Child Without An Eye

Michael Rosen: Teacher power; children power; language power

2012-01-18T23:38:00.001Z

Michael Rosen: Teacher power; children power; language power: I had a great day today working with teachers in Richmond, London. We had two hours thinking and talking about poetry in schools. If I'm n...

He's a prolific blogger is Michael.
A twelve year old girl came in to the library a few weeks back. She was typing up a Christmas poem she had written. She had been asked to read it aloud at a school assembly. She was as proud as can be and offered to read it to me.
What I loved about it was her creative use of language to express very personal observations.
At one point she mentioned the festive season as something to boost people's drear (this isn't correct but I can't recall the words exactly) The teacher had corrected it and put in cheer for drear (again this isn't exact - I just can't recall her exact phrasing)
She explained that she meant to use drear because people around her felt and acted pretty miserable in the build up to Christmas. I have noticed this especially this year in the neighbourhood of our library. People are down on their luck, the kids have been acting up more than usual. The aftermath of the riots, the constant talk of cuts, recession, job losses. Kids feel what the adults are feeling.
I thought it was a shame that her original wording wasn't have been kept in.
But never mind that, it was a really stimulating interaction with a child who was buzzing with the creative process.

Michael Rosen: David Cameron: Books, Lies and Videotape

2012-01-18T23:03:00.000Z

Michael Rosen: David Cameron: Books, Lies and Videotape: The front page of London's Evening Standard tonight shouted out: "Cameron visits the school we're fighting to save and gives this message ...

This is so good I had to share it on my blog.
I won't add any comments as I'm recovering from a wisdom tooth extraction and a long day at work has left me needing to get horizontal pronto.

Holness

2012-01-06T15:18:00.001Z

untitled recording(4).3gpp Listen on Posterous

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Retro Christmas on Android Phone

2011-12-24T18:44:00.001Z

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I just decided to promote friends' family's and acquaintances' websites on G+

2011-12-19T23:11:00.001Z

Matt King - 23:04 - Public

Best of Devon, a hidden gem. Locals know the secret. If you're in the Tavistock, Plymouth o Dartmoor area and looking for somewhere refreshing with great food and atmosphere away from the ubiquitous cream teas, check out Robertson's in Tavistock.

Robertson's Organic Café & Pizzeria 01822 612 117

Local, organic ingredients simply prepared; "Huge local following and some of the best pizzas in Devon." —Observer Food Magazine Awards, 2008; Read about Robertson's Organic Café in the ...

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Matt King

Matt King - 22:58 - Public

Fantastic selection of fine affordable wines from an enthusiastic knowledgeable lover of wine. Grab yourself a box and/or buy one as a gift for that wine loving friend or relation. Personal recommendation. Nick knows his wines!

Welcome to Grapebox

Welcome to Grapebox Grapebox is a new, independent wine merchant based in Reigate. The online shop is now open for business, look out for fresh and exciting wines arriving each week. Make sure to stay...

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Matt King

Matt King - 22:53 - Public

As the days get colder and darker, Happy Feet Happy Heart probably won’t be out and about as often as we were in the summer. However, if you’d like to see us, you can book us for a Pamper Party: we offer you a little bit of foot flirtation and a delicious face, neck and head massage.

happy feet happy heart

London based mobile Thai Foot Massage unit. Our aim: to spread happiness from feet upwards!

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Matt King

Matt King - 22:51 - Public

Massage and Mediation
exploring connections between body work and conflict resolution

Massage and Mediation

THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR CHILDHOOD. "The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipula...

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Matt King

Matt King - 22:47 - Public

Welcome to the ecocentrus project

By sharing our garden data with each other we can monitor and take action together to nurture biodiversity. The best way to begin is to sign up for a free account here and then register your garden. You can upload photos of your garden and the species you sight and others can engage in discussion with you, reporting sightings in other gardens is a new feature of the ecocentrus project.

Welcome to the ecocentrus project online gardens, biodiversity, urban sightings, uk species, wildlife

Ecocentrus mapping UK gardens and species sightings for biodiversity

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Matt King

Matt King - 22:45 - Public

Why Weave Willow?

* Achievable - objects woven in willow can be made very easily and quickly, bringing a sense of satisfaction.

* Engaging - the act of weaving can be very relaxing while demanding full attention

* Creative - weaving willow can inspire the imagination since it lends itself to be used in many different ways...

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Why Weave Willow? * Achievable - objects woven in willow can be made very easily and quickly, bringing a sense of satisfaction. * Engaging - the act of weaving can be very relaxing while...

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Remembering Rob Brezny

2011-12-03T15:48:00.000Z

Free Will Astrology was the name of the website
with the quirky hippy star signs written, in the style of
Tom Robbins, by a certain Rob Brezny.
Back in 1999 I answered his online questionaire.
So to continue the function of the meme blog,
you can find out about ME by reading this.
Sorry it's a bit long.

What did you dream last night?

Last night I dreamt that I was flipping through a NME which is a music paper published here in the UK. I came to an article about Terrence Mckenna. What was interesting is that the page would glow slowly to a nice fluorescent blue and then dim down into black. I thought this new technology for newspaper was pretty cool. So I turned the page over to see if I could work out how it functioned. There was a little red light or mini-diode that was embedded in the paper which shone through to the Mckenna article.

What about this dream?

I havent read the NME regularly for years. Also years ago in one of my sketch books I drew a picture with the caption "Burn your NME's and dont take magic mushrooms" Then this morning I check out the Real Astrology web page, read an interview with Rob where he says that he doesnt do drugs anymore and namechecks Mckenna. Nice bit of syncro.

What image or symbol represents the absolute of your desires?

I guess its got to be the Shree Yantra symbol or some variation of it. For those that dont know, it is used in Bhuddhist and probably some other religions and comprises of a lot of triangles coming down the way and heaps of triangles going up the way. These two gaggles of differently sized triangles meet each other and overlap creating a wonderful and endless radiance of energy.

If you think about this symbol and the idea of triangle above and below initially seperate and slowly moving together, you will find that you begin to see it used to create proportion and harmony in many iconic works of art; Its also present everyday as our perception of perspective when looking at a wide open landscape. The sky above being the down pointing triangle and the land below being the up pointing triangle. And if we percieve that then...? DESIRES

Describe the ways in which your life is affected by invisible forces you don't understand or are barely aware of.

Let me first not answer this and expound my spontaneous theory.

The earth gives off invisible forces which can be very good for us if we could feel them. However human beings also give off invisible forces that although we are not always directly aware of, have a much more profound effect on us because we have been brought up and socialised amongst other humans.

I get my earth forces in remote beautiful places, like mountainous regions (Scotland, Nepal) or windswept ancient landscapes such as the Orkney Islands. I can even pick up on it in a city park or garden. However this is usually easier AFTER I have been to a remote natural place. I think these earth forces charge you up _or_ rid you of the surface techniques you use to get by in an urban lifestyle, thereby exposing your own subtle energies.

Once you have stripped away the verbal trick bullshit that disguise us and protect us we can feel free. We can then pick up on others invisible forces and respond to them in a much truer way. Plus they will pick up on you too. Yippee.

But watch out because the city can eat you up and spit you out and you'll have to go thru the whole damn process again.

Tell a good lie.

I am extremely good at letting women know that I would like to get more intimate with them.

Are you a good listener? If so, describe how you listen. If not, explain why not.

I am not the worlds greatest listener. When someone has something to say to me whether its a personal problem or some interesting idea, I will listen with great attention and absorb what they have said. The problem comes with my response. I tend to immediately come out with an answer or a response, rather than encourage them to go on or expound a little further. Also my answers can also be a little flippant or clever as if I am enjoying my own intelligence. The only time I encourage them to talk on is if I dont have an answer. Its not a major problem but unless I am aware of myself it can happen.

What's the difference between right and wrong?

They are both words, and language is a symbolic format used by humans to communicate. However it can never tell the truth and will therefore always manipulate anyone who recieves it as truth. Some people believe that a wordless esoteric form of communication if known and utilised by us all would help us bridge this language divide and lead to a peace. But for now a friction still exists and maybe creativity is akin to barbarity. Let us pray in silence.

Name something you've done to undo, subvert or neutralize the Battle of the Sexes.

Wow this question has stumped me.

Have you ever witnessed a child being born? If so, describe how it changed your life.

I have never witnessed a child being born but I have witnessed a man dying. I was visiting a friend called Thip in a town called Mae Sot in Thailand. Thips father had bad circulation and one night we bundled him into the back of a pickup. At the local hospital we all massaged his arms and legs to try to circulate his blood. He looked at me with some alarm as I was this strange white boy there with his two sons. Anyhow after that shocking gaze he suffered a coronary and went all rigid very suddenly with teeth clecnched and lips pulled taut. They didnt have any electric pads, so the nurses shoved this tube down his throat in order to push air in, and started pumping his chest. But to no avail. Thips father had died. I was 18 years old at the time and it definitely had a very good effect on me. I have never felt horror at this kind of natural death. I still cringe at television hospital scenes that are designed to make you feel tense; but when I worked in the cancer department of a large London Hospital, I felt at ease with the patients . I never communicated with them with any sense of tragic sympathy. In fact that job was a bloody good experience that I would reccommend to anyone.

As for children. I would love to witness a childbirth.

Where did Cain's and Abel's wives come from? How did people make appointments before there were clocks? How many angels can dance on the head of a firing pin? Explain the following fact: The universe has a condition resembling dyslexia.

The universe is okay. Its doing fine.

Write a beautiful blasphemy that makes you feel like crying.

Oh why was I such a fool. She invited me into her bed for heavens sake.

Why did I take heed of the New Sensitive Man bullshit and not take charge as in retrospect I feel she wanted me to. I used this idea of Right Behaviour as a shield, as an excuse for not having to expose my true desires and let go of myself in real abandonment.

We went a certain distance and it sure felt true and good. Then instead of handing herself to me on a plate she wanted to know if I really WANTED her. All I had to was take hold of the energies we had built up and begin the manifestation. But no, instead we slept a sweet dreaming night together as friends not lovers.

What do you do to make people like you or love you?

I will talk to you, make you feel at ease, like we are sharing something new. I'll make a little fun of you put some weird spin on something to just break the mundane ice that can overwhelm cautious strangers. That kind of thing. I also try to keep that sense of freshness with my friends, so that we dont get bored with each other or drift into some gloomy familiarity. The problem is that when I really realise that , 'cor blimey, I could be in with a bit of loving lusting good times here', I tend to lose the lively smiliness and get too quiet and selfconcious. Do you know what I mean?

Describe the circumstances in which you were most dangerously alive.

ACID, Air Travel, Mushrooms. You know I went pot holing and it was full on, squeezed in those rocky tubes. Pretty shit stirring and adrenalin pumping. I've been up in the mountains and sailing over the ocean.

However the ultimate perception of living had to have been particular experiences I've had using psychedelic substances. I wont go into the extreme details as there are plenty of netzones for triptales. However when you are in a room seeing no longer thru your eyes but as a disembodied VIEWER seeing a new kind of surround 3Dimensional view that should be impossible, and you realise that everyone around you is a deity even if they havent realised it yet, and then a supercharged volcanic explosion reverie pours into you or out from you pinning you to your chair in cathartic orgasmic delight, then you feel pretty dangerously alive. But hey, I dont do that stuff much.

Talk about three of your most interesting personalities. Give each one a name, astrological sign, rank, and numerologically powerful serial number.

i) Matt Van Horn, Aquarius, 23.

He will dance, he is weightless, he can talk amazingly funny and fast connections between the universal symbols, he is daring, easy to flatter, maybe too open for some.

ii)Easy Matt, Gemini, 7.

He is the chameleon that you will find has so much in common with you. He can talk to you at any 'Level' and about any subject. He will be calm have a gentle laugh, a comforter, a supporter. But is he a fraud?

iii)Child Matt, Capricorn, 9.

Tucked away he couldnt survive in the real world. He had to go at about age 16. The one who was bullied and tried to understand why. He is capable of clinging on to someone too much. And sometimes much to that persons irritation. However he is true, and he helps to illumine some of the spoutings of easymatt and mattvanhorn with the crystal clarity of one who has passed to the other side.

Do you wish to take advantage of the introductory half-price offer at this time?

I have no credit card. Not because I'm worried about buying too much, but because I hardly buy anything anyhow. I have got used to living on a low income, and I enjoy seeing through the endless marketing scams. These days its getting easier because almost nothing is aimed at someone like me. I'm not even into second hand shit. I had a period of being addicted to buying records, but now its simply basic food'n'booze. I like nice things but because I dont waste my time falling for the "be a connoiseur" scam, I can take it or leave it. I dont like to get too attached to possessions because they can seriously weigh you down. You may have heard that one before, but listen to it because it is TRUE.

What's stronger than love, wetter than water, and truer than the facts? What's more exotic than trust but a lot like it?

Oh mom, I'm stuck in the mud. (Dont worry my child, you can be free if you just put your mind to IT).

While listening to Karen Dalton

2011-11-27T22:02:00.002Z

Deary me oh momma,

wave me a hankie,

tear me up old maid mamma in the morning rain,

Off to the railroad and my grip is firm on this old suitcase,

my suit doesn’t fit and I have no tie,

But I must go go and be on my way,

The morning broke I had had no sleep.

You stood back and you let me leave,

Remembering the good times,

Those days there were so few,

This bye bye is more between us and the dew

While listening to Daniel Johnston

2011-11-27T21:40:00.004Z

And she did sing and the chorus with in harmony,

All did feel safe in the warm room,

Where devils were not welcome,

When time it came to leave and she was alone,

Being quiet and still then her heart was so loud,

And devils feast on crying souls,

The birds came to her as she dished out crumbs,

Beaks and eyes and feathers and ripples,

The Sunday sun fell and the colours were left,

Some things last a lifetime.

Gillespie Park to Finsbury Park

2011-08-25T00:06:00.001+01:00

Gillespie Park to Finsbury Park, a set on Flickr.

Chilled out in the little park reclaimed from old railway land. Walked along to Finsbury park where there was a fairly empty fun fair.

All snapped with my mobile phone.

Operation Target - massive police propaganda?

2011-07-21T13:23:00.001+01:00

200 police swooped on Queen's Crescent in Camden, London yesterday in what was a massive suprise raid on suspected drug dealers and criminal gangs in the area.

See http://www.camdennewjournal.com/news/2011/jul/200-police-gang-swoop-queens-crescent-rush-hour-operation-targets-drug-dealers-estate for details.

Although many will be delighted that a police operation on this scale has been mounted in the Queen's Crescent

area some will be questioning the timing of the operation.

A similar operation that had also been "months in planning" took place this week in Hackney.

See http://www.hackneygazette.co.uk/news/police_arrest_20_in_dalston_junction_drugs_crackdown_1_969092

That both these operations took place in the week that Sir Paul Stephenson and John Yates resigned seems more than a coincidence.

The briefing given to police in Queen's Crescent that I saw yesterday included a section attributed to Mr Godwin (presumably Tim Godwin Deputy Commissioner).

It was a rallying call to staff to "walk tall" during these "tricky" "challenging" "upsetting" times.

It refers specifically to the resignation of Sir Paul and Mr Yates.

I can't help but see this operation serving two purposes.

One is to fight crime.

The second is to boost police morale and to create positive propaganda in a bad news week for the Met.

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a retelling of an old corny Christmas joke

2011-01-05T22:15:00.001Z

Husband and wife are sitting on an inter-city train to Liverpool in 1985.

A man sits opposite and they get chatting.

Turns out he is named Olf, hails from East Germany and is a staunch defender of the Communist regime.

He is also rather provocative and loud.

After arguing a while about politics the husband looks out the window and so as to break the tense atmosphere says

"ah look out there, it's snowing".

Olf replies abruptly "Huh, that is not snow, that is rain and I should know. We have real snow where I am from."

The argument continues. Husband turns to his wife, "Darling what do you think?"

Wife says, "Rude Olf the red knows rain, dear."

I heard this joke some time in the early 1980s. It may be that I heard it while on an intercity train.

I also think maybe my dad heard it and then retold it to us.

Anyway this is my version.

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War Jive

2010-11-14T18:11:00.001Z

"We are takin' dis acshun fo' one real simple reason, dig dis, dig dis: t'damage Serb fo'ces sufficiently

t'prevent Milosevic fum continuin' t'puh'petuate his vile oppression against innocent Albanian

civilians."

UK Prime Minister' Tony Blair

"De grotesque breach uh human rights in Kosovo which we gotss' seen in recent monds kin

be tolerated no mo'e. S coo', bro'."

UK Conservative Party leader William Hague

"We had no opshun oda' dan t'snatch dis regrettable acshun against Milosevic once da damn

Kosovars had signed our peace proposals but da damn Serbs had defiantly continued deir brutal

repression. What it is, Mama!"

UK Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown

"People who lived drough de 30s and 40s feel some sense uh utta' shame and disgust dat da damn

British Government should be boogiein' its solemn commitment t'de UN and launchin' air

attacks waaay downon Serbia. Ah be baaad..."

Veteran Labour MP Tony Benn

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One limerick after midnight.

2010-11-13T01:07:00.001Z

When it was two thousand and ten,

The young poet lifted his pen,

He couldn't believe,

That old new year's eve,

Was happening all over again.

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International Limerick Writers Month - my first contribution

2010-11-04T01:13:00.001Z

Dean Whitbread initiated a month of limerick writing here

He wished to be the sole contributor but I had other plans.

Here is my first entry that I wrote about ten minutes ago.

An elephant from old Dungeness

Left his wife in a terrible mess

He packed up his trunk

And did a swift bunk

Now she's living off mustard and cress!!

more nonsense about mustard and cress from The Goon Show

The Mustard and Cress Shortage
Seagoon: Mr. Crun, British Railways want you to grow them six thousand acres of mustard and cress - in the Amazon.
Henry: Very well, I'll get my hat. Min!
Minnie: What did you say?
Henry: I'm just going to the Amazon.
Minnie: Be careful.
Henry: I'll be away for six years, Min.
Minnie: I'll put your dinner in the oven, Henry.

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Why Boris's London hire cycle scheme may not be so great

2010-05-22T13:21:00.001+01:00

This is a comment from the Times Online article

The new London cycle hire system is based on one used in Montreal, Canada.

Ali Azizi wrote:

The Montreal system is a disaster. I've tried to use it on and off from day 1. Here's a list of only the most common problems:

1. The bikes can easily be torn out of the locking posts, which breaks the station, so the next user cannot lock his bike there,

2. Often you check on the internet to see if there are free stations near your destination, only to find out that the stations are free because they are broken. In Montreal, the first 30 minutes of every bike ride are free. Because you cannot find a free station that works, you end up paying to cycle to a place that's often a long walk from your actual destination,

3. If you use it to commute to work, you will find that first most of the bikes are gone from near where you live by 7:00, and the bike stations in the centre of the city are almost full (sort of like the tube trains that are only full in one direction---common sense would tell you that would be a problem),

4. The bikes are not nearly as sturdy as you'd think for the price. The racks break off in no time,

5. The seats are easily stolen,

6. The stations themselves break down often, so you can't drop off your bixi,

7. The stations obviously don't indicate when the six 'available' bikes all have flat tires.

These are just the most common issues. Add the operating costs of the programme, and you could buy a new bike for every citizen every two years and just give the bikes away for free. These are projects that politicians love because they give them green credentials, but that just inordinate sums of money.

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A taste of Ireland.

2010-05-21T21:05:00.001+01:00

Hungry shoes ate a cracked wheat biscuit and surrendered to the tarmac. sweet prospect of hitch hiking waits on unknown a-roads. Irish times cross the border with frozen beef in the boot, you're a star, you're a star. From Newry to Carlingford on a summer's day.

John Barleycorn must die. The buses are all done. Belfast has gone. Say goodbye to the redbrick. Hallo green grass and the placid blue sea.

Gossiping and stepping up and around town, there are fishing boats and some dead ends. But it costs ten pence to have your things put in a shopping basket. We step out onto the harbour wall. This is a heatwave. Dublin is not far away. But the taxi driver cuts a mean city in two.

So is that a windmill an old church a fairy glen or the sight of our mother in blue? Grottos are two a penny here.

I take a tumble and bring out the pac-a-mac.

Sure its getting moist now.

Very moist.

So when I say go, we'll go. Ok?

GO!

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Random Reading #3 from Techgnosis by Erik Davis

2010-05-13T20:42:00.001+01:00

Here is a little video I just made.

It is part 3 in a very occasional series where I pick up a book and open it at a random page

and read.

This one is from Techngosis by Erik Davis

I'm not very professional at reading and this was a first take, but it may be interesting...

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Hampshire Libraries to be decimated by proposed savage cuts

2010-05-13T18:08:00.001+01:00

Hampshire UNISON reports:

Yesterday library management began consultation with UNISON and the other trades unions over their proposals for the Library Service Restructure, which if implemented would result in a total reduction of 65.32 full time equivalent (FTE) posts. By now you should also know what has been suggested. These proposals are much worse than we had feared, and we are very doubtful that the Library Service can be sustained if these savage cuts go ahead. There is no doubt that they wil result in a worse service for library users and extremely difficult working conditions for those staff that remain.

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Concussion

2010-05-08T22:22:00.001+01:00

I banged my head against a shelf in the darkness of the garden shed.

I didn't knock myself out but later that evening I began to suffer from mild concussion.

I felt anxious, I felt overwhelmingly and unusually tired.

The next day a headache kicked in and I went to a&e to see a doctor and make sure I wasn't about to

have a brain meltdown.

So anyway now I am chilling at home and here is a very basic electronic track I just put together very quickly whilst feeling pretty spaced out.

Download now or listen on posterous

concussionfade.mp3 (4782 KB)

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London 2 Glasgow

2010-05-08T11:51:00.001+01:00

I recently became reacquainted with my old turntable.

So I decided to record some vinyl into a mix, well there is no mixing as I only have one turntable.

This was my first attempt from a couple of weeks ago.

It is mainly electronic music, but still has the Child Without An Ipod podcast flavour.

ie, there are some odd cheesy tracks as well as some classics.

It is called London2Glasgow as those were the two cities I lived in during the 1990s,

a time when I bought a lot of records.

I do have to get rid of some of my vinyl though, so if anyone wants that dreadful track with

the Police sample which is second last in this mix, just let me know and its yours!

Tecnical notes, I used a Behringer U-Control UCA202 to get the line in from my amp.

It is a great cheap littlee usb soundcard.

My old amp has a bit of a static problem so there is a bit of hum, but not really noticeable.

I used Audacity software to record the music.

Download now or listen on posterous

london2glasgow.mp3 (38928 KB)

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EVADING STANDARDS LONDON, FRIDAY 18 JUNE 1999

2010-05-03T00:01:00.001+01:00

this is a lost page from my second website Matt King's Unbelievable Hype.

At the J18 demo in London there was a fake version of the Evening Standard being handed out.

I must have transcribed this article but I never put it online

EVADING STANDARDS

LONDON, FRIDAY 18 JUNE 1999

The Final Act Of Enclosure

One cold winter morning in 1997 Lord Simon, Minister for Competitiveness, awoke to find bio-activists in white coats in the back-garden of his Islington residence collecting samples of his pot plants and tagging his petunias with bar-codes. This was the day that Lord Simon was travelling to Europe to sign a directive allowing the caring, compassionate biotech companies to patent plant strains with engineered genes - of course for the 'good of mankind'. This was a huge leap in the concept of patents. No longer did companies or entrepeneurs have to invent something to patent; under the new concept, pioneered by the US and forced on the rest of the world by the WTO(World Trade Organisation), engineered strains of plants and animals could be converted to private property rights. Almost overnight life became an 'invention', a commodity, a product.
Extravagant claims spin their way through the corridors of the biotech industry and, amplified by large sums of PR money, out into the public domain. On the other side the financially challenged NGO's and direct activists scrape together their resources and challenge the biotech giants head-on.
But on the ground are farmers, who depend on strains of plants that have been gradually and painstakingly selected over about 10,000 years. The focus of the biotech giant's attention; the 'Third' (and majority) World. India for example, is home to some of the greatest genetic diversity in the world, much of which is found in their valuable crops as rice.
Basmati is the champagne of rice varieties. It's distinctive aromatic flavour makes it a favourite in the US, Europe and the Middle East, netting India USDOLLARS 280 million in 1996-1997 and employing around a quarter of a million farmers. In september 1997 Rice Tec Inc ( a US based multinational) was granted a patent on Basmati "rice lines and to plants and grains". Their claim stemmed from a genetically altered strain. However it could ultimately extend to all strains of basmati rice producing the ridiculous scenario where basmati growers could violate Rice Tec's patent merely by continuing their traditional farming of rice.
In India, unlike in the US, patents on life are not allowed. However, under the WTO's trade related property rights regime (TRIPs) all signatories are due to unify patent laws this year - consolidating corporate (and Western) control over the genetic diversity of the world.
Under so much pressure from the public one woders why the UK government is so keen to support the biotech irms in their race to gain control and intellectual ownership of the world's food supply. Perhaps the Minister of Agriculture, Jack cunningham's words on the recent BBC Panorama programme hands us a clue. As he sat in the spotlight justifying the use of Genetically Modified Organisms, repeating industry rhetoric he eventually hit in the key: GMO's are good for the British Economy. In short the share prices of Zeneca ( a British based biotech firm) are more important to our repreentatives in the government than the will of the people.
This is part of a wider process that has been taking place for centuries, from the enclosure of common land in England in the 18th century, to the claims now being made by corporations. From the local to the global, things that once belonged to all of us are being transformed into exclusive private property. Today a few powerful institutions are, in some sectors, virtually eliminating small business and securing all trade for themselves, turning public streets into guarded shopping malls, and life itself into a profit-making venture.
Matt King's Unbelievable Hype
The J18 Homepage

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I finally found my first ever website

2010-05-02T23:51:00.001+01:00

Hey People, Get Ready To Relax.

____________________________________________________

   Hi there. Sorry I have moved server.   please click here to go to  http://freeweb.digiweb.com/arts/webking

Well you know things are strange. Crosswinds my server for this page have speeded their act up, so I may use this page for a more relaxed laidback kind of vibe. So for serious pretentious arty bollocks you can go to that digiweb site up there. But if you wanna stick with me you'll get a regular update of rambling sprawl straight from the centre of London. So you can Email me at Mattyking@hotmail.com

Latest update 2nd of December 1998: Well my lovely Grandpa died the sunday before last. So I have been with the family up in Liverpool. He was a great man. You would have enjoyed meeting him. He was born in 1912 in Foley st, London. He lived in Fitzrovia, London, but spent the summers in Saint laurent a small village in rural France where his Father was from. His mum was a loving cockney. So as a child he was surrounded by his singing parents. He learnt all the French and Cockney songs of the time and he could still remember them eighty years later. At the age of 15 he became a cook on board the Cunard ships. The Mauritania took him to New York. He also travelled to many other parts of the globe on these ships, at a young age. This travelling stayed with him until the last years of his life. Anyway he wrote lots of memoirs about this early period of his life, and maybe I'll get permission to put it online because it really is worth a read.

CHECK OUT THESE LINKS!!

CYANOSIS
This is a page with some seriously fascinating essays for all you poetic-genius nutters out there.
SYSTEM-ZERO
This is the homepage of Cyanosis and also has unhinged arty stuff from San Francisco.
NETWORK 23
This is a techno/direct action/drugs/arts/fun/reclaim the streets kind of site with minizines spreading across the UK and the world!!
t0 PUBLIC NETBASE
This is a large site based in Vienna with many fascinating essays written by some deep thinkers.

This is a live regularly updated picture of downtown sydney. My pals Matt and Hayley are there.

Posted via web from Garlic Toothpaste

Brian Wilson Fan Art from the 1990s

2010-05-02T23:26:00.001+01:00

Yeah, back in the early 90s we were buying cd bootlegs of smile and reading fanzines like Beach Boys Australia to find the latest news about poor old Brian Wilson who was being held under the care of Doctor Landy. Affectionately known to us as Wilsa, I made this cover inspired by a book that was being written at the time.

Posted via web from Garlic Toothpaste

Collage from the 56k modem psychedelic internet 1999

2010-05-02T23:13:00.001+01:00

I made this birthday card for a friend using the wonderful magical images I was finding online.

In those days you could download 64k intros which were 3d demos and then gaze in awe at the cool visuals

that would fit into such a tiny download.

I remember downloading lots of pictures of sunsets and lightning bolts.

Classic visionary art by Blake and Hieronymous Bosch were alll the rage.

Plus people were doing their own digital airbrush art, many of them influenced by narcotic intake.

Anyway I think this is pretty cool and I remember knocking it together pretty quickly.

There is also a pic of me in there somewhere.

Posted via web from Garlic Toothpaste

The Settler is the new single by THE EUROPEAN

2010-02-13T23:12:00.000Z

THE SETTLER from THE EUROPEAN on Vimeo.

In this short video, we present the heroic/pathetic figure of The Settler as he wanders, lost and conflicted, through the jagged ruins of Modernism in search of some dimensional portal to the happy hunting grounds of the post-historic era.

The Settler is the new single by THE EUROPEAN
Released March 2010 by Stolen Recordings

Directed by Simon Break
Photography and lighting by Coco Asper Valdes and Paul Jones
All Rights Reserved

LSD inspired sonic-vocal sample mix I found on the net

2009-10-25T22:39:00.001Z

This mix took a long time to complete & is in the style of MILF WEED & part of the Drug Session mixes as volume 2: LSDisco. It's a small tribute to Albert Hoffmann (who died at 102 last week, RIP) & the acid generation.

It's a challenging bombardment of disembodied voices over ambient music, taken from the acid generation of the 50's & 60's. Starting off with Albert's Bicycle Ride, an audio representation of his accidental ingestion of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, we hear the sound of him peddling his bike towards the very first LSD psychedelic trip. Sounding like the bastard offspring of the KLF & the Orb, they are ambient & sound representations of what it might be like tripping.

Later in the mix we hear from Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, students involved in the laboratory tests & various authoritative voice overs appropriated from that era. A Paranoid Bad Trip gets captured by the CIA; the Hallucination Generation goes into Hippie Revolt & a classroom of high school students show No Fear discussing taking LSD & those freaky chromosomes. Colors become complete in a Monogramatic World. American Military troops (normal soldiers) loose control & laugh senseless into Alice Trenton's long trip into Acidland.

Like a LSD trip itself these "sound painting" sections seemed to want to wonder off in their own direction but I present to you a loose (rough) mix of LSD samples, appropriated from various DVD's & you tubes. There was plenty that could have gone into the mix & you may notice that I did not include many of the staple acts, The Stones, The Beatles (no Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds) although Pink Floyd was heavily represented.

A big thank you to Celebrity Murder Party (CMP) for his collaboration on this mix. King Megatrip for sample contributions & Strictly Kev for his friendship & support.

Tracklist

(Alberts bike ride)
Sample: pushbike..train sound effect
Pink Floyd (Piano from Animals) (..grooving with a Pict) (Peddle steel guitar Dark Side Moon)
Pelican Daughters - The Bicycle Ride (CMP edit)
Genesis P-Orridge - talking about ambient sound representations
Genesis P-Orridge & Mr Leary - Thee spirirt of thee molecule
Voidware -Take LSD
Hawkwind - Space dust
Tangarine Dream - Pheadra
Ken Kesey..Terence McKenna
Irresistible Force - Wave form

(The Paranoid Bad Trip)
The Weird World of LSD,(1967)
Sample:Dewey Cox Story (Walk Hard)
Danny Ben Israel - Bad Trip
Love - Seven and Seven is
Todd Rundgren - Dogfight Giggle
Sounds of Haunted House
Drum and Bass Beats - CMP
Voiceovers from LSD and Mind Control Documentary
Todd Rundgren - International Feel
More Beats - CMP
Todd Rundgren - Flamingo
John Luther Adams - Shimmer
Ken Nordine - WordJazz (from podcast)
Rhys Chatham - Two Gongs
John Luther Adams - Velocities crossing in space
Cheech & Chong - Acid scene

(Hallucination Generation)
Hippie Revolt (1967)
Meat Beat Manifesto
Iron Butterfly - In A Gadda Da Vida
Ken Kesey (The Room)
Unkown 60's band - Acid
Woodstock Brown Acid
Godley & Creme - Consequences
Moody Blues - Legend Of A Mind
Dr Timothy Leary (Death)

(No Fear in the classroom)
No fear- CMP
voiceovers LSD Educational video
Pink Floyd (steel peddle guitar)
Chris Coco - Memory of a free party

(Monogramatic World)
Various people talking about the colours of LSD
Hot Chip - Colours

(The troops of the White Rabbit)
Ian Hunt - Troops on LSD
Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit (Jonathan Peters Mix)
Alice in Acidland (1968)
Stu Mitchell - LSD

http://www.divshare.com/download/4409598-b7e

current British housing market ruminations

2009-10-15T23:17:00.002+01:00

eric pebble -

"They've [the bankers] achieved their aim - to fraudulently pump up house "prices" for 10-15 years by issuing Liar Loans, backed by CDO's & SIV's: THUS - The Genie is out of the bottle - house "prices" now = 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 [etc.] x single salary...

SO - only way to "afford" property now is for both husband & wife/partner to combine their earnings - and take out 30-40 yr mortgages of lifetime of slog incomes -- TO BUY THE SAME THING IT TOOK JUST ONE LOW INCOME TO BUY 15-20+ YEARS AGO......

This was all deliberate - The Moneylenders have prised the Genie out of the bottle.... Many people have fallen for it -- they now pay £200-400k for A SHOEBOX/DOG KENNEL, BRAINWASHED into thinking this is an "investment".....

THE question now is: WILL people continue to accept this? We have in many ways, got to STALEMATE. House buying turnover has halved [at least]: MANY people do not see WHY they should partake in this SCAM.

I.E. IT IS STALEMATE. As per usual -- it's down to - WHO BLINKS FIRST? The Buyer or the SELLER ..... ?

In the meantime - the PR Machine is PUMPING, PUMPING, PUMPING -- in the newspapers, 24/7 on the tv -- "Property prices only go up".... "Invest in property for the future"..... "Become a Property Millionaire".......... etc., etc., etc.

AND - The Moneylender[s]....? They're sitting in the wings, as per usual, sniggering away, rubbing their hands together in glee.... They control the politicians via the PR & Lobby Machine - MP's and BENT Lords in House of Lords table and/or amend legislation through parliament for them on the sly...... etc etc., etc., etc. "

tinker -
"I remember the property crash of the 90s, and that was before Liar Loans, and people got hurt, negative equity became currency.

But those price levels (and losses) mare nothing compared to the bubble created today (see HPC graph).

I looked on with disbelief wondering how prices could have risen so much, and how people could be so stupid and fall for it.

Pokey little 2up-2downs that had trebled in price over a few years. Absolute madness. All that interest - what a waste.

The bankers it seems will always find ways of relieving us of our money, too many are willing to acquiesce.

One salary
Then one and a bit
The two
Then increased multiples
Then increased terms

What next? Generational mortgages?

The madness will only stop when people stop plying the game, and say enough is enough.

This should be happening now, however, the powers that be have other ideas... "

Redhat Sly -
"In 1980 I tried to buy a house that was on the market for £4,500

I had to have a sit down talk with my bank manager. A Mr Stead at Yorkshire Bank.

I had a £2k deposit, a bond for £1k that matured about 4 months later which I wanted to sign over.
I wanted a loan for £1.5k
I was in full time employment earning £3k a year.

He refused! "

my recent trip to Switzerland

2009-10-06T21:36:00.000+01:00

The March Hare Race

2009-10-06T00:38:00.000+01:00

<a href="http://childwithoutaneye.bandcamp.com/track/the-march-hare-race">the march hare race by child without an eye</a>

home again home again jiggedy jig

2009-08-22T18:45:00.001+01:00

kitchen panorama, originally uploaded by dweller88.

this is a panorama shot of my kitchen/living room that I share with three others. I made the picture by automatically stitching together several photographs using a piece of free software called Hugin.
Its easy to use you should try it.

The chancellor's City surrender

2009-07-09T01:15:00.001+01:00

"It is boring banking, (essentially mortgage banking), done badly that has caused all our problems."

What ?! They piled over $1300Trillion of derivatives on a base of mortgages they sold to people who barely had a pulse and zero income. They did it outside of a transparent market, over-the-counter. They lied and lied and lied. They even shorted the companies they sold the rubbish on to because they knew the junk would take them down. They lobbied for Glass-Steagall to be binned because they knew that what they were up to was a conflict of interest and all they had to do was to remove the legislation in their way. They decorated their balance sheets with assets that they themselves valued and called it "mark-to-model". Bookkeeping based on a lie. They took their worse crap off-balance sheet and offshore and sold and resold crap between themselves and the SIVs to create ever more "deposits" which they used as "collateral" for yet more borrowing and lending. Every time the penny came around they took "fees" and "commissions". This boondoggle inflated the money supply, robbed honest workers of their savings and because it was covered with layers of bookkeeping boolshite, distorted price and investment signals leading to malinvestment and misinvestment. Now they have collapsed the world.

And you think that is BORING banking ? Then what the hell is rampant, out of control , criminal, embezzeling, their noses in the coke bucket and their hands on your wallet. banking ?

This was no Black Swan , this was an organised crime who have as a last insult stolen what is left of the taxpayers' money and bailed THEMSELVES out and carried on paying themselves obscene "bonuses" as though nothing happend.

These BORING bankers need to be put on public trial for treason.

Glastonbury events - getting earthy on an early Sunday morning

2009-07-02T02:18:00.001+01:00

After watching this great lad run through some Beatles numbers including a strong and insistent "Don't let me down" I wandered off. I made it to the green field pond staring at the strange silhouetted sculpture against the slowly lightening sky. Moving on I discovered an alcohol and shoe free peace tent with hundreds of scented candles arranged centrally in the star of David. There were some people meditating on cushions around this glittering and strongly perfumed circle of candles. All was in great contrast to the staggering revellers outside (one of whom I had just been). I sat cross-legged on a cushion as still as I could for someone still too drunk and in full on festival madness mode. I sent some peaceful messages out, especially to newborn baby Freya. I wasn't really connecting and I was wobbling about a bit so I leant forward and placed my hands on the earth. Aaaah that's better.
So after a period of Spock mind melding with planet Earth, I left the peace tent and went up to the main fire by the stone circle.
Here gaggles of people were waiting for the sunrise. There was drumming going on but no dancing. A lass who had just wheelbarrowed a tonne of wood up and then hand lifted the great heavy lumps onto the fire decided to relax her weary body with a bit of a dance. I naturally joined in. After she left I moved into her spot next to the drummers and to the command of their silent gestures I stomped my feet in time to a particular rhythm. I let the ground really have it. Over and over and over again. In fact each time I stomped I could feel a whole mass of the earth vibrate - kind of like how the earth moves if you jump up and down on peaty ground.
So eventually in my addled mind I thought (in a Neil from the Young Ones moment) WOW they're drumming the drums with their hands and I'm drumming the whole planet Earth with my feet. This added to my enthusiasm and I transmitted a lot of energy. More and more people had started to dance so I felt Job done. I wandered off for more early hours adventures...

my band logos from last.fm

2009-06-12T22:44:00.003+01:00

prophetic article - the new poor

2009-06-11T23:41:00.001+01:00

From the New Statesman in 2003

You have heard of the third-world debt crisis: now for the one in the first world. Ordinary people, up to their necks in debt, will bear the brunt while the rich get off scot-free
British and American consumers are obedient and compliant. When the central bank chiefs of America and Britain, Alan Greenspan and Eddie George, sidled up to them in the 1980s and 1990s, nodded and winked, they took the hint, and dutifully embarked on a binge of borrowing and spending. The nod and the wink were never explicit, but the easy money policies that deregulated lending, boosted credit card companies and lowered interest rates have provided the incentives for consumers (on declining incomes) to borrow like there's no tomorrow. That, consumers rightly calculate, is just what the powers that be want them to do.

And so debt has spiralled. By borrowing and spending, the middle-class consumers of the US and the UK, heroically and almost single-handedly, are holding up damaged economies, scarred by the bursting of asset bubbles such as stocks, telecoms and dotcoms. These bubbles, in turn, had their origins in the credit bubble created by central bankers and other deregulators.

But one group of people has stayed away from the party: the rich. According to the new annual report on the global econ- omy from the New Economics Foundation (NEF), the rich have declined to become heavily indebted, both in the US and the UK. They have sat idly by and watched as central bankers helped inflate a credit bubble, which then flowed into and fortuitously pumped up the value of assets, including property.

a nice video

2009-06-04T23:56:00.000+01:00

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

2009-05-23T15:38:00.001+01:00

"Most of us spend many hours each week watching celebrated athletes playing in enormous stadiums. Instead of making music, we listen to platinum records cut by millionaire musicians. Instead of making art, we go to admire paintings that brought in the highest bids at the latest auction. We do not run risks acting on our beliefs, but occupy hours each day watching actors who pretend to have adventures, engaged in mock-meaningful action. This vicarious participation is able to mask, at least temporarily, the underlying emptiness of wasted time. But it is a very pale substitute for attention invested in real challenges. The flow experience that results from the use of skills leads to growth; passive entertainment leads nowhere. Collectively we are wasting each year the equivalent of millions of years of human consciousness. The energy that could be used to focus on complex goals, to provide enjoyable growth, is squandered on patterns of stimulation that only mimic reality."
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

FLOW

In his seminal work, 'Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience', Csíkszentmihályi outlines his theory that people are most happy when they are in a state of flow— a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. The idea of flow is identical to the feeling of being in the zone or in the groove. The flow state is an optimal state of intrinsic motivation, where the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing. This is a feeling everyone has at times, characterized by a feeling of great absorption, engagement, fulfillment, and skill—and during which temporal concerns (time, food, ego-self, etc.) are typically ignored.[5]
In an interview with Wired magazine, Csíkszentmihályi described flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost."[6]
To achieve a flow state, a balance must be struck between the challenge of the task and the skill of the performer. If the task is too easy or too difficult, flow cannot occur.
The flow state also implies a kind of focused attention, and indeed, it has been noted that mindfulness meditation, yoga, and martial arts seem to improve a person's capacity for flow. Among other benefits, all of these activities train and improve attention.
In short, flow could be described as a state where attention, motivation, and the situation meet, resulting in a kind of productive harmony or feedback.

"Young Socialist" lets greed get the better of him

2009-05-21T09:56:00.000+01:00

May 20 (Bloomberg) -- Cevdet Caner, the man at the center of Germany’s biggest real estate insolvency in 15 years, is fighting eviction from his 20 million-pound ($31 million) London townhouse, complete with basement swimming pool.

His group of investment companies called Level One owes 1.5 billion euros ($2 billion) to creditors led by Credit Suisse Group AG, according to estimates by the German administrator. The two main holding companies defaulted and were placed under court administration in August, U.K. filings show, after the group bought 27,000 units of communist-era public housing in the former East Germany over three years, almost entirely with debt. read more

London Zoo

2009-05-05T01:28:00.004+01:00

gag the fist
turnip prize or eurovision
hump the toaster
trevor mcdoughnut or alastair campbell

god save me from a Canonbury weeping willow
new river walk is a drain with poisoned ducks
the birds sat stiff and in a daze, what is in that water
a new river - a stagnant pool
and the weeping willows remember a better time
to be in Islington...

past the essex road
I get to the canal
I see a large opening
I'm listening to London Zoo
Angry sounds,
The guys fiddling with their longboats
Don't seem pleased to be there,
I gaze into the large opening,
A grand vista,
A rectangular pool of Canal water.
In the distance a half demolished building,
I can make out the insides of homes,
Spilling out.
A freeze frame of a dynamite demolition.
LONDON ZOO LONDON ZOO
What animals have escaped
and are roaming the streets?

piggies

2009-05-05T01:25:00.002+01:00

this little piggy
sang a song of suckling
and this little piggy
rode a white swan
and this little piggy
in an english country garden
while this little piggy
gatecrashed a new cross squat

£20bn of public property to be sold off to finance banks bail-out

2009-04-22T08:29:00.000+01:00

The Government is planning to sell £20bn-worth of public property over the next 10 years to help recoup the billions spent bailing out the banks.

"the Banks are buying up our country with our money - they are transfering our assets to the Bankers (through corporations which the banks effectively own anyway through the title of the loans they advance those companies) - and get this - it is such a twisted wicked scheme that we get to fund the bankrupt banks to take our national assets as well.

This is the undoing of our democratic parliamentary system - this is the nature of the wicked schemers that lord over the people of the UK. "

Blog from an inter city train

2009-04-10T13:43:00.002+01:00

I#39;m on a train to Devon for an easter break. Travelling out of London always makes my mind drift to the subject of why I'm slaving away doing my full time job and living in a noise and dust polluted slavebox when all those other people are writing plays, making quirky bits of art, creating music, etc etc or just discussing cool interesting things that I never have time or energy to do. My only focus seems to be on keeping healthy enough so I can function well at my workplace. Fact is the work itself and my lack of time for any creative outlet that is affecting my health. So I should probably do something about it. I could quit or reduce my hours. But I feel I need to do something more radical. I haven't figured it out yet. Problem is a lack of confidence. I know I can do my job well, my crazy thoughts and ideas, passions or urges are mere self indulgent claptrap. Or are they? I enjoy other peoples self indulgent creations. In fact I think its a rich facet of life that many hurried and hassled Brits never tap into in the modern world. The language of life has fewer and fewer words. Fewer words = fewer thoughts and ways of living. A more homogenous and apathetic population. Keep working keep breeding. This is life. Ask no questions. Write no letters. Build no fires. Don't hike out of the city and scream at the top of your lungs from a hilltop. No strap yourself into a gym fetish machine and plug in your earbuds. I suffer from internet addiction. Serious life destroying internet addiction. I've got OCD growing on my OCD. It's so hard to quit. I keep looking back to 1997 and before. I believe our lives were richer then I truly do. Too many silly repetitive habits I've now picked up like a tiger pacing up and down in a cage. A saddening sight. If you could see yourself with others eyes maybe you'd weep at the futility. Anyway have a happy easter. And may the bunnies eat the eggs before the cross bleeds.

The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.

2009-04-02T10:43:00.001+01:00

"Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbours, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult. … It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice."
— George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

how our leaders are propping up this sick system of rich bankers

2009-04-02T10:14:00.002+01:00

THE Obama administration’s $500 billion or more proposal to deal with America’s ailing banks has been described by some in the financial markets as a win-win-win proposal. Actually, it is a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win — and taxpayers lose.
Treasury hopes to get us out of the mess by replicating the flawed system that the private sector used to bring the world crashing down, with a proposal marked by overleveraging in the public sector, excessive complexity, poor incentives and a lack of transparency.

What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a “partnership” in which one partner robs the other. And such partnerships — with the private sector in control — have perverse incentives, worse even than the ones that got us into the mess.
Joseph E. Stiglitz

The whole Geithner plan stinks. It is even more of the same, socialising the losses and provatising the profits and Stiglitz is not the first to point out that this plan is just a way of robbing the taxpayer to get the nasty stuff off the banks' books without looking like pure nationalisation of the debt to the man on the street.

It is disgusting!

The fact that 90% of the population aren't rioting in the street suggests that the US public are bovinely cowed and stupid...or is it that a large portion of them believe that, given their obscene debts, this will work out well for them? Whatever the case the whole thing fills me with loathing of the whole system...there is absolutely no morality left. I see no reason to be honest and hard working anymore...none. I've more or less come to the conclusion that tax evasion is a moral duty. Boy are my kids going to get a different lesson about how to behave in society than what I did from my parents.

The only way to get these toxic assets off the banks' balance sheets in a fair way that does unduly encumber the taxpayer, is by allowing the banks to fail. Certainly there would be a certain cascade effect, but being "too big to fail" is absurd, and creates moral hazard - if a bank only borrowed and lent enough, it would put the taxpayer at its mercy by being "systemic". But the hopeless flailing around with obfuscation schemes designed to transfer the "systemic" risk to the taxpayer, is no less systemic once it sits uncomfortably on the public balance sheet, and given the globalisation in the finance industry and the politicisation of these decisions, are simply protectionist.

The Banks must be allowed to fail. The losses must be accepted by equity holders and bond holders. The fools must be parted from their money. It will hurt. It might even be seen as depressionary. But it will be over much sooner, the market will find its bottom, the point from which it can recover. However, a finance industry absolved of its utter failure, transferred to an overburdened and newly indebted taxpayer, is a recipe for a much longer and intractable depression.

Yesterday's demonstration in London is really just the tip of the iceberg.. The *ankers waving money from the windows is like the french gentry's behaviour just before the revolution.

This is the start.. Just wait until later this month when Brown ups the tax to extortionate new levels and by the end of the year, we are all watching our food and fuel skyrocket, and interest rates get hiked .. We are nearly at breaking point.. I think the majority of the population are in denial at the moment, but that will soon turn to anger and we WILL have civil unrest.

History does have a habit of repeating itself. Mark my words, please somebody.. quote me in 12 months time.!!

I'm a mild man but it's time for a fucking global revolution just to teach these fucks a lesson

2009-04-02T00:36:00.001+01:00

by Almart on the guardian blogs

Let me see if I follow here:
The banks lose trillions of dollars
The world's leaders steal our money to give them back the money they lost (not in order to replenish out lost pension funds and retirement funds, btw, but in order to replace their empty coffers since these banks were loaning out at a rate of 50 bucks for every 1 buck they actually had)
The world's leaders meet in London to discuss how to steal more of our money
We protest
And the police who are paid by our money beat the crap out of us.

In other words, we pay for the banks to lose money, we pay for the leaders to pay the banks, and we pay for the police to beat us.

Seriously, I'm a mild man but it's time for a fucking global revolution just to teach these fucks a lesson if nothing else.

british police tactics at g20 protest and protests in general

2009-04-02T00:29:00.002+01:00

by _float_ of Urban 75 forum.

Stage 1: get in the way of marchers at the last minute (ie just before the BoE) and try and push them backwards in on themselves. Cut the crowd into managable 'chunks' using barriers and lines of officers. Prevent people from going down side streets. Prevent people from going in or out of certain areas. "Shape" the crowds into static lumps of a certain size and keep them there against their will, to demoralise the more 'casual' protestors. Shaping the crowd mans that no one section is more than a certain size. Keeping it static means that people can' choose where and how they protest, and allows stage 2 to progress.

Stage 2: Keeping this 'holding pattern', get increasingly kitted up and start rough-housing the crowd in sections - push them around pointlessly and start beating them, but don't let them leave. Further wears down and demoralises people and also provides the pretext for next stage...

Stage 3: The 'controlled release' phase - disperse the 'softer targets' in the crowd in small increments, by baton charging and pushing the crowd around, but now allowing some people to escape. Because people have been held so long most will immediately decide to go home at this point. On the way out they are intimidated and isolated so are easier to bully and instruct, less likely to join another demonstration. In effect the softer targets are bullied off the field of play.

Stage 4: The "Finish them off" phase - anyone who still remains is driven further together and can now be labelled as "the hard core" - by the fact they have remained (and ignoring that they have been penned in). At this point they can be baton charged repeatedly, the media will have run away and its too dark for decent footage, news deadlines have past and the remainder can be arrested, id-ed, searched etc.

This strategy is put in place beforehand, and enacted regardless of how peaceful people are. Anyone wanting to uncover the documentation and management of this by senior officers is told to get fucked on the grounds of operational secrecy, public safety and national security. The proof exists however by looking at even after event where the same thing is put into effect, regardless of people's "right to protest" or how well behaved people are.

Great country we live in, isn't it?

The Big Takeover : Rolling Stone

2009-03-26T10:26:00.000Z

The Big Takeover : Rolling Stone

"It's over — we're officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire."

This is quite a long article,
but very very interesting about how
the US Fed bank is secretly protecting
all the failed Wall Street players by pumping trillions
to them under the table. Democracy is dead in america,
the banks rule all.

This was apparent to us when we went on the J18 demo in the city of London all those years ago.

Now the UK and USA are confirming this.
These people are seen as untouchable.

Read on and find out more

woah this is uncanny

2009-02-12T22:14:00.001Z

Some wealthy but tragically sad librarian will be masturbating furiously tonight.

I met the walrus

2009-02-11T22:07:00.000Z

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon's every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit, and timeless message.

bank bonus culture

2009-02-09T12:21:00.003Z

I have heard too many comments on this site recently trying to convince us that the bonus is required because if it is taken away then talent will leave this country..........well the talents that were involved in the banks collapsing please leave the country......sorry if I am wrong but a bonus is meant to be an incentive to perform well....and they havent performed wll so no bonus....also if you want a bonus....then perform well otherwise you dont get one now your in public hands through your lack of ability to perform......if amateur economists on this site in their spare time could see the banks error 4 years ago then the talent at the top is a joke...........it really makes me sick all this talk of the great talent we have in our banks and that its justifiable to pay these bonus because of the "Nature" of banking and trading.......wrong........I would like to be there when one of these bankers goes to hospital to have an op.......to be cared for by a nurse on a wage which is a small fraction of his bonus........then for the nurse to pay her tax into his fat pocket for doing a job incompetently.....that is not justice do not try to dress it up as so........

FROM THE FINANCIAL TERRORISTS AT WWW.HOUSEPRICECRASH.CO.UK

she

2009-02-05T19:27:00.001Z

she loved me

she loves me

yet how could this be

we weren’t we were we?

maybe she was right

and men don’t know

I feel peace when I give her the right

to be right

so men don’t know

and in low moments

when empty hallway and dry toast is all

then yes

I can see

that she loved me

that she loves me

this road leads to smog

2009-02-05T19:23:00.002Z

a dirty little road,

with picnic wrappers in the gutter

and I dawdle

but its dusty and gravelly and it turns and

veers over hills and disappears

I’d make more progress on a bicycle

but walking is my style

hold on there is someone else

hallo

and?

what

do you have something to say? I ask full of hope

yes

you may begin

blood flows blood flows blood flows blood flows

no time for a jedi teddy

can I borrow your mush eddie (machete)?

in this wonderful world

hold on

in this beautiful world

hold on

hold on hold on with a grip so tight

it dams my blood makes my head feel light

blood flow blood flow

Technorati Tags: smog

hand eczema

2009-02-05T19:12:00.001Z

Srtike out a coiling serpent poisoned umbrella handle.

Clasp tight scrolls and curves and wishes and spell burned autographs.

Curdle sweet memories in today’s horrorzone.

A pond of fear. How deep? How dark?

A tree stump, cut back too much, it never grew back.

They don’t wink at me in the morning.

A smile is a once monthly gift and usually with strings attached.

My real prize is painful skin,

I can’t grasp, couldn’t think of picking up the guitar.

Like the Singing Detective living in my right hand.

Curse you!

My name is not JOB.

Fuck OFF.

Testing out Windows Live Writer

2009-02-05T16:19:00.001Z

I just found out about this blog writing tool.

Quite interesting I can see my words being written in the context of the blog.

So Let me try something out.

Blog Posts	Blog Readers
115	3 if you’re lucky

View Full Album

Blue Bell Woods Video

Yeah feels pretty slick,

I have to stop now because my hand eczema is killing me.

Technorati Tags: windows live writer,photo album,embed video,table

Class C for Cannabis

2009-01-27T21:40:00.003Z

Sod the new law,
free the weed

smoke on it people

a glass of red wine at night is fine

but smoke some draw and you will free yourself
and create - you will extend beyond the norm

do you trust their reasons for the drug upgrade to class B?

B for Bullshit

they want safe closed minds
B leave
C Love

Big Phone, Tiny Penis

2009-01-25T21:16:00.004Z

As of this week I have a new T-Mobile G1 google phone.
It runs a new operating syatem called Android.

It is an absolutely fantastic machine.
Never mind the fact that the country is riddled with more and more
powerful cancer/adhd inducing transmitters, usually located on the local creche roof, this phone is the mutt's nuts.

Its big and bulky unlike the apple iPhone.
But I always found the iPhone looked like some posh lady's cigarette lighter.
Something to slip out of your handbag in a cafe.

My googlephone is a bulky bastard.
Stuck in its leather holder it clips to the side of my belt like a
gun in a holster.

I'm not gonna taser anyone with it or chib them - it's not that aggressive.

What it has got that I couldn't do without is Buttons.
It has a full keyboard that slides out from the side and it has a rollerball for
navigation of the menus and browsers.

So what can it do?
Well I spent this week working out what groovy applications I can install on this thing. You can download these from the android marketplace built into the phone.

Music:
Streamfurious:
This simple online radio player can be filled with all shoutcast pls streaming stations of your choice. It comes with a built in selection , mainly techno and hiphop, but the world is your oyster when it comes to stations. It has BBC World service but I'm not sure that other BBC stations can be added as they are real media/windows media streams.

Last FM
A great player for the Last FM website where you can listen to your personal taste in music as well as others while reading about the artist playing and lining up future gig details - perfect/

Shazam
Most new sony erricson walkman phones can do what shazam does.
Identify the artist and title of a recorded song playing from an external sound source such as a car radio using the phone's microphone. Nifty if you missed the name read out by the dj.

GMote
This can be used to start music and video files on your home computer.
It acts like a remote control.
You will see a list of albums on the phone's screen. The files are on your pc's hard drive. Click on one and music comes out of the pc, incredible. It can also be used to stream those PC songs and play them on your phone. It has a nice interface which adds the album art to the background of the controller.

Ringdroid
Use this to slice a section from any of your mp3 files on the phone to create new ringtones or alert sounds.

Arnold sounds
Just a bit of fun . Phone a friend and play famous Arnie Schwazernegger quotes to him or her.

Communication Apps

Chomp SMS
Gives the screen a touchscreen keyboard for quick texting without unsliding the
hard keyboard. You also see a nice conversation style format of previous texts from the same contact scrolling down the screen.

HulloMail (UK only at the moment)
A visual voicemail app.
This syncs with your email account and sends you an email with a small mp3 file with
the sound of your voice message on it.
It is all accessible from the phone using the HulloMail app or by checking Gmail (which I use).
By the way there used to be a service like this back in 1999. I would get land line voice messages sent to my email for free while I was otherwise enagaded surfing the net with my 56k modem.

Google Mail/ G Talk/ Calendar
Being a google phone these apps are already installed.
I already use all three so it is quite handy for me.

Apps that use GPS Global Positioning

Qype Radar
This is great. Find out where nearby pubs, restaurants, places of interest etc are in your local vicinity, works very well and includes reviews and a link to a map.
Loads of content here in the UK.

Various barcode scanner shopping apps like Shop Savvy
I haven't really tried these. You can scan a barcode of an item in a shop and see
how much it costs elsewhere, newrby or online.

Camera
You can add your gps data to photos you take. Later when you upload to
a site like flickr, you can view all your photos positions on a map.

SkyMap
Out and about where the sky is clear at night?
Use this app to help identify the constellations above.

Other stuff

Wifi Scan
Find hotspots when you are out and about for faster data access that
is also outside of your phone contract's data limit.

Steel
A great browser with a touch screen keyboard.

Video player and Youtube for your mob vid needs (if you have them)

Sticky
Create sticky notes. There are other "to do list" and notes apps that I haven't tried yet.

PixelPipe
This is great for uploading photos to any of your online accounts
such as flickr blogger and facebook.
Send to all at once or choose your selection.

There are a few games out there too nothing that amazing,
but enough to waste time if that's your thing.

I mainly love the music apps,
Last FM and StreamFurious.

This phone doesn't yet have any apps to read and write office documents like
windows mobile phone's do.
It's not a business phone and
it's not a pure consumer phone either.
One for the geeks with small gonads I reckon so count me in!
I'm impressed!!

edit to add:
textonphone
this is a really brilliant app,
download ebooks in a really great sharing community
environment, then read them on your phone.
This app is really well developed, check it out,
I think its fabulous!!!!

John Waters gives Barry Obama some advice - hilarious

2009-01-25T02:30:00.001Z

this is funny as f**k

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7849026.stm

Tony Benn sticks it up the BBC

2009-01-25T02:19:00.001Z

Tony Benn is quite rightly appalled by the decision by the BBC not to broadcast
a charity appeal in aid of the victims of the savage attack on Gaza.
Watch him tear into the BBC in this BBC TV interview

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7849026.stm

first g1 photo

2009-01-24T00:43:00.001Z

Posted via Pixelpipe.

President Obama News (video)

2009-01-22T17:01:00.000Z

white phosphorus - gaza

2009-01-14T00:21:00.002Z

Gaza – Ma’an – Everything was on fire; houses, sheds, trees.
Ma'an News Agency Jan 13, 2009

Bombs, too, were everywhere, and with them came the white clouds. White phosphorous, the doctors are now saying, but that's disputed in Israel.

But for sure it was a night of terror. We were terrified. We thought we were going to burn to death.

Bombs were everywhere. That's what 27-year-old Fadia Al-Najjar kept saying. She's from Khaza'a; she was telling us what kind of horrific night she and her family had just gone through.

While explaining what had happened, Fadia stood next to her paramedic husband Ghanem, now surrounded by other medics, desperately struggling to save his life after he was caught in an airstrike unlike he had ever seen before.

Ghanem was incapacitated while on duty trying to bring injured Palestinians to the hospital. There had been calls reporting mysterious white smoke in the latest airstrike, and Ghanem was dispatched to attend to the wounded. He was on duty when he inhaled some of the smoke.

"The shelling with phosphorous bombs started in Khaza'a. Two of the bombs hit the area around our house,” Fadia explained. She recalled how the fire spread quickly throughout the home, and white smoke billowed out the windows.

"Neighbors were screaming, asking for help; the fire was changing," she remembers. "I woke up my kids, got them to my parents’ house, hoping to find a safer place."

"But the real catastrophe was two hours after we had moved to my parents’ house; bombs hit their home too and the fire spread everywhere. The top floor was burnt completely.”

It's not just her husband Fadia keeps watch over. In fact, the young mother has to split her time among the hospital's many wards. Her children have also been hospitalized.

"They wanted to burn us alive inside the house. There were 40 of us in there. Men, women, children,” she recalls of the second bombing. "We could hear their bodies burning."

"We didn't know where to go. Our house, my parents' house, my in-laws' house? All were burnt, damaged, destroyed. But where can we go in this weather? It's very cold."

Zakaya

Another relative, 51-year-old Zakaya, said she struggled to make sense of the chaos and confusion of trying to find her injured family members at Nasser Hospital in the northwest of Gaza City.

Zakaya told Ma'an that she barely remembers what happened, "but at about 10:00pm we heard explosions in several areas of Khaza'a, coming closer and closer."

"We live so close to the border wall [targeted by Israel], so we were just so afraid; our fear reached a maximum level."

"The children were asleep, so I tried to wake some of them because I felt our home was no longer safe," she says. "And all of the sudden bombs fell all over our two-story house."

"White smoke filled the house, and suddenly fires were spreading inside," Zakaya explained while checking on her children at the hospital's intensive care unit.

"We started screaming; we were so scared. I started to get the kids outside but the bombing went on and six more bombs fell on our house."

After the sixth bomb hit the home Zakaya and those her family was able to get out of the home were forced to abandon those left in the building. The fire was too hot and the smoke too intense and no one could get back inside.

"The smoke was spreading so fast; we couldn't see through it. We couldn't see, but we could hear.” From the windows of the burning home the cries of her children and cousins filled the streets. “The cries were not just from my home, but from the neighbors' house too."

Paramedics arrived and evacuated some of the last who were rescued from the building. They braved the smoke and were able to rescue a few others before the entire building was engulfed in flames.

Adel

According to 48-year-old Adel Kdeih, the night was calm before the bombs hit. Now that he knows what it was, that it was phosphorous, "it just makes the situation that more horrible."

Kdeih came hurrying to the hospital to check up on his children injured by the phosphorous, but he also remembers how tired he was. He was in great shock, numb, when he told Ma'an how the "dozens of incendiary bombs fell on civilian houses."

"We could hear women and children screaming in fear," he says.

Many of the bombs fell on the courtyard of his house. "I hurried inside the house to wake up my twelve children. I was able to evacuate the house with the help of paramedics and others from the [Hamas-run] civil-defense team."

"When I was evacuating the house I saw a lot of houses and fields being burnt, too,” he recalls.

The doctor

Dr Yousef Abu Ar-Reesh, the medical director at Nasser Medical Center, said more than 90 patients were brought in for burn treatments Sunday night.

"Most of them were skin burns, lacerations and deep wounds. A lot of them came in choking, unable to breathe," he explains.

He explained that as far as he can tell the Israeli army is using two kinds of bombs,"The first causes severe skin burns and leads to death, as with 41-year-old Hanan Al-Najjar here, and others."

"The second kind leads to suffocation, congestion, the inability to breathe.”

Dr Ar-Reesh said that he cannot confirm that the bombs are white phosphorus, since there are no specialized laboratories in Gaza. The eyewitness reports and the type of injuries he has seen in the hospital, however, worry him.

"What is certain” he said, “is that the Israeli government is using a new kind of bomb and explosives that Palestinian medics have never even heard of."

"Not even the Arab medical teams who just arrived can give us any support," he says.

The doctor pointed out that the wounds and burns are "terrible and horrific."

"And they can lead to death, as with Hanan Al-Najjar, who burned to death when a shell directly hit her body.”

When asked if Israel is deliberately using weapons that are illegal under international law for use against civilians, Dr Ar-Reesh chooses his words carefully: "I can't rule that out."

Temporary School Of Thought

2009-01-12T10:42:00.000Z

Temporary School Of Thought

a space where people come together to share knowledge, non-descript skills, tactical imagination, creationism, passive action. a week long event of mutual learning, leftwing bias, free lectures, inert radicalism, workshops, discussion and film screenings.

LEARNING TO MAKE AN ‘OUD IN NAZARETH by Ruth Padel

2009-01-11T11:52:00.001Z

LEARNING TO MAKE AN ‘OUD IN NAZARETH

Published in The New Yorker, 27th October 2008

The first day he cut rosewood for the back,
bent sycamore into ribs and made a belly
of mahogany. Let us go early to the vineyards
and see if the vines have budded.
The sky was blue over the Jezreel valley
and the gilt dove shone
above the Church of the Annunciation.
The second day, he carved a camelbone base
for the fingerboard.
I sat down under his shadow with delight.

The third day, he made a nut of sandalwood,
and a pickguard of black cherry.
He damascened a rose of horn
with arabesques
as lustrous as under-leaves of olive beside the sea.
I have found him whom my soul loves.
He inlaid the soundhole with ivory swans,
each pair a Valentine of entangled necks,
and fitted tuning pegs of apricot
to give a good smell when rubbed.

The fourth was a day for cutting
high strings of camel-gut. His left hand
shall be under my head.
For the lower course, he twisted copper strings
pale as tarmac under frost.
He shall lie all night between my breasts.
The fifth day he laid down varnish.
Our couch is green and the beams of our house
are cedar and pine. Behind the neck
he put a sign to keep off the Evil Eye.

My beloved is a cluster of camphire
in the vineyards of Engedi
and I watched him whittle an eagle-feather, a plectrum
to celebrate the angel of improvisation
who dwells in clefts on the Nazareth ridge
where love waits. And grows, if you give it time.
Set me as a seal upon your heart.
On the sixth day the soldiers came
for his genetic code.
We have no record of what happened.

I was queueing at the checkpoint to Galilee.
I sought him and found him not.
He’d have been in his open-air workshop -
I called but he gave me no answer -
the selfsame spot
where Jesus stood when He came from Capernaum
to teach in synagogue, and townsfolk tried
to throw Him from the rocks. Until the day break
and shadows flee away
I will get me to the mountain of myrrh.

The seventh day we set his wounded hands
around the splinters. Come with me from Lebanon
my spouse, look from the top
of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens.
On the eighth there were no more days.
I took a class in carpentry and put away the bridal rug.
We started over
with a child’s ‘oud bought on eBay.
He was a virtuoso of the ‘oud
and his banner over me was love.

Stag's Head - Still sorely missed

2009-01-10T21:51:00.002Z

The best Athlone pub outside of Athlone! Full of Athlonians and acolytes on weekends in the good old days of the late 80s/early 90s when I used to go there regularly.

YOu can see the exterior and interior of the Stags as it was 20 years ago on "Completely Pogued", a bonus documentary on the DVD of the Pogues live at the Town and Country Club in '88 (it was broadcast on Channel 4 a couple of times in the 90s.)
Report this for removal
MadMick - 3 Jul 2008 15:05

The best Athlone pub outside of Athlone in the 80s and early 90s. The saddest pub closure of my lifetime - not having been to Camden for several years I was totally shocked on revisiting a couple of years ago to discover that the Stag's had joined the late great pubs in the sky. RIP.
Report this for removal
MadMick - 1 Jul 2008 15:05

Yes, a sadly missed pub. To rub it in, the block of flats conversion is now called "The Stags Head Apartments". Shameful.

There's a pub nearby on Royal College St that's had exactly the same treatment, ie, closing down and being called The Black Horse Apartments. I reckon there's someone contemptible out there who's doing this for a living. Let's get a mob together and lynch the fucker.
Report this for removal
travis - 22 Feb 2008 20:03

I loved this place, my second home for 4 years when I lived in london. Bert was a one off, a real gent and his staff/family were the salt of the earth.
We will see less and less of this sort of pub and that is a tragedy.
Report this for removal
scaldy - 11 Feb 2008 03:42

this was my favourite in the world ever.
maybe it was Bert and family (Landlord)
maybe it was the hearth fire
maybe it was the great music
maybe it was all the regulars
maybe it was the lock-ins
maybe it was the pool table.(I know there was no place but that part of the craic)
maybe it was the back yard
maybe it was the quiet weekdays.
maybe it was the saturday afternoons which drifted into evenings and late nights.
maybe it was all the wonderful diverse people who were likely to meet. or maybe it was Noreen. but whatever it was it is sadly missed. It's likes will never be seen in London A part of me died the day they closed the old place down.
Report this for removal
shancoduff - 8 Sep 2006 16:41

Sadly missed. Was a great place with top Guinness and great live Irish music particulalrly on Sundays. Good place to warm up after a day at Camden/Stables market. Spent many a good night there and met my missus there. Certainly irreplacable.
Report this for removal
pdavis500 - 9 Apr 2006 13:56

"The greatest little boozer"

The Stag's closed more than a year ago now and I'm still in mourning. It's not even a gastro-pub but just converted into flats.

Its like will never be seen again. Irreplacable.

Thanks for a some unforgettable times Bert Griffen.
Report this for removal
ThierryHenry - 2 Nov 2005 11:20

Great, just what Camden needs yet ANOTHER gastro pub. The Stags was a fantastic place, especially the music. Unfortunatley, it's happening all over the borough. Sad days indeed.
Report this for removal
Mat Delort - 6 Sep 2004 11:30

Very sad to hear this is closing down. Unfortunately 'anonymous' has been rather naive. Apparently its closing down for four months and will re-open as a gastro-pub. Great!
Report this for removal
Owen - 15 Jun 2004 17:18

sorry to hear that the stags is closing down...the best irish pub in london..great traditional music
unique atmosphere. diverse clientele and the best bar staff in the world
Report this for removal
brian tinley - 21 May 2004 20:47

end of era!!! Bert sad to see you and your family leave the best pub in camden! lets hope the new owner leaves the stags as it was under Bert
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anonymous - 5 May 2004 12:13

This pub is one I dont like to tell many about, on the other hand it deserves the recognition for been a real taste of what Irish bars should be in london (less commercial, tacky waxy o conors/o'neills) It is like steeping into a pub at home! I love it great food and the guv is a great guy! Great Music too and all welcome to play! Long may the inn in Camden be!! P.S happy St. Patricks Day guys!!
Do chara
K
Report this for removal
Karen - 17 Mar 2004 14:58

Lovely place. Warm, cosy and great atmosphere. More pubs like these please!
Report this for removal
Steve - 15 Mar 2004 13:44

A personal favourite of mine. A dying breed for sure, so long may it remain unchanged – I shudder when I recall what has happened to practically all other Camden pubs.

It’s hard to find, which is a good thing, though well worth the effort if you’re a right thinking sort with excellent taste in pubs.

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Steve Harper - 13 Feb 2004 14:13
One of the last proper Camden pubs, friendly, great atmosphere - but keep it a secret.......
Report this for removal
Derm - 14 Jan 2004 10:29
Does this place still do the Thai food? Nice pub in an unpromising location. Bonus points for real fire, loses half a mark though for the pool table - waste of space as there's not enough cue room when it's busy.
Report this for removal
Matt - 12 Jan 2004 12:53
best barstaff in the world
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o"sullivan - 7 Jan 2004 20:38
The best pub in London.
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Odran Jennings - 24 Nov 2003 12:59
great pub this , just a welcoming atmosphere and a real fire if i remember, excellent, place to go on a saturday afternoon in winter,
Report this for removal
pat - 22 Oct 2003 15:18
my mate small hands and dangrous first dave first started drinking here when they were young,i dont mind a traditional old boozer with good old live irish music being played over the weekend,but the toilets are freezing in the winter.
Report this for removal
baz tav - 17 Oct 2003 12:47
My local. Friendly bar staff, nice quiet pub during the week and really busy on Friday/Saturday nights.

And Bert the gaffer is a top bloke
Report this for removal
Jonesy - 1 Oct 2003 13:33
top place! first place i started drinking and still go back!!! landlord and family are great and good friends! place to go for a good lrish experience.
Report this for removal
S.H. - 19 Sep 2003 12:54
use to drink there all the time when I LIVED IN LONDON..GOOD CRAIC AND Bert the gov is sound
Report this for removal
Gerry - 31 Jul 2003 15:47
Good little pub this. Not particularly pretty, but does what it says on the tin. We often used to stagger over there after band practice in a nearby studio. Those were the days!
Report this for removal
G - 16 Jun 2003 16:27
Visited here last year; Thai food, real ale and a lovely atmosphere in a 'proper' Irish bar.

Could it be possible that the Bucks Head (suggested by someone else with a blurry photo) could actually be this?
Report this for removal
mike - 10 May 2003 14:08

sad eyed lady of the lowlands

2009-01-10T00:27:00.001Z

sad eyed lady of the lowlands
lowlands
lowlands away
my love
so the be when was in the brent cross acid party space at
joel’s parents place where badness was goodness
allowed up to a point and then brent cross was the beyond the
point new station where we would all arrive
and further unexpected points were crossed
such as the 30 year old guy with our 15 year old girl friend
but the main point was an irritating pseudo grown up daringness and
dabbling with adult mind bending drug-sex danger.
irritating cause I was rarely dabbling with the drugs and definitely not
getting any of the sex.
Oh no, I was living in good old boozy Glasgow,
being trained in the ways of booze and heavy metal.
Roman marching camps and cup and ring marks in Argyllshire
I went to gigs at the Barrowlands with girls who wanted me to get it up,
when I would only “oh sit down” to James.
So I got a dose of panic attacks,
some kind of acid mushroom come down from the previous years
mixed with major sessions drinking pints and pints of tartan special...
I learned how to drink,
I learned how to sing drinking songs
Back down south I realised how quiet and mellow everyone was in
comparison to up in Scotland.
I discovered that my crude jokes and songs and fast drinking methods were
an appreciated novelty after the years of faux-north London squat trendy heroin addict
vacant middle class cliquey wankdom that my friends were unwittingly exposed to.

Avi Shlaim: How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe |

2009-01-08T00:20:00.000Z

Avi Shlaim: How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe |
World news |
The Guardian

This is the best article I have read about the current situation in Gaza.

Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions

The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.

..........

"inhuman" assault on Gaza

2009-01-04T23:57:00.001Z

John Ging, the head of the UN relief agency in Gaza, described the situation there as "inhuman".

"We have a catastrophe unfolding in Gaza for the civilian population," he said. "The people of Gaza City and the north now have no water. That comes on top of having no electricity. They're trapped, they're traumatised, they're terrorised by this situation.

"They're in their homes. They're not safe. They're being killed and injured in large numbers, and they have no end in sight. The inhumanity of this situation, the lack of action to bring this to an end, is bewildering to them."

The UN has been particularly angered at the contention of the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Ging also accused Israel of a campaign of destroying public buildings vital to the administration and governance of Gaza.

"The whole infrastructure of the future state of Palestine is being destroyed," he said. "Blowing up the parliament building. That's the parliament of Palestine. That's not a Hamas building. The president's compound is for the president of Palestine. Schools, mosques."

windows 7

2009-01-04T00:26:00.003Z

Windows 7 IS what Vista should have been.
It actually runs nice and fast - much better for exploring
files and folders and viewing photos in the full screen slideshow.
I haven't yet tested the speed at which files can be copied from drive to
drive (a major unforgiveable fault that vista had).

This should be made available for free for us mugs that had
the inadequate Vista foisted upon us when we bought new comps in 2008...

'I didn't see any of my girls, just a pile of bricks'

2008-12-30T09:11:00.000Z

Israeli air strike kills five daughters from one family as Gaza death toll passes 300 |
World news |
The Guardian

The family house was small: three rooms, a tiny kitchen and bathroom, built of poor-quality concrete bricks with a corrugated asbestos roof, in block four of Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza. There are hundreds of similar homes crammed into the overcrowded streets, filled with some of the poorest and most vulnerable families in the Gaza Strip.

But it was this house, where Anwar and Samira Balousha lived with their nine children, that had the misfortune to be built next to what became late on Sunday night another target in Israel's devastating bombing campaign of Gaza.

An Israeli bomb struck the refugee camp's Imad Aqil mosque around midnight, destroying the building and collapsing several shops and a pharmacy nearby. The force of the blast was so massive it also brought down the Balousha family's house, which yesterday lay in ruins. The seven eldest girls were asleep together on mattresses in one bedroom and they bore the brunt of the explosion. Five were killed where they lay: Tahrir, 17, Ikram 15, Samer, 13, Dina, eight and Jawahar, four.

They were the latest in a growing number of civilian casualties in Israel's bombing campaign. At least 335 Palestinians have been killed and as many as 1,400 injured. On the Israeli side, four people have been killed by Palestinian rockets. Israel's military offensive continues and may yet intensify.

Imam, 16, lay in the room with her sisters but by chance survived with only injuries to her legs. She was eventually pulled free and rushed to hospital. "I was asleep. I didn't hear anything of the explosion," she said yesterday as she sat comforting her mother. "I just woke when the bricks fell on me. I saw all my sisters around me and I couldn't move. No one could see me from above. The neighbours and ambulance men couldn't see us. They were walking on the bricks above us. I started to scream and told my sisters we would die. We all screamed: 'Baba, Mama. Come to help us.'"

Her parents had been sleeping in the room next door with their two youngest children, Muhammad, one, and Bara'a, 12 days.

Their room was damaged and all were hurt, but they survived and were taken straight to hospital even before any of the older girls were found.

Imam eventually recognised her uncle's voice among the rescuers and she shouted again for help. "He found me and started to remove the bricks and the rubble from me," she said. "They started to pull me by my hands, the bricks were still lying on my legs."

Her mother, Samira, 36, had seen the pile of bricks in the girls' bedroom and was stricken with grief, convinced they were all dead. Like all the family, she was asleep when the bomb struck. "I opened my eyes and saw bricks all over my body," she said. "My face was covered with the concrete blocks."

She checked on her two youngest children and then looked in the room next door. "I didn't see any of my daughters, just a pile of bricks and parts of the roof. Everyone told me my daughters were alive, but I knew they were gone."

She sat on a sofa surrounded by other women at a neighbour's house further along the street and struggled to speak, pausing for long moments and still overcome with shock.

"I hope the Palestinian military wings retaliate and take revenge with operations inside Israel. I ask God to take revenge on them," she said.

Her husband, Anwar, 40, sat in another house where a mourning tent had been set up. He was pale and still suffering from serious injuries to his head, his shoulder and his hands. But like many other patients in Gaza he had been made to leave an overcrowded hospital to make way for the dying. Yesterday his house was a pile of rubble: collapsed walls and the occasional piece of furniture exposed to the sky. He spoke bitterly of his daughters' deaths. "We are civilians. I don't belong to any faction, I don't support Fatah or Hamas, I'm just a Palestinian. They are punishing us all, civilians and militants. What is the guilt of the civilian?" Like many men in Gaza, Anwar has no job, and like all in the camp he relies on food handouts from the UN and other charity support to survive.

"If the dead here were Israelis, you would see the whole world condemning and responding. But why is no one condemning this action? Aren't we human beings?" he said. "We are living in our land, we didn't take it from the Israelis. We are fighting for our rights. One day we will get them back."

alt facebook status update #1

2008-12-26T23:17:00.001Z

Matthew glugs a tax collector's fill of shame and belches a stinking burp of redemption.

Bush gets shoes thrown at him in Iraq

2008-12-14T22:57:00.003Z

sketches of winkle

2008-12-10T00:04:00.002Z

well she danced like a floozy in a hot tub of guava
eddy ran the sceen you know he's hip to her mantra
he was a meditative fucker all strung out on sinatra
sketching van winkle like there ain't no tomorrow
i saw van winkle show up on the scene
i bled from my elbows when i saw that he was doing all those
sketches of winkle, crying to the heavens in a fit of rage
skethces of winkle, keeping little cupids locked up in a cage
sketches of winkle, i think i love her but she don't love me
skethces of winkle, i thought she loved me dude
well she drained all the fluid from the sink in the kitchen
eddy wanted veggies all he's doing is bitchen
steve and sandy went out and bought a new pair of mittens
mean ween cut me and he said he was kidding
rip van winkle
rip rip rip van winkle

thod speaks

2008-12-02T17:53:00.000Z

"""There was a time when almost everyone worked the land. Now we produce more food than ever with only a tiny fraction of the people. So we have 1 man producing as much as 100 used to, what are the the other 99 to do now. Well we still have the food, so they have gained 100% leisure time. Of course the one that still has to drive the tractor resents them. But you don't see him offering to cut his work hours and share the labor around. He wants to earn more than everyone else. This is the basic problem, too many people are working too hard. The factories are the same, the robots can do what 10 men used to do, we still get the same amount of product. We are just going to have to stop working so hard and spread the work around more. Make it illegal to work more than 20 hours a week. Those that want to prove they are better than everyone else because they work harder are going to have to find other ways to play their oneupmanship game.

We could start classifying the workaholics as anti social in that they deprive other men of their jobs. Or we could classify it as a mental illness. Still most people are happy to let them be the mugs and put in all the work hours. Just so long as they get their share. All you hear about is complaints from those mugs that they get taxed, thats because they are so dumb they cant see the big picture. They cant see anything but defining themselves in terms of work and money. So we encourage their psychosis. We don't need their labor it can all be made by a few hours a week from each person.

In the future it will all be done by robots. There will still be guys going out trying to play a game that isn't there anymore. """

oh I'm so effing scared of this dude

2008-11-23T00:00:00.003Z

this is one scary dude,
and he;'s doubly scary coz he's english
like yoo and mee
but now he's deddd blown up by a cosy comfy us missile, I'm so
happy and now i feel so sayf innit?

the fetching scarf

2008-11-16T15:57:00.001Z

the fetching scarf she wore at weekends was lying across her back and dangling over her breasts, beating time as she hurriedly walked down lake passage.
Glasgow kisses and milkman wronged wives slashed the net curtains – a bitter reflex.
lips curled and the fan humming in the hairdressers.
steeples so tall and the flailing jacobite windows ajar – windy gust
trod treading footfalls again and still making no ground on the Great Western Road
back from the Maryhill dole
back from the gray wet bleak hole

The End of Wall Street's Boom - National Business News - Portfolio.com

2008-11-16T00:23:00.000Z

The End of Wall Street's Boom - National Business News - Portfolio.com

To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital—to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue.

I’d never taken an accounting course, never run a business, never even had savings of my own to manage. I stumbled into a job at Salomon Brothers in 1985 and stumbled out much richer three years later, and even though I wrote a book about the experience, the whole thing still strikes me as preposterous—which is one of the reasons the money was so easy to walk away from. I figured the situation was unsustainable. Sooner rather than later, someone was going to identify me, along with a lot of people more or less like me, as a fraud. Sooner rather than later, there would come a Great Reckoning when Wall Street would wake up and hundreds if not thousands of young people like me, who had no business making huge bets with other people’s money, would be expelled from finance.

Peter Schiff was right!!

2008-11-12T20:39:00.001Z

You may never have heard of this guy,
but I saw a video of him about a year ago and he
described economic collapse coming while the other
experts around him laughed in his face.
He stood calm and stood his ground.
Now he has been vindicated.
Everything he said was right.

I urge you to watch this video and see how time and again,
he gave this warning.

need a piss

2008-11-11T22:35:00.004Z

need one, but won't leave the
stale sheet bed

need to sleep, but won't switch off the
google chrome black killer box that gives me a skin rash

needs must when the french devil's kick wigan's backside

need a falafel but they shut it down,
no Turkish bar b que for me

need health but the scum between my teeth will keep
the throat infection topped up for the winter

need to de-pornolize,
in fact this is working I'm suck-seeding ha ha

need to stop economy obsessing,
I now have a layman's degree in "the world is going down the tubes"

need to learn some new songs on the guitar,
but I always forget which ones I had earlier elected for this role

needeepinnoneffectivemedicines

nee d een dddd nnn eee eee

glen hoddle's escape hatch

I dreamt I had a new type of camera
you put both eyes in the viewfinder like
a diving mask and everything looked so
vivid and clear and bright,
with this unique machine at once I became an artist
bringing visionary beauty from the mundane light from objects and scenes
we all normally see in shades of tainted dreary modern human vision

I dreamt of a woman swimming in these strange waters,
neither sea nor river and this documentary I was filming/watching
it was the story of a man. she became the narrator,
after being the sex object of his.

I needed those dreams and today's sun and last week's intense
caring stare of my fantastic GP who explained the lot and gave
me what I had forgotten I deserved.

Ian Dury show comes to London: Looks good

2008-11-11T14:37:00.001Z

Does one want fries with ones big mac?

2008-11-07T09:04:00.001Z

Alex Jones take on the Obama victory

2008-11-06T17:32:00.002Z

It is always healthy to think beyond the hysteria
that such events as Diana's death and now Obama's victory create
in the mass public.

I don't really go for conspiracy shock jock Alex Jones,
but he is on form in this show.

http://rss.nfowars.net/20081105_Wed_Alex.mp3

John Cusak - No currency left to buy the big lies

2008-11-03T21:00:00.002Z

I knew it!!!
At the anti-Iraq war march in London 2003 I was sure I saw John Cusak the cool American film actor marching along near Gower street.
Turns out he's a bit of a lefty.
Check his latest blog. Its long and a bit complex but pretty dang good stuff
he is an angry not so young man...

As I contemplated the real possibility of an Obama victory and listened to right wing pundits revise history still unfolding, I thought of titles for this blog:

"Neocon Logic: This Statement is Untrue"
"The Modern Free Market System is False But a New Revelation Shall Come"
" They Would Feast on Themselves: All the Money's Gone, Nowhere to Go"
I decided on:
"No Currency Left to Buy the Big Lies"

NO CURRENCY LEFT TO BUY THE BIG LIES

In the pre-capitalist reality, James Madison said when he put power in the hands of the business elite, he would be entrusting "enlightened statesmen and benevolent philosophers who would devote themselves to the welfare of all."

Clearly, he believed this statement in the way I guess some modern Republicans do. The only problem was that he eventually realized this didn't work and in 1792, disillusioned and worried about the democratic experiment, condemned what he called "the daring depravity of the times." He went on to denounce the business elites who, given ultimate power, "become tools and tyrants of government...they overwhelm government with their powers and combinations and are bribed by its largesse." That's how he perceived the system he had helped design. In 2008, this is an apt description of the Republican relationship to government and power.

read on...

Barcelona #1 - Cigarette Girls

2008-11-02T12:23:00.001Z

Cigarette Girls
On two of the occasions that I entered a tobacconists I was confronted by a young woman dressed in what seemed like a beauty contest outfit with a sash across her chest and not many clothes on.
I was asked whether or not I smoked. It was then that I realized that a special offer was on the cards. They were offering cheap John Player Special cigarettes; The smokes that went out of fashion in the UK in about 1982 and are lower on the pecking order than Dunhills. I don’t usually smoke anything, but when on holiday I do get the urge and seeing that there was no cigarette ban in Spain I couldn’t resist the chance to sit in a bar or restaurant and spark one up. But for me it was Gauloise Blondes or nothing.
No, neither green, red, blue or yellow JPS let alone the traditional black would sway me. I didn’t want to disappoint the girls on parade, but together we knew they were just doing a job so it was all smiles.

awesome crystal caves

2008-11-01T00:07:00.006Z

paranoid commies : James Bond has secret anti-Russia messages from UK and USA

2008-10-31T20:52:00.001Z

Bond girls often come to a sticky end but Olga Kurylenko will be hoping that the Communists never get hold of her.

Kurylenko, the Ukrainian actress who plays Bond's sidekick in Quantum of Solace, has been condemned by the Communist Party of St Petersburg for aiding "the killer of hundreds of Soviet people and their allies". Apparently oblivious to Bond's fictional nature, it accused her of assisting "a man who worked for decades under the orders of Thatcher and Reagan to destroy the USSR".

In an appeal to the actress on its website, the party said: "The Soviet Union educated you, cared for you and brought you up for free but no one suspected that you would commit this act of intellectual and moral betrayal."

It is not the first time the Communists of St Petersburg - or Leningrad, as they would rather it be called - have taken aim at perfidious Western films. Earlier this year they claimed that the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, set in the Cold War in 1957, was a vehicle for crude anti-Soviet propaganda and lambasted the antics of Harrison Ford and his ruthless Russian nemesis Cate Blanchett, calling them capitalist puppets.

The party declared that Ford had "no future in Russia any more" - a message that apparently failed to reach the country's cinemagoers, who flocked to see the film at a record 808 screens.

The Communists are, however, willing to rehabilitate Kurylenko - if she delivers her co-star, Daniel Craig, into the clutches of Russia's secret services for interrogation. "Let him tell what other plans are being written in the Pentagon and Hollywood to discredit Russia and drive a wedge between the Russian and Ukrainian peoples," it said.

Sergei Malinkovich, the leader of the city party, told The Times: "Everyone knows that the CIA and MI6 finance James Bond films as a special operation of psychological warfare against us. This Ukrainian girl sleeps with Bond and that means that Ukraine is sleeping with the West."

giant lego man on Brighton beach

2008-10-31T20:45:00.002Z

Mystery surrounds the appearance of a giant Lego man on a beach in Brighton.

The 6ft-tall (1.8m) red, green and yellow figure has the slogan "No Real Than You Are" painted on the front and some words written in Dutch.

Brighton resident Peter McNiven said he had spotted the figure in the water while walking to work this week.

It is not known if the figure washed ashore or was carried to the seafront. A Lego man with the same slogan appeared on a Dutch beach last year.

Mr McNiven, 32, who works for a digital marketing company, said: "I just happened to stumble across him on Wednesday morning.

"I took a couple of pictures because it's not something you see every day.

"There's a lot of talk about him coming over from Holland to here, but there's no tide marks on him."

A spokesman for Brighton and Hove City Council said it did not know how or why the Lego man had appeared on the beach.

The Dutch Lego man was pulled out of the sea last year
He added the figure had now been taken away.

In August 2007 a giant Lego toy, bearing a close resemblance to the Brighton figure, mysteriously appeared on Zandvoort beach in Holland.

And Like the Brighton Lego man, there was no official explanation about where the giant plastic toy had appeared from.

The blue and yellow figure was pulled out of the sea and bore the same slogan "No Real Than You Are".

granddaughter shagging

2008-10-28T19:02:00.005Z

now cameron and brown are wading in on the side of righteousness
in the Ross Brand insult andrew sachs debacle.

I think they must reckon that those people who are most upset
by the shenanigans are the demographic that are swinging between voting Labour and Tory.
No other reason for these two to start commenting.
Its absurd.

Anyway for all we know Brand did shag Sach's granddaughter.
She looks pretty shaggable...

2008-10-28T08:54:00.000Z

mortgage madness 2003

2008-10-26T22:57:00.001Z

this amazing documentary explains why the
crazy housing boom that is now crashing happened
in the first place

why we are callous brutes

2008-10-25T10:14:00.001+01:00

Psychologically, we can't help but selectively construct our own mental world:

Try to imagine how many events of emotional significance occur in the world in the course of 24 hours:

Countless causes for joy - at 3:05PM a healthy baby was born in Alaska
Countless causes for optimism - at 11:45AM a divorcing couple amicably finalised custody arrangements in Bulgaria
Countless causes for anxiety - at 8:32AM a coughing poultry worker boarded a plane for the UK
Countless causes for anger - at 2:22PM a factory worker in China was unfairly dismissed

Now think of the other 6 billion people in the world. Something joyful, or reassurring, or ominous, or unjust... (etc) has probably happened to each one of us today.

How could a single organism react with genuine emotion to all of these events?

Right or wrong, it is unavoidable that we have to choose which events we invest emotional significance in.

Young Creatives

2008-10-24T23:32:00.000+01:00

'young creative' is clearly a term used by people who work in advertising, PR and marketing to try and kid themselves their doing something valid, vital, exciting, original, daring and 'outside the box'.

When what they are actually doing is spending their days slapping lube on the scabby cock of capitalism so as to make it easier for the man to fuck us all up the arse.

kaka tim

The Stark Choice Now Facing America - The Market Ticker

2008-10-23T14:36:00.000+01:00

The essence of this article could also apply to the
United Kingdom

The Stark Choice Now Facing America - The Market Ticker
The truth is that our nation, and indeed the world, has too much debt for its ability to earn income and has had since 1968. As this became apparent to the people at The Federal Reserve and Treasury, in the 1980s starting with Alan Greenspan, interest rates were artificially kept low for a long period of time to encourage you and others to go into that debt - debt you and these firms cannot possibly repay.

This is why we had the crash in 1987, why LTCM blew up in the 1990s, why we had an Internet Bubble and now why we had a Housing Bubble.

All of these bubbles were intentionally created by The Fed, Treasury and Wall Street Banks to keep the charade alive that you could take on more and more debt and they could make more and more money.

We are now out of bubbles and ability to support bubbles, and America (and the world, in fact) is out of the ability to support more debt.

I think it could get really nasty -- 'mob' nasty.

2008-10-14T19:07:00.002+01:00

This is a post from the House Price Crash forum.
I've been reading this website quite regularly for the past six months.
Its a very interesting place to read about the current financial shenanigans.
There are also outlandish posts like this which are food for thought...

Post by Dissident Junk 13/10/08

Something is not right, there's a presence somewhere, something waiting to be born.

I know I sound utterly nuts (I don't often speak about these things because I know I sound nuts), but I tend to be able to read how things will pan out politically and culturally, what is inevitable and what isn't. I have wondered whether it is a "Blink" thing -- you know that book by Gladwell? -- because I have spent the last ten years of my life utterly submerged in political, cultural and social analysis in both my work and social spheres, so maybe my feelings are a form of subconscious process of analysis that then make me feel something 'instinctually'.

But, nevertheless, I told people in 2000 we would see race riots in the North -- they laughed at me -- and we did. I said we would see a terrorist attack on British soil -- they laughed again -- and we did. I became convinced that the implications of house price rises meant something rotten at the heart of our systems, and that they had to crash and it would be horrific -- everyone laughed at that -- so I found HPC and realised I wasn't alone, and now we see it all panning out.

And at the moment, I just feel this 'presence of an absence', something really strange, bizarre and -- you use this word yourself -- surreal that is about to come to pass. I can't explain what it is or what it will look like. This feels like the calm before a very weird and insane form of storm.

I guess, putting my rational hat on, that there has been too much social, cultural and financial change in the UK in too short a time. There has been a loss of a sense that anything is stable, or works to understood parameters and theories. When things seem so subject to change like this, then people do not know how to 'predict' their best course for the future, they find it hard to make informed decisions, everything becomes uncertain, and with uncertainty comes unease, a sense of vulnerability, a sense of anxiety and then panic. And with panic comes the loss of morality, the loss of civilised behaviour.

I would say that the size of the ultimate reaction relies on two factors: one) to what extent people have repressed their reactive impulse over how long, and two) how much pressure has been placed upon them.

And it is this that bothers me. The last eight years have seen a political environment where dissent or challenges to the existing ideological position have been stifled, quashed or just ignored; modes of reaction to events from both the government and media has felt very muted in proportion to the significance of those events (you can see this in the official responses from situations as disparate as the raft of teenage stabbings, for example, or the response to the Bridgend suicides to the terrorist attack on 7/7 and the blatantly preposterous nature of the housing and credit boom. Even the response to the J-18 or the May day riots, which, when you think about it, were astonishing really as public displays of youth disaffection, seem now to have been dangerously non-existent).

These official responses have served to mute public reaction, but they do not dissolve it. Instead, it is stifled but continues to grow in its smothered state as new events add to the keg of discontent. And more and more things just keep adding to the keg: high migratory patterns (both immigration and emigration: the impact of emigration upon those left behind is never discussed but also has quite significant social and psychological consequences), taxation, financial instability, even things are small as a lap-dancing club opening in a small market town can really unsettle people.

And we seem to have seen a lot of this type of change, and reactions to it have been stifled.

It bothers me. And I know that the way things are going simply cannot continue. Too much change, and too much pressure. I think the keg is going to blow soon. I suspect the outcome will be some form of ideological paradigm shift, but I think it could get really nasty -- 'mob' nasty.

Smoke Mirrors And How A Handful Of Missed Mortgage Payments Started The Global Financial Crisis (from Sunday Herald)

2008-10-07T21:12:00.002+01:00

LAST WEEK, something happened which I never expected to see in my lifetime. There was a general run on the entire British banking system, something that hasn't happened before, even in wartime. Ordinary people started moving their money around from bank to bank in fear that they might lose their cash. Millions of pounds were flowing across the Irish sea for the safe haven of the Irish government's recently-announced 100% depositor guarantee. The UK's banks were on the verge of losing public trust, and public trust is the one thing that banks need to survive.

We are witnessing what the commentator Martin Wolf of the Financial Times calls "the disintegration of the financial system". But how did we get here? How did a few dodgy sub-prime mortgages in American inner cities lead to what is beginning to look like the collapse of capitalism?

read on

2012 SHIT logo

2008-10-05T22:26:00.004+01:00

I just got round to watching the British part of the Olympic ending ceremony
in China.
What a load of codswallop.
Jimmy Page you old nutter, what were you thinking?
- the whole thing was an embarrassment

Do zebras go neigh?

2008-09-07T18:50:00.002+01:00

We are ancient
We like to see ourselves as new

But all that is new are
our things

No no we are so
wonderfully old

Just look at insects
They seem to have just stepped from the
primeval soup

All angles
All geometry

And yes it's a valid perception
We know insects are earlier than us

Yet we do not perceive
our own antiquity

Look at the wrinkles on our hand
like elephant hide

The nails
all horny

Oh walking man
dancing gymnast
tumbling free
how you so perfectly express
your antiquity

I am not asking for a
return to stoneage ways

But to know that grass
with its fruit on top
Makes a bedlike meadow
more precious than any
manicured lawn

teaches us something
don't you think?

breezy breeze

2008-09-07T18:49:00.001+01:00

breezy breeze
I hide behind

the smiley smile
you won't know

the easy ease
with which I
fill my eye
with the sleazy sleaze

I like pretzels

2008-09-07T18:47:00.000+01:00

the shiny surface
the dry crunch
the salty tongue

Hypocrites in the US news media defending Sarah Palin exposed by The Daily Show

2008-09-04T20:12:00.001+01:00

memory of the alps

2008-09-01T23:49:00.000+01:00

rainy day library

2008-08-12T23:24:00.001+01:00

Islington Central Library, Holloway Road from my window with weeds growing in the foreground.