Are there more people killed in Asda supermarkets than anywhere else - and if not, why not?
Let me begin by saying that I accept any blame that might be handed out over the whole experience because I did a very stupid thing. I went shopping with my wife (on a Sunday!) to the Asda supermarket at Clapham Junction. Now I know that with this simple admission I risk losing about half of my readers. (He did what? This guy is obviously an idiot - I'm not reading any more of this.) But bear with me, we all have our moments of weakness.She asked me to go with her, what was I supposed to do? The choice between going to Asda's on a Sunday and getting the wife mad at you is not one you want to have to make too often.
When we get there the place is roaring. It is like Oxford Street during the pre - Christmas sales or the pre - New Year sales or whenever the hell it is they hold their goddamned sales. The place is huge but jam-packed with people who are, strangely, all behaving as if they are completely alone in the store. They stroll around propriatorially gazing at potential purchases, most of which they chose to acquire, because all of the trollies are pyramided with stuff by the time they get to the check-outs. They park these trollies in the middle of the aisle - sideways, of course - and take a slow meander to study the competing attractions offered by a 7ft. high wall of vegetables or to ponder whether it will be the cheaper frozen chicken today or the slightly more pricey fresh.
Okay, you live, and therefore shop, in London so you know that this is the deal. Mayhem is the natural state of affairs here so just shut up and get on with it. So we do, and eventually we get to the check-outs. All of these are working flat out and in front of every one of them is a queue of at least ten people, each one of them pushing a trolley with enough food in it to feed a family of six for a year. I stare aghast at this immobile chunk of humanity and groceries in despair,experiencing a panic-edged gloom not lessened by the knowledge that I have voluntarily inflicted this on myself.
But a gleam of hope appears in the distance. The Do-It-Yourself check-outs! Even the most combative Asda-goers baulk at these mechanisms of antique torment so the queues are shorter there. Also the wife tells me, with a bland confidence I find anything but reassuring, that a child could use them. She, by the way, is exhibiting no signs of disturbance or vexation, appearantly under the delusion that this near-phantasmagorical ordeal is actually normal human behaviour. Only, amazingly, showing a tut-tutting irritation with me as my justifiable exasperation threatens to erupt into actual violence.
We reach the check-out. There is a place to put your basket and a metal pad on which to place your 'scanned' purchases. I know this because a voice from the bowels of the check-out has just told me it. The scanning of our second item, however, doesn't work. My wife tries it again. And again. We clearly need help. A woman comes over, bleeps the machine with her gadget, and we are off again. For two more items. The next one doesn't scan. It doesn't scan several times. Well, it's not something we really need, the wife says, and she puts it on one side. She does the same with the next item, which won't scan either, and is not best pleased when I protest that I haven't lugged these damn things all around the store only to abandon them at the last minute.
By now, for our different reasons, we just want to get out of there. The remaining items are put over the glass scanner. If they work, fine, if they don't, we just sling 'em. We bolt into the chemically riddled air of the car park an pause to take several deep breaths. Even when it is poisonous, freedom is sweet. We throw our four items into the boot and we're gone.
It would not trouble me to return to Asda's at Clapham Junction, but any future visit would include certain elementary precautions. Provided you go after 10pm most days are safe but never, as Melina Mercouri so wisely said, never on a Sunday.
Tuesday 9 November 2010
Tuesday 28 September 2010
I AM NOT A NUMBER - I AM A FREE MAN! (That's what you think.Read on.)
Over the past year or so I have become convinced that we in Britain live in a two-tiered society every bit as delineated, and for those who control it every bit as advantageous and effective, as Stalin ever brought about in the Soviet Union. Indeed more so, for the Politburo lasted a mere seventy years or so, the Establishment in this country has endured for centuries and shows every sign of continuing into the forseeable future. But when you become sufficiently aware of the implacable, brazen bluff by which we are run, everything changes; the veil is lifted and you see the Institutions of Authority for what they are.
And what are they? That is a difficult and complicated question. (Complication itself being a thing they make ready use of.) Who they are is easier. They are the government, the courts, the police, the local authorities, the tax man, the ubiquitous health and safety people and all the others who insist they know how we should live our lives better than we do ourselves. I accept the need for these Institutions - what I object to is their acceding to, almost exulting in, a life controlled by rules, millions of rules, and their own impregnability. Perhaps some recent examples of their power will help clarify my meaning. Most people, I suppose, believe that we in this country are controlled by a series of laws, proclaimed in open parliament, which are enacted to promote the public good and before which everyone is equal. The truth is different.
Take the death of Dr. David Kelly in July 2005. As in all cases of 'violent or unnatural' death a coroner's inquest was convened and in Dr. Kelly's case had already begun. In this instance, however, where the truth, if discovered, might put in jeopardy the careers of several powerful men, including the Prime Minister's, it was thought prudent that such a dangerously subversive proceeding should be stopped. The inquest was therefore summarily cancelled on its first day and replaced by an enquiry conducted by Lord Hutton, a useful dupe who could be depended on to return the required verdict. Although it is important to notice that Hutton would perform his services, not on behalf of some ephemeral government - of whatever political hue - but for the Institutions of Authority, which will endure, though governments come and go. Thus at the will of a few politicians the law was subverted and that subversion compounded when Hutton decreed that the facts of his enquiry be kept secret for seventy years.
Other similar cases abound. Everyone with a functioning brain knows the only reason why hundreds of crooked MPs have not been prosecuted for stealing taxpayer's money is - because they are MPs. In perhaps the the most shameless example of Authority flaunting its invulnerability, Mr. Ian Tomlinson, an innocent bystander in every sense of the words, was killed by a policeman in front of the whole country - on camera - and no proceedings will ensue, because no member of the police force must ever be held responsible for his actions. Or, to put it another way, because we live in a police state. For where else can a policeman kill an innocent person in front of witnesses and walk away scot free.
But the killings of Dr. Kelly and Mr. Tomlinson are merely the tip of an administrative iceberg that reaches out in an attempt to control every part of our lives. You want to change a window in your house? You must get permission to do so. And the window you put in must be of a type approved by the authorities. Want the privelege of parking your car outside your house? You must pay a sum of money to your local council who, in their magnanimity, will then allow you to park there. (I realise this restriction does not apply in every part of the country - yet.) And the reasons Authority gives for micro-managing our lives, if they deign to give any, are almost always straight lies. Lies that, in the hubris of their mastery over us, they do not bother to make even remotely believable. In the Ian Tomlinson case the Crown Prosecution Service announced there would be no prosecution because a conflict in the medical evidence rendered a conviction unlikely. Everybody else, having seen the thuggish attack that brought about Mr. Tomlinson's death, knows that a conviction was a cast iron certainty. On the terrible day when the Twin Towers were destroyed in New York, the BBC broadcast a news item announcing that a third building - Building 7 - had also collapsed, half an hour before it actually did. (The building can clearly be seen - on Youtube - over the shoulder of the woman reporter who is telling us that it has just fallen down.) When the BBC was asked to replay the piece they declared the video to be lost, and when asked who provided them with the information that the building had fallen they said they had no record of who that might have been. Like the constable who asserts from the witness box that he has lost his notes on the case or the official avowal that the CCTV cameras were switched off at the critical moment, the explanation arouses more distrust than the event itself.
I would like to think that this - what to call it? - this teasing of the public has over the years become a major component in the whole scheme of things. It is now not only necessary to manipulate the people, it is also necessary to privately ridicule their gullibility. I cannot be persuaded that Keir Starmer, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, did not return to his office after announcing that no prosecutions would result over the death of Ian Tomlinson and report to his colleagues "The idiots have swallowed it - again!" Or at least I hope he did. If he didn't, it means he actually believed the garbage he had just told the press and that would mean we have a moron running the CPS, which would never do.
I have always hoped that the true, certainly preferable, explanation of why Roman Catholics were not allowed to eat meat on Fridays was that a medieval cardinal, possibly bored and exhausted from living the life of a perennial voluptuary, said to his companions in gorgeous scarlet "Why don't we, just for a laugh - and also maybe to see how much the mugs will put up with - tell the faithful that from now on God disapproves of them eating the flesh of warm blooded creatures on, well, let's say Friday. And think of the kickback we'll get from the fishermen!" It was either that or a bunch of old men, living a life that drove them to borderline insanity (no penicillan for the syphilis in those days) thought it a good idea to deprive the peasants of one of the few things that made their pitiable lives worth living. Hmm, now I think about it though, between the two it is probably a damn close run thing.
Of course this state of affairs can only prevail because we allow it to. There are many more of us than there are of them and all we have to do is say no, we are rational people and we will live lives of our own choosing. Nor would this necessarily mean the onset of anarchy and misrule, it would simply mean that public decisions would be taken cognizant of the will of the people.
But, needless to say, this will never happen. Authority would fight it tooth and nail and the bald fact is that not enough people care that they are being treated like children and are humiliated on a daily basis. So Authority need do nothing but continue to rule, the heads that wear this crown need by no means lie uneasy. As was remarked about the victims of the Lloyd's scam of a few years back "If the Lord had not wanted them shorn, He would not have made them sheep."
Over the past year or so I have become convinced that we in Britain live in a two-tiered society every bit as delineated, and for those who control it every bit as advantageous and effective, as Stalin ever brought about in the Soviet Union. Indeed more so, for the Politburo lasted a mere seventy years or so, the Establishment in this country has endured for centuries and shows every sign of continuing into the forseeable future. But when you become sufficiently aware of the implacable, brazen bluff by which we are run, everything changes; the veil is lifted and you see the Institutions of Authority for what they are.
And what are they? That is a difficult and complicated question. (Complication itself being a thing they make ready use of.) Who they are is easier. They are the government, the courts, the police, the local authorities, the tax man, the ubiquitous health and safety people and all the others who insist they know how we should live our lives better than we do ourselves. I accept the need for these Institutions - what I object to is their acceding to, almost exulting in, a life controlled by rules, millions of rules, and their own impregnability. Perhaps some recent examples of their power will help clarify my meaning. Most people, I suppose, believe that we in this country are controlled by a series of laws, proclaimed in open parliament, which are enacted to promote the public good and before which everyone is equal. The truth is different.
Take the death of Dr. David Kelly in July 2005. As in all cases of 'violent or unnatural' death a coroner's inquest was convened and in Dr. Kelly's case had already begun. In this instance, however, where the truth, if discovered, might put in jeopardy the careers of several powerful men, including the Prime Minister's, it was thought prudent that such a dangerously subversive proceeding should be stopped. The inquest was therefore summarily cancelled on its first day and replaced by an enquiry conducted by Lord Hutton, a useful dupe who could be depended on to return the required verdict. Although it is important to notice that Hutton would perform his services, not on behalf of some ephemeral government - of whatever political hue - but for the Institutions of Authority, which will endure, though governments come and go. Thus at the will of a few politicians the law was subverted and that subversion compounded when Hutton decreed that the facts of his enquiry be kept secret for seventy years.
Other similar cases abound. Everyone with a functioning brain knows the only reason why hundreds of crooked MPs have not been prosecuted for stealing taxpayer's money is - because they are MPs. In perhaps the the most shameless example of Authority flaunting its invulnerability, Mr. Ian Tomlinson, an innocent bystander in every sense of the words, was killed by a policeman in front of the whole country - on camera - and no proceedings will ensue, because no member of the police force must ever be held responsible for his actions. Or, to put it another way, because we live in a police state. For where else can a policeman kill an innocent person in front of witnesses and walk away scot free.
But the killings of Dr. Kelly and Mr. Tomlinson are merely the tip of an administrative iceberg that reaches out in an attempt to control every part of our lives. You want to change a window in your house? You must get permission to do so. And the window you put in must be of a type approved by the authorities. Want the privelege of parking your car outside your house? You must pay a sum of money to your local council who, in their magnanimity, will then allow you to park there. (I realise this restriction does not apply in every part of the country - yet.) And the reasons Authority gives for micro-managing our lives, if they deign to give any, are almost always straight lies. Lies that, in the hubris of their mastery over us, they do not bother to make even remotely believable. In the Ian Tomlinson case the Crown Prosecution Service announced there would be no prosecution because a conflict in the medical evidence rendered a conviction unlikely. Everybody else, having seen the thuggish attack that brought about Mr. Tomlinson's death, knows that a conviction was a cast iron certainty. On the terrible day when the Twin Towers were destroyed in New York, the BBC broadcast a news item announcing that a third building - Building 7 - had also collapsed, half an hour before it actually did. (The building can clearly be seen - on Youtube - over the shoulder of the woman reporter who is telling us that it has just fallen down.) When the BBC was asked to replay the piece they declared the video to be lost, and when asked who provided them with the information that the building had fallen they said they had no record of who that might have been. Like the constable who asserts from the witness box that he has lost his notes on the case or the official avowal that the CCTV cameras were switched off at the critical moment, the explanation arouses more distrust than the event itself.
I would like to think that this - what to call it? - this teasing of the public has over the years become a major component in the whole scheme of things. It is now not only necessary to manipulate the people, it is also necessary to privately ridicule their gullibility. I cannot be persuaded that Keir Starmer, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, did not return to his office after announcing that no prosecutions would result over the death of Ian Tomlinson and report to his colleagues "The idiots have swallowed it - again!" Or at least I hope he did. If he didn't, it means he actually believed the garbage he had just told the press and that would mean we have a moron running the CPS, which would never do.
I have always hoped that the true, certainly preferable, explanation of why Roman Catholics were not allowed to eat meat on Fridays was that a medieval cardinal, possibly bored and exhausted from living the life of a perennial voluptuary, said to his companions in gorgeous scarlet "Why don't we, just for a laugh - and also maybe to see how much the mugs will put up with - tell the faithful that from now on God disapproves of them eating the flesh of warm blooded creatures on, well, let's say Friday. And think of the kickback we'll get from the fishermen!" It was either that or a bunch of old men, living a life that drove them to borderline insanity (no penicillan for the syphilis in those days) thought it a good idea to deprive the peasants of one of the few things that made their pitiable lives worth living. Hmm, now I think about it though, between the two it is probably a damn close run thing.
Of course this state of affairs can only prevail because we allow it to. There are many more of us than there are of them and all we have to do is say no, we are rational people and we will live lives of our own choosing. Nor would this necessarily mean the onset of anarchy and misrule, it would simply mean that public decisions would be taken cognizant of the will of the people.
But, needless to say, this will never happen. Authority would fight it tooth and nail and the bald fact is that not enough people care that they are being treated like children and are humiliated on a daily basis. So Authority need do nothing but continue to rule, the heads that wear this crown need by no means lie uneasy. As was remarked about the victims of the Lloyd's scam of a few years back "If the Lord had not wanted them shorn, He would not have made them sheep."
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