There’s no doubt a sizeable proportion of the population of this country last weekend, and the weekends to follow, particularly as we edge towards Christmas will find themselves strolling around Bluewater and Lakeside Shopping Centre, Westfield Stratford City Mall and many others dotted around the country buying and consuming to their hearts content blissfully or ignorantly unaware of the sweatshop labour, the slavery behind the products they are buying. We all do it, some more than others, it’s a modern-day preoccupation for many, a false idea of comfort and happiness. Of course, there are things we need and trying not to buy sweatshop products is quite a task. But we should be aware of the pain and suffering that goes into the making of those products, particularly if we are to be angered by the rise in energy prices coming our way.
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Solidarity and understanding are two major components to recreating a better society. As it stands, we are easily divided by many things, one of them being wages. This has been highlighted in the media response to the strikes by the RMT in the last week. And it worked. Given that the strikes aren’t even solely about wages, it’s clear that the ‘wage’ can be used as a divisive issue causing discontent among some of the population as they react with how little they earn in comparison to the 60k a train driver earns. Is it the train drivers’ fault, if true? Of course not. This is a corrosive issue across all our society. We should also be focusing on and questioning the wages of politicians which currently stand at £84,144 https://www.parliament.uk/about/mps-and-lords/members/pay-mps/ and be happy that our contemporaries are making a good living.
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And once again immigration in Britain is a Hot Potato, let’s just hope it’s a King Edward or a Maris Piper and not a Desiree or a Patata Naxou otherwise the gingham warriors will spontaneously combust with patriotic misinformed outrage.
Once upon time in the foggy corridors of politics Tony Blair was heard emphatically declaring: ‘Education. Education. Education.’ How long will it be until we hear Priti Patel in the same vein exclaim: ‘Immigration. Immigration. Immigration.’ Which she already is in all but words.
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If you are currently a resident, an inhabitant of Great Britain, particularly England, there is a strong chance you are disgusted by the egregious self-interested hypocritical behaviour of our Prime Minister and particular members of the government, whilst simultaneously angered, worried and despairingly thinking about how you will manage the rising price of gas, electric, food and more. But all this shouldn’t really come as any surprise because it is exactly what should be expected from a system built purely on self-interest and competition. There are no places for ‘losers’, in a self-interested system there will always be winners and sufferers.
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Whilst it is somewhat funny and perhaps reassuring to see and hear Boris Johnson being heckled and booed as he alights from his chauffeur driven Range Rover and then traverses the stairs into St. Pauls for the platinum jubilee event with his wife Carrie, following and preceding the adulation given to the royals, what really comes to mind rather than a form of minor rebellion on the publics part, is the performance of a pantomime. We all know how a pantomime works, it is a participatory form of theatre where the audience is encouraged to join in and partake in the show. Cheers for the heroes and boos for the baddies. Simple, but highly effective. Just watch the platinum jubilee ceremony at play.
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Whenever there is a royal event, I always feel it’s an important time to question and reflect on the monarchy. Now let me just put this down in writing first that I actually have no problem with them as people, as individuals, well not all of them but that is another article altogether. The point I want to raise and make is about the unequal hierarchy that part of the population embraces so freely and people all over the world admire.
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When it comes to training: running and cycling, I’m a morning person. Within 20 minutes of my eyes opening and after the performing of the perfunctory matutinal ablutions I’m out either running between 3-5 miles or cycling 15-20. Given that our lives are now unfortunately consumed and partially wasted in front of a multitude of screens I find it important to exercise. Losing weight is less of an interest to me than just getting out in the natural elements and… moving. I did try the gym once for a stint of about 4 months through a dark wet British winter (is there any other kind here in Blighty?), but it was short lived the moment the sun started to rise early, and so it was back outside for me. Plus, I couldn’t take witnessing men video themselves in their Lycra lifting weights anymore to post on the ‘gram. Let’s be honest who can? And furthermore, who ‘likes’ that?
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On the 8th May 2022 a BBC article ran with the headline:
“Shop owners to be forced to rent out empty premises, government says.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61362442
It then went on to explain how “under the move, set to be unveiled in Tuesday’s Queen’s Speech that buildings left vacant for over a year would have to be entered into a ‘rental auction’”. Boris Johnson is quoted to have said that “boarded up premises were a blight on towns and cities and damaged local economies.” BBC.
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If there is one term in this cosmos of captions we now find ourselves encapsulated in that I truly biliously detest and everything it stands for, it is ‘brand loyalty’. Why anyone in their right mind would devote themselves to anything as dull and faceless as a ‘brand’ is truly beyond me. Have you not seen these clowns ‘branded’ head to foot with logos exhibiting their ‘brand loyalty’, under the incredibly false assumption that somehow, we should envy them or even worse be under the illusion that they have achieved something by simply going into a shop or online and paying for the ‘branded’ item? Wow what an achievement! It’s a pair of fucking shoes! It’s a garish gaudy handbag! It’s just a fucking car! I love to hear folk brag about how they think their ostentatious material products speak volumes about them. They have to, because they nothing to fucking say! It illustrates the legerdemain of marketing.
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Film, movies, the cinema, the pictures, the silver screen, the flicks, the motion picture has played a dominant role in my life from a very early age, as I’m sure it has in many others. I don’t recall and I wouldn’t want to confabulate, but according to my father, he took me to the cinema in Leicester square circa July 1977 and introduced a 4-year-old version of me to George Lucas’s science fiction cinematic masterpiece, Star Wars. I’m by no means a fan anymore but I’m sure at such a young age the moving picture left an indelible mark on my highly impressionable still forming embryonic mind as I stared wide eyed in the darkness at the huge screen, the celluloid light bursting across the theatre illuminating the auditorium like a religious experience with projector above beaming the film over our heads to be reflected back on the audience with images dancing over us, as we all tucked into our popcorn and watched Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero with a thousand faces’… in space.
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I currently live in a small coastal village by the name of Seabrook in Kent. It is sandwiched between Sandgate and Hythe, and if one is driving from the latter or the former to the other and happens to blink, they will never have known the village existed. This, in itself, gives you an idea of how geographically microscopic the village is.
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For a moment picture the Earth floating through space, this lonely ball of rock placed with exactitude in our solar system, the perfect distance from the Sun for life to begin and flourish, this planet surrounded by other heavenly bodies, all spinning on their axis in what we have called the ‘Universe’. And as we start to move into our world through the clouds, we can begin to see the shapes of blue and green where the aquatic worlds float under the surface and mammals stretch across the land comprised of towns, cities, deserts, mountains, forests and jungles. And what seem like ants from a distance are human beings living within their social structures, their evolved environments, their religions, their economies, their quotidian affairs utilizing some of the most advanced technology enhancing their lives, like never before. We definitely are living in a world of wonder, creativity and leisure. With the touch of a finger, we can access a colossal amount of information that will undoubtably add interest and inform our lives incredibly.
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As I talk to many people, read many posts on social networks and place my ear to the ground there is clearly an air of fear, rage, anger and despair. People are openly disgusted with the current status quo as they watch their lives get increasingly harder, the price of living climbing out of control and making ends meet a feat in itself as they move slowly through the years.
This against the backdrop of the FAANG corporations making trillions, their governments and associates doing as they please, breaking their own rules that they create for the population and setting new agendas with laws to increase and control through digital surveillance often leads one to think: ‘what can I do?’
(more…)Arranged in front of Marcus, horizontal in the proverbial doggy-style position with hands gripping headboard, the mid-to-late thirties blonde female thrust her well-kept, taut, gym tight, ersatz tanned body, graced with little hair, back and forth on to his Viagra-fuelled cock. She was naked, apart from the obligatory porn star style heels of course for added sexual effect. The heady mixture of wine and cocaine had pickled their brains enough to run through the perfunctory motions of coitus after being digitally matched and brought together by a dating app now simply used for nothing more than a seminal release.
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