The Brighton Festival has kicked off and the centre of Brighton was pretty busy today. Fabrica has an installation entitled 77 Million Paintings by Brian Eno.
77 Millions Paintings at Fabrica
Posts Tagged ‘brighton
06
Feb
10
Spitalfields
Spitalfields
A new clothes shop has opened up on East Street in Brighton with an interesting store front crammed full of old fashioned sowing machines. The name of the shop is Allsaints Spitalfields harking back to the days when the Spitalfields area of east London was famous for tailoring.
sky falling in
It has been said that the tone of this blog site is somewhat negative. Can it be true that our leaders are all complete vermin? Is the world really going to the dogs?
A photograph has come into our hands which may show that the situation is worse than had been anticipated. The photo appears to show that supports have been erected along Brighton beach to stop the sky falling in.
It is not clear whether the construction in Brighton are precautionary or whether the sky has already started to sag. No evidence has yet been obtained to show whether the potential collapse is related to global warming or the latest period of cold weather.
You read it here first folks.
What do we expect if we buy everything at Tesco?
At least three off licenses and wine merchants have closed on Western Road/Church Road in Hove recently. I guess we only have ourselves to blame for shopping in super markets. I used to enjoy getting a vid from the local DVD rental shop and then choosing a bottle of plonk but now I am forced to queue up at the Tesco Metro behind people buying sandwiches or pasties or washing powder.
The news covered the fact that the recession had hit wine merchants but estate agents still seem to be thriving. Western Road/Church Road seems to have just as many estate agents. This is not surprising as, though property prices may have dropped around 10%, they are still up as much as 300% on ten years ago. As the general public are stupid enough to pay estate agents a percentage based commission their income must have sky-rocketed too. The estate agents in Church Road seem to think that the pavement outside their shops is a private parking space for their Jags and Porches. Nothing like rubbing it in!
Cut backs? - Not bloody likely!
It seems to me that whenever one deals with large sums of money one finds that the “professionals” involved demand a percentage based fee. Whether you are investing in funds or buying a property the professionals want a piece of it. When you are forking out 300,000 for a property the addition of another £4,500 can be easily overlooked but I see no reason why the estate agent should earn more merely because the property prices have increased. It seems to me that the estate agent business is money for old rope. Ask yourself: What do estate agents do? They keep a list of properties. They stick pictures in their windows. They maintain a web site. They keep your keys and show people around your house. And for that they can demand 2%. That is outrageous.
Booze
The man on the radio is talking about binge drinking in the UK and the mumblings in the political establishment is in favour of “banning cheap alcohol”. God knows how they plan to achieve this – I think I’ve heard arguments to stop super markets doing cheap offers.
As I have pointed out before, New Labour has embraced hyper-commercialism as it’s core ideology and subsequently perceive that their only lever for affecting alcohol consumption is price. Since the commercial revolution which engulfed the UK under first Thatcher and now Brown, controls have been removed from all aspects of commerce. We are now bombarded with advertising everywhere we go and everywhere we look. The emphasis on terming everyone a “customer” is key as it means that success is determined by achieving a sale.
In Britain and America we, rightly, tend to look very much askance at any type of social engineering and this includes government advertising exhorting us to some worthy goal. But this is odd as we do not even notice when large corporations attempt social engineering and this is exactly what is achieved by large marketing campaigns.
Our society is undergoing social engineering but the engineering is not devised by a national government with goals such as social cohesion or community responsibility. The goal of those that control social engineering is simple: Profit.
So while the government attempts social change by squeezing in a few sound bytes on a news program, the alcohol companies are able to keep up a relentless campaign which targets kids and tells them alcohol is stylish, alcohol is fun, alcohol is cool.
I saw a bit of video on The Sun web site which underlines the ubiquity of this message. The video was of a drunken reveller desecrating a war memorial. The story in the sun was full of outrage but the video had a little advertisement tacked on the front and the advertisement was for cider!
Prior to the commercial revolution, restrictions existed on the sale of alcohol. In my youth one could only buy booze at a pub or off license and the off licenses was generally part of the pub. I think it is understandable that we can now buy booze in super markets but this means little metro super markets in the centre of town too. Walking along Western Road in Brighton there are a string of little grocer shops which also sell alcohol and there is at least one which appears to do very little business in anything but alcohol and I suspect that the dodgy looking vegetables are just there for show.
Deliberate targeting of youth by the alcohol industry also plays a part in increased consumption with fruit flavoured vodka based drinks and high strength lagers. Another factor related to greater alcohol consumption is that the owners of pubs and bars have strived to make them more “efficient”. In our commercialised society efficient means that they generate as much money as possible and this means selling as much booze as possible. To achieve this the environment in pubs and bars has been modified in a number of ways. For example there is little room to sit down and the music has been turned up so that one must shout to be heard. I have been in pubs like this myself and when nobody can talk we just resort to drinking. Why do we stay in the pub? A good question. I guess it is that a majority of the people present have fallen for the marketing that a noisy uncomfortable bar is the place to be.
I am not arguing for draconian laws to curb alcohol. I like to drink myself. What I am criticising is the government’s lack of understanding and imagination when tacking the problem. I am criticising, once again, New Labour’s obsession with the market and commercialism. I am criticising New Labour inability to affect anything because of their obsequious relationship with bis business. I am criticising the fact that New Labour are now so scared of business that they dare not make any change that would affect someone in a pin striped suit. If New Labour had been in power in 1833 the Slavery Abolition Act would never have been passed because the slave owners would have whinged that their profits would be affected.
Before the government looks at the price of alcohol they should look at Targeting, Advertising, Drinking environment and Availability (TADA).
Moving the booze away from the fruit and veg would be social engineering
18
Dec
09
Snow in Brighton
Brighton Copper
I travelled back from London to Brighton last night, catching the 11:14pm from London Bridge. As we travelled the snow began to fall and the train slowed to a crawl. As we crept along the driver announced that we would soon be in the tunnel and then we would be home free. Emerging from the station Brighton was quiet and white and beautiful. The copper standing chatting was a nice contrast to the screaming policeman I’d seen earlier on the underground.
Walking down Queen’s Road, a handful of taxis skidded around and the Quadrant pub looked very good. I walked along Western Road where a huddle of people stood waiting for a bus that would never come. Then down to the sea front where people were building giant snow men on Hove Lawns.
.
.
Bikes at station
The Quadrant
Snow
The Meeting Place
Hove Prom
Footprints
Driving Culture
Tags: bangkok, brighton, Cars, corruption, culture, developing world, driving, Dyke Road Avenue, Enoch Powell, ICMB, Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles, lane discipline, multinational companies, Nigeria, salesman, Thailand, traffic, United States, women drivers, Woodean Drive
Traffic in Port Harcourt
While in America I had hired a car. Americans seem to ride more than drive and when the traffic stops they leave vast spaces between each car. They seem more tolerant of poor driving but this may be because they lack lane discipline. Cars weave between lanes without warning.
In Nigeria the driving style was to never give an inch to any other driver. I remember a journey crawling along a narrow street in Lagos approaching a crossroads. Once we reached the intersection every car was revving their engine madly and pushing forward to gradually edge past the other cars which were all doing the same thing. Normally, in Nigeria, I had a driver but one Christmas I had to drive myself and determined to show Nigerians how it should be done. My plan was doomed from the start. I waited forlornly for someone to let me out into the moving traffic but if I had not abandoned my stupid idea and pushed my way out I would be waiting there to this day.
It is the same with the Nigerian corruption. It is all very well claiming moral superiority and deciding that you will pay no bribes but you will achieve nothing. One cannot eradicate corruption by example any more than one can force lane discipline on Americans by example. This is a lesson I believe should be understood by armchair stay at homes who lecture multinational companies on their behaviour in the developing world.
On occasions a Nigerian would become so frustrated by the lack of progress that he would emerge from his car and start directing traffic himself until his own driver was able to navigate the intersection at which point he would re-enter his car and leave the whole tangled mess behind him. I did this myself on several occasions and it gave one a great feeling of elation as one finally gained the open road and sped away into the hot night.
Another boon to Nigerian traffic control were the disabled. I vividly recall a one legged man who would stand on the podium provided for the permanently absent traffic police and direct the traffic with his crutch. As the traffic passed the drivers would sling him a handful of Naira.
bangkok traffic
A few years ago I drove across Bangkok in the rush hour. Starting around 5pm, I reached my destination by 9pm but on the wrong side of the road which was divided by a concrete barrier. I continued and, noticing that U-turns were prohibited, I turned left and then left again into a car park where I re-emerged and turned right back onto the correct side of the road. A traffic cop stopped me and accused me of making a U-turn. He explained that although I had not actually made a U-turn I had achieved the same result and had therefore broken the law. Unlike the British police he seemed to enforce the spirit of the law if not the letter of the law.
Back in the UK this morning I drove north on the M23 and, as the lanes merged into the A23, I indicated left but the other driver refused to let me in. My initial reaction was that the driver was an anally retentive moron but then I saw the driver was a woman. It is a fact that women do not let you in. I once knew a salesman who said that he never let cars pull out from side streets as it was a “a sign of weakness”. I don’t believe that the reason that women do not let you in is driven by this same insecurity but by a preoccupation with following the rules. If you have right of way, why should give it up?
Men (excluding salesmen) appear more cooperative when they drive. At the meeting of Woodean Drive and Dyke Road Avenue in Brighton each morning cars take turns to join the main road. This admirable cooperation is interrupted only by women and, presumably, salesmen. Perhaps this is related to Enoch Powell’s comment that women are not “clubable”.
I have heard that a study was carried out in the United States to test the effectiveness of the process for launching Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICMBs) and that the test provided that the launch technicians believed that they were initiating a real nuclear missile launch. It was found that women would always launch the missiles as they had been instructed but that a percentage of men would refuse. The men would fall back on their own reasoning and decide that since all they could achieve was wholesale murder there was no point in proceeding. I have heard that more women in the UK support the introduction of capital punishment than men.
It is interesting that my reaction on seeing that the driver who failed to let me in was a woman was to dismiss the incident whereas I would have continued to feel aggravated if the driver had been a man. I guess this is related to some kind of male competition.