David Barrie

Boys wearing England shirts

i found a new door
i didn't know where it went
i went through
i came out in this shopping mall where
boys wear england shirts
and west ham shirts and arsenal shirts
and the boys from dagenham wear jackets
called harlem
grinning at the door at the
Ann Summers sex shop
it's st. georges day
and all the old people smile
the young people look hungry
looking for a new door

Bit up-itself, aulde skool but still (kind of) brilliant lyrics from 'Ring Road', a track on Underworld's new album Oblivion with Bells. (Yes, they're still alive - just.)

Described by one reviewer as like a

drunken, rambling dad caught in the early morning detritus of some ethno-disco gone wrong.

Background noise

This is the infamous image of a group of students relaxing in the sun on September 11, 2001, unaware of the events behind them. The picture was taken by Thomas Hoepker of Magnum Pictures less than an hour after the planes had struck the World Trade Centre (and the subject of much angst-ridden discussion on the fate of photojournalism last year.)

Below is one of the brilliant pictures taken by photographer Arnold Genthe of the earthquake in San Francisco in 1906.

Both pictures show human dis/engagement with disaster.

The first picture's shocking: but it suffers from the usual weird, cool, self-referential photographic thing, where image-making, rather than the image itself is what counts.

The second picture has all the excitement of the sensational, laced with Cronenberg car crash voyeurism. Over time it has also acquired a mega layer of 'dejeuner sur l'herbe' irony.

In both pictures, disaster is background scenery.

Which is the more comic? And which the more tragic?

Your glimpsed lash....

Your glimpsed lash is like a fault in the view-finder,
a shadow of your self
                                          falling
through the sky's
                                  widening lens.

From Trumpeldor Beach by Fiona Sampson in the latest collection of her poetry.

Image from Naomi Morlan at Flickr.

End of the Pier show

Submission dates loom for international designs for a seaside development that will revive the derelict Birnbeck Pier in Weston-super-Mare, England.

According to the design brief, go-go developer Urban Splash plans to turn the area in to a beautiful and awe-inspiring destination.

In this week's real estate magazine Estates Gazette [subscription required] there's an interview with a another developer who has plans for Fleetwood Pier in Lancashire that include a new complex of 85 apartments.   

In the interview, Mike Simmons says

The exciting thing about piers is the real sense of quirky Englishness about them. It's brilliant to use these sites and maximise the incredible views they give, both looking out to sea and back at the land.

Elsewhere in the country, a hotel restauranteur has bought Suffolk's Southwold Pier to turn part of it in to two-bedroom holiday apartments with rooftop terraces and balconies.

What's happening to the quirky Englishness of the seaside pier?

Sounds to me like it's becoming a platform for buildings, flash design, well-heeled Captain Pugwash-types and wannabe Santa Barbarans.

I've no problem with that. It would be fab to live on Southwold Pier. I could be branch officer of a 'wannabe Santa Barbarans' fan club. And most piers in the U.K. are savannahs on stilts.

But the combination of Urban Splash's plans and Simmon's comments does give a little peek in to the cultural fate of quirky Englishness.

It's starting to sound like Prada backfilled with Les Dawson. A space, not a trait. A trendy, up-scale platform for real estate development, rather than gauche, incompetent Austin Powers or Mr Bean.

Is something profound going on? Or is it just crap marketing by the developers?

Who explodes urban myths?

Several years ago, I was asked to research a documentary film on snuff movies. Problem was that because of obscenity laws, I couldn't watch what pretended to be 'the real thing' in the U.K., so had to fly to Amsterdam, book a hotel room, go down the video shop, then double-check that room service would be left at the door.

Another time, while making a film in West Africa, the looney tunes former President of Liberia refused requests to be interviewed, telling the country's national newspaper that my camera was a laser gun fully armed for his assassination.

Both of these experiences are about nonsense behaviour and popular fiction. But they're also about the persistence and ingenuity required to promote or defeat cynicism.

On 17th July 2003, Tony Blair's 'Efficiency Czar' made a presentation to the Cabinet of the U.K. Government on their progress on targets. The presentation by Michael Barber centered on ten key lessons - and is reproduced in his new memoirs.

Lesson 9 holds more than a useful thought for anyone involved in laying the cables of social, economic and cultural change. You may even think of having it sewn to the inside of your pocket.

Under the heading

Lesson 9: Extraordinary discipline and persistence are required to defeat the cynics

Barber's first bullet point:

Who explodes urban myths?

Hole in the Wall

Great news from Broadcast's Format Focus [subscriber's only]  is that Japanese game-show Hole in the Wall is about to be snapped up by the U.K. TV market:

Teams of three play for a cash prize by forming their bodies into various extremely tricky shapes in order to fit through oddly shaped "holes in a wall".

Call it human Tetris.

The wall they must get through gradually moves towards them, and behind the contestants is a pool of water. If they fail to fit through the hole, they end up taking a bath.

Watch the clip. The show is totally brilliant.

When does the tent get too big?

From software online news service Beta News comes the inevitable question "Was Wikipedia Just a Fad?"

According to research by one user

new account registrations are down a quarter since earlier this year. This decline in new editors has also resulted in a decline in the editing of articles -- some 17 percent -- and article deletions, down about 25 percent. Also down were user blocks, down 30 percent, and uploads, down 10 percent.

This may simply be Cassandra-ness that screams when things like Facebook usage declines and faddists move on to new climes like Web 3.o - whatever that this. 

But I do wonder whether we've also reached a moment to ask the question "when does the tent get too big?" or "does the tent get so big that it hits entrophy - and declines?" - and no Les Dawson pun intended!

I've just run a public project in the U.K. in which a thousand people grew food in public places and shared it  at a closing event that was attended by 8000 people. The total population of the town is 140,000. That's a 6% participation rate. Amazing.

We structured the project in a way that carefully drew a basket of over 60 'cellular' groups into a final epic (ish) moment of a final 'harvest'. But what does the high closing hit-rate mean? 

Would the entire town be prepared to grow its own food? Or is there a moment when production would hit capacity, then steady and simply decline?

Is something fundamental going on in the public mind linked to climate change, food production and environmental equity?

Or are people today prepared to grow food in number and spirit similar to how they might might once have participated in other forms of justice, such as war?

Are people social networking because relationships, media and culture have genuinely changed?

Or are they simply turning up in droves to create and edit each other's material, only to move on to, say, walking backwards?

At the moment Government champions public participation in public policy here and in the United States. But blogs are starting to draw sharp dividing lines between marketing and democratic engagement and questioning the openness of 'open media'. And the limitations of social networks are beginning to be charted: their value defined by not only who's on it, but also by whose excluded.   

Is the tide turning not just on Wikipedia but also on 'marquee politics'?

Flogging a dead horse

For all of those who have ever felt that they've been flogging a dead horse - er, everyone?  - here's a great quote from former Russian Prime Minister, Victor Chernomyrdin - courtesy of Michael Barber, Tony Blair's former 'delivery guru' in his book, Instruction to Deliver:

We tried to do better, but everything turned out as usual.

Catwalk carrots

This is a recent press advert for the food department of London's most chic department store.

It shows fashionistas waiting for a catwalk parade of Herefordshire beef, Iberico pork and - no doubt - Dolce & Gabbana carrots.

The picture looks fab - the handbags a special turn-on for many, I know - but there is something weird and uncomfortable about this image.

Environmental activist George Monbiot may have put his finger on it when he wrote

Ethical shopping is in danger of becoming another signifier of social status. I have met people who have bought solar panels and wind turbines before they have insulated their lofts, partly because they love gadgets but partly, I suspect, because everyone can then see how conscientious and how rich they are.

Add in the fact that Blackrock, one of the world's biggest fund managers, has recently launched a £100m hedge fund that plans to buy up farmland across the U.K. to profit from booming food prices.

Throw in research that  indicates that consumers who are interested in buying organic food are prepared to and do pay a modest premium - say an additional 15-20%.

Buy a load of electronic goods on your Barclaycard Breathe account: the new credit card that counters climate change.

Then stop to think.

I love consumerism.

But me, you, all of us do need to work out how we are going to become sustainable and resource-efficient, ideally before luxury goods manufacturers, credit merchants and mercantilist retailers turn "green" in to yet another opportunity to spend surplus capital or the exclusive grazing ground of the aspirational rich.

Why?

Because otherwise environmentally-conscious consumerism becomes yet another act of de-politicisation and  there's a danger that we end up ignoring how we consume and spend resources and don't lead a more sustainable life.