Inclusive Capitalism.

At the Mansion House today a gathering of economists, bankers, politicians, IMF top bananas and Prince Charles come together to discuss Inclusive Capitalism and how best to bring about such a happy state of affairs. I reckon that capitalism is already inclusive. Fully inclusive, all embracing and totally pervasive - that's the problem.

Foreigners using British trains shock.

It's a given of the human condition that two people can be in exactly the same situation and have a totally different experience. Take for example me and Nigel Farage and our view of foreigners on trains. I was on the train yesterday and next to me in the carriage was a Polish girl and a young guy who might have been from the Middle East or Mediterranean. They were chatting away (in English) about this and that. I got the impression that they were work colleagues or perhaps attending the same college. Back home they might never have met someone from such a different background but they interacted here in London. Will this not effect their view of the world and am I just being a naive old fool to think that in a small way this was a good thing? I am not a relativist and there are many aspects to some cultures, especially in the areas of religion and gender politics, that I find abhorrent. I also understand only too well that a population increase from abroad on the scale we in the UK have seen over the past few years puts a terrible strain on housing, schools and the NHS and that this impacts mainly on folk who don't make the decisions and have no way of buying their way out. All this was going through my mind as the results of the EU Elections were revealed this morning. Interestingly enough, the countries that have really felt the brunt of high unemployment and the crisis driven austerity policies, Spain and Greece, moved toward the left despite Greece's Golden Dawn getting some 10% of the vote. In Germany and Italy the voters opted for the status quo but in France the Front Nationale were clear winners and in Belgium a Flemish Nationalist party with a policy of dismembering the country secured a third of the votes in Flanders. Compared to some of the political parties lurking in the European undergrowth the Kippers seem quite benign but across the EU voters have shown that when the going gets tough people frequently turn inward, exclude the outsider and look for scapegoats. There may come a time when the likes of me and the two young people on the train will need to stand up and be counted.

Billericay casterway.

From the moment that she first started to make a name for herself in the early eighties I was a fan of Alison Moyet. Her voice and the way she can deliver a song was enough, but there was something else. We should never expect anything from performers than that which they are paid to do and to ask for more is frequently the road to an unjustified disillusionment. None the less, I always felt that offstage Alison Moyet was probably an interesting, warm but complex person and her  appearance on Desert Island Discs was confirmation of this. Nice selection of music too.

Unlike puppies a councillor is not for life - thank fuck.

Early indications are that UKIP are making a real breakthrough in the local council elections making some inroads into the traditional northern Labour strongholds as well as in the areas were you might have expected them to do well. How many of these newly elected councillors will have the stomach for long hours of tedious meetings about the local issues that affect peoples lives but have absolutely nothing  to do with Europe or immigration or "foreigners" remains to be seen. What almost certainly will put the cat amongst the pigeons in local council chambers is today's report that the Tory heartland of the Home Counties is actually sitting over a vast reserve of shale gas. How will the Kippers respond to this? Little England Nimbyism will need to be weighed against fuel security in a possibly destabilised Europe that they want nothing to do with anyway. The problem of having to listen to foreign tongues on the train may soon pale into insignificance.

The true nature of the beast.

Back in the late 60's and early 70's I became very influenced by the writings of the Situationists and I suppose that to an extent I still am. I struggled with the writings of Debord and Vaneigem and had frequently no clue as to many of the other theoreticians that they referred to but I was none the less captivated by the stuff. From May '68 in was downhill all the way for the SI but how could they have known that their theory of recuperation would in turn be recouped by generations of shit for brains middle-class art students working "The Situationists" into their dreary dissertations? For all of their failings the Sits were on the money about many things and not least the utter futility of the old hierarchical left. Also central to the ideas of Debord, Vaneigem and the rest was the notion that, in the developed world at least, the struggle was no longer about material inequality but rather the total alienation of daily life and the drudgery of work - commute - TV. It was claimed that capitalism could feed the masses and  provide us with all the labour saving gizmos but would never be able to mask the fundamentally hierarchical nature of the system; it was always going to be us versus the bosses. We might all be well fed but an authentic life was not possible within capitalist society. All of this is true of course. Today more people than ever spend their working lives isolated in an open plan office staring at a computer screen. The working day has been extended with workers starting earlier and staying on into the early evening. But this increase in the alienating nature of work has also gone hand in hand, not with any levelling of material wealth but with an increase in inequality that the Situationists could never have foreseen.
This years Sunday Times Rich List spells it out in harrowing detail. The Richest 1% of UK population own as much as the poorest 55%.  The richest 1000 individuals own the equivalent of one third of UK GDP and that same 1000 have seen their wealth increase by 15.4 % during the past twelve months. The rich are getting richer. Our poor dear Queen increased her share of the cake by £10 million last year but that's nothing compared to that diamond geezer and geezerete Jamie and Jooles Oliver who amassed a further  £90 during the same time. The top 64 people in UK own between them £255 billion. The same amount is shared between the poorest 30% of our population. And all of this in a country where for the first time in my memory the distribution of food parcels to the needy is a commonplace.
But if the Situationists got it wrong about distributive trends they were right about one thing. The solution, as always, lies not with some new re-alignment of left grouplets or placing any trust in the pre-election pledges of politicians. The solution is on the streets.

It's all in the past.

The gentrification of mile after mile of London's old housing stock has gone hand in hand with the  transformation of the capital's skyline into something resembling Dubai and the almost complete decline of the small workshops that could be found down every side street in Central London. As long ago as the 1950's Ronald Searle and  Kaye Webb could see that the writing was on the wall for the old shambolic unhygienic street life and decided to capture some of the flavour in drawings and prose. The classic, Looking At London (and people worth meeting),  was the result.

Nothing lasts forever and all cities are in a perpetual state of flux. I know that but I can't help feeling that we have lost something irreplaceable anarchic in return for a sterile metropolis suitable for international tourism and the global property market. London has been replaced by the "London Heritage Experience". Wandering around town, and even here in the suburbs where I live, I frequently come across a "development" and wonder what was there before. Sometimes of course I already know the answer and such is the case with a small part of the Kingston Upon Thames riverfront. Kingston had a thriving river industry at one time with coal and timber being unloaded at what are now blocks of expensive apartments. One small oasis of higgledy-piggledy delight survived right into the 1990's as the headquarters of a passenger boat and marine film services company. When Jerome K Jerome and his chums hired a skiff for their Three Men In A Boat adventures it was from this already well established firm. At that time such was the enthusiasm for pottering about on the river that at Kingston Railway Station a man was employed for the sole purpose of shouting, "This way to the boats!" as the crowds descended from the trains. By the time that I became acquainted with the it there were half a dozen passenger boats operating from the site with an engineering shop, a house that had once been the family home being used as an office and also a large store containing an amazing collection of small boats and nautical odds and ends that were hired out as film props. When I was a young seaman getting ready to take my Able Seaman exam I had to learn about a piece of kit called a Kelvite Sounding Machine. I had never seen this machine nor met anyone who had used one. I'm not even sure if the National Maritime Museum had one, but years later I would find one here in this store. The whole site was patrolled by a large number of semi-feral cats who helped control the rat population. There was also a pub. The Outrigger was not the kind of establishment where the chattering classes meet for lunch. The ceiling was papered with old navigation charts stained brown by the smoke of a million roll-ups. I once walked into this salubrious establishment  to find a bloke standing at the bar with a goat on a piece of string. He had bought the animal in Southall Market - as you do. Looking at the area now it seems almost inconceivable that such a haven of wonderful chaos existed there only a few years ago.

UKIP immigration own goal.

It's so difficult running a political party that has an anti-immigration stance as a main plank of it's policy. For one thing everyone to the left of the right-wing of the Conservative Party will be queueing up to accuse you of being Fascist, generally it must be said without much idea of what Fascist politics actually are. No matter, mud sticks and appealing to the less generous side of our nature is always going to be problematic in the long run. Such are the trials and tribulations of Nigel Farage and his UKIP comrades. A few weeks ago Farage was revelling in the media attention but as the EU Election approaches there are signs that he may be beginning to unravel just a little bit. The last thing that the Kippers need now is an illegal migrant scandal in the party. Oh bugger! Curry entrepreneur and top UKIP candidate Amjad Bashire has only gone and employed dozens of illegals at his Manchester curry house. Get a grip Amjad for fucks sake.