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The Plutocracy of Everything

The only people who won't be feeling the pinch (economically wise) right now are the corporate leaders and CEO's of the world. Sure, on paper it looks like they're suffering, but they've separated their personal assets years ago, obviously because they could afford sound advice.

I and Chris had a dream years back, we'd make a million or so, move somewhere with a fairer legal system, a sense of community, a culture, France say, and we'd become self-sufficient. We'd raise some kids and animals, I'd paint, she'd plant, design and write. Things would be just peachy.

The problem is the price of freedom, or rather escape from the sceptic isle is rising everyday. Americans don't for the main part care about the value of the dollar ,perhaps they should take a look at Zeitgeist: Addendum, by Peter Joseph, essentially money is debt. However most Americans will never leave their shores, but unlike a lot of cultural snobs I don't blame them, sure it's filled with guns, but at least they've got some space there, a Bill of Rights, mountains, countryside where it isn't desert, even a few ghost towns to haunt when you're repossessed. What do we have in the UK?

Well we have a CCTV camera per 14 people, practically a police state i.e a collective of more than a dozen people can be classed as public disorder, no money, no prospects, no natural resources (unless you count some wind in Scotland and the sea - that happens when you live on an island). We're over-populated, probably up there with Japan by now, and most of us seem to insist on living in the South East. There are laws and guidelines for everything, Labour just released rules on how to look after pets I believe. We have no bill of rights, no constitution, we aren't citizens, we are subjects of the Queen, who by the way is one of the richest people in the world? We are polluted, we have a lack of infrastructural funding, in fact Thatcher sold most of it off and what was left Blair and Brown took loans of the rest i.e PFI - a 'partnership' which means that companies and corporations will end up owning every new school and hospital in Britain.

The list is endless but the worst of all is our innate disrespect for the Arts. At school over 90% of the kids there would end up in an office job, mainly banking, some would have a knack for science and go on to Oxford or Cambridge, if their parents had the money. The few of us with an artistic talent were forced to study subjects they knew we'd fail, I had to take two sciences and German, I failed them all. Now the joke is, and not a very funny one, the arts industry, the music industry, the film and TV industry, writers, poets, illustrators, designers, artists in general collectively make as much if not more in tax revenue for the UK as the precious Square Mile, Gordon Brown's beloved financial sector.

Has Obama got a brother? We could do with ousting our current unelected dictator and vote someone in young enough to understand that Britain needs a serious overhaul. The Industrial Revolution, The Empire, Our History, it's done and dusted. We have nothing but our imagination and that for the main part is being supressed by a new dictat, a pseudo-fascist regime, what's sadder still is they, however evil, don't actually have any form of vision, good nor bad. It's all based on fear, fear of failure, and as I have suspected for a while now, fear of social unrest.

How long will it take, how much more will the British public be pushed before they rise up, most likely it won't even happen in my lifetime, maybe not yours, but one day this place is going to completely fall apart and then it won't be so much a Blitz spirit as a Blitzkrieg spirit. I can't imagine every generation of this land bending over one after another and taking it where the sun don't shine.

I know it's revolutionary talk, I don't really mean it, honest guv, please don't attach those electrodes to my arrggghhhh...

Posted by Paul Baines on 11/14/08 | tags: British Britain Revolution Political pop-culture democracy History uk London government Labour BROWN economy graffiti/street-art




OBEY in the UK

Stamford - The Finest Stone Town in EnglandEver heard of Stamford? A sleepy little town, well hardly even that, around 100 miles north of London, Stamford, as their website exclaims is ‘The Finest Stone Town in England’. You get the picture, cobbled streets and babbling brooks, pretty… dull. It’s nearer Peterborough than London, but I can fully understand why they wouldn’t want to mention that, Peterborough was a heavy contributor to some of my earliest moments of deep depression, if you don’t think architecture can damage your (mental) health take a look at the Corn Exchange next time you’re there. No, in fact don’t, just don’t go there at all. i used pass by on visits my old Nan in Cambridgeshire, the yearly seasonal greetings trek with Mum and my sister as a child. It was supposed to be a treat I reckon, but I think it was something more to do with the parents’ divorce and Dad’s minimal visiting rights and wages at the time. Nicky, my long-time estranged sister (we don’t get on) didn’t mind, but she’d never really liked dad, or men for that matter,. She hadn’t even invited him to her wedding a few years back, she’s divorced now, too.

Let’s skip the biography, my parents married young, they divorced young, end of - the fact is another poor soul recently had to venture up that way, the flattest place in Britain. His name’s Shepard Fairey, you might know him better as the street art impresario behind the mammoth ‘Obey Giant‘, a stencil nut and prodigious defacer of public property, (for the good of mankind mind you). Let me just knock you to the side one more time, I received a frighteningly conformist comment at my post regarding the UK Government’s defacing of Banksy’s work, I let it through, I’m not a blog fascist, but if you really want to tow the UK Government’s line (this guy was from the USA by the way, and a so-called Banksy fan), don’t tell me how much we should respect the law. I’m getting too long in the tooth to be lectured by a transatlantic authority-loving whipper-snapper on how to behave. No, I don’t run around spraying stencils all over the shop, but that doesn’t mean when a modern phenomenon of the scene does, I have to ignore it. There’s enough censorship in the U.K as it is. Remember Americans, we Brits have no Bill of Rights, no Constitution, we are subjects not citizens, all we have are words and pictures, so just let it be.

Peterborough - Come for the architecture - stay for the atmosphereBack to Shepard, so there he is, late October, flying over to the U.K, dreaming of the bright-lights of London, you can just imagine the phone call that dragged him here, "Hey Obey guy, come and make your name in Britain - we love you more than Banksy! Yes that’s right, London. Yes Stamford is in London, yes just a short ride on the tube… Peterborough? Never heard of it!"

So he turns up, suitcases full of stencils, the cans no doubt confiscated by the anally-retentive terrorist-phobic customs officers at the airport - still they don’t mind probing where the sun don’t shine. There he is, a hero of the graffito world waiting to be picked up, and taken to… Stamford - "The Finest Stone Town in Britain".

Still he made a good job of it, he filled a derelict basement-cum-music-dive into something worth seeing, check out the photos, and yes, they do have cameras in Stamford

Obey Peterborough Council

 

The saddest thing of all is that they even convinced him to stencil up a few Perterborough hotspots too. I wonder if their council will be debating the credibility of Fairey’s art now he’s back home across the pond. Like I said again and again, most places would kill for a piece of art, as long as it’s not the backyard of the British Government.

State Sponsored Vandalism

Peterborough - Getting Down Wiv The Kidz

Tags: architecture, art, Banksy, Britain, Cambridgeshire, Corn Exchange, council, England, government, graffiti, graffito, grim up north, London, mental health, OBEY, Obey Giant, Peterborough, Shepard Fairey, Stamford, State Approved, state control, UK, USA, vandalism

Related posts

Posted by Paul Baines on 11/13/08 | tags: OBEY Shephard Fairey installation graffiti/street-art





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