Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner

Being as I am completely indifferent to the Olympics the only good thing about it coming to my home town has been the programmes about London that BBC2 & BBC4 broadcast in recent weeks. In particular  The Secret History of Our Streets, a 6 part series using Charles Booth’s 19th century social maps (Charles Booth Online Archive) as a starting point to chart the ever-changing character of London streets and its residents.

Starting with Deptford High Street SE8, once described as ‘the Oxford Street of south London’; a sorry tale of decline, a community broken up and officious local authority figures deciding the fate of residents with little regard to what people wanted. This was typical of many experiences of ordinary people particularly in the post-World War II years of ‘scum clearance’.

Staying south of the river the up and down fate of Camberwell Grove SE5 was a tale of property development and well-meaning folk wanting to preserve fine old buildings. Here developers built fine houses for the well-to-do who wanted to escape the rapidly growing city in what was then a semi-rural area. However the city soon caught up with Camberwell Grove and as the well-off moved on landlords rented out the houses to families who occupied rooms rather than the whole houses and the properties began to fall into disrepair. In the 1960s things begun to change as young middle-class people bought up these run down houses. And now the street is up-market again.

For the Caledonian Road N1 there was never such grandeur. A road leading up from King’s Cross with its railway station, the area was and is still considered ‘rough’. But here too residents fought to preserve what there was when British Rail threatened to destroy the community. And since the programme was aired there has been much controversy regarding the local landlord featured who boasted about his disregard for planning and building regulations. ‘No milk left in the Cally’

Property speculation in west London’s Portland Road W11 told a very different tale. Built with the well-off in mind Portland Road however soon was notorious as a slum. Again it was not until the 1960s that the street saw a turnaround in fortune; and what a turnaround. Now a banker’s enclave, the street has some of the most expensive property in London – with a council estate at one end.

Returning south of the river Reverdy Road SE1 was perhaps the least changed of the street featured, although here as everywhere changes were happening. Home to the ‘respectable’ working class in the 19th century this was a story of Bermondsey’s local politicians and for want of a better description, their Christian / Socialist sense of duty to the local people. When the now defunct Bermondsey Council bought up Reverdy Road and the rest of the West Estate properties they modernised them and ensure local people had priority in renting the houses, keeping the community together. Now however with the changes to housing policy and the ‘right to buy’ local people are not so dominate as they once were.

Finally the first council estate opened in 1896 in east London. Built by the long gone London County Council, the Boundary Estate around Arnold Circus E2 was to replace the overcrowded slums in the area. By today’s standards the flats would seems substandard with only some having indoor toilets and none having hot water, but in comparison to the buildings they replaced the flats were palaces. Trouble was at 10 shillings a week the people who had lived in the slums demolished to make way for the estate could not afford the rent them. Those that could afford it soon built up a sense of community; a mixed community with a large number of residents being Jewish. However in the post war years people wanted more than these neglected flats could offer and the community began to dissolve as they moved away to more modern homes. In the 1970s a very different movement to those seeking to preserve changed the fortunes of the declining Boundary Estate – squatting. This area of the east end was now home to many Bangladeshi families who were living in squalid and overcrowded conditions. Encourage to squat in empty properties belonging to the LLC’s successor, the now also defunct Greater London Council, the GLC ended up rehousing the families in the area. Of course now while the estate remains a council property (Tower Hamlets) many flats are now privately owned and overpriced.

This series was on the whole very good; with no ‘experts’ just commentary and interviews with former and current residents it gave a fairly rounded view of the social history of these streets. My only criticism would be that the role of poor and / or exploitative landlords, whether they be private or local authority, in the creation of slums was not given enough attention (though Peter Rachman was briefly mentioned) and it was implied that rent control (something desperately needed) was to blame for the fact that landlords let their properties decay as was the often asserted assumption that all council estates are poorly designed slums full of the ‘undeserving poor’.

Olympic Apathy

What can you do when you don't care about the Olympics & there's nothing else all over the TV? And if you say you're not bothered about the Olympics people think you're unpatriotic. it's all very tiresome. Can't wait for it all to be over. But then there'll be years of talk about the 'legacy'....bloody hell another 7 years no doubt!

Ignore the smug

What can you do but ignore the smug? Everyone, including me, feels smug from time to time, but some people it seems just have to continually express their smugness by criticising others and making out that they are superior. Best not to engage in any conversation with such smug gits, lest you lose it and end up having a pointless row. 

Prometheus

Prometheus – there’s a lot of debate surrounding Ridley Scott’s prequel to Alien, mostly about the myriad of unanswered questions raised in film. Personally I found the film a bit of a disappointment. I didn’t read any reviews before going to see it and went purely on the strength of the trailers and memory of really enjoying Alien. I expected the film to be visually good – and it was. We went to see it in Imax and 3D at the BFI. It was stunning – a bit too stunning in our seats! My disappointment came in the storyline and lack of characterisation.

What some have seen as unanswered questions, I saw as plot holes and as for the characters and their motives (or lack thereof), well I didn’t care much for any of them. Also the editing and continuity in places was very poor. I expected more from Ridley Scott, as the director of one of my all-time favourite films, Blade Runner.

So what’s it all about? In a nutshell 2 archaeologists, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) & her husband, Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), discover a series of depictions of what they have interpreted as a star map inviting us to meet an alien species they call the Engineers, who Shaw believes are our creators. The fact that they are archaeologists is enough to put me off of them to start and as the film went on I liked them even less. why archaeologists make me annoyed

With apparently no other evidence, only Shaw’s belief, mega-rich Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) funds an expedition. His motive is clear – he’s dying and is looking to extend his life. As for the rest of the team and crew, as they appear to have no idea why they are going or what they will find when they get there, I guess they are just being very well paid.


beware of androids

So they arrive and start to explore. And very soon things go wrong. In part due to the android, David (Michael Fassbender), who has been alone on the ship for over 2 years while everyone else has been in stasis, watching Lawrence of Arabia, spying on the human’s dreams and possibly going ever so slightly bonkers. David is responsible for Holloway’s demise (no loss there) and the introduction of an alien parasite to Shaw’s barren womb. The latter giving rise to a very unpleasant scene which made me wonder at the 15 certification.

Well things go from bad to worse and all but 2 characters are dead by the end. Although our annihilation by those that Shaw believed created us has been prevented by 3 characters sacrificing themselves for no apparent reason than they believe what Shaw tells them!

Shaw is the most annoying character; a bad scientist and worst of all, a female lead who’s no Ripley. I just couldn’t take her seriously and in no way could believe in her as a saviour. I wanted her to kick some alien ass. Shaw couldn’t kick her way out of a wet paper bag. Now Vickers (Charlize Theron), icy cold and at one point accused of being a robot by Janek (the under-used Idris Elba), you could imagine kicking ass. It would have been a better film to make the Vickers character step up.



that's the way to do it

And as for all the debates about who the Engineers were, why they did what they did, why they planned to go whatever it was that they were going to – well David supplied the best answer in conversation with Holloway about the engineer’s motive for creating us; have we considered they did it just because they can.

I think that’s why Ridley Scott made the film, just because he could.

Class War #3

Most London councils try to move people outside borough

And so it goes on. The story told by the resident of Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea is only to be expected of a borough that thinks if you can't afford to buy your home there or pay for private education for your child, you shouldn't be living there and should send your child to another borough's schools. Nearly 170,000 people live there, a quarter in council or housing association housing yet there are only 5 state secondary schools in the borough, 3 of which are church schools. Not much choice and I guess once they cleanse the borough of so-called 'social housing' tenants they'll probably be even less.

The 70s

BBC2 has been running a 1970s season. This has meant the airing of some classic 70s cinema; One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest; Mean Streets and Cabaret, but also the documentary series by Dominic Sandbrook called 'The 70s'. 

 

As I grew up in the 70s I thought I'd give this 4 part series a go, if just for the nostalgia. There was that aplenty in the soundtrack but other than that it was a deeply unsatisfying in format and content. Made up entirely of archive clips and Sandbrook's voice over and to camera commentary, it gave a broad sweep of the decade under the premise that the 1970s shaped the world we live in today. Well duh! You could say that about any past decade. Society is not static and is forever changing; old traditions and ways of life fall away and new ones take their place. There was certainly some significant shifts in British society in the 70s. 

Consensus politics were on the way out, global economics began to bite, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and Race Relations Act 1976 were to start to change the lives of millions (though sexism and racism are still with us). Yet there were no interviews with the people involved or affected. The whole series was just Sandbrook's personal view - a view which seemed to come from the middle-class right and say 'no wonder Thatcher came to power in the end'. And that was about the sum of it.

In contrast 'The Lost World of the Seventies' presented by Michael Cockerell, an hour long programme which focused on 4 'characters' of the 1970s, was far more satisfying. Using archive footage and interviews with people involved at the time, these snapshots gave a far more interesting perspective of the times and in a way was more convincing about the changes the 70s made. 

 

Starting with General Walter Walker, who sought to protect Britain from 'the enemy within', the archive interviews show a man with genuine fear of the 'Red Menace' and who was trying to gather around him like-minded individuals that would, if necessary, take over Britain to save us from Marxists. There were many who did fear such a thing. In the end though even the Telegraph undermined him and the old general with his paper army faded away. In Britain we don't go in for coups. 

Next up was Lord Longford aka Lord Porn and notorious visitor of Myra Hindley. Longford headed a campaign against pornography after the Obscene Publications Act had been amended to allow more salacious material to be published. An old school moral campaigner his investigation and report was ignored by government. 

Next was Jimmy Goldsmith, billionaire financier and tycoon, who's business dealings were subject to scrutiny and criticism by the BBC's Money Programme and by Private Eye. Goldsmith went on to try and use the criminal libel law against Private Eye, which though in the end only cost the magazine a full page add apologising and retracting its allegation that Goldsmith had helped old friend Lord Lucan flee after the murder of his children's nanny, all Goldsmith actually achieved was dislike and increasing the sales of Private Eye. 



Last up was Robert Mark, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police from 1972 to 1977, who came to fight corruption in the CID. Corruption, was rife especially in the Flying Squad and Obscene Publications Squad and Mark was determined to root it out. Several high profile arrests followed. Mark in the end resigned though when government sought to make an independent police complaints authority. He had kept his investigations 'in-house'.

 

The world has changed since these characters were in  the news. You can't image some old general now talking about the need to fight any kind of menace if government fails nor some old lord campaigning on such controversial issues. No, too campaign now and be listened to means you have be a celebrate chef and/or have lots of followers on Twitter and Facebook. Goldsmith's story though perhaps does have more of a parallel today; no doubt now he'd have taken out a super-injunction. Big business men still don't like to be criticised - look at Murdoch. As for Mark's crusade against police corruption, it was long over due and still with us - Murdoch again - though not so rife as failure to make timely investigations (see this)

This post has kind of got away from me a bit but I guess the point of the comparison is that when it come to making programmes about recent history it's the documentary maker not the historian who wins hand down. 

Thanks John

Last night as I was adding my latest post I noticed there was a comment on my Chronicle film review post. This is what it says:

‘You're an idiot... The movie was horrible. Your article is a contrived tribute to your "I think I'm a good writer" wanna be persona. However, looking past the fact that you can't string together letters to form coherent sentences, I still find your article to be a hot heaping mess of, well, mess... Have fun blocking this so others can't see truth... ‘

It was left by someone calling himself John Titor. Obviously John did not enjoy Chronicle and apparently according to John anyone who likes something he doesn’t is an idiot. Well everyone’s entitled to their opinion and it would be a boring world if we all liked the same things. As for the criticism of my writing, well I don’t claim to be a professional writer or a good one. John doesn’t care for the way I write and again that’s his opinion. I’m not complaining. After all anyone who posts anything on the internet is open to criticism. I often add remarks to other people’s posts, although my comments tend to be either to agree or disagree with what has been written and rather less personal.

John got me thinking though about why I blog at all. I can’t even remember why I decided to blog. Must have had a reason at the time and as my earlier posts are generally moaning about the petty inconveniences of life and things that annoy me I guess I began just to have a vent for my own frustrations. Then for ages I didn’t blog at all until I did one post in 2010 about a couple of TV programmes I’d watched. An even longer gap followed and at the end of 2011 I did a film review post and decided to carry on blogging mainly about TV and film because I like TV and film.

This doesn’t really answer the question though of why I, or anyone else for that matter, blogs if you’re just a nobody. I mean I never assumed that anyone outside my friends and family would ever look at my blog. I think, in the end, I write my blog because I enjoy writing about things that interest me.

So thanks John for giving me another subject to write about.

BTW I have left John’s comment up and invited him to say what he didn’t like about Chronicle but I guess as he loathes my writing so much he won’t be viewing my blog again.