London Fields # 41
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 11 July 2007
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here
Ostensibly my reason for travelling to Dublin was to catch one of the "rehearsals" that R.E.M. held over five nights at the Olympia Theatre there. "This Is Not A Show" stated the projection behind them, and in many ways it wasn’t – the idea was to road test new songs for their partly recorded next LP. But it did provide an opportunity to catch one of the biggest bands in the world in a comparatively intimate venue, and the trip overall provided me with an unexpected reflection of life in London as well.
The last time I was in Dublin was in October 2001, in the aftermath of September 11. This trip coincided with the attacks on London’s West End and Glasgow Airport, which insured lots of shenanigans getting through security procedures, as it had nearly six years earlier. But the city has changed so much over the period. Like London, the influx of workers from Eastern Europe has had a visible aspect, both in the rise of specialist shops, and in those employed as waiting and cleaning staff. It seems as if the divide between rich and poor has widened too; there are far more beggars on the streets. Near Parnell Square I see a bottle shop where the worker is behind bulletproof glass with a small bank teller like window to distribute the booze. Making the purchases are a couple of scangers, the Irish version of the chav.
I catch up with an old friend, someone I met on my first trip here in 1990. He’s a musician who has toured the world in an award-winning band. He tells me that although rental prices in the city have increased astronomically, the average income has not followed suit. Rising rents means that many of the beautiful old bookshops near Trinity College have had to close, or move to cheaper premises elsewhere.
The one thing Dublin has retained, and possibly its greatest tourist attraction, are its many bars. It’s such a contrast to London, where those remaining pubs that haven’t been closed and converted into flats are often nearly identical, as part of large chains. There a very few places in central London where you’d be tempted to have more than a swift one on your way somewhere else. In Dublin, it never more than a stone’s throw to the next pub, but they’re actually places you’d want to stop and spent time in. The Stag’s Head is probably my favourite, even seamlessly absorbing the after show crowds from the nearby Olympia Theatre.
The biggest change to Dublin’s pubs has been the rise of the "beer garden" following the introduction of the smoking ban a few years back. Often these are little more than a small covered area for smokers to huddle into, and while the pubs seem quieter, but they still have retained the atmosphere without the smokehaze. But land values have risen so much that there is talk that even the famous Guinness Brewery at St James’s Gate may be up for development as luxury flats, such is the value of the land in the current climate.
My old friend also worries about the lack of variety in the Dublin music scene. While their rock industry bible HotPress celebrates its 30th Anniversary, and the Oxegen Festival is national news, he tells me that while the scene is buzzing, there a few acts not aping what they see as the current "NME taste". In fact, the only newish act he could recommend had just called it a day. Which is all the sadder as HotPress has retained some of the more in-depth journalistic pieces that the present-NME abandoned in favour of a Smash Hits-style presentation.
It was on my last night that I saw R.E.M. and they played an uberfan’s set – asides from the new material, it was all early IRS-period material with Harbourcoat and the entire Chronic Town EP. Some things are the same everywhere, like the couple who elbowed their way beside me just before the band began, and then spent the first two (new) songs nattering about how exciting it was to be there, her pausing only to yell "We love you Michael" repeatedly. But two things told me I wasn’t in London at the gig. Firstly the amazingly well-run bar, and secondly no one would choose London audiences as a testing ground for new material. While London is seen as old and set in its ways, Dublin is still perceived as somewhere willing to embrace the new.
© James McGalliard 2007
Showing posts with label terrorism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label terrorism. Show all posts
Wednesday, 11 July 2007
Wednesday, 21 February 2007
We're Just Talking To The Kids
London Fields # 36
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 21 February 2007
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here
You can’t open a newspaper or turn on the TV in the UK at the moment without some new revelation about the state of youth in Britain today. So is there really something worrying about the environment that society has created for those growing up in urban areas?
Well, there are two big stories over the past fortnight that have given this discussion renewed vigour; firstly a series of inner city shootings, and secondly a report from UNICEF which placed the well-being of children in the UK at the bottom of a list of 21 industrialised nations.
The outward signs are that the UK is a gun-free nation. Bobbies still patrol the streets unarmed [if you don’t include nightsticks, pepper spray or bullet-proof vests] and unlike Australia, you’d never see a store security guard with a gun. In fact it’s a bit of a shock when you do see armed coppers, even if the sight has become more common in the post-9/11 society. Sadly though, this is becoming a dangerous anachronism. In South London, three teenagers have died from gunshot injuries over the past few weeks. The official response was a call to lower the minimum age for mandatory sentencing of five years if found guilty of being in possession of a firearm, but nothing much is said about the reasons for the behaviour.
None of this will change while guns are seen as a fashion statement. One summer’s afternoon while walking in Hackney, a kid of about fifteen caught my eye and then winked as he lifted his t-shirt to reveal a gun stuffed into the waistband of his jeans. And this was just a few days after an execution shooting in roughly the same spot. If they’re trying to frighten, they’ve succeeded.
The UNICEF report, Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries, used forty indicators from 2000-2003 to determine "…whether children feel loved, cherished, special and supported, within the family and community, and whether the family and community are being supported in this task by public policy and resources". Sadly, its findings were used as a political mallet, rather than as a tool for much-needed change.
There was also a bit of an outcry about the content of new E4 television series Skins, which follows a group of fifteen and sixteen year old friends from Bristol, who quite possibly attend the school from Teachers. The furore was that teenagers were shown to drink, take drugs, have sex and generally try to enjoy being alive. The wowsers couldn’t see past this to find a fairly accurate picture of mainly likeable characters facing issues about discovering who they are and how they fit.
It’s an extremely well considered and intelligent piece of television, at a time when the dearth of new ideas in British dramas (see Robin Hood, Hotel Babylon, New Street Law, Party Animals, etc.) is more evident than any exciting developments. The audacious part of the series is that each episode is seen from the viewpoint of a different character. But instead of the hackneyed device of telling the same story over again from a different perspective, Skins has an ongoing narrative that is like a relay race, where each week one of them takes the story and runs with it for a few days. Clever too is the viral element behind the show. There is a MySpace page for each of the characters, and these are all ‘in character’. And you do get to care about them too; the unfolding story of Cassie is heartbreaking.
Maybe a lot of fuss can be written off as stereotyping or political football. But the other side is that you’re not reading stories about shenanigans on the streets of Somerset towns; no it’s Manchester and London. Because it’s true that there’s not much to do in the inner city; areas are heavily built up; it’s grey and brick with few parklands or leisure facilities. I suppose you can watch telly, or play computer games or even kick a ball round on the street if you can avoid the traffic. Even going to see a film will put you back about $25 so you may as well hang around with your mates and kill the time looking for something to do.
There are pressures to grown-up quickly too. The National Curriculum Assessments (SATs) has children and schools being graded and compared nationally at the ages of seven, eleven and fourteen. Maybe part of the problem is that there is no time left to be kids?
Day-after-day I hear of people leaving London as "it’s no place to raise a family"; but isn’t a society a reflection of its members? Things aren’t as bad as they are painted, but saying ‘things are OK but could be better’ is not going to win anyone’s vote. I don’t have the answers to any of the questions I’ve raised. But simply abandoning the ship will leave it to sink with many still onboard…
© James McGalliard 2007
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 21 February 2007
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here
You can’t open a newspaper or turn on the TV in the UK at the moment without some new revelation about the state of youth in Britain today. So is there really something worrying about the environment that society has created for those growing up in urban areas?
Well, there are two big stories over the past fortnight that have given this discussion renewed vigour; firstly a series of inner city shootings, and secondly a report from UNICEF which placed the well-being of children in the UK at the bottom of a list of 21 industrialised nations.
The outward signs are that the UK is a gun-free nation. Bobbies still patrol the streets unarmed [if you don’t include nightsticks, pepper spray or bullet-proof vests] and unlike Australia, you’d never see a store security guard with a gun. In fact it’s a bit of a shock when you do see armed coppers, even if the sight has become more common in the post-9/11 society. Sadly though, this is becoming a dangerous anachronism. In South London, three teenagers have died from gunshot injuries over the past few weeks. The official response was a call to lower the minimum age for mandatory sentencing of five years if found guilty of being in possession of a firearm, but nothing much is said about the reasons for the behaviour.
None of this will change while guns are seen as a fashion statement. One summer’s afternoon while walking in Hackney, a kid of about fifteen caught my eye and then winked as he lifted his t-shirt to reveal a gun stuffed into the waistband of his jeans. And this was just a few days after an execution shooting in roughly the same spot. If they’re trying to frighten, they’ve succeeded.
The UNICEF report, Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries, used forty indicators from 2000-2003 to determine "…whether children feel loved, cherished, special and supported, within the family and community, and whether the family and community are being supported in this task by public policy and resources". Sadly, its findings were used as a political mallet, rather than as a tool for much-needed change.
There was also a bit of an outcry about the content of new E4 television series Skins, which follows a group of fifteen and sixteen year old friends from Bristol, who quite possibly attend the school from Teachers. The furore was that teenagers were shown to drink, take drugs, have sex and generally try to enjoy being alive. The wowsers couldn’t see past this to find a fairly accurate picture of mainly likeable characters facing issues about discovering who they are and how they fit.
It’s an extremely well considered and intelligent piece of television, at a time when the dearth of new ideas in British dramas (see Robin Hood, Hotel Babylon, New Street Law, Party Animals, etc.) is more evident than any exciting developments. The audacious part of the series is that each episode is seen from the viewpoint of a different character. But instead of the hackneyed device of telling the same story over again from a different perspective, Skins has an ongoing narrative that is like a relay race, where each week one of them takes the story and runs with it for a few days. Clever too is the viral element behind the show. There is a MySpace page for each of the characters, and these are all ‘in character’. And you do get to care about them too; the unfolding story of Cassie is heartbreaking.
Maybe a lot of fuss can be written off as stereotyping or political football. But the other side is that you’re not reading stories about shenanigans on the streets of Somerset towns; no it’s Manchester and London. Because it’s true that there’s not much to do in the inner city; areas are heavily built up; it’s grey and brick with few parklands or leisure facilities. I suppose you can watch telly, or play computer games or even kick a ball round on the street if you can avoid the traffic. Even going to see a film will put you back about $25 so you may as well hang around with your mates and kill the time looking for something to do.
There are pressures to grown-up quickly too. The National Curriculum Assessments (SATs) has children and schools being graded and compared nationally at the ages of seven, eleven and fourteen. Maybe part of the problem is that there is no time left to be kids?
Day-after-day I hear of people leaving London as "it’s no place to raise a family"; but isn’t a society a reflection of its members? Things aren’t as bad as they are painted, but saying ‘things are OK but could be better’ is not going to win anyone’s vote. I don’t have the answers to any of the questions I’ve raised. But simply abandoning the ship will leave it to sink with many still onboard…
© James McGalliard 2007
Wednesday, 29 November 2006
Everyone Says I'm Paranoid
London Fields # 33
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 29 November 2006
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here
Is Britain heading towards the dystopia predicted in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four? Spin doctors are straight from the Ministry Of Truth, and while reality TV has softened the concept, the question remains “Is Big Brother watching you?” There are currently 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain, and around half a million of those are in London. Recently published figures suggest that you’ll be filmed about 300 times on a day out in the capital. This camera footage is also linked to numberplate recognition software to see if the £8 daily congestion charge for driving in central London has been paid.
But you can avoid the charge if you use public transport, and the cheapest way of doing this is by Oystercard, a smart card which will eventually eliminate paper tickets and cash fares. There’s great pressure for punters to switch - some buses don’t sell tickets on board, and cash fares now cost about double those made by Oystercard. Yet every single journey you make is monitored, and CCTV footage can link you to your card, even if it’s an unregistered, pay-as-you-go one. As a punter, the only time this journey-tracking really comes into its own is when you’ve been partying hard and can’t remember just how you got home. All you have to do is place your card on the reader in the station and hey presto – your forgotten past is there on the screen as your journeys of the previous evening are displayed. But what else could this information be used for?
Recycling of domestic waste is still in its infancy in the UK; many folks will dump their newspapers into the wheelie bin rather than the recycling box next to it. To meet tough new government targets, compulsory recycling is being introduced, involving random checks, and warnings or fines for non-compliance. More stringent measures include the use of hidden cameras, and in one council simply refused to collect a household’s domestic waste because it contained recyclable materials.
New biometric UK passports have just been introduced to meet the stricter requirements of a post-9/11 US. Already you need to submit to having your fingerprints taken if you wish to enter the USA. But a new UK scheme is asking drinkers for them to be fingerprinted before they’ll be served in the pub! The idea is to cut alcohol-related crime, and it’s already been tried as a pilot scheme in the village of Yeovil in Somerset. Publicans who didn’t want to join in the scheme were told they faced having their licences revoked if they refused. The scheme is set to expand, as figures showed a 48% drop in violent alcohol-related crime over six months in the pilot area. So if you’re barred, you’ll stay barred! I wonder what Liam Gallagher and Pete Doherty will make of this? Recent newspaper reports claim that they’re scouring Kentish Town, looking for the right local to take over and run.
The British judicial system is the model on which many others are based. In April last year, the double jeopardy law, which prevented someone being tried for the same crime twice, was removed after being a part of law for 800-odd years. It could be successfully argued that the law had to be changed following the unsuccessful prosecutions of those involved in the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence. So sometimes age-old laws need to change or evolve, but consider the case of anti-war protestor Brian Haw, who has held a one-man protest in Parliament Square, outside the Houses of Parliament, since June 2001. Existing laws were unable to remove him. In answer came the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (SPOCA), which prohibits protests within a one kilometre radius of, yup, Parliament Square! Following a High Court battle, sections of the legislation have been applied retrospectively, and he is now facing criminal charges.
It could be argued that all this is necessary in the dangerous world of 2006. Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, has said that there are at least 200 al-Qaeda cells operating in the UK, and that the agency is currently tracking over 1600 people, and investigating 30 major plots, and 200 others. This, she says, is an 80% increase in casework since January, and went on to say “I wish life were like Spooks, where everything is knowable and soluble by six people”. Yet the recent fifth series of Spooks continually repeated the mantra that the stakes were raised, and previously accepted freedoms just weren’t possible in this new world. So now policeman have cameras fitted to their hats, and are carrying devices allowing people to be electronically fingerprinted in the street, when previously an arrest was needed to do this.
So, in summary they’re watching us, and monitoring what we buy and where we go, and even what we throw out. Some may argue that only the guilty need fear this level of intrusion, as the innocent have nothing to hide. The worry is what this information may be used for. Just remember - no matter how many pictures you take on your London trip, more will be taken of you!
© James McGalliard 2007
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 29 November 2006
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here
Is Britain heading towards the dystopia predicted in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four? Spin doctors are straight from the Ministry Of Truth, and while reality TV has softened the concept, the question remains “Is Big Brother watching you?” There are currently 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain, and around half a million of those are in London. Recently published figures suggest that you’ll be filmed about 300 times on a day out in the capital. This camera footage is also linked to numberplate recognition software to see if the £8 daily congestion charge for driving in central London has been paid.
But you can avoid the charge if you use public transport, and the cheapest way of doing this is by Oystercard, a smart card which will eventually eliminate paper tickets and cash fares. There’s great pressure for punters to switch - some buses don’t sell tickets on board, and cash fares now cost about double those made by Oystercard. Yet every single journey you make is monitored, and CCTV footage can link you to your card, even if it’s an unregistered, pay-as-you-go one. As a punter, the only time this journey-tracking really comes into its own is when you’ve been partying hard and can’t remember just how you got home. All you have to do is place your card on the reader in the station and hey presto – your forgotten past is there on the screen as your journeys of the previous evening are displayed. But what else could this information be used for?
Recycling of domestic waste is still in its infancy in the UK; many folks will dump their newspapers into the wheelie bin rather than the recycling box next to it. To meet tough new government targets, compulsory recycling is being introduced, involving random checks, and warnings or fines for non-compliance. More stringent measures include the use of hidden cameras, and in one council simply refused to collect a household’s domestic waste because it contained recyclable materials.
New biometric UK passports have just been introduced to meet the stricter requirements of a post-9/11 US. Already you need to submit to having your fingerprints taken if you wish to enter the USA. But a new UK scheme is asking drinkers for them to be fingerprinted before they’ll be served in the pub! The idea is to cut alcohol-related crime, and it’s already been tried as a pilot scheme in the village of Yeovil in Somerset. Publicans who didn’t want to join in the scheme were told they faced having their licences revoked if they refused. The scheme is set to expand, as figures showed a 48% drop in violent alcohol-related crime over six months in the pilot area. So if you’re barred, you’ll stay barred! I wonder what Liam Gallagher and Pete Doherty will make of this? Recent newspaper reports claim that they’re scouring Kentish Town, looking for the right local to take over and run.
The British judicial system is the model on which many others are based. In April last year, the double jeopardy law, which prevented someone being tried for the same crime twice, was removed after being a part of law for 800-odd years. It could be successfully argued that the law had to be changed following the unsuccessful prosecutions of those involved in the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence. So sometimes age-old laws need to change or evolve, but consider the case of anti-war protestor Brian Haw, who has held a one-man protest in Parliament Square, outside the Houses of Parliament, since June 2001. Existing laws were unable to remove him. In answer came the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (SPOCA), which prohibits protests within a one kilometre radius of, yup, Parliament Square! Following a High Court battle, sections of the legislation have been applied retrospectively, and he is now facing criminal charges.
It could be argued that all this is necessary in the dangerous world of 2006. Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, has said that there are at least 200 al-Qaeda cells operating in the UK, and that the agency is currently tracking over 1600 people, and investigating 30 major plots, and 200 others. This, she says, is an 80% increase in casework since January, and went on to say “I wish life were like Spooks, where everything is knowable and soluble by six people”. Yet the recent fifth series of Spooks continually repeated the mantra that the stakes were raised, and previously accepted freedoms just weren’t possible in this new world. So now policeman have cameras fitted to their hats, and are carrying devices allowing people to be electronically fingerprinted in the street, when previously an arrest was needed to do this.
So, in summary they’re watching us, and monitoring what we buy and where we go, and even what we throw out. Some may argue that only the guilty need fear this level of intrusion, as the innocent have nothing to hide. The worry is what this information may be used for. Just remember - no matter how many pictures you take on your London trip, more will be taken of you!
© James McGalliard 2007
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