Carnaby Street

The Suez Syndrome

The symbols of Empire and the silver tipped, three pipped, furry lipped master race, that was the English Establishment. Top hatted Etonians, defenders of a class system, defeated over two World Wars. Poppies in Afghanistan and Flanders. For all the tea in China. Old colonial tobacco, rubber and sugar cane plantations lost in the turning tides of global capital. Churchill's after-dinner speeches in America. Breaking Blighty's chalky bones down into little pieces; rebranding those tattooed blue Britons as 'never will be slaves'.Single-skinned cardboard boxes stamped UK plc.

I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet

Reprocessed through the liberalising free-market razzamatazz churn of pop-music, fashion, football, newspaper scandals, celebrity, club-life and street-drugs: the post-war engine manufacturing working class identities for the consumption of the masses. Not for us the bespoke tailors of Saville Row and family physicians of Harley Street. Marks and Sparks and the National Health Service have arrived. The Messershmitts have been replaced by Vespas. The Volkswagens have become campervans. Cheap holidays abroad, Rioja red sunburn, with Fish and Chip vinegar, skinheads on the Costa del Sol. Mary Quant hemlines flirting with Paul McCartney baselines. Patent leather boots, plastic jewels and Prince Buster on the dance floor. 

Flamingo Jazz

Post-war power devolving to the bourgeois middle-class; the Knightsbridge, Whitehall and Mayfair mafia. The reassuring critics of a Empire under blood red skies: spies, mobsters and civil servants clustering under the mosquito nets, plotting on vodka martinis, a khaki coloured politics. The white, navy and chrome grey aluminium of the BOAC VC-10, James Bond, and Rule Britannia. A starchy white linen suit daubbed with a saucy red liquid lipstick kiss in some far away field. Strawberries, cream and hot chilli sauce. The tingling heat of humid tropical fever cooling naked skin under the inky diamond studded night sky. Sweating guilty secrets in the evening breeze around the glowing gauze of the gas lamp. The insects swarm. Never forgotten, forever England. The world service, cricket commentaries, all night long. Ex-patriots: strangely boorish, rude and obnoxious; grandiose, narcisstic; pathetic, hilarious bully-buddies; making saints out of all us sinners; we all sit down to all their dinners; now not another a word about it; that will be all. [Amen].

Granny Takes a Trip

Love is all you need. The counter-culture, being and becoming permanent revolution, funded by rock and rollers in rose-gold Rolls Royses. The regimental bandsmen of the next generation, raising their festival flags for freedom, preaching to the converted, peacenik hippie capitalists, psychedelic warriors, fighting a war against fascism, with Hammond organs, American blues, and sexy sax solos sold in the back streets of Soho. Magazine men marching off to neverland. Marxist-Lenninist guerrillas invading distant Banana sands. All members of the same Gentlemen's club. Palm courts aplenty. The occasional desertion to Moscow. With no state pension and no name. But Her Majesty has asked that they should all still retain their seats in the House of Lords. God forgive us our sins.

"Man's Search for Meaning"....

Everyone is deeply engaged in living their lives - but like fishes swimming in the sea we can never see the water that surrounds us because we are totally immersed in it. In the same way, only some of us ever get to understand the true meaning of our lives, because we only see it in its parts and not its wholes, the meaning of things is rather patchy.

As a mental health nurse this is important to me because I work with people who have lost the meaning of their lives; the definition of being and staying well almost seems to be "knowing what your life means". 

However, my studies tell me that, for the majority of us, that meaning is a received meaning. By that I mean, it is not a meaning that we have had to discover for ourselves. Being "a mum", being "a postman", being "a president", are all titles with roles and actions attached to them, a bit like actors in a play, society has written the script for us in the history of our interactions. 

These words that we use to describe the people that we are, that are supposed to give our lives 'meaning' are actually only generic tokens for specific things. Thus, while I may "love my dog", by calling it "a dog", I relegate it to a class of things, that are infinite in number, that I have no connection to, that I could not love, at least not in the same way that I love this being that I know, and therefore, "my love" ceases to have the same meaning that it had for me before I used language to describe it.   

Language is said to "carve nature at the joints" in the same way that Dad carves up the Turkey at Christmas dinner. It goes for the easy bits first, and makes the incision to break the world up into natural categories of things to make things simple. For instance, it carves the "sexes" up into "girls" and "boys", and conveniently forgets about the problems of "transgendered" and "hermaphrodite" people.

Thus, it is easy to see how language has become the natural repository for ideology, the vehicle for the communication of ideas, for the benefit of some and detriment of others! What is left behind, and is often managed out of the picture by clever editing and production, is the ‘umwelt’ of the embedded and embodied emotions.

Ideology controls others through language. Ideology controls others by having them control their emotions. The more meaningless the emotions are, the less they have value from an ideological point of view, the less they are talked about or even recognised as existing. Like people who do not fit the ideology, they will eventually cease to exist.

But when you do not fit the ideology, and your meaningless emotions are all you have left; when your ideology has been destroyed; when another has destroyed everything that you are; then, you will have no capacity to decode the information of your senses; you will not be able to explain your reactions to events; you will not be able to externalise your emotions; and you will be mad. And you will be outside your own head wondering how you can get back in. And you will wonder if you have ceased to exist. And you will not exist.

Although you will still be deeply engaged in living your life. Some of you will realise that your lives still have meaning, beyond the received meaning, beyond the ideology, beyond the normative assumptions. You will develop a capacity to find meaning. The difference will be in whether others find that meaning with you; and share it with you; and live it with you. Without you. As it were.

Local Elections 2018: Fortress Britain

Interesting set of results last night which are widely being reported by the national media as no change. This translates into the Corbyn bandwagon running out of steam and the Tories not being as badly affected as they might be by their recent bad press over the Windrush generation.

From a coastal Essex town I would say the results are more revealing of the widening political and economic divide behind the haves and have nots in the UK.

The wards that have crept towards more Labour councillors are also those more likely to have properties being converted to flats or houses of multiple occupation (HMOs). This is creating increased pressure on schools, GP surgeries, transport and other public services in these areas that central and local government are slow to respond to. The sort of working class voters UKIP might also have gone after.

The wards that are creeping towards more Independent, Green or Liberal Democrat  councillors are those going through the now familiar "gentrification" process. This is related to young professionals, commuting to and from inner City areas, with good credit histories, large deposits, and assured shorthold tenancies and landlords with large portfolios investing in  property hotspots altogether stimulating a flourishing high street of small independent taders and artisans.

The wards that are creeping back towards Conservative from a flirtation with UKIP or Labour are generally populated by properties that have bought by tenants from landlords in the last 50 years. This would be "Thatchers Generation" of "Basildon Man" - those that bought their council houses at knock down prices as a way out of 'the ghetto'. The same people that Blair tried to appeal to as the aspirational working and left-leaning middle class homeowners. The reason that "Jerusalem" replaced "the Red Flag" as the Labour Party's anthem for a while.

It is no lie to say that there is a homeless person in nearly every shop doorway when I walk through town to get my sandwich at lunchtime. The white beggars seem to be drinking more and chasing the European homeless out of town. 1 in 3 shopfronts is boarded up. The high rise office blocks have been empty for 10 years now. The Tory council have finally agreed for their conversion to residential property. They are being reclad Grenfell style and marketed to young professionals and property investors. There is a policy to disrupt any large public gathering where political descent could become contagious. Car parks are closing in favour of more residential developments. There is a clear political agenda quietly being developed under May's regime.

So this is the future of, what shall we call it, "Fortress Britain" would suit. There is a very British feeling to it: quietly determined and gentile; but ultimately, utterly ruthless. "Doing what we have to do to get the business done. This is what we do. No need to ask why." Chances are you wouldn't get an answer anyway. 

On Corbyn v Berger

A few words on the current row between two highly respected left-wingers. What appears to be behind it is the misapplication and misreading of iconography and stereotypes of a pretty mediocre piece of street graffiti.

The way I see it...

Corbyn's original comments seem to reference the anti-globalisation anti-capitalism movement.

This would be infered from the US dollar symbol that is known as 'God's all seeing eye' that sits atop a pyramid (a piece of iconography normally associated with the largely Christian history of the Freemasons); and a monopoly board (which I think was first designed by a Socialist as an educational tool); being supported on the backs of what appear to be anonymous slaves.

In a hasty tweet Corbyn makes some glib comment about a similar piece of street art depicting Lenin having being threatened with erasure in the same way that this piece is; he makes some claim to political solidarity.

Berger draws attention to the racist stereotypes used in the street art some time later, when Corbyn has become leader of the Party because his tweets have become important news.

Indeed sat round the monopoly board are a number of what might be loosely described as 'Dickensian' stereotypes of a Victorian-era Jewish bourgeois. In terms of narrative there doesn't seem to be any reason for these figures to be there apart from to reinforce a 1930s Nazi style propaganda. That is, as some sort of racial targets for anti-capitalists, which is a highly suspect political message.

So Lucianna is absolutely correct to bring attention to the sinister nature of the message being communicated to those who would not necessarily be able to read its disturbing language and demand an apology from a leader who should know better.

Corbyn apologised for being an artistic 'philistine' and agreed he had misinterpreted the whole thing. End of.

But no. Since then the opportunity to make a massive news story out of a stupid mistake has been too good to miss. Such is politics.

One has to wonder whether who wins from dragging race and religion into politics in such a way but who am I to judge?