Piss & Vinegar #015: Law And Order (E4)

This is the GF Newman Law And Order, btw, not the glossy American police procedural. This one’s an altogether darker, more pessimistic view of the ‘criminal justice system’, a four-parter which examines the same series of events from different perspectives – the criminal, the copper, the lawyer and the prisoner.

Here we find armed robber Jack Lynn (Peter Dean – Pete Beale from EastEnders!) reacting somewhat surlily to the prison regime by pissing over the doctor’s desk.

Elsewhere, Derek Martin (Charlie Slater in EastEnders!) plays bent copper DI Fred Pyle, whilst crooked solicitor Alex Gladwell is given life by Ken Campbell (erm… Ken Campbell! Dude with the eyebrows!).

If you’ve never seen this downbeat, documentary-style mini-series from 1978, and you like things such as, say, Scum and McVicar, then hunt it down, it really is worth it.

HonkWatch #061: Sid And Nancy (ii)

A rather nice yuppie-covering chunder on the Champs-Élysées courtesy of Herr Vicious in Sid And Nancy.

Keeping it real on Wilder Street

HonkWatch #060:

Couldn’t quite capture the motion-in-motion moment, but I think the vom is pretty clear on the toilet seat. From the moment in Alex Cox’s Sid And Nancy when our eponymous hero first tries junk in Wally Hairstyle’s mum’s house.

Not sailing, but sinking

Vinyl on a junction box in Dean Lane pastiching Bristol Shitty Council’s logo. Check out Bristol Streetart too – Knautia’s found another, slightly different, design by the same person/people.

HonkWatch #059: Heist

One of the motherswiving robbers in mediæval caper movie Heist lets loose a flagonful of gut juice.

“Gentlemen… We’re history”

Oh, and a belated perestace to George Carlin, who shitpissfuckcuntcocksuckermotherfuckertitsed his way off this mortal coil Sunday just gone. Bon voyage, George.

HonkWatch #058: Sorted (E5)

Kathy (Eva Pope) beseeches the ceramic gods in Danny Brocklehurst’s postie drama Sorted after her affair with her husband’s best friend is revealed.

Law of the Wring: anti-graffiti attrition continues along the Avon

The Battle of Cumberland & Wapping Roads continues…

I’m not sure how long these anti-graffiti signs have been up – I’ve been past every day since Tuesday, and only noticed them today, as there were some workmen doing what looked like grouting – but already all of them that I could see have been artistically deconstructed

HonkWatch #057: Hustle (S4E5)

Small child vomiting is always made of win (and yes, it is yet another blood heave rather than genuine gut splatter), especially if it’s in a flagship entertainment show like Hustle.

Two points about Hustle: Firstly, the last series really was rather oinque*. Secondly, are any of the cons in it not already known to viewers who have seen The Sting, The Grifters, House Of Games or The Spanish Prisoner?

* Okay, so the whole thing is pretty much just glossy, colour-saturated, stutteringly-edited bread-and-circuses, but it does have a certain charm to it.

WØØP! WØØP! …Är ljudet av polisen

Yesterday there was rather a lot of porky activity on Wilder Street – unmarked cars, undercover bulletheads, furtive lurking around in the cemetery and on the streets surrounding Cave Court… No idea what it was about (well, I do have an idea, but it’s rude to speculate), but in lieu of facts, here’s a snap of the Saab 9-5 stationwagon (registration T766 KCJ) which appeared to be the command vehicle. If you see it around town, give a little wave!

Dangling the carrot of reconciliation

Stencil down the side of the Full Moon, opposite the Blue Mountain on Moon Street.

Bristle’s back

People who talk about themselves in the third person are, to a man, woman or child, utter cocks, and Bristle is no exception. However, I’ve had a great week, so what do I care? Been chillin’ in Wilts at the crib of my lovely lady friend’s rents, helping her get ready for Glarstow, squeezing in a night down the Thali and a mini-Easton pub crawl, and generally enjoying the first full fruits of the summer, because we are young and vibrant and all that. Even the whole threatening to slap that uncle’s arse thing couldn’t dampen things. Alles ist gut!

So anyway, she’s packed of to Pilton, the flatmate too, and I’ve got a few days housework to catch up on as well as a week of moggysitting, which takes me down south of the river – and so it is that I managed to grab a snap of that graffiti on the footbridge over the New Cut leading to Dean Lane. Poetry emotion.

HonkWatch #056: The Ghost Squad (E1)

Aha, it’s the opening episode of the aforementioned The Ghost Squad. Again, like that Rebel Heart HonkWatch, this is less blowing belly chunks, more an eruption of stomach blood. But it’s all good. Dude on the floor’s been beaten by bent cops, by the way.

Racey reading

I’ve only gone and won a blinking competition!

That very fine comics blog DownTheTubes – sister of the equally excellent DownTheTubes.net website – has been running a comp tying in Titan’s latest Roy Of The Rovers collection (The Best Of ROTR: The 1980s) with that Euro 2008 thingummy, and for my sins my name got pulled out of the hat!

I very much look forward to reading it. I am a happy bunny today

HonkWatch #055: Tough Love (E2)

A cut above the average ITV police procedural two-parter, this: it’s Tough Love, with Ray Winstone as mediocre detective Lenny Milton, whose best mate is his charismatic and more successful boss, DCI Mike Love (Adrian Dunbar). To say much more would nudge too much at the plot, but if you like grim and unhappy dramas where coppers are arseholes (and let’s face it, I am), you may well enjoy this. Throw into the mix director David Defence Of The Realm Drury and solid supporting performances, and it’s a decently dour couple of hours.

On the honking tip, here we find Lenny attending to his morning emetic aerobics after being stitched up in a particularly unpleasant way.

Fighting Mann drops Scratcher in the shit!

The British mercenary Simon Mann today told an Equatorial Guinea court that Mark Thatcher, the son of the former prime minister, was a committed member of the group that organised the attempted coup in the oil-rich west African state in 2004.

Giving his first detailed account of the planning for the coup, in a clear and confident voice he said Thatcher “was not just an investor, he came completely on board and became a part of the management team”. He said Thatcher had provided $350,000 (£178,000) in funding for the coup.

(Guardian)

And it gets better:

In further testimony, Mann claimed that Spain and South Africa, with the endorsement of President Thabo Mbeki, had supported the plot.

…From the Pentagon in Washington, and from the CIA and the big US oil companies, came tacit approval for regime change, according to Mann.

…The name of Lady Thatcher’s son [Mark Thatcher] cropped up when he was asked about planning meetings in South Africa. Both Mann and Thatcher lived there at the time. Thatcher, who now lives in a gated estate in southern Spain, accepted a plea bargain from the South African authorities in 2005 after he admitted helping to finance a helicopter that he suspected “might be used for mercenary activities.”

…Mann took Thatcher to the Chelsea home of Ely Calil, the Lebanese businessman who is alleged to be the main financier of the plot. He named the management board as Calil, himself, a London property developer, Thatcher and a Lebanese colleague of Calil who lives in Beirut.

…Mann said Calil had initially asked him, in May 2003, to assassinate President Obiang and launch a guerrilla war or a coup. “I said I would not do it, on ethical grounds, and also because it was a very stupid thing to do,” Mann said. He accepted he was doing the job for money – said to be $15m – but he claimed he was sympathetic to the story he was told that oil money was not reaching the people. “I believed it was right.”

Piss & Vinegar #014: The Ghost Squad (E3)

Having given up on broadcast telly a few years back, I completely missed The Ghost Squad, but thanks to the power of thee t*r*e*t, it’s fair impressed me.

It’s about a secretive anti-corruption unit within the police (based on the one which earned investigative journalists Laurie Flynn and Michael Gillard their marching orders from The Grauniad courtesy of that prissy prick Alan Rusbridger, you may recall), into which young copper Amy Harris (Elaine Cassidy) is recruited. It’s not the usual few-bad-apples hypothesis; pretty much every jack is shown as bent, just to different degrees and towards different ends. There are no happy endings. And whilst counter-intuition sometimes helps direct the viewer to whodunnit, invariably it doesn’t really matter, because the point seems to be in highlighting the dysfunction of organisations such as the police, where personal qualities and discretion rub uncomfortably with corporate goals and discipline.

In episode four, the from-the-headlines hook revolves around anti-social behaviour, sink estates and girl gangs. Peeler-haters may revel in the beating an off-duty constable takes off a posse of feral minxes, one of whom takes the time to squat over their unconscious prey in order to piss her primacy into his bloodsoaked body.

Lazy shorthand: Between The Lines meets The Cops by way of (GF Newman’s) Law And Order.

Shirley not!

This past weekend saw the Jamaica Street Studios open up their doors for an open day, celebrating the living art and culture of Stokes Croft and its people. Chris Chalkley of PRSC very kindly has sent round a round robin email complete with pictures from the weekend, and lumme if in one of them it looks like not just one but both Ashley ward councillors! See what you think…

Can it be true? Has the wanderer not only returned, but actually spent time in sunny Saint Paul’s? Or are these actually agency doppelgangers, hired in for the day? Answers on the back of a council expenses claim as soon as possible, please…

(Picture courtesy of People’s Republic of Stokes Croft, which is in no way responsible for this blog!)

Fighting Mann: a “mere instrument” or a total tool?

Well, the trial of Simon Mann over his involvement in the planned coup in Equatorial Guinea is off the blocks at last…

The judge opened with the reading of a police report setting out the well-rehearsed allegations: Mann had conspired with the London-based Lebanese businessman Ely Calil and the exiled politician Severo Motto to mount an armed coup with South African mercenaries that would not have ruled out killing the president. In return, Mann would have received £15m. There was a contract in evidence.

Then it was the turn of the attorney general, Jose Olo Obono, who outlined the prosecution case and read out the charges: crimes against the head of state, against the form of government and against the peace and independence of the republic.

He said Mann’s first lawyer, who was suspended from the case last week, was to be prosecuted for insulting Obiang. This was a reference to the fact that he had wanted to argue that Mann’s extradition from Zimbabwe in February this year was illegal.

Obono compared Mann with the terrorists who attacked New York, Madrid and London. They were, he said, “a threat to humanity that must be wiped out”.

The attorney general also claimed the main conspirators included Calil, Mark Thatcher, the British businessmen Greg Wales and David Tremain and Nigel Morgan, a former intelligence officer with the Irish Guards now living in South Africa. Calil had put in $2m (£1m).

Obono told the court for the first time that the Lebanese defendant, a Malabo resident called Mohammed Salam, had known about the plot but failed to tell the authorities.

The court was told the six local men were opposition members of Motto’s party who had been in touch with Motto by email. Each of the 70 mercenaries would have received £3,000. For the first two charges against Mann he asked for 14 years and eight months and two years and four months on the third.

The defence lawyers were about to present their opening speeches when the judge dropped another bombshell. He ordered a smartly dressed man who had been sitting with the diplomats to join the defendants.

He is a serving minister. Although evidence has yet to be adduced it is understood he knew of Calil’s investment in Equatorial Guinea as a precursor to the coup and failed to raise the alarm.

And so to Mann’s new lawyer, Jose Pablo Nvo, who in a short speech said his client was a “mere instrument” working for Calil and the coup could have gone ahead without him. It was, in effect, a guilty plea.

The hearing continues.

(From The Guardian)

BCC to stimulate local economy by introducing 450 workers to the employment market

A reorganisation could lead to the loss of up to 450 jobs at Bristol City Council, a spokesman has confirmed.

The authority wants to save £17m annually and has decided 35 of its 52 office buildings are to be sold off.

The council also hopes that as many as three in every 10 of its remaining 16,000 employees will work from home.

Councillor John Bees, in charge of transformation, said he believed the actual redundancy figure would be 100.

He said: “By 2012 the council will look, feel and operate very differently.

“This will be the most radical change to the way the council is organised and operates in over a decade and will make an enormous difference to the lives of everyone in our city.

“Tinkering with the organisation or doing nothing are simply not options.

“We cannot deliver the kind of services that the people of Bristol expect and operate effectively as one council without a real shake up of the way we work and I believe we are now ready to make that change.”

(BBC Bristol)

Don’t panic, though – I’m sure none of this ‘transformation’ will involve losing any of our Very Important six-figure salaried ‘strategic directors‘ who are so vital to ensuring we, the people of Bristol, receive such high quality services as in the fields of education, housing and social care.

Brown: shirty measures to safeguard liberty

Gordon Brown thinks a more authoritarian, intrusive, centralised state affords its citizens greater liberty.

Gordon Brown has defended the use of CCTV, ID cards and the DNA database – saying they protect civil liberties.

In a speech to the IPPR think tank, the prime minister said they helped ensure people’s right to live free from crime.

…In his speech Mr Brown said it was time to write a “new chapter” in Britain’s history which would both protect citizens’ security and individual liberties.

(from the BBC report on the speech)

STOP PRESS: Downing Street plans to send a research team to the moon on a factfinding mission into the possibility of securing the longterm sustainability of the British cheese industry through interstellar expansion. Now that’s thinking outside the political box, baby!

It techno terrorists two, baby

O noez, Bristol *really is* a hotbed of mad Islamofascist turrists!!!1!! Well, at least if you go by ‘Breaking News’ stories on the Beeb website:

A 19-year-old man has been arrested in Bristol under the Terrorism Act, police have said.

The man, from the Easton area of the city, is being held for questioning.

Officers from Avon and Somerset Police are conducting a forensic search of his address. A second nearby property is also being searched.

It’s all to do with “ongoing investigations” into Andrew Ibrahim, the ‘techno terrorist’ who got himself charged under the PTA in April, so obviously it’s not going to be a repeat of last summer’s whole cooking oil fiasco.

Cue laughing policemen cracking down on hippie crack

Dozens of pierced canisters of nitrous oxide have been found in a playground at Claverham, North Somerset.

The chemical, also known as laughing gas, is used in food preparation and as a medical pain killer.

Police believe that youngsters were experimenting with the gas which causes a floating sensation when inhaled.

Officers are trying to find out where they got the 70 canisters from [hmmm, I wonder...] and warned that their misuse could lead to illness or injury.

Pc Phil Kinsella said: “We are very concerned that young teenagers are risking serious injury, as piercing the pressurised canisters could make them explode.

“Alcohol cans and bottles were also found and we don’t know what the combined effects could have for children’s health.

“The Neighbourhood Team will be talking to local schools to encourage them to pass on safety messages to their pupils, but we would also ask parents to talk to their children and make them understand the risks they are running.”

Users also risk frost-bite and its after-effects include nausea, loss of appetite, headache, sleepiness and a lack of co-ordination.

From BBC News Bristol

Well, had to happen sometime. FFS, don’t be dirty bastards, clean up your litter!

Desperately seeking Shirley

The ongoing saga down here in St.Paul’s of our absentee councillor, Shirley Marshall, continues:

Shirley Marshall. Check. Huge suitcase. Check.

Cllr Shirley Marshall attended full council last night. Full marks to her. Unfortunately, her card was spoiled when she was seen leaving the council house with a very large suitcase. Perhaps the suitcase contained a bumper crop of council papers – perhaps she’s off on another ‘holiday.’ We don’t know, but perhaps Jon Rogers, Gary Hopkins or – heaven forfend – Cllr Marshall herself would care to enlighten the residents of Bristol who are giving her £11,000 a year to represent them.

Tip o’ the titfer: Bristol IndyMedia

Bye bye Lakota, hello yuppies

Just got back from the council committee meeting. They voted for demolition of Lakota and the Coroner’s Court. One committee member voted against, another seemed to have absented himself under instruction from the chair. A further three said they did not think the development proposals were very strong, or expressed reservations about going against conservation findings made by the council itself, but still voted to demolish.

There were passionate contributions from the floor, both in favour and against. Roughly speaking those against demolition focused more on conservation and historical interest, which may with the benefit of an hour or two of hindsight seem a tactical error, whilst those in favour presented it as a benefit to the local community in terms of housing and employment. It was precisely this area that I feel the proposals were weakest – go figure. There were also a handful of paid consultants and silent suits lurking around, and the council officers presented pretty strongly for demolition, despite admitting that the development did not meet various criteria.

Oh well, lengthier post mortems to follow, which seems appropriate for a mortuary. PRSC put up a strong presence in the room, as well as there being various concerned local residents and civilians such as myself, so I imagine the fight is not yet over.

HonkWatch #054: Summer Of Sam

John Leguizamo’s carousing disco ‘dresser blows chunks after seeing a serial killer’s victim in Summer Of Sam, Spike Lee and Michael Imperioli’s paean to the New York of the late-70s.

PRSC Says: Stop the yuppie developments! Save Lakota!

Right, so I been a lazy little blogger, been away, yadda yadda yadda, but anyhow, that busy bee Chris at the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft has done my work for me by putting out another call to arms to the people of the Croft and the STP…

As you may know, Lakota – one of Bristol’s most significant nightclub venues, and a progenitor of local underground dance culture – is under serious threat of being knocked down to make way for (yes, you’ve guessed it) more yuppie flats. I wrote about the earlier stages of all this back in 2006, and sadly Clockwork has now fallen to the speculators; but we do still have the chance to execute a blocking manoeuvre on the profiteers wanting to socially cleanse our neighbourhood by sticking together and routing them on the Lakota issue. How can we do that? Well, over to Mr Chalkley:

IMPORTANT NOTICE: FINAL COUNCIL PLANNING MEETING TO DECIDE WHETHER THE LAKOTA NIGHT CLUB WILL BE DEMOLISHED

TIME AND VENUE: WEDNESDAY, 11th JUNE 2PM, at the Council House.

The Lakota building is up for demolition. A development of The Lakota and the Coroner’s Court is proposed (See attached images), which will mean the demolition of the former malthouse, now the Lakota, and the construction of 57 residential units, ground floor commercial units, to include a restaurant/cafe and an element of affordable business space.

The Lakota is a former malthouse which has its origins in the 18th Century… and falls within the Stokes Croft Conservation area, and is identified as “an unlisted building of merit.” 197 letters and e-mails have been received by the Council, of which 21 were in favour of demolition, the rest being against… most people citing the loss of the club… Be warned: this is not a valid reason as far as the planning is concerned…

We invite you to peruse the relevant documents, and there are many (See the two links at the bottom of the email)… and would ask you to attend the meeting…

Everybody has a right to speak at this meeting for up to three minutes, to put one’s point of view. In order to do this, you must contact Steve Gregory at the Council by 12 o’clock the previous day [midday, Tuesday 10th June], with details of what you are going to say… Tel. 01179224357 or email steve.gregory@bristol.gov.uk

The proposed development has some merit, but we feel that, even though the Lakota building is in poor repair, and is a simple utilitarian warehouse building, there is no valid reason for its demolition. The reason that Stokes Croft is “Known as much for its individuality, culture and diversity, as for its perceived decay” is precisely because it has managed to retain an eclectic mix of historic buildings that have managed to escape the blandification of commercial re-development. It is arguable that the reason that the Lakota night club came into existence, is that the building was not locked into one specific use… Essentially it is a large box.

With developments taking place all over the City currently, we believe that it is increasingly important to retain whatever historic fabric that remains within the City Centre, and to retain buildings that offer the possibility of many different uses. By creating more accommodation, we remove these buildings and potential space from the possibility of public/creative/commercial use. In fact, we believe that to demolish the Lakota would do the City an enormous disservice, and risk setting a precedent for further re-development throughout Stokes Croft that neither ‘preserves’ nor ‘enhances’ its status as a Conservation area.

Jamaica Street Arts Studios in the centre of Stokes Croft is an old industrial building which was similarly under threat in the early 1990’s. By working with English Heritage, the owners managed to keep the building alive, and it is now a flourishing Arts studio complex, and houses over 40 working artists in a refurbished historic building.

One thing is certain: If we demolish the Lakota, we cannot un-demolish it a few years later… So, if there is the slightest element of doubt, we must work to preserve it…

If you wish to speak, then please get in contact Steve Gregory Tel. 01179224357 email steve.gregory@bristol.gov.uk
Or… contact us [PRSC], with a view to co-ordinating our response.

————————————————————————–
Lakota planning app on BCC website
Description: DEMOLITION OF LAKOTA CLUB BUILDINGS.
Address: Lakota 6 Upper York Street Bristol BS2 8QN
Council reference: 08/00155/LC
Online Reference: Not Available
Date opened: 25/Jan/2008
Status: Current

Coroner’s Court planning app on BCC website
Address: Former Coroners Court Backfields And The Lakota Club Upper York Street Stokes Croft Bristol BS2 8JW
Council reference: 07/04779/F
Online Reference: Not Available
Date opened: 01/Nov/2007
Status: Current

REFURBISHMENT AND CONVERSION OF THE FORMER CORONER’S COURT TO RESIDENTIAL USE (19 UNITS) INCLUDING DEMOLITION OF LATER ADDITIONS AND EXTERNAL ALTERATIONS. DEMOLITION OF ADJOINING LAKOTA CLUB BUILDINGS AND REPLACEMENT WITH A MIXED USE DEVELOPMENT INCLUDING Drawings can be large files. We recommend that you click on the “thumbnail” links. The quality of the image depends on the quality of the original submission.

People’s Republic of Stokes Croft

Turbo Island Studio,
37, Jamaica Street,
Stokes Croft,
Bristol,
BS2 8JP

Mobile: 07866627052
Email: chris@prsc.org.uk
Web: www.prsc.org.uk

Oh, and the pic directly above? That’s the coroner’s court standing in for Peckham Town Hall in the 1996 Only Fools And Horses Christmas special, ‘Heroes And Villains‘. Guess it’s time for our councillors to decide which they are themselves…

HonkWatch #053: Shooters

This one deserves a bit of chat – it’s from Shooters, a 2001 film made by Dan Reed. It’s essentially a drama, but the project had its basis in the director wanting to make a documentary about gangsters in Liverpool… Except perhaps unsurprisingly not even Scouse hoods are so stupid as to go on camera and talk about their daily ‘working’ lives. So Reed ended up recruiting what might be described as ‘local characters’ to improvise a piece of fiction based on what goes on in Merkeyside’s criminal subculture. It’s pretty darn good, up there with Penny Woolcock’s Tina series for films that use non-professional actors. And no, it doesn’t glamorise the gangster lifestyle – we’re talking roid raging, coke-addled, mostly unlikeable idiots here.

This scene is the nauseous aftermath of a shooting carried out by a motley crew of drugdealing doormen. Not exactly Lock, Stock, is it?

HonkWatch #052: Homicide (S4E21)

Well, at least I can safely say this is Lewis