Meet the neighbours

This morning I went out early to get some bread for my lunch sandwich. Feeling posh I decided to walk up to M&S in Hampstead Heath and get a loaf from the shop as apposed to my local across the road. Although it's a walk its is a normal thing for me and I imagine a lot of people who live near. The interesting part though is how different the area that surrounds Hampstead Heath is and yet how close it is to where I live. The walk takes about 15 minutes and I step across my road - a busy one - and pass through a council estate into Gospel oak territory. Across another busy road at the Oak and I then start to assend into Hampstead where the red brick houses adorn the leafy streets. The street I used today was interesting - one of many routes I could have taken. Outside a few of the houses were skips - full to the brim with plasterboard, wood and various nik-nacks that catch my eye like a magpie to a quality street wrapper. Beautiful old chairs, bicycle wheels, records, a chest of drawers... these are but a few items i have pinched from skips in this area over the last year. A few more oldy-woldy roads and I am at Southend Green - the back end to the home of London's ancient heartland: Hampstead Heath. This area is special to me for many reasons but mainly so because it looks like London of the past. There's the book shop as immortalised by a bored Orwell in Keep the Aspidistra Flying, the old clock tower and and a few old pubs and cafes. Further up towards the Heath and you are literally in 1920s London. This is old London, its also posh London, which brings me to the point of this entry - you can go from poverty to extreme wealth in 10 minutes in this city. A lot of people take the bus or worse still the tube, but if you cycle or walk you will be amazed at what you will see. Bussing and cycling let you see London in its glory but walking slows everything right down. You are there in the dirt of it all - or in the freshly swept streets if walking in Hampstead. M&S - I wont go into it - but if you ever find yourself there, its an experience that will last. The clientele are delightful.

My walk back home really brings it home. A different road takes me down Fleet Road (named after the River that once flowed from the Heath and emptied into the Thames) and into Mansfield Road. Social housing everywhere here. A few hundred metres and I decide to head towards Queen Crescent Market - one of the oldest in London - for some loo roll. You wouldn't guess it's one of the oldest markets. The street is coarse, as are (at first glance) the people. Immigration has played its toll on this once idyllic market and you are miles away from the 'White' Hampstead heath and the tourist trap Camden market, even though both are very close. This street is a mix of old residents that have passed their stalls and shops down the family, generation to generation and Indian Pakistani, Somalian and Jamaican shop owners. I realise now that prefer this street. Its where I live, love and understand more. Strangely I nod and wave to some of the people that always seem to be here. The fruit stall man deosnt mind if you pay next time and the hardware chap has everything in that small shop. Its not all Eastenders down here but you feel that this is the real London where most live on or around the minimum wage, have little hope (or desire) of moving away or up the social ladder.

My walk this morning has stayed with me all day purely because I walked it. Within that short walk I saw the two sides of the coin and realised that equality and the road to it is long.

Im a feminist and so is my wife.

Its been almost a year since my last update and a lot has changed politically, socially, economically - in my life and everyone elses. One thing however has become clearer and clearer in my life and my view on society and that is that there is a massive unspoken inequality between men and women. I chose my words carefully here but like most ideals that one holds close to ones heart - it is difficult to explain. Unspoken is the word i chose. I was cycling down Kentish Town road today and i found myself stuck behind the 134 bus. On the back of that bus i found an advert by the European Commission on behalf of gender equality in the work place. Eqaul pay for equal work - enshrined in the EU treaty (lisbon) and various other forms of secondary legislation. Fair enough I thought, its about time this found its way to the worlds stage (the back of a bus). My day continued and throughout that it I saw and heard different forms of gender inequality but it all came to a head when i watched a politics update via the daily politics show where my names-sake (David Davis, con) failed to grasp the social policy brought forward by labour. here i witnessed Davies and Charles kennedy talk endlessly and interupt the labour MP and former cabinet member caroline Flint. Presenter and idiot exrodinaire, Andrew Neil, also interupted flint and his fellow female host to say whatever he could. My main point here is a rather feeble one at first glance: men rule the foreground (i believe they do so in politics, arts, literature, science etc) and hardly ever let women share the discourse. More than this though I argue that even when men think or believe they are feminists or believe in equality they still continue in a vulgar way by interrupting and grimacing in whatever the woman says. This is the unspoken equality - we should not fear the people who dont believe in equality... no, no ,no... we should fear those who believe they understand equality and yet still tread all over it.

Many issues have gripped me in the run up to the election but the issue that engages me most is that politics (just like literature, the arts, science, law et al) is still dictated by men for men and until those men (and women) who feel they are beleivers in feminism act rather than just believe, we're all doomed. Sam Cam, Sarah Brown and the spanish bird - i am looking at you but more impportantly i am looking at your men - how can they believe inequality when they still treat you like objects?

More to follow soon.

This picture is one of the most repugnant pictures I have ever seen.

I know that Brown is well and truly buried but surely the UK doesnt deserve these smug buggers. Osborne, tory boy, Cameron, tory boy - I can deal with these morons. Hague though, eurgh....yuk yuk yuk. I cant get the image of this man (?) wearing a baseball cap attempting to be hip and cool. Now he is rubbing his hands awaiting tory victory so that he can finally masturbate all over himself.

''La la la la..... I cant hear and you I dont care!'' say the British public... or should I maybe say some pseudo average middle class person outside a Tesco (Tesco!) in a town/village/london suburb. Yes its anti EU spin time at the BBC! I just went on the BBC 24 website and caught the end of a report on the 'bent fruit' EU ruling. Its amazing how this type of case inspires the British public. It went something like this:

BBC reporter: would you buy this carrot? (show the man a picture of a carrot that looks something like a penis)

Man on the street: 'Yeah, 'thass alright...Im fed up with this EU regulation nonsense - once that carrot is in the pan and cooking away I dont care if its the shape of Michael Jackson's cock'.

And thus the ignorance towards the EU continues.

Why, why, why BBC wont you do a proper report on the EU or at least try to understand what this case was it about? No, no, no its good to tell the public about bendy bananas and the relevance paaaaaaand aint it?

Going green is easy….except when it comes to eating flies

When I first moved to London I was pretty sure that all my greenness would fly out of the window and I’d rely on public transport, stop recycling and shave on a daily basis. This was the case for a while and I didn’t cycle anywhere for fear of being mugged, run over stabbed or shot. But this time last year was the turning point and I decided to fetch my bicycle from a friend’s garden in Colchester and take it into London. I arrived at Liverpool Street and had no idea how to get to the flat - I literally relied on bus routes and maps provided in parks to get me home. In short the 35 minute cycle route that I now know well took two hours. At home came the compost bin in the garden and the kitchen box for recyclable goods. Then I bought low wattage eco light bulbs, grew tomato plants and a beard. For my 25th birthday work colleagues bought me a bike helmet as they too feared that I would get run over/shot/stabbed/raped and thrown in a river etc. Today I can confidently say that I am the greenest I have ever been. I rarely eat meat, I share a lot of my meals with flatmates and I have a beard. I haven’t started drinking my own recycled urine yet but you get the picture. On a dry windless day I can cut through London on my bicycle like a hot knife through plasticine. From my flat to Covent garden takes 25 minutes. I can sincerely say (and do tell everyone I meet) that cycling is safe in London. In fact this has been proven by research in Holland and Belgium – cycling in cities is usually safer as cars are more aware of the bicycles whereas in small villages (where people tend not to cycle) more accidents occur. So next week will be one year cycling in London. It will also be one year of the compost bin. Yesterday me and a flatmate decided to rotate the bin as this is apparently supposed to speed up the process of rotting old fruit n veg. To be honest we didn’t have a clue when we first got the damn thing and so we certainly didn’t have a clue on how to rotate it. The compost bin stinks and there are flies. Slinkiness and flies. It all goes in your mouth – flies and all. And it stinks. Basically you shovel the top ‘soil’ and place it on the top of the fresh peelings/egg shells/tea-bags. The middle collapses and the composting continues. Hopefully by the end of summer the house will have enough soil to create a garden for winter vegetables. It doesn’t take much effort and it really is about hearts and minds rather than hard work. This is just my beginning but until they invent cheap and efficient electric cars (or the car like in back to the future that runs on banana skins) I wont be changing.

Still I can point to one or two things I have definitely learned by being hard up. I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning.

[George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London].

Oh dear, Winston Churchill’s grandson didn’t do too well on BBC’s Famous and Homeless last night. But the thing is that there’s not much difference between me and Churchill Jnr.
I live in the UK’s largest city and I see homelessness every day outside cash points, tube stations, shop doorways and parks. I hunch my shoulders, look at the floor and ignore them. I say ‘no’ immediately or I’ll smile nervously if it is one of those tramps that crack a joke. Sadly, s/he will have probably cracked the same joke and asked the same thing 100 times in that one day. More ridiculous and awful than this is that I live next door to a homeless shelter. Next door to me is the Matthew Community, home of the homeless - where people come 24 hours a day for food, a shower and maybe if they’re lucky a bed for the night. When I first moved in next door I was full of interest and excitement. ‘Wow’ I thought, I’ll get see homelessness first hand and be a true middle class renegade! That’s exactly my first thoughts – about myself – I thought it’d be an excellent chance to show to myself and others how wonderfully opened minded I am. What a richer person will become! Within a week I was sick of the old Irish girl Christine who sits on the stairs smoking cigarettes all day. ‘I’m 86 you know, on the streets for 40 of them and an alcoholic for 20 0f them’. She repeats this on a daily basis. Now after one year it is: ‘alright Dave, how-are-ya?... I reply: yes I’m fine Christine, how are you?’ as I quickly open the door and shut out the shitness that is neighbour. So my dream of sitting on the steps talking to the Matthew Community’s clientele about life and love faded pretty fast. As soon a flatmates bike was stolen my initial reaction was that it must be one of those bastard drunks next door. Of course it was one of them! They need bicycles on the streets! Tramps on bikes! No, I thought, probably sold it to get a hit of heroine because all tramps are heroine addicts!

Months passed and I bought Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris in London. How noble of me! How clever I am?! I will read some Orwell – that’ll make me see things clearer. Somehow my poor behaviour got into my conscious, my how-are-ya’s with Christine were getting blunter. I wanted to scream ‘shut up you old bint!’ Stop smoking all those cigarettes and sod off!. So, Orwell it was and brilliance is what I got. I snapped it up and thought long and hard about Orwell’s brilliant descriptions and feelings of the homeless. A lot of the book talks about poverty and homelessness but a large part of it is about humanity the goodness of man. But the sad truth is it didn’t change me too much. I still give my mundane ‘I’m fine’ to Christine. I still think ‘lazy buggers’ about the queues of people at the steps when I step out to unlock my bike. My point in all of this is that we (as relatively wealthy people) want to do something – we genuinely don’t want people on the streets begging and living in piss and shit but the truth is its ridiculously hard to change one’s mindset to Jesus-mode. I can read my books and have conversations with friends about equality, poverty, the class system et al. But the reality is that it’s about changing the mindset.

I am desperately, desperately trying to change my attitude with all this. Last week I invited who I thought, was one of the ‘workers’ from the Matthew Community in for a meal and a drink. It turned out that Sergio was not a worker – he was homeless – there are no ‘workers’ just volunteers in the Community. I felt bad and then it hit me. All the fancy talks I have with friends and loved ones about equality and fairness are just balls. I live in an ivory tower. (‘Oh society must do this and that’ there needs to be sea change here and there…’) because next door are living in a much equal conditions - more so than the one I always rant about. There’s no moral ending here except that the BBC are right to talk about homelessness… it’s a profound and difficult subject..

Blaaady Frogs

As a Europhile and Anglophile I am becoming ever more anxious about what the EU elections will bring next month. I have just spent the last 20 minutes or so going round in circles on YouTube watching Nick Griffin interviews, commentary and BNP rallies. Every time there is a local election there is always a tabloid driven fear that they may grab something, but in the end it never happens – that is, until the BNP got a seat on the London assembly. The number of candidates and the number of voters are on the rise – both have risen slowly since the mod 80s – but have really swelled under the leadership of Griffin. I’m interested in the BNP for many reasons and I am interested in the attraction – ultimately what type of people vote for them. Why do they do it? What do they hope to achieve? Do they really understand the BNP and what it stands for? My favourite grenade to throw in to a talk is the story of Nick Eriksen, one of the candidates for last years London Assembly election. Nick, writing on his blog stated that Rape is pure poppycock – ‘women are like gongs, they need to be struck once in a while’. Nice.

When the membership leak came out last year I nearly wet myself with pleasure. Who are these people? I immediately searched the list for old primary school teachers, friends and family. I searched street names, towns and postcodes. No one came up of course but then this list was all but a few of BNP membership. Now though I am scared. Unlike a lot of people I mix with I do know some semi BNP supporters, wannabe Nicks I call them (at the very least I know a fair few people who will defend Nick Griffin). My fascination comes from here. I know the mindset of the BNP supporter. Maybe not the average mindset, but it’s certainly a popular and growing one: ‘I don’t like foreigners coming here, stealing the jobs taking the benefits and faaahking off back home’. BNP supporters in my eyes have gone beyond race (whatever that is) and colour. It is about nationality and culture nowadays. The second root of my interest is that I know these blaaady foreigners. I am the only English person living in the 4 floor house I reside in. I went to multicultural university where, again, I was the minority. I have heard first hand what people think about England and more importantly the experiences they have had in England. With these two mixed together with a general understanding and belief that 90% of the British media is corrupt I am scared that the BNP will grab a seat in the European Parliament.

Last week I went to see English People Very Nice at the National Theatre. The central theme to the play that’s set in Bethnal Green is that the UK is built on immigration -from the Romans to the French - from the Russian Jews to the Commonwealth countries and EU free movement of today. Everyone in the audience (including me) slapped their knees and laughed loudly with their big teeth at the anti French jokes that were made by one of the central British characters. I laughed at the Jewish jokes and stereotypes of the Indian and Pakistani characters that cavorted on stage. The mainly middle class white audience however drew eerily silent when the play reached the 1980s, which took on the birth of the National Front (one of the main characters falls for an Indian man). It grew even more still when the topic of post 9/11 came up (daughters of immigrant moderate Pakistanis turn fundamentalist). I too went quiet and realised that the play was not a simple satirical jab at immigration or a grotesque stereotype fuelled script - it was an excellent reflection of what we are witnessing today. It confirmed in my head all that I have ever believed about being English. I understood that we, as a collective, who were just 20 minutes ago laughing at the cheap French gags were watching a razor sharp manifestation of the current climate. On the one hand we are of course a lovely, quiet, reserved and gentile nation (‘after you love’) and a frustrated and disillusioned nation on the other. We don’t mind ‘them’ coming over here – just as long as they don’t live next door to us.

Bringing this back to today and the BNP - this is what is worrying. The ‘just as long as they don’t live next door to us’ is not the only issue of today, it is beautifully combined with recession, immigration (on a scale that the UK has never witnessed before) and most importantly with a disillusionment with politics and England itself.