London Fields # 76
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 24 March 2010
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here
There‘s a new drug on London‘s streets. “It stimulates the part of the brain called Shatner’s Bassoon, and that’s the bit of the brain that deals with time perception”. Actually, that’s a description of Cake - the “made-up drug” that was the centrepiece of an episode of Chris Morris’s satirical series BrassEye in February 1997. But reading the news over the past few weeks, time and time again it’s been hard to distinguish the current near-hysteria of the tabloids with a television show from 13 years earlier, which actually led to questions being raised in parliament.
The substance attracting all the headlines is mephedrone (meow meow, M-Cat, bubble and lordknowswhat), reportedly now the UK’s fourth most popular street drug (and rising fast up the charts). Of course, it’s not really that new at all; the change is in the public awareness of it, stirred into a frenzy now that deaths have been linked to the drug. After the immigrants taking our jobs, the paedophiles lurking on every street corner, the dangerous dogs, the easier school exams, the ASBO generation of dangerous youth and binge-drinking Britain, methadone is the latest weapon to make you fear for Queen and Country.
The thing that kickstarted the UK tabloid panic over ecstasy was the death of schoolgirl Leah Betts in 1995, who collapsed into a coma four hours after taking an E, and later died. News reports blamed the drug, with some claiming it was a contaminated batch. Yet the inquest determined that the primary cause of death was water intoxication (drinking 7 litres in 90 minutes) with the drug a possible contributory factor. What’s triggered the current outrage is the death of two teenagers, also reportedly first time drug users. While you may have sympathy for those grieving relatives who have lost family members, what is not being so widely reported as that in addition to mephedrone, they were drinking and also took the (prescription only) heroin substitute methadone. Mixing sedatives and stimulants in such a way puts a tremendous strain on the body, and can lead to heart failure.
The big fuss seems to be about these being so-called ‘legal highs’. But the legality isn’t the key selling point; it’s the affordable price. The danger of such reporting seems to be some weird correlation between it not being illegal and it being safe. Now mephedrone is supposedly sold as a plant food, with a greater than 99% purity. But as it retails for between £8 and £15 a gram (although this figure may include ‘free’ delivery), I doubt you’d pay that for Blood & Bone or Thrive. Unless of course you found you could get high off it. There are many substances it’s possible to abuse - the difference is this one is being sold as one thing officially while everyone knows its actual intended use is something else entirely.
Now the delay on a government report on M-Cat is being linked to resignations following the sacking of drugs czar Professor David Nutt last October. He controversially used published studies as evidence for suggesting that while undoubtedly unsafe, ecstasy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol. He was swiftly asked to resign as chair of Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs by the home secretary as a result. His thoughts here mirror those that lost him his job. "Who knows what's in [mephedrone] when you buy it? We don't have a testing system. It could be very dangerous, we just don't know. These chemicals have never been put into animals, let alone humans."
As yet, I’m not sure how many inroads this drug has made into Australia, but I have seen UK online sellers spam Oz message boards advertising their wares. And of course, this is where the its current ‘legal’ status becomes an issue. But there’s a part of me that thinks the biggest result of the current furore has been a huge advertising boost for a newer player on the block. These’s no doubting, particularly with an election looming, that M-Cat will be banned outright fairly quickly, even though experts are saying this could be the worst move possible. The simple truth is people need to take some responsibility for what they pump into their bodies, regardless of its legality. ‘It’s only one molecule different from MDMA’ screams The Sun . Yeah and H2O2 is only one molecule different from water, but I wouldn’t advocate drinking hydrogen peroxide either.
© James McGalliard 2010
Showing posts with label The Sun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Sun. Show all posts
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Wednesday, 13 August 2008
Going To The Dogs
London Fields # 55 
Londoners often tend not to know what they’ll miss until it’s lost. So when one of the first initiatives of new London mayor Boris Johnson was to ban the consumption of alcohol on all public transport, wags used Facebook to organise a number of giant booze-ups on the Circle Line for the last night of legal drinking. Predictably, it all went awry, leading to chaos, closed lines, and arrests.
A few weeks later, waiting with my shopping for a (now booze-free) bus outside Walthamstow Central station, a family of rats frolicked playfully around my feet. You can’t live in London long without someone helpfully reminding you that you’re never more than fifteen feet away from a rat in central London, but the exuberance of this lot was something else. As I got off the bus in the middle of the local estate, I was greeted by the all-too-familiar sound of a police siren. I looked up and down the street, as did others also waiting to cross, but there wasn’t a cop car to be seen. Then we realised that the ‘siren’ was emanating from ten year old lad, sitting astride his BMX. This junior Michael Winslow’s rendition was so uncannily accurate (including the switches in tone used to get through heavy traffic) that people looking for the police car broke into hails of laughter as they realised its source. Like a bowerbird imitating what it hears, this lad had captured the sound of the London streets.
While a wail of a siren is a modern soundtrack, so many symbols of the old East End have disappeared from the streets. Some changes are a reflection of its changing emigrant culture; others are due to financial pressures. It’s been many years since I heard the ringing school bell and cries of “any old iron” from the scrap metal man, and even longer since I last saw (or heard) the clip-clop of the horse and cart of the rag and bone man (as immortalised by Steptoe and Son). With a large influx of followers of religions which shun alcohol, many of the smaller local boozers have closed and been converted into flats. Very few pie and mash shops, which sell the traditional jellied eels, remain. Greasy spoons are one of the remaining stables of the East End, but the price of a fry up has risen 15% in the past year, according to a report in The Sun.
And next Saturday, Walthamstow Stadium, an iconic landmark and a centre of greyhound racing in the capital for 75 years, will close its doors for the last time. Last May the Chandler family, who have owned and run the track since it opened in 1933, sold the 8.1 acre site to developers for the construction of new-build flats. So I spent last Saturday night at the dogs. This is not the world I usually inhabit; in the bar they’re playing Phil Collins’ Against All Odds and Chicago. Sitting in the seats of the grandstand around me are four generations of the same family, brought together by something that will soon be another lost relic of the old East End. It’s a real mix; young couples on dates, old couples, children, Hoxton haircuts - all gathering as an era ends. The stadium also has a place in rock history, as all the photographs of Blur’s breakthrough album Parklife were taken here.
No matter what happens, the beautiful neon frontage, the East London equivalent of the Nylex or Skipping Girl Vinegar signs will be saved, as it was listed by English Heritage last year. But it will become a façade with no heart behind it. The closure will also mean the loss of hundreds of jobs for local people. While there are two rescue packages on the table and a big protest march planned for the lunchtime on Saturday, at this stage the only hope seems to lie in the developers fretting over the slump in the housing market. 
For The Stow, as it’s affectionately known, is one of the few places of entertainment in this impoverished ‘Olympic’ borough. Waltham Forest remains the only London borough without a cinema, since the local Odeon closed early this decade; it now lies rotting as they decide what to do with it. And the horrible giant 3.7 metre TV screen that the council have just installed this week in the Town Square, to show both the Chinese and 2012 Olympics every day from 7am to 11pm, is no replacement.
Even local MP, Neil Gerrard, a former greyhound racer himself, can’t really see the council opposing the development, reports the Waltham Forest Guardian, as it fits into the social housing agenda. But he also said, “We don’t need housing at the expense of everything else, especially the biggest leisure facility in Walthamstow”. Over twenty greyhound stadiums have closed around the country in the past ten years, but The Stow was the jewel in the crown. Next week, London will only have tracks remaining at Wimbledon, and in Romford, Essex. While the opponents of greyhound racing may applaud its closure, there’s a part of me that’s very sad about it. For this is another part of London that will be irretrievably lost, and once again, people may only realise what they had once it’s gone forever. 
© James McGalliard 2008
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 13 August 2008
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here
Londoners often tend not to know what they’ll miss until it’s lost. So when one of the first initiatives of new London mayor Boris Johnson was to ban the consumption of alcohol on all public transport, wags used Facebook to organise a number of giant booze-ups on the Circle Line for the last night of legal drinking. Predictably, it all went awry, leading to chaos, closed lines, and arrests.A few weeks later, waiting with my shopping for a (now booze-free) bus outside Walthamstow Central station, a family of rats frolicked playfully around my feet. You can’t live in London long without someone helpfully reminding you that you’re never more than fifteen feet away from a rat in central London, but the exuberance of this lot was something else. As I got off the bus in the middle of the local estate, I was greeted by the all-too-familiar sound of a police siren. I looked up and down the street, as did others also waiting to cross, but there wasn’t a cop car to be seen. Then we realised that the ‘siren’ was emanating from ten year old lad, sitting astride his BMX. This junior Michael Winslow’s rendition was so uncannily accurate (including the switches in tone used to get through heavy traffic) that people looking for the police car broke into hails of laughter as they realised its source. Like a bowerbird imitating what it hears, this lad had captured the sound of the London streets.
While a wail of a siren is a modern soundtrack, so many symbols of the old East End have disappeared from the streets. Some changes are a reflection of its changing emigrant culture; others are due to financial pressures. It’s been many years since I heard the ringing school bell and cries of “any old iron” from the scrap metal man, and even longer since I last saw (or heard) the clip-clop of the horse and cart of the rag and bone man (as immortalised by Steptoe and Son). With a large influx of followers of religions which shun alcohol, many of the smaller local boozers have closed and been converted into flats. Very few pie and mash shops, which sell the traditional jellied eels, remain. Greasy spoons are one of the remaining stables of the East End, but the price of a fry up has risen 15% in the past year, according to a report in The Sun.
And next Saturday, Walthamstow Stadium, an iconic landmark and a centre of greyhound racing in the capital for 75 years, will close its doors for the last time. Last May the Chandler family, who have owned and run the track since it opened in 1933, sold the 8.1 acre site to developers for the construction of new-build flats. So I spent last Saturday night at the dogs. This is not the world I usually inhabit; in the bar they’re playing Phil Collins’ Against All Odds and Chicago. Sitting in the seats of the grandstand around me are four generations of the same family, brought together by something that will soon be another lost relic of the old East End. It’s a real mix; young couples on dates, old couples, children, Hoxton haircuts - all gathering as an era ends. The stadium also has a place in rock history, as all the photographs of Blur’s breakthrough album Parklife were taken here.
No matter what happens, the beautiful neon frontage, the East London equivalent of the Nylex or Skipping Girl Vinegar signs will be saved, as it was listed by English Heritage last year. But it will become a façade with no heart behind it. The closure will also mean the loss of hundreds of jobs for local people. While there are two rescue packages on the table and a big protest march planned for the lunchtime on Saturday, at this stage the only hope seems to lie in the developers fretting over the slump in the housing market. For The Stow, as it’s affectionately known, is one of the few places of entertainment in this impoverished ‘Olympic’ borough. Waltham Forest remains the only London borough without a cinema, since the local Odeon closed early this decade; it now lies rotting as they decide what to do with it. And the horrible giant 3.7 metre TV screen that the council have just installed this week in the Town Square, to show both the Chinese and 2012 Olympics every day from 7am to 11pm, is no replacement.Even local MP, Neil Gerrard, a former greyhound racer himself, can’t really see the council opposing the development, reports the Waltham Forest Guardian, as it fits into the social housing agenda. But he also said, “We don’t need housing at the expense of everything else, especially the biggest leisure facility in Walthamstow”. Over twenty greyhound stadiums have closed around the country in the past ten years, but The Stow was the jewel in the crown. Next week, London will only have tracks remaining at Wimbledon, and in Romford, Essex. While the opponents of greyhound racing may applaud its closure, there’s a part of me that’s very sad about it. For this is another part of London that will be irretrievably lost, and once again, people may only realise what they had once it’s gone forever. © James McGalliard 2008
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