''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..