Life shuffles past at a low interest rate in the money-coloured meadows.

[reddragdiva]

• What the fucking fuck? You need to join Liberty, right fucking now.

This is ridiculous. I got to sleep last night at 1:30am and woke up this morning at five. Lay there until the alarm went off at six, but still.

The calendar post idea is useful but I'll have to keep it updated. I have Friday evening clear for a date with arkady but forgot to ahhhh ask her what she was doing. Whoops.

I had a pleasant Starbucks frapp and muffin with karen2205 this lunch time. She was three-quarters asleep from accounting-induced stress, but otherwise most bouncy and cheering. She impressed upon me the need to sort out my tax properly this year. Indeed. My pay arrived yesterday — there's something enormously cheering about a couple of thousand quid showing up after much delay.

The housework and DIY appear to be happening faster. Good!

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Go to Dead & Buried, then. I can't, as we are moving offices this weekend and it's already looking like it's going to be a total train wreck

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Date is still happening; I cancelled on the fluffybunnies. So we may both go to D&B.

Or not, depending on splatitude levels.

[reddragdiva]

Oh baybee. Let's sleep together! *zzzzzzzzz*

[arkady.livejournal.com]

That Guardian article is downright scary. Gods only know what would happen if they took an interest in any of the arscc uk [wdne] guys....

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

Well this isn't a good time to continue the Wikipedia project of photographing tube stations. Hell I got stopped by the cops at Borough tube _before_ the bombings.

My camera has pictures of tube stations and Crystal Palace mast on. Gawd knows what they'd do to me now. I'm not even fucking respectable.

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

What the fucking fuck?

this is why i think Britain is a shitty place to live, pretty much in a nutshell. if you ask police to arrest a 15 yr old you've just seen trying to break into a neighbours flat, they refuse, and don't check his identity or age in any way. if you walk into a tube station with a rucksack, they arrest you, take all your stuff, refuse to tell you what they've done, and then put you on all their lists of troublemakers and keep you there forever.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

We should issue rucksacks and bulky jackets to all teenage burglars.

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

or maybe just convince them to burgle Tube stations...

[sparklielizard.livejournal.com]

Especially as the tube where it happened - Southwark - is the local tube for where I work and most weeks somebody tries to steal bikes/laptops/whatever from our company and the police don't give a toss. And the thugs continue fighting in the streets, accosting passers-by and generally being abusive. But that's okay, so long as you don't look respectable, mind your own business and catch the tube home from work.

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

yes, exactly.

but oh, it's their human right to fight, spew on my car, accost me, or abuse the little old lady down the street.
*sarcasm*

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

Funny I live in Southwark too and don't see any of this.

Maybe they only come out when they know Daily Mail readers are looking..

Or (*shock horror*) you are stereotyping based on dress and class!

[sparklielizard.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here, but in my experience the people who fight in the streets, hurl abuse at innocent people and have been seen stealing are without question not dressed as office workers! Perhaps you live in a different part of Southwark?

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

Yes I do - I live in Camberwell which is nowhere near as posh as the area around Southwark tube station.

We don't actually spend all our time beating up old ladies.

The only abuse I've ever received in the streets was when I went to the London Metropolitan archives in Farringdon. That was an unprovoked attack on me for looking poor. I haven't been back.

There seems to be very little mixing in London. People come into our areas - work and then leave. They are afraid of us and their only information about us comes from the hysterical press.

It also means that it can be impossible to escape. You don't "look the part", you "don't fit in". Social mobility in the UK is at its lowest level since World War 2. Whether the ASBO/"Chav" hysteria is a reflection or a cause I don't know. I know it is increasingly unpleasant to live here.

[sparklielizard.livejournal.com]

I think you're taking what I said a little too personally! I never said that all poor-looking people are all criminals at all - I said that the people who have hassled me, been abusive, started fights in the street and been seen stealing our bikes and laptops were not respectably-dressed office workers! I'm only going on what I see around me.

You don't know me, or you'd realise I don't give a fig what someone looks like, and I will be just as friendly to anyone no matter what their appearance, so long as they're not giving me abuse. I may work in London, but I'm not from round here - in fact I grew up in one of the poorest parts of the UK (I would love to return if only I could afford to) and I think you're being a bit harsh.

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

You're right - I don't know you. I tend to take the current hysteria as classism - and I tend to take classism personally.

[narnee.livejournal.com]

What the fucking fuck?

And this is why, when walking past police officers anywhere, I always smile at them and say hello.

[shamus9999.livejournal.com]

Lucky for him he only got arrested and not shot.

[barakta]

http://gizmonaut.net/ The guy's own website. A friend of mine knows him.

I would be unhappy about that much data about me or my partner being kept on police file. We would have no good reason for having a good skip worth of random electronic and computer crap. We acquired most of it from my dad who is allowed to swipe it from his work's skips.

The other issue would be my partner worrying about being sarcastic at StupidPeople(tm) by telling them that "No, if I was a terrorist, I would do it X way" which of course would be extremely unwise. Hell I've got a chemistry A-level and started a degree in the nasty subject.

*shudder*

[karen2205]

Thank you for lunch - it was good:-)

[hiddenpaw.livejournal.com]

Hate to see what happens if this bloke trys to take a holliday in the states.

[redcountess]

That was my thought too - stop being in my head! :-)

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

join Liberty, right fucking now.

not a fucking chance in hell. i will *never* support any group that actually backs the load of meaningless bullshit that is the European Convention on Human Rights. nor do i think ASBO's are a bad idea, or object to them being used on 10 yr olds.

basically, i'd rather have the current fascist police state than let that load of idiotic wooly thinkers anywhere near government policy.

[karen2205]

hat actually backs the load of meaningless bullshit that is the European Convention on Human Rights.

What makes you say that?

I think ASBOs are quite a good idea for both kids and adults, but some of the stories I've heard about their use make me a bit uneasy eg. kids diagnosed with asperger's syndrome being given them for doing something that's clearly caused by their illness. Those kids are in greater need of proper medical treatement/support from social services/appropriate education provision than punishment, IMO.

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

the european convention on human rights has created a lot of new rights which entitle people to things they have not earned, and which other people do not appear to have the same entitlement to. in the UK, the most obvious applications have been that all the local councils have had to lay people off and cut wages, because unskilled cleaners aren't being payed as much as technicians - cleaners tend to be women, and technicians men, so it must be sexism! clearly it's a violation of the human rights of the women to pay them less! it's also given the "travelling community" a handy exemption from planning regulations.

i'm not actually a believer in "human rights" as the term currently exists - since when do people have a "right" to a nice house and enough to eat?? why do i have to work full time to pay for a nice house and enough to eat if they are my "right"? if i have a "right" to an education, why did i have to pay for it?

i grew up thinking that human rights were the right to speak and act with relative freedom, and without horrific abuse. the right to succeed or fail without being enslaved, or having my body violated... but it clearly the term now means something completely different. and frankly, i blame fuzzy thinkers like Liberty.

and on aspergers...

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

the criteria for diagnosis are so very vague that i think that it should be completely eliminated from medicine. there are horrible short and long term side-effects from ritalin, and the criteria for aspergers (being far less severe than for autism) fall well within the range of normal human behaviour, and would be better dealt with as being within the normal range. and that includes being held to society's standards for what behaviour is legal and what is not.

[kest]

what's an ASBO?

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

Anti Social Behaviour Order.
if someone's doing a whole lot of antisocial stuff, they get taken to court and told it's their last warning, and given a list of stuff they must not do. if they do it, they go back to court.
if the police and legal system hadn't been so badly messed up here, we wouldn't need them.

[kest]

what sort of stuff are we talking about here? I'm guessing not actual crimes. Is this like forcing smelly people to take showers, or what?

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

generally it's vandals, people who harrass their neighbours, people who drink and get violent. "petty crime".