How Many Roads Must a Man Walk Down?

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You need militants on a demonstration. You need passion and commitment and a sense of purpose. If you’re undecided or wishy-washy your march is never gonna get off the ground. Can you imagine the leader of the Liberal Party (Simon Pegg, I think his name is) organising a demo? It’d be as effective as a solar panel in Salford. “What do we want?: DON’T KNOW; When do we want it?: SOME TIME IN THE NEAR FUTURE, IF IT’S NOT TOO MUCH TROUBLE” is not gonna get anyone excited.

So you need heart. You need drive. Often, some of this passion boils over into violence which is why we see thousands of Plod on the streets of London this morning, having had Knacker cancel all leave. Shame. But we are (up to a point, Lord Copper) exercising our right to demonstrate, and a march without passion or a smidge of violence becomes a ramble— and the Church organises those, complete with kagools and sponsorship forms. No thanks.

I was 13 when my brother took me on my first demo— The Rock Against Racism/Anti Nazi League march from Trafalgar Square to Victoria Park in East London (30th April 1978, for anyone taking notes). Fucking miles! But it was fantastic. Hundreds of thousands (Police estimate:143) of like-minded people marching for a common cause: crush racism in the UK. It was 1978 and the National Front were becoming a little strong for our liking, so we marched in protest. And we sang. “The National Front is a Nazi Front, SMASH THE NATIONAL FRONT“ We sang it all day. For mile after mile. We ALL sang it. It was bleedin tedious.

RAR_carnival_78_poster

Google Maps tells me the direct route between Trafalgar Square and the park is 5.9 miles. Well we didn’t go the straight route (Plod diverted us away from the posh bits in the City) and my brilliant 13 yr old mind told me we walked at LEAST 15 miles. 15 miles of singing the same song. It was like listening to a Morrisey Album all afternoon: torture. But it was a thrill for me at a tender age: collecting ANL and RAR badges. AND placards, and leaflets and flyers and pamphlets. Oh! Think of the Trees, Mike, all that wood n paper!!! well this was BGB (Before Geldof and Bono) and no-one gave a monkeys about the planet or the rainforest. A witty cardboard slogan nailed to a lovely bit of 4×2 was the weapon of choice for both pacifist and anarchist.

The Author (back row, third from left), prepares to leave Trafalgar Square. Note bad haircut

The Author (back row, third from left), prepares to leave Trafalgar Square. Note bad haircut

I was proud to have my photo taken by the Police snapper when it was my turn to carry the big banner (what DID they think I was gonna do?) waved at the spotters on the roofs, and ran away quickly when some of the bigger boys started lobbing stuff at the police. But on the whole it seemed to me to be a good-natured event, (I swear that copper was smiling as they wiped the blood from his head) and it ended with my first rock concert in the park and my first sight of Joe Strummer and the boys. I was in heaven.
So we had one message and one march. And one song.

Fast forward to today. Sit down, I have something to tell you: One of today’s marches goes from London Bridge to The Bank of England.That’s a distance of less than a mile. I have longer nostril hair than that !!

Come on guys, put a bit of effort in.

And the coalition of beefs these people have is mind-boggling: Anti Banks, Anti War, Anti Welsh, Save the Planet, Reclaim the Streets, Right to Work, Right to Left, Anarchists, Pacifists, Cyclists, Monarchists, Buggerists, Typists the list is endless. What are they gonna sing? Is there a running order? (mind you, by the time the London Bridge mob reach their destination they’d have hardly had time for a couple of lines of We Shall Overcome). As far as I’m aware they won’t be passing a McDonalds, a Shell garage, or a branch of Barclays: all classic targets for the mob (I still mourn the end of South Africa House demos). Perhaps they can get more miles under their belts by marching round and round in circles a la American pickets in episodes of The West Wing, Columbo etc. (Why DO they go round in circles??)

Say Cheese!

Say Cheese!

So let’s hope for a good clean fight today. We won’t throw lamp posts at you if you put away the CS gas and the horses. We promise not to lynch anyone, if you promise not to lie about the numbers attending. AND if you’re gonna single us out and snap potential “troublemakers” at least make the pics available to us, so that years from now I’ll have a copy of the photo for my blog.
Up the Revolution !!

Camera Obscura

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An organization calling itself Privacy International have complained to the Information Commissioner (very 1984) that the new Google Street View infringes people’s privacy because some are identifiable in the photos therein. And? What’s the problem? Every day, all over the world people are innocent bystanders caught a photographer’sviewfinder. Shots of people walking to work, waiting on train stations, shopping in the high street or sitting on beaches are published online ,in newspapers and in magazines to illustrate stories from the state of the economy, the state of the weather.

Now if I could ask you all to sign this form....

Now if I could ask you all to sign this form....

It’s common practice and perfectly legal. Those people captured on film are merely part of the landscape of the image. If the good people at PI have their way photo editors would spend more time pixilating or masking-out the faces of those in the frame. The alternative, I guess, would be to have every man jack of them sign a model-release form, allowing their face to be published. Well that’s not gonna happen. It’s not an intrusion of privacy. No-one’s poking their noses into your little lives or keeping track of you. It’s a photo illustrating a scene. Don’t flatter yourself—you AIN’T the subject.

Same goes for the Google bods: they’ve come up with a gadget that let’s you, me and anyone else see almost every street in London, letting us while-away many a dull afternoon in the office, and it gives iPhone owners another chance to bore us rigid with what their new machine can do. And YES there ARE people in some of the images. Of course there are: IT”S THE CAPITAL OF ENGLAND!!!! But that’s not the point of it. And even if it was, WHO CARES???? If you happen to be seen exiting a massage parlour, sitting outside a wine bar, plying your secretary with chardonnay or spewing up on the pavement that’s just tough. Not Google’s problem. If you wanna play-away with Miss Jones or fall over elephants that’s your look-out.

You can almost see the veins in her neck

You can almost see the veins in her neck

It’s perfectly acceptable and legal to take photos on a public street OF the public street and almost anything you damn well like. Ok, if you stand outside an army base, or an airport and start shnapping through the barbed wire at people or equipment, you’re liable (and probably deservedly) get your collar felt by Knacker of the Yard. For years Middle England have moaned about photographers and their long, intrusive lenses. Snappers for the redtops sit in bushes or in the back of blacked-out vans, training their lenses on some poor sod or celebrity who they deem to have been up to no good. Street View does nothing of the sort. Google used a 360 degree wide-angle. How much shorter do you want a lens to be????

My local. I must have been at the bar

My local. I must have been at the bar

So who are Privacy International and it’s supporters? It’s website states that they’re “a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations”. Surveillance? Google aren’t putting you under surveillance, they’re just photographing the street where you live, in the same manner tourists the world over photograph Pal Mall, Las Ramblas or that quaint little village near the resort you stayed in last year in Thailand. Does this mean Flickr will be shut down too? Is this the end of your neighbour’s boring holiday-snap evenings? Wait a minute: I’m sure a Japanese family took a photo of me outside The National Gallery the other day. I WANT THEIR NAMES, FILM AND SERIAL NUMBERS.

Five will get you ten that the people who subscribe to PI’s views are also Facebook addicts and Twitter junkies (“just had pony, can’t be arsed to wash hands and now walking around with knickers around ankles, talk later”).Something really odd is happening. One hand the world wants to tell me absolutely everything about themselves and what they’re doing IN REAL TIME, show me photos of their friends, what their dog looks like, who they’ve snogged and what they looked like the last seventeen times they went to a party or a club. But take a photo of them walking down Oxford Street, carrying a H&M bag and all hell breaks loose.

Smile, you're on t'internet

Smile, you're on t'internet

It’s not CCTV, it’s not stalking you (most of these snaps were last summer anyway) it’s a bit of fun which may be of some interest to a few, lonely people. Focus your protests on something else. There’s plenty to be scared of out there—it’s just that this isn’t it. So next time you’re out-and-about, make sure you’re not with someone you shouldn’t be, and PLEASE stop picking your nose.

 

Whistleblowing on G20

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Isn’t it always the same? Your wardrobe is full of fine clothes but you still haven’t a clue what to wear. I mean, what DOES one wear to a riot? Knacker of the Yard suggests the merchant bankers among us should refrain from donning the pin-stripes tomorrow, lest Swampy takes offence and goes berserk as you alight at Cannon Street. This is all very worrying. I have, on occasion, had a pot of tea with chums in the square mile, and I can’t honestly remember the last time I saw any of them in a suit. It’s all changed from the Gordon Gecko days, I can tell you. Time was in the 80’s if anyone (me) walked into a bar in the city in anything less than a Hugo Boss he’d be met with howls of derision. Nowadays yer broker wears chinos and mocassins rather than sharktooths and tiepins. The level abuse is just the same though.

Besuited like Merchant Bankers . The Horrors of Excess.

Besuited like Merchant Bankers . The Horrors of Excess.

Ever-the-one to keep my finger on the pulse, just when the barrow boys were shedding their threads, I was venturing into the world of permanent suitage. I used to throw on a suit for work every now and then—usually when Black Dog was nipping round my ankles more than usual that day. My theory was that people would think I was going for an interview and therefore treat me better at work and/or give me more money. It never worked. Mind you, the theory was pretty solid: there was once a Daily Mirror photographer who regularly spread the rumour that he was being courted by The Sun, which led to a succession of gullible editors giving him a pay rise every six months. He came from the Land of the Shiny Suit, earned a fortune and drove a Rolls, chauffeured by an YTS kid. That’s what I aspired to (well, not the shiny suit) but my pathetic attempts to get my guvnors to drown me in extra dollars came to nothing. (An aside: there was once a particularly painful correspondent from a district office of a London national newspaper, again from Shiny Suit Land, who was dubbed by his colleagues the “Shite in Whining Armour”).

 

But it did teach me the power of a Whistle and Flute. You feel better in a suit. You do, I tell ya. You walk taller, bolder and more confidently. If you look like me (like a robber, rather than a robbee) it stops coppers staring at you for quite so long or people changing train compartments when you board. And, of course, you get served quicker in a boozer. You just do, and that’s a fact.

So, even given that I look like a bloke with a head transplant, five or six years ago I began wearing a suit to work daily. I’m the only bloke in the office that does, and that’s ok. It took my colleagues a while to get used to it, but it’s sorta taken as a given now. It doesn’t matter any more whether I’m going down the local, out for dinner or going for an interview. No-one ever knows. They have to guess (and they usually guess right).

My suits have a strict ranking: No.1s for special occasions, (cocktail evenings etc); No.2s :every day suits (generic pub-wear); No.3s: drinking heavily suits (Black Dog days). The order is worked out by the criteria of smartness, age and stain-resistant qualities. It is, of course, not unusual that I’m wearing my No.1s when I unexpectedly find myself drinking heavily. On such occasions I just do the best I can and call into Sketchleys in the morning.

The Author trying to turn No.1s into No.3s

The Author trying to turn No.1s into No.3s

For less than 200 of your English Pounds (about 7 Euros) you can pop into Marks, or Millets or wherever you choose and deck yerself out in something that your dad would be proud of. AND it saves your T-shirts for the weekend. Simples.
So my advice to you tomorrow is Suit-Up so you won’t look like a banker and , as it’s a special occasion, put yer No.1s on.

You’ll Never Walk Alone

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News item:
A disgruntled Newcastle United fan has failed in a bid to get himself banned from St James’ Park by invading the pitch.
Kevin Southerton, 26, ran on to the field after Djibril Cisse scored for Sunderland in February’s Tyne-Wear derby.
He told police who pursued and arrested him: “I hope I get banned. I’m sick of watching this.”
Although Newcastle magistrates could have imposed a three-year banning order, they opted to fine him £200.

Now who amongst us hasn’t felt like that at least once in their lives? Anyone who’s spent any time standing in the covered end at The Valley knows that urge only too well. In the 70’s I once watched Charlton draw 0-0 in three consecutive matches, a Saturday-Wednesday-Saturday thrill-fest. It was like undergoing root canal work.

Rubbish

Rubbish

A colleague once wrote of a crusty old fan in Scotland (at some team like Hearts, or Arbroath—you know the type) who every single Saturday took his place in the stand by the players entrance, resplendent in a grubby old mac and woolen bobble hat, and booed his team ON to the pitch. He never missed a home match. Furthermore, after one mid-week away fixture, the team were on the club bus driving home through the pouring rain when they spotted this same fan trudging a lonely trudge through the storm, having been to watch his lads lose away. They took pity on him and picked him up. No sooner had the coach pulled away that our hero stood up at the front of the bus and delivered a long stream of abuse, punctuated by profanities, on what a useless bunch of wankers they were. After 75 yards of this the bus pulled in and the players threw off the old git again.

The Traditional Way to Watch Charlton AFC

The Traditional Way to Watch Charlton AFC

Football fans have a bad rep, but there’s always occasional characters like the examples above which give you renewed hope for mankind in general. At this stage I’d like to draw your attention to to a lovely little book by Jack Bremner entitled “Shit Ground No Fans” a collection of football chants collected from around the country. Many are predictable and repetitive, but there are a few little gems within its 256 pages. One example from Boston United goes (to the tune of John Denver’s Annie’s Song:

You fill up my senses
Like a gallon of Batemans
Like a packet of Seasalt
Like a good pickled egg
Like a night out in Boston
Like a greasy chip buttie
Like Boston United
Come fill me again

Beautiful.

Oddly the great Andy Goram song isn’t included in its pages. Readers will recall when Goram, the then Rangers goalie, had been “exposed” in the press as having a mild form of schizophrenia. Shortly after, opposition fans started chanting “Two Andy Gorams, there’s only two Andy Gorams”

And they say there’s no humour left in the game.

Help….

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Not sure what to do about this one. A friend just forwarded me this email sent to her. What do you think she should do?:

Hello,
How are you doing?hope all is well, I”m sorry that i didn’t inform you about my traveling to Nigeria for a Seminar.I need a favor from you as soon as you receive this e-mail because i misplaced my wallet on my way to the hotel where my money is and other valuable things were kept, i will like you to assist me with a loan urgently. I will be needing the sum of $2,500 to sort-out my hotel bills and get myself back home.I will appreciate whatever you can afford to help me with, i’ll pay you back as soon as i return. Kindly let me know if you can be of help? so that i can send you the details.

Your reply will be greatly appreciated
Stanley

Anybody got some spare cash they could send this poor soul?

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