Pillar of the Community
And I thought I was just a feckless eejit.
Not so. ITV says I’m a Pillar of the Community. Look. Twice.
Just as well they didn’t see me in the Cat & Mutton last night. I was an unashamed disgrace. Best time I’d had for ages.
Anyway, that’s quite enough autofellatio. It’s Elegantly Dressed Wednesday after all, and here’s a stylish pic of Alexander Trocchi, the thinking Glaswegian’s favourite skag-addled writer.
Published on 30th July, 2008
25 years of the “urban jungle”
It’s a rare article about Hackney that makes me want to stand up and give the writer a standing ovation, but that’s pretty much what I did when I read this:
Hackney needs activists, not socialist revolutionaries (whom Mr Harrison rightly says adore picking at sores) and theorists, not just the very necessary agencies to make claimants more efficient at their sad profession. It needs busybodies, preferably among the deprived themselves.
It reminded me of something I wrote on my old blog in December last year, when I was making a faltering, contorted case for localism in the face of a indifferent, one-size-fits-all council:
If we can’t get our representatives to listen, we need to get angry on other people’s behalf as well as our own. Because if we don’t, we’re not just going to get rancid public toilets, we’re not going to get respite care for the people who need it, or make sure that members of our community don’t have to sleep rough because the council has failed them. And if we can’t do any of those things, how do we really imagine we’re going to improve life on those gang-ridden estates?
But whilst I was blogging towards the end of 2007, the first writer was making his case in The Times as long ago as 7th December 1983. The journalist was Richard North and you can find his article in the newspaper’s archive. It must have caused a stir because, as many as twelve years later, he mentioned the same article in an Independent piece:
I can remember, even in palmier days, I was excoriated by liberal types for writing in the Times that Hackney’s public spaces were in need of busybodies - middle class or not - who could assert that swiping little Jewish children wasn’t on.
Few would disagree with that; although I suspect that what he originally said would cause a stir, particularly now:
…the burly little goys in Clissold Park need to be cuffed and talked to when they insult the pale Hasidic families who go there on Sundays.
I don’t advocate cuffing anyone, but I certainly advocate putting the fear of damnation up any child who does that. Certainly, these days, it’s relatively rare to see a Orthodox Jewish family walking in that park, even though a large number of them live on or near its north eastern edge. It’s not the only depressing vision conjured up by North’s article. Indeed, a heavy sense of plus ça change weighs you down further with each paragraph. Any Hackney resident of today will soon spot these 25-year-old remarks are at least as relevant now as they were then.
Hackney is a place in which the vast majority of adults dare not speak to children, even when the children are inarticulately crying out to talk. The adult seems not to dare speak to the teenager, even though I have always found the glue sniffers, and even the illicit parker, glad to be spoken to.
And:
…beyond cruel petty officials and being broke, what most assails the hopeless minority in Hackney is our modern society in which only competence makes life manageable.
I am, of course, being highly selective. Some of North’s suggestions, and particularly his solutions, betray a tendency to wish his own pet ideas on other people’s difficulties. This one’s a gem:
The unemployed… need to boycott the canned drinks makers and the pubs and start brewing their own wine.
Home brewed wine? He clearly hasn’t tasted the stuff, even if it is a cut above Carlsberg Special Brew. Or how about this tour de force?
For many hopeless people… Permissiveness has broken their immediate family. Increasingly mobility has broken their wider world, robbing them of relatives. Planners have broken their communities. Teachers and welfare workers have robbed them of responsibility. The liberal creed has broken their will to self discipline.
So, on the one hand it’s not their fault but, on the other:
I have to accept that Hackney’s misery is in part the fault of its inhabitants, and in part of people like me who won’t do more about chivvying and informing them.
People like him? Yes, the middle class, or rather more gobsmackingly:
What a double pity that those who have always been good at poverty - the drop-out middle class, who go hippy at the drop of a hat - never taught the working class how to do it.
It’s the same old flaw: a middle class person comes to the conclusion that, despite the terrible state society is in, the poor could do more to help themselves and each other; but then can’t accept it could be done without middle-class involvement and - preferably - leadership. All whilst pointing out that (middle class) liberals knackered society in the first place.
It’s hardly any surprise, therefore, that liberals tend dismiss all elements of the argument as bollocks. Take a look over at Dave Hill’s London blog: it’s still going on today. Well-off liberal Dave has got rather froth-flecked by new City Hall Policy Director Anthony Browne in general, and about this Daily Mail article in particular. Fair play. Especially when confronted by this bit of circular logic:
If people don’t learn the difference between right and wrong, it is not just that they become anti-social. They don’t learn the fundamental lesson that there is only one person responsible for what they do — and that is themselves. Nothing is wrong, and nothing is anyone’s fault; it is always someone else’s. Don’t blame me for what I do; it’s society’s fault.
The logic as I read it is:
1) Some people haven’t been taught the difference between right and wrong.
2) They therefore have no idea that they are responsible for their own actions.
3) Even though they don’t know they are responsible for their own actions, it is wrong of them to blame other people. Including those people in society who didn’t teach them the difference between right and wrong.
And the people responsible for this moral vacuum? Yep, middle-class liberals:
This Left-wing moral neutrality comes from the best of intentions — wanting to sympathise with victims and other vulnerable people. If they do something anti-social, it is because anti-social things have been done to them — they are not at fault. And if you can’t judge someone for their actions, there can’t really be a right or wrong thing to do.
As I said earlier: plus ça bloody change. Theorists are theorists, whether they’re socialist or patrician Tory. And as Richard North rightly pointed out, Hackney needs fewer of them - even if he was, to a degree, one himself.
Sadly, in amongst all the moralistic finger pointing, the fact remains that - after 25 years - Hackney residents (and many other) are even more terrified of speaking to children, teenagers or - often - other adults. Which is a shame because, whoever you blame, it’s not government, or theorists, or socialist revolutionaries who have the power to solve the problem - it’s us.
If we dare.
Published on 29th July, 2008
Elegantly Dressed Wednesday: L’Antisteak
“Petit traité de dandyisme culinaire.”
Now that’s what I call an Elegantly Dressed Cookbook.
Hat tip: Ace Jet 170.
Published on 23rd July, 2008
I might give it you…
Published on 18th July, 2008
Morris Men wouldn’t clone your debit card
It’s easy to knock Morris Dancing; and, to be sure, most city types simply think it’s convenient when lepers supply their own bells.
But I have to say, I’ve always enjoyed watching them dance. I’ve no idea why. And I’ve no idea why I really enjoyed these guys doing their stuff at the Tendring Hundred Show. But I did.
Maybe it’s because one can’t imagine a Morris Man being the sort of person who would clone your debit card and withdraw your money from cashpoints in the Philippines. Whoever did that with my card this weekend deserves to be beaten soundly with willow sticks.
Published on 14th July, 2008
Elegantly Dressed Wednesday: A Scout
Inspired by Ian Hislop Scouting for Boys on the BBC, I thought I’d offer you my elegantly dressed grandfather, kitted out in his Scout uniform at some point in the late 1920s. What this photo does not convey, though, is the fact he took a rather small hat size; but that’s the beauty of a fine uniform.
Published on 9th July, 2008
Take-away Feud in Hackney
I love a good feud, and there’s the makings of a really ripe one in this week’s Hackney Gazette. In the editorial, Gazette Opinion, one of our friendly, neighbourhood hacks is taking a pop at the local blogosphere.
SOME bloggers can be remarkably precious about their weblogs considering many are the web equivalent of the nutty tub-thumpers at Speakers’ Corner.
I can’t say I’m precious about mine, but the nutty tub-thumper bit is spot on. Give me a tub I like and I’ll thump merrily along. Anyway, pushing on:
Don’t believe all the sanctimonious drivel about citizen journalism. Most blogs are little more than a self-indulgent soapbox for those arrogant and egotistical enough to believe their opinions and observations deserve a public airing.
Occasionally, a blog will spark controversy and come to the attention of the media via computer search engine alerts.
It’s accepted practice - particularly if a public figure makes controversial remarks on a blog - for newspapers to use them as source material for a follow-up story, subject to the paper contacting the person quoted to check that what appeared is accurate.
For bloggers to moan that what they themselves put in the public domain has somehow been pillaged because a newspaper hasn’t acknowledged them smacks of breath-taking petulance.
Miaow! Who on earth can the Gazette be thinking of? Maybe Dave Hill knows…
(ps - a free story for Hackney Gazette hacks: if your search engine alert has led you thus far, you might want to note that Cllr Akehurst has now come out in favour of extraordinary rendition and as a supporter of imprisoning people without charge in the appalling conditions at Guantanamo Bay. If he ever becomes Hackney Council’s Cabinet Advisor on Crime and Community Safety, we’re going to be even more fucked than we are already).
Published on 4th July, 2008
For sale: baby shoes, never worn
Or, in other words, Ernest Hemingway’s bash at telling a story in six words. Pants has challenged me to do the same. So I have:
Wedding ring found embedded in Semtex
I tag:
Worship Street
The Little Men
Dornan (as always)
Fabio Moraes
COUTTH
Published on 3rd July, 2008
Bloody good idea
Even if it’s bound to go wrong. Solace here for one who is too busy and grumpy to blog properly at the moment (ie me).
Published on 3rd July, 2008
A load of old cock
And for once I’m not talking about Nando’s haters.
Apparently the BBC Trust has complained that Top Gear presenters were drinking whilst driving to - erm - the North Pole. I saw the the bloody programme. Clarkson and James May (fine fellow) cracked open some wine, cheese and foie gras whilst the presenter - whatisname, the one who always gets bullied - was busy crossing the Artic by ski and sledge. With a woman he didn’t like at all.
Excellent TV if you ask me. Though I think it’s rather telling that rather fewer people complained about the pictures of frostbitten genitals.
Published on 2nd July, 2008
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