#Tottenham riots

[gravalicious]

“David Cameron’s chief policy adviser has apologised after he helped to ward off cabinet pleas for assistance for black unemployed youth following the 1985 inner-city riots with the argument that any help would only end up in the “disco and drug trade”. Oliver Letwin, then a young adviser in Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street policy unit, played a decisive role along with her inner cities adviser, Hartley Booth, in rejecting demands from three cabinet members that assistance schemes be introduced in the aftermath of the Tottenham and Handsworth riots in 1985. On Tuesday night he said he apologised “unreservedly” for any offence caused by his comments. Downing Street files released on Wednesday by the National Archives include a confidential joint paper by Letwin and Booth in which they told Thatcher that “lower-class unemployed white people had lived for years in appalling slums without a breakdown of public order on anything like the present scale”. In a later memo, Booth warned Thatcher that setting up a £10m communities programme to tackle inner-city problems would do little more than “subsidise Rastafarian arts and crafts workshops”. Their intervention followed a warning from the home secretary, Douglas Hurd, that alienated youth, predominantly black, in the inner cities represented “a grave threat to the social fabric” of the country.”

Alan Travis - Oliver Letwin blocked help for black youth after 1985 riots (2015) [The Guardian]

[unitedbydevils]

Match Review: Tottenham Hotspur Women 0-4 Manchester United Women

Four goals, four different scorers. A good night away in London for the Reds as Spurs were soundly dealt with by an efficient Manchester United side that is coming into form nicely ahead of the Christmas break.

Full back Hannah Blundell opened the scoring in the 29th minute with what could fairly be described as a pass, curled in over the top to Melvine Malard, but the replay shows no touch as the ball tucked in neatly to the bottom right corner of the net.

Toone bagged a chip over the keeper in the second half courtesy of Malard's assist to lob the centre backs, and just eight minutes later Melvine finally scored one of her own; a smart finish into the bottom left in the 59th minute.

Malard, Toone and Ladd ran riot over Spurs in the second half, and a beautiful first time hit from Ladd on the edge of the box sealed the win for United in the 84th minute.

Player of the Match went to our beloved Ella Toone, but Melvine Malard would have likely stolen the award had she managed to nick that opening goal. Either way, it was exciting to see United play Malard as the central striker rather than sacrificing Leah Galton.

It's still somewhat irksome to have Lucia Garcia out of the starting XI, but it's hard to dispute the form Nikita Parris (Lil Keets) is in for the Red Devils at present. Form will pass though, and United has depth in talent up top with Geyse and Rachel Williams in the mix to keep the goals coming.

Next up is Leicester in the FA Cup; likely a sterner challenge for United against a side with a bit more discipline to sit back rather than go toe-to-toe. Leigh Sports Village will play host, so United should benefit from the home crowd.

[lindsaywesker]

Good morning! I hope you slept well and feel rested? Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day. Welcome to Throwback Thursday!

On this page, ‘Throwback Thursday’ is all about memories. So, what do you remember? If I was to say the word PROPAGANDA, what immediately comes to mind?

On the front cover of yesterday’s Metro read the headline, “40 BABIES MURDERED BY HAMAS”. Utter tosh, of course, and appalling, irresponsible journalism, but such is the nature of propaganda. The people behind such headlines have an agenda. Most of MSM (mainstream media) is owned by a few men wealthier than all of us put together. Peace, love and harmony are no good to them. There’s no money in it. Hatred, war and sickness are profitable businesses, so it’s good to promote disharmony. Newspapers telling huge, whopping lies on their front cover is nothing new. Just after the murder of P.C. Keith Blakelock, during the Broadwater Farm riots in Tottenham, The Sun put a huge photo of a man called Winston Silcott on the front cover. Underneath it was the word, “MONSTER”, implying that Winston had murdered Keith Blakelock. Of course, he hadn’t. Appalling, irresponsible journalism but did The Sun care? No. Their agenda was to turn blacks against whites and, to a degree, it worked. Did they care about facts or the truth of the matter? Putting Winston’s face on their front cover created more racial tension. So, should we be surprised at newspapers putting utter bollocks on their front pages? Not at all. As it happens, this story about (a beautifully rounded number, not 39 or 41) 40 babies being beheaded began to unravel as the day went on and it was eventually debunked by end of play. No real, hard evidence of any such event occurring. Sadly, the feeble-minded believe propaganda, and the elite agenda continues on its merry way; divide and conquer, keep the working classes occupied so they don’t notice that they’re getting royally shafted! Let’s get this straight, not all Palestinians belong to Hamas. Not all Irish people belong to The IRA. Not all white Americans belong to the Ku Klux Klan. Not all Nigerians are members of Boko Haram. To suggest that all Palestinians are terrorists is not a good look for your credibility, but propaganda doesn’t care about that. Propaganda wants you to hate your neighbour, even if you have a ton of things in common.

So, on this Throwback Thursday, what kind of memories, thoughts or emotions does the word PROPAGANDA conjure up for you?

Obviously, over the past few days, I’ve been calling-out the hypocrisy on MSM and have lost a number of ‘followers’. As they say, it’s always good when the trash takes itself out. The Trouble said to me, “You must stop being so political!” “My father was political,” I said to her. “His parents were political too.” Dad’s play, ‘Chicken Soup With Barley’ is about a bunch of Jewish people (his family) sitting around a table, drinking tea, eating cake and discussing politics, with The Battle Of Cable Street raging outside the window. Oswald Mosely and his ‘black shirts’ tried to bring their Nazi nonsense to the east end of London, knowing it was heavily populated with Jews. Mosely was rejected, of course. An amazing moment in London history and the reason the play is so good. My father hated cruelty, injustice and zealots.

Have a throbbing and thrusting Thursday (with hopefully a few thrills through your thoroughfare?) I love you all.

[ausetkmt]

and if you want to sing along -

"Ghost Town"

This town, is coming like a ghost town All the clubs have been closed down This place, is coming like a ghost town Bands won't play no more Too much fighting on the dance floor Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town? We danced and sang, and the music played in a de boomtown This town, is coming like a ghost town Why must the youth fight against themselves? Government leaving the youth on the shelf This place, is coming like a ghost town No job to be found in this country Can't go on no more The people getting angry This town, is coming like a ghost town This town, is coming like a ghost town This town, is coming like a ghost town This town, is coming like a ghost town This town, is coming like a ghost town This town, is coming like a ghost town This town, is coming like a ghost town This town, is coming like a ghost town

Riots have broken out around Britain.

Charles and Diana are about to marry.

And backstage at Top of The Pops, The Specials are falling apart.

In a few minutes they will perform their latest hit Ghost Town, which over the years, would come to be regarded as one of the greatest British singles of all time. It was a track which bottled the discord, racial tensions and societal breakdown happening in the UK that summer.

There had already been riots in Brixton that April, over the increased use of a new stop-and-search policy, the so-called sus law, which was named Operation Swamp. Police were said to have mounted a campaign of harassment against the black community in south London.

Brixton was the centre of clashes between members of the public and the police

Terry Hall is telling the band that he too has had enough. Worn down by touring, band infighting and struggling to deal with success, he wants out. It is too difficult to be singing about disharmony, while surrounded by it, both inside and outside The Specials.

"We knew it was going to end as we were recording it (Ghost Town)," Terry Hall told Front Row in 2019.

"It was bizarre. It took about eight months to record. I don't think there were more than two of us in the studio at any point. Those weren't good signs really. It finished up with me in a living room in Tottenham singing Ghost Town. It was all over the place. But it was a great way to bow out."

The song was written by the band's founding member Jerry Dammers, but it is also the track with which lead singer Terry Hall is most closely identified. Every TV and radio report about his death has centred on Ghost Town.

The single was simply one of the most timely releases in music history.

Terry Hall performing in Amsterdam earlier this year

"Talk about zeitgeist. That one song suddenly captured so much," remembered Specials fan and Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chada in the 2021 BBC Documentary 2 Tone: The Sound of Coventry.

"If there is one song Margaret Thatcher wishes never got released, it's probably Ghost Town," she added.

On 7 July 1981, Radio One announced that Ghost Town had replaced Michael Jackson's One Day In Your Life at the top of the charts.

That same day, newspaper front pages were full of reports about the first ever use of CS gas grenades by the police on mainland Britain, as they struggled to contain the Toxteth Riots. These were sparked by tensions between police and the local community in Liverpool.

By the end of the week more than 20 towns and cities including London, Nottingham, Wolverhampton, Leeds and Luton had riots of their own. The Specials were providing the soundtrack.

Amy Winehouse and Terry Hall both attended the Q Awards in 2009

In 2 Tone: The Sound of Coventry, Dammers explained how the creation of the song started with him sitting at his home organ, trying different diminished chords and working out how wailing could substitute a chorus.

"I think I wrote the music first. I was working on that for ages. The lyrics I wrote on tour just seeing what was going down around the country. It was about the recession and three million people on the dole. It's about the police harassment and unemployment. It was like a perfect storm really."

For years there has been debate over whether or not Ghost Town is specifically about their hometown of Coventry. The decline of the car industry had turned a thriving post-war economy into a concrete jungle.

Shakin' Stevens' Green Door shot up the UK singles chart

Neville Staple from The Specials has stated he believes the song should be taken more generally: "In Coventry and all over England it painted the same picture. This town is coming like a ghost town."

Terry Hall's own understanding of Ghost Town changed over the last 40 years. In 1981, when speaking to the New York Times, he insisted: "We were talking about riots in Bristol and Brixton. The fact that it became popular when it did was just a weird coincidence."

But speaking on BBC Radio Five Live in 2019, he told Nihal Arthanayake: "We made a record about how we saw the north of Britain. People think it was about Coventry. It wasn't. It was about Glasgow and Liverpool and Newcastle. It was about the north."

Ghost Town has certainly had an after-life.

When Amy Winehouse joined The Specials on stage at the V Festival in 2009, it was Ghost Town that she wanted to sing.

In Father Ted, when the priests organised a disco and the DJ, Father "Spin Master" O'Dwyer only has one record that everyone has to dance to all night, the 7 inch on repeat is Ghost Town.

West End Girls

On Desert Island Discs, it's a recent favourite, having been picked four times in the last three years: by the charity worker Claire Horton, the Director of Tate Maria Balshaw, the foreign affairs specialist Fiona Hill and the actor Rupert Everett, who called it "one of the great songs of the era".

And in 2020, The Guardian named it the second best number one single in the UK of all time, behind West End Girls by Pet Shop Boys, a song released four year later and not entirely dissimilar with the sense of urban decay which it creates.

Ghost Town is now considered to be an all-time classic, but its reign over the summer of 1981 came to an ignominious end. The day before 28 million people watched the wedding of the future King to Lady Diana Spencer, The Specials were dethroned.

The lunchtime unveiling of the charts revealed that rising 22 places to number one was none other than Shakin' Stevens with Green Door.

The band's era as chart-dominating stars had well and truly been slammed shut by Shaky. Within months, Hall had formed Fun Boy Three and The Specials in their original incarnation were over.

More than 40 years on Ghost Town stands as their defining work - the perfect coming together of pop and politics at exactly the right moment in history. It was that rarest of things, a song dealing with subjects found in The Economist while the band were on the cover of Smash Hits. Special indeed.

[sharpened--edges]

Transforming historical images of containment associated with the sonnet, [Sean] Bonney’s Commons [2011] translates the prison cell and pastoral sheep pen into the barricades, pickets and kettles of riot and protest: ‘so, I’ve been in the penn / with the rough & rowdy’ [p. 68]. While referencing the enclosure of the police kettle (the forced imprisonment-in-place of demonstrators), the ‘penn’ is also a space for holding sheep before shearing, as well as slang for a prison in US English. Equating protestors with livestock subject to […] pastoral discipline […] makes a formal equivalence between containing units that index urban social unrest and a ghostly agrarian past. If we are encouraged to see the protesters as sheep, the police kettle’s coercive enclosure ironically forges solidarity in a temporary and contingent collective space, where there is no alternative to sharing that experience and being changed by it.

Indeed, transformational collective experience of protest and state repression explains Bonney’s ‘rough & rowdy’ image of the ‘penn’, which reflects particular struggles: the autumn 2010–spring 2011 protests against UK Coalition-government proposals to treble university fees and scrap the EMA (Education Maintenance Allowance), which allowed low-income people to access further education, and the riots in the summer of 2011 following the police killing of Mark Duggan in Tottenham. The energy’ of these events informed Bonney’s poetry after 2010: ‘You can’t get ridden down on by police horses, or watch the cops breaking people’s heads’, he reflected early in 2011, ‘without it getting into the work. Impossible’ [‘Interview with Sean Bonney’].

Daniel Eltringham, Poetry & Commons: Postwar and Romantic Lyric in Times of Enclosure (Liverpool University Press, 2022), p. 192.

[epl-news-today-live]

Tottenham 4-1 West Ham : Spurs run riot in SEVEN-MINUTE blitz to pile pr...

[icemaninvestments]

Season 2024/5.... It’s all kicking off (including the Football)  

The Good news is we have said farewell to a dire Tory government, and the good news stops there.  

We are at the moment witnessing some violent and hateful ‘protests ‘(riots) by ‘concerned citizens ‘ (fash).  This follows a recent Tommy Knobinson march in London that had around 30,000 in attendance. This is all extremely worrying, however, too early to see how it all plays out. 

Imagine some fringe elements will be put off once they see people going to court. A lot of others who regard immigration as a priority will be repelled by the thuggery and destruction. On the other hand, there is a lot of whataboutery in the right-wing media from the people who stoked this up and continue to act as apologists. It is very scary how many people seem to being radicalised online 

This blog has always supported Hope not Hate the anti-racist charity, that support is needed now more than ever. Hopefully the Left, civic society and trade unions can unite and start the fight back, this will mean countering hate on the streets and community organising. 

It beggars’ belief that the original excuse for these events was in reaction to the horrific incident in Southport that resulted in the deaths of 3 children.  The mentality being ‘I am so upset about violence and the death these poor children that I felt compelled to loot Greggs and grab some sausage rolls. Sad. 

Last years investments created a profit and now we start all over again....

Football 

As usual IceMan is all about ante-post value in the outright markets, singles only.  No accumulators or match coupons. 

We won’t get rich but expect to post a profit and contribute to Hope not Hate. 

Premier League – Tottenham to make the top six- 4/6 

Most years my dabble in the Premiership has involved Arsenal, I have at various times backed them top 6, top 4 and to win in the without Man City market. There great performance last year is reflected in current prices. There is no Arsenal angle. I am instead looking to their North London rivals Tottenham, I did consider backing them for top 4, however I am concerned they could come up a bit shy, therefore I have taken top 6 at 4/6 which is a shortie but represents ‘relative’ value as I feel they are more a 1 /2 shot. There is a positive case for Spurs, however this position is motivated as much by challenges faced by their rivals. I am assuming Man City, (cheating bastards who should be relegated to the National League), Arsenal and Liverpool are 3 of the top 6 so Spurs are up against Villa, Man Utd, Chelsea and Newcastle (head chopping bastard owners) in vying for the remaining places. Villa now have the distraction of the Champions League, United have potential to improve but still appear too inconsistent, Newcastle have managerial and financial concerns hanging over them (Good) and Chelsea are Chelsea. 

Spurs finished 5th last year so you would hope that Big Ange (ex Celtic) can at least maintain that level in his second season.  Spurs suffered injuries last term to many influential players, so having them back to full fitness should have a massive impact. I also expect Spurs to make useful additions to the squad over the next couple of weeks.      

 Championship - Leeds to be promoted 23/20  

Any thoughts about this division must start with looking at the relegated sides from the Premiership and Championship teams that were knocking on the door last year.  Of the relegated sides I like Luton the best and expect them to go well.  However I am going to make Leeds the pick, they massed 90 points last year which would have normally secured automatic promotion. Many people regarded them as the best team in the league. They have retained Daniel Farke as manager and have a strong squad. They have lost some key players but also added some interesting signings with hopefully more to come. I admit it is not an original pick. 

League One – Bolton to be promoted 11/4 

Birmingham City are the obvious starting point as they are a big club at this level and have spent heavily on recruitment. Thing is, this ain’t been missed in the market and The Blues have been underperforming for years. I am therefore happy to roll the dice again on Bolton who went close for us last season.  The Trotters have improved year on year under Ian Evatt and if they do that again, we will collect. They appear to have an even stronger squad for this campaign.       

League Two – Doncaster Rovers to be promoted – 11/5 

This was a tricky division to select from. I was tempted to stick with last year’s selection MK Dons who got beaten in the play offs. I am also hearing positive things about Port Vale who have invested a lot of money for a side at this level. In the end, I have worked on the basis that teams that finish last season strongly tend to do well the following season and Doncaster Rovers fit the bill. In January last year they looked like relegate candidates then Gavin McCann engineered an escape that took them all the way to the play offs. They have lost a talented winger but also recruited wisely, including veteran journeyman forward Billy Sharpe, it will be interesting to see what he can do at this level. 

National League – Aldershot to finish top half – 5/4 & Barnet to be promoted 5/2 

Despite this being a tough league to get out of, it has proved a happy hunting ground for me over the years. In recent seasons there has tended to be a standout option for the one automatic promotion place, this year not so much.  The consensus is that Barnet last year’s runners up have the strongest team. I do fancy them to win the title, however I am being cautious and backing them for promotion with the safety net of the play offs. My other interest in this league is my local side Aldershot. The bet is a very conservative punt on The Shots to finish in the top half of the table. Last year they outperformed expectations to come in eighth place.  On the downside they have sold their most talented player however they have also recruited smartly. I am hoping to see them being competitive for a play off place. 

Scottish Premiership – Hearts without Celtic/ Rangers – 15/8 

The SPL for me is all about Celtic and how often they can beat Glasgow rivals Rangers. The problem is that Celtic ae so superior that I can’t find a betting angle on them. I am looking at the market without the big two and Hearts are hard to avoid. They were comfortably the best of the rest last season and look a better outfit than their obvious rivals, even if there is a question mark over their main striker. Aberdeen are my normal go to punt, however, they had a shocker last year.  They look to have significantly improved under new management but the gap to Hearts seems too wide. Aberdeen could also lose their leading scorer.  So, reluctantly Hearts it is, they are a bit too Rangers adjacent for my liking, would have much preferred to back Edinburgh rivals Hibs but they are rubbish.         

Scottish Championship – Livingston 11/2 each way 

This division is very competitive, it is easy to make a case for at least 5 sides.  I am taking a chance on Livingston who have probably punched above their weight in the premiership in recent season. Last year they had a torrid time and were relegated.  They have retained a good manager and a lot of the premiership squad; they also added some useful signings. Livi have also looked good in pre-season cup games. I am hoping that there is no hangover from last season, and they can compete successfully at this level.  

Scottish League One – Queen of the South 9/2 each way 

One of my golden rules is not to force a bet, if you don’t really feel it, then walk away. I seem to have broken that rule. The fact I have backed a 9/2 shot each way betrays my lack of confidence. This league looks very weak compared to recent seasons. I honestly can’t remember the case for QOS they were 7th last year and have had a middling pre-season, maybe I was drunk. Obviously if they win, I will claim it as a shrewd bit of business. 

Scottish League Two – Clyde 2/1 

I am a bit annoyed as I missed the boat on the 3/1 on Clyde, however it was due to the fact that the price and market move seemed to be based on vibes and not facts, bearing in mind that they finished 9th out of 10 last season. The reason for the expected turn around in fortunes is as usual money, Clyde have a serious financial power advantage over the other sides at this level.  There has been a massive churn of players with most of the new arrivals being players who have operated in higher divisions. The wee Bully have had a solid pre-season. It’s time to believe the hype.  

La Liga Spain – Athletic Bilbao – Top 4 – 7/4

I don’t back teams on sentiment, but it is nice when once in a while a team you genuinely like also offer some good market value. Basque side Athletic Bilbao are such a case. They finished fifth last year admittedly 8 points adrift of fourth place. The main reason I fancy them to improve placings is that Girona will probably drop out of the top 4 as transfer activity has weakened their squad. They also have the distraction of Champions League games. A more positive case for Athletic is that they are well managed by Ernesto Valverde who has a real feel for the club and superstar Nico Williams looks set to stay for another season.    

Old stuff 

Politics Lab/Lib Coalition 7/1 (Loss)

Reminds me what a political rollercoaster we have been on. When I struck this position, I thought Lab would not get a majority government.  As you can imagine I am not too concerned about putting this in the loss column.   

Hungary -Euro2024 150/1 E/W (Loss) 

Hungary played like 150/1 shots. They were shite like their government. 

Democrats Evs to win Presidency.  Now 10/11 

Two weeks ago, I had this in the loss column.  It is just nice to now have a competitive race. Kamala Harris is now a shade of odds on, to be honest I would not now buy the Democrats at Evens as I am worried Trump could win the Presidency despite losing the popular vote.  

I am pleased I played this safe and backed the Democrat ticket rather than Joe Biden himself.   

Matteo Berrettini - Wimbledon 28/1 E/W (Loss)

No complaints. He got beat in the second round by the no1 seed, three of the sets he lost went to a tie-break. He has since won a couple of tournaments. 

GAA Football – Dublin to win All Ireland 7/4 (Loss)

In GAA everyone who ain’t a Dub hates the Jackeens, backing Dublin is a joyless and mercenary thing to do.  You justify it by saying that when they inevitably win, you gain a financial upside. This time they shit the bed, so I just feel dirty about getting involved. Had Mayo or Donegal won, I would have happily taken the hit, however Armagh winning was small consolation.   

That’s it.  

I will be out and about at some counter demonstrations over the coming days. No Pasaran.

IceMan Investment Portfolio – Punting for a Purpose 

Smash the Fash  

[swldx]

BBC 0423 26 Jul 2023

12095Khz 0357 26 JUL 2023 - BBC (UNITED KINGDOM) in ENGLISH from TALATA VOLONONDRY. SINPO = 55545. English, dead carrier s/on @0357z then ID@0359z pips and newsday preview. @0401z World News anchored by Gareth Barlow. Ecuador's security forces have launched a raid on a major prison in the Guayaquil port, which has been rocked by deadly confrontations between rival gangs. Authorities say 31 inmates died in riots over the weekend. Ghana's parliament has voted to abolish the death penalty, joining a long list of African countries that have done so in recent years. Pan Gongsheng was named China’s central bank governor Tuesday in the widely anticipated final major appointment of the ruling Communist Party’s once-a-decade change of power. Strength-training exercises such as wall squats or holding the plank position are among the best ways to lower blood pressure, a study suggests. Current guidance focusing mainly on walking, running and cycling should be updated, the UK researchers say. The UK government has been sharply criticised by the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) for under-estimating the dangerous growth of Russia's Wagner mercenary group. Resident Doctors have declared indefinite strike in Nigeria. Prosecutors say British billionaire and Tottenham soccer team owner Joe Lewis has been indicted in New York on insider trading charges. Authorities say Lewis slipped confidential business information to others, including his romantic partners and private pilots. At least 51 pilot whales are now dead after a mass stranding of almost 100 on a Western Australian beach yesterday. @0406z "Newsday" begins. 250ft unterminated BoG antenna pointed E/W, Etón e1XM. 250kW, beamAz 315°, bearing 63°. Received at Plymouth, United States, 15359KM from transmitter at Talata Volonondry. Local time: 2257.

[petnews2day]

Leicester vs Tottenham - Premier League: Live score, team news and updates

New Post has been published on https://petn.ws/mCKhN

Leicester vs Tottenham - Premier League: Live score, team news and updates

Leicester 4-1 Tottenham: Foxes are on fire as they run riot despite Antonio Conte’s return… as 10-man Wolves comes from behind to lead Southampton in their relegation six-pointer to heap the pressure on Nathan Jones By Arthur Parashar For Mailonline 14:00 11 Feb 2023, updated 16:57 11 Feb 2023 Follow Sportsmail’s live blog for the […]

See full article at https://petn.ws/mCKhN #OtherNews

[paullicino]

Ten Years

Taken from my Patreon.

Ten years is a long time. It’s long enough for many things to change, but also long enough for everything to remain the same.

I remember ten years ago as if it were yesterday, as if it passed by in the blink of an eye, with light and shadow, textures and taste all as familiar as ever.

A morning after. Shocked faces. A phone call. Events barely believable, yet all too real.

Ten years ago, my then partner and I were living in a top floor flat off Tottenham High Road. It was sweltering in the summer and the downstairs neighbours played dance music at four in the morning. But the views out the back bedroom window were of valleys of rooftops, sprouting television aerials and summited in the winter by the briefest dustings of snow.

The sun was for the front of the flat. The moon shone into our bedroom.

I remember that sunlight in the afternoon, sparkling through the shifting foliage of the tall trees outside. And I remember summer most of all. August.

We had a tap. A faucet. A great, overwrought thing that our landlady was obsessed with. It was the best tap ever, she said. It was large, curved and heavy, the pharaonic headdress worn atop a newly-fitted kitchen of which she was so proud. Wasn’t it exciting that we had such a good tap?

We just wanted our bed repaired. Our home wasn’t finished when we moved in and we slept on the sofa for weeks. When the mighty tap was finally installed, it was too heavy for its fitting. It teetered. Along with poorly-mounted cupboard doors with handles that prevented other cupboards from opening, its practicality was an afterthought.

The walk up Tottenham High Road took me to the only two locations I ever really visited, the supermarket and the job centre. The supermarket provided us with affordable food (though I’d watched the price of many staples almost double over five years) and the job centre provided me, an unemployed person, the money with which to buy that food.

The job centre, which was now extra special and had been rebranded Job Centre Plus, did not provide anyone the means with which they could get a job. It spent almost all of its time providing people with unemployment benefits. Most of the thousands of Tottenham residents who poured through its doors would’ve taken a job if they could’ve found one, but the listings at the centre itself were usually out of date, irrelevant or in some other way misfiled. Most employers don’t want to list their vacancies at the Job Centre Plus because they don’t want to employ the kind of people who go there.

Out of the Job Centre Plus and the supermarket, which one do you think burned that August?

I have written before about my strongest memory of the Job Centre Plus, but here it is again. It was of an old foreign woman and her daughter trying to speak to a clerk. The old woman didn’t speak English, so her daughter was attempting to explain that the woman was looking for work and thus registering as unemployed to gain unemployment benefit. The clerk was trying to explain that the woman was too old to work and should also be on disability benefit. The daughter was trying to explain that they had tried to navigate those systems and that they were obtuse and broken. Her mother just needed money. To live.

(Ten years before, in the summer of 2001, I’d first looked at the cost of moving out. I looked at rents around my Hampshire town, at the cost of housing and at the wages I needed to earn. England was expensive, I decided. It sure cost a lot just to live.)

Everyone was trying to explain everything. The job centre mostly wanted to give people their money and get rid of them, because there were many more lined up behind.

My strongest memory of the supermarket was of the man outside with no legs. He sat there panhandling in his wheelchair almost every day of the year. Britain had just launched its latest Astute-class nuclear submarine, each of which costs over one and a half billion pounds, but it was still a country where a man with no legs had to beg outside a shop.

I thought about that man long after I left Tottenham. I think about him here, now, ten years on.

My partner went abroad to see family and I spent some of the summer restarting my career as a freelance writer. I was fortunate with the connections and opportunities that I had, none of which would ever be found at a job centre, and I spent a lot of my time writing either to find work or simply for practice. I was writing on the night my street burned.

It began before dusk and I came home to find enormous police vehicles parked outside, the sort that are mobile command headquarters. Chains of armoured riot vans surged north. I heard there’d been a protest outside the police station and that a car or two had been burned. I checked the news occasionally. It didn’t have much to add.

Police vans kept coming, though all other traffic had stopped. The roads were closed, blocked by the police, and the latest news told me that petrol bombs had been thrown and a bus set alight. The reports were sparse.

The police in England are really good at responding to riots. They turn up in great swathes, on horses, in vans, or on foot and armed with batons and shields. They have all kinds of exciting equipment to help them. A year before, they’d kettled schoolchildren protesting the huge increase in university tuition fees, surrounding and slowly crushing hundreds of them in Trafalgar Square and on Westminster Bridge. Footage emerged of them beating the shit out of kids or dragging people out of wheelchairs. Here they were now in Tottenham, ready for more.

I kept trying to find news. The police had cordoned off most of the High Road, which meant the journalists that were arriving had no ability to find what was happening inside the riot. Distant footage of fires was the best most of them could provide. As I remember it now, the BBC had one van inside of the police cordon and couldn’t broadcast out because its dish had been damaged. I also have memories of a single journalist, almost in the thick of a mob, asking rioters to give them a moment to explain why they were protesting, or wondering why on earth they might want to block a BBC camera crew who were trying to film them.

What an inane question.

I found the news I wanted. I found it via Twitter and social media. And it was terrifying.

Broadcast news had described a riot not unlike any other. But the still relatively new sphere of social media was overflowing with witness statements, photographs and the kind of low-quality video that phones captured back then. People across Tottenham were panicking as they described growing crowds on the High Road burning not only vehicles, but also shops and businesses. They were breaking into commercial properties. They were looting. They were starting more fires. This had begun half a mile away from my home and it was spreading outward. The post office burned. Landmark businesses burned. Local shops burned and, with them, the flats and homes located above.

The updates kept coming and it’s almost impossible for me now to try to describe to you not only the sheer volume of panic and distress that waterfalled down my feed, but also the sense of utter hopelessness that came with it. People beyond the High Road described not just the violence spilling into their streets, the fights and the hundreds of looters, the fires and the damage, but also how there was no one who could stop this. No emergency services responded. Their phones went unanswered or the lines were jammed.

I read update after update that echoed the same, basic fact, something which I still struggle to comprehend even now, something I’d describe as barely believable: No help was coming.

But the social media updates kept coming. Looters were turning up with empty vans and loading them up with everything they could take. Buildings were being destroyed. A whole estate was being evacuated.

The news provided by the BBC and its peers remained limp and languid, so I spent all night reading these updates, discovering more nearby shops were being gutted, or how the retail park near me was looted to the point of emptiness, and I watched as even my own view out the window became broiling crowds of countless restless and angry people. I remember one man walking off into the darkness with brand new flatscreen televisions under each arm, the police vans now long gone. The night was regularly punctuated by shouts, screams, thumps and sometimes what might have been explosions. The sirens were always distant. The helicopters came and went.

I don’t know where the police cordon had gone. It felt almost as if they had given up and let Tottenham run rampant.

The sun came up and from that back bedroom window I saw smoke rising. I hadn’t slept. The news was full of irrelevant speculation and so, at five-thirty, I put on my shoes and walked the High Road. What I saw was barely believable. Sometimes I met the stunned gazes of other people doing the same, sometimes I avoided any eye contact. I have kept a diary for a long time now and this is what I recorded (slightly edited):

“This morning at about 5:30, as the sun rose, I tried to wander through Tottenham to take some pictures. It became one of the scariest walks I've ever taken.

The atmosphere was tense and unpleasant. Columns of smoke snaked upwards and the High Road and several other streets were blocked off or packed with police vehicles, many more of which were endlessly arriving, some from as far away as Kent.

The nearby retail park was littered with debris and many of its shopfronts were smashed. Groups of people, perhaps gangs, loitered everywhere. While some areas were busy with police officers, others were neglected and patrolled by hostile looking young men.

I didn't end up taking many pictures. I kept moving. Depending upon where you walk, Tottenham looks like a cross between a blitz bomb site and the mess after a chaotic festival.

Something still feels very different. Tottenham has hardly been rosy at the best of times, but today the sunshine can't seem to dispel a strange chill in the air. I myself can't stop thinking of all the homes that burned last night. It might not be immediately obvious to many people, but above a great deal of those shops set ablaze were flats, often family homes for very poor people. Many of those who had little now have less.”

A day after those first riots hit Tottenham, they went nationwide. London wasn’t done and, for a week, many major cities in England played host to their own riots. Tottenham was totally locked down, but it was far too late. The disorder had moved elsewhere.

I remember telling a colleague I worked with that I wouldn’t be finishing something that weekend. He laughed at the news and imagined it would all blow over. He was from a much wealthier background.

Then, everyone started trying to explain everything.

The BBC caught up with events the way a great-grandparent catches up with technology, fumbling and frowning. Goodness me, they said, in their middle class, broadcast-trained voices, and they joined in with the three broad lines of discussion that emerged. One asked how this could happen, one asked why this had happened, and one was about how this would never happen again, because the law would be firmer than ever, the punishments and prosecutions authoritative and absolute. The police were ready for more. They were going to get water cannons. I imagine those work particularly well on kids and wheelchairs.

There was a lot of talk about punishment, including from the Prime Minister, who decided to stop being on holiday in Tuscany only after England’s third night of rioting. I wonder if he had imagined it would all blow over.

Sometimes there was talk involving the people of Tottenham themselves, but it was more likely to be talk about them. A lot of people in Tottenham are Black and have families that trace back to the very first Windrush immigrants of the late 1940s. One Black Labour MP said it was important to talk about their experiences in London, their economic situation and their history of treatment by the police. After all, the spark that had set these riots alight was a protest outside the police headquarters, subsequent to the suspicious shooting of Mark Duggan, a Black man, something that called to mind a similarly suspicious death of a Black woman that also precipitated Tottenham’s 1985 riots.

For some people, the discussion became about how Black people had started the riots and been the chief participants. This wasn’t reflected in anything I saw either on social media or with my own eyes, in person, on the night. But nobody was stopping to ask me what I thought or what I saw.

Not long after that first riot, my partner called me to check I was okay and to ask if those barely believable things she’d seen on the news were really as bad as they seemed. They were. I rode the bus up the High Road on my way to Wood Green, then later to Walthamstow, both of which offered me temporary job centres that took the overspill from ours, thoroughly gutted by fire and then looted of all of its copper piping. The bus crept past burned-out shops and homes. I don’t know where those people have gone.

Later that year, my partner and I discovered that our income was low enough that we were eligible for housing benefit. It took us so long to try to apply for it that we moved home before any progress was made. When I found enough work to support myself, I visited the job centre to sign off, as we called it, to close my file. I asked a woman at reception what I needed to do. “Nothing,” she said, as the line behind me wound down several stories of stairs and out into the grey autumn street. “Just stop coming. Stop coming.”

Winter came and things rustled in the walls. There was a long, tall hedge along the High Road and I would look out the window to see men using it as a urinal. I only had to live in Tottenham for around a year and a half and I have good memories from that flat, but I also remember a stifling and sad place to live, from which I was lucky to move on. Tottenham was never my home and I never had to stay there, but I certainly feel that I came to get a sense of the place.

After moving out, our ex-landlady complained that we hadn’t left the oven as clean as she would’ve liked. She hiked the rent 9% while we were staying there. She never fixed anything that broke and provided excuses instead of solutions.

I found more work. I taught games and narrative for a semester at a small institution in East London. One of the things I asked my students to consider was the stories and the experiences of people who weren’t like them. I asked them to share how often they had been stopped and randomly searched by airport security. “Not just at the airport,” one student reminded me. “On the tube. On the street.”

My life continued to improve in many ways, but I still remembered the man in the wheelchair. The BBC and many other media outlets continued to talk about poverty and race, but not always to poor people or to people who weren’t white. In 2014 I wrote On Poverty and one of the most surprising responses I repeatedly received from people was “I had no idea that it was like this.” A friend of mine tried to apply for support for chronic health problems and documented her many struggles, including being required to explain exactly how many times a week she suffered from migraines (“You said it was two or three times a week. Well, is it two, or is it three?”). The news regularly reported growing homelessness, rising use of food banks and the inevitable deaths of people who weren’t just failed by broken systems, apathy and a lack of understanding, but also simply too poor to be alive.

I feel like some of the people I knew didn’t like how I kept returning to these topics. I feel, even more, that they didn’t at all understand. I remember some of these people waiving off the Brexit referendum as it approached, certain the country wouldn’t vote to amputate itself from the European Union. I don’t think they understood and I don’t think they’d seen the unhappy England that I had, both as a child and as an adult. I think they’d only seen, and been, very comfortable people.

I think these people would call themselves open-minded, progressive and keen to make the world better. I’m sure they could explain those views. At length.

If I think of those people now, I’m quite sure they are all still very comfortable, ten years on. I also think there is still a good chance that man is sat in that wheelchair outside of that supermarket, though he could also be dead by now, again simply too poor to be alive. No longer able to watch the sun sparkle through tall trees, see roofs dusted with snow or catch the moon peeping through his bedroom window.

Such things aren’t for poor people. We still get frustrated when we give them benefits or find out they own mobile phones.

---

Ten years on, Tottenham is almost a dream, a memory where the details have faded and the edges have softened. I have moved countries, had the privilege of travelling through work, enjoyed many different creative opportunities and benefited from free healthcare that has addressed difficult, long-term health issues. I have rationed my life according to a tight budget, but I’ve never had to face the overwhelming, unending hardships of others that I’ve shared neighbourhoods and postcodes with. I cannot ignore these people because they have so often been one street away, visiting the same shop or riding the same train. They are not an abstraction, they are right there, ready to tell us all about their lives.

Ten years on, Tottenham has one of the UK’s fastest-growing rates of unemployment, the latest statistic in the region’s long history of joblessness and poverty. Many of its residents, like poor people across the country, live paycheck to paycheck, at risk of financial ruin should they experience a single upheaval. Ten years on, the most reliable predictor of success and financial stability in the UK (as in many developed countries) is now considered to be the circumstances of your birth. The idea of social mobility is more irrelevant than ever, with much of your destiny decided before you are even born. Ten years on, almost a quarter of the population of the UK lives in poverty.

Ten years on, continued austerity, government apathy and cuts to social services has meant that, yes, ten years really is enough time for everything to stay the same. Without change, the problems people face become generational, systemic. Some people tell me that the 1980s were like this for certain families, regions, populations. I didn’t know. We were doing okay. Perhaps I didn’t get it, didn’t notice it, didn’t want to think about it.

Ten years on, Mark Duggan’s family filed a civil claim against the Metropolitan Police and were awarded an undisclosed sum, after his death was officially ruled a lawful killing in 2014. Lawyers for the Duggan claim commissioned this in-depth report on the shooting, which illustrated many problems with the official police version of events.

Ten years on, the UK government is trying to curtain the right to protest. It commissioned a review that concluded that the country has no systemic racism. It wants to limit the powers of the Electoral Commission and has considered conflating the concepts of whistleblowing and leaking with spying, meaning those who leak information could be treated as criminals. It is increasingly intent on punishing those who might express dissatisfaction.

And ten years on, as we all know, wages have not risen to match the rising costs of rent, food, utilities or transport. It sure costs a lot just to live.

Finally, in 2018, the UN Special Rapporteur on Poverty and Human Rights visited the United Kingdom and did speak with many of its poor. The resulting exhaustive and damning report concluded that “statistics alone cannot capture the full picture of poverty in the United Kingdom” and that “much of the glue that has held British society together since the Second World War has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos.” It described harsh, ill-conceived and out-of-touch support systems devised and doubled down on by a government that not only failed to understand poverty, but that couldn’t even measure it accurately. It also predicted that these things would only get worse, and without any consideration of the effect of extraordinary events, such as a global pandemic.

The government described the report as “barely believable.”

I don’t think any help is coming.

---

There’s a question that sometimes bounces around social media and it asks people this: “What radicalised you?” As if there was some moment that changed a person’s political beliefs and rearranged their perspective on the world.

Here’s the thing. I feel like my perspective is from the floor, skewed and sore after I fell between two stools, always unable to find an identity amongst wider British culture. I grew up too comfortable, too spoiled and too well-spoken to call myself working class, but I was easily alienated by schoolfriends with multiple bathrooms and university-educated parents. My interests and my sentiments aren’t supposed to be working class, but many of my life experiences and even philosophies are. I know what it’s like to memorise Shakespeare and to explain themes in Romantic-era art, as much as I know what it’s like to fight government systems that are ostensibly supposed to help, to be unable to afford your own home, to walk into a supermarket and look at staple foods you still can’t afford. You think about Descartes and then you think about which dinner provides the cheapest way to keep your body alive.

When I was a kid I remember going to friend’s houses where they were too poor to clean the carpet, or seeing them lose a parent to lung cancer, or the time someone showed me a gun hidden in their brother’s car. As an adult I wrote to my politicians to ask them what they were doing about poverty, about education, about the cost of living. I went to protests and signed petitions and supported charities both practically and financially. I suppose I was trying to articulate some of the skills I’d learned from in some situations to articulate the experiences I’d had in others. Surely you have to do something.

I both resent and appreciate aspects of both classes and I imagine I’ll never work out who I am or what I’m supposed to call myself. But I do know there are vastly different worlds and vastly different experiences within British culture and that many continue to be overlooked even when in plain sight. And it’s what I find most frustrating.

If there was one thing I learned, if not one thing that radicalised me, it wasn’t simply that poverty never goes away, it’s that it always needs to be explained. There are always, always people who don’t get it, who don’t notice it, who don’t want to think about it or who will puzzle over it from a distance as if it were some transient mirage they can never hope to touch. Those in power will continue to make decisions about poverty that they do not experience, in spite of the fact that making financially comfortable people the authority on money is like making able-bodied people the authority on wheelchair access, like making men the authority on women’s bodies, like making white people the authority on racism.

And so, ten years on, here I am again, writing about Tottenham, about class, about poverty and about ignorance, and only from a slightly different angle. I will write about these things more, not least because I’ve already started another work on these themes, but mostly because I will always need to. I don’t imagine that, during my lifetime, the explaining will ever stop. I don’t imagine that our societies will give up on punishing people for being poor in a world where it is so often simply too expensive to be alive. And I don’t imagine I will have any more patience for people who imagine it will all blow over.

I refuse to let you middle-class your way out of this.

I don’t have any solutions to these enormous and complex problems. I don’t have exhaustive lists of who exactly to blame or where precisely everything has gone wrong. But here’s what I believe: If we don’t talk about poverty, and if we don’t listen to those caught inside of it, it will never go away, and there will be infinitely more Tottenhams.

[thegameisaboutglory]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/football/53533387

Go vote Sonny

[fromgreecetoanarchy]

The real Champions League: Football in the streets and fascists down their rabbit holes

[whitehartlane]

this is a really fucking stupid thing to say because as outspoken as benny was about football not being his passion he was always a model professional and was really solid for us. even his social commentary on football came from a place of great thought—he said things like how football was a job and there were more important things to life rather than kicking a ball around. he said that footballers who kiss the badge and go somewhere else for a better payday six months later should be held accountable for it. besides and perhaps even despite all of that, benny was deeply connected to and involved with the local community at tottenham, suggesting during the london riots of 2011 that more of his colleagues should be trying to aid local causes financially and he himself making contributions to the london evening standard’s dispossessed fund. he was frequently seen talking to spurs supporters about the club and about how disenfranchised tottenham was/is. he had an oyster card and would walk up to white hart lane with the supporters before home matches.

benny was a much loved player by both spurs fans and his teammates and is still talked about fondly to this day. zinchenko can fuck all the way off. what’s this cunt even done to write a book about, anyway? and if he’s interested about footballers hating football then he’s got no further to look than his own teammate ben white lol who by own admission doesn’t watch football 🤷🏾‍♂️

zinchenko should keep assou-ekotto’s name out his mouth, as if he’s even fit to lace his boots!!

[saint-dominik-of-zadar]

After all, I didn't even think that this year we will see two underdogs, the one I support on daily basis and the other deserving to win UCL like no one ever, this far in the finals, as two of four best clubs in Europe. This is truly a great year for football.

[93seyoons]

jkdhjkfhsd [mess in the tags]