IMG_5627

IMG_5627
Originally uploaded by Nick Owen's Poetry and Pictures

Another Oxfordshire Wedding. Good to witness something far removed from the recent riots

Overexposed in Denver

Overexposed in Denver
Originally uploaded by bratjerm

In England we see rage and malice in the faces. Here there is only resignation

The Story Listener

The Story Listener
Originally uploaded by bratjerm

We are yet to hear the stories of the rage and despair of the people who rampaged through England last week
But the Government wants to punish first and listen maybe later

Sleeping Homeless Demo

Sleeping Homeless Demo
Originally uploaded by bratjerm

looks like the pain of the world staring you in the face.
As you know, England went up in flames last week. I don't think any of us here will ever feel the same about England. Maybe the damage was done years ago, by Thatcher and her "no such thing as society", and then Blair, the leader as war criminal.
Either way, the people of many of our cities rebelled, for no better reason than to loot and burn our stores.
If you worship mammon, Pluto, he will take you to his underworld.

All His Worldly Possessions in a Cart

All His Worldly Possessions in a Cart
Originally uploaded by bratjerm

I guess things hot America before they hit us.
Our social security prevents most homelessness.
It also provides a disincentive to create useful lives
and simply makes for angry resentful ungrateful young people

Denver Keys to the City

Denver Keys to the City
Originally uploaded by bratjerm

and in London in the streets where I used to live we just have a culture of rap and violence.
It was a safe place to live forty years ago
there was a community spirit
Since then the schools where I worked were taken over by the Government after failing.
My step sons live there now, with their father
Joel already had to change schools after he was mugged by class mates.

Hackney burning

Living in Cameron land is not too threatening at least right now. My boys are in France for the summer, but they live a few hundred yards from the Hackney riots. Thirty years ago I lived there myself. My nephew now lives in a flat almost directly above the riots.

A young man of 22, he seems to have no connection to the young people who are looting and fire bombing. He felt both frightened and excited.

We may see him on Thursday. What else will have happened by then? What else does a 22 year old man think about this stuff?

Watch this space.

Criminality pure and simple! Pah!

Cameron comes on TV at five past eleven looking strong and resolute offering us 16,000 police on the streets of London tonight.

Maybe that will be enough. Maybe this is just opportunist theft. Maybe civil society will reassert itself. Maybe the wombles will come to our rescue.

So many maybes. Cameron may be jetlagged, but the oddest thing I heard was his statement that "we should be in no doubt the Government is on the side of the law abiding." That brings something we were most of us not doubting into deep doubt.

I feel old and weak at sixty. I don't want to face a sixteen year old with a gun or a baseball bat.

There is random violence here in Cameron's constituency, in Witney, already; nasty acts of seemingly random thuggery in the heart of wealthy conservative Oxfordshire.

Tonight there could be a riot here.

I have seen our society being shown to be riddled with corruption. I have seen our prime minister claiming for a chocolate bar on his expenses.

I have seen how Murdoch has been pulling the strings of Government for thirty years.

I have seen the BBC humbled and cowed by the Government over the war crime of Iraq.

I have seen how Governments for the last thirty years have all operated from the centre right or right of the centre right , when the vox populi has expressed a preference for moving leftwards.

We are told there are no rights and lefts any more.

The bankers have been allowed to go on creaming off the top of the world's money, in spite of the last financial met down.

As the stock market crashes again it seems likely that the ordinary people will be the ones to feel the brunt of it again, while the Government contemplates reducing taxes on the rich.

Maybe the rioters will drift into history or prison.

Maybe normality will be restored.

After the Brixton riots the way our capital was policed was reconsidered.

Maybe it is too early to think of anything much beyond saving our lives, our streets and our property right now.

But if this is not seen as a wake up call to the way our country is being run and changes are not made then there is no way ahead.

We are on the road to oblivion.

UK Burning

London is burning. Other cities are starting to burn too. Yet this is not a time of physical heat and humidity.

What is going on?

I have been an anarchist, philosophically, all my life. But I am not a nihilist. This looks like nihilism. If that is what is going on in our cities, why has no one noticed enough to write about it.

I can only assume it is because the media are run by the rich conservatives on agendas that have little or no relation to the lives and needs of the ordinary people.

I find myself feeling like an old conservative myself, demanding special forces to smash one of these groups of rioters to show the rest that they cannot get away with this.

If something like that does not happen I can see it getting worse; much worse.

Darcus Howe is brought on as a voice of the rioters and accused of being a rioter himself by the BBC. He seems to think it is racial oppression again. I am not so sure.

Already it is not just Tottenham and other historical riot spots. Even the police killing is not enough of an excuse.

Ealing is comparatively rich and affluent.

The time the Prime Minister is supposed to speak this morning keeps being put back.

Indecision and dither instead of decisiveness there then.

I shall post and watch to see if he comes on the air at the third time of asking or rather offering.