We might as well just enjoy the sport now.

"Londoners say no to games of greed", proclaims the front page of the Morning Star. The article goes on to say that 600 people turned out for an Anti Corporate Olympic demo in East London. The numbers say it all. The truth is that outside of a tiny leftist bubble Londoners are shrugging their shoulders at the corporate greed and civil rights abuses and just enjoying the sport while hoping that they wont be too inconvenienced by the extra people using the tube. The truth is that it is very difficult for activists to mobilise around something like the Olympics without coming over as a bunch of whining lefties out to spoil the fun because they themselves were never any good at sport. There is plenty to complain about of course. Who knows what the much vaunted "legacy" will be, apart from increased profits for a handful of multi-national companies and a nice little windfall for some greedy landlords. Will the games make us a fitter nation? I doubt it. Well, not unless there's some kind of training benefit from watching twelve hours a day of Olympic TV. Give it a year and as the weeds start to grow across the now semi-derelict Olympic Park and the real cost of all this becomes apparent we will all be nodding in agreement at some Channel 4 expose of The Great 2012 Swindle. In the mean time we might as well enjoy what will certainly be some great sporting moments.

DON'T PANIC!

Isn't it amazing how things just creep up on you? I mean you know that a certain event is due on such and such date but it all seems like a long way off and then suddenly it's on top of you. THE OLYMPICS START IN LESS THAN TWELVE HOURS! Her Indoors reckons that panic buying will result in shops running out of food and that we must fill every available space with soon to be unobtainable supplies. WE COULD ALL BE IN OLYMPIC LOCKDOWN. We actually will be in lockdown on Saturday due to the CYCLE RACE going down the main drag at the end of our road. BLOODY HELL! We'd better get more food in just in case Bradley Wiggins stops off for a sarni. He looks like he could do with one. Another thing..... is it me or do those rings suspended from Tower Bridge look a bit naff? Too late to change that now. If only Steve Ovett had been in charge rather than that tosser Coe. The troops are being pulled out of Afghanistan in order to form a ring of steel around the Olympic Park. 4FS will take over training the Afghan army. I wouldn't go anywhere near a Job Centre if I were you. THE OLYMPICS START IN LESS THAN TWELVE HOURS. The torch has just passed through the lock where I used to work. It's only five minutes away but I missed it. I've got a lot on. WILL THE NATION STEP UP TO THE PLATE OR BE FOUND WANTING IN THE CRUCIBLE OF OLYMPIC WHATSIT? Our kids are coming over to watch the opening thingy on our TV. I'm not sure why. Perhaps they feel the need for parental comfort and guidance. I don't know what makes them think I'll be any good at that. I hope we will have enough food.  DON'T PANIC!

A Rotherhithe afternoon.

I suppose that these days there are people who visit the Rotherhithe Peninsula and think that  Canada Water and Greenland Dock are water features thoughtfully provided by the architects and developers of the many blocks of luxury apartments that now grace the area. The truth is of course that these now sterile and meaningless bits of water are the last sad reminder of the Surrey Docks. This was the hub of London's timber trade with planks of sawn timber from the Baltic and Canada plus huge logs of tropical  hardwood being unloaded into barges for transhipment to the wharfs of London River and the small ports of the estuary. The Surrey Docks was the whole reason for Rotherhithe. Right into the sixties this area was a hive of activity that supported a host of small industry as well as the docks themselves. But the writing was on the wall. Truth be told "The Surrey" was even then a very cramped and old fashioned  group of docks. This combined with containerisation and the long term plans to move the docks industry downriver and leave the capital itself to the developers and the service sector meant that the Surrey Docks was closed for good in 1969 and not long afterwards the process of filling in the docks was started. Like other dock areas Rotherhithe went into a long period of decline. The closing of the docks devastated  communities and did away with a whole way of life. Only slowly have the various riverside areas found a new role and it has been a change not without problems and certainly has benefited some people more than others.
I don't get down to Rotherhithe much these days but yesterday I spent a very pleasant afternoon drinking in the Angel just a stones throw from the site of the old docks. We sat watching the visiting yachts manoeuvring and my companions remarked about how busy the river was. I thought that it looked dead and soulless and could not begin to describe what the view would have been fifty years ago.  I fell into conversation with a local man and we talked about the river of our youth, politics and how our lives had panned out. One interesting point that this guy made was that although he was only too aware of the downside of gentrification he also felt that at least the area was finally recovering from years of neglect and decay. The tough dockers and lightermen, the tally clerks, riggers, bargemen and tug skippers have all gone and I can but  hope that this new Rotherhithe will treat kindly the grandchildren and great grandchildren of all those long gone workers who so shaped my view of the world.

"I can do you a deal for cash Dave"

When he is not selflessly working on behalf of his Hertfordshire constituents or fulfilling his duties as Exchequer Secretary, David Gauke has a cushy  little number with the well known firm of tax avoidance briefs, Macfarlane. Gauke also claimed ten grand in stamp duty and fees for his second home  so clearly he is a man who knows a bit about tax dodges, bunging it on expenses and what people like him call "the black economy". But such is the sense of entitlement and moral self-righteousness of  the creep that he has no hesitation in lecturing ordinary folk about the rights and wrongs of doing a bit for cash or paying in readys. What I don't understand about people like Gauke, people who's whole financial world is as bent as a nine bob note, is the way that they are so certain that the rest of us are too thick to see through the hypocrisy.

A right royal urban myth.

The proposed new Royal Yacht, or UK flagship as we call such vessels these days, is reckoned to give the economy a boost by in some way  promoting the inventiveness of British industry, honesty of British banking and so on. That such a hugely extravagant PR exercise could in any way benefit the ordinary walking round the streets members of the population is such nonsense, and such believable nonsense,  that it should be categorised as "urban myth". Most urban myths are harmless. Vanishing hitchhikers, insects that take up residence in a beehive hairdo and bore into your skull and similar Fortean occurrences. Some however are far from harmless and a  particularly nasty one was going the rounds when West Indians first started to make a home in London. The story was that these simple folk from the Caribbean lived on  KitiKat, a brand of cat food popular at the time. It was arrant racist claptrap but you heard it repeated over and over and there was always someone who knew someone who had proof positive that it was all true. But as I say, most urban myths are harmless and some are downright rib splitters. Which brings me back to the Royal Yacht and an urban myth that if not actually true certainly should be. 
The story concerns the Royal Yacht Britannia and a young Queen Elizabeth. A plot was hatched on the lower deck to procure a royal souvenir that would remain a talking point for generations of old salts. I should point out that the tale dates back before ships had holding tanks for sewage and when the contents of  "the heads" just went straight out of a hole in the ships side. Anyway, negotiations were entered into and with the aid of a double tot of rum here and a favour returned there the plotters were able to get the information that they needed. When it had been established at what point in time Her Majesty was likely to be performing a Number Two and, most importantly, out of which shipside orifice the contents of the royal bowels would be ejected, the plot entered it's final phase . From then on it was simply a matter of by means of a series of whistles and hand signals to get a bucket attached to a line lowered over the side and strategically placed at the right time. Piece of piss as you might say. The royal turd was recovered, and if you believe the tale, given several coats of varnish before being mounted on a wooden plaque and displayed in the stokers mess. From such legends national identities are forged.

With philosophers like these...........

I'm all in favour of the tradition of the autodidact, worker-philosophers capable of honest labour one moment, intellectual debate the next and manning the barricades the next. Like much else in life I have failed miserably to live up to this ideal but I continue to try. Organisations such as the WEA and Open University are an inspiration I reckon, and the new movement of Philosophy In Pubs sound pretty tasty as well. No surprise that the latter has a strong base in Liverpool where there is a long and noble tradition of people gobbing off in boozers. When I came across Jules Evans' Philosophy For Life it sounded right up my street and in truth it's not a bad read if perhaps a little too American Self Helpy for my taste; but I'm not so sure about Evans since finding this little philosophical gem on his website. 
"For my money, the great champion of the mass intelligentsia is Jamie Oliver - I'm serious, I think Oliver and Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall have done more to promote learning and shift ethical attitudes in our culture than 99% of academics. Chefs have become the philosophers of our society. Anyway, the latest addition to the Oliver empire is a new drop in cookery school in Notting Hill Gate. Good idea."  Yeah! Fucking ace!

Simon Harwood "not guilty".

Regardless of the verdict, if Harwood's previous is anything to go by the death of Ian Tomlinson or someone else, was bound to happen sooner or later. Harwood is clearly a very violent and possibly unbalanced man. But what has gone more or less unnoticed has been the efforts by senior ranks in the Met to psyche up the police prior to the G20 protest. The protest was a peaceful one but such was the nervousness and tension among officers that something unpleasant was inevitable. The top brass had succeeded in working up the officers on the ground into such a state that policing was spiteful and confrontational from the start. A loose cannon like Harwood, a police force worked up into a state of fear and ready for violent confrontation, poor Ian Tomlinson stumbles into a situation and meets a tragic end. This is the force that is supposed to have ultimate responsibility for Olympic security. Heaven help us.