory to have a radio receiver licemce, I'd cough up.

BBC on the internet - lifw`would be quite horrible without listen again.


The biggest irony is that most of the licence fee goes on the things I hate about the BBC - BBC1, BBC2 and BBC3. The problem is that the BBC makes me feel that I am in a minority about the things I like about it. It is as if the BBC alludes that its output must appeal to the 'wider audience'. Oh, fuck off!

Labels: BBC, BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, Radio, Radio 3, Radio 4, Television

Being quite skint at the moment, I have to behave myself with my bank account - I am fast approaching the end of my overdraft limit and I have too much month at the end of my pay. I went into my bank, HSBC, to obtain a statement print-out to check on things. My nerves were somewhat jangled and the muzak did little to alleviate the situation. The muzak stopped, a male voice announced "This is HSBC radio" then a female voice came on, deejay, talking deejay babble - you know that twelve year old shit - that was babble babble babble and next we have babble...then there were ads about the crippling and balls busting loans that the bank offers. What the fuck is HSBC playing at; spending on all that interest I pay them on some twelve year old to announce fucking records.

Labels: Banksy, commercials, Radio, trash

I downloaded this podcast from the BBC, Crossing Continents, it was a report by Julian Pettifer who examined on how holiday makers and property developers are beshitting the Mediterranean. Spain has become so overdeveloped and polluted, that property developers are casting their sights on the Eastern Med. In Montenegro, for example, it is estimated that there are 2000 bits of plastic polluting 1 square kilometre of sea. In spite of the National Law that allows everybody access to the beach, property developers have marked out their territories, like a dogs pissing on the corner of a wall, by hiring security guards to patrol the beach that they consider theirs, ie near to where they have built an hotel. On one beach, Julian Pettifer was told to leave by a security guard as it reserved for special people. He went to another beach and told by a security guard that he could stay on a beach if pays "twenty five erreh (twenty five Euros); for the twenty five erreh he would get a sun bed and beach umbrella. Gosh, it seems that property developers are dangerous and hazardous pollutants.

You can download the podcast here

Labels: environment, Greedy Property Developers, pollution

Have you ever noticed that when a really good piece of music becomes hackneyed it becomes horrible on the ear. This happened with Vivaldi's Four Seasons when telephone answering services adopted as a jingle designed to keep you hanging on to the telephone. Ad agencies are now plundering classical music to sell burgers, paint, diy, shit. Now Diesel has found Schubert's Piano Trio in E Flat to flog one of its stinky products. Worse still, the music stops and starts. The ad is real shit and I feel really angry that my personal cultural is being invaded by this shit.

Labels: Advertising, culture, Music, trash