Idiocracy

The quarterly waste of paper that is About Leeds, the council’s pathetic effort to convince us that they have a use, has just come through my letterbox.

I guess for many it serves it’s purpose of instilling a sense of civic pride, taming the bewildered herd, as Chomsky (very tongue in cheek, citing Walter Lippmann) puts it. It tells us all the wonderful ways that Leeds City Council are spending our rising council tax, over a million doing up Albion Place so we get more tourists and (the businesses) of Leeds benefit, for example. They even have a family, Dave and Sue (bit of a milf to be fair) Dawson who’s exploits quizzing their local councillors and accepting without question their rhetoric have been noted for the last 2 years.

Now, I have to say that if I was ignorant enough to parade my lack of knowledge about simple things like council tax (why doesn’t it go down ‘cos house prices are dropping) or landfill (I KNOW how to save money, only collect one bin), I guess I would believe everything some councillor said. Apparently her hours have been cut and she has three hungry mouths to feed obviously does indicate she lives a hard life and her fella’s a lazy lump. But hey, she’s a Yorkshire lass and she won’t give up.

But aside from these paragons of salt of the earth Leeds-ness, and the fact that Leeds, like much of the country is going down the pan, we have the best quote ever:

“…everyone can have a say in how the city is run…”

Yes, boys and girls, that bastion of civilisation… Democracy.

Da Da da Daahhh!

Lets return to Chomsky. Chomsky manages to paraphrase Lippmann in such a brilliant way that I am going to type it out verbatim:

…in a properly functioning democracy there are classes of citizens. There is first of all a class of citizens who have to take a role in running general affairs. That’s the specialized class. They are the people who analyze [sic, we will forgive the American spelling] , execute [no pun intended?], make decisions, and run things in the political economic and ideological sphere. That’s a small percentage of the population. Naturally anyone who puts these ideas forth is always a part of that small group and they’re talking about what to do with those others. Those others, who are out of the small group, the big majority of the population, they are what Lippmann called “the bewildered herd”. We have to protect ourselves from “the trampling and roar of a bewildered herd” Now there are two “functions” in a democracy: The specialised class, the responsible men, carry out the executive function which means they do the thinking and planning and understand the common interest. Then there is the bewildered herd, and they have a function in democracy as well. Their function in democracy, he said, is to be “spectators”, not participants in action. But they have more of a function than that, because it’s a democracy. Occasionally they are allowed to say “We want you to be our leader” or “We want you to be our leader.” That’s because it’s a democracy and not a totalitarianism. That’s called an election. But once they’ve lent their weight to one or another member of the specialized class they’re supposed to sink back and become spectators of action, but not participants. That’s in a properly functioning democracy.”

So who are those specialised classes in Leeds..? Lets look at a recent motion in council.

85.

White Paper Motion -Vote of No Confidence in the Administration

“This Council deplores the inefficiencies and ineptitude of the Conservative led coalition.”

B ATHA

Minutes:

It was moved by Councillor Atha seconded by Councillor Taggart

That this Council deplores the inefficiencies and ineptitude of the Conservative led coalition.

An amendment was moved by Councillor Finnigan seconded by Councillor Grayshon

DELETE all after “of the” and replace with “Labour led Government”.

The amendment was carried and upon being put as the substantive motion it was

RESOLVED – That this Council deplores the inefficiencies and ineptitude of the Labour led Government.

If you want to see the whole 50 pages of script and from what I can work out from the minutes the best part of two hours of conversation, have a look at the verbatim report, from about page 38. It’s hilarious. OK, no doubt the Tory Coalition and the Labour Administration both deserve little confidence, but what the fuck does that do for Leeds.

Jack. Shit.

I recently tried to call upon some of these specialised classes after an incident with certain builders. This was mainly because I was pissed off, had consumed 4 double bourbons to calm down and wanted to whine at someone. However if the specialised classes are really executing in Hyde Park they fucking deserve it. I left a message with the office, and on two of their personal numbers as advertised on leeds.gov.uk and so far have heard nothing.

Of course if I was living the other side of Royal Park Road it would be a different story, as Kabeer Hussein obviously cares and looks after his ward residents, even taxi drivers who commit assault. If one wonders if this is part of the great LS6 Asian network I will be called a racist, no doubt, (by the way if you choose to, go fuck off and look up the meaning of the word racism please), so lets go with Hussein’s story that Shafiq Aziz is his friend. So either he is plain stupid, and doesn’t know that his friend had criminal convictions for assault, or he is a bare face liar when he claims he did not. Does he also know that Aziz is reputedly a relative of one of the biggest lot of con artists in Leeds, the very people the council claim to be trying to deal with? It’s not in his declaration of interests.

If we must succumb to the need for this “specialised class in Leeds”, is it not reasonable to ask that they are slightly more than inadequate, ineffectual, blustering, posturing, lying, porn peddling, arrogant, useless idiots?

Obviously not.

—–

Cited:

Chomsky, N (2002) Media Control. New York: Seven Stories Press.

Hole in the Head…

Once again, I am astounded by the plain stupidity rife on the BBC website comments. One day I’ll stop reading it, but I guess I’ll lose a large amount of my entertainment. But honestly…

So what is it this time. Don’t you know, the world was due to end today? A black hole was about to swallow us all up when they switched on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

As I am still sat here writing this, I think it’s safe to say this hasn’t happened. Now if we are to believe the scaremongers that it was gonna blow the moment they switched it on, I guess this is probably easily explained by the fact that it was actually switched on quite a while ago. If you believe the ones who reckon it’s gonna create a mini black hole then the lack of oblivion might just be accounted for by the fact that they haven’t actually collided anything yet…

Don’t get me wrong, pushing the boundaries of physics is dangerous. I’m sure the City Fathers of Hiroshima would be able to tell you that if they weren’t ripped apart to their constituent atoms half a century ago. My personal fear is, like Einstein’s reputed despair about the Atom Bomb that knowing more about the fabric of the Universe will enable us to learn to commit atrocities of a Stellar scale if we ever survive to leave this ball of rock – have a read of Greg Bear’s Anvil of the Stars for a pretty scary moral explanation of what knowledge of the fabric of spacetime could enable us to do. But that’s down to how we use it. I can hope we might just manage to control our violence one day.

But not content with telling us that Islam is The Beast Incarnate, that paedophiles should all be forcibly castrated before their hanging and so on, the panic merchants are now telling us that physics is the end of the world. Most of them hail I’m sure from the Bible-belt of the Mid-West and of course have their ulterior motives. But it seems some people are daft enough to truly believe them.

“I cant believe they would put our lives at danger!
They could have had a world wide vote to see what everyone thought just like they did for england with terminal 5.They put billions of lives at risk more lives then how much money they spent one the experiment in the first place ? Why the world is gonna stop anyway so whats the point on spending the money when other people need that money to survive.What went through their heads i do not know but next time is there is one STOP & THINK AGAIN!” Holly Burton, benissa/spain

This experiment has a potential of duplicating Big-Bang. But,we know that the matter was created from”Nothingness”and it started expanding thereafter.Collision of Zero Particles might start another expansion process capable of colliding with “God Particles’. Important question is,do we know beyond doubt if this experiment will not violate nature in a”Big Way”starting a collision course of “God Particles” with Man-Particles expected to ultimate destruction?

Muhammad Saeed, Islamabad, Pakistan

Worse than that are those who show a complete inability to constructively manage their fears, and hide behind those of their children. This goes a little off my main point, but these are two gems from the BBC

“My 2 daughters aged 10 and 8 are absolutely terrified of this experiment…”
Marc, Lanarkshire”

Hmm… So what you are saying is that you do not have the ability to explain to a child of that age that sometimes people talk shite. Or is it that you are scared, and blaming your children.

And the classic…

“i think its stupied, my children are scared bye this and i am not happy about it”
stacey, nottingham

If one can get past the atrocious spelling and understand what the fuck you are on about, this is stupied [sic] because you believe evryfing that people tell u and so they shouldnt do it cuz you are an idiot who lets ur kids watch tv all day wile ur smoking rocks?

Ok, maybe I’m being a little cruel. I feel for another commenter on here who said he needed to sit all night with a “mentally handicapped” friend who was upset by this. But the idiot responses to this are akin to scaring the shit out of kids telling them they will go to hell if they are naughty (haven’t most of us realised that threatening children in the name of discipline is a bit last century..?) – this is the church breeding ignorance.

This I don’t get… Not that I consider that Vatican to be the paragon of Christian Virtue. But it’s certainly pretty vociferous. Last I heard, the Pope had abandoned the Inquisition and accepted that much of our theory of Physics was entirely compatible with creation, Big Bang included. Having turned my back on the majority of the Christian Church a long while ago for its abject hypocrisy, I don’t know how the rest of the Church sees this, but my feeling is that the majority of rational (i.e not American) Christians in this world agree that discovery and progress is a good thing. Most rational, thinking people do not think that X-rays, Semiconductors, MRI scans, The Internet and so on and so forth are a threat to all humanity.

Or am I wrong…

…. I believe God has sent us a message already. Have you seen four earthquakes in different parts of the world happened in one day? Ed Li, Vancouver, BC, Canada

For fucks sake…

OK, some people baulk at the cost, while happily accepting the latest military behemoth to protect us from the evil Arabs. OK I’m sure many millions of starving children could have been fed with the cost of this… But lets face it while we sit in our capitalist bubble (which looks to burst soon, guys) that’s not gonna happen.

But back to the point. The simple thing to learn from this is use your fucking heads. The simple fact that the eschaton brigade have chosen today to portent doom shows us clearly how daft it is. Why today? Why is it going to happen today, when all they are doing is sending the first test beam round the whole circuit? Not switching it on. Not colliding things for the first time. No-one making these claims has said it’s gonna be today, but everyone is prattling on about it.

Because today is publicity day. Today is the day when people can see something going on in the news that they don’t understand. And because they don’t understand it (which is fine, it’s complex, not many people do) instead of learning about it, reading the facts and making an informed assessment, they hide behind the first scare rumour they can find.

I’m sounding like the scientists now, sticking up for the idea, which was not my plan, but I can’t help it. I’m fascinated by all this, though it’s well outside my field. Like most people. Maybe it will all go horribly wrong, and in a few years time we’ll realise it did create a mini black hole and we are fucked. If you are a conspiricist you will doubtless believe there are many more potentially dangerous things going on. To be fair, I think I do. But we’ve more to gain from this than Trinity and Enewetak. Even if the risks are real, people in power risk the future of this planet on a daily basis, often for little more gain than their sense of pride.

You hide your heads in the sand. One day, if you’re lucky and we’re feeling altruistic, we’ll come and show you the secret of fire.

To protect and to serve…

This is a rant about the police. Plain and simple.

I have never really had much respect for the majority of West Yorkshire Police. They seem to have a great effect of generally disturbing the peace, hassling people about their business, and generally being a bunch of ineffectual pussies.

Look at the “Hessles incident”, or the Aspire raid of 2002. What a prime fuck up they were. OK, this party in the Hessles was out of control, down to naivety and lack of thought. As for the Aspire raid, this was not really causing any trouble at all. Both police responses were a show of power.

On our way to Solfest, we pulled up in the taxi at Leeds station to be greeted by about 6 coppers and a sniffer dog (who seemed quite interested in my coolbag… …note to the wise if you have dope on you try hiding it in a pack of lamb-chops…) which was sent over the taxi like a rash. I would have expected a grilling ourselves, two oddly dressed festival heads. But no, a middle aged taxi driver obviously quite keen to finish his shift and go to bed is the new suspect drug mule. Or maybe they thought he had a bomb.

The mind boggles.

Recently though I have had a couple of reasons to try and get the police, and also the council, to do their fucking jobs. Ha-bloody-ha.

The other night I was woken at about 3 in the morning by a burglar alarm. And not a steady wailing siren that you can just about go and block out. This sounded like a dial up modem connecting. At about 150dB.

Skirting over the fact the the council’s “out of hours” noise service does not operate past 2am (not that this makes much different ‘cos they need a magistrate’s warrent to enter and shut of an alarm, which cannot be obtained out of hours. Anyway, somewhat unsurprisingly I was pretty pissed of when the builder turned up at about 9am, and made this fact quite clear.

He, however was fine, and obviously had the sense to understand why someone who has had no sleep and listened to that noise for about 6 hours might be a little stressed. However as I was imploring him to get t shut down, and to leave a contact number so we could get hold of him if it went off again, one of the roofers working on the project got out of his can and starts screaming it me to “chill the fuck out”. I pointed out to him that it was a little hard to be chilled out when one has been kept up all night, and that in any case it was not really any of his business and I didn’t want his fucking abuse. I went back inside.

Next thing I know, he is trying to kick his way through my door and screaming threats at me.

At this point I called 999.

I do not call the police lightly. Well ok, when I would like to make a point, for example about the fact that bonfire night in Hyde Park is like a war zone, or ask an explanation as to why sitting on the park early in the morning is considered suspicious behaviour and seems to give the police a right to take everyone’s details. However in this situation I called the police because I was concerned that I could not defend myself safely or within the Law.

And what a fat fucking load of use this was.

Despite, or maybe because of, the fact that this roofer shouted at the policeman as he arrived “tell him not to come out here again and cheek me”, the self important idiot of a copper had obviously decided that this whole thing was beneath him, and gave the distinct impression that he had made his mind up about the situation before even speaking to me.

“It’s just a door and I can’t see any damage what you so upset about, if he’d have wanted to he’d have got through it anyway” was the main gist of the police response. Aimee asked the reasonable question “can he not be asked to leave the area to give everyone a chance to calm down?”. Apparently a number of witnesses (and in fact an admission) is not sufficient evidence to act on a public order offence. Now I guess that the police are indoctrinated into the idea of retributive justice, as this officer’s tiny mind did not seem to comprehend that I did not want this person arrested and charged, merely that I was not happy with someone who had attempted to kick my door through working outside my house for the next day. Apparently the roofer “just wanted his days wage”. This of course is at the expense of mine as I will probably have to take this as a days leave, as there was no point I was leaving the house until I had got some sleep and this gentleman builder (which is what he seemed to have now been elevated to) had fucked off.

I contacted Horsforth Police Station about this, and talked to a very sympathetic desk sergeant. Sympathetic that is until she had spoken to the attending officer, when she called me back and generally repeated by rote the attitude he had taken with me. My recourse if I was unhappy, she said was to make a complaint to the IPCC.

The Victor Meldrew in me actually is quite happy with making complaints, when I feel they will have any kind of constructive effect. However at this point I really cannot be arsed with the bureaucracy. However I would quite like a police officer with enough seniority to possess more than a lone brain cell (possibly an oxymoron I guess) to explain to me, as an intelligent adult why it is not reasonable for someone who has issued threats and attempted criminal damage to be asked to leave the area, for the well being of another person.

I was not going to check my door for damage while this person and the remainder of the cowboys working on the property were sat outside my house taking the piss. However a couple of days later is became obvious that in the cellar step, which is admittedly eroded, there is now a hole the size and shape of a steely boot where a chunk of step had been forced with some velocity into the cellar.

So again I called the police. Once again this is not because I wish to get this person in trouble. In an ideal world this would have resulted in perhaps an apology and slapping a bit of concrete over the hole. But I rent my house, and if I need to report damage caused by a third party to my landlord, I need a crime number. Of course this all fell on deaf ears. The policeman said he could not report that as a crime, claiming there was no evidence it was not just simple erosion.

In contemporary Britain it is not considered appropriate to take matters into ones own hands. Yet those there to deal with things have no teeth. Personally I would have liked to climb the scaffolding and knock that fucking alarm off with a lump-hammer.  Maybe had I opened the door to the abuse with the kitchen cleaver in my hand Mr Big Boy would have realised I wasn’t worth the effort of taking out his bad day and the late arrival of his foreman on.

Two things are clear. The council is simply a politicised waste of time. They want to show lip service to tackling issues affecting local people, but when it comes to the crunch I could not get anything from them. It is also noticeable that not one of the three local councillors for the area who do not, it seems, run any kind of surgeries have replied to my messages left on their numbers or with their offices. And what fucking use is an out of hours noise service that does not run out of hours.

Secondly, the legal system in this country is a waste of space. Of course this is something I know very well, but this illustrates is very well. Kids are hassled on the street for being kids. Yet an abusive builder, or for that matter, students who should by now know better are left to act like twats. The ones who stole various of my plants, which were then found (along with many other items from their night out) planted on their windowsill were left be as “there was no evidence”.

I’ve recently been in court with Aimee to support her giving evidence. This was interesting, especially the defence counsel who seemed to think he was in Ally McBeal. I guess I’d hoped, for the sake of sense that the general bullshit of a trial was exaggerated. The defendant’s main defence was that it was not her wot done it, based on the witness giving a 90 per cent certainty that it was her in the ID parade. I will be interested in the result of this one. I have no interest really in the result for the result’s sake, but I would be intrigued if with all other evidence pointing to this person, except a 100 percent certain identification she can worm out of it.

Going back to builders, I think I will make a complaint to the IPCC. Not because I think it will do jack shit, but if the police are made to trawl through and respond to a complaint it keeps them off the streets, where to be fair, they do more harm than good – less through their attitude, but just via their inability.

Everybody must get stoned?

It’s happened. The Pakis have taken over. No-one is safe, all our daughters will be raped in their beds (as of course, “every rape in this country is committed by a Paki”, as we were informed by some gentleman at the Car Boot the other day), and the while our women will be stoned to death for glancing at a man and not wearing the Hijab.

Seriously, you would think this is the truth, looking at some of the reactions to the suggestion that principles of Sharia Law could have a place in the British legal system.

Yes, the informed an considered opinions of the moral entrepreneurs on the BBC comments page are at it again.

The blatantly xenophobic are one thing. But it is some others that concern me the most:

If it’s not in conflict with any existing laws, then why need it?

We mustn’t allow there to be different laws for different sections of society. Moreover, laws based on backwards religious doctrines have absolutely no place in this country. Let’s move forward for goodness sake.

Tina Cakesniffer, Manchester, United Kingdom

Recommended by 300 people.

This is a classic.

Now to be fair, I don’t know a huge amount about Sharia Law. What I do know a certain amount about is the failings of the Anglo-American Legal System.

The Law in much of the “Western” world, is not some democratic social institution. It is based on a retributive system designed to better initially the interests of the feudal lords, then later The Church, and in modernity the Capitalist system. Why does a fine go to the state, not the victim? Why (until moderately recently) did one have to swear on the bible in court…? You can take this further – Peter Fitzpatrick (1992) argues Modern Law is based on nothing more than myth.

Now whether Miss Cakesniffer’s view is simply ignorance, the racism of a genuine belief that Islam is a “backwards religious doctrine” whilst Christianity is not, or the ravings of someone who is obviously fucked up by their addiction to a drug that doesn’t exist, I do not know, but (although I could not resit the pun in the title) my point here is less to do with Sharia Law, and more to do with ignorance.

Ignorance, and the vehicle of its dissemination.

Ok, I understand that the BBC should be independent, championing free speech and personal opinion. But if I had posted the opening paragraph of this ‘blog, even as it is here – as a parody of a viewpoint I have no doubts it would be moderated for bad taste. Whilst many of the “I’m not racist but…” brigade would secretly agree of course. But in any case it would be fairly obvious that I was either racist or taking the piss. Hopefully the latter, but after a couple of personal comments on my suggestion that the issue of wearing a veil was as much a control issue as one of racism I don’t know…

But what is happening here, is someone looking like they know what they are on about, when they obviously know jack shit. And yet plenty of people “recommend” that comment.

The BBC instead of wearing its heart on its sleeve, like the Torygraph and the Mail, leaves that to its readership. Thus allowing itself to promulgate idiotic views whilst appearing the bastion on impartiality.

Cited:

Fitzpatrick, P (1992) The Mythology of Modern Law. London: Routledge.

Mr Nobody…

This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

This must have been presented in every company around the world. It’s in our resources room, not that it seems to help the mess. It’s old, but it’s very clever. And it’s very much how I feel about LS6 at the moment.

It’s been a tense year, following on from the Hessle’s Party last summer, which was a bit of a blow for the relationship between students and locals in Hyde Park. No one can deny that it was a major fuck up, on the part of those present, and West Yorkshire Police, and the Local Authority. Now the wounds have healed, and half those who were up in arms have calmed, I think one of the biggest impacts of this, and this is down, I’m afraid to the police and their reaction to this event, is that many of the student population are feeling got at.

I reckon they have a point, though as ever when one presents oneself as this homogeneous subculture, one has to accept being tarred with the same brush as that subculture’s worst elements. This is ignored by the main demagogues of this viewpoint – Pete Beckett in Leeds Student Recently being one of these, who in trying to get his tiny mind round the issue sadly makes himself out to be a fool.

From his opening paragraph about “much needed student accommodation” he proves little grasp of figures, issues, or indeed reality. I found his article interesting, but when someone claims there to be a “need” for a service which exists with a huge surplus (around 3000 student bedspaces in Leeds surplus) one wonders if this is journalistic license, or lack of business accumen. I have not checked his figures for the supposed increase in economy The Univerity brings to Leeds (he does not cite sources, so his academic integrity seems lacking too), but whether the mulit-million facelift to Leeds is as he claims student funded or not he misses the issue by a mile. Those of us who live in the day to day grind of LS6 do not benefit much from this.

We see an inaccessible housing market, as even if we could afford the landlord inflated prices, converting what were once decent properties back from soulless HMOs will cost the purchase price of the house. We see the price of a drink skyrocket as each new bar milks the bottomless wallets of the overpaid clerical workers employed by the finacial services industries who have supposedly moved to Leeds because of it’s student workforce. Sure, business if brought to LS6: for the takeaways and convenience stores run by Asian businessmen who have had the sense (or opportunity) to ship out of Hyde Park to the suburbs. Oh yes, businesses are happy to take the student pound, when it’s flashed about by the rich kids from the south (few students in Leeds grew up here). But they’re not local, and not making money for the local people who apparently should be “on their knees in gratitude”. The gentrification so often attributed to studentification is not apparent in Hyde Park.

Anyway, I digress with that rant, but quite a lot of local long term residents are feeling somewhat got at too. And why? Because denying (in the face of all evidence) that something may be an issue related to students, because you feel got at, or because of the supposed benefits is going to do nothing.

Lets backtrack to the end of May, that lovely summers day when Hyde Park got totally trashed. It looked like a warzone, everything burned, rubbish everywhere. The reports are here if you want them.

So, as is pretty much the norm these days a facebook group was started – Clean up Hyde Park. Brilliant, we thought, some people (who let’s remember were probably not the ones responsible for the mess) taking some ownership. However, look at the posts. Instead of making sensible suggestions, much of the posts are bitching.

“Maybe it would help if the council emptied the fucking bins…” Well, aside from the fact they do, and provide 2 huge skips, which do tend to get full, that does fuck all about rubbish left on the grass. And no, lack of bins does not give one the right to leave the rubbish elsewhere. Just because there is a dispute does not mean you can ignore the problem.

Or the other one – “Why is it being blamed on students?”. So we’re back to the feeling got at now. Well, take of the paranoia specs, and you will notice that no-one is saying that no local long term residents, or non students are responsible. They are. But the population of Headingley is 61% student – maybe more now. So by simple mathematics, a good two thirds of the people on the park would be students.  Not withstanding the fact that if no students were responsible, no students were on the park as they were all revising (as stated by some folk on the facebook group, then the entire 18-30 population of Headingley would need to have been there.

OK, so this is rough and ready maths, it is a fair point that plenty of people from outside of LS6 use the park, but the general point is that anyone can easily formulate an argument that it is always someone else… And that is all that people are doing rather than trying to address the actual problem.

Here we have it again: “Student’s not to blame” these letters say. OK that is the YEP’s title for the page, and I fully agree with the sentiment that the media should perhaps be a bit more balanced on this one, as expressed in the first letter, but here it is again, a declaration evident in both letters that it is not students who a responsible, backed up it seems by the idea that no local residents could be seen doing anything to help, and once again, the skips were full.

Obviously whilst we cannot tell a student at ten paces in order to assess if it is student who is making a mess, students can tell a local, to assess whether it is a local “doing anything proactive”. Unfortunately last time I tried to do something proactive about people making a mess, all I got for my troubles was abuse.

But this is not the point, the point is that over and over again people just throw blame around.

And of course this is endemic with the people whose (one could say) job it actually is: This letter sums it up, the council blame the police, the police blame the park wardens. Though of course here we have a person acting like the own the place after living here 6 months, “long aware” of the notices that are at the entrance of the park… …though for not very long. The other side, throwing blame when they don’t really know what they are talking about.

Lets go forward to the normal end of year move-out. Despite excellent ideas from the University Union, there was still the standard mess at the end of the tenancy period

The residents of 19 Thornville Terrace are certainly students. At least ——- —– (I can’t be so cruel as to post her name) must be from the many details of her name, course, pitiful grades, bank account and underwear size that were evident all over the binyard. I had to spend a good half an hour of my time cleaning up enough to get in the binyard to put my own rubbish out. I wish I was an identity thief, or the kind of perv who gets off on sniffing women’s underwear, I’d have had a field day. Amusingly I got a pretty comprehensive collection of camping gear, abandoned by someone who obviously decided that now they has graduated they were too old for festivals. Good thing too that I removed and made safe the venting gaz stove dumped in the recyling bin.

I mentioned this to Mr Singh, the Landlord. His somewhat predictable response was that it was the tenants responsibility. I pointed out they had left, and he said I should not have cleaned up, but I should have called the council. Obviously Mr Singh has some secret hotline that gets the binmen out on a Sunday evening. I brought up the fact that if his tenants had left the garden of a house in a mess he would clean it and deduct it from their deposits. He said the binyards were up the the tenants. Odd this as he can get fined for waste in gardens, whereas binyards are shared, and from past experience all the tenants get a threat of enforcement action, even if it is flytipped…

Once again, it is up to someone else…

Of course by Monday morning all the mess I’d cleared up had been strewn all over again. I called environmental enforcement, they told me to call waste management. I called waste management they said it was my responsibility. Eventually they said they would contact the Headingley Streetscene manager for the student clean up and he would be able to arrange for it to be cleared before Friday.

It’s always some one else’s responsibility. This is the issue. It does not matter one shit whether a problem is student related. What matters is that all of us stop bickering and try and find a solution.

I’m sure plenty of people will read this and get the notion that I’m getting at students too. This is not the aim, though I’m sure some of the more petulant will take it that way. I moved to LS6 because of the place it was, and a lot of that was a thriving scene that owed a lot to the creativity and energy of many of the students living here. But people took responsibility. I remember soundsystem parties on Hyde Park – a great one in about 1998 or so when we bullshitted the Jesus Army into running us a power line for the soundsystem. But the park didn’t get trashed. People had respect for the land, the people around them and each other. We didn’t need enforcement orders, DPPOs (as we are soon gonna have banning drinking, possibly including the park), PCSOs and so on. OK, things got out of hand from time to time, but there was not the continuous war going on, or at least not since the Newlands.

And this makes me sad, as I am coming to the time where I am wanting to move from an area I have lived in and loved most of my adult life.

Leeds Biggest Wets…

Ahh.. The joys of summer. Waterfights, fun ain’t they… Except this one, it seems, was a bit of a fuck up.

Ok, I will expect that the thousands of pounds worth of damage might be an exaggeration, though lots of people don’t really get that mature plants don’t appear from no-where, and that pumping fountains full of foam might just fuck up the soil…

To be honest I’m slightly ambivalent about the damage to public property business, I mean I don’t like Leeds to look like a shit-hole, but Millennium Square is kind of “pretty” anyway, unlike much of Hyde Park, the difference being that Millennium Square brings in tourists, and hence money, and so gets more money spent on making it nice. Anyway…

…what I don’t quite understand is the naivety and down right selfish stupidity of some of the babies whining of facebook…

Don’t get me wrong. I’d love a big waterfight. I’m all for flashmob type actions to piss people off. But common sense needs to prevail…

For a start, it seems like people realised that it might be a problem having all the staging still there from the gig the night before the organiser (who apprently is not an organiser because although he calls himself one sometimes the event is not organised) thought it would be fine to carry on and cram it all into the gardens.

But then…

Quote:
Last year the event went well. Approximately 300 people showed up and had an amazing time in the hot weather without causing any damage to the gardens. The police were present and happy with the event.

This year was organised in exactly the same way. Unfortunately a combination of circumstance beyond the organisers control (the square being closed off) and the actions of a small minority of people, has resulted in some very minor mess and damage to the gardens.

You sit and go on that “a few idiots” turned up and caused damage etc… How surprising with the thing advertised all over facebook. What fucking idiots.

Where were people who would step in and address these “few idiots”. Oh no one saw anything. Of course not.

When you realised the square was blocked of would not the commonsense idea be to rearrange for a more appropriate place or time?

Take the blame like adults. If you organise something and it goes wrong you are responsible. Period.

If, of course, no-one organised anything, ‘cos you think you can claim to have some cutesy little kowtow to the idea of anarchy or something, then everyone who took part shares responsibility. With “social anarchy” (as someone was loving it all with on the Wall) comes social responsibility. Look at the Reclaim the Streets Demo’s in Leeds in the 90s. They had some element of collective responsibility to them. And so they worked. Might have lost some money for the big businesses, but didn’t fuck things up for the man on the street.

But lo and behold, nobody is taking responsibility.

Quote:
at the end of the day everyone involved with the water fight were there to have fun, none of us went out of our way to damage any of the plants, and to be honest i didn’t see anyone purposfully damaging anything. :/

Anyone else think that’s kinda irrelevant. The fact that you all had fun does not mean a monkeys arse.

For fucks sake stop whining that you’re hard done to and face the music. Then events (and it is an event and this group owner organised it) like this may have some credibility and not be a bunch of kids whining that they’re in trouble…

Running this kind of event takes brains and responsibility. Obviously most of you have neither.

Shame, ‘cos it’s a good idea, which could have be fun. I love the ethos of the event. But like barbecues on the park, sound systems in the streets and so and so on stupidity and lack of common bleeding sense means that controls on what we can and cannot do will just get tighter…

There are…

…forty Scum living in my area.

This Ward : Headingley Ward

Electorate : 12644

Turnout : 19.69%

Surname	Forename	Votes	%Votes	Elected	Partyname
HANSARD	LAWRENCE	40	1.61		British National Party

From the LCC website.

Ok, so it’s only 1.6%. Though overall I think that democracy is a pretty flawed system, it’s what we have. Sadly, at least on a local level, I think it’s time to start putting votes in. As I did, for once.

This turnout of less than 20% is sadly endemic of the area. No one cares. From the political ranting I’ve heard round campus, I refuse to believe that students are so politically inactive. And in any case, Headingley is still about 40% non-student.

God, I can’t believe I’m writing about voter apathy when I mainly agree with Chomsky’s analysis of what democracy actually means.

And not that I condone violence, other than as a last resort (some point I’ll write on my views on antifascism and  last resorts) but I wonder where they live…

Yummy Tummies

Ended up watching that How to Look Good Naked thing last night…

This concerned me a little. The girl concerned had quite a sexy body (particularly the boobs), though it took the whole program for him to do something about the lank hair, and the vacuous tone of voice is probably beyond hope…

Anyway, what concerned me was this…

He spent the whole program telling her she had a yummy tummy, (this being the issue she was worried about), and we see shots of her buying sexy undies (good effort, ‘cos the ones she showed up in were fairly dire), yet half the time he is sculpting her clothes-sense he has her trussed up in some kind of flesh covered girdle. I mean this is not Bridget Jones and her “hello mummy” pants. OK I like curves and it would take quite a size of tummy to put me off someone when I saw them naked. But if I undressed someone and found them strapped up like a burns victim I’d run a fucking mile.

So much of fashion for “larger ladies”, at least in stupid programs like this seems to be hiding their shape and trying to look as skinny as the rest of them. Bah, I say.

Old men of St George

Morley, it seems is Britain’s most patriotic town.

I wonder where else will rise to the challenge set of beating this? Burnley? Blackburn?

It is interesting how “patriotism” and a high BNP presence go hand in hand…

Tumbleweed…

So the government seems that it may have accepted the problems of studentification…

Though it’s unclear what they plan to do about it. I think it’s very unlikely they can. I’ll be watching this one.

Of course this article doesn’t quite get the fact that actually the ghost-town of the holidays is less of a problem, though some plainly anti-local students might seem to disagree. The holidays is when we get some peace and quiet, I can enjoy sitting on my doorstep without the 5 cars the girls next door have clogging up the road, I’m not woken up every fucking night, and the streets are relatively free of vomit and discarded knickers.