LondonJuice

Looney Tunes

2006-02-09T13:56:00.000Z

It's been an exciting time to be in London. Cartoon villain Hooky is in jail. A cartoon jailbird on parole is dressed to kill and may be bounced straight back to Clink. The Association of Muslim Cartoon Critics convenes outside the Danish embassy. The police look the other way. No arrests made. It's a Cartoon World. But are they funny?

In The Barber’s Chair

2006-01-09T18:00:00.000Z

I went to my ‘ethnic minority’ Greek Cypriot barber (who born in the UK, talks like a Cockney and thinks of himself as Greek only when The Sun declares that the Greeks are the best lovers in the world or when the Greek football team wins the European Nations Cup). In the waiting line we all sit in silence reading whatever is at hand (books on the SAS and the ancient world, GQ magazine, The Sun newspaper).

In the chair we are interviewed by the barber. The man in the hot seat is white, middle class, well spoken. The talk is of riots.

So far there have been no riots in London like those that have been reported in the UK media in France and not reported in the UK media in Denmark. I heard callers say on Vanessa Feltz’s phone-in that it couldn’t happen here, that we are ‘too multi-cultural’. Maybe we are too integrated in London (which is what the caller meant to say, perhaps) for one race to turn against another or for one religion to take up arms against the law.

The man in the hot seat thinks it’s inevitable though. He says we are treating the immigrants as second-class citizens although he provided no evidence. The barber says there are too many immigrants here and he says that the problem is not that they are immigrants (his parents were immigrants after all) but that these immigrants (muslim) do not want even to integrate let alone to assimilate. He says there are a million muslims in the UK. ‘A million,’ he said, cranking up the incredulity, ‘A million!’

Then I was in the chair. Andrew told me about Hannibal crossing the Alps because we do history rather than current affairs.

I wasn’t really focussed on the Hannibal story. I was thinking about the man before me. His assumption was that it was inevitable, yet he expressed no indignation at that. He seemed to me to be suggesting that we ‘have it coming’, as the barber might say. And I can’t help thinking that this clearly educated man had accepted this threat, believed it was justified and that what we should be doing is bending over even further forwards to accommodate the threat and not repel it.

On New Year’s Day

2006-01-09T17:59:00.000Z

I sent a link to two friends I have known for 30 years by way of wishing them a Happy New Year. It was Mark Steyn’s thousand month stare into the future of the West. I got no reply from my friends on the essay and it made me wonder whether I have become serious with age.

I thought about all the places I have known and imagined them with new names, Arabic names, alien names grafted onto the mountains and streets where I grew up. I imagined the village empty of people who look like me, who dressed like me and who spoke like me. I thought about the church yard headstones and the inscriptions to the dead in the church and reflected on how this energy, this drama and this history, already forgotten by its own people, will now be erased altogether by another culture. Maybe.

Some Get A Kick Out Of Cocaine

2005-11-18T12:48:00.000Z

Well, more than some. Nearly 4% of the city is engaged in snorting Charles according to the calculations of scientists who took samples from the river.

Depends how much you allow for each user. Embarrasingly, friends of ours are regular users. They have proper jobs, careers even (one is a partner in a law firm). We declined an invitation recently to a house party where we knew there would be a big quicksniff element. It's just so self-consciously transgressive. I much preferred it when it was the preserve of the rich and the sleazy. Now, it's so suburban.

Cocaine is at the stage of public acceptance that Cannabis was at in about 1983. Before then smoking dope was for students, hippies and Jamaicans. At some point the students got jobs and began their inevitable climb into positions of power. And with that the drug has become accepted. If you are a low user and not a supplier you have more chance of being busted for not buying a TV licence.

And so it will be with cocaine. In twenty years everyone will have taken cocaine. It is an unstoppable force. There have been the usual attempts (education, siezures) to stop it. To no avail. I went to a place in Shoreditch a few years ago where they had a bouncer in the wc. His role in life was to stop people getting a fix in the cubicle. In twenty years that will seem as quaint as a teacher expecting you not to smoke outside the school.

It's now cheaper than it has ever been. Cocaine is everywhere. Drug deals are done at the top of my suburban street. Every toilet cistern in the night-time economy is used as a cocaine table. Almost every banknote in use in London has traces of cocaine on it.

You got a problem with that?

Banking Again

2005-11-17T13:42:00.000Z

I note with interest that the bankers are developing new products to help the colonists.

The caliphate won't be extended simply with violence but also with the unwitting help of the infidels themselves, devising products to make life easier for the settlers. Lloyds TSB will no doubt derive some financial advantage out of exploiting this niche market which is always a good thing. They will also benefit with some touchy-feely PR about diversity. But there is another side to this development and that is that we are now creating an economy that will be capable or replacing infidel capitalism. Should we need to. Should we have to.

Summer's Over

2005-11-17T13:27:00.000Z

I know it was over some time ago. But it didn't feel like it. But today in London the sun is shining and the air is cold. It's close to zero and the leaves are autumnal. It's time for winter pursuits, including sitting at a computer and making notes from near the Underground. So, where were we?

State Sponsored Terrorism

2005-07-26T18:00:00.000+01:00

I would like to say I am amazed or shocked or even surprised. But I am not. Once again the State has subsidised the living costs of people who would destroy it. Maybe, just maybe, if people like this were not paid to sit around on their arses all day then they wouldn't have so much time to build up a festering hatred of the hand that feeds them. State benefits are a problem in the UK and this has to be the most extreme example of just how much of a problem.

The 9/11 Attacks That Didn't Happen

2005-07-25T18:06:00.000+01:00

The diligent Melanie Phillips picks up on a story that in ordinary times would have been on the front page. The Times' story of how men plotted to fly planes into British and Australian targets on the 11th September 2001 made page 12.

Melanie is right to highlight that these conspiracies were before Iraq and before Afghanistan. I am sure her enemies will soon point out though that she is hiding from her readers some of the facts: as she well knows, the intended attacks were preceded by the first Gulf War, the creation of the state of Israel and the collapse of the Caliphate.

If Looks Could Kill (But They Don't Do They?)

2005-07-22T17:57:00.000+01:00

Mr Bunglawala from the Muslim Council of Great Britain said in the current atmosphere Muslims were very afraid and other people were looking at them in a very suspicious manner. I imagine they are, especially if they are wearing souped-up rucksacks. Where will this end? Not only do we have to make them our special friends according to Trevor Phillips, now we also have to look at them correctly.

Bombing For Allah (Part Two of a Series)

2005-07-21T20:17:00.000+01:00

No news yet on who was (ir)responsible for today's sorry-arsed attempts at causing death and destruction. I think we need not be looking for too long. A friend tells me that his police officer brother, who is working in Central London, claims there have been nine arrests, that the police shot one suspect and that another suspect is loose in University College. He also says that the bombs were nail bombs.

Religious Education

2005-07-13T13:14:00.000+01:00

As soon as it happened we got people telling us that we shouldn't be so hasty at pointing the finger at Muslims. Then, yesterday, we discover the identities of the bombers. Shehzad Tanweer was one of them. His family came out with the usual 'It couldn't have been him' rubbish that we always get from killers' families. After all, they say, he had just been in Pakistan for two months studying religion.

This breaks two ways doesn't it? If he really was studying religion and that religion is a religion of peace then how come he was such a bad student? Could it be that the religion he was getting wasn't about spreading peace? Alternatively, the whole religion school story might be a complete fabrication and that really he was there learning how to carry out attacks against Kaffirs.

The former Chief of the Metropolitan Police estimates that there are up to 200 people in this country are Al Quaeda trained. Many more have been to training camps run by the Taliban. Some of those are dead. Some are in jail. Most are out there in places like Bradford, Hounslow and Luton. No-one yet has the numbers on how many have been to Pakistan to further their religious education.

Amateurs

2005-07-13T12:46:00.000+01:00

Well, that didn't take long did it? Less than a week after the bombing we know who the killers were and where they came from. The Met can call this a success. I think, though, that it may have been relatively easy. The bombers arrived together on a train. They carried identification with them that was found at the crime scenes. One of their families, perhaps unaware of why he was in London, reported their son missing. As terrorists go these were amateurs compared to that other bunch of murderous pychopaths we have been dealing with for decades, the IRA.

I think that the organisation that inspired these people to do these things will regard the clues that led to their early identification as errors. Inspiring terror in the populace requires the threat to remain. Assuredly, now that we are almost certain that these were suicide attacks, the threat will remain as there will be other indoctrinated young people ready to die. However, to maximise terror it would have been more effective for the killers to have remained as anonymous as possible for as long as possible. They have been found within a week and the evidence discovered and the information obtained from individual arrested yesterday will begin, in a small way, to close down the threat.

The Islamofascists took a blow yesterday but those who are not brought under the police's scrutiny will learn from their comrades' mistakes. They are amateurs now, but for how much longer?

The First Named Victim

2005-07-11T17:43:00.000+01:00

And so the roll-call of the dead begins. The first named victim was Susan Levy (52). I don't know if she was Jewish. Levy is certainly a Jewish name. Has anyone said that it was Mossad yet? Or that the Jews were told to stay out of town on the 7th July?

Backlash

2005-07-11T17:26:00.000+01:00

Much wringing of hands is happening all over the BBC, The Guardian and all the other usual places. The BBC quotes one Muslim woman as saying:

"Whenever something like this happens, I know we're going to get targeted. Last time [Madrid train bombings] I got pointed at in the street."

It's not nice to be pointed at but, Lord above, can a bit of pointing really be that painful? Is it as painful as having your head sawn off?

There Is No Evidence To Suggest It Was Muslims

2005-07-11T13:34:00.000+01:00

Something calling itself the Islamic Human Rights Commission (Commissioned by who? Not Her Majesty's government that's for sure) is complaining that Tony Blair is jumping to conclusions in claiming that the bombs were set off by Muslims. We'll see soon enough but if it wasn't the work of Islamofascists I will eat my burqa.

Isn't it about time that we stopped trying to be so delicate about this? We know who is doing it and we know what they want. Why can't we identify them? Why can't we tell them they can't have it? It's time to start plain-speaking regardless of how much that hurts.

Flesh and Alcohol

2005-07-11T13:22:00.000+01:00

This weekend I did nothing much. Mrs Hambrough and I cycled down to Hampton Court and back. The sun shone and people lazed in the parks. Women sunbathed in bikinis, men went topless. People drank by the river, the middle classes took wine from glasses, vagrants Special Brew from cans. I loved it all. I loved even the men who wear tattoos and I can't stand tattoos. London is beautiful. It moves me. And one of the many things I like about it is it's so unSharia.

Flesh and alcohol. I might get myself a tattoo of my own and take to drinking in the streets. While I can.

Eyewitness Phones Gaunty

2005-07-08T13:42:00.000+01:00

On this morning's Jon Gaunt radio show a British man called Angelo phoned to talk about how he had been on a bombed train at King's Cross. His faltering voice explained the panic and the fear, how people tried to beat out the windows with shoes and umbrellas to escape, how others said their final prayers. Gaunty assumed that this man, who only twenty four hours earlier had been in a terror attack, was at home recuperating. 'No,' said Angelo, a barrister, 'I am outside the Court waiting to go in.' He's getting on with it. Let's hope the politicians don't betray that spirit by attempting reconciliation.

London Attacked

2005-07-07T13:22:00.000+01:00

We don't know the real human damage yet. Its lunchtime and two have been declared dead. It seems certain there will be more. I heard on the radio that there are many injured.

Scotland Yard said explosions have been reported at Edgware Road, King's Cross, Liverpool Street, Russell Square, Aldgate East and Moorgate. Also, on a bus at Tavistock Square, near to Russell Square and Kings Cross.

It's not altogether clear why these places were targeted. Liverpool Street and Moorgate are two stations where thousands of City workers arrive for their financial services jobs. They would always be major targets. King's Cross like Liverpool Street is also a major railway terminus so it too would be an obvious target. Aldgate East is on the edge of the City and what has become known as Banglatown, an area populated by immigrants from Bangladesh. That station may have been chosen simply because it was easy to get to if the bombers were hidden in that part of town. Similarly, Edgware Road is a relatively quiet station but it is in the middle of the London emigre Arab community. The bus bomb was a one-off (perhaps a suicide bomber). Maybe others were planned though.

I drove through Hounslow over in the west of the City around mid-morning. That, too, has a high Muslim population. There were police everywhere and several buses looked as though they had been stopped in the street in a hurry, parked at odd angles and emptied of passengers.

You phone your friends and your relatives. Everything's OK with them. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.

Witchcraft in London

2005-06-16T13:43:00.000+01:00

It must be along time since people were last killed in the course of Witchcraft in London. Then they found 'Adam''s limbless torso washed up in the Thames, apparently dead through ritual murder. Maybe a one-off. Maybe not.

Now plod at the Met has discovered that three hundred black African schoolboys are missing. Have they, too, been dismembered by their own kith and kin? Who knows. What seems certain is that we can't pin this on the people who did it.

'Antoine Lokongo, the editor of a Congolese newsletter, Congo Panorama, believes the growing violence in exorcisms is due to western influence. '

Didn't you just know it would be our fault?

The Interview

2005-06-15T19:28:00.000+01:00

I went for a job. I already have one but I need a new one. The worst moment in what was an hour of bad moments came when I was asked to give examples of how I had implemented in a new way the Equality and Diversity policy under which organisations the like of which I work for labour. I could think of nothing because I had done nothing. And I had done nothing because I don't care who provides me with the services I need to get my job done. They are either good or bad. I am not going to waste time looking for a good black builder. Or a good white one for that matter. A good builder of any skin tone is fine. My interviewers seemed less than impressed. The three of them, all cyborgs, looked back at me with the grey detachment of administrators following orders. What I wantedto say was: I have enough to do without implementing social policy, but I didn't. I need the job, I thought. Afterwards I thought I don't want it anyway.

Englische Girls On Holiday

2005-06-15T19:22:00.000+01:00

'Englische' laughed the people on adjacent tables in the cobbled Greek street. They were commenting on the two teenage girls waddling past them dressed mostly in transparent netting. I kept my mouth shut out of embarrassment. They were English. They didn't have to speak for us all to know.

Madrid Averted

2004-12-09T13:46:00.000Z

See this and be grateful.

Killer Gets Away With 9 Years in Jail

2004-12-09T13:28:00.000Z

Call me old-fashioned but shouldn't these sorts of people just be hanged?

The Worst Job I Never Had

2004-12-09T13:17:00.000Z

Strong constitutions only should apply.

Labradors Work

2004-12-05T18:38:00.000Z

There we were feeling sorry for him, loving his labradors and then bang! Turns out he likes to shtupp other men's wives. (Not bad looking either. He did well for a blind fella.) She rocks up to him three months after getting married to another bloke. She is, so I read, desperate for the attention of powerful people and, apparently, also desperate for a baby. Strokes his dog, steals his sperm and dumps him. But he can't let it go. He wants the world to know he is the daddy, even though he must also know it will damage her (perhaps because of that). He does it even though he must know it will damage himself (but he has lost all reason) and even though he must know it will ruin her marriage some time, if not now (perhaps especially because of that) as, at the moment, the cuckold stands pathetically by her. In the second Elizabethan age this is how tragedy looks. Vindictiveness, passion, self-destruction, labradors. It's got it all, this story. Lest any of you think that this is what happens to us all in London, I have to tell you that it isn't happening to me. Mind you, I haven't got me a labrador yet. Grrr.

Skanky Soccer Players

2004-11-27T19:24:00.000Z

These young men this week were cleared of rape due to the evidential unreliability of the alleged victim who, it seems, had not been raped at all but had engaged in consensual sex with four of the men in one evening. She was fifteen at the time. It's become frowned upon to think of female humans as sluts and male humans as animals but I can't think why.

I have learned to despise the beautiful game and this makes it easy to stay educated.

Crime Aint What It Used To Be

2004-11-27T18:34:00.000Z

This wouldn't get in print if it happened today.

100 years ago on Thursday, Arthur Yates, 27, of Shepherds Bush, and Daniel Hickman, 24, of Walworth, were charged with having been drunk and disorderly at
Richmond Road, Twickenham. Police constable 419T said that he was called to eject the prisoners from the Fox public house. They went to the Royal Oak and he was called again to eject them. As they were very disorderly, he took them into custody. A tram car conductor said the prisoners had earlier boarded the car at Stanley Road junction. They then lit up pipes. Yates was dancing and put his arm round an old lady's neck.

That was in 1904. It's a long way from spraying lighter fuel on someone's face and setting it alight, the most recent public transport crime that has come to my attention. Oh for the days when a solitary copper could quell this kind of disquiet, especially the lighting of pipes. It would now take a team, if they bothered to turn up at all. And, of course, today's singing, dancing old-lady worriers would probably be smoking crack and not tobacco.

Posh Bloke Discovers Police Are Wankers

2004-11-26T14:00:00.000Z

Although he blames New Labour (seriously), this kind of treatment will ring a siren with many of us who have had the misfortune to help the police with any enquiry at all over the last 30 years, yea, even before New Labour made them all tools of the Police State. This is how it always was, it's just that Mr Samengo-Turner has probably never had the misfortune to be asked back to their place for a cold cup of abuse.

The Night Bus

2004-11-24T13:37:00.000Z

In London you can get home at any time of the night on public transport. It sounds so civilised. It makes London sound so modern, so 24-hour.

But think about it. Who, apart from people unlucky enough to be working unusual hours is going to be using the bus in the middle of the night? I will tell you who. People who have been drinking all night.

The night buses take ages to get anywhere. They often smell of vomit as people throw up because they have had too much to drink. Occasionally the bus stops for an arrest to be made or for someone to be ejected.

All of this must be trying for the people driving the buses. It must make them even more ill-tempered and bad-mannered than they usually are.

This is what you can expect.

Proximity and Sin

2004-11-21T13:17:00.000Z

God Save The Queen has been thinking about travelling on the tube. He feels uncomfortable about finding his fellow travellers offensive. It's the confinement and the proximity that does it to him. He looks back fondly to the Middle Ages when the problem of unprovoked taking offence, he (somehow) knows, did not happen. Since then cities have grown so large that revulsion has became the default emotion of urban life. Cities, he thinks, have invented a new sin: offence at others. I doubt it: there is no such thing as an original sin. Proximity has just made it more likely. Personally, I have no problem with finding other people offensive, especially if they are close enough to smell. It's not a sin, it's human nature.

Forward Planning In The Prison Service

2004-11-17T15:08:00.000Z

Are they sure it will be big enough?

Chavism: the root causes

2004-11-16T13:35:00.000Z

There has been an animated discussion over Johann Hari's Defence of the Chav. In essence, Mr Hari believes, the non-Chav population is lacking in understanding about the root causes of Chavism and is being just plain old snobbish in laughing at people with bad manners, bad taste and a bad diet. The root causes are, of course, poverty, poverty and poverty. (Always the bad guy in Johann's eyes.)

He takes the Chav thing personally, thinking that he could easily be mistaken as a Son of a Chav because his Dad is, or was, a bus driver. But what Mr Hari junior doesn't get is that the job does not make the man. Millions of people do ordinary jobs without turning into ill-mannered slobs with gobs. And Chavs don't generally wave their children off to Cambridge to finish their education.

I doubt whether Mr Hari even knows any Chavs. Certainly, Whitechapel, where he lives, has only just over a quarter of white British residents and we all know that 'White British' is the default ethnicity of the Chav. If they exist in Whitechapel at all, Chavs must be a microscopic proportion of the population.

So, following Mr Hari's logic, if lack of money is the root of this evil then we should be giving Chavs extra money. Such a shame that they would waste it on yet more bad food, clothes and music.

Barbican Shoot-Out

2004-11-10T17:18:00.000Z

Despite the decision to withdraw the nominations for awards to people who incite murder there was the traditional 'black music awards shoot-out' outside the Barbican last night. Unfortunately for the likes of Sizzla Kalonji (stage name) who has rightly been refused entry to the UK, no homosexuals were shot, only a city worker. She lives. Jamaican music without the Church has become, like so much black music, reduced to baseness. And in that it is a perfect echo of the sub-culture within the black community that produces such ugliness.

What's In A Name?

2004-11-10T16:34:00.000Z

An argument is rumbling in Islington. The council wants St Mary Magdalene School to be renamed because its Christian name might offend non-Christians. It's not inclusive, it's not multicultural and...it's Christian. Unfortunately for the council almost everyone in London, including the non-Christians, wants to get their kids into religious schools as they are perceived to be better than secular state schools.

I know that it's fashionable in some quarters to mock the BBC as a rat's nest of poisonous liberals but at least they let someone on with an apposite Thought For The Day, which points up the story behind the story. In case, like me, you had no idea who is Rhidian Brook...

Fireworks and Tears

2004-11-03T19:15:00.000Z

On Saturday the Hambroughs were out celebrating the failure of terrorists to kill the King. It's the 401st anniversary of the attempt by Catholic extremists/ 'freedom fighters' to blow up Parliament. In some places an effigy of the Pope gets lobbed on the fire with the luckless Guy, which fact does not impress Mrs Hambrough.

It rained but the show was not spoiled. We stood under the trees and looked up into the drizzle as 'Stand By Me' played loud across the darkened crowded cricket pitch. For some reason (the sky, the colour, the people, the rain, the song) Mrs H shed a tear and I felt choked. We made it to a local Bangladeshi restaurant, where we took control of ourselves.

Amsterdam Assasination

2004-11-03T18:50:00.000Z

I hear that someone of Morrocan origin has murdered a film-maker Theo van Gogh because he made a film criticising the treatment of women in Islam. Van Gogh was a friend of Pim Fortuyn who Melanie Phillips rightly remembers in this context. Fortuyn was killed by a self-important left-wing vegan. (It is not known whether he was a Guardian reader but luckily for all the downtrodden of the Netherlands he might be loose again in 2014.) It was a colleague of similar persuasion who announced to my shocked co-workers that Fortuyn 'deserved it'. She is a lifelong Labour Party member and what we used to call an 'activist'. I haven't kept in touch with her so I don't know what her view is on the latest slaying on the streets of Amsterdam. I think we can be sure that it will be, at best, equivocal.

Over There

2004-11-03T18:35:00.000Z

As I write Kerry has conceded and so Bush has got another term. Despite The Guardian trying to influence the vote. Despite Osama bin Laden trying to influence the vote. Or maybe because of those things. All those silly Guardinistas probably will be wondering now whether or not, if they'd not bothered hectoring the good people of Ohio, they would be looking at another four years of neo-con American hegemony. And Goat Boy bin Laden is probably wondering the same thing too. His imprecations may have been counter-productive and encouraged the Americans to vote exactly the wrong way for him. Don't unpack the suitcase Osama.

Dalston

2004-10-18T13:25:00.000+01:00

The Hambrough family visited friends over the other side of town at the weekend. They have lived in Dalston for years and value it as a beacon of all that is good about urban living. I remain unconvinced. They like to draw attention to the closeness of their flat to the border of the London Borough of Islington, in the hope that this might confer some sophistication on their manor. But it's the London Borough of Hackney and that's the reality.

The A10 runs straight through through Dalston from fashionable Hoxton and Shoreditch out to Stoke Newington (London's lesbian HQ) and beyond to Hertfordshire. From the A10 you pass many Turkish and African shops as the local immigrants along that stretch of the road are principally of these origins. Great for kebabs (much superior to the inferior Greek variety) and good too for illegal gambling. The Turkish bars stay open forever but unless you are Turkish yourself I urge caution as you will feel like a stranger in those parts. The African clubs, I am told, also offer good value for the late night drinker. The atmosphere on the streets is dirty and grey. It feels unloved although, apart from the glowering young men for whom eye contact is either an affront or a come-on, there was no obvious danger on Saturday, unlike other Saturdays for us in this neighbourhood.

In the streets that run off the A10 the housing is run down and being gentrified very slowly, thanks to overspill from the exhorbitantly priced Shoreditch down the road, although 'Bushitler' posters do prosper in windows. Graphic designers (who wouldn't have the posters but share the sentiment) cannot now afford to live in Shoreditch as it has been colonised by young people with trust fund backing and so the T-shirted ones have blazed a trail north. They are the sort of people who resent the touristification of Hoxton and Shoreditch and now they keep their watering holes a secret. The one we were taken to is a word of mouth sort of place where the feeling is lounge retro and the air is thick with cigarette smoke and the longings of lonely young males. Everyone there works in advertising or TV or in publishing although at a junior level. If you had any money you would find somewhere better to be cool. And somewhere safer.

My friends say that crime happens everywhere and sure enough it does. But in some places more than others. Dalston has two and half times the English average for house-breaking and car thieving, twice the average for sexual offences and violence and an inglorious eight times the average for robbery (principally mugging). If you go there, don't take much money with you. It won't protect you but it will hurt less.

Rural Racists Repel Removers

2004-10-08T17:22:00.000+01:00

Trevor's been thinking again. The great and so far largely unrecorded problem of straw chewers being unfriendly towards people who are not 'white' has been exercising him. I grew up in the country and that was decades ago, when the CRE was merely a babe in arms. At that time there were two people living in the village who were non-'white' (not counting a doctor whose domestic arrangements were unkown). Both lived in 'white' families. In all the time I lived there I never heard anyone make a racist remark about them or even remark on their skin tone. It just wasn't an issue. Then along comes Trevor with his good intentions. Hopefully he will have some solutions soon. Maybe we need is some of the measures suggested by Andrew of London on the BBC website. But this does not go far enough. What we need to look at is bussing people to areas they don't choose to live in to obtain some consistency of settlement across the country. What do you mean you don't know anyone in Wiltshire?

Whining In Neasden

2004-10-07T14:01:00.000+01:00

What else we got? Up and over in dreadful Neasden we have parents complaining that their right to prviacy and family life have been infringed by council leaflets identyifying their kids as local pains in the arse. I think this is money well spent despite the usual pressure group whining from Sharon Moone, a policy officer for The Children's Society, who told a reporter:

'There is a strong risk that this kind of strategy will have a negative impact. These young people need to be engaged with the community, not antagonised and alienated still further.'

Let's take the risk Sharon because I think there is an even stronger risk of alienating the kids' victims if we do nothing about it and and even greater risk of alienating their victims if we reward the kids with 'engagement' which, I fear, means free car-racing lessons.

Divided Loyalties

2004-10-07T13:52:00.000+01:00

There has been much talk about whether muslims are loyal citizens. This one decided that serving his country against a muslim enemy was a loyalty too far and paid the price: nine days' pay. One thing: if you're a conchie why take the Queen's shilling in the first place?

Woman Wanks Off Pig

2004-10-07T13:45:00.000+01:00

That's entertainment! When I were a lad it were only the poor, incestuous and crazy who did this to animals for fun. I suppose we can expect Ms Loos or another media microcelebrity to be sucking off dogs any day now.

Close To Me: Chiswick

2004-09-29T13:32:00.000+01:00

There was no plan to come to London. I had a fantasy of escaping the Midlands for The Smoke since a teenager but it imploded with my various domestic arrangements. Then I met the woman who would become my wife and she took me here.

We landed in Chiswick in the mid 1990s by accident. I had a friend in nearby Hammersmith. My wife's mother knew the area and she found the room above a shop. It was a hundred yards away from a tube station with a flower seller outside, and around the corner Routemaster buses drove all the way to Oxford Street. I had never lived anywhere nicer.

Chiswick retained a certain 1950s charm. The shops were a mixture of those that had been there for years: haberdashers and hardware stores together with Woolworths and WH Smith. No Top Shop, no Burtons, no Next. It still doesn't, although it now has perhaps half a dozen coffee store chains.

It had a balance of people but, I suppose, the middle classes were disproportionately drawn from the acting and media trades. In the time I lived there I saw Rula Lenska striding womanfully down the High Road, John Thaw coming out of the tobacconist, his wife Sheila Hancock entering Sainsbury's, where, once, Moira Stuart smiled at me (or maybe the world and I just happened to be in the way). I sipped coffee with Trevor Nunn and his wife Imogen Stubbs at one of the aforementioned coffee shops. Trevor and I had a history: I had seen him before in the checkout queue at Marks and Spencer (it's an M&S that sells only food, that's how nice Chiswick is). And they were only the faces. I have seen other actors I can't put a name to and there are no doubt many media types living in the neighbourhood who are not famous. Their presence lends the area a certain successful bohemian quality which rubs along nicely with the mere mortal Affordable Dwellers.

Why did it happen to Chiswick? Chiswick was once cheap and unfashionable. It was when Anthony Burgess lived there before success afforded him a home abroad. It was when Harold Pinter wrote The Caretaker in a flat on the High Road. Perhaps they pioneered it for generations of actors and writeers: it's close enough to the BBC. It has the benefit of not being Acton. Neither is it Shepherd's Bush or Hammersmith and it certainly isn't Brentford.

London Banking Sharia Stylee

2004-09-22T18:23:00.000+01:00

The Muslim colonisation of Britain took a step forward today with the opening of the first bank in the UK to be operated according to principles laid down in the Koran. The first branch opened in Edgware Road, the epicentre of Britain's 500,000 strong Arab 'community'. The Arabs have apparently been in the UK in their thousands since the 1940s and have increased that number due to the oil business, violence in their home countries and the generally nicer lifestyle to be had in London. I don't know why the Edgware Road was favoured but it is handy for the casinos ('Traditional Arab dress welcome') and that famous Arab store Marks and Spencer (do they know?) in Marble Arch.

Apparently though, the Arab involvement with Britain goes back to pre-Roman times and, according to artist Ali Omar Ermes:

The first Arabic minted coins in Britain were produced in the 8th century by King Offah Of Meria [sic.] (The British Museum), who declared his Islamic orientation by putting the words of 'There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His Messenger' on these coins during his reign (The British Museum) . It is curious that recent writers of British history hardly mention things like this and I wonder why?

Well, it may be because Offa wasn't actually a Muslim at all and that he had the Arab coins copied without having a clue what the script meant, much in the same way that people in the Soviet Union used to walk around in T-shirts that had random English words written on them. Far from being a Muslim, Offa was clearly a cultural predecessor of Del Boy. He had the coins made thinking he was being clever and that the Spanish Muslims would be deceived. Well, maybe it worked with them. It worked with Mr Ermes.

Leaving

2004-09-20T17:47:00.000+01:00

There has been talk elsewhere and in other places of leaving London. We are no strangers to the theme in the Hambrough household and some of our friends have already made what seems like an irrevocable journey out of the city. London is a place to be young in: to share a flat or a house, to be entertained and to meet other people doing the same thing. It's no place to be old (or even of house-buying age), it's no place to be poor and, in some places, some feel that it's no place to be white. Parts of the city have been colonised by foreigners and they and their British-born children now outnumber the indigenous population. The London Boroughs of Brent and Newham have already have mostly non-white British residents. Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Ealing and Harrow are not far behind. And, while there is endless talk in the papers and on the telly about how house prices are driving people out, about the work/life (im)balance, about the crime, the pollution, the coarsification of life, the British (!) and the weather there is no mention of this reason. It's an unmentionable reason. But, with the doors closed, and with no strangers within earshot people will admit to me that one of the reasons they want to leave is to live amongst people like themselves: who share their background, their culture and their aspirations. They will admit that they do not want the stress of the multi-cultural experience, that, far from us all living together as one happy family, we are living together as forced co-habitees with insuperable differences that are only exacerbated by increased immigration. So, just as the ancient British abandoned their lands or were forced from their land by the Anglo-Saxons in the Dark Ages so the modern descendants of the Anglo-Saxons (with some Celt, some Huguenot French and some Viking) are abandoning the old places and setting off for new homes where they feel more at home.

A New Minority Comes To Town

2004-09-16T13:17:00.000+01:00

The villagers came to town yesterday to make a point. They want to keep fox-hunting on the grounds that it gives them jobs, it protects the livestock and it gives them pleasure. Some of them snuck into the Houses of Parliament and were chased by men in tights. One of them was the Marlborough-educated son of the singer Bryan Ferry. Otis Ferry is Britain's joint hunt master for the South Shropshire Hunt. The boy's got form too. While the posh kids were doing the high-profile publicity stuff inside (allegedly the BBC knew in advance but kept quiet about it, no doubt prodding the cameraman awake in advance) the larger-booted rural types were trying to pull down the barriers outside in Parliament Square to catch the urban fox himself, Tony Blair. The Metropolitan Police eventually lost their civility with their patience and took to breaking the heads of the roused rural rabble with gusto.

To those of you who don't know what this circus is all about I can tell you it's not just about the foxes. It's about the rural way of life. The government is getting the blame for the 'destruction' of the countryside: rising house prices, disappearing jobs, intensive farming. I don't know if they are for or against farming subsidies. Probably for them.

It's interesting that the bumpkins have now begun to call themselves a 'minority' to take their place alongside all the other aggrieved 'minorities', each with their own high-pitched whine. You want people to listen to you in the government? Then what you need to do is form a minority and accuse the majority of trying to ruin your life.

Caped Crusaders Not Shot

2004-09-14T13:14:00.000+01:00

Two distressed Dads, dressed as Batman and Robin, stormed the gates of Buckingham Palace yesterday. Fathers for Justice's most audacious attempt to get in the papers worked a treat. The police decided within 10 seconds that Jason Hatch didn't need shooting immediately or hosing off the masonry later. Their view was that the attention-seeking belonged within a tradition of eccentric British attention-seeking dating back at least to the woman who was trampled by the King's horse in 1913 when she threw herself in front ot it to publicise the issue of extending the vote to women. Luckily, Prince 'Shooter' Philip was not at home and the Royal Cherry Picker was brought in to retrieve Hatch. As it edged towards him so he moved further away. Down below the guard changed, presumably under instructions not to open fire. In 1914 the suffragettes suspended their activities for the war. Fathers for Justice have so far not suspended their activities. Don't they know there's a war on?

Heathrow

2004-09-12T19:17:00.000+01:00

On the 11th September I took my mother to Heathrow for her to catch a bus back to the Midlands. Heathrow is, the fourth busiest airport in the world, where a plane lands almost every minute. As you drive into London on the M4 you can see them queueing up to land, each at a different level of descent. Heathrow itself is a scruffy assortment of buildings built at different times, seemingly to a drawer full of different master plans.

When I returned to my car I noted the number of muslims parking their vehicles. I avoided eye contact, partly out of fear of appearing prejudiced against them and partly out of fear of finding a bomb-wearing supporter of the Intifada. There were no incidents.

Do Muslims have any qualms about travelling on this day? Did I detect that there were more of them travelling that day? Did I detect the celebration of an anniversary? No, but that was what I was looking for.

Away

2004-09-11T19:35:00.000+01:00

Out of London we hid from the wind in the dunes at Camber Sands and then drove into Rye, an ancient port stranded, unevolved, inland. The cobbled streets and half-timbered buildings remain unchanged since medieval times, except for the shop fronts. It's become a museum and a theme park; a place for the English Experience. Teashops abound and places to stay all have that ‘authentic’ old world feel. We stayed at a place with a genuine sloping floor decorated to look like a ship’s cabin. We got pasta and risotto nearby as the menus of the local traditional restaurants were also olde, 1970s olde. Beef Stroganoff still features. The revolution in British cooking (and hoteliering) has not reached Rye. We walked the streets at night and looked for the action. There was none. We nurture a fantasy about living somewhere by the sea but every time we visit places like Rye we wonder how we would survive the boredom of not living in London.

Again

2004-09-04T04:15:00.000+01:00

Friday was the last day of work before a week off. I always take a week in September. Around lunchtime one of the old-timers said the Russians had gone into their school in Breslan and there were many dead children. Over the weekend I read some reports and watched some television but I wasn’t as hungry for analysis and explanation in the way I had been three years ago. (We know why they do it and why they say they do it. Why read about it again? What good will it do?) I had a similar sense of disbelief at this new example of barbarity but, sadly for me, it was only an echo. I felt shock and nausea and pity as I had then on that week’s holiday. But less so. I am becoming inured. True, the killers’ choice of target group (What next? A maternity ward? Cripples?) made me feel those things more keenly than with other recent atrocities (the beheadings, the bus bombings, their regularity now also a familiarity) but 9-11 fitted no pattern and Breslan does. The world did not change in Breslan. It confirms what we already knew: the scale and the name of the evil in our midst.

Re-Structured

2004-09-02T13:49:00.000+01:00

Carnival is over. Back to work. And what a funny week it's been. Firstly, a long time friend tells me that his email is about to be unplugged as he has been made redundant, his job a victim of the outsourcing vogue, then I get an email from the boss saying that everyone has to attend a meeting. No 'Cheers', no 'please', no kisses. Some people are missing from the meeting and we soon know why. Inside the envelope waiting for each of us there is a document telling us we have been 're-structured' and that around 20% of the workforce will be required no more. The 'missing' had already gone home for the day having been told a few hours beforehand. I feel sorry for them and then I'm thankful it wasn't me.

(The) Carnival

2004-09-01T13:34:00.000+01:00

The weekend was also my first experience of Nando's chicken restaurants. The food was spicy rather than sophisticated but it was good value and nutritious. The food was hot and no-one was shot. But then I did take care not to mention anyone's hair.

The West End was quiet. This is August and this is (the) Carnival weekend.

There was a shooting later but as the news report says we must not think that it is anything to do with the carnival. Of course, the truth is that the party was being held by 'carnivalists' and the truth is also that the carnival is not just the route in Notting Hill (where the West Indian community used to live in greater numbers). Carnival (without the definite article) is an attitude of mind and it covers the whole of London, but particularly those areas where the West Indians live now: Harlesden, Willesden and Shepherd's Bush among them. On carnival days the black population parties and the world is briefly turned upside down. Then again, maybe it's just another London shooting of young black men by other young black men. It's so common now that it might have happened anyway, without the drink, drugs and attitude cocktail that the weekend mixes.

Shania Twain

2004-08-29T20:15:00.000+01:00

It was the Saturday of the bank holiday weekend and for something to do Mrs Hambrough and I walked through Hyde Park in the brief sunshine. Alongside the Serpentine, a man-made lake where Shelley's first wife, apparently preganant by another man,drowned herself in 1818, we were detained briefly by the recently opened Diana memorial fountain where visitors have been falling down in the water and the surrounding mud. Really not a destination attraction unless you like slapstick, it looks like a civil engineering project made for transporting water.

We headed over towards the West End and in Shepherd Market came across a film crew. Many people were involved, not all of them working. A group of teenage American girls explained to an actor we didn't recognise that they were from Memphis and Texas. The actor was polite and asked them if they liked it here. They did. A vintage Cadillac was driven backwards and forwards up Half Moon Street a few times to get the shot and then the cafe on the corner of the Market was soaked with water and Shania Twain walked through. It was, we discovered from the man in charge of the Cadillac, the making of a video for her new single. I imagine it might be set in France judging from the narrow streets of the area and the French advertising sign fixed to the cafe entrance. We spent about an hour, waiting for something dramatic to happen.

I don't know much about Shania Twain. There was some doubt amongst us onlookers who the woman striding through the set was until we were told. To me she is not a household face, let alone name. Her real name is Eilleen (sic.) anyway. Shania is Native American apparently, like her step-father. I find her music offensively bland but many don't and pay to own it. It's a long way from Timmins, Ontario to Mayfair (even if it is Shepherd Market in Mayfair, previously notorious for it's harlots, one of whom seemed to remain, leaning from a window to watch the scene. That trade has waned in these buildings but I find that there are a few rooms kept in business to maintain our heritage.

Maybe Shania, like some of the ladies' clients, was staying in the nearby Hilton and later that night maybe Shania got a phone call after her half-brother Darryl was arrested back home in Canada on drug charges.

'Rock cocaine'? Isn't that what we know over here as 'crack'?

The Place Where I Live

2004-08-28T18:38:00.000+01:00

Today we paid the grateful Serbs another instalment. It took time because the builder's English is not good and his maths is a bit shaky. Today, also, a letter arrived from the Immigration Service for the people who used to live here. We didn't open it.

Which co-incidence is to say that this place, London, is busy with people who came here from somewhere else. In my street there is a Jamaican, Indians, Serbs (unrelated), an Argentinian and some French. Until recently there were Japanese and Nepalese. There may be - almost certainly are - other nationalities. I don't know. This street being in this city my neighbours often remain anonymous to me. Which, up to a point, I like.

Generally I also like all of these people fetching up here. As I did. The street is not a ghetto, which I would not like, and the few people I know of from other places seem keen to get on with their lives without annoying the neighbours. Which I like too.