Orgreave Estate

Only cowards steal from the poor

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Drowning in debt?

Jeff Bezos vs. a Storage Shed Full of Beanie Babies

Hi. Greyhoos, here. Longtime listener, first-time caller.

While I've had things to contribute to the other two decades blogs, I don't think I've ever found reason to pop up here. Maybe because I was so aloof from a lot of things that were going on in the '90s, was too distracted of had so little invested in it and so many of its cultural trends, that it leaves me short of material for this here venue.

Reason being that throughout most of the 1990s, I was just finding my own way -- scrambling at it, basically. Finally digging my way out of a provincial cultural sinkhole and to the big city, eventually into graduate school where I was immersed in my studies, and then eventually defaulting into an industry that seemed like a fairly reliable safety net at the time, only to watch that industry get demolished in the decade that followed.

Which means that in the 1990s, in the course of all that scrounging, there were a number of things I missed out on -- tbig cultural trends and whathaveyou.

Such as stock options. Because at the time I didn't have a highly marketable tech skill that would make me a prime hiree at a startup. Where I would then agree to work 35 hours of overtime per week for free, doing so because I'd agreed to what my visionary entrepreneurial uber-lords had promised me. That promise being that I should forego proper pay for the would-be company's stock options, because one day -- very soon! -- down the road they were going to go public; because it was all going to be MASSIVE, and then I would be stinking rich and set for life, at which point my prior issues about working myself into chronic exhaustion for free would seem like mere pettiness and small-thinking on my part, since money would cease to be a concern for me thereafter. It was all gonna be worthwhile, many times over. Just you wait.

But I wasn't so unattuned that I didn't hear about when the dot-com bubble burst. And can remember it all seemed so unsurprising when I heard why it had done so.

Which means I also managed to get through the decade without ever owning a fucking ferret.

People have found the lo-fi nature of the murders quite shocking

 'They were kind of atrocities but they'd gone unnoticied, unrecognized, they'd been done in the name of leisure almost.'

'The NoW reveals that the video has a further two minutes of footage shot at various intervals. In one sequence, the cameraman is shown an Iraqi corpse and proceeds to kick the dead man in the face twice, whilst a soldier sniggers: “He’s been a bad mother****er.”'

There's a parallel between the charcter of Richard in Dead Man's Shoes (2004) being a soldier, and the film being released a year after Iraq, three after Afghanistan. Like Northern Ireland there is a lot of horror waiting to come out: nobody talks about Northen Ireland today, and barely anyone talks about Afghanistan or Iraq. The topic is taboo. There are no comforting myths to emerge from the War on Terror: in a great act of collective memory it has been entirely forgotten. The BBC have rewritten their history in an attempt to reinforce the commonsense "nobody could have wanted this" storyline that will eventually become the true story, if any story at all. In Dead Man's Shoes (2004) Richard visits supernatural, violent justice on the lowlifes who killed his brother. It is a film about the importance of taking responsibility: slaying the guilty, and once becoming guilty yourself in the process, seeking self-terminarion. Richard's justice is moral: his enemies are the lowest degenerates of the working class, druggies and immoral scum. They even listen to the wrong music, hip hop rather than the tasteful alt-Americana or wistful folk supplied by Warp. Whatever the intention a trawl of youtube comments reveals commenters seem to have incorporated the film directly alongside the likes of Death Wish and Dirty Harry: they deserve it, every one. The post-apocalyptic state of Britain is well described, casual violence, isolation, and no future, propaganda for any leftist reading; the solutions however, a culling of the irressponsible and devolved, is straight out of the right's playbook. The old embers of political struggle were fading out in the early 2000s, a strange period when the organizations and individuals the left assumed were allies began advocated wars they knew could only have the consequences they did if they had any idea of history. Even the BBC couldn't be trusted anymore. The feedback can be observed in popular militarism (which will likely die with the wars) and the stark reactions to send in the army in response to 2011's riots.

The prediction buried within Edge of Darkness (1985) and GBH (1990) was that Britain (England particularly) had become occupied territory: an alien colonizing force was manipulating what seemed like organic commonsense developments for the good of the colonizer's. Dead Man's Shoes is a depiction, along with elements of GBH, about how the colony should be policed and what should make up the policeman. Detatchment, responsibility, and a calm repose are what is required. After a time, as in Kenya, the Congo, or elsewhere, the violence flows naturally. The battles of the 80s and 90s dramas are done with, more history than ever in the wake of the totem of that era's death: with the natives broken and scattered, what becomes of us next?

He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.

How she left us

"Transformed Britain, made us Great again, restored order etc"

Well this was Britain the year the Blessed Margaret left us. Police provocation, baton charges, snatch squads, arson, looting.




She didn't give a shit about this by then: didn't need to give a shit. Riots and a million non-payers would have brought down a Labour Government. This should have been the Tories 'Winter of Discontent'. But by now they could just change the figure heads and keep sailing on.

The Economy at Night

"The night-time economy can bring many benefits to an area, but how can councils ensure that it's properly managed? Get it right, and the night-time economy can boost your financial prospects locally, enhance the sense of community, in your area and also improve local services during the day. But if councils get it wrong, a community can be plagued by antisocial behaviour and alcohol-fueled violence."

“How should councils manage a thriving night-time economy?”

"The panel learned that the town centre was seen, by some influential key players, as the ‘engine room of the local economy’ and the future economic success of Middlesbrough is tied up with the performance of the town centre. Developing a more diverse evening economy can bring many opportunities and economic success to the town in terms of job creation, attracting businesses and people and altering the image of the town."

Middlesbrough Council Final Report – Night Time Economy

By the cashpoint, half past 1.  Idling about waiting for friends to restock on money so we can go back into the club and carry on drinking. Lad slumped at a distance from the cashpoint: head lolling about, clumsily try to manipulate a smartphone. We eye him and walk on by; offer sage advice, for example “You wanna watch that mate, someone’ll have it off yeh” or the sturdy, “Are yeh alright?”  Can’t quite remember what I said but it might have been “You want to get yourself a taxi home.” Think later that I should have maybe done something more for him, helped out; try and fight the idea it’s his own stupid fault for getting in a state. He isn’t there when we roll out a few hours later into the pizza shop; hopefully he didn’t come to any harm. Wonder where his friends were.

Second floor near the bar; guy in a dark coat appears. Starts talking to me (his accent Eastern European?) quite friendly-like: he’s clearly fucked. You can see from his face the links between body and brain have been disjointed by intoxication; seen this sort in here before and don’t like it. Friends return and we proceed towards the ground floor to meet up with others, dark coat following. He grabs one of my friends by the throat and holds him against the wall at the top of the stairs; we don’t make a move, appreciating the precarious situation. Dark coat turns to me and inquires of my friend whose throat he’s got his fingers wrapped around: “Do you know him”. Indeed I do. He releases him and wanders off after giving me a friendly ‘cya around’ sort of gesture. Friend who’d been restrained turns to me and says “Who the fuck was he, did you know him?” No, but I did feel worried for him: if he’d tried that when the friend we were going to meet on the ground floor was about, the one who’s been drinking since about 4, he’d have ended up at the bottom of those stairs without a doubt.

Outside, the smoking area. A friend has been chatting to a girl we’ve met: plenty of people floating about, smokers, black-coated bouncers, hi-visibility coppers in the distance. Guy turns up amongst the four of us: “That’s my girlfriend.” Friend who was walking to her replies “Alright then.” Guy (never do find out if he is her boyfriend, the girl’s edgy and starring with quite appropriate disapproval) acts quite genially but in no certain terms offers to fight all three of us: “Bring your two friends”, he says to my friend, “they don’t mean anything to me.” We’re frankly stunned, the guy’s fairly out-of-shape looking, and obviously the worse for drink but even still you’d have to be a lot more drunk than this to embark on something as plainly idiotic as this. Eventually the situation is defused in the way these things are and we drift off. See the girl again that night on her own: understandable.

Very late in the night/early in the morning. Cooling towers, chemical works, orange flaring from towards Dormanstown. Too tired to speak or say anything or look at anyone. The taxi skirts its way through what’s left of the little Hercules of British industry in the sad pre-dawn as we are driven ages for no reason to drive to an outer suburb to drop a friend off. It’s only when I’m this tired and this drunk that I start thinking about inanities: my dad’s stories about working at a steel foundry and a warehouse amongst the stacks in the now carved-out and ‘redeveloped’ docklands; Ridley Scott’s memories of the industrial skyline and its impact on the imagery of Blade Runner; the permanent orange glow just beyond the Eston hills.

There’s still industry here but it’s no more convincing than when the Deputy Prime Minister visits a shop floor somewhere: this is what Britain still does the news and the politicians are telling you, it’s all about the classics, the cars and airplane engines and so on. What they would find it difficult to say is that the real action is behind me in the town centre: young men and women leaning against walls with tears in their eyes; a broken bottle arcing down a face leaving red memories and lost sight; three police kicking a man in the gutter and hefting him into the back of the van with the rest. A utopian idea in the 1990s about clubs suggested they could become zones of alternative reality, fuelled on E-nergy and rave optimism/hedonism. Dream on.