JP2 pt2

JP2 #2
Originally uploaded by StefZ.

London has a long-established Polish community dating back to the end of the last war. The last really big war that is.

Given that I attended a Catholic secondary in South London, I had a fair few classmates of Polish decent. They were usually quite easy to spot, coming as they did in two basic varieties; tall and blonde or small and brown. You could easily pick them out from the Irish kids, who were medium-sized and white with red tops or the Italian ones, who were also small and brown but did no€™t sport that curious, cropped pudding basin haircut so beloved of East European males since, presumably, the dawn of time.

The other way you could pick the Polish kids out was that they were so damn intense. I did not really click onto why until my last year or so at school. There had been clues though. Like when summer holidays were coming up and I would chat about spending the Summer with relatives in Italy and the Polish kids would say 'We are staying at home in Streatham as our parents are exiles from their homeland which is subject to the boot of Communist tyranny'. Yes, the penny really should have dropped sooner.

Then the Solidarity thing happened in the early 80s and the Polish kids perked-up immensely. They would come into school festooned with all sorts of Solidarity memorabilia, jabbering away about all the great things that were happening in Gdansk (where?) and raising money for and sometimes even travelling on aid convoys into Poland.

John Paul II was part of that process and, for Poles, he was a very big deal indeed.

Watching the procession last night reminded me of that time and I could not help wishing that I could turn the clock back and take the opportunity to get more involved. Partly because a major historical event passed me by without me really noticing it and partly because the Polish kids at school had some seriously cute sisters.

Who was it who started that whole genre of ugly Polish women jokes years ago? Stuff like 'What do you call a pretty woman in Warsaw? A Tourist'. And that unrepeatable one about the single sock? Was he mad?

Poland produces an apparently limitless supply of stick thin, doe-eyed women with forlorn expressions and husky voices that simultaneously cry out to be protected and, pardon me, rogered senseless all at the same time. Hitting just about every single button in the primeval male brain.

Having said that, it could be just attributable to the lure of the unknown. I recall, what to me was, a particularly bizarre conversation with an Hungarian friend who tried to explain to me that, to him, the Welsh were an exotic and compellingly attractive race ...

JP2 Pt1

JP2 #1
Originally uploaded by StefZ.

So, a couple of days after I decided not to take any more pictures at marches for a while and the same day I write a post about the large number of migrants who have moved into London, what did I end up doing last night?

Taking pictures of a group of migrants marching through London of course.

There was a candlelit procession in commemoration of John Paul II from Trafalgar Square through to Westminster Cathedral and being a serious lapsed Catholic I wanted to attend, with or without a camera.

Photography-wise it was not all that successful. I have not taken many pictures at night lately and am out of practice. Plus, I totalled some of my gear a week or two ago and I also spent far to long in an abortive stalk of a Vietnamese guy selling flashing neon crucifixes to a not entirely receptive crowd of devoted Catholics. I am still gutted that did not work out.

I was not the only person to make a balls up though. The police had initially estimated that something like 200-300 people would attend. I am no expert in crowd counting but, on the night, Trafalgar Square looked pretty full too me and, judging by previous gatherings I have attended, the true number of people was nearer the 20,000 mark.

The police line looked awfully thin. Obviously there wasn'™t much risk of any violence but shepherding 20,000 people through central London traffic on a weekday night needs a certain number of officials on the ground. And they were no€™t there. From what I could see there were more police at the 200 strong anti war march in quiet Clerkenwell on a quiet Saturday afternoon last weekend than on duty last night. There was much grumbling in the ranks, leapfrogging along the march route and piss-taking of senior officers going on into walkie-talkies.

Presumably, they got their estimates from the same guy who compiles the census figures...

Devotion

JP2
Originally uploaded by StefZ.

Theme Thursday Submission

Migration pt47

I spent part of today poring over ethnicity data for London taken from the last Census, particularly maps showing the spread of various ethnic groups.

Considering how important census data is in government planning, we take a surprisingly casual view when gathering census data in this country. I’ve been in other countries twice on national census days and it’s a very serious business indeed. People are encouraged not to leave the house on census night, keep their children close and not venture out on the streets. It’s all a bit like some kind of werewolf movie.

Anyway, we don’t do that sort of thing in Britain. We get a form in the post, some of us bother to fill it in, 1% of us claim to be Jedi’s, and then a few get returned in the post. A large proportion of the returned forms are illegible and it’s unlikely that people traffickers with two dozen teenage sex slaves or illegal labourers in the attic are going to be altogether truthful when completing their returns.

So, you have to take the resulting data with a shovel-full rather than a pinch of salt.

After poring over the maps I discovered such exciting information as:

• Jewish and Irish people live almost exclusively in North and NorthWest London
• There are a lot of Africans and Afro-Caribbeans in South London
• There are a lot of Indians and Pakistanis in Hounslow
• With a few exceptions North of the River, Whitey doesn’t live in the centre of town
  

How much did the census cost? For anyone who’s lived in London for any length of time, this information is more than a little under-whelming and reflects a pattern that’s been established for as long as I can remember; at least twenty or thirty years.

But the ethnicity of London has changed greatly, particularly over the last five to ten years. The census just doesn’t reflect it. There are a stonking number of new arrivals in town, many from groups not previously represented in large numbers before in London; East Africans, people from the ‘Stans’, SE Europeans, East Europeans, Central and South Americans, all sorts. Looking at the census data it’s as if they don’t exist. The Somalis are a good example. No one’s quite sure how many there are in London; the accepted range is somewhere between 70,000 – 250,000. I ask you, how can you lose up to 180,000 people from just one ethnic group in a city of ten million?

Immigration is a hot topic in the run-up to the general election next month. The Conservatives are playing up the undoubted mismanagement of immigration since 1997 and the Government is attempting to neutralise people’s concerns, real or imagined, with dollops of bullshit and spin.

I find this all very amusing. Our politicians are still debating whether to permit the rest of us to have a debate on the subject of mass migration when it has already happened. The mass migrants are here, now, and they’re not going anywhere. We really should help settle these guys in and make the best of it. An enormous and undeclared racial experiment is currently under way in London and it’s in everyone’s interests for it to work positively.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t debate the issue of continued mass migration. As a nation we might want to mull the subject over before our country is turned into one low-waged sweat shop; with half the population cleaning toilets and making ready-meals for £2 hour, the other half working for the government, and two blokes in kilts entertaining tourists as our only source of hard currency.

The problem with debating migration is that the big money is with the pro-migration lobby; from lawyers troughing out on legal aid budgets to companies having a ready source of cheap, easily exploited labour. 'Pay a decent wage for this sh@t job? Nah, let's employ some wetbacks instead. They work for peanuts and are scared sh@tless of being deported' .There’s no money to be made on the anti-side. Plus, in supporting mass migration, you can have your cake and eat it. Not only is it lucrative, you can also posture around claiming that you actually give a damn about the migrants being sucked in for exploitation. Profitable and virtuous – a winning combination in anyone’s book.

No, I don’t think there’s never going to be any rational debate. As soon as anyone starts to ask critical questions they are immediately labeled a racist. It doesn’t matter if the person is really being racist or not. The race card trumps all rational questions or arguments. A corking example of its power has cropped up over the last few weeks during the debate about Travelers.

The number of Travellers in this country is tiny. The fact that a minority of this minority abuse planning regulations and build on agricultural land, whilst irritating, is absolutely NOT a matter of national interest. That hasn’t stopped both political parties playing national politics with the issue.

What I find most interesting about the ‘debate’ on the issue of Travellers is that they're not called Travellers any more. Suddenly, and subtly, even though they’ve been referred to a Travellers for years now everyone’s calling them Gypsies again; Gypsy, Gypsy, Gypsy. Even though most UK Travellers are of Irish rather than Romany decent everyone’s calling them Gypsies. Why? Well if you refer to them as Gypsies rather than Travellers you can accuse people criticising them of being racist, clouding the issue nicely. And, most annoyingly, Joe Public doesn’t seem to notice how he is being subtly manipulated through the abuse of language. He never does.

Talk about 5% of the population controlling the other 95% …

Shame on all of our politicians. Shame on the Conservatives for ramping up such a trivial matter. Shame on Labour for turning it into a ‘race’ issue. F*ck them all.

Now that's what I'm talking about ...

Now this is photography ...

Action Man

Mexican Dwarf in His Hotel Room

... and there's me forced to subsist on a diet of floppy marches and men whoring themselves in kilts to pleasure the tourist market. Ah, what I would give for the opportunity to take a photo that I could caption 'Mexican Dwarf in His Hotel Room' ...

Useless Things

I was sorting through some pictures I took in New Zealand last year when I came across a photo of several used, one litre, plastic Coke bottles filled with water sitting in someone'€™s front garden.

It took a minute or two to recall why I had captured that particular image, until I finally remembered ...

People in New Zealand think that used plastic Coke bottles filled with water scare unwanted cats away from their gardens

Marvellous.

And then I remembered a little game I came up with after seeing those bottles. The idea was to pick out the very best of the vast array of useless things that fill our daily lives. Objects and concepts with absolutely no functional utility whatsoever. I toyed with the game for a short while, got bored and forgot about it. However, what with the prospect of another five years of Labour government I think I might just resurrect the concept. So far, I'€™ve come up with three general categories of uselessness ...

1. Useless Remedies

- Plastic coke bottles filled with water to scare cats
- Acne Cream
- Those little rubber strips that hang off the back of some cars to prevent motion sickness, or is it lightning strikes. I don'€™t know.

2. Sh*t we don'€™t need

- Detergent blocks that turn toilet water blue
- That curious British habit of putting a plastic bowl inside their sinks
- Books of condolence

3. Illusions of comfort or security

- Lifejackets on airliners
- '€˜Close door'€™ buttons on lifts/ elevators
- '˜I want to cross'€™ buttons on pedestrian crossings (round my way anyway)
- London cycle lanes

There's probably a Phd thesis in here somewhere, comparing the similiarities between ancient and modern talismans and superstitions but there's no money in it so, personally, I can't be bothered to take that line any further.

And OK, it'€™s a short list at present but I haven't been thinking about it for very long and it will grow. I'€™ve just spent two minutes taking a mental walk from my front door to Oval tobe station and come up with two new ones. Try it for yourself, just walk around for a short while looking for uselessness and you might be delightfully surprised at your bounteous harvest.

Surprisingly, the attack on Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, compulsory identity cards and the like do not figure in the draft list; on the basis, they are actually quite useful things, just not for the reasons we'€™ve all been told.

Please feel free to contribute.

Alternative employment ideas

It's the Little and Large Show
Originally uploaded by StefZ.

I have been toying with a few ideas to earn a little cash whilst my mid-life crisis runs it course and I finally realise that working in an office is great after all.

The first idea I ha€™ve been kicking around is to offer a professional, at home, but above all, discreet, PC maintenance service for celebrities and politicians.

Let'€™s face it, having your PC repaired off-site is the 21st century equivalent of taking a couple of rolls of film to Snappy Snaps for processing. Every photolab I have ever dealt with had a couple of albums in a back room somewhere, loaded with duplicates of the more bizarre and pornographic customer photographs. And sometimes, Heaven forbid, the lab technicians even stopped laughing long enough to call the police or social services.

There i€™s a gap in the market out there. After all, what is the point of employing a fitness trainer, lifestyle guru and personal chef if you are doing three years in Parkhurst on child porn charges?

Ah yes, the Internet giveth and the Internet taketh away

From Jonathan King to Gary Glitter to Pete Townsend to Matthew Kelly to Michael Jackson to that pair of former Labour cabinet ministers who miraculously avoided exposure a year or two back (hmmm, now what were their names again?), it is a risky world out there for paedo porn hungry people in the public eye.

What is the harm in viewing images anyway? People watch imagery of war and death on news programs every day and no one is locking them up for murder.

Yeah right.

Hats off the Microsoft on this one. Not only have they produced such crap operating systems that pretty much every home PC is now crippled with malware, spyware and botched application installations, they also came up with the Internet Explorer file caching system, the downfall of many a children'€™s TV presenter....

Would you like Internet Explorer to save hidden copies of all the unnatural smut you've been looking at over the last three months you grubby little reptile? Yes / No

Aside from offering a specialist PC repair service for famous perverts who would rather not become famous for being perverts, I am also toying with the idea of offering specialist walking tours around London. Not only are they a potentially lucrative source of cash income, that the taxman is unaware of, they could also be a lot of fun.

I got thinking about this outside Whitechapel tube station on Saturday night. A man with a silly hat and the voice and mannerisms of a middle-aged, out of work actor was gathering a collection of expectant American tourists for one of the numerous Jack the Ripper walks that criss-cross that part of London. What really impresses me about the Jack the Ripper walks in particular, aside from the opportunity for kick-backs from the pubs that line the route, is the fact that few original Ripper sites remain. Actually, I could be wrong here but, on reflection, no original Ripper sites are left standing. Not having taking part in one of these walks myself I can only imagine what the guides are telling their eager punters...

And over here between the Bangladeshi sweatshop on the left and the kebab house on the right, just where that empty can of lager is propped up against the wall, is the site of the fourth Ripper murder. Imagine, if you will, a night-time scene, a cobbled street wreathed in fog, quite unlike the scene you see today ... etc etc

I got to chatting about the prospect of getting into this business with my companions later on in the evening.

We had stopped for a drink in an up-market bar that looked like a hotel lobby area at the far end of Brick Lane. The hotel ambience was accentuated by the presence of a several East European call girls. Sat at the table immediately behind us was a particularly nasty looking piece of work with a pair of female employees. He seemed to be catering for two very different potential markets, namely Muscovite Brick Layer and Heroin Schoolgirl. He bought the bricklayer and the schoolgirl a Margarita each then they sat there not saying anything to each other for half an hour before walking out onto the street, and staying there.

Anyway we watched TV for a bit. Until, the TV got up, adjusted his dress and left the bar.

I then turned the subject of conversation towards imaginary tours of London, in keeping with the tour we had seen earlier and a blog posting I had made on a similar subject a little while ago. I mentioned the story about the teacher on a school trip who had shown us the place in Rome where the Toblerone was invented 500 years ago. Tracy then came up with a blinding lie to tell tourists on my proposed London walking tour. In its early draft form, it goes something like this

The first tube tunnels were originally built in 1645 and cut in a triangle shape. The designers believed that this was the strongest tunnel configuration and one that would enable the trains to travel at very high speeds. Because of their experience with mountain passes, Swiss workmen from the village of Tobe Le Rone were employed to cut the tunnels. When they had finished working on the Underground they returned home and one of them started a chocolate making business. He created the triangular-shaped Toblerone chocolate bar in memory of his time working under the streets of London

And then comes the punch line. You wink at the listening tourists and say in an authoritative tone

And that is why real Londoners always refer to the Underground as the Tobe. Remember, if you want to sound like someone who knows the real London, and not some tourist who has just come into town, always refer to the Tobe

Excellent, another two dozen similar lies and I sha€™ll be ready to rock and roll. Maybe, I could even turn the whole walk into a kind of street game show, a contest to see who can correctly spot the most of my bullshit. I could give the winner a prize. A bar of Swiss chocolate maybe...

The Pope's dead let's have an election

Jesus
Originally uploaded by StefZ.

So Tony Blair has finally called the general election.

Apparently he delayed calling the election earlier in the week out of respect for the Pope. I'€™m sure the Pope would have been touched if he were still alive. I'€™m also sure that the Pope would have been even more impressed if Blair had not taken the UK to war against his express pleadings. There are stories that Blair will convert to Catholicism once he stops being Prime Minister. If so I'€™d love to be a fly on the wall during his first confession. That one is going to be doozie.

John Paul II'€™s death was accompanied by some serious bullshit. On top of the delayed election announcement we were also treated to the sight and sound of Peter Tatchell and various other activists criticising the dead pontiff for being opposed to condom use and therefore directly responsible for the spread of AIDS around the world

D'€™yer what?

I think Peter and friends might find that the proscription against condom use comes as part of a whole package that also requires Catholics not to indulge in pre-marital sex, promiscuous or otherwise. The chances of a married couple who only ever f*ck each other spreading AIDS are, let'€™s be honest here, slim. Also, John Paul II was only against condoms as a means of birth control. Sodomy between consenting male partners generally doesn'€™t produce babies so, even from the Pope'€™s point of view, condoms were fair game. But, there again, monogamous gay couples are hardly contributing to the global spread of AIDS either.

Admittedly, the Pope wasn'€™t the greatest fan of sodomy, monogamous or otherwise (well except in Catholic schools but that's different), and that is a major cause of AIDS, probably the major cause of AIDS. So, really, Peter Tatchell should have been applauding the Pope for giving guidance that would stop the spread of HIV in its tracks.

However, Peter Tatchell'€™s a dick. Always was, always will be. He was just hitching a ride on another human being'€™s death to partly publicise his adopted cause but mostly to serve his own ego. Tatchell fits very neatly into that category of awful people who compensate for their own personality deficiencies by associating themselves with a crusading cause. No, the end doesn'€™t justify the means, particularly when it's a dick'€™s means.

Lots of other nonsense accompanied the Pope'€™s death. We had the usual fatuous public tributes from the Queen and the Prime Minister; '€˜He was a man of God, adored by Catholics throughout the World. He wore a white hat and was born in Poland'.

And then the media cranked out the tired old story about how church attendances are falling in the developed World and how the Catholic Church needs to change to increase its appeal to secular Western populations.

What? Like maybe getting a new logo or diversifying into the training shoe or computer games markets? Or maybe Jamie Oliver could capitalise on his success in exposing the inadequacy of food in British schools by making 'Jamie'€™s TV Catholics'€™?

'Wot no condoms? You'€™re '€˜aving a giraffe ain'€™t ya?'

The Catholic Church has been doing its thing for two thousand years. It is onto a winning formula and currently has over one billion subscribers. Thanks to some canny forward thinking on the contraception issue, club membership is growing every minute not falling. Ping! There's another couple of hundred.

The whole point of being a Catholic is the complete absence of doubt and debate on key issues. Catholicism offers certainty. A continuous thread of certainty stretching back almost two thousand years. A lot of people like that. Personally, I don'€™t but respect where respect is due; you know what a Catholic stands for.

Any attempt to adapt the Catholic Church to suit the whims of an increasingly secular Western World is bound to fail. Like a retail logo or gameshow format, any new image the Church chose to adopt would fall out of fashion in a few years and it would have to rebrand itself periodically. On the way it would lose its USP and then it really would be in trouble.

Most of those people shopping in superstores instead of spending a couple of hours a week devoted to contemplation of morality or their own individual purpose are already lost to the Catholic Church, or any other rigorous religion or philosophy, regardless of how well they market themselves. Those people are toast.

Curiously, even though we'€™ve largely dumped religion in this and many other industrialised countries we still find ourselves able to slaughter and exploit our fellow beings without any difficulty at all. Funny, I was always told that religion was to blame for all the World'€™s ills.

Anyway, General Election, May 5th. If you can'€™t wait for the start of another five years of Tony Blair and a Labour government, steal some money from some pensioners, spank it on deceitful PR and lies then fire bomb some Muslims.

Iraq, Iran, IKEA - what's the difference?

Cruisin'
Originally uploaded by StefZ.

Getting bored with photography and Flickr now. Time to get back to some serious blogging. Yes, blogging, it'€™s not some silly, faddish techno craze like playing with Flickr is it?

The photo ennui thing set in strong last Saturday. Ian and myself had met up in Clerkenwell Green to catch the start of a migrants rights march that was planned to make it€™s way from Clerkenwell over to the East End.

The deju vu was so thick you could cut it, pop it between two slices of toasted soda bread and sell it at Borough market for three pounds a pop. Same demonstrators, same policemen, same photographers, even the same blinking costumes and banners. It was a migrants rights march wasn'€™t it? So how come there were people packing Stop the War, Anti-Globalisation, and Anti-Pollution placards, recycled from the last time we all got together about two weeks ago?

To cap it all there was only a handful of demonstrators and they were probably outnumbered by the combined police/ street photographer presence. Even more so than the Stop the War march last month, I sensed embarrassment in the police ranks at there being so many of them in attendance at so lame a protest.

The demonstration season is cranking up to full speed now. There'€™s an anti-racism march in town next Saturday. Presumably all the gang will meet up on that one as well.

I doubt if I'€™ll be there. I'€™ve had enough for the time being. It'€™s getting to the point where I honestly can't tell the photos from each demonstration apart.

Yet there are so many photographers at these events; professional and amateur. Why? I can only conclude that they turn up in the hope of catching some photogenic argy bargy. Attending a street demonstration potentially offers the chance of capturing some full-on violence, without going to the effort or risk of flying over to a war zone or even catching a bus to Tottenham. The problem is that these marches are now so over-policed and the general public so numbed by a spin-driven, consumerist lifestyle that the chances of any action are minuscule. Everyone'€™s watching Sky Sports or at IKEA on a Saturday afternoon and you'€™re much more likely to witness some hard core mob violence in IKEA these days than you'€™re even going to do watching a procession of lettuce-crunchers mumbling away to themselves in Clerkenwell.

We left the march and strolled around Kings Cross / St Pancras. Photography-wise the landscape improved, but only a little. We took the usual photos of street graffiti, abandoned sofas and council blocks. Eventually we found ourselves in yet another old cemetery. Oh yes, the uninspired photographers' friend.

At one point I got to thinking, 'why I do this thing?'. Watching Ian stalk an elderly, wheelchair-bound couple amongst the tombstones with a Leica, it was obvious to me that this is all a throwback to the primeval hunting instinct. You spend several hours creeping around, harnessing all your senses to identify and approach worthy quarry and then you return home with your trophies. In that respect street photography shares common characteristics with train spotting, stamp collecting and, er, hunting.

Lately, worthy quarry has been hard to find. Or maybe I'€™m just tired of bagging the photographic equivalent of a sackful of squirrels every time I go out.

The lowest point in the day came when I found myself photographing a sign that said '˜St Pancras Cruising Club'€™. It had no aesthetic merit whatsoever and I was only taking the shot because of the weak double entendre. Whilst taking the picture, a kind old guy came to the gate and offered to open it because he thought I was photographing the building behind the sign. I declined his offer as politely as I could, uttered some bullshit about abstract photography, took a hurried snap and walked away, feeling about two inches tall.

Is that what my hobby has degraded to? Photographing sign posts because they include unwitting references to gay slang?

No, back to the old blogging for me for a while, Blogger permitting

The Joys of Lambeth

lambethguns01
Originally uploaded by StefZ.

It's been a cracking week for crime-fighting bits of paper making their way into my household. Someone popped this little number into my letterbox this morning.

It's all very confusing. One day a load of police chiefs hit the headlines because they maintain that violent crime is not increasing by as much as some people are saying. The next day I get this on my doormat.

What is a boy to think?