view from the cheap seats

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READERS ON THIS, MY 200th POST

Enough is enough! Seems like all I do when I'm not at work is bitch about work and hence it slowly eats my life. So here's to the good old days, politics, society and the world around me, (through a dense and fragrant cloud obviously )

Not so long since we had a spell of seriously hot weather which, one afternoon, was punctuated by an absolutely torrential rain storm. I was inside at the time and remember thinking that I'd never seen rain like it in this country: great sheets of water thrashing sideways against the building.

Anyway, walking up the road later that day I noticed that each drain cover I passed now sat amid a wide oval of foul smelling debris. Clearly the sheer volume of water flowing through the drains had been such that it had lifted the covers off, coughing some pretty evil water out onto the surface.

Now since then the varied but entirely gross litter has been removed, (possibly by the council but it may have just blown away in the wind to be honest.) The ovals marked out by that unsanitary eruption are still clearly visible in some cases however.

Basically the covers located on areas of grass are now framed by areas of lush thick green. taller, darker and thicker. The plant life immediately surrounding these recently violated covers clearly enjoyed the experience. Something hideous had, in time, become the exact opposite and was actually better off than if the original awful event hadn't taken place.

Putting this to one side for a moment, I'll move on to Charles Clarke. Last night I saw a TV interview he gave (to Newsnight I think,) recently in which he laid out what seemed to be some pretty honest, if measured, criticism of his successor and Blair.

Regular readers will notice I have referred to the former Home Secretary by his actual name rather than as Santa's retarded cousin, the affection nickname he earned on this blog during his brief spell in office. I must admit that he came across in a much more favourable light, though of course it's much easier to seem calm and sensible a few months after the event.

What occurred to me watching the piece however, was the way in which the BBC billed the piece. The overall gist seemed to be that Clarke had been ousted too soon. The suggestion seemed to be that, had he been given the chance to follow his plans through for the four years he'd planned for, he would have been able to bring about the serious reforms the Home Office is crying out for.

I found this particularly interesting as I'm pretty sure that the BBC, along with the rest of the media, were at the centre of the campaign to take Clarke's scalp. Had he argued the same case at the time, and to be fair maybe he did, the media wouldn't have listened to a word of it.

I'm reminded of a conversation I've had with my father, (an aging hippy journalist,) several times. He pointed out to me that when Woodward and Bernstein brought down the Nixon administration it was great for the US at the time but they also released a pretty dangerous beast. Some major quarters of the media today now seem to see it as their purpose in life not to hold the executive to account, but rather to simply drive politicians out of office on a regular basis.

Anyway, it also occurred to me that the reason Charles Clarke was given the opportunity to, and felt comfortable in giving such an interview was BECAUSE he had left the Home Office in disgrace just a few months before.

That's what made it an interesting story for the BBC, it's also what gave him his unique and risk free perspective. Something shitty for all concerned developed into a great bit of PR for him, an interesting story for the BBC and a unique insight into the Home Office for the rest of us.

So now let's talk about consumer capitalism, (aren't tangents great?)

I've written plenty, though not as much as millions of others, about the wide variety of negative consequences of the system of consumer capitalism currently creeping its way towards covering our entire planet. There are of course some positives as well.

For all the horrendous impact of this system it has given rise to some fantastically useful advances, particularly in technology. Now I'm increasingly thinking that a radical shift away from centralised power structures and materialism is the only way for us to move forward as a race. I'm also aware that while such words may be anathema to the mainstream, more and more people are leaning the same way, especially in the southern hemisphere.

Within these circles then it may not be too popular to admit but I'm wondering if this brutal orgy of killing and selling might actually be a necessary step along the road. Just like a couple of days of shit in the streets or a few weeks of bad press, maybe the nightmare of genocidal economics is but a temporary sting holding within it the seeds of something great.

The growth of the internet, let's face it, has been driven mainly by commerce, specifically advertising. Fair enough, credit where it's due. Of course this doesn't mean that this was the only way the internet could have come about, or that we need to continue in the same way to keep it.

What we have is the most powerful comms tool in the known universe and, now we have it, we can use it as we please. In fact one aspect of technology, again mainly driven by big business, that I notice time and again is the removal of the need for representatives.

The idea of democracy is hinged around a single, fundamental assumption, it is impossible to have a referendum on every little thing, ie. there are too many people to all be involved in the governing process. As technology allows more people to communicate directly with one another, and educate themselves, without the need to travel or occupied shared space, this assumption begins to break down.

Now it has often been said that a true capitalist will sell you the rope with which to hang him. A slightly less viscous way of looking at this is to say that the achievements of the capitalist system may in fact be the very things needed for a new and superior way of life to become dominant.

Who knows, maybe I'm making the religious man's error of confusing desperate hope with reality, and his god knows I do need some hope at the moment. With this admission in place however, I still feel my reasoning and comparisons are valid.

So fuck us vs them, railing against the system and fighting the rich, it's all just another flavour of elitism. Let's just look a what we've got and how it we can use it to achieve what we want. I admit that to SMASH THE SYSTEM would be much more fun. I'm increasingly convinced, however that as I keep saying the admittedly less catchy, SUBVERT THE SYSTEM is, in the end, our only option.

The problem with listening to my favourite band of all time while trying to write is that they're just too good. I'm six minutes into the last track on the album and only just starting to put this post down., better later than never I guess.

Anyway, let's crack on because, as usual at the moment, I am knackered. Bit more work related stuff first off, (what else is there?) We've been advised recently that we're not using crime numbers anymore and I believe, but cannot currently confirm, that the police themselves have requested that we no longer ask council tenants to get crime numbers.

It is my understanding that the aim of this suggested practice is to reduce recorded crime figures. I'm wondering now if, in the months to come, we are going to hear of 'great steps forward' and 'significant improvements,' in 'reducing' antisocial behaviour and petty crime in urban areas.

Shit on crime, tough on the appearance of crime.

Now if this is indeed what the police are doing then it's tempting to hurl a whole bundle of abuse at them and forget about the wider picture. I view the police the same way I view our military personnel: each one of them makes a conscious choice to be part of an enforcement machine and therefore bears some responsibility for the impact of that machine on the world.

This said however, police and soldiers do not make laws or start wars, they just enforce them and fight them and I've respect for anyone prepared to risk their lives for what they believe to be right. The notion of putting the appearance of an issue before the reality brings us neatly to the people actually steering these machines.

So we're getting some new laws, that's right, some more. Apparently our legal system is all screwed up, but it's always been this way so it's not fair to blame our present government. This is ok though because, as I say, we're getting some new laws that are going to make everything as it should be.

Our systems aren't underfunded or weighed down by insane bureaucracy, or even undermined for short term political gain, no what it is, is that 'the whole thing is tilted in favour of the criminal rather than the victim.'

Now I do find this interesting because, as I understood it, criminality only comes into it at the very end of the process. There's certainly a victim from the start, but isn't the other guy supposed to be innocent until the end of the trial?

Perhaps what is meant by that curios phrase is that the system is stacked in favour of the accused innocent rather than the victim. Or maybe it is suggesting that the imbalance is all crammed into the back end of the process. After the conviction, it may be saying, we are just too nice to those we find guilty.

If this is the idea, and I confess to still not being sure, then can someone explain to me why we have such an enormous prison population? (relatively speaking, one of the highest in Europe I think.) And when you've done that could you then talk me through how increasing that population is going to make things any better.

In the end I think, rather than trying to decipher such words, it's easier to just put them down to more of the same: putting the appearance before the reality. It's not about how things are, it's about how things look.

So what's the third example? The final slice of post, someone prioritising image over fact? Well, I think I'm going to have to say: me. I do it all day, every day. My focus is maintaining a convincing facade, of sustaining an alternate identity.

Whether it's playing the clean living and reliable employee or saying 'yeah, I'm fine' when I'm really not, most of what I actually say during a day is bullshit. Of course it's necessary, necessary for an easier life anyway.

When my boss asks me what I did with the weekend I could be honest, I could say, "I did a load of drugs and thought about how little I wanted to see this place ever again." And when my peer on the phones asks if I'm ok I could say, "miserable actually, I'm falling apart, how are you?"

I could be honest, but I can't help but think this might invoke an slight air of tension into the workplace. I guess the point here is that we all do it, we all play off people's responses and allow our behaviour to be defined, to some extent, by the appearance of a situation.

We are creatures weak and flawed. Despite this however, we achieve both great and wonderful things and we do this by the working together. Through co-operation we combine our strengths and cancel out each others weaknesses, this is what have evolved to do.

Why then, do we see flaws of personality, failings of an individual nature affecting our, supposedly, most widely inclusive body, our democratically elected parliament?

I've written before about my opinion of our 'democracy', that instead of electing representatives we employ a management elite to run our nation for us. I could bang on about that for pages more I'm sure, but now's not the time to retread old ground.

Instead I'll defer to a far greater writer than myself and recount a brief overview of Asimov's Foundation trilogy, three quite astounding must read books for anyone interested in how human society functions and develops.

The trilogy spans a vast era of time during which various forces rise and wane over both the bowed and shaking heads of humanity. There is the aristocracy, then religion, then practical idealism and eventually economics. As with all truly great writers, science fiction or otherwise, Asimov made me turn to the title page to check the publishing date.

Ahead of his time is too feeble a phrase, let's just say it's creepy to read someone's past predictions while knowing that they have since come so very, very true. Anyway, beyond economics, there was yet another force, the most powerful yet, the force of celebrity.

Now I'll ask you to draw your own parallels and conclusions from this, (because I can't be bothered to spell it out and godamnit I'm not here to hold your hand! ) All I will say is that it seems obvious to me that a system based around individuals rather than groups is going to be more vulnerable to those aforementioned, individual-type flaws.

So that's it, there're your three for today. I'm off to smoke and play on the XBOX until I forget how much work I have to do at the office and how little I've got done here. I mean, my whole image on this blog is of a depressed and frustrated stoner writer. I can't very well say I'm off to be really active and happy can I, how would that look?

For those beginning to wonder, I am still here.

Work's been a real grind of late and I've just been bouncing along the bottom, working and sleeping. Received a surprise, but most welcome visit from my bro GeordieKeith this weekend however and that reminded me what life's all about. I guess mammoth sessions of drugs, computer games and boundless conversation are just what I'm all about really.

Work was nothing more than an ugly blur today, the best part of me stayed in bed I think, had more sense. It's funny, in a way, but I'd been having the most mindbending nightmares over the last week or so when the stress was on me and I wasn't smoking.

Though I happily let the details drift away from me upon waking I do recall a recurrent theme. Every so often I have dreams that are so real the only way I can tell the difference is that I know I'm dreaming. When the dream is a bad one it's an unpleasant feeling, trying to wake myself up to escape , but whatever the circumstance it's a weird feeling.

Your senses seem to be telling you utterly convincing things and the only way you know it's not real is vague memory of there being some other world. At work today, sat at my desk in a daze, I found myself struck by the exact same feeling. None of it seemed real, which is probably why it was so easy for me not to give a fuck.

Anyway, thanks to Mary and this little cat sleeping in my lap and one very pissed Geordie, I'm feeling better than I was. The will and ability to think is returning and with it comes a post.:

All three things today come from work but hey, work with what you've got I say. To start of quickly, I've recently come to see a senior manager in my department in a different light. Basically I've realised that while he talks the talk, and fuck me can he do that, when it comes to actual work he knows nothing.

What he is good at is taking credit for the work of those under him and what's now also clear is that not only is that how he's got to be where he is, but that the higher he has climbed the better his tactics have worked. He's a lovely guy but a nightmare to work with and, to use a phrase he's rather fond of, as long as he's a hole in his arse he'll be a bad manager.

He doesn't mean what he says, he's bullshitting, he doesn't even know what he's saying.

Now, moving seamlessly into the second point, unless you count this as a seam, shit, anyway, if you were in my office and asked me for my job title I'd tell you, "why I'm an Admin Support Officer of course." The thing is that would be a lie.

Basically our chief exec left a few months back and the decision has been made to stretch the existing management team to fit. This has meant a whole shed load work has been 'delegated' and I'm sure you can guess where a lot of it's ended up.

I'm currently doing my own job and a lot of what our Property Manager and Information Officer would be doing, if we had them. Now in a few months there's supposed to be an Information Officer post being created in our team, so doing this work now puts in me good stead for that. The fact remains however that I'm doing work way above and beyond my job description.

As a result my line manager has put wheels in motion to change me to an Assistant Information Officer and move me up a pay scale. (That other manager I mentioned tried to pass this off to me as his idea by the way.) The upshot of all this is that I'm getting more money than my peers, but I'm not allowed to tell anyone.

I mean what I say when I tell you I'm an Admin Support Officer, I'm just lying. What I say is not what I know.

Last week I had half a day out of the office at our quarterly staff briefing, (a good way for me to keep track of how much of my life I'm pissing away here.) This time there was only one issue to be discussed: the forthcoming merger of housing ALMOs in Leeds.

Council housing is currently managed by six Arm's Length Management Organisations but this system is to be revised into one, two or three ALMO's. Basically we had half a day and a free lunch to discuss and feedback the pros and cons of each option.

The ALMO boards and council wanted our unique perspective on the issue before putting the decision to our tenants in a ballot. we had a presentation before splitting up into smaller discussions groups, mismatched chairs, A-boards and multicoloured markers, you know the scene.

Now to be honest I wasn't really up for this, a mountain of work and no restful sleep had reduced my usually tolerant nature to the point where I just couldn't be arsed. The only points I thought of were raised by other people so I just sat back.

It wasn't until the chair was wrapping up and asked each person in turn if they had anything to add that anything really worth saying occurred to me. I asked if the tenant's decision would be final and was told is almost certainly would be. Then I asked who would be presenting the potions to the tenants and was told it would be the strategic landlord, (I think this is the body that oversees all the ALMOS).

More or less thinking out loud I followed the line of reasoning I'd opened. The strategic landlord will have a preference as to which option is chosen and so will simply present this as the best for the tenants. As I said, starting to be a bit annoyed by what I was realising, the tenants don't give a monkeys about the structure as long as it delivers service.

The decision has already been made! Nothing we said would have any impact as, despite appearances, the power was entirely in someone else's hands. As the group broke up to return to the closing presentation and lunch there grumbles of agreement spread through the group. The merger will almost certainly mean job cuts, which are much easier to sell if you can pretend that the staff themselves were instrumental in the decision.

They didn't mean what they said when they told us they wanted to listen, they were covering their ass. They didn't say what they hoped we wouldn't know.

So it seems like there's a whole bunch of reasons not believe anything anyone says, ever. But that's not enough is it? If, instead of dismissing what you hear all together, you try and work out where that anyone is coming from maybe you can decode some degree of truth, or at least useful information, from the nonsense being spouted.

We all have our own agenda and it's impossible not to let it skew our view. The fact that some people try AND SUCCEED in pulling off some quite breathtaking bullshit can only be taken as a sign that people are forgetting this. In fact come to think of it, religion, politics and economics pretty much all come down to getting people to believe things that aren't true.

Damn man, we've been getting screwed since forever, it has to stop! We can't go on just taking people's words at face value, we have to start actually thinking about what we're doing. To this end I'd like you all to email me all your credit card numbers, pin numbers, DoBs etc to start a fund to stop this sort of thing...

Standing at the bus stop this afternoon I was thinking to myself how utterly unnatural is was to spend days like these inside. What was the point of millions of years of evolution and millennia of painstaking technological progress just to end up lacking things we took for granted as chimps?

Ok, there's the vent, here's the post. I am, after all, a creature of habit.

There was a feature on BBCN24 tonight about the security of modern cars. Basically it's now so hard to break into your average new high end motor that thieves don't bother. Great stuff, technology making things better etc etc.

Of course the down side is that thieves are now far more likely to target older, shitter cars, ie. the ones most people can afford. While this technology improves the lot of a minority of people, the way it comes about actually makes things worse for everyone else. Watching this it struck me that this is the kind of thing that counts as progress in our society today.

Another feature on BBCN24, (there's just nothing else on TV,) described how a wider variety and greater volume of work was being exported to India. A bit of idle pondering led me to see this oft reported issue in a different and much wider light.

We're basically introducing a limited number of, relatively high paid jobs into the country. With these jobs, and the consumers they create, comes the rest of the west, supermarkets, brands etc etc. The thing is there are far more people than these industries can employ so pretty swiftly you get a disturbingly familiar three tier system.

there's a tiny group of guys right at the top who own and run the businesses.

there's a much larger group, though still a minority, of people in 'well paid' jobs,

there's everyone else, with nowhere to go and nothing to do,

Sound familiar? It seems that we're exported much more than jobs here. It'd be almost nice to think that we're spreading this system and remaking other nations in our own image. I say nice because the, more realistic, alternative is that we're actually just former victims of this system, already utterly conquered. We are not remaking anyone in our image, the system is remaking us all in its own.

Nice huh?

Well these two recent thinking points married up quite nicely with a concept long established in my mind. Capitalism claims to use competition as an engine for progress. The flaw in this, once seen, is painfully obvious.

While competition can drive progress for certain groups, the winners, it can only do so at the expense of others, the losers. If competition is your engine then there is no way EVERYONE can succeed. In this system the only way to get anywhere else is to climb over other people.

What we're talking about here, however, is more than just capitalism. This goes beyond economics, this is a mindset, an ideology and, as is often case with mindsets and ideologies, a system of social control. What the two issues mentioned above demonstrate is that:

a) Far from offering opportunity our current way of life is geared towards keeping people in their place. Money is used to improve the lot of the few at the expense of the rest. Of course this makes it harder for the rest to join the privileged few and so we spiral downwards.

b) This new financial faith is spreading across the world. The religious and political beliefs that prove most effective at centralising power and controlling people are generally the most successful. There are, after all, always people looking for a big stick to beat those around them.

This latest stick has been custom built and is trimmed down to the essence. Gone is the pretence of morality or even the need to justify actions. This stick beats not in the name of some invisible god or intellectual ideal but in its own name. It is its own motive, method and reward.

Now I don't know about you but I find that to be some scary shit. Of course it's no good just bitching, we need alternatives, escape routes, a selection of other ways. I'd say exploring some of these might just take another post or two but I did here something on the local news recently that might be a start.

Some ordinary working bloke at a factory kept getting headaches and falling over. He tried various things but nothing seemed to help until his boss suggested that maybe he should get a scan. Unfortunately he found that the NHS waiting lists were prohibitively long and there was no way he could afford to go private.

What happened? Every single employee chucked some money in a hat and they sent him for his scan. The private scan found he had a brain tumour but luckily caught it in time to operate and save his life. The guy didn't drop down dead because the people around him each did their own little bit. Sounds good to me.

All things must come to an end and it saddens me to report that Elephant Books(1) will soon be closing its doors for the last time. Every single book is currently half price but once it's gone it's gone, so if you're in or near Leeds get yourself down there.

I was up there the other day and was talking to a friend about what I'm currently reading, ('Out' by Natsuo Kirino) I related how, some time ago, I had realised that almost everything I read was written by white AngloAmerican guys.

As a result I made a conscious effort to try and read literature both from further afield and written by women. I must admit I've done better with the first than the second, though Natsuo Kirino is a woman. Anyway, the reason this was important to me was that what I read plays a significant part in making me who I am.

I felt it was important to get as wide a range of viewpoints as possible, to gain a better understanding of things I can/have never experience/d. I already had an interest in some aspects of Asian culture through computer games, martial arts films and animation so this seemed like a good place to start.

I left this particular visit to the elephant with two books under my arm. One was a collection of short stories by a young Native American guy, a culture I've long been interested in but have only ever heard of rather than from. The second was by an old South African guy , again somewhere far removed from my own everyday life.

Now I stand by everything I've said so far but, during this now overly vaunted visit to my favourite second hand bookshop, I began to realise that my viewpoint required another adjustment. I was talking about having watched the first episode of 'Spiral', a French crime thriller that was apparently huge across the channel.

It was interesting enough for me to want to see the next one, (I know I've missed it, I'll catch the repeat,) but one thing in particular really stuck in my head. Rather than pondering the plot or the characters I spent most of the episode trying to work out just how the fuck the French legal system works.

What really struck me was how significantly alien the show looked and felt. In my search to find variety and people with lives different to myself I had pretty discounted Europe and the US out of hand. Watching 'Spiral' however I realised that even these guys next door, with whom we have a longer and more closely tangled history than anyone else, have a viewpoint distinct enough to be valuable.

A couple of points made, maybe I'll just leave it there...

...no ok, I can't, so third and finally:

I went out on my second ever site visit at work today. For those who don't know I'm only a mentally ill, dope smoking writer by night. During the day I'm a mentally ill, dope smoking civil servant. It pays the bills. Anyway I spend my days arranging and facilitating the repair and maintenance of council properties.

Now sometimes there are leaks in blocks of flats and, unlike houses, these can cause huge damage to lots of properties if left unchecked. Sometimes, however, it's not always possible to get hold of people to make an appointment to get into a property. It's usually just people who work nights but sometimes they'll be on holiday or they'll have done a bunk or worse.

In order to avoid putting other tenants through the ordeal of water damage etc, (and to avoid getting sued,) we are allowed, having given 24 hours notice, to force entry to properties to fix the problem. Anyway I arrange all this and today my boss and I went out to oversee just such an operation.

There were various things about the state of the interior that suggested our tenant had fled in a panic and left the country. Now it has to be said that I never hear from the vast majority of our tenants who probably live their lives much as I do.

It is also true however, that many of the people I do hear from have their front doors kicked in on a very regular basis, by the police if they're lucky, by 'persons unknown' if not. These people live in the same city as me, in fact some of them quite literally round the corner.

These people's lives are utterly different to mine, lacking things I take so much for granted I didn't even recognise their existence, like being able to sit in my front room and feel safe behind by front door. Thinking further I realise that during another recent visit to Elephant I bumped into a homeless mate of mine.

I hadn't seen him for months and, based on the state he was in on that last occasion I had started to fear the worst. I am very glad to be able to say that he had put some weight on and looked much stronger. But here was someone right in front of me who's everyday routine I couldn't even imagine.

Once recognised this concept spread out through my life in great ripples. After my site visit I returned to the office. Most of the people I work with began their careers as craftsmen and while they may not have much in the way of academic education there isn't much they don't know about what they do.

Having spent most of my life in streamed formal education and then working in a shop among an almost exclusively disillusioned-graduate workforce I have had distinct lack of contact with anyone beyond my own peer group.

I've enjoyed getting to know my work colleagues and I continue to enjoy working with them. As well as this though I feel lucky to have the chance to get to know and understand people who've led lives different my own, it shows in the way they think and work and there's plenty I can learn from them.

I realise now I'm not really sure where this is going but I guess there're are a few basic points to take away from these semi-random notes:

you don't have to look to the other side of the globe to find a different world, you walk through thousands every day,

the stories of most of the people around us are not being told, where're the books and the art from council estates rather than about them? not in our mainstream, that's for sure,

while reading about people different to yourself can be eye opening, actually meeting and sharing something with such people is not only more informative but much more pleasant as well,

footnote

(1) to find out how to get to Elephant Books just take a quick look http://underthecheapseats.blog.co.uk and hit the ELEPHANT BOOKS tag.