Martial arts & religion

Chewing the fat the other night at one of those all-important having-a-beer-after-training sessions, the conversation turned to why a couple of students had recently left – in both cases it was a question of religion.

The first was one of our very few female students – a hippy / New Age type. She left because she thought we weren’t spiritual enough: She had asked why we didn’t have anything to say about chi. We said that we just don’t go there – it’s not necessary to explain how Wing Chun works. We only talk about perfecting body mechanics not releasing inner energy.

It’s not that we have anything against chi – we still know so little about how the nervous system works that it is quite conceivable that the concept of chi is just an ancient expression for some sort of energy impulse that medicine is yet to articulate.  It’s just that we don’t need to promote it in the teaching of what we do. As for the student who left because of this omission - we have heard since that she has converted to Islam, so presumably she is not too keen on chi herself now.

The other student was a senior with many years of mileage on him – and experience working as a doorman. Then he became a born-again Christian. His pastor told him that he was practicing a ‘pagan art’. The evidence cited for this was a couple of things found on the internet about techniques known as ‘the half prayer to Buddha’ or ‘the five prayers to Buddha’. These are not the technical names of the techniques – they are effectively Chinese slang that maybe made sense in a society with a Buddhist culture. We don’t even use them in our kwoon – and we don’t use the traditional Chinese yin-yang salute either, believing that a handshake or a bear-hug are more meaningful Western-equivalent gestures of respect and brotherhood.

It’s sad to lose  students for such stupid reasons. It’s also kind of amusing to see how religious belief systems are so mutually-repellent. (Although I should add that we do have some students who are devout Muslims or Christians and manage to reconcile this with their training). Personally as an atheist/Humanist/freethinker/whatever I find martial arts not only compatible but absolutely complementary with my own worldview:

Martial arts training is so essentially ‘promethean’ with much of the training counter-intuitive and aimed to condition new reflexes. It takes short, tall, skinny, fat, timid, aggressive, uncoordinated people, or more rarely natural athletes and scientifically allows them to make themselves into something else. It is about rational enquiry – looking behind the seemingly amazing feats of strength, speed or endurance and breaking them down into perfected physical techniques. And in the long run, more than the physical it provides psychological benefits like stress management and the cultivation of calm. You can call that spirituality if you must but I think that’s just shorthand for mental well-being.

A different German anniversary today

Amidst all the 20 years-on 'where were you when the Berlin Wall came down?' coverage this weekend, a snippet of news got buried: In Dresden a synagogue has been daubed with Nazi graffiti. This weekend is the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

The facts of Kristallnacht are, or should be, familiar. Nominally in response to the murder of a Nazi diplomatic official by a young deported Jewish man in Paris, members of the Stormtroopers or SA, dressed in plain clothes to give the impression of spontaneous popular riots, attacked Jewish homes, business and places of worship throughout Germany and Austria. As a result 90 Jews were killed, and 250 synagogues and 7,500 business were destroyed. In the immediate aftermath the authorities deported 25,000 people to the concentration camps.

The plan for the 'Night Of Breaking Glass' was that of propaganda minister Josef Goebbels. It did not mark the start of the Holocaust - it could be argued that lay in the Nuremburg Laws of 1935 when Jewish Germans were stripped of their civil rights - but it was a turning point. After it the work of repression would become more systematic, more bureaucratic and ultimately more 'industrial', culminating in the genocide of the Final Solution. And it would be entrusted to the more reliable and professional SS rather than the beer hall thugs of the SA.

It was no accident that the pogrom sprang from the mind of the Nazi's propaganda genius - or spin doctor in modern parlance. Essentially Goebbel's idea worked - baring a very few isolated incidents where ordinary Germans took the side of their Jewish neighbours - generally they either stood back and watched or cheered from the sidelines. In some cases they joined in.

The actions of the SA had succeeded in establishing a racist consensus; that there were dangerous and undesirable 'others' in the midst of German society. And here lies the relevance of Kristallnacht to the threat of the Far Right today. We are not going to see uniformed Fascists goose-stepping down our streets. That isn't the objective for any but the most boneheaded of Neo-Nazis. But they can generate a climate where 'others' are seen as the enemy within - this escalates to the occassional attack on a corner shop, and before you know it, to entire communities being hounded out of estates.

Sounds unlikely? It's already happened in this country.

Hardcore troubadors - Steve & Townes

There's only one artist that I religiously follow these days - waiting for each new album to be released and then buying it straight away - or having to see the show whenever there's a UK tour - and that's Steve Earle.

So this week I took my other daughter (not the Green Day one) to see him at The Barbican. The venue is about the worst atmosphere for a gig like that - far too reverential for something that belongs in a bar or a coffee house and the audience seemed elderly to me so fuck knows how old them seemed to my thirteen year old. But a Steve Earle gig is a Steve Earle gig and I loved it nonetheless.

In fact this Steve Earle gig was just as much a Townes Van Zandt gig as much of the material came from the latest  album 'Townes'. An album of Steve's covers of his friend and mentors' work. I'm not too familiar with Townes Van Zandt - but it says something that I am now inspired  to go off  and buy some of his back catalogue this lunchtime.

Here's a clip of the gig - this time playing one of own:

Guy Fawkes - 17th Century 'mentalist.

Another year and again the universal misappropriation of the memory of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

Much as I love the work of Alan More and his creation of ‘V’ -  the anarchist avenger in the dis-utopian ‘V For Vendetta’ continues the mistaken mythology of the plot to blow up parliament as something worth celebrating.

In fact Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators could not have been further from   anarchist revolutionaries, or any other sort of radical. A more appropriate contemporary parallel would be Al-Qaeda or any other group of reactionary religious ‘mentalists.

In a period of general ‘Catholic-phobia’ – Catesby's conspirators  aimed at blowing up a large section of the Protestant ruling class, all conveniently assembled at King James’s state opening of parliament ceremony. This was to be the signal for a Catholic uprising that would seize power and install the nine year old (Catholic) Princess Elizabeth with a (Catholic) council of state effectively ruling as her regent.

There was no manifesto for the proposed  new regime  – but for the average English Protestant at the time  - familiar with the despotic and theocratic regime in Spain - the prospect of such a regime was probably about as appealing as that of a Taliban government is to us today.

Just as 9.11 hardened attitudes of Islamophobia – the Gunpowder plot succeeded in fanning the flames of anti-Catholicism. And in an ironic parallel, also created a myth for the conspiro-loons that the whole thing was a set-up by sinister state forces with Sir Robert Cecil and his proto-secret service cast in the role of the CIA or Mossad.

The Gunpowder Plot definitely has all the ingredients for a rollicking historical costume drama: Shadowy conspiracies (on all sides); fanatical bravery (the horrific torture of Guy Fawkes; farce (the planned uprising ended as a bodged shoot-out at Holbeche Hall); and irony (the plot was uncovered when the conspirators tried to warn a Catholic Lord to stay way from the opening ceremony).

But I’m afraid there’s nothing remotely radical in the story. Given the  current expenses scandals and the low public esteem  of parliament and MP’s  blowing the buggers up may have more appeal now than ever  - but we’re going to have find inspiration elsewhere.

Poppies - or not ?

As I am most Novembers, I feel conflicted about wearing a poppy.

It's not that I don't care about remembrance. It's a subject that's featured on this blog several times previously. In fact history and family history have intertwined to make it one of the things that have shaped my political ideas.

This year I have settled on the contrary solution of putting money in the collecting tin but not actually taking the poppy to wear.

I'm familiar with the argument that supporting any charity in some sense perpetuates the very problems that the charity is trying to solve - by letting the state, the system and society as a whole off the hook. But equally looking the other way and spending the same money on a double de-caff soya latte instead isn't the answer either.

Just as I will reluctantly throw some money in the buckets collecting for kidney machines, so I am prepared to give to the Poppy appeal. Even though if ever there was a cause that should be supported by the state rather than charity it is the care of those who risk life and limb in its defence. The woeful treatment by the government of injured servicemen and their bereaved families is enough to overcome any quibbles I may have.

But at the same time I don't want to wear my support on my sleeve: Like it or not, the British Legion's appeal inevitably seeks to justify the conflicts that have produced the victims it exists to support. This is seen in the constant emphasis on 'sacrifices made on our behalf' and 'our glorious dead'.

Sorry but I can't feel that any war this country has waged since 1945 has been on my behalf - however much I may feel sympathy for those who suffered. Whether  it was in Korea, Aden, Malaya, The Falklands, The Gulf or Afghanistan - servicemen died and suffered for various political purposes at the time - but not for me. And I see precious little glory worth celebrating in any of those campaigns.

I also resent the fact that in this St George's flag waiving era when populist nationalism  has been rehabilitated, the wearing of a poppy has become an acid test of citizenship. To the point that anyone appearing in public without one - especially on television - is virtually declaring their pariah status.

And I can’t bring myself to wear the white poppy of the Peace Pledge Union either: I am not a pacifist - my anti-militarism is political not moral. I might respect  the stand of indivdual conscientious objectors but I can't sympathise with their ideology. Pacifism smacks too much of moral absolutism  and sanctimony  - and is implicitly judgemental of those who have no choice but to fight. 

So until there is some socialist symbol of remembrance, I am stuck with my contradictory but pragmatic solution.

Death of a klansman

Coincidentally a week after Nick Griffin defended his relationship with ‘an almost totally non-violent’ leader of the Ku Klux Klan – it is the anniversary today of the death of in 1877 of one of the Klan’s founders, General Nathan Bedford Forrest.

The original Klan – formed in Tennessee in 1865 in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War – is sometimes contrasted with the modern Klan ‘re-founded' in 1915. It is true that it was only at this later stage that its racism was elevated into the pseudo-philosophical and grandiose belief system of modern white supremacists. The original Klan just had more mundane and practical objectives – primarily intimidating the newly emancipated and enfranchised black electorate in the Southern states, along with their Reconstructionist white supporters.

Forrest’s experience as a brilliant general of cavalry raiders and irregular troops stood him in good steed to lead this campaign of intimidation. The Civil War in the Western theatre had frequently been conducted in a particularly brutal guerrilla-fashion, especially in disputed ‘border’ states such as Forrest’s home state of Tennessee. And Forest’s raiders had been very successful exponents of this – and unusually for a general of the time Forest himself revelled in personal combat and claimed a tally of more than thirty ‘kills’. As a commanding officer he was responsible for the notorious massacre at Fort Pillow in 1864 when surrendered Union troops – significant half of them from a black regiment – were slaughtered.

If the patrician image of General Robert E Lee has come to represent the supposedly chivalrous and benevolent face of the Old South, Forrest without a doubt represents the Confederacy at its ugliest and meanest. Unlike the ‘aristocratic’ Lee who uneasily inherited his estates and slaves and after the war denounced racism and urged reconciliation, Forrest was born into poverty. He went on to become one of the richest men in the pre-war South largely through his involvement in the slave trade - killing his first two men at the age of 20 in a business dispute.

Arguments about the Civil War and the Confederacy still understandably run strong in the ‘states – rather less so over here. But I would suggest that rather than claiming Winston Churchill as a proto-member of the BNP, Griffin could have more appropriately retro-adopted the memory of Bedford Forrest.

A taste of Wing Chun

I don't really like to do technical posts about martial arts. They mean little to those who aren't into it - and for those who are - they are very suseptible to mis-interpretation. And the internet is already full enough of malicious web-warriors who spread flame wars from behind the safety of their keyboards.

So here is a clip of my Sifu talking - not 'performing' or demonstrating. It gives a nice flavour of what the man and the art are about.

Punk's not dead - a father & daughter moment

I went with my daughter to see Green Day at the O2 on Saturday night. And I surprised myself by rating their performance as one of the best live acts I've seen.

I couldn't really imagine that punk-pop works in a 20,000 stadium but Billie-Jo Armstrong has got the same crowd-engaging energy to create a communal event on that scale the I have only ever really seen before in Bruce Springsteen. Which is really just a pretentious way of saying that, like Bruce, he can't hide the fact that he is fucking loving every minute of it - and that is highly infectious. And asking if there was a drummer, bassist and guitarist in the house and then pulling three kids out of the audience and handing over the bands instruments for a number was genius.

Most of all it occurred to me how lucky I am to have grown up after the social watershed of the 1960's. Much as I love my parents I can't imagine them - children of the Blitz* - coming with me to Motorhead gigs when I was my daughter's age.

* Just realised that would be a great name for a band !

'BNP's Griffin in bigoted fool shocker'

After last night's Question Time, the BNP's spin doctors should be wondering if the old adage about 'better to keep your mouth and have others think you're an arse than to open it and confirm the fact' would not have been a better strategy. But actually I suspect they are rubbing their hands this morning.

Nick Griffin dug himself into all the predictable holes you would expect - holocaust denial, islamophobia, homophobia and of course racism and... more racism. All this in spite of the ineptitude and bankruptcy of the major parties representatives' in trying to out tough each other over immigration controls.

Bonnie Greer did make Griffin look like the bigoted fool we know him to be - but I don't think any arguments about the migration of early man out of Africa following the end of the ice age, or the multi-cultural nature of Dark Age Britain (a subject close to my own heart) will win over any wavering BNP voters in Barking or Burnley.

Surprisingly I thought that one of the most telling points was made before the broadcast by Diane Abbott: She spoke about going on Question Time twenty five years ago as the first black woman MP. Nobody could remember what she said but everybody knew by her mere presence that the political landscape had changed. The same could be said of Griffin's appearance last night.

No such thing as bad publicity?

I wish I could take delight in the BNP’s home goals this week:

Just days away from their much sought opportunity to join the mainstream on this week’s Question Time they have their membership leaked (again), their party constitution is ruled in breach of human rights law, leading generals condemn them and their mis-appropriation of military iconography – and Griffin responds by likening the same generals to er…Nazi war criminals.

The trouble with this is that it plays to the ‘nobody likes us we don’t care’ siege mentality that the BNP are trying to build in the white working class heartlands. In fact the more the opposing voices come from elites - whether they are Tory-leaning army bigwigs or the liberal intelligentsia – the more it feeds their whining persecution complex.

When the panellists sit down at the table with Griffin tomorrow night conspicuous by its absence will be opposition to the BNP from the point of view of white working class socialists.

So a favourite parlour-game at the moment on the Left is ‘who would you choose to face Griffin on Question Time?’ Personally I like the suggestion of Bob Crowe as one of the few nationally known figures on the Left who could pull the rug from under the feet of the self-appointed fascist champions of the abandoned white working class – by force of argument and an ‘impeccable’ demographic. But it’s not a serious suggestion and it’s not going to happen.

Anyway the rise of the Far Right will not be staunched in the manner of a debating society no matter how effective the participants in the debate. But the Bob Crowe suggestion does highlight a more fundamental point in the question of how to take on the BNP.

Exposés and marginalising of the fascists have their place - but they also have their dangers if they turn the BNP into persecuted martyrs of a disenfranchised working class. There is absolutely no substitute for taking them head-on on those issues that effect the daily lives of ordinary people – jobs, housing, education and health.

And of course just occasionally taking time out to confront them when they make a show of force on our streets, and to ridicule their in-built propensity for contradictions and shooting themselves in the foot.

More historical ink

I returned to the tattoo shop for some more work at the weekend. In keeping with the theme of the rest of my decoration, I added the Sutton Hoo helmet in one of the few gaps left on my upper arms.

As a 'birthday treat' earlier this year I was indulged with a day out to Sutton Hoo. It's a National Trust site these days and amidst the tea-rooms and elderly couples clad in beige it's easy to be lulled into a cosy picture of our past - but the helmet, probably belonging to Raedwald of East Anglia, is nothing less than a piece of Dark Ages gangster-bling.

Raedwald was not a king in the modern sense of how we understand the term - he was bretwalda or overlord in the region having clawed his way to the position of top dog by a combination of military ruthlessness and political cunning. This included a tactical conversion to Christianity - although to keep his Pagan wife and family happy he sensibly hedged his bets and built twin Christian/Pagan altars.

The helmet was based on a Roman design and decorated with what would have been lavish ornamentation. At this time very few warriors would have had any armour at all, and the helmet would have been both a practical defensive piece and a status symbol that marked out the wearer as somebody very special. (In fact only four helmets from this period have ever been found in this country). With its face-mask of life-less human features it would also have left a pretty intimidating impression on any lesser person who had to face it in anger.

Two Worlds Collide

The same week that JP Morgan Chase announce that their profits have soared some 75% since the dark days of Autumn last year, and that it's happy days all round with ludicrous bonuses for the red-braced parasites: In what I would consider to be the real world things are very different - Harley Davidson yesterday announced a 21% fall in sales - with production of the Buell range stopping at the end of this month, 180 jobs going with it, the sale of the recently acquired MV Augusta brand and a question mark over the future of the plant in York Pennsylvania.

Much as I admired the classic Italian sports bikes, MV Augusta seemed like an odd bed-fellow to HD, the only thing that they had in common was a long heritage and a premium price tag. Buell on the other hand is a great motorcycling story - Erik Buell started a cottage industry building performance bikes using HD parts that was so successful that he sold up and became one of their chief designers. Ironically it might have been the reflection of his involvement in the latest 'performance' Sportster, the XR1200, that put the nail in the coffin for the Buell range. I never had one myself, but I can see how the thinking behind the Buells was a modern updating of the concept of the Sportster fifty years ago.

That's very much a European view though; in the heartlands for HD sales, blue-collar America, the drying up of easy 'sub-prime' credit for lower income consumers is the real reason for the current problems. There's always been a tension between the image of Harleys as a middle class toy and the icon of a 'real' bike for the working man and I for one would hate to see the balance now tip the wrong way. HD are now talking about concentrating on core product - I hope they remember that this means motorcycles not branded aftershave.

And if things get worse for HD it will be interesting to say if there is the same willingness to bail out the Moco with government intervention as there was with the banks. If the Obama administration shies away from this it would be a scandal given that the last time that a US government took such a 'socialistic' measure to help the quintessentially American company was under Reagan.

Cultural Interlude

I have to confess that theatre (along with opera, ballet and poetry) is a bit of a black-hole in my cultural life. When I went to see ‘Mother Courage And Her Children’ on Saturday I also admit I went in knowing more about the 30 Years’ War* than I did about Bertold Brecht.

Actually my knowledge of 16^th century history was of no real use at all. The play – as I subsequently found out Brecht would have intended – was staged in a way that represented no specific period at all, and all periods. Although I did get a distinct sense of the recent wars in the former Yugoslavia.

To call it is an anti-war piece is an over-simplification - the play suggests that war is in fact the natural order. It seemed to be more concerned about the universal need for ordinary people to simply survive – and their ability to do so. Watching it I was reminded of Hasek’s novel ‘The Good Soldier Svejk’ - and then I found out afterwards that Brecht scripted that novel for the theatre.

I also later found out something about Brecht’s dramatic theories: What often puts me off theatre – and I am conscious of quite how philistine this sounds – is the ‘staginess’ of it. Having grown up on film and television – stage drama can easily just seem too hammy. Particularly so when it is trying to be realistic: In fact the less hard it tries this the more ready I am to accept it – so I will happily sit through Shakespeare but struggle with something that it supposedly more accessible like 'Look Back In Anger'. Brecht’s theory and technique of alienation actually tackles this head-on, and it works. Which is why I found that three and a half hours of fairly heavy-going drama flew by and I was thoroughly engaged.

* It is no coincidence that Brecht chose to reference the 30 Years' War when he wrote the play in 1939. The period 1914-45 - a parallel time of protracted and devastating Total War in Europe - has been called the second 30 Year's War.

We're all in it together

Except some of us are clearly more in 'it' than others. Certainly everyone I know is considerably more in 'it' than David Cameron who along with his wife is apparently worth £30 million or George Osborne worth a mere £4.3 million but who stands to inherit much more from the family business along with a baronetcy.

It's the mirror image of when that other 'great' patrician MacMillan told the working class in the 60's boom that they'd never had it so good' - when in fact some had 'it' considerably better than others. It's one thing for the vast majority of us to have to endure the cyclical effects of a capitalism system we have no control over ... and another to have our noses rubbed in it by the tiny elite minority who manage to come up smelling of roses no matter how deep the shit the rest of us are in.

So it was fantastic timing that in the same week as we had to listen to those pampered baby-faced toffs at Tory Party Conference lecture us on tightening our belts, we also saw 'When Boris Met David', the TV drama capturing their formative years at Oxford. Funnily enough at the same time in the 80's that David, George, Boris and the rest were up to their hi-jinks at the Bullingdon club, I was at Cambridge and had a chance to witness at first hand their equivalents there. We had a name then for those kind of people at the time - arrogant, obnoxious, over-privileged cunts.

I have a long memory and bear a grudge - so I hope does anyone else who can remember the Tories last time round.

Hope I die before I get old ?

I saw an interview the other day with Richard Wilson reminiscing about the nation’s favourite curmudgeonly pensioner, Victor Meldrew. The actor pointed out that Victor was not actually a pensioner at all but had been forced by redundancy into early retirement - and that this was a major part of his general frustration at the world.

There was once some kind of a social-democratic consensus which held that as an individual progressed through life’s journey they would progressively experience the benefits of social justice. So the gap between those children born into poverty and those born into privilege would be eroded by a meritocratic education system that provided the gateway to equal opportunity. Along the way social housing, medicine and ultimately old age provision would narrow the gap.It was a blueprint for something like socialism - to be achieved by stealth over a few generations. It might well have been bollocks but it kept much of the Labour Party going for years.

Now George Osborne says that the Tories will increase the retirement age to 66 in seven years’ time, trumping New Labour’s own long-standing objective to do the same in seventeen years - ultimately rising to 70. By then final earnings, inflation-linked or even a basic state pension that you can actually live off, will all be distant memories. In effect old age will be privatized, thereby finally reversing the social-democratic consensus - as we get older we can now look forward to inequality (and life) actually getting worse.

At the same time we hear a lot of bullshit about the ‘third age’ and the ‘silver economy’. It’s one thing to be a grey-haired captain of industry working into your 70’s or to cash in on your good fortune on the property lottery and take early retirement in sunny climes. Or come to that, to pontificate about having a portfolio of flexible skills because we cannot expect continuous employment any more.

But in the real world most people will find in their 50’s that the skills they have built up over a career have become obsolete with little chance of re-training. They will then probably have to fill the next 20 years of employment with low paid part-time work just to keep their heads above water. They’d also better keep their fingers crossed that when they do finally stop working that they don’t need (almost certainly private) care.

And for their children they might get a small window of respite when they are in their 30’s; a few years in-between paying off their student loans and starting to support their own children ... and then their parents.

Artists above the law

The chattering classes rushed to defend convicted paedophile Roman Polanski from extradition to the US for long over-due sentencing. Tracy Emin says she is moving to France if New Labour go through with their plans to raise the tax rate for those with incomes over £150,000pa. To me it’s just two sides of the same coin in the argument that creative people are not like the rest of us and are worthy of special consideration.

Personally I don’t give a toss whether Polanski directed The Pianist or not; if he was an unemployed welder who had groomed and drugged a 13year old girl in order to have sex with her, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. If Tracy Emin, who bores at the drop of a hat about her working class roots, had built up a successful plumbing business that took her into the highest tax bracket nobody would suggest that she shouldn’t cough up like anybody else.

Funnily enough France features in both these stories. In the Polanski case because supposedly they take a more ‘lenient’ view of artists’ peccadilloes. In Emin’s case because supposedly their tax regime gives better breaks to the arts.

In fact we’re not talking about different cultural nuances of sexuality - paedophilia is no more legal in France than anywhere else. And we are not talking about subsidies to community arts projects in the inner cities, I’m sure young artists struggle in France much as they do everywhere. We are actually talking about whinging luvies that have now established themselves as very successful brands and celebrities and want some sort of special treatment.

This isn’t an argument for philistinism – I can admire ‘The Pianist’ or ‘Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995’ (well actually I can’t but that’s another story) without reference to my approval or otherwise of the artist. George Orwell wrote about this in ‘The Benefit Of Clergy’ – in relation to Salvador Dali “a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being”. I agree with him - a talented arsehole is still an arsehole.

Sons Of Anarchy

It didn't get the exposure over here in the UK that it deserved when series 1 aired earlier this year but I'm a big fan of Sons Of Anarchy.

Written by Kurt Sutter who brought us The Shield - it's been described as The Sopranos on two wheels with a bit of Hamlet and Macbeth thrown in for good measure. And for once it shows some proper custom bikes not OCC bling-machines, has a killer soundtrack, and features Maggie Siff and Katey Sagal... what's not to like? I've just found that you can watch series 2, currently showing in the US here.

It did occur to me though that there is nothing new under the sun - just have a look at Lee Marvin as Chico in The Wild One, and then compare with Ron Perlman as Clay in SoA:

Supermarkets and the cost of living

I spent last week working on a tender to get work from a supermarket.

Sadly enough I must admit that sometimes I get a bit of a kick about putting these things together – it’s a throwback to the days of writing essays – with the same essential ingredients of bluffing and bullshitting. With an added frisson, albeit a self deluding one, that if successful we are getting one over on ‘The Man’ – and of course paying the bills for a few more months.

The quasi-profession of ‘procurement’ has its own bullshit ethics of ‘fairness and transparency’. One consequence is that if any of the parties tendering have a question to ask then it is published, along with the answer, for all the other tenders to see. So after a week of bullshitting away on my tender I got to see the questions from ‘the competition’.

The answers let slip a few things that the supermarket hadn’t been quite so transparent about initially. Such as for every piece of work they gave us - we would have to pay them an ‘admin fee’ ; or that we had to employ a couple of staff to work in their head-office at specified wages way below what we would normally pay. Or that we would also have to pay the supermarket rent for the space taken up by the desks of our staff in their building. Or finally that they wouldn’t actually be paying any of the bills themselves – their suppliers would be picking up the costs and it was down to us to get the money out of them.

Imagine trying to negotiate such a deal in any other situation, say when buying a car or a house. Particularly if you weren't told about the 'hidden catches' up front - you would be sorely tempted to punch the cheeky fucker's lights out, or at the very least you'd walk away as quickly as you could. So I did the next best thing and immediately pulled out of the tender. The Bastard Supermarket seemed genuinely perplexed and offended.

I feel sorry for the poor sods who do win the contract - it will go one of two ways; if the company is a medium sized one – like ours - it will run the work at an increasing loss and so grind itself into the ground within a couple of years. Or if it’s a large one it will try to off-shore the work to a studio in India , Eastern Europe or wherever else labour is cheap that month. That's precisely what's going on in our industry when small businesses have to swim with the sharks. In any case, in a couple of years the Bastard Supermarket will have sucked everything it can out of the relationship and declared a new tender for fresh victims.

Blake’s 'dark satanic mills' may have been the universal symbol of old -style capitalism.If you want the equivalent for our own ‘post-industrial we’re all consumers now’ society – it’s the supermarket.

The night the music died

On this day, an unbelievable 29 years ago, drummer John Bonham died - marking the end of what at the time, and still to this day, I believe to be the ultimate rock band.

I was a teenage head-banger at the time - and it is almost impossible now to convey the intensity of attachment we felt to just about every aspect of the band and its music.

It’s the human condition that over time we lose that intensity and forget how it is to be 15. Occasionally I now see glimpses of it in in my own daughter who at that age – although the metal obsession was/is probably a boy-thing.

It will always be one of my strongest and strangely warmest teenage memories – the night Bonzo died my friends and I sneaked into the local bikers/rockers pub. Grown men were weeping into their beards and the juke box played Led Zep all night. We retired to the car park where we sat in the cold night air with a few cans of Special Brew listening to Tommy Vance’s rock show tribute on a crappy little radio; the three of us sharing the moment.

Nowadays the pub is a fucking Harvester and I hear that arch smug-tosser Jeremy Clarkson is a big ‘Zeppelin fan - all of which depresses me deeply, but still; ‘The Song Remains The Same’.

Hypocrisy

Our governments tell us that the Taliban is such a threat to the people of Afghanistan that air-strikes in villages where they are hiding are justified – in fact they are really for their own good. They also say that the Taliban is such a threat to the peoples of the western world that sending our young people to fight and die in a far off inhospitable country is justified – if fact it is a humanitarian duty.

But when some of those same victims of the Taliban, filled with stories of the peaceful and prosperous West, actually come here, and risk so much in the journey to do so, our governments don’t want them. They are treated like criminals and end up in detention centres to be ‘processed’ - or living like hobos in canvas shanty towns like something our of Steinbeck’s novels.

And then our governments break up these unofficial camps and herd them into official state-run ‘camps’ that may look neater but are actually far more sinister. From there the ‘processing’ will inevitably result in some children being separated from their families and some people being returned to the very places they are fleeing from.

Yesterday’s pitiful scenes of the French riot police breaking up the refugee camp near Calais are in reality just another piece of ‘collateral damage’ from the War On Terror.

What gives the CBI a right to an opinion ?

Back in the dim and distant past when I was a student activist, student unions would be criticized for having policies on all sorts of things which we were told were none of our business. And from time to time there would really be a stink if students tried to donate money to worthy clauses like the striking miners.

Occasionally there was a smidgen of truth in these criticisms - back in the eighties passing resolutions supporting the armed struggle in Nicaragua or declaring the union bar a nuclear free zone were often a political fig-leaf for future New Labour careerists to ignore more pressing matters closer to home. But generally I would say that if ever there was a time to have an opinion on anything and everything it is when you are a student.

The same cannot be said of the CBI sticking an unwelcome nose into higher education.

Their proposals to allow free reign to market forces in universities is an outrageously reactionary piece of cheek on their part. To suggest, as they do, that university numbers be drastically reduced, that student loans are no longer subsidized, and that only 'useful' subjects are promoted would not only take higher education back to before the 1960's, it would introduce a new strain of philistinism unknown even in the elitist bad old days.

What make the fat cats of the CBI presume to think that have the right to say anything about higher education in the first place ? Only a mistaken belief that they are the true creators of wealth in society and therefore can dictate how this wealth is spent - or more appropriately 're-invested'. How fucking presumptious and arrogant of them: By sheer weight of numbers, by hard work and by tax, it is working people who create the wealth and whose children are getting the educational opportunities (albeit at a cost) that would have been unthinkable for the vast majority only a couple of generations ago.

And to add insult to injury when the CBI dare to question the numbers of students in higher education and to ridicule some of the 'new' subjects studied - it was the same industrial bosses who in the Thatcher era attacked the unions and with them the apprenticeship system. These were the bedrock of the skilled working class and thanks to this attack this group has now become an endangered species. So for their offspring going to university - even if it is to a former polytechnic for a so-called 'mickey mouse' subject - is the only option now of securing decent 'life chances'.

I thank my lucky stars that I was able to go through higher education in an era when it was still free at the point of consumption - I now fear for my own kids.

Haringey Food Festival

My part of London doesn’t get much of a good press. Green Lanes, the site of the Haringey Food Festival, earned national notoriety a couple of years ago with a running gun battle between Turkish and Armenian gangs. It also features regularly on those reality TV shock-shows – I seem to remember one about the local environmental health team and another about the Met Police’s robbery squad.

But it is also one of the few genuinely 24hour streets in London with cheap restaurants, cafes, bakeries and fruit-and-veg stores selling exotic foods from South and Eastern Europe and the Caribbean. If you wanted to celebrate the diversity of this borough then closing the street and having a food festival there is a pretty effective way of expressing it.

As I stood in the street on Sunday afternnon, taking in the sun , sipping a can of Red Stripe and tucking into some Curry Goat whilst listening to my daughters’ school steel band, it occurred to me that I would like Cameron and the shire-smug-ites who talk about ‘broken Britain’ to come and have a look at this. And the likes of the English Defence League and all those Essex-geesers that I work with who ‘want their country back’.

We may well have fuck-knows enough problems in Haringey and in many respects we do tick all the boxes of ‘broken society’ - but in spite of it there is genuinely a community here. And a community does not have to look like Ambridge for it  to work: I see over at Penny Red she is saying something much along the same lines.

I also feel saddened that such is the nature of life in London that after twenty years of living here I am still on the periphery of this community. Spending most of my waking hours working somewhere else – even when it’s only a couple of boroughs away - it is inevitable that your hometown becomes a dormitory.

Something that the anarchists make much of, and which I have to say I agree with, is that the very act of being a community is itself political. Especially in these times when so many will deny us this.

Shit you can't make up

Seen this morning on my ride in to work - graffiti-ed very neatly on a newly painted shop-front in Camden:

Peasants beware
Abolish banal thinking
Embrace only radical thoughts and oppose capitalist pigs.

I'm not sure if this a quote from Mao - or a made-up piece of ironic genius - or maybe just that term is about to begin and the students are back in town.

Brighton Burn Up

To Brighton for the end of season run the ‘Brighton Burn Up’. I took the ’89 Sportster as I did for the start of the season 'Southend Shake Down’ back in April. Now that the gearbox is sorted, this time it was rather less like trying to control a bucking bronco. Brighton is a helluva lot nicer than Southend but for me, taking in a detour to drop in on my parents, it was a 180mile round trip. That’s a long way to go for some very average fish and chips.

As always getting there was the thing and the arrival a bit of an anticlimax really – a saunter down the esplanade to check out the rows of something like 10,000 motorcycles and then jump on my bike and head home. It wasn’t a day to take your time and lounge in the sun - because there wasn’t any. In fact I discovered that I was decidedly chilly even in my new supposedly super-warm reproduction World War Two Tankers' Jacket.

Interesting bikes were in a small minority - plenty of Harleys to be seen but I was surprised that with the exception of a handful of old Shovelheads mine was one of the oldest. And tattiest. Some nice old 60’s British café racers and their counterpart Vespa and Lambrettas, ridden by revivalists and some old boys who looked that they had actually been around for the original bank holiday shennanigans back in the day. I can’t help noticing that old age wears better with the rocker look than it does with the mod look. Over sixty, paunchy and trying to look like Paul Weller doesn’t really cut it – but good luck to them anyway – anyone who can keep a 40 year old two stroke machine in running order deserves some respect (even if it is Lambretta).

That’s it really – nothing spectacular to report. There is something very British about these runs to seaside towns. I’m sure I’ll carry on doing them out of some misplaced sense of tradition but I can’t help thinking that really I’d have been happier just riding on my own to some sleepy and deserted place on the coast. For some people biking is primarily a social activity but in my own case I think the appeal is in the solitude and the quiet – even with the noise of a big V-Twin engine heard through an illegal exhaust.

Rover & The Phoenix Four

Who would have thought that it would take four years, 800+ pages and £16million to come up with a report that the Phoenix Four – owners of MG Rover – didn’t do anything illegal; they just acted like big businessmen do ?

Only four years after they brought the business for just £10, the last British-owned car manufacturer closed down and 6,500 jobs were lost. In the process The Four trousered £42million between them and even now they haven’t shared any of the pain arising from the collapse that left a hole in the manufacturing heartland of the West Midlands.

A year on from the Lehman Bothers’ collapse, a distinction is often heard being made, sometimes even on the Left, between evil ‘finance’ capitalists who get huge and undeserved bonuses for doing speculation at no personal risk and honest ‘manufacturing’ capitalists who actually make stuff and employ the people. But the Phoenix Four weren’t Gordon Geckos in red braces – three were engineers by background and one was an accountant. It still didn’t stop them from behaving like greedy cunts who were out for themselves.

The usual moral justification given for capitalism is that it rewards the entrepreneur for taking risks that are for the good of society as a whole – creating jobs and ever-new products and services. Maybe at the time of the industrial revolution this was true to some extent - although if you were employed in a factory or mill from the age of 10 risking life and limb you could be forgiven for not seeing the bigger picture.

But with capitalism these days, rather than inventing something, risking everything to develop it and working hard to produce it, with just a bit of financial sleight-of-hand in the book-keeping, you can still make the money and stick two fingers up at the people who made you rich.

It’s the system you see and it takes a pretty rare individual to buck it.