Huge Fire Response at Stamford Hill Filling Station
Spotted earlier, just over the border in Haringey at Craven Park Road.
Published on 31st May, 2008
It’s you we’re working for
Published on 30th May, 2008
Quentin Davies Fires Blanks
The problem with Quentin Davies…
No. I’ll start again.
One of the many problems with Quentin Davies, the merchant banking Tory-turned-Socialist MP for Grantham and Stamford, is that he’s never had to build a bridge over a stream using only a bit of frayed rope, a bald tractor tyre, a punctured oil drum and a handful of underdeveloped 13-year-old boys. If he had, he wouldn’t be wishing the Combined Cadet Force on our state schools.
I can see the thinking, though. It goes like this:
1. The Labour Party has decided that dropping cadet forces into state schools will boost its electoral fortunes.
2. The MoD is pretty much the only arm of the state that doesn’t have lots of New Labour types running the show.
3. The military top brass particularly loathe the Secretary of State for War Defence.
4. The only person who will have the credibility to push the job through has to be a… [former] Tory.
And as Quentin (unlike Shaun Woodward) looks like the sort of chap who might - conceivably - have been bumped up to Brigadier a few months before he was told to retire, he got to carry the can.
So far, so good. But what no-one has yet questioned is Quentin’s actual suitability for the job.
He may wear Savile Row suits. His father may have been in the army. But the fact is that Quentin went to the Quaker - and thus pacifist - Leighton Park School. So, unless he was learning how to prime grenades in some secret, militant chapter of the Woodcraft Folk, he will never have picked up first hand knowledge of how the Combined Cadet Force actually works.
Which means he’s probably an idealist.
So, to help cure him of his fantasies, I’m going to compare the commonly-believed virtues of CCF life with the reality - as experienced by me between 1987-1990 (in the RAF and RN sections) at a school in the heart of Quentin’s own constituency (as pictured above, a decade or two before my time).
Integrity
There’s nothing like the threat of hard work to make sure you - and those with whom you are temporarily saddled - devise an honest and foolproof plan to get out of it. In Cumbria, back in 1989, such a wheeze ensured that my little group of miniature soldiers, sailors and airmen got up at dawn, packed up the tents without a sound, and pissed off - via bus - to drink beer (underage) in Penrith; thereby avoiding a 20+ mile trek and giving everyone time to learn their lines about “missing you in the fog on the peak, sir” before they rolled up at the appointed campsite. An excellent day’s work, which most of my companions claimed as part of their silver or gold Duke of Edinburgh Award.
*
Compassion
“Oi, Needsmith. Your roll mat’s fallen out of your rucksack.”
Needsmith looks round to see said object rolling about 400 feet down the hill face.
“Go and fetch it Needsmith. Everyone else, we’re stopping here till he’s got it.”
Half an hour later, as Needsmith ascends, panting with his lost bedding: “Right, here he comes. Let’s go.”
“Can I take a break too?”
“Fuck off Needsmith,” says the great chief, who only half an hour led us up the wrong hill. “It’s your fault for dropping your stuff. Only another 15 miles to go.”
*
Safe use of firearms
“Needsmith,” says the shooting master to the idiot lying on the point with a .22 in his hands.
“Yes Sir?” asks Needsmith, turning full circle with his loaded weapon and pointing it at the officer’s desk.
Voice from under desk: “Put. That. Fucking. Thing. Down. And. Step. Outside.”
*
Observational skills
Master to NCO: “So, what I want you to do in this drill…”
A pause as he examines another, smaller boy standing next to him.
“What the hell do you want? Sit down with the others, boy.’
Smaller boy, blushing and pointing to the stripe on his shoulder: “I’m a Junior Corporal, Sir.”
“Oh. Why didn’t you say so before?”
*
Smartness
“Fucking hell. Look at his boots - they’re like mirrors.”
“Fucking ginger keeno. Let’s stamp on them.”
“Great idea. That’ll teach him.”
*
Equal Opportunities
“Jesus Christ. What’s Stumpy doing up there with all the top brass? He’s a bloody cripple.”
“His dad’s the Major General.”
“No way! Then he ought to tell his son to get a haircut. Permy twat. No wonder he ended up teaching.”
*
Tact
“Ah, Locker. This is the Air Commodore.”
“Oh.”
Then, in the plane: “So, Locker. Are you a day boy or a boarder?”
“A day boy, sir”.
Air Commodore, immediately dropping the plane a few hundred feet: “Ah. Do you want to join the RAF when you leave school?”
“No. I want to join the Navy.”
Plane lands 13 minutes after take-off.
*
Anyway, I’m sure you get the idea. Davies with his pacifist upbringing probably thinks the whole wheeze is about gentlemanly behaviour, playing the game, and possibly cutting a dash in the Queen’s uniform (not her personal uniform, but you see what I mean).
He’s wrong, and he can take it from Leading Seaman Benjamin Locker, CCF (RN Ret’d).
Sure: there were some excellent cadets, who were cut out for the experience. But the fact was that most of us were in the thing because the alternative was a somewhat stigmatised afternoon of community service (otherwise known as “granny bashing”). And I can’t help thinking that a lot of the boys who spent their Friday afternoons running round Springfields with massive logs, or square bashing in the Dell, could usefully have been improved by a bit of regular, selfless work for other people.
So, Quentin, go ahead: but whatever else you do, don’t make the CCF an expected part - whether implicitly or explicitly - of secondary education. You’ll only undermine the good you’re setting out to do.
Published on 28th May, 2008
Elegantly Dressed Wednesday: The Ampersand
I’ve always adored the ampersand, originally because it reminded me of the treble clef. Nowadays I like it because it is often the one flamboyant figure in an otherwise austere typeface.
The ampersand above is rather to narrow at its head for my taste, but I love the elegant simplicity of the black figure on the circular plate. At first glance it looks like a typewriter key.
The plate is by cul de sac and I found it one one of my favourite new blogs: The Ampersand.
Published on 28th May, 2008
Hoxton Square: getting wired now unnecessary
If you’re one of the people who follow my photo blog, you’ll know from the map that I don’t get down to the south of Hackney very often. It’s not that I don’t like the area - after all, it’s the only place I’ve heard builders’ dialogue as fine as this exchange on a scaffold:
“Oi! Crispin! I can see your ringpiece.”
“Oh, you can see that far then?”
It might, though, be worth taking a trip down to to the area soon, especially as Rachel Jay from The Shoreditch Map tips me off that Hoxton Square is going to become East London’s first public space with free wi-fi. This means that, from 6 June, I can wander round Shoreditch picking up snippets of amusing dialogue, and then go straight to Hoxton Square and blog about them. For free.
Of course, I’d have to be quick because the battery in my laptop is almost completely shagged; but that’s hardly anyone’s fault except mine. And Apple Computer, Inc.
Bastards.
Anyway, if you’re in the area, all you have to do is spread yourself out on a patch of grass, crack open a bottle of Tiger Beer (they’re one of the sponsors, dontcha know?) and point your browser to www.hoxtonwifi.com. And there, no doubt, you will find all the instructions you need, along with lovely details about the other sponsors and upcoming events that I’ve omitted to mention.
Published on 24th May, 2008
Footprints
Ever since my other half painted the soles of my feet, I’ve reluctantly come to admit I’m a sleepwalker.
Actually something I spotted a couple of streets away. It made me smile.
Published on 23rd May, 2008
Elegantly Dressed Wednesday: Gioachino Rossini
Anyone who dressed with the panache of Rossini, a man I admire for composing a rollocking Mass for two pianos and harmonium (which he sometimes described as the “last mortal sin of my old age”) deserves not only to be nominated for Elegantly Dressed Wednesday, but also to be accorded a sack load of respect.
“Gracious Lord,” he remarked in the preface of his manuscript, “forgive me the following comparison. Your twelve are also the apostles in Leonardo da Vinci’s famous fresco that is called The Last Supper. Who would have thought it possible! There are some among your disciples who sing wrong notes!! Be assured, my Lord, I swear that there be no Judas at my supper, and that my [disciples] will sing your praises in tune and with love.”
Chapeau!
Published on 21st May, 2008
Dalston Regeneration?
Spotted in Dalston Lane (click to enlarge and make legible). I haven’t kept abreast of the arguments, which have been raging here, but the attempts to stick a load of high-rise buildings and a new tube overground station into the heart of Dalston have more than a passing resemblance to what famously happened at Broadway Market.
Published on 21st May, 2008
What size was the naked Ugg boot ram-raider?
The BBC has footage of a drunkard ram-raiding a West Midlands supermarket, only to get out and steal cigarettes whilst wearing nothing but a sheet and his girlfriend’s Ugg boots.
I’m intrigued. Nine times out of ten, men’s feet tend to be somewhat larger thatn those of their girlfriends. So, did David Ball’s girlfriend have particularly large boots, or were his own feet on the small side?
One thing I am sure of: we’d have known for sure if his sheet had slipped.
Published on 16th May, 2008
Sketch: Flies in the champagne as Hackney elects a new Speaker
Last night, I went to the town hall to watch the new Speaker and Deputy Speaker for Hackney get voted into office.
No, please: come back. I won’t take long.
It’s a simple procedure: the elected mayor (and leader of the Labour group) nominates someone from his own party and speaks in his favour; the leader of the much smaller Conservative group commends the nominee personally, but points out that as his own party members are de facto excluded from the office of Speaker, they’ll be abstaining; members of the Labour group shake their heads vigorously and pretend to look outraged; and the leader of the two Lib Dem councillors makes a pleasant speech commending the choice of candidate. So, as fixes go, it’s a good natured and tolerant one - which is quite in keeping with our diverse borough.
I can’t be arsed to do the maths, but with the backing of all the present Labour councillors, both Lib Dems and one Tory (I don’t know about the Green), the new speaker is:
- Councillor Ian Rathbone.
And, thanks to a similar process and result, his deputy is:
- Councillor Muttalip Unluer
That was the easy bit. When the appointments were over, the elected mayor, Jules Pipe, told us what his policy priorities were for the coming year.
I’d not seen him speak before, but a few seconds were enough to reveal that he falls into the personable and well-prepared school of public speaking, rather than in the devastatingly charismatic camp. I’m not sure how he does it, but there’s some sort of switch he flicks that transforms him into state-of-the-art Soviet statistics transmitter: “….waste recycling up from less than 1% in 2002… crime down 32% since 2004… 53% of students achieving five GCSEs at A to C compared to less than one-third in 2002… 36% of Labour councillors beatified by the Roman Catholic Church in 2007 - up from only 27% in 2004.”
Okay, he didn’t say the last one, but he might as well have.
It’s a terrifying sight: the seemingly affable man, suddenly endowed with the power to bore his political opponents to death. My eyes glazed over repeatedly, but I think that, when you penetrated all the “coming year going forwards” and the like, the gist of what he was saying boiled down to “in the six years under my most excellent rule, Hackney Council has learned to sweep streets, collect rubbish and admit that a schools system that fails over two-thirds of teenagers is not acceptable. We are now excellent at improving, so I might as well tell you that we’re improving at being excellent. It’s the same thing really. I am, incidentally, most excellent.”
In the new, improved Hackney, in which teenage gunmen throw aside their weapons and launch renewable composting schemes with small business start-up grants, dissent is frowned on. So when Tory group leader Matthew Coggins stood up to dissent, everyone on the opposite side of the chamber knitted their brows in the way Churchill might have done when discovering an insect or three in his morning glass of champagne.
“Yuck,” they thought as they picked out Hackney’s pisspoor SATs results from amongst the bubbles. “Eeergh,” they muttered as they grasped rising knife crime between thumb and forefinger and flicked it into a clump of cow parsley. “Not again,” they hissed as stuck their pinkies in the glass, fishing out the suggestion that their consultations were more faits accomplis than any genuine attempt to listen to residents.
There was lots more of this, but as the occasion was a celebratory rather than an adversarial one, the Tory refrained from snapping the stems of his adversaries’ flutes. Not so Lib Dem leader Ian Sharer, who poured the champagne down the drain whilst drawing attention to the poisonous sight of a Labour Mayor campaigning to save Post Offices that his own Government had condemned. Then, as the Pol Roger bubbled down the grilles, he pointed out how vast numbers of parents couldn’t get their children a place in any Hackney secondary school.
Pipe wasn’t going to let that lie. Standing for a second time, he muttered something about how he had planned to let the Conservative speech pass, but really had to respond to the more recent outrage. How could anyone, he said, believe that he had the ear of Government? (Answer: no-one does. Besides, that wasn’t the point). Surely it was right for him to campaign against post office closures? (Answer: yes, if he wanted to look like a hypocrite). And as for the schools situation, surely the fact that so many parents were being turned away was a sign of the borough’s success? Why, back in 2002 parents didn’t want to send their children to Hackney’s schools. Now they simply couldn’t (I paraphrase, but that’s essentially what he was saying).
There was no stopping him. Within seconds he was back on the statistics. I averted my gaze before it was too late, only to find it resting on the expensive propaganda that had been laid before me. There was an Olympic folder/booklet with a velcro fastener and a fold-out chart entitled “Hackney highlights: a 12 month summary”, taking credit for - amongst other things - the opening of Clissold Leisure Centre, retaining Investor in People status (woo-hoo!) and the CSCI rating of “Hackney’s Adult Social Servcies [sic]” as ‘good’. All these publications were printed on gold paper, making me wonder whether the colour is a sort of socialist rank entitlement for an elected borough mayor - kingly gold to Livingstone’s Imperial purple.
Pipe finally ground to a halt and it was time to head next door for drinks and supper. As I stood in the queue, I looked behind me to see a man who was clearly by himself. I wondered who he could be. He didn’t look like an organic farmer or race relations expert. And he looked way too content to be a politician. Nor did he emanate the aura of a businessman. Yes, from all the Hackney folk who hail from every continent and walk of life, I’d found the sole representative of the borough’s single army base. Damned nice fellow he was too.
–
(Sadly, I took no photos of the Council meeting, nor has anyone posted any footage. But for the curious and disbelieving, I have discovered this wonderful clip of our esteemed mayor defending one of the world’s most ridiculous education selection policies.)
Published on 15th May, 2008