Just let me be clear about this (It’s a good phrase, Mr and Mrs Cameron, and one I looted from every sentence your son utters, just as he looted it from Tony Blair), I am not justifying or minimising in any way what has been done by the looters over the last few nights. What I am doing, however, is expressing shock and dismay that your son and his friends feel themselves in any way to be guardians of morality in this country.
Here are the pictures I took in Manchester today. A looting clear up slideshow.
I’m calling it looting, not rioting, because it’s important to use the right words. Last night’s activities in Manchester (I’m not so sure about Salford) were all about theft and thuggery. A riot has to be about something, this was just opportunism.
Come to think of it, calling it looting may make it sound grander than it really was.
I rode into town with a brush and a shovel waving around in my pannier. But I feel like an amateur next to this guy.
The Council’s clean up squads got most of the mess out of the way over night, it seems, leaving us to tidy up little bits left over. Apart from a few Vans trainer boxes the only stuff I helped clear up was accumulated crap in a doorway. There were a couple of jewellers which had been hit harder than most, and a lot of cracked windows, but nowhere near the devestation I feared fom last night’s coverage. I’ve wandered around the Northern Quarter and the Arndale and found little to do. I feel unnecessary, but that’s a good thing. I’d rather be a fifth wheel, taking a break in Nero, than sweeping up the bits and pieces of folks’ lives, as they’ve had to do in parts of London.
Let’s put an end to the calls for water cannons and baton rounds, and let’s not allow the Coalition to use this as an excuse for harsher laws. This will blow over and when it’s calmed down and everyone’s rebuilding we don’t want draconian laws in place that can be used to silence genuine protest.
Make a lot of noise supporting the Police, Fire and Ambulance sevices. They may have made mistakes, but they were out there doing a dangerous job. Tell Cameron, Clegg etc. that they need the funding. As do all the other services getting cut because of their policies. Youth clubs aren’t going to prevent riots, but they are going to keep some kids out of them. And give those kids people to confide in so the vandals can be rounded up. Build a better society (and not a Big Society, that was a fucking stupid, empty concept even before Saturday) out of this.
Stay safe Manchester, Salford, Birmingham, Liverpool, London and everywhere else. We’re bigger than this.
There’s been a few great posts about classic hot rod comic art, but it’s interesting and hopeful to see that the traditional hot rod is alive and well in modern comics too. In the afterglow of Comic-Con 2011, I was turned on to three great comic artists that are using the iconic 20s and 30s coupe and roadsters (with a few mid 50s Chevy’s thrown in) to tell gritty tales of racing, wreckin’, and world domination.
Several independent film, DVD and Blu-ray distributors have lost their stock – in many cases, all of their held stock – in a fire caused by the rioters in London. I covered this a little earlier today, but I didn’t want to just report on it, I wanted to do something about it.
Thankfully, there is something we can do. It may not, in all cases, be enough but that, I suppose, is up to us. Many of the films available from these distributors can be purchased not only as hard copies, but as downloads.
My take on a vertical farm in Sounds of Soldiers had a bunch of guerilla gardeners taking over a multi-storey car park. The first draft of that bit of the story can be found here.
I’m still a fan of Top Gear, despite everything, but watching it is beginning to feel more and more like something I do out of duty than anything else. Another series came to an end last week and I’d be perfectly happy if it was the last one ever.
There are a number of things wrong with the show, which interlock to an extent and mean that it can’t just be tinkered with. Top Gear has to be put out of its misery and replaced by something different. I have some suggestions of what the replacement could be, but lets start with a list of the programme’s problems.
1. Its presenters
It’s too easy to dismiss Clarkson as an ignorant buffoon. I think he’s a very intelligent man who has found a persona which earns him a lot of money and then spent years honing it. It’s possible even he has begun to think the persona is the real him. Hammond seems to be setting himself up as a chirpy mini-me to the Clarkson character, which is a shame, because he’s capable of interesting stuff. May is the one of the three I have the most hope for away from Top Gear, but he should get out soon.
In a few years time, students will be writing theses on early twenty-first century man’s mid-life crises and citing the antics of the Top Gear presenters as examples. Their meltdowns have a bigger budget than most, so they actually get to do the sorts of things 40 and 50 somethings wish they could to reclaim their youth. However, it’s getting to the point where the antics are less cathartic and more embarrassing. There’s enough material available for dozens of doctorates, no need for more.
2. It’s got a small penis
The programme is obsessed with big expensive cars which go fast. It’s like it’s desperate to impress us and convince us it isn’t lacking in the trouser department.
3. It’s predictable
If a car is being reviewed it’s unlikely to have fewer than eight cylinders or cost less than six figures. There will be tyre smoke. The car will go sideways. They’ll lay that filter over the shots which darkens the top third of the screen and makes the sky appear grim and foreboding. Then they’ll give it to a man in white leather to record a lap time. (Has anyone else noticed that the times recorded by the tame racing driver in expensive compensation devices are, at best, about thirty seconds faster than those of untrained celebrities in the reasonably priced car. What’s the point of these stupid vehicles anyway?)
If the boys are doing a challenge in the UK they will be staggeringly incompetent. May will say “Cock”, Hammond will squeak and be useless, Clarkson will grump and be useless. A caravan will be destroyed, often by fire.
If the challenge is abroad then Hammond will complain about the food, Clarkson will be a bit racist, May will say “Cock” and they will do something culturally insensitive.
The script is no longer original. It’s really tatty. They should have admitted defeat when, in possibly the least artificial of their “car vs ….” races, they proved that bikes, buses and boats were all better suited to urban transport than cars.
4. It’s conservative
There are a huge number of motoring subcultures. Every weekend during the summer months there is at least one show dedicated to a particular marque or style of car. You wouldn’t know this from watching Top Gear. If it isn’t marketed to footballers then a car doesn’t exist in Top Gear’s world.
It would be neat to see, for instance, a piece about the ingenuity and obsession that goes into building a hot rod. Line up a bunch of Fords of the same vintage, one original and the others customised in different ways and tell the stories of how they were built. Or take a look at the update and upgrade ethic of my favourite car mag- Retro Cars. Or any number of other odd creations.
“Boring” old Top Gear could do the occasional piece on a unique and eccentric vehicle-
5. It’s propaganda
The defence that keeps getting rolled out is that Top Gear is an entertainment show. But it peppers the nonsense in amongst news items and the reviews, so the difference between information, taking the piss and telling people what you want them to hear gets a bit blurred. And some people want the bullshit to be true.
Earlier this year Clarkson came out with the old nonsense about cyclists not paying “Road Tax” so not deserving space on the road. The producer may tell us it’s entertainment, that Clarkson was just joking and everyone knows it. But cyclists are attacked by idiots who believe that they have paid to use the road whilst the two wheeled menaces haven’t. ipayroadtax.com does a great job of rebutting the all too frequent examples of this meme and has its own response to Clarkson’s comment.
More recently, in the last episode of the most recent series, Clarkson and May did an allegedly sensible and serious piece about electric cars. To do this they didn’t drive the cars around town, simulating the sort of short trips electric cars are perfect for (and which constitute around a third of all car journeys). No, they took the sort of journey only an idiot would think was right for an electric car. And they let some fool run down the batteries before hand so they could conveniently run out of juice in a town with no recharging points. All so they could come to their pre-existing conclusion that electric cars aren’t any good.
There are numerous other examples. I’d be here for days if I tried to recount them all.
Top Gear promotes the message that only cars- preferably petrol powered ones with lots of cylinders- deserve to use the road. I don’t think the licence fee should be paying to spread that lie. (Full disclosure- I don’t have a television, so I don’t pay the licence fee. I watch what little TV I’m interested in on iPlayer and the other channels’ equivalents.)
6. It’s got no counterpoint
Channel Five has Fifth Gear, which is a bit more sensible as a car programme. However I can think of no programme on British television which could be considered an antidote to Top Gear and a dose of the Clarksons. I don’t mean some staid, stop-this-silliness sort of thing, but a show given just as much free rein to present an alternative view just as irreverently. Maybe if there was a programme which had segments where presenters mocked drivers for not knowing the Highway Code or that suggested that soft roaders are so useless they can’t even traverse speed bumps then TG’s fast and loose relationship to facts wouldn’t seem so bad.
So, what shoud we replace Top Gear with, seeing as we’re going to kill it?
As a cyclist I obviously have to suggest a show about bikes. I know that a show called Freewheel (or similar) wouldn’t be able to replace Top Gear or get the same sort of viewer numbers straight away. But, with bike use ramping up and more bikes than cars in the City, it’s time one of the TV channels looked at giving us more coverage. If any of the broadcasters want some ideas for how a bike show might look, I have a few.
Top Gear is a magazine show, it has regular features and special stories. We need to see some programmes with a similar format but a far wider remit. Get guests in to do features on stuff that interests them, give them some challenges (build a gravity racer, canoe from one side of the country to the other, get Danny MacAskill to ride across a city without touching tarmac, do a piece outside London without coming across as patronising and insular etc.) Top Gear needs to be replaced by a bigger, better, more inclusive version of Top Gear. I don’t think we’ll be able to call it Good Shit.
When you win a prize in a game that has cash value, that prize is taxable at the fair market value, even if you do not sell it. This is true in the United States, and (from my cursory Googling) appears to be true in the UK and India (and likely many other locations). So when you stumble across that Massive Staff of Infection or Red-White-Blue Shield of Copyright Infringement, items that could be sold in the Diablo III Market for $20, $50, or even $100, you’re legally supposed to declare those winnings on your taxes.
Sheep rustling is booming as the price of meat soars, according to figures obtained by The Independent, with thieves targeting British farms at almost double the rate they were six months ago.
We also seem to have tweaked Jeremy Clarkson’s tail, which is never a good thing. He’ll always win a shouting match because he’s got a bigger megaphone.
I don’t want Top Gear to change, I desperately want them to continue their ill informed criticism of electric vehicles. It’s one of the best things that can happen to encourage the uptake of this technology.
Far too much of what I know of London comes from Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine lyrics. It’s been odd listening to them and flicking over to Twitter to read of riots in the capital. I don’t know where all these places are, absolutely or in relation to each other, and, apart from Croydon, I haven’t been to any of them. So I don’t know how big the riots are and how dangerous they are.
Anyone I know in London- hell, anyone in London- I hope you’re safe.
I walked from my baby’s Brixton flat
Into a riot
I thought of maybe turning back
Till things were quiet
When all the buildings to be burned
Had been burned
And all the cars to overturn
Were overturned
Outside the prison they were screen testing the free
Open auditions for closed circuit T.V.
Your baby brother would be there outside the jail
Throwing bottles as the police sirens wailed
And a love song might not be suitable
But you look beautiful tonight
Death and disaster only make me love you more
The morning after the night that went before
When the brains of Brixton with conflicting points of views
Are outside The Ritzy on the local TV news
A love song might not be suitable
But you look beautiful tonight
And if you feel the same way as I feel
Everything will be alright
I was thinking,
Let’s forget about the car
And do some late night drinking
In a late night drinking bar
It isn’t far, well it’s my local anyway
I know the barman
And there’s a small vocal P.A.
Now the insurance man has left you with the news
That your third party fire and theft would be no use
And I know a love song isn’t suitable or right
But you look beautiful, beautiful tonight
And if you feel the same was as I feel
Everything will be alright
Tonight, Big Brother is watching you
And I am watching too
I will watch over you
Like a thunderbolt out of the blue
Something told me it was true
God created me and you
And God created Brixton too
Hallelujah!
Praise the Lord!
Tonight you can rest assured
The Father, Son, The Holy Ghost and I
Will love you more than most
Tonight
The NASA Juno spacecraft blasted off on Friday, its aim, to discover more about the biggest planet in the Solar System, Jupiter. The Juno mission is uncrewed, but there are astronauts aboard, even if they are a non-human trio of 38 mm (1.5 in) high LEGO minifigures.
The Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC, “United East India Company”) was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia. It was the second multinational corporation in the world (the British East India Company was founded two years earlier) and the second company to issue stock.[2] It was also arguably the world’s second megacorporation, possessing quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts,[3] negotiate treaties, coin money, and establish colonies.[4]
The East India Company (also known as the East India Trading Company, English East India Company,[1] and, after the Treaty of Union, the British East India Company)[2] was an early English joint-stock company[3] that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China. The Company was granted an English Royal Charter, under the name Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies, by Elizabeth I on 31 December 1600,[4] making it the oldest among several similarly formed European East India Companies, the largest of which was the Dutch East India Company.
Containing works by the classic SF pulp writers of the Golden Age right through to modern award-winning authors, the SF Gateway is the largest library of digital Science Fiction and Fantasy ever assembled.
Okay, it’s obviously a stunt, but don’t you just wish there really was a man in a tank (or APC) out there who’d come along and crush all those cars parked in the bike lane.
There are two ways of cutting a deficit: raising taxes or reducing spending. Raising taxes means taking money from the rich. Cutting spending means taking money from the poor. Not in all cases of course: some taxation is regressive; some state spending takes money from ordinary citizens and gives it to banks, arms companies, oil barons and farmers. But in most cases the state transfers wealth from rich to poor, while tax cuts shift it from poor to rich.
So the rich, in a nominal democracy, have a struggle on their hands. Somehow they must persuade the other 99% to vote against their own interests: to shrink the state, supporting spending cuts rather than tax rises. In the US they appear to be succeeding.
