Yesterday I took a trip out to Manchester to catch up with a friend. Initially I was going to take the train from Liverpool but as its January and money is tight,I decided it would be cheaper to drive and park up at a N.C.P in the middle of town.
To park in the N.C.P the maximum stay is four hours and the charge to do so was £6:90.
I was gone 4 hours and 9 mins.
Those 9 mins which I spent lost struggling to find my way round the unfamiliar streets of the city have cost me £25, because at 4 hours 6 mins a parking attendant issued the ticket in the photo...how nice of them!
The cost of parking for 4 hours 9 mins was £32 pounds... Add to this the cost of the tram as I rushed back and it was an expensive visit!
What is annoying is the penalty would have been the same if I hadn't bought I ticket...therefore I would have received a discount of £7. I also wouldn't of had a deadline to work too so I wouldn't have rushed and could have saved some money on the tram also. By trying to play by the rules I got stung almost on every level.
This got me thinking if you can only receive one parking ticket for an offence every 24 hours, the next time I get a ticket for being slightly late the cars staying there overnight to get maximum value for money, by my calculations I could leave it there for 14 hours to break even and after that the next 10 hours I'am actually getting for free!
I probably will never do this, however thinking about it and sharing it on here has definitely made me feel a whole lot better ;)
This video contains many of my favourite music tracks from the last 10-15 years and a few older but equally respected tracks. Its been mixed using state of the art consumer level technology. It exists because someone gave it a go, and in doing so created something of a celebration of tunes which I know to be cool.
The Internet has allowed this person to distribute this clip and because of this others can also experience what is good about everything contained here through the power of sharing. They may even be inspired to search for these tracks for them selves. This video is a nod to the past and also the future, however the old school don't get it!
The Stop Online Piracy Act will stop this, and as a consequence the producer of this video will not be able to post content like this. Under this new act ,it will be the hosts of content like this who will be breaking the law as well as the publisher. You Tube, Facebook, Twitter any one who allows the sharing to take place.
The idea of the act is to stop online Piracy but the reality will be that it will crush the Internet as we know it.
The simple truth is Big companies like Sony, Universal etc have become lazy. They want our money but want the least barriers to getting it. The Internet has thrown down the gauntlet, it's made getting the message out there easy but at the same time also made the monitizeation of this message difficult. If the brands of yesterday want to compete with the new school they need to stop playing by the old rules and work out a way to deliver something better than the pirateable experience.
If you look at Artists like Plastikman or services like Spotify that's exactly what there doing and that's where the future lies. Rather than fighting the Internet the likes of Sony, Universal etc should be embracing the opportunities it presents and exploring how to take advantage of it rather than hold back progress just because it takes them out of their comfort zone.
In the words of the mash up... "Don't hold back ...Push it forward!"
This is a "remix" of the video i posted a few months back of the riots in Manchester. Using the song from the current Christmas John Lewis advert.
I was also reading a William Blake poem the other day and came across the following words which also reminded me of the bit of footage attached.
Taken from the Poem " The Mariage of Heaven and Hell". (Massively Abridged Version)
Now the sneaking serpent walks In mild humility ; And the just man rages in the wilds Where Uons roam. Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in the burdened air, Hungry clouds swag on the deep... ...Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, rea- son and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys reason;
Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is heaven. Evil is hell. That man has two real existing principles, viz., a Body and a Soul. That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body ; and that Reason, called Good, is alone from the Soul. That God will torment man in Eternity for following his Energies. But the following contraries to these are true : — Man has no Body distinct from his Soul. For that called Body is a por- tion of Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age. Energy is the only life , and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
Energy is Eternal Delight. Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place and governs the unwilling. And being restrained, it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of desire. And the original Archangel or pos-sessor of the command of the heavenly host is called the Devil, or Satan, and his children are called Sin and Death. For this history has been adopted by both parties. It indeed appeared to Reason as if desire was cast out, but the Devil's account is, that the Messiah fell, and formed a heaven of what he stole from the abyss.
To conclude I have included the above section of the poem because it really does seem to resonate with the goings on shown in the video. You wittness the bursting forward of energy, the expression of desire. That same desire described in the lyrics of the John Lewis advert which ironically has been used to promote consumerisim and further creating the desire to form "a heaven from" what is stolen from "the Abyss".
This blog is slowly changing. I still want it to be a running/travel blog, however since returning home from my travels its become more of a social commentary blog. Not out of choice but just because these are the thoughts spinning round in my head. Sadly I have the same sense of being an alien at home as I did away. I see things differently since my travels and hence the change in my blog. It pains me to be like this and I have seen a dramatic drop in page views since adopting this stance but I can't help it, this is who I have become.
And so begins another social observation post, next week is Halloween and in true social media fashion we will see a flood of meme themed costume posts. Last year it was all about Angry Birds and Wikileaks, this year I predict a return to the ghoulish celebration of death. That's if the past weeks media coverage of the demise of Gaddafi is anything to go by. To be honest I found the whole thing a little bit hard to swallow. The repeated images that surfaced and where pushed out and force fed to the masses, the self satisfied manner in which our leaders broke the news. It was all very much in keeping with how I imagine the Witch trials of old would have happened, but in a modern context. It must be part of the human condition its been happening for centuries, probably since the beginning of time. On the 5th of Nov here in England most people we will celebrate Bonfire night by burning a effigy of a terrorist called Guy Fawkes. Question is...is this right, morally are we not also becoming monsters to condone murder and execution. Say if in a few years the public decided that Tony Blair was a war criminal would it be ok to hunt him down and execute in public, does it come down to the consensus of the people. Anyway regardless of this we also have those who don't care a hoot. These are the products of the internet and 24 hour news coverage. They have become disengage from the reality of life and will next week no doubt dress up as one of countless bad taste possibilities. I predict that we will see a mix of Saddams , Bin Lardens and Gaddafis strutting their stuff on various sites like Mashable etc. I also suspect just to add to the mix, it safe to say there will be a few Micheal Jacksons and last but not least dare I say it, but I suspect some of the Android faithful will see fit to try and pull off a Turtleneck to pay their sarcastic last respects to Mr Jobs. It will happen its inevitable but will it be celebrated as random acts of genius or simply bad taste like when Prince Harry dressed up as Hitler a few years back. I wait to see what the comments will be in response to these folk, the misguided scouts of public opinion, but based on what I witnessed so far this year I am sadly guessing it will be completely acceptable for the majority of people as we become increasingly more secular as a society, not just separated from the dogma of religion (which ain't a bad thing) but separated from the common morals and virtues of decent people. Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
Last Thursday "I got a cap in my ass" whilst jogging home from a night out with work colegues. I now officially walk with a swagger and it hurts a bit when I sit down. If I was in the hood this may have been seen as some sort of badge of honour, but I dont live in the hood and there is no honor in having to wiping the seat to make sure you dont get an infection when you use a public loo due to your weeping wound.
It happened about 9:40 pm, I was minding my own buisness jogging along the road when I heard the sound of a car decelerating behind me. I then heard what sounded like a gas cannister being squashed, like a burst of air, I heard a slight whistling noise and then felt a kick in my backside followed by a pinch, like being bitten on my bumcheek. I then coiled backwards and grabbed my left buttock as I realised what had happened, my initial thought was that the car had run over a can of something and I had been hit by shrapnel...I looked to the road and the 4X4 was now accelerating away and I could not see any cannister in the road. I also could'nt find any shrapnel just a small metal pelet and then it dawned on me that some little sod had shot me with an air rifle. By this stage the 4X4 was quickly disapearing from sight and it was too dark to get the number plate.
Fortunately the ripstop fabric on my pants stopped the pellet but it still hit with sufficient force to beak the skin. I continued to walk home, a bit shook up so i tried to phone home to share my woes but got no answer. I got back to my Bed and Breakfast and told the owner what had happened before heading to bed.
In the morning I was woken by the landlord who handed me the phone and told me the police wanted me to come to the station to make a statement. I got there and the woman on the desk said she was expecting me as I was the guy who had been shot. It all seemed a bit sureal.
I was given a quick interview and then taken upstairs to a female "Scenes of Crime Photographer" who wanted to take a photo of my backside. I had a few reference photos taken and she asked me to remove my pants. I then had the indignity of being asked which spot was the pellet mark as i had several spots on my bum, was i sure it was an air rifle and not a shotgun. I then had to stand there and feel my bum untill I found the one that hurt, it was all a bit comical.
After the photos I then had to give my statement, which was quite cool especially as I could verify my movements with my Android phone which had even logged me stopping at the time of the shooting incident and recorded it all on an app called Eventflow, almost felt like the whole thing had been worth while because I had a chance to justify the expense of my HTC phone though the police officer didn't seem that impressed.I then left the station and sent a few joke tweets about the experience and went back to work.
As the day progressed word got round my work site about what had happened and more and more people made jokes with regards to the incident, they reffered to the Mean streets of Banbury and how I would now be taking up arms myself. It was all rather tounge and cheek stuff and became a little bit tidious though i did laught at some of the remarks.
I left work to drive back to Liverpool and as I drove home I got thinking about the situation and how it had come to be, who where the little bastards who shot me and why had they thought it was ok to do so. What fantasy where they living in and where had the ideas come from. I thought back to the riots of a few weeks back and wondered if these moments in time where connected through a social consiousness that somehow has become deriled from the reality of the normal people and now existed in one of playfull drive by shootings in your dads SUV and free stuff from JD Sports shops and Currys Digital.
I reflected on a story I had been told whilst in work of soething that had happened last weekend of how a dad was out riding his bike with his two sons. One of his sons fell off his bike a twisted his ankle, the dad got off his bike to attend to his son who was in agony and whilst he was trying to calm the boy down some little scum bag stole their bikes. If you check the papers its full of these storys, but what I find scary is its not just the papers now its people you know who are telling these tales.
So today I sat at home tried to make some sense of it by doing what I always do and going on You Tube. I typed in Drive By shootings just to see what was out there, I also typed in Scallies, Scumbags Hoodies and Scrotes just to see what else I could dig up. This video is a short montage of the clips I found, Ive also thrown in a clip of J-Roc from "Trailer Park Boys" (which is a satire but of a very real situation).
Ok so anyway I was just a victim of an airgun, some kids role play but its scary that this is a mindset, a reality / fantasy that people seem to want to create and be a part of... It seems this existance is steadily gaining more mass and starting to pull more people into into it like a social super nova and even if the idea of toy guns dosn't scare me... whats on the other side of the black hole certainly does and at this moment I dont see any way out.
Attached is a video I found on You Tube from the riots that took place in the UK last week. This clip was filmed in Manchester. I've stripped down the original soundtrack and replaced it with a track from a Plastikman album called 'Consumed' which I felt was quite fitting to the content. I ask that you watch it and then consider your own thoughts and feelings immediately after watching it. I would appreciate any comments you may have.
What follows are my feelings on this particular video and not on the riots in general which I think are too complicated to digest here in a single blog entry.
This clip of Manchester shows kids, youngsters, the type I see whenever I leave home, all getting in on the action... "gegging in" as we like to call it in certain parts of the North West of England. This particular clip, of all the clips I've seen from the riots,upset me. Not because it shows graphic violence or destruction but because it shows people like those I see on a daily basis behaving like animals, somehow infected, like something out of a horror movie. Having watched this clip I later found myself shopping in my local Tesco supermarket and it wasnt long untill I witnessed the usual cluster of young lads debating which drinks would get them most wasted for their money. However where as normally I may even be tempted to give them some advice, this time I found I couldn't even look them in the face. I felt that these somehow the guys in the You Tube clip and the guys in Tesco had become part of the same group, part of the same "Zombie Nation" that had ravaged our streets days earlier. In my mind all that separated them was their current proximity to the events because it seemed that somhow their mentality appeared no different from those capable of such things. To me they were guilty as where the majority of people I saw in and around town the following day regardless of if it was fact. It seemed everywhere I looked I suddenly saw potential rioters, much in the same way that when I was growing up I remember my Dad had always seen potential drug dealers and burglars on every street corner regardless of any basis to form such a conclusion.
I questioned why i felt this way and I concluded that it was because in my opinion these kids didnt stand a chance. Its a case that their mentality has been cultivated for them over the past decade within a society that has officially become both financially and morally bankrupt.It seems more and more Kids are bringing themselves up with no real role models to focus on just each other and fantasy realities that are being sold by those who see fit to exploit whatever misery they can uncover. These realities have been crafted by merchants of escape who seem to see society more like a farm yard in which they can harvest cash from and not a place that contains real actual people. The lies they pedal are pushed out through the media reiterating a mantra that tells these kids telling they can have it all.
"Whats that... you're not happy with your looks, have plastic surgery... what you have no money... here have a loan... it's like saving... but backwards"...."What your happy with your looks, how about a TV, an ipad, a flat, a car.. you can have just about anything you want, have it all... you deserve it...your special".
It's all wrong and I have been as much a victim as the next person. One things for sure I dont have any answers but I do feel that the problem was let out of Pandoras box a long time ago, and it gets worse with every next wave of individuals who reach an age of lost inocence. If we are to close the box (if thats possible) I think we all need to take responsibility for our own actions and work out how we can fix ourselves after years of being programmed by the great farmers in the sky.Fix the parents and the rolemodels and the icons each look up too and restablish the realities they subscribe too. I dont belive for one second we cant fix these kids or the system overnight but I do feel that one thing thats apparent is that these green fields of England have been abused for way too long; if what we saw last week tells us anything its that our society has toxins within it and that some of these people in our nation are obviously mutating. All the natural goodness has been withdrawn by big buisness and now as the crop stops growing people are freaking out. Like farming big buisness is looking else where and is currently in the process of rotated to pastures new. The next harvest is planned in places like China, India, Brazil, Russia.
One things is for sure, England needs to get back to its grass roots and replenish its soils with the goodness that was once there. If it doesnt it stands no chance of avoiding becoming part of the emerging moral wasteland that is the back end of a failed capatalist system.
Attached is a video I found on You Tube from the riots that took place in the UK last week. This clip was filmed in Manchester. I've stripped down the original soundtrack and replaced it with a track from a Plastikman album called 'Consumed' which I felt was quite fitting to the content. I ask that you watch it and then consider your own thoughts and feelings immediately after watching it. I would appreciate any comments you may have.
What follows are my feelings on this particular video and not on the riots in general which I think are too complicated to digest here in a single blog entry.
This clip of Manchester shows kids, youngsters, the type I see whenever I leave home, all getting in on the action... "gegging in". In particular, of all the clips I've seen, the attached clip upset me. Not because it shows graphic violence or destruction but because it shows people like those I see on a daily basis, somehow they seem to be infected, like something out of a horror movie. Having watched this clip I was later in Tesco and saw the usual cluster of young lads debating which drinks would get them most wasted for their money and I couldn't look them in the face, to me these where part of the same "Zombie Nation" that had ravaged our streets days earlier. All that separated them was their proximity to events as their mentality appeared no different from those capable of such things. To me they were guilty as where the majority of people I saw in and around town the following day. It seemed everywhere I looked I suddenly saw potential rioters, much in the same way that when I was growing up I remember my Dad had always seen potential drug dealers and burglars on every street corner regardless of any basis to form such a conclusion.
These people have had their mentality crafted for them over the past decade within a society that has officially become both financially and morally bankrupt. Kids are bringing themselves up with no role models just each other, and fantasy realities that are being sold by those who see fit to exploit whatever misery they can uncover. These merchants of escape see society more like a farm on which they can harvest, not a place with actual people. They push their lies through the media telling them that they can have it all... "Whats that... you're not happy with your looks, have plastic surgery... what no money... here have a loan... it's like saving... but backwards"...."Need a TV... You can have just about anything you want, have it all... you deserve it".
Pandoras box was opened a long time ago and before we can close it (if thats possible) we all need to take responsibility for our own actions and work out how we can fix ourselves after years of being programmed by the great farmers in the sky. I feel these green fields of England have been abused for too long; the people are obviously mutating. All the natural goodness has been withdrawn and the crop is currently in the process of being rotated to pastures new (China, India, Brazil, Russia). We need to replenish our soils with the goodness that was once there if we want to avoid becoming part of an emerging moral wasteland.
