Over the Weekend

I live in Tottenham.

There were separate incidents.

1) There was a peaceful demonstration of about 200 people seeking explanations of the death of Mark Duggan who was shot dead in the only place in Tottenham that doesn't have CCTV cameras (the Ferry Lane Bridge).

At the time media were reporting that he had shot at police but once forensics suggested that the bullet found lodged in a police radio came from a police gun, they stopped saying that. Meanwhile there was an equally (no more, no less) false rumour going round that Mr Duggan was shot several times in the head, execution style.

The execution rumour caused a great deal of anger in the community and this seems have got out of hand and, about 8:30 PM, youths began attempting to attack Tottenham Police Station. Police decided to concentrate all of their resources into protecting Tottenham Police Station.

At this point, with control of the streets having been abdicated to the mob, the youths moved about 200 yards North at first to sack Northumberland Park and Bruce Grove Police Post but later to carry out various acts of violent disorder.

(Police stated on SKY News that they had only fifteen officers available when it kicked off at 8:30. I make no comment except to say that my stepson called from the Tottenham Hotspur ground half way through the match between Spurs and Athletic Bilbao asking my wife and I to take his son home because he was bored with the football. The match ended at 7:00 and at that time we saw literally hundreds of police officers escorting supporters the five hundred yards from the Spurs ground to Seven Sisters station, a route that took them past the point where the violence would kick off within half an hour of the last few stragglers reaching the station)

2) With police having abdicated control of the streets to the mob, outsiders from Hackney, Walthamstow, Wood Green and Edmonton arranged through their smartphones what was essentially not a riot mass burglary of Totteham Hale retail park and Wood Green Shopping City. They did this to take advantage of police being unavailable but that does not mean these events were in any way connected with the violence on Tottenham High Road except inasmuch as they were the actions of opportunists taking advantage of the original violence.

(Events in Walthamstow, Enfield, and Brixton on Sunday copied these mass burglaries. It seems the mob has realised they can get away with this sort of behaviour and don't need a riot to cover them.)

3) I walked through the area at about 7AM on Sunday morning. There were many more people than usual but, with the exception of one burned down building, the damage was not as bad as that caused to de Coolsingel by Feyenoord fans winning the Dutch league in the 1998-99 season (when I was in Rotterdam). Many of the damaged buildings on Saturday night were derelict before Saturday. Most of the East Side of Tottenham High Road, from the old DSS office at Scotland Green as far as Aldi had, with only two exceptions been empty for years and the Pleasure Rooms had recently been demolished by Viridian Homes to make way for a new housing estate.

Off the High Road there was light ash which appeared to be huge lumps of charred polystyrene foam everywhere on the East Side. There was a strong smell of burning in Baronet Road and the Victoria Pub on Scotland Green appeared to have been smashed beyond use. On the West side, even ten yards from the High Road, it was as if nothing had happened.

Twenty Years

Twenty years ago today, I was standing in Ingoldmells Methodiist Church beside Hopie and getting married. I wore a light coloured suit and had an erection. Hopie wore a peach dress. There were only twenty people in the church and I was my own best man.

Today is our wedding anniversary and it seems against all the odds, our marriage has lasted longer than the church in which it was celebrated.

After twenty years of getting on one another's nerves, we are still together and neither of us has killed the other. I'm proud of that.

New Videos

Last Wednesday, I got together with the Swampies, a bunch of reprobates from the Waterloo Delta and we recorded a few tracks. I'm the singer for those who don't know what I look like.

Big Rock Candy Mountain

Man Of Constant Sorrow

Mack The Knife

It's St George's Day... here's something English

A Traditional hymn from the English Civil War - I heard this while watching the film Winstanley.

Hail the day so long expected, hail the day of full release
Zion's walls are now erected, and her watchmen promise peace
Throughout England's wide dominion, shrill the trumpets loudly roar:
Babylon is fallen, is fallen, is fallen.
Babylon is fallen, to rise no more.

All her merchants stand with wonder, what is this has come to pass
Murmuring like a distant thunder, crying O alas, alas.
Swell the sound ye kings and nobles, priest and people rich and poor.
Babylon is fallen, is fallen, is fallen.
Babylon is fallen, to rise no more.

Blow the trumpet in Mount Zion, Christ shall come a second time
Ruling with a rod of iron, all who now as foes combine.
Babel's garments we've rejected and our fellowship is sure.
Babylon is fallen, is fallen, is fallen.
Babylon is fallen, to rise no more.

Tune your harps ye heavenly choirs, shout ye followers of the lamb.
See the city all on fire. Clap your hands and swell the flame.
Now's the day of compensation. Hope of mercy now is o'er.
Babylon is fallen, is fallen, is fallen.
Babylon is fallen, to rise no more.

Economics 1.0 is broken.

We have reached a point where a genuinely free market would leave people to starve. If those people have the strength of course, then they can introduce the concept of negative utility into the equation.

(Negative Utility relates to an offer to provide a product or service which will be actively detrimental or harmful to the recipient unless the recipient agrees to pay the price of not providing that service).

But that simply sidesteps the question. We have reached the point where everything that can be needed by the whole population can be provided by a fraction of the population, leaving the rest with literally nothing to offer. The market cannot and will not provide for those people's needs and since governments can gain income only by taxing (or by providing services free of charge, thus taking many commodities out of economics altogether since they are as abundant as air - and thus denying those still in the economy a chance to profit).

The point of an economy is to find a way of distributing resources. The market works as long as there is enough demand for labour but once demand for labour falls, as it has now, then we are in a position that means we need to find some other way of distributing resources.

There have been arguments about 'fairness' but in the realm of the possible, 'fairness' doesn't get a vote, so what else can happen? We know that planned economies are even less efficient, leading to mass starvation in Stalin's Russia for example.

Economics 1.0 is broke and somebody needs to fix it, but who? The market has failed. Communism doesn't work with real humans. Some kind of religious equation won't work unless people believe in the god or gods involved.

I believe that Economics 2.0 will evolve over the next century or so, but in the meantime, there is going to be a lot of death and a lot of suffering as the market moves meaningless tokens into higher and higher concentrations while elsewhere food rots in the ground and people starve, all for the want of an efficient system for the distribution of resources.

On the objectivity of science

The thing is, science IS an ideological construct but those who are ignorant of it tend to attack from a ridiculous angle. They usually tilt their lances at straw windmills and attack "the infallibility of science", whereas science has never claimed infallibility.

And then others with fundamental views of their own, attack science for its lack of certainty, usually by saying something like "relativity is only a theory" (other theories are available and those who replace 'relativity' with other words are no less ridiculous) as if that somehow undermined the validity of relativity.

It's worth looking at the scientific method. It's very simple, we begin with a problem or an observation, for example "What is the moon made of?".

Next we come up with hypotheses. "gold", "silver", "green cheese" "plastic" and so on. A hypothesis is a guess as to what the answer might be. We will have to consider what we would predict to be observed if the hypothesis is true.

Then we carry out an experiment or further observation (sometimes an experiment is impossible or unethical so we just have to watch and see if the hypothesis is born out by observation) to test the hypothesis.

Next we conclude either that the hypothesis fits the facts or it doesn't. That may well lead to further questions we need to pursue further.

That's it, science in a nutshell, so how is it an ideological construct?

Well, first of all, what problems do we consider worth investigating? Scientists need to attract funding and the organisations offering the funding are rarely interested in "pure science". For example, a tobacco company might want somebody to find a way of delivering the hit of nicotine without all the dying of cancer side -effects (or alternatively, might like someone to show that smoking tobacco does not cause cancer).

Secondly, how do we consider the hypotheses? Essentially, at this point, the scientist is guessing. There was, for example, nothing unscientific about the theory that burning released a substance called phlogiston rather than absorbing a substance called oxygen. en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Since the scientist is human, he chooses hypotheses appropriate to the current paradigm. This continues for a while until there are so many anomalous results worldwide that the paradigm itself has to change. There is an inbuilt resistance to this because science is peer-reviewed by people whose entire career has been within the current paradigm. It is also TAUGHT by people who have a vested interest in continuing the same paradigm and for a scientist to be considered a scientist, his PhD needs to be approved by such a person.

But then, things change and there is a new paradigm and the whole cycle begins again, the former iconoclast becomes the new iconodule.

Next comes the experiment itself, the most objective part of science. The point of an experiement is not to prove a theory but to test a hypothesis. Of course, the hypothesis could still be wrong (as it was with phlogiston theory) but nevertheless be supported by the evidence. This is the basis for the uncertainty of science.

That uncertainty though does NOT make science a matter of opinion. It is why peer-reviewed journals are essential. Such scrutiny enables the scientific community to come to a consensus on what is, more or less, for the time being, true.

Science does not, and never could have the certainty of religion, but neither is it as much a matter of opinion as art or politics. It is, at any one time, the best guess available but, unlike fundamental certainties, it is capable of change. I view that as a good thing.

Nineteenth Stranger

Nineteenth stranger in a month
You wore a gin and tonic and had a little black dress on.
You told me how you wanted fun
You kissed me with juniper breath and put your hands on
Stroking me beneath the fabric
Wanting me: It feels so fucking good to be wanted.

Nineteenth Stranger in a month
I think you may have had blonde hair or was that number sixteen?
Or it could have been both of you.
Number nineteen you've soft hair cut close like a boys own
And your lips are such sweet poison
Wanting me: It feels so fucking good to be wanted.

Nineteenth stranger in a month
Hey baby you're not strange now. I have a sense of deja vu
Sure I saw you a week ago
Wasn't that you? The one who blew my mind as well?
You whisper, feels like I know you
Wanting me: it feels so fucking good to be wanted.