Archive for May, 2005

Carbon Cards

Tuesday, May 31st, 2005

On the day that Ryanair announced huge year on year profits, ‘Green Week’, the European Commission’s annual conference showcasing the European Union’s environment policy, has begun.

The link between these two events is that aviation pollution is responsible for the highest rising levels of carbon emissions in the UK, and the surge in global air travel is thus having a huge impact on speeding up climate change. In amongst all the worries I had over the elections and who I could possibly vote for with a clear conscience, my main concern was that in the end, none of the policies will matter if we don’t get environmental policies working first. And I think that one of the biggest problems with getting people to change their behaviour with environmental issues is that not only is the government not forcing us to make sounder choices, making them isn’t even made that easy – which, coupled with an apathetic and uninformed attitude from the public, means that being ‘green’ is still regarded by many as the choice of lesbians, vegetarians, social workers and other left-field members of society.

Consider it: in my house, we prefer to use less damaging household products. We all cycle as our primary form of transport. We collect and re-use our plastic bags (as we all cycle, we will often fill our panniers up without using plastic bags at all). We recycle weekly. We tend to all shop locally, especially at the weekly farmers market on Broadway Market, which sells predominantly British grown food. But it isn’t always easy to do these things. When our Ecover washing liquid ran out, I used a less environmentally friendly one which was lying around, and a stain which had been on a t-shirt of mine for a couple of months disappeared. The Ecover had never managed to shift it, and I have stopped using it. In our excellent council run recycling scheme, we get a small box to fill up with our weeks’ recycling. It isn’t big enough. My weekend papers alone fill it up. And if we leave it outside once it has been emptied, it tends to get nicked very quickly.

I am a firm believer that it isn’t enough to provide schemes for people to opt in to on a voluntary basis. Even people like me who do believe that it is one of the most important issues facing us, will get affected by apathy. And I was therefore delighted to read of a proposal for an EU wide scheme introducing carbon cards, whereby each government within the EU will give 40% of its carbon emission quota equally to individuals, with the rest being auctioned to business and industry.

The beauty of the scheme is that individuals would then be able to sell on anything they managed to save on their allowance. So for people like me, who never drive, I would almost certainly have points left over. I could then choose to ’spend’ these on such things as the long-haul travel I tend to take more than most, to visit my family in various places around the world. Conversely, if I were a four by four driver, I could create a well insulated home which requires less fuel consumption to run, and have more to use on my gas-guzzling monster. And if I am a paragon of environmental virtue, I will have credits left to sell on to individuals.

This is precisely the kind of scheme to grab the public’s interest. It is fair. Unlike proposed taxations on fuel emissions, which will add more to the bills of lower income households, it isn’t punitive, and offers the possibility of extra income to careful consumers. It gives people the choice of how they want to reduce their own personal emissions. And it highlights the fact that everyone needs to take responsibility for these emissions. It completely sidesteps the ‘it’s not down to me’ attitude that plagues the movement towards a more environmentally sustainable world.

At the moment, it seems like it is only a notion on the agenda. Perhaps it is self-interest which motivates my wanting it implemented – after all, as a cyclist, I have greater sympathies with those sticking guerrilla stickers on SUVs than those driving them, and I am top of the list of those likely to benefit from such a scheme. I sincerely hope that it could be implemented, and even go further, making people use credits on goods they buy which travel long distances such as vegetables from the other side of the world which have to be flown in refrigerated conditions to reach our tables within days of picking. Or clothes which have been made on the other side of the world. A reduction in the purchase of goods like this could even have the knock on effect of stopping companies using sweat shop labour in far-flung countries, the stranglehold of multinationals on small-scale farmers.

Posted in Topical | 1 Comment »

The Power of the Dark Side

Friday, May 13th, 2005

So Bluewater, that out-of-town mega-retail-outlet, has decided to ban the wearing of hoodies within its premises. As a cyclist living in Hackney, having read of at least 15 violent attacks on cyclists within 5 minutes’ walk of my house in the last year alone, I am one of those people who, on seeing a group of boys of a certain age, will automatically assume that their presence indicates trouble. And if they are wearing hooded tops, hiding their faces, increasing the sense of unknown, the indication is heightened, even more sinisiter.

Yesterday I cycled at 10.00am along the Canal towards Islington. A short distance from where I got on the tow path, and on a stretch that was completely deserted, I saw up ahead, cycling very slowly, two teenagers on bikes that were the wrong size for them (always an indication that they have been misappropriated – although one of them was on a bike that was way too big, the other on one slightly too small, for him. Why didn’t they just swap?). They stopped to allow me to pass, one of them flashing me a knowing grin as I went past, desperately trying to pick up speed as I went. I was concerned when about half a mile later I came to a barrier across the path, with a red sign saying ‘tow path closed’, and a large set of temporary stairs leading up into an estate. I started up the stairs, and they rounded the corner, now cycling much faster than they had been when I was cycling behind them.

Of course, I made it up the stairs, worked out where the diversion went, and zoomed off to safety. I have no doubt that the boys deliberately allowed me past, with the intention of ambushing me further down the canal. Attacks on the canal, especially on cyclists, are commonplace, and often quite brutal.

The point of that story is that I cannot say for certain whether the boys were wearing hoodies, but in my mental image of them, they certainly were. Although one of them might have had a Burberry cap. The cartoonish image of ‘generic yoof thug’ is so entrenched in my mind, that I forget that there was a time, in the late ninetees and early noughties (and just for the record, I hate that word, but no one has yet to come up with an alternative) when I owned several hooded tops myself.

With predictable promptness, and with moral standards flying high, our national and local press has jumped on the news to highlight the fact that the very fabric of society is being ripped apart by young thugs intent on operating outside of societal laws, norms, and mores.

Of course, it would be naive not to attach any blame to the perpetrators of youth crime, to the gangs like the 800 strong ‘London Fields Gang’ who are responsible for so many of the attacks round my way. But, without being too much of a bleeding heart liberal, I would like to propose that we look instead at rectifying the causes of youth violence and crime. The social exclusion, poverty and disillusionment. The education system, the moral torpitude bred by a government which chose to engage in an illegal and unethical war, the listlessness of the inner city. To stop blaming the youth for so much, to accept the failings of the modern world to look after them, to stop making them feel alienated, peripheral to society. Because as long as they feel like that, then the rules which we all look to for our security will mean nothing to them, and the only way of affirming their identity will be to flout them.

Now if you will just excuse me. I am going to phone up outlets of Gap, Next and Nike at Bluewater, to see if they stock hooded tops…

UPDATE:

Thanks to my friend who read this entry and suggested this alternative to my softly-softly approach. And, having thought about Blonde’s response in the comments, and remembered all the times I echoed her sentiments when I have felt threatened, or been the victim of the little brats – most often when I have had bikes nicked by them, I now wholeheartedly endorse the product below, and a vigilante approach to dealing with this problem!

Posted in General, Topical | 2 Comments »

Chicken and Eggs

Wednesday, May 11th, 2005

I was just re-reading an article from a couple-of-weeks-old Guardian, in which Nick Laird, Zadie Smith’s husband, is interviewed about his new novel. And having once claimed an association with the interviewer, who is now a fairly successful journalist, I couldn’t help feeling a sense of schadenfreude that she seems to have made a right botch of it.

The interview makes for uncomfortable reading because Ms Gold clearly wanted Mr Laird (or Mr Zadie Smith as she so embarrassingly put it) to conform to her preconceptions of him, and because the ‘I’s’ in the profile outnumber the ‘he’s’, leaving the reader wondering whether she understands the basic underlying purpose of such an article – to reveal the interviewee not the interviewer.

Granted, she points out that he holds back in the interview, and wonders to herself ‘when is he going to tell me who he really is?’ (Memo to Ms Gold – it is your job as interviewer to get him to open up, and can you please stop it with the ‘me, me, me’s already). She also, rather bile-inducingly, goes on to say ‘He reminds me of a flower, he opens and closes with the light.’ Not since – oh, let me think… the previous paragraph, where Mr Laird has managed to shoe-horn a reference to Nabokov into a question about his favourite biscuit – has The Guardian’s pretentiousness hit me so hard. In fact, I start to lose patience with him too, when I read the phrase with which he ends the biscuit musing ‘[with] Chocolate Hobnobs – you have to give a little bit of yourself’.

He redeems himself slightly towards the interview when he shows his thought processes have mirrored mine, and he has seen through her completely, in the following exchange, ‘I ask him to describe himself for me, as if he were writing himself into a novel. “That’s your job,” he says’. Bravo, Nick, I think.

But excuse my ramblings above. I just couldn’t let the article go uncommented-on. And having started that rant, it was very difficult to stop. The reason it prompted me to write a blog, however, was for the very tangential reason that he confesses to a weakness for chicken omelettes, the concept of which prompted a slight confusion in me. It just seemed wrong. I carried on with what I was doing, and then, a couple of minutes later, my subconscious surfaced, and presented to my conscious brain, the cause of my mental judder – eating chicken with chicken eggs is just plain strange. Quiches, omelettes, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs – all are paired with meat on a regular basis – usually pork-based, but often beef, lamb, fish, too. Just rarely, in my experience, chicken.

I don’t know if it is because of a kind of biological good manners that we have avoided a culinary marriage of the two. Is the idea of animal mortality harder to bear if it is mother and reproductive matter, dead, on the same plate?

I would like to point out that I am not a vegetarian. Indeed, I am an enthusiastic carnivore. But the idea of chicken wrapped in warm egg – a neat little inversion of how they existed in their live state, was one I just found disquieting.

But, fuck it, perhaps I am deconstructing this all too much?

Posted in General, Levity | 5 Comments »

Somewhere Else

Sunday, May 8th, 2005

I know it isn’t particularly ‘this minute’ to like Razorlight anymore – that when asked what we think we are supposed to affect ennui and to comment that they are derivative, that Johnny Borrell is a sneering egotistical wannabe, that they are far too Shoreditch, and like all good trend watching Londoners, we are so over Shoreditch. But, dammit, I really like the song ‘Somewhere Else’, their new single (watch the video here - although you will have to register with the site first) . Poppy, upbeat and totally disposable, it still manages to have an edge. And when your disposable candy floss looks as fine as Johnny does in the video, who’s complaining? A shaggier, almost feral version of Vernon Kay, he sports full lips and lovely cheekbones, and can therefore be forgiven his mouthing off about being a music scene supremo almost before he was discovered. (Comparing himself to Dylan – what breathtakingly arrogant style.)

In addition to which they recorded their initial demo in the famous Toerag studio in Hackney, and immortalise my favourite borough further in their song ‘Don’t go back to Dalston’, which is allegedly begging Pete Doherty not to go there for a fix.

So: lyrics which are forgettable, guitar riffs which will set days in the park in the still-trying-to-break-through-summer off beautifully, and a sultry front man. I think I smell a new favourite song….

Posted in General, Music | 2 Comments »

Prevarication, Vacillation, Indecision

Friday, May 6th, 2005

I spent election night with two University friends, a couple who live round the corner from me in the safe Labour seat of Hackney South. You would be hard pushed to find three more staunch, traditional, labour voters than us. I was interested to see, as we discussed it all in the pub prior to retiring to their house to watch the (truly excellent) TV coverage, over a (equally excellent) takeaway thali from Massala on Stoke Newington Church Street, the way our opinions collided and diverged. Last election she voted Socialist Alliance to send a message to Labour, but neither he nor I could bring ourselves to vote against them. This time he and I both had difficulty doing so, but voted Lib Dem because we couldn’t sanction that horrible sneering man having a third term. And she voted Labour because she wanted to see a return to the old Labour values which we all share.

My thinking process during the whole election ran something like that on sitting down at a restaurant where you have a favourite dish. You peruse the menu and decide that instead of the carbonara, you are going to go for a zucchini fettuccine. The bonuses of the new dish are clear, you have made your mind up, but when the waiter comes to take your order, you find yourself asking for the same old thing.

In the polling booth, I took two deep breaths, and put my cross next to Hugh Bayliss, Lib Dem, noting as I did so that he lives a couple of minutes away from me on a road on which I would very much like to buy a house. I surprised myself when my hand didn’t inadvertently wander to the Labour box, and I felt enormously pleased with myself for voting for the party which I feel most closely represents my beliefs and convictions.

Back to the pub. Where he is saying to her ‘I can’t believe you voted for that awful man’, and she is beginning to doubt what she has done. But as the evening wears on and we see the first seats won by Labour, but with a swing to the Tories, both he and I begin to wonder what we have done… Was Tony’s warning not to split the left vote bizarrely prescient, rather than a mere trickery to guilt left wing voters into voting for a party that has betrayed them? I leave after four seats are declared, with her shouts of ‘What have you two done? It’s all going to be your fault’ ringing in my guilty guilty ears.

I get into bed, still glued to the telly, and fall asleep to the news that Mr George ‘Human Rights for Iraqi despots’ Galloway has almost certainly won Bethnal Green and Bow.

Wake up this morning and lie in bed for fifteen minutes before summoning up the courage to even think about it. Wander into the kitchen, where Bloke and Blonde are having a cup of coffee. I ask for news, and she says ‘I am too nervous to check’. Back into bedroom, telly on, and its clear that Labour have won a majority pretty much on a par with both the expectations of the pundits, and the exit polls, but that the Liberal Democrats haven’t gained as much as was expected, or as I had hoped. Huge sigh of relief as I look on Ceefax for Hackney figures, to see that Labour dropped about 2500 votes from last time, almost all of which were accounted for by Lib Dem gains, and little change in the Conservative figures. Also pleased to see Green coming in fourth.

My stomach does a churning lurch that can’t just be down to the excess of Leffe drunk last night, as Tony Blair talks of having been given a mandate from the people for a third term in office. Almost pleased to see that idiot Ferry staging his feeble protest. If one more person says ‘secures an historic third term’ or mentions the fact that it is the smug bastard’s birthday today, I may not be able to control the churning any longer. Bring on the taciturn Scot, I think to myself.

Grumpy (Bethnal Green and Bow) texts me to say ‘By George. Have RESPECT. Bye bye Oona.’ I start to plan my strategy of derision and mockery for having such a rubbish MP. He voted for the Green party candidate because he fancies him.

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