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Jul 25

Boris Johnson’s Olympic welcome, courtesy of Cassetteboy

“Get some burgers or else you’ll be eaten by bears.”

Jul 5

“On the other hand, we now appear to be actively styling our Games to resemble a futuristic dystopia.

I know what you’re thinking: this lunacy won’t last. And I concede I thought the same, assuming the military would be in situ just for the build-up, only to withdraw before the public started arriving, replaced by Adidas-kitted operatives whose previous tours have been in places like the All England Club as opposed to Basra.

Staggeringly, though, Locog confirms that the army will remain for the duration of the Games, meaning that all visitors’ first experience of the Olympic Park will be passing through military checkpoints. Furthermore, the organisers state that many unspecified people are “reassured” by the massive military presence. This seems the most questionable of claims.

The British people have historically recoiled from the use of the army in civilian situations, which is why it happens with such studied rarity. Standout instances would include Churchill sending in the troops during the Tonypandy riots – an incident best summarised as This Was Not His Finest Hour – and David Blunkett deploying tanks to Heathrow, an irrational piece of theatre that failed to rally support for the then imminent attack on Iraq.

And now this. Quite an achievement, considering that even the masterminds of the Beijing Olympics resisted the PR triumph of stationing the People’s Liberation Army at the gateway to their Games. But then, which of us wants to come across as being as laissez-faire as the Chinese?”

London 2012: even Beijing didn’t put an army on the gates

…and that Muse Olympics song with its “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” vibe seems even more appropriate.

Aug 10

Shocking video of brazen looter in the London riots!!!

(Spoiler: it’s a seagull.)

Aug 9

“Monday a deputation from the parish of Bethnal Green waited upon Mr Peel to request that some measures might be devised to suppress the dreadful riots and outrages that take place every night in the parish, by a lawless gang of thieves, consisting of five or six hundred. The gang rendezvous in a brick-field at the top of Spicer St, Spitalfields, and out-posts are stationed to give an alarm, should any of the civil power approach, and their cry is “Warhawk,” as a signal for retreat.

On the brick kilns in this field they cook whatever meat and potatoes they plunder from the various shops in the neighbourhood, in the open day and in the face of the shopkeeper. Their outrages have been of the daring kind, there are now no less than five individuals lying in the London Infirmary, without hopes of recovery, that have fallen into the hands of the gang. Within the last fortnight upwards of fifty persons have been robbed, and cruelly beaten, and one of the gang was seen one day last week to produce amongst some of his associates, nearly half-a-hat-full of watches.” An account from September 24, 1826, posted at Spitalfields Life. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

“What’s happening now isn’t a protest or, as Darcus Howe put it, an “insurrection” – it’s a nervous breakdown. The motor isn’t a political cause but a mood. Politics is in the background, in the pervasive frustration and anxiety of an alienated underclass: record levels of youth unemployment, widening inequality, social services (especially youth services) slashed to the bone, the Education Maintenance Allowance scrapped, a damaged relationship between the police and the community, and collapsing faith in a seemingly indifferent political class. But the immediate outcome makes the lives of residents – many of whom are every bit as deprived as the rioters – even worse than they were last week and opens the door to an authoritarian response. A riot is a weapon of last resort; a cry for help; a public form of self-harming. It pays for short-term catharsis with long-term pain.” Dorian Lynskey, “Why the Specials’ Ghost Town is still the sound of a country in crisis”

Citizens’ cleanup brigade in Clapham Junction, via Lawcol888 on Twitter, who posts:

@johnprescott @clapham @vauxhalllabour we’re ready yfrog.com/kj5oewj

Jan 14

“There is no other way of putting it: a huge blue cock will stand on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2013.”

Yes, as you can see, the Guardian is having far, far too much fun with this:

[London mayor Boris] Johnson conceded that there was no getting round the fact that a giant blue cock was going up in the square where it will stand proud with the other plinth inhabitants – George IV and Victorian generals Henry Havelock and Charles Napier.

Johnson assumed Katharina Fritsch’s cock was a French one. “The only consolation I can offer is that despite this gigantic French cockerel being in Trafalgar Square, we will still have Nelson looking down on it.”

Fritsch, though, said it was non-specific bird. It could be English but it would be made in her native Germany. And the double meaning was not lost on her. “People try to avoid the word cock – they say cockerel,” she said, laughing. “I’m playing with that a little bit, sure.”

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Guardian — London riots: before and after photographs

Bollards of London

Love's labour's located: how I plotted Shakespeare's London with an iPhone app