Tony Blair. Arrested for War crimes?

I'll keep this short and to the point.


Why has Tony Blair not been arrested and charged with war crimes?


He is the living embodiment of everything that is rotten in our society today.

Meanwhile Gardens by Charles Caselton.

One sometimes finds strange things in familiar places, or familiar things in strange places; Charles Caseltons Meanwhile Gardens manages to do both.


In reality Meanwhile Gardens is a plot of land in the shadow of the Trellik tower, adjacent to the Regents Canal. The goldborne road helpfully points to it. It is the kind of place (the name helps too) to sit, watch and wait for stuff to happen; Frequently in life stuff tends to happen elsewhere. Meanwhile in Caseltons novel  is all go.


Marion, the central character, escaping a life she would rather do without and hoping to find some answers, arrives in the neighbourhood; more specifically the cemetry further down the canal. So begins a rough and tumble adventure in North Kensington, an adventure that is larded with wonderful characters in an almost fairy tale world. Surrounded by a 'rag tag' family of strangers she sets about a quest of sorts. Naturally there are highs and lows, there are some great villains too. Tragedy strikes and she must somehow pull through. Of course we must not lose faith.


Caseltons West 11 is not quite as it should be there is the air of a circus to it. There is a lightness of touch to the writing and I get the sense that here is a storyteller who knows his subject (and his manor) well.


Meanwhile Gardens was originally published in blog form. Nothing wrong with that; if Dickens were alive today he would be doing the same, he'd probably nick a few of caseltons characters to boot. There is however a greater sense of pleasure to be gained from holding and digesting a slab of book! 


I'm off to Meanwhile Gardens to wait for stuff to happen...


And before you accuse me of plugging a friends book, I bought my copy, happy I did, which allows me to speak my mind.  It is available in all good book shops.

Legal coke in Notting Hill? Balaclava's for Afghanistan.

Jan Nieupjur writes:


Yesterday as I was openly enjoying my drug of choice; alcohol it occurred to me how silly things have become: Alcohol; Freely available 24 hours a day 7 days a week, endorsed (and used) by the government, cause of more deaths and crimes than all other drugs put together, taxed to the hilt to provide revenue for, among other things, the police, in order that they can spend the majority of their time dealing with alcohol related crime and anti-social behaviour.


When they are not doing that they are obliged to persecute poor underprivileged young people for possession of the drugs of their choice; drugs they use to escape the miserable elitist society we live in. 


Carnival time is a good example of what goes on.


The police state that a 'number' of arrests were made over the weekend, some of them drug related. You can bet that they were picking on the easy targets; the poor black kids with their bits and pieces rather than the thousands of well heeled, predominantly white, coke heads and pill poppers with their pockets full of Colombia's finest!


The bars and parties of Notting Hill were awash with coke, they always are, yet the police do nothing because doing something would be tantamount to opening a massive can of worms.


Because...


The so called drug fiends are in fact middle class society today... Every one is doing it; newspaper editors, the BBC, ITV (what the hey, all TV), the Law, MP's, everyone. 


If they raided one of the smarter places and turned all pockets and bags out there would be enough coke to supply Lithuania's dentists for a year.


But hey, that is not what the police force is for is it! The police are here to protect us from the nasty social no-hopers in their sink estates.


Solution: Legalise drugs. Tax the fuck out of the rich users and spend the revenue on improving the lot of the underprivileged... They wouldn't need drugs then!


We could all sleep safely and happily then. Except of course the coke heads gurning and yabbering the night away. 


Hey, they could knit balaclava's for our boys and girls in Afghanistan while they are at it.

Cheating, gamesmanship, on line Scrabble and the 'Cheat detector'.

I'm a bit busy right now with the forthcoming event. Jan has offered to fill in for me on the blogging front for the next couple of days.  I would like to make it quite clear that his views are not necessarily my views... I take no responsibility for what he writes; he is an old man with an old mans temperament.  Here goes:


I have, in my dotage, taken to playing on-line scrabble (the on-line scrabble arena these days is where the blue rinse brigade try to hook up with widowed accountants and Filipina's look for potential husbands).


I pose as a retired bank manager and have posted a photograph of my least favourite nephew! I find it hard to get through an evening without at least one invitation to 'tea in Eastbourne' or a tryst in the local Holiday Inn. 


One thing I have noticed is that a lot of these demon scrabble players cheat! And if they don't cheat they use gamesmanship tactics that would make Terry Thomas blush. My method of dealing with this is to send them a message of admonishment then immediately withdraw from the game; leaving them with a somewhat hollow 'victory'.

                                                                       Wilson Hsu


You see they are all 'stats' whores; they care more for the records of 'games won' than the actual game... In fact they would much rather not finish a game; finishing a game is incredibly time consuming and invariably ends in defeat.


The 'non English speaking' competitors are obliged to resort to computer programmes to play the game resulting in an extraordinary spurious vocabulary a lot of which is gleaned (by the computer) from scientific dictionaries.  These poor souls do not realise that they have become just another part of the computer software... they are not playing the game, they are purely 'interfacing' between myself and their computer. They receive a stiff message from me which requires no computer programme to understand.


I have a feeling that they will not 'Love me long time' after reading my missives.


I did however 'chat' with a wonderful woman who now lives in a dug out home (literally dug into the ground) in australia. I wish there were more like her!


I am resolved to invent a cheat detector... I sense a fortune coming my way!

Corrine Day. RIP. Another sad, untimely death.

 

Corinne Day, whose frank, unadorned photos of a teenage Kate Mossin the early 1990s helped inaugurate a new era of gritty realism in fashion photography that came to be called “grunge,” died Friday at her home in Denham, a village in Buckinghamshire, England. She was 45.

Dafydd Jones/WireImage

Kate Moss, left, and Corinne Day at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2007.

The cause was a cancerous brain tumor, Susan Babchick, her agent, said.

Ms. Day’s passion to record the most profound human experiences with a camera was never more evident than the day in 1996 when the tumor was discovered after she had collapsed in New York. She promptly asked her husband to shoot pictures of her, and they continued the project through her treatment and decline.

“Photography is getting as close as you can to real life,” she said, “showing us things we don’t normally see. These are people’s most intimate moments, and sometimes intimacy is sad.”

Ms. Day built her reputation on unrelenting visual honesty. She refused to airbrush the bags from under models’ eyes or de-emphasize their knobby knees. She eschewed pretty locations or even studios in favor of shooting people in their own environments.

It added up to a startling detour from the glossy world of supermodels — “subversion,” in Ms. Day’s own phrase.

There were two defining moments along the way, both involving Ms. Moss. The first was in 1990, when some of the first published fashion photographs of Ms. Moss, taken by Ms. Day, appeared in the British magazine The Face. One showed Ms. Moss topless; another suggested she was naked. She wore a mix of designer and secondhand clothes and no makeup over her freckles, and her expression was sincere. The photos seemed to usher in a new age of anti-fashion style. Artlessness became art. Some called it “grunge.”

The second moment, in 1993, was a shoot for British Vogue that featured a pale and skinny Ms. Moss in mismatched underwear. A public outcry ensued, as some claimed that Ms. Moss’s waifish figure seemed to imply she was suffering from an eating disorder or drug addiction.

On her agent’s advice, Ms. Moss stopped working with Ms. Day, with whom she had become close friends. Ms. Day said she was tired of taking fashion pictures, anyway.

“I think fashion magazines are horrible,” she said in an interview with the British newspaper The Observer in 1995. “They’re stale and they say the same thing year in and year out.”

The grunge aesthetic took hold for several years in designer imagery of the 1990s, most visibly in Calvin Klein’s influential fragrance and jeans campaigns, and also in street fashion, with the throwaway style of flannel shirts and distressed jeans, as popularized byKurt Cobain and the burgeoning Seattle music scene.

Ms. Day eventually took fashion photos again, including ones of Ms. Moss that are in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London. But her aspiration was to document the lives of the people she knew best, and her “Diary,” published in 2000, told visual stories, including those of a single mother struggling to survive.

Corinne Day was born in 1965 in Ickenham, a town in west London. She said that her mother had run a brothel and that her father had robbed banks. They divorced when she was 5, and her grandmother raised her. As a girl, she said, she liked to spend hours in the photo booth at Woolworth’s with her friends.

Ms. Day left school at 16, worked briefly as a trainee in a bank, then flew around the world as an airline courier. A photographer she met on a plane suggested that she take up modeling, and she did, for Guess Jeans.

In Japan she met a filmmaker, Mark Szaszy, who taught her to use a camera — they would later marry — and she began taking pictures of the drab private lives of her fellow models, who seemed so glamorous in public.

“There was a lot of sadness,” she said in an interview with The Guardian in 2000. “We couldn’t buy the clothes we were photographed in, couldn’t go out and do the things we would have liked to do as teenagers.”

She took her work to the art director at The Face, who asked her to shoot some fashion pictures. She prowled the modeling agencies with a Polaroid and found Ms. Moss, whom she likened to “the girl next door.” They lived, worked and prospered together for three years.

“Corinne’s pictures, you might say, made Kate, and Kate made Corinne’s reputation,” The Evening Standard said in 2007.

Ms. Day is survived by her husband as well as her parents and two brothers.

Even at the height of her celebrity, in 1993, Ms. Day told The Guardian that her personal sartorial goal was to look “unstyled.”

“I don’t take fashion too seriously,” she said.

Pinball.

A few years ago I was asked to restore an old pinball machine for a friend... It was part of her degree show at St Martins college of Art.

The playing field graphics are by Natasha Griss.

Carnival 2010. No acid attacks then.

From the BBC:

Notting Hill Carnival has drawn to a close - with revellers enjoying a late spell of sunshine on Monday evening.

The clouds and rain that marred Sunday's event were banished, to the delight of crowds.

Police made a total of 230 arrests for a variety of offences over the two days of the carnival, and British Transport Police arrested another 34.

The incidents included two stabbings, but police said overall the festival went "smoothly and to plan".

Two pit bull-type dogs and one Staffordshire-type animal were seized by officers.

Continue reading the main story

Ch Insp Jo Edwards said the event was "marred by a small element".

She said: "Most carnival-goers had a fantastic time, with the large part of the Bank Holiday weekend passing without serious incident.

"For the fourth year there were no firearms incidents and reported crime fell by more than 31% compared to the same stage last year.

"However, as we have seen in previous years, last night saw some people determined to try and ruin it for others who simply wanted to enjoy a day out."

Notting Hill Carnival: Your pictures

A few drums

The view from my roof on Carnival Monday!

A few drums

Rumours of Trouble on Carnival Monday.

The police have been quick to deny the rumours (circulating on twitter) of trouble at the carnival today.

Rumours of acid attacks and a shooting began to circulate on Twitter but were later said by police to be unfounded. A Metropolitan Police spokeperson tweeted: "There have been no reports to police about any acid being thrown or firearms incidents at Notting Hill Carnival."

Hundreds of thousands of revellers have thronged the streets of West London for the first day of carnival today. Over a million people are expected to attend the two-day event, which is second only to Rio Carnival in visitor numbers.

Director of London Notting Hill Carnival Ltd Chris Boothman said: "This weekend is thehighlight of the year for not only the Caribbean community, but also for the many visitors from London and the rest of the country."

According to the Metropolitan Police, a total of nineteen people had been arrested at the carnival as at 4pm today, with most arrests made on drug-related charges.

Although incidents of crime have hit the headlines at Notting Hill over recent years,organisers and police are keen to stress that the event is safe.

Chief Superintendent Mick Johnson of the Territorial Support Group told the BBC: "It's important to remember that crime rates do remain relatively low at carnival, given the thousands of people who attend."

Scaremongers and killjoys posting rumours on Twitter - we reckon they're just jealous. If you're off to carnival tomorrow, have an amazing time!

This was first posted in 'Most wanted': http://www.vouchercodes.co.uk/most-wanted/police-deny-rumours-of-trouble-at-notting-hill-carnival-london-3772.html

Today; Carnival Sunday!

 

9.00 am. The view from the roof.

                                                                  Gaz's Rockin Blues

Apart from the rain showers (fortunately I was safely tucked away in the Tabernacle) Carnival day one went well!


9.00 pm: I have just attended the worst party  imaginable; full of youngsters (fair enough, but why invite sentient beings too in that case) and fairly sad middle aged folk who should have known better... I sat down next to an overweight, over made up, over indulged middle aged woman who informed me she was 'too tired' to talk. she was, however, not too tired to ask where the quavers were.


I was handed a beer of the variety that through it's sheer cheapness, leeches out any sense of enjoyment and, through it's weakness, and through some strange osmosis or capillary action, sucks out any alcohol already in the body... the fat plain woman, I was told, had a rich husband and for that reason must be respected; bollocks, the husband deserves a great deal of respect for putting up with her in the sober light of day 24-7, what the fuck he was thinking about when he married and impregnated her boggles the mind. She was truly appalling..


I left.


Now, outside my window, thousands of drunks are exploring that place that exists the wrong side of 'time to go home'.



Carnival!!!


rumours have been circulating since this afternoon of impending acid attacks and shootings tomorrow. Let us hope they are groundless.

Notting Hill Carnival 'After parties'. The Source Magazine.

Are you coming to Carnival? Do you need to know where the best parties are after the carnival has melted into the barrio's and bars of W11, W2 and W10 each evening?


Check out 'the Source' at:http://www.thesourcemag.net/

It is also THE Source of all local action throughout the year.

All Saints Road, last years whistle and the economy.

All Saints Road last night was great fun! The photograph is rubbish but I'm not a photographer. 

I called in at the Cow at the end of the evening and an interesting point was raised; Carnival spirit is most certainly linked to the economy; the tougher the times, the more determined to party! This year should be a good one.


My first party invitation is for 11.30 am tomorrow. If one had the inclination (and stamina) one could party solidly for 48 hours.


I have dug out last years whistle.

Peep peep!

Notting Hill Carnival: D day minus 2. Panorama.

After days of miserable weather it looks as if it might cheer up for the occasion.


This evening sees the Mangrove steel band playing in All Saints Road. W11. Tomorrow the band will compete in the 32nd Notting Hill Panorama in Kensal Road (off Ladbroke Grove) W10. Where the 'champion' band will be decided from the best bands in Britain.  It starts at 5.00 in the afternoon. check it out It's free.

'Ebony' another local band are the guys to beat having won the thing 18 times...