Rejoice - the recession is over

. . . though not for the little people obviously.

Era of repression

We are in the midst of a culmulative radicalism. The state, long since aware of the dangers of its own economic system, has built of an armory of repressive measures using whatever comes by as an expedient. The attacks of the early twenty first century on urban centres can be seen as the start of an acceleration of already existing and underlying drift towards the closing down of any non Parliamentary political opposition (the latest 'pre-emptive' arrests of eco-campaigners in Nottingham, increased police infiltration into 'opposition groups', for example), the thorough and systematic suffocation of demonstrations (the violence is nothing new of course) via new police techniques, the legally endorsed infringement of personal communications and the arrests of innocent people on trumped up charges of terrorism. We are aware of all this.

Not so much publicised is the aggressive campaign state forces have been waging on 'no go' areas. In France, the liberal media has bemoaned the Sarkozy inspired withdrawl of 'proximity policing'. This is the idea that saturating quarters with police can prevent disorder. In the UK, the police are intervening more aggressively but without about as much success statistically. We are not interested in crime figures, (but generally they are not good - burgalries up and so on). What is interesting about the latest bit of info from Liberty (no real left wing organisation it has to be said) is that the police not only can turn any area into a virtual prison, but that they have used 'Section 60 powers'. These powers can turn an area into a police search free for all, essentially criminalising everyone who lives in an area that comes under such jurisdiction. T"he figures showed that there were 53,000 section 60 searches in 2007/08 with most of them in London, Birmingham and Liverpool." That's quite a lot of searches. It's more like an active policy.

The point of the report is that police searches of people (which hardly ever result in prosecution let alone conviction) have 'surged' since 2005. (The MSM word 'surge' is interesting. The 'surge' in Iraq was the state's response to increased disobedience in Iraq. The violence is not working agress more, is the message from on high to the grunt on the street). We know that rozzer over here needs little encouragement, (the Facebook quote of a snout drooling about 'bashing some hippys [sic]', as a stray example...) but even so the tripling and doubling of police searches (not very nice to-be-on-the-receiving-end-experiences at all) on black, Pakistani and white working claszs people - the report doesn't say that but is glaringly obvious - is chilling nonetheless.

It shows the state knows where the flash points will be, Liverpool, Birmingham and London, mainly, and who will need closing down and how much the police need the practice in this type of repression. The heading in the MSM has it that the only salinet feature of the report is that there are more searches of black and Asian people than ever. In reality, there are just far more searches in general.

The quickly gathering storm is taking a familiar shape.

Class war update

We are not winning the class war at the moment. The offensive started 30 years ago, is faltering but the enemy troops still get their supplies and perks. The news is padded out with the qualification that it is £6bn less than last year, but £7bn in bonuses for the few hundred thousand zombie parasites in the city is not going to calm things down any. Even the Lib Dems are sounding angry about it.

Nevertheless, we are glad that Cameron's message that the UK needs an age of austerity is getting through to people at last.

Boil them in shit.

Jet stream

What the fuck was that jet plane doing crashing low over the centre of New York the other day. Obama wasn't on board, reliable sources inform us. But unreliable crank sources (low truth probability but much more interesting) froth that it was a coup attempt. The two jet fighters were going to shoot airforce one down.

Subtle stuff. Either way, more craziness just when it's needed.

We're not all gonna die

This swine flu hype is bollocks right left and centre. EEeww 150 people have died in Mexico (well 7 according to a new fresher survey) gaaasp one person has died sort of because of the flu in the US and, er, that's about it. This though puts it into a bit of perspective, ". . . malaria kills 3,000 people EVERY DAY, and it's considered "a health problem"... But of course, there are no fancy vaccines for malaria that can rake in billions of dollars in a short amount of time."

So do something more interesting when you hear the words 'swine flu' on the telly. And in the papers and, er, in the blogiverse....

Another 7/7 success

The acquittal of three men who supposedly helped the four July 7th bombers rounds off a terrible few weeks for rozzer. This particular investigation cost over a hundred million pounds and came up with nothing. "[A] senior source said the investigating officers were now at a loss where to turn."

Perhaps to their own masters...

Swine flu

After a week of heated rambling, the hype-flu simmers down and no further action need be taken. After all, it's only people in the 'third world' that are going to die from it. And not from 'it' at all, of course, but from the fact that they are so poor that their immune systems have been compromised. So once the hype is over, they'll be forgotten about and the 1.5 billion dollars Obama has just given to [fill in corrupt company here] will have been given to grateful shareholders.

Yes it is cynical, but we're all shiny eyed idealists here. (Though not philosophical idealists you understand. That wouldn't do at all).

The Poor List Ch. 8 'Moving on up.'

Transcript 1 - Line-drop mobile/pda no.’s […]1498sec3(i)5/04/p.t.12 23:07:52 length of conversation 1mn 30 sec. Transcript:
[Background noise from A’s pda – heavy traffic/in car radio? (light classical)/woman’s voice, Southampton accent, at 1 min 15, 1 min 25 resp. /pneumatic drill.

Start:
Voice A (unidentified): ‘May is the most merciful of months.’
Voice B (Thought to be that of Warren Green currently henching in the Central Political Unit of the ISD): ‘But the scars of April must leave their mark.’
A: ‘Did the material get through?’
Green: ‘The concert will go ahead as planned.’
A: ‘Good. My people will be pleased. They are expecting a perfect performance. Are all the other pieces in pace?’
Green: ‘There are still some bodies, some players to be found. But we’re not expecting there to be any shortage, any problems…
A: ‘What? Warren, you should have had this all tied up by now.. [indecipherable]…yes…The conductor wants things brought forward. A month maybe more.’
Green: ‘Why?’
A: ‘What’s that?’
Green: ‘I said ‘why’?’
A: Just to make sure, all the instruments made it didn’t they?
Green: ‘There’s been a bit of a delay but…’
[drilling noise over shouting]
A: ‘…wit. Green, you do know who you’re working for here? I mean. Come on.
Green: ‘Look, percussion instruments are delicate things and…’
A: [indecipherable]…take a right here…Don’t fuck with us Green. We know all the fucking games ok?
Green: ‘I. What? Look. Everything’s under control, everything’s cool. Look why are things being moved?’
A: ‘Cool? Green Cool? I don’t want to have to inform the conductor of any delays. This is of utmost importance…
[Woman’s voice]: ‘ECH on the blue line sir.’
A: ‘About bloody time.’
Green: ‘I still need, the, er, notes.’
[Woman’s voice]: ‘Something about Friday…’
A: ‘Just get things sorted out Green.’
Ends.


Studds folded one end of his mauve striped tie round and under the shorter end and frowned.
‘It depends on what you mean by ‘freedom’ of course. At a minimum that would mean the virtual absence of control and domination. But I don’t think you’re going to get that past your editor.’
The interviewer smiled and stroked a stray strand of polished hair behind her ear. ‘You might be right.'

Studds tied a Windsor knot and straightened it.
‘I know I am. John Stretham isn’t it. Your editor I mean?’
She tilted her head and half smiled.
‘It’s for the supplement - limited but very discerning,’ she said.
The Prof laughed and opened one of his desk’s drawers.
‘Just one last question. Something to, you know, round the piece off. Will you be buying any of the shares?’
‘I think you’d write, ‘He refused to be drawn on the issue..’. Anyway, I wouldn’t think your country’s, Financial regulator would let me. I don’t want another,’ he smiled, glanced out of the window at the steady rain and neon tinged crepuscule and closed the drawer, ‘…drama.’ He sighed and looked back at her.
‘Dismal place. Those towers the gas works out there. How do you, you know, keep up your famous spirits?’
‘O, we get by.’
Studds smoothed his linen suit and took his over-coat off the chair .
‘Well, you could accompany me to the ugly academics’ ball if you like. They’re opening up the new quad tonight, official function, Deans, Principal, mayor all the local dignitaries. But there’s free drinks if you’re not wowed by the social side of things…’
Caroline looked at her watch and raised her eyebrows.
‘Why not? Might be a story in it, who knows,’ she sighed and closed her ipad.
‘I doubt it. Get your things together and we’ll drive over there, anyway.’

As she started to put on her jacket she stopped to look again at the print of the Straightway Bank building that took up a large portion of space on the wall between the two bookshelves. The dramatic bottom-up perspective made the immense building loom and fill the sky with its broad gleam. It had been taken at dawn or dusk because the luminous low grey cloud was cut through with blood red light which shone in brilliant reflection all half way down the tower’s length. A large seagull had been caught in mid flight wheeling away over to the building’s right. There was a blurred outline of someone half turning their back from the window some fifteen floors up and the reflection of a jet stream splitting the sky glowed in higher gigantic windows.
Studds put his coat on and moved across the room. There were lesser buildings in the background and, underneath, written in large TNR, “Live for the moment. When you live in the belly of the beast, there’s not much else you can do.”
‘You’re still feel as if you’re in the belly of the beast then?’ she said standing up.
‘I could extend the metaphor…,’ he said and opened the door. ‘…but I think John would put a line through it.’
She leaned towards the picture and squinted.
‘You took the photo?’
‘It’s a hobby. No great skill required.’ They left the office and made their way out of the building.
‘I once nearly bought a photography book. It was called ‘Photography in a Week’ something like that and I thought “What? That long?”. It’s cheap, instantaneous.’ Their steps echoed in the bleached light of the long corridor.
In the car as they drew up into the new old quad’s car-park, ten minutes later, Studds said,
‘Caroline. There’s something…’
Caroline Duffy took Studds’ hand from her knee.‘Let’s not even fly over there, M.’

Conspiracy

The swine flu thing - it'll all blow over. But in the mean time, there's a lot 'they' can do to stop politics from happening. A few 'cases', a few deaths, quarantine a few places and ban gatherings of more than five people - all for our own good of course - and presto! marches of any sort are forbidden.

Pigs might fly - swine flu. That 'joke' has to have been done already..............

Poor List Ch. 7 pt II

The shopping precinct right in the middle of town, too small to be called a ‘mall’ to big to be called just a ‘precinct’, had been largely emptied of big brand names in the initial phase of the SGD. It was like hundreds of others I’d seen all over the country. When they were there, before, you hardly noticed them – now they’re lost or turned into ‘Gonemalls’[ Dr. Kilo Endgerety rather ugly neologism in his ‘Retail slowdown in Kansas: The Gone Malls and Empty Precinct in the post-bubble American Landscape: in The New Poor Minus Five Publishing House] you notice them everywhere. It started with an uptick in shop turnover. That Gadget shop had turned into a kitchen ware place. The Cut price DVD joint that used to be a cut price jewellers that used to be some travel agent or something. Who’d notice. Next if you had been keeping tabs on it all, you’d notice the place shut up shop that bit earlier on an evening, the people you might have been observing or meeting with no longer turn up as often as they used to or in smaller numbers or not at all, the bar, where you might have sat, closes with just a note on the drawn metal shutter saying that they’d see you in the upturn. Gather evidence, it was one of the top three tenets.

They sauntered through the narrow streets towards the Silver Castle, agreeing tactics. Danny led the way through shops, arcades and the main precinct. As they came up to a corner nearby the empororiumall Coily said,
‘We split up, Lumpy goes in we wait on the opposite sides of the shop, Sharon and Lisa do their stuff Lumpy’s in and out and gives the stuff to one of us. Usual thing after that. Scar’s then Superdrug. You’re on your own after that. You two got the lists?’
‘Yeh.’
‘Yeh.’
Danny zipped up the wavy styled zip of his purple top and toyed with a bolt just affront his hairline.
‘Sthe matter Dany? Scared or something?’ Coily said smiling, slowing them by the old McDonald’s corner. They stopped. Lumpy bent down as to tie his shoe lace.
Danny said, ‘Scared? Course not. Just feel like shit warmed up today,’ and scowled for a second. He then shrugged and said,
‘I’ll go in the side way right. See ya,’ and was gone.
‘Right I’m off knall. See you later, ‘ Lumpy said, stood and darted into the road narrowly missing a slow moving car. Coily loped after him and the flow of the crowd swallowed them all up.

Then, all the big names go, one way or another. Kilo’s law. But you can’t know everything. Kilo, the crits and the doomers all exaggerated things. The thing was the places still got packed. Sometimes. And though that didn’t mean things had returned to BT it went along with the rinsed eye hopeful mood that collapse had been if not avoided, then delayed enough so you still wouldn’t need to talk about it too much. These are ‘haunted times’ [The Haunted psycho-geography of industrial abandon. Kilo Endgerety ibid] That’s what the crisis had meant. Well, it’s what ‘crisis’ means. That things can go either way. At any time. A patient is in a crisis when an operation or a dose of chemical or electricity will leave it either alive or dead, I guess. Everybody knew it was there.

The three musketeers, as Lumpy thinks of things at the moment, swung into action as and when instructed. Lumpy was wrong, course, because they were a long way from being knights. Their individual standing in the ‘Great Chain of Theft-being’ was, in fact, still only five or six notches above the ‘Type II (a) disorganised opportunist thief’[1]. And this progression had taken time and effort. They were, though, coming to an end of a form of training. They didn’t all know this. And like all training it had had its ups and downs, runs of form, periods of disillusion and, in some of their cases at least, spells in youth offender units. But, in a few moves, they could take a lot of pieces in a very short space of time and were currently on a bull run. They were, however, up against it. The Darwinian struggle between the technology and manpower employed by the retailer and legal enforcement bodies had coalesced, in contemporary historico-psycho-geographical terms, into a eager and rapacious predator of upstart shoplifters, organised gangs and opportunist wannabees. It was Coily who knew that they were running out of air, but the thought of attempting anything more ambitious had never yet occurred to any of them.

So what had happened to the Silver Castle, like what happened to thousands of them all over, was that, once they were unable to pay councils for rent and even basic up keep , the directorate of the town’s Silver Castle Arcade Project had presided over a gradual decline from high profitable zone, polished chrome, muscle bound suited security, palm trees and cars on stands to frayed but still high P/E ratios plateau with slightly scuffed shiny floors with coloured water fountains, second hand cars on stands, bijou coffee bars and gadget shops and gleaming consumer promise of a place, to a scuffed flooring, empty water featured, one third full car park, roof parts working loose exposing wires, ducts and pipes for weeks on end and it wasn’t tropically warm anymore, empororium. It had happened slowly, though, over that eighteen twenty months, like a scar fixing itself and, in the near-end, the emporium, opened in fanfare that ten years before, had morphed into a sometimes echoey place where functional shops sold tea or scoop food and things for the kitchen. The Castle had entered a littered, continual seeming end-time (an ‘everything must go’ phase that roamers and the likes of Danny had interpreted in a literal sense) ever since I got here. Though I don’t think there was a connection.

The plan was stark but only worked in shops where the changing rooms were in plain view of people in the shop. As it had happened, quite a few. Essentially, the two women would just get changed. But in that accidentally on purpose observable way. In this, they would distract the security guards (in this instance a recently unemployed twenty year old man, nametag ‘Andrew’, who had been sent to Scars’ Clothing (‘Street style at Street Prices!’), very much against his will by the staff at the local Work Fend, with whom they had long since lost patience, and an even larger man who stood wherever he could so as to never see his own reflection) allowing Lump to use the detag to neutralise the magnet alarms and quickly slip each garment into his prized and gilded shopping bag as smart and ironed as Lumpy’s nap cut suit.
The two of them had dubbed it, ‘The Sexing of the Guard’, after trying it out in London on a weekend staying at friends a year or two back.

The big name topplers cleared out first, then the space rented to medium to lower sized firms, the tight margin just in timers like ‘Scar’, ‘Hempel and Forage’ (unofficial slogan ‘Cheap - but Rubbish!’) and the bargain basement electronic/computer conglomerates, all reasoning, wrongly as it turned out, that the upturn had arrived and things could would get back to normal soon, not eventually. All the clichés and media management had got aired, like ‘we must stop talking ourselves into depression’ ‘vicious circles’ and ‘catch 22 situations’ where the shops become less attractive so people don’t go so businesses don’t sell… even blaming the immigrants and I know, I had to collate a lot of it.

It was Sharon who was key to the plan. Lisa, a former cell mate of hers, had more of an apprentice’s role in the gang, and had become an important feature of this whole particular shop-lifting technique, but it was Sharon who played the major part. It wasn’t a very sophisticated way of liberating merchandise but it had worked in the five out of six times they’d tried it and the only time things had gone wrong, it had been Lumpy’s fault and the guards, unexpectedly, had been female.

Danny had half come up with the idea alone in his room, whilst under the effects of ‘K’, a horse tranquilliser, that had left him for a few excruitiating moments but a neuron’s width away from a full blown psychosis, one Sunday afternoon. Whilst trying to keep a grip on things, teeth and fists clenched, sweat pouring down his face, muscles rigid, all the usual, usually wonderful, effects, but this time far far too intense, he had hallucinated a way of dodging the unpleasant aggravation of having to physically assault security staff before they, the unshoppers, felt confident enough to make their way hurriedly out of premises and general area.

The malls were an important part of what had happened.

Their plan came off smooth as cream on a plate. There was no hitch from the moment Sharon caught the guards’ attention to the meet up on the car park’s fourth floor. No one noticed that had stuff gone missing until much later, from the cashier, to the security guards to the CCTV operators and viewers in a Styro office far away in the Indian sub-continent somewhere who, though paid a going rate, were failing in their function as a cost efficient means of alerting homeland staff of imminent and actual thievery taking place in thousands of shops throughout our sector.

I was stood in the pub which wasn’t far from the place. Right at the top of the hill near the ring road about half a mile away. The pub – meaning the Drug and Bottle - in town. The town specialises in off-beat sounding pub names. Course not, Jug and Bottle it’d be. I say half a mile away because the first time I saw Danny I didn’t know who he was yet, of course and he must have run it in less than a minute. If the time stamps were right. I’m sat there waiting for another half of the local lager I’d become partial to since I’d landed. This stuff is a pound a pint. No really. Ok, it tasted like pound coins do, but after half a glass of the stuff, it didn’t seem to matter that much. I thought I’d lost the taste for beer, after all that had happened, but, with things being the way they were, and are I suppose, it worked out economically.
It was a busy Saturday afternoon, it’d be, the place was packed and even though there was a Rozzers’ Den was only thirty second’s dash away, the interior was clogged with fumes of various stripe and saw a lot of trade of one kind and another going on. Real cigarettes from the bar-maid, Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Speed over there, the dope-fiend’s corner that way and, by the book shelf in the other direction, the sex workers of various gender configurations, all warped and wefted into the pub’s swirling throng.

I had made myself invisible. I’d buy some supply and then settle down at a neutral part of the bar shielded by columns or in a corner table below the tv screen where nobody wanted to sit. Just about the time the football finished, this figure bounded in and some of the light stops coming into the pub. I turned casually as I could. No one commented or moved or asked him to leave or left themselves or threw him out or even, really, looked up. Even though he was like a human alarm, he somehow fitted in with the Drug's surroundings. General piercings and tattoos, he had the complete range of accessories, a shaved head and a bag of proletarian shopping crammed under a massive forearm.

He moved through the gaff with grace and easy expansive gesticulation. From over the other side of the wide pub, he moved and traded from table to table to clump of client to solitary drinker in methodical fashion. I lost track, distracted by the music. Once a song of the band’s came onand I was waiting for it to happen again. It never did.


He moved his way round and over to the side of the pub I was in whilst I was away thinking about tunes. Id felt an inertia slowly gather round me and mutate into a something more like a social paralysis. I looked up and realised I was 'trapped'. I remember a brief sensation of being drawn into something. Like hearing a plane flying far away overhead on a quiet Summer’s day. I coughed needlessly but hacked up something anyway.
“Bad cough, fella.” Danny shouted, close and over the juke box din, with a tilted back look.
“Too much choke.” I said, gulped some beer and focused on a neutral point half way between the bar and the bottles of spirits, nodding.
“I can get you some cheap fags. Real ones. Sort that out for ya.” He shouted over the noise.
I nodded.
“Addidas trackies John Fish shirts?” He insisted frowning this time.
“Not my cut. Look….” I just wanted to be left alone to get drunk. He looked like he felt like he’d spotted a mug. I delved into a jammed pocket and hand him a note.
“Sthis?”
He had. I didn’t know. Well it was a twenty, we both knew that. But that’s not what he meant. Obviously. Things like this don’t happen, he meant. No one, but no one gives money away for nothing, especially coin like this, unless there was some conspiracy or other. But there wasn’t any plot at that point. It was just a stupid attempt to parachute out of the situation. I hoped that by giving him a couple of folds, that that would be that. I’d have bailed out. I’d let the money talk and thought it would shield me from unpleasantness. Something against all the programme’s rules. Sorry Studds. Where ever you are. But then again, I don’t blame myself for what happened. They were your rules. I should feel bad? Well, maybe a little. Yes, that river in Egypt.
‘You fucking queerin me up mate?’ he shouted.
I looked incredulous. ‘Nah, nah. Just had a lucky day on the nags - just feeling a bit, generous’ I shouted back, improvising. He looked at the genuine note, then at me, pulled a face turned and walked off shaking his head through the multi-coloured crowd of drunks.

Sometimes Studds’ rules were completely abstract and inapplicable. Like the excracable ‘Random acts of kindness’ - all a bit BT40’s. I’d come to the conclusion that they had been conjured up with the intention that they couldn’t be followed at all times with any degree of consistency or without getting into a stupid looking analysis-paralysis. It almost compelled you, sometimes, to act randomly. ‘ Everything in moderation’, he’d once said, ‘Even moderation.
If I had been lucky that day I’d have ghosted out of the place before I’d set eyes on Danny Quinn. If not Quinn then not Coily if not Coily then not the branch then not, not the rest of it. Day 466 - it was about three weeks since I’d left London.

[1] T.Govern: ‘Towards a Categorisation of post-Depression Urban Crime across the Northern Sector’ in The Philosophy of Poverty: [P. Studds (Ed.): BT8, Richtown Press]

And the upshot of all those 'good' times...

"It will require two full parliaments of mounting austerity to repair." [Institute for Fiscal Studies].

Of course, not for those in parliament or those who have already done very well out of the long boom and are doing even better out of the bail-outs. It's like being slapped in the mush with a bucket of shit - it really is that black and white. The rich wallow, the poor cop for it.

Soon open rebellion will be called for.

'When are you coming back....?' Grammar clampdown

"The acting chief financial officer of troubled US mortgage giant Freddie Mac was found dead in an apparent suicide this morning.
David Kellermann, 41, was found dead in his home in Vienna, Virginia on the outskirts of Washington, before dawn. Fairfax county, Virginia police said no foul play was evident and that the cause and manner of death was under investigation by the state medical examiner. CNN reported Kellermann had hung himself, citing a law enforcement source. Police spokeswoman Lucy Caldwell said police responded to the house just before 5am (10am BST). She would not say who called police but said others were in the house." [Guardian]

It's 'hanged' himself for crissakes. If he'd hung himself he'd be in a picture frame and not a box, now.

'Oh Freddy. Freddie Mac when are you comin' back?'

The Poor List Ch.7 - Danny's first appearance in the order of things

[PL1/40 “Proletarian Shopping”)

Danny threw the door open and stood in the pub’s doorway, goods under his arm cigarette in mouth. His face registered a ‘Where the fuck am I again?’ look, then he smiled a massive grin. The noisy interior was crammed. He strolled in and leered jauntily at two young women he half knew. They sneered in return.
The pub was built into the slope and as people walked by outside all you could see were their legs. It was the type of pub regulars would hammer on the windows to get in of a morning. Danny Quinn wasn’t a drinker but a regular anyway. This morning he had less time than usual. He glanced around and trying to spot familiar punter. Barefoot Karl over in the corner, Hitch, Dover, Trist. They’d do. He sauntered over. Barefoof Karl and the people at his table nodded obliquely to the looming figure. He had to shout over the music and the TV
“Course they’re fucking nicked”, he said to someone next to barefoot Karl “I can get rid of the tags, obviously. Fifteen. Tenner then. Here you go.”
Business was brisk. He moved quickly from table to table with the bag of clothes and other sundries, (men’s and unisex sport’s wear children’s tops, DVD’s, perfume, console games) and took some more orders. By the time the landlord noticed, he’d got through practically all the stuff.
“You again. Fuck off out of it,” the landlord shouted and moving quickly, raised the partition, but he needn’t have bothered. Quinn had taken a gulp of Triste’s lager and had eeled his way back out onto the dusty main street. He dodged smoothly but obtrusively through the cut price crowd up the main route to this weekend’s hq.
He was to meet up with Coily and Lump again back in Spearman’s. They were filling in slips and drinking tea from plastic cups, when he got there. Danny sighed royally and sat beside them, on a stool nailed to the floor, under a bright light that made him squint.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Coily asked Quinn.
“Yeah you took your time.”
“Fuck off. Did you flog all yours?”
“Nah. The underwear thing. I told you it wouldn’t work. Go’ shut o’ the trainers though.”
“Cool. Another run and we should have enough. Keep the frills for your sicko life Lumpy eh. "Where next? We haven’t done the Castle for a while. ”
“Keep your voice down for fuck’s sake,” Lump said.
“Get us a tea Coily.”
Spearman’s betting shop was tucked in between a charity shop and a pub all under the car park next to the Abbey House tower block. This was why it was always dark when you looked out of the window. The place was half full. The clientele was all male and there was an atmosphere of almost reverential silence. Horses were paraded on the screens for the Chepstow twelve fifteen. The commentators’ up market voices, consoling and posh, droned on. The majority of the people listening were from the sharp end of the way things were, though, Coily thought. Apart from the odd copper. Which was why Lump’s advice was well placed.
“Look at all these fucking numbers and shit. What the fuck?” Danny said and frowned at the selection of Racing Post pages pinned to the wall.
“Why call a horse ‘Biter arse’?” Danny said then checked his mobile. He sipped his tea and glanced at the three women clerks behind the plastic screen at counter as they dealt with a pre-race rush of five or six shambling men.
“It says ‘Bitter Harvest’. Twenty to one. Might have a throw at them odds.”
“Wever. Lumpy, Shaz and your slag are meeting us down the precinct in twenty minutes. We’ll do Scars and the Slipped Disc and that Superdrug and that. Reminds me you 'ave got in touch with Posh Dave?”
“Don’t worry. Is sorted.”
“She’s too up market for you Dannyboy”
“Fuck and off Coily you goat fucker.” Coil stared at Danny’s multi-pierced face and extended his middle finger from a grubby fist towards him and turned to the sodden race build-up on the high screens.
Adrian Haze who had for years answered to ‘Lumpy’ from family, friends and enemies stared glumly at a work poster. On it a smiling family stood against a blue background reaching out towards a woman in a suit smiling behind a desk, a man, also smiling, in a white laboratory coat with a clip board and a young black girl in a fork lift truck smiling and giving the thumbs up sign and behind them other officials and workers smiling and beckoning, all in a happy circle.
The design had been amended in blue biro. Pert breasts had been drawn on the female characters as well as some of the male ones. A crudely scrawled elephantine penis coiled its way from the father in the middle of the scene and behind the suited woman who had had her eyes and mouth artistically drawn over into smudgy ecstasy. In a bubble extending from her mouth, the artist had written, “Anytime big boy”. A similar more untidily executed bubble from the technician’s agape mouth exclaimed “Me next.”
The “going forward” part of the poster’s slogan had been modified to read “going down”. There was an email address of sexual content, mirrored swastikas and ‘AWA’ scrawled on the technician’s coat.
“You ever wonder though”, Lump said into the rising volume of shouts and pleas as the race got underway, “What it’d be like to, like, have proper jobs?”
Danny looked at Lump who looked at Coil who looked at Danny and then at Lump. In the background the upper class southern voice droned to a mechanical sounding climax. People grimaced and shouted. A few made towards the door screwing betting slips up and throwing them away in disgust.
They stayed for two more races, which Coil and Lumpy, taken together, came out of just above even.
“Come on, “ finishing his tea, “stuff won’t nick itself.” Coil said later.

Outside, Danny carried out a biological event in the doorway right opposite Spearman’s betting office. Once leaving the doorway step, the stream of warm yellow water picked up dust, chocolate wrapping and, for a short distance, a small tin can, as it flowed its way, with seeming purpose, towards the centre of town.

Surprise!

"The case of 12 men arrested over a suspected bomb plot in the UK who were all later released without any charges is to be independently reviewed.
Eleven people - Pakistani nationals - are now in UK Border Agency custody and face possible deportation.
Lord Carlile of Berriew QC will look at the case as part of his ongoing role as independent reviewer of terrorism laws.
Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police Peter Fahy defended the arrests, saying he was not "embarrassed". " [BBC]

Presumably not "embarrassed" because they're only foreigners aren't they eh? Anyone else would feel ashamed about getting their job all wrong and might consider resigning and finding something they could do, like road sweep or masturbating in front of the tv all day. Something out of harm's way anyway. But no, this rozz'll carry on rounding up innocent people somewhere near you, maybe.

One has to conclude that these arrests, that always happen at politically sensitive times, (the G20 march, the Israeli assualt on Gaza), occur either for distraction purposes or to generate resources for the police. But if the boys and gals in blue keep getting it wrong, even the duff political class that rules, must eventually think that it's all a ruse to get money out of them. So it must be a political conspiracy and a distraction. But we're not conspiracy nuts here at REL....The only other conclusion, rancid and nihilistic as it seems then, is that the whole apparatus, from lowliest clod on the beat to senior civil servant, don't know their arses from their sideboards.
Thinking about it, though, this is encouraging for us, in the end. They are not only morally corrupt but criminally stupid too.
So why aren't we beating the lot of the bastards yet?

Control

" 'IPPC' urges crowd control debate. " is the lame headline to the latest batch of video nasty starring London's rozzers on the rampage.



But surely the IPPC (Independent - that's a laugh) should be urging a 'police control debate'.

There is a micro-debate spluttering into life in the MSM and the blogs, that somehow, if you're shocked and/or politically angered by the police action then you should also be equally concerned about the policing of Countryside Alliance march eight years ago, where a few toffs got coshed by HM's finest. You might be able to tell that we here at REL do not feel inclined to set up any support group or send any money to the 'victims'' legal funds. That might, shock, sound like double standards! After all, if you're against police brutality, you should be against it and in favour of, whoever is on the receivingend of truncheon's beatings.

Well no. First, this sidetrack into the CA demo is just pure diversion. The policing of the G20 demonstration was the biggest police operation in British history. Second, it was demo against the fundamentals of capitalist logic and thirdly, the police had incited the violence in the build up to the march so as to intimidate people away and, as their violence unfolded, to reprimand those who did turn up for daring to challenge the way things are. Naturally, these factors do not condone the police actions on the CA demo. It shows that the G20 march was far more politically significant than a load of upper class champagne swilling horsey snobs getting hot and bothered about the right to tear foxes to pieces. Sure, their greivances may have been a little more profound than that - but why should anyone outside the BBC/'Liberal' media (who in constructing this story are alligning themselves with the police, i.e. in the middle against two "extremes") really care about the CA people. None of their contingent were on the G20 march and non of the G20 demonstrators hunt foxes or own hundreds of hectares of valuable farming land and get subsidies from the EU.

Clearly we are against police brutality, but when the toffs start to pipe up that they too suffer at the meaty hands of rozzer, one must see it as a way of diverting attention from who the police's real targets are.

(You and me).

First Laugh

A reserve footballer has been suspended and there have been calls for his being sacked after 'laughing' during the memorial to the Hillsborough disaster twenty years ago. The video footage shows him leaning ever so slightly to the person on his right and hardly half smiling as he says something. The rest of the 30 000 crowd stand straight faced and motionless, the editing of the piece has it that these two players are shunned by the respectful mass.

This eventlette is neither something nor nothing. It certainly isn't a sign of "disrespect" as it is being hysterically described but, merely, a young person having to be somewhere he clearly doesn't want to be and fidgeting a bit. This reaction and its MSM highlighting play a tiny but recognisable part of the general distraction that has been put in place since things started to disintegrate. The policing of people's behaviour has grown so refined and intimate whilst that of the elites and their police has receded. Hence after breakdowns in the machine (the lies of the G20 police riot, the raids, the economic collapse...), public humiliations of inoccous behaviour must be held up and scrutinized. Indeed rozzer at the centre of the G20 is only now being disciplined for the death of Tomlinson, whilst this football player is expunged pronto.

Forget 1984, but they are watching you.

Last laugh

For a long time the falling of the Berlin Wall was associated, in my mind, firstly with 'Don't put your finger on that button' on the B-side to New Order's 'Fine Time' and a vague sense of boredom. In tutorials the likes of us were mocked for sticking to the idea that humans were more important than profit and, all around, the triumphalism gathered its noise and the crowing became part of the ambient background to the awful nineties.

If only I'd read this then, " 1. The event of the 'fall of socialist regimes' was not an event. These regimes had in fact been dead for a long time.
2. In no way did this death signify the failure of communism. Communism had already often failed and it will fail again. But it is also continually victorious. It is the only available Idea in the history of human beings.
3. The failure should not be attributed either to the despotic character of socialist states or to their economic shortcomings. It is the withering away of politics which made these constructions untenable for their own leaders. And in all this, people played practically no part.
4. The political crisis that these collapses bear witness to is a crisis in the West just as much as in the East. It is a general crisis."
Alain Badiou Of an Obscure Disaster.
Instead we just felt it - obscurely. Thanks to 'Infinite Thought' for posting this.

Overheard

The little old man and woman walked slowly past. She said to him, 'It's not you who chooses the path, but the path that chooses you.'

We looked round but they were gone.

Round up week 2

We're into the second week of the detention of twelve people rounded up under terror laws in the north west of England and still no charges.

It is left to such far flung reached of the blogiverse to describe the reality "One senior security source was cited in the Guardian as stating that “nothing of huge significance” had been uncovered.
This is a far cry from the hysterical claims that originally attended the arrests. Then police sources claimed that they had thwarted a massive Al Qaeda-directed operation to launch large-scale suicide bomb attacks over the Easter holiday." [ibid.]

The MSM tale was that Quick, the head of Spook UK let the cliché out of the bag by flashing details of the terror suspects as he poured himself out of a ministerial car. However, it wouldn't be in conspiracy nut territory to postulate that, in fact, the raid took place, nothing was found and then Quick was blamed for 'leaking' the "information" that brought the operation forward. Or it was just a botched raid left, right and centre.
Still, whatever the result of these raids, the state wins - No attacks? Then the roundups must be working! Attack happens - round up the usual suspects.

Political grammar

The footage unambiguously shows a police officer strike a woman with a baton. Why, then, does the BBC text beneath the clip read, 'Police officer 'hit' [sic] G20 protester - footage courtesy YouTube'.

Ideology corrupts grammar. The quotation marks round 'hit', suggest scepticism, but here no doubt is possible.

The Poor List Ch. 6 - 'Proletarian shopper'

He threw the door open and stood in the pub’s doorway, goods under his arm cigarette in mouth. His face registered a ‘Where the fuck am I again?’ look, then he smiled a massive grin. The noisy interior was crammed. He leered jauntily at two young women he half knew. They sneered back. The pub was built into the slope and as people walked by outside all you could see were their legs. It was the type of pub regulars would hammer on the windows to get in of a morning. Danny Quinn wasn’t a drinker but a regular anyway and this morning he had less time than usual. He glanced around trying to spot someone. Barefoot Karl over in the corner, Hitch, Dover, Trist. They’d do. He sauntered over. Barefoof Karl and the people at his table nodded obliquely to the looming figure. He had to shout over the music and the TV. Hands shook fingers pointed.
“Course they’re fucking nicked”, he said to someone next to barefoot Karl “I can get rid of the tags, obviously. Fifteen. Tenner then. Here you go.”
Business was brisk. He moved quickly from table to table with the bag of clothes and other sundries, (unisex sport’s wear, DVD’s, perfume and console games) and took some more orders. By the time the landlord noticed, he’d got through practically all the stuff.
“You again? Fuck off out of it,” the landlord shouted, shook a bony fist and moving quickly, raised the partition. Quinn took a gulp of Triste’s lager and had eeled his way back out onto the dusty main street. He dodged smoothly but obtrusively through the cut price crowd up the main route to the weekend’s hq.
They were filling in slips and drinking tea from plastic cups. Danny sighed royally and sat beside them, on a stool nailed to the floor. He squinted under a bright light.
“Fucking hate horses.”
“Where the fuck have you been?” Coily asked Quinn.
“Yeah Danny you took your time.”
“Fuck off dossers,” Danny said smiling and rubbing his head. “Did you flog all yours?”
“Nah. The underwear thing. I told you it wouldn’t work. Got shut of the trainers though.”
“Cool. Another run and we should have enough,” said Danny and rasped his head again. “Keep the frills for your sicko life Lumpy eh. Where next? We haven’t done the Castle for a while. ”
“Keep your voice down Danny for fuck’s sake,” Lump said.
“Get us a tea Coily.”
Spearman’s betting shop was tucked in between a charity shop and the Wild Rover pub all under the car park next to the Abbey House tower block which was why it was always dark when you looked out of the window. Before, too, I guess. The place was half full. Occasionally, from the speaker system around the walls, over the top of low level murmur, a loud Hampshire accented voice gave out clues and figures. The clientele was all male and there was an atmosphere of near reverential silence as horses were paraded on the screens for the Chepstow twelve fifteen. The majority of the people listening were from the sharp end of the way things were, though, Coily thought. Apart from the odd copper. Which was why Lump’s advice was well placed.
“Look at all these fucking numbers and shit. What the fuck?” Danny said and frowned at the Racing Post pages pinned to the wall. “Why call a horse ‘Biter arse’?” Danny said as he checked his mobile.
He sipped his tea and glanced at the three women clerks behind the plastic screen at counter as they dealt with a pre-race rush of five or six shambling men.
“It says ‘Bitter Harvest’. Twenty to one. Might have a throw at them odds.”
“Wever. Lumpy, Shaz and your slag are meeting us down the precinct in twenty minutes. We’ll do Scars and the Slipped Disc and that Superdrug. Reminds me you ave got in touch with Posh Dave?”
“Don’t worry. Is sorted.”
The commentators’ up market voices, consoling and posh, droned on.
“She’s too up market for you Dannyboy,” Coily said and put a brown cup on the chest high table in front of Danny.
“Fuck and off Coily you goat fucker.” Coil laughed silently as mad as a cat’s yawn and extended his middle finger from a grubby fist towards Danny and turned to the sodden race build-up on the high screens.
Adrian Haze who had for years answered to ‘Lump’ from family, friends and enemies stared glumly at a work poster. He was a worried man. A smiling family stood against a blue background reaching out towards a woman in a suit smiling behind a desk, a man, also smiling, in a white laboratory coat with a clip board peered at a desecrated test tube and a young black girl in a fork lift truck smiled and gave the thumbs up sign as she shifted a pallet pile of apples from invisible origin to invisible destination and behind them other officials and workers all smiling and beckoning, all in a happy circle radiate hope and confidence. The design had been amended in blue biro. Pert breasts had been drawn on the female characters as well as some of the male ones. A crudely scrawled elephantine penis coiled its way from the wielder-father in the middle of the scene and behind the suited woman who had had her eyes and mouth artistically drawn over into smudgy ecstasy. In a bubble extending from her mouth, the artist had written, “Anytime big boy”. A similar more untidily executed bubble from the technician’s slightly agape, mouth exclaimed “Me next.” The “going forward” part of the poster’s slogan had been modified to read “going down”. There was an email address of sexual content, mirror image swastikas and ‘AWA’ scrawled on the technician’s coat.
“You ever wonder though”, Lump said into the rising volume of shouts and pleas as the race gained momentum, “What it’d be like to, like, have proper jobs?” The clipped accent intoned position and countdown.
Danny looked at Lump who looked at Coil who looked at Danny and then at Lump.
They stayed for two more races, which they came out of just above even.
They counted up. Bitter Harvest was paraded round the pen. The Hampshire voice was now quite post-coitial and some of the men left screwing up their betting slips in disgust.
“Come on,” Coil said finishing his tea, “stuff won’t nick itself.” Outside, Danny took a biological event in the doorway right opposite Spearman’s betting office. Once leaving the doorway step, the stream of cooling yellow water picked up dust, chocolate wrapping and, for a short distance, a small tin can, as it flowed its way, with seeming purpose, to the centre of town.

Pirates

These fishermen from Somalia are only doing what anyone else would do under the circumstances. Their immediate enviroment is being destroyed by westerners dumping toxic waste of their coast and stealing their fish. Their country has been effectively destroyed by western countries interference and they have been pushed into penury and near starvation. They are not pirates in the sense of being outside the law, they are just people with the temerity to stand up for themselves. Something the west, above all other things, will not tolerate.

Rozzer outrage

The arrest of enviromental activists before they have even been anywhere near committing any crime is an outrage. The state is practising all its moves in the run up to the big crack down.

Get ready.

Sarkozy lives

On Yahoo France I half translate a headline that says "Sarkozy receives two bullets in..." then wishful thinking takes over and instead of "the post" I 'see' "the head".

Round up

Rozzer has rounded up some more usual suspects, this time in the north of England. As usual, the initial hype and excitement have given way to a 'lack of evidence' hangover. Despite being called a 'success' (in that presumably the police feel pleased about arressting people who do really do come from... Pakistan), we learn that "Counterterrorist sources admitted that despite intensive surveillance they had uncovered no definite targets for an alleged plot, and described reports citing a shopping centre and nightclub in Manchester as targets as "wide of the mark"." So, at least thus far, no evidence save for some pictures. And on those grounds everyone, clean skinned or not, would find themselves flung in the back of the unmarked van.

We are just asked to believe, really have faith, in the authorities' conviction that a huge terror plot has been smashed. But even those with the most feeble political memories, must be becoming hardened and sceptical in the face of these PR raids, especially given the smokescreen of lies puffed out into the mediasphere after the SPG did for the unfortunate Ian Hamilton.

As usual, the release of these suspects will receive far less media attention. So what role do the raids really play. We have to start to discount the reports of such raids as soon as they become breaking news. The 'plots' that turn out to be vague aspirations prompted by agent provocateurs, the evidence that turns out to be household objects and holiday snaps will have to be seen as part of the strategy of tension that the cadaverous elites have to keep in place in order to help to keep the whole tottering show on the road.

shoe fling

With another politician, this time in India, getting footwear hurled at him it's time to say out loud "Shoe throwers of the world, untie and take over."

Moldovians show the way....

We strain to hear the condemnation of western leaders to the flagrant destruction caused by the rioters in Moldova.

The capitalist police are far more efficient than their communist conterparts.

A tale of two riots

The kettling all the protesters got at the police riot in London recently and the heated events in the Strasbourg resistance march reveal the repression and violence inherent in capital social relations. The coaslescence of systemic economic, political and social crises (in the real sense of the term, crisis as in 'Things could go either way.') is adding further ingredients and catalysts to the conditions for its own destruction.

The G20 event was something forced upon the flailing bourgeois cadaver cabin crew to psychologically prop up the faith of its followers in the idea that things can be reorganised so that they can resume living in the manner to which they were accustomed. This vapid dronefest clashed with a major NATO summit (that undead organistion) in a way that either signalled a clear statement of intent ("The extortion and violence are going to carry on get used to it.") or (my interpretation) near panic in the higher echelons of the rotting social order. But, again, the gatherings themselves conjured up their own gravediggers.

The protest cadre in Britain and France on the streets in recent days confronted different state tactics but with the same end in view - to criminalise, stigmatise and terrorise the protesters and to send out a clear message that active dissent will not be tolerated. Both London and Strasbourg were effectively locked down for the duration of the G20 and NATO 'celebrations', with Strasbourg under police seige to prevent demonstrators getting anywhere near the worthy undead that came paying hommage to NATO. ATOW, there is little information about the exact developments of the NATO counter-demonstration, save for the usual scandalised tone of condemnation about a few windows being smashed and things being set on fire. (It's an obvious thing to say, but it is wearisome to read papers/reports that moralise about demonstrations that turn 'violent' and yet a few pages later or a couple of days earlier, are celebreating the latest NATO operation despite the collateral damage, the latest country to send troops into the pit of the Afghan 'campaign' or the fact that Sarkozy has joined the pointless club). But the salient features of the last week's protest is that the movement is energised, mobile and intelligent (though perhaps tactically naive...) and that the state forces are having to spend more time and money in countering them.

The police provoked riots (and death, let us not forget) in London made a lot of people across Europe more determined to counter the grey slabs of repression being set up, metaphorically and literally, throughout the West. Hence "Protest groups have said they want to bring chaos to the NATO summit and police warn that clashes at the G20 meeting in London earlier this week have fuelled tensions."

OK. These initial responses to the unpresidented economic and social crisis from the European working class, were relatively small affairs - about 100 000 marchers in total for the two protests - and bourgeois scribblers will, at this moment, be scratching away about how peaceful protest has been hijacked by hooded anarchists, that the mob has no answers to the crisis and that the kettling was more effective than the seige of Strasbourg, or vice versa. But they, and the elites, know that for every demonstrator on the street there is another thousand in the towns, inner-cities and banliues all feeling the same anger and righteous sense of injustice and who are waiting for the chance to turn the chaos our way. As a first step, then, these demos are more than encouraging. The second step would be to draw in worker occupations and unite these two sources of opposition.

Protests insufficient for the kind of change we foresee, of course, but imagine if the G20 and NATO fests had been met with no protest at all, just cheering adulators and sight seers....

Articulate anger - spread sedition - ferment revolution

Priceless

It's far from clear whether the bank troughers are worthy of their hand outs, but sometimes you can't put a price on the garbage they come out with. Some curly tail squealing about the 'get tough' regulation that might put a lid on their well earned pay packets remarked thus.....""Regulation is generally bad. You should let the market decide what the people will get paid," said Matthew Prest, managing director at Close Brothers investment bank. "Sometimes regulation has the opposite effect of what you want and I think bankers' salaries regulation would fall under that category. I don't hear anybody calling for Hollywood star salary caps. This is a trendy, fashionable thing to do, it will have bad consequences."

I'm no economic expert, but when was the last time a Jude Law, a Mel Gibson or a Meryl Streep helped create 5 million job losses in fifteen months?

Get to fuck and back before you say anything like that again you rich duffer.

The temperature falls again.

Over at K-Punk, there is the idea that haunts those who think about alternative futures and hope for action from the people, that idea that the future will be more of the same neo liberal 'capitalist realism', though in a different, even less, palatable form. That is, if one can think of the smoke and fumes of the melted real of contemporary capitalism as actually giving rise to anything as grand as form. A glimpse of this future that we, really know all too well, comes from a Reuteurs report about the demonstrations against NATO in Strasbourg, thus -

" At one point, rioters charged a military vehicle that happened to cross their path, with a masked youth hurling a pole through the windshield.
One of the occupants, who was in uniform, drew his gun and pointed it toward the sky, giving the driver time to speed off."

"One of the occupants...drew his gun and pointed it toward the sky..."

There is a tiresome metaphor I read somewhere about how if you put a frog in pan of water and slowly boil the content, the frog will not really notice and eventually (surprise!) die without realising it. It's meant to be a political message - but it seems to me that if we (you?) are the frog, then we're not being warmed up but cooled in the hope of numbing us into accepting further greyness, limit and violence.

Don't just protest - Act.

Death of a G20 demonstrator

This is how the craven BBC reported the incident "More demonstrations are expected after protests in London on Wednesday.
One man collapsed and died at the protest, police said.
Police say they made at least 87 arrests during the protests and four people have since been charged. "

One man collapsed and just died according to the police. Perhaps he did, just dropped dead, like so many thirty odd year old people do. But MSM reports of police related deaths must be treated with extremem scepticism. After all Charles De Menezes was wearing a bulky jacket and running away from the police when they had to murder him....

The crisis moves in

The economic slump has caused widespread political instability. At the macro level, Latvia, Iceland and indirectly, the Czech Republic have all seen their (neo-liberal) governments collapse. Just beneath this order of things, is the massive unemployment this depression is causing. In recent decades, investigations into the relation between unemployment and social stability demonstrate that tensions and rioting are more likely to occur in times and places when and where unemployment is increasing rapidly and by large amounts. This seems to be what is happening. At a micro level. Take your pick. The demos in Greece, the marches all over Europe, the Strikes and hostage taking of bosses in France and reaction against the G20 facade plus also the spate of burgalries we're experiencing over here at the moment, to get a bit more subjective.

This tends to proove the Leninist point well, the "The worse, the better." This phrase has come for some criticism over in the hallowed tomes of the Tomb. Yet, it's worth defending.
It doesn't mean that worse the idividual lives of the workers must become, what, 'intolerable' before the better of an upsurge in revolutionary consciousness, but that when the economy (by withdrawing hitherto expected benefits) forces people to become political, then there is a chance that our message will be better received.

As living conditions deteriorate, people will and have begun to look for alternatives. This is all the, ok, brutal sounding aphorism, supports. It doesn't mean the worse you make things for the working class, oppressing them, exploiting them, violating their human rights and even killing them, that they are going to turn socialist by pure experience.

An interpretation closer to the meaning of the phrase is the worse the situation gets, the panickier and less convincing become the bosses and leaders and the working class makes connections, gets stronger and arms itself.

That kind of better.

Communism would fail to convince anyone at all if capitalism really did, grant everyone a fair humane life and kept economic inequality to 3-1 say, if that were conceivable.? A capitalist world full of peace and happy workers whilst all being exploited. Impossible.

So defend the idea of 'the worse the better'.

Unless you're really sure of the person's adherence to communist materialism, don't say it to the recently made unemployed. Though do say it to those you leave behind on your particular 'You got the sack Day'.