Welcome to St. Paul’s

Guardian: Were YOU injured by G20 police?

The Guardian want to interview people who were actually assaulted (not just threatened) by the police. You’ll need to use your real name.

Via What I Saw (blog devoted to eyewitness accounts from G20 protests) [Edit: It seems they have had a large response to this, and so don't need any more! See comments for more on this.]

PS The pic comes from a demonstration outside Bristol Magistrates’ Court this morning in support of Paul Saville, the ‘Bristol Chalkist‘ who was arrested and charged with criminal damage for writing on the pavement in chalk. The Crown Prosecution Service finally saw sense and dropped the charges.

“Daddy, what did YOU do during the policing of G20?

The Telegraph reports:

Earlier today an MPS officer identified himself to his team leader as being potentially involved in the incident shown on the video footage.

A total of four MPS officers, inclusive of this officer, have now come forward with potentially relevant information in relation to the investigation into the death of Mr Ian Tomlinson on 1/4/09.

…The camera footage shows Mr Tomlinson being hit and pushed over by a partially-masked police officer, who has now come forward, as he walks away from a police line with his hands in his pockets…

See also The Guardian, etc.

As Ed rightly points out in a comment on the Bone blog:

The vicious attack on Mr Tomlinson was only one of series of assaults propagated by the police last Wednesday. This could have been any of us dead – and the number of people injured last week is almost certainly in three figures.

If any of us were to be killed by the filth, we now know the sort of black arts they’d use to justify their actions and to demonise our comrades. While we currently see a number of unusual forces ranged against the police, from the Lib Dems to the Evening Standard, be under no illusions that they would be onside were it one of us on the mortuary slab.

These police officers thought they could get away with it. They thought they could get away with it one week ago, when the Evening Standard was being briefed that protesters were hurling bricks, when initial police claims that brave police medics had come under a barrage of missiles as they tried to help a dying Ian Tomlinson.

These police officers thought they could get away with it because one week ago they thought Ian Tomlinson was just another protester, a hippie, an anarchist, a Student Grant, a dirty, stinking leftie.

These officers thought they could get away with it because they felt that they had the power to go around intimidating witnesses, demanding that demonstrators delete pictures from their cameras, threatening journalists, slinging people who tried to note down their numbers into the back of police vans on dubious pretexts.

These officers thought they could get away with it because the person standing to their right was a cop, the person to their left was a cop, the person behind them was a cop.

These officers thought they could get away with it because this is the job they are trained to do; this is the job their bosses told them to get on with; this is the job their bosses were briefed for by their own political masters.

This is not “a tragic accident”.

These are not “rotten apples”.

There will be no “justice”.

This is simply the logical consequence of the enclosure of public discourse, the disenfranchisement of civil society, the impoverishment of governance.

The year is 2009. Welcome to Britain.

Banksy stormed!

In the early hours of this morning, Banksy’s ‘Mild Mild West’ on Stokes Croft in Bristol (UK) was repainted by a member of Appropriate Media, presenting an alternative version of this ‘alternative Bristol landmark’.

Through this action, Appropriate Media asks ?What is the value of street art??. How much time and money will be spent to restore this urban ‘masterpiss’ by urban masterpisser, Banksy.

Come on, you only care about it cos its a Banksy and he sells his lazy polemics to Hollywood movie stars for big bucks.

Come on, you only care about it cos makes you feel edgy and urban to tour round the inner city in your 4×4, taking in the tired coffee table subversion that graffiti has become.

Graffiti artists are the copywriters for the capitalist created phenomenon of urban art.
Graffiti artists are the performing spray-can monkeys for gentrification.
We call for the appropriate and legitimate use of public and private property.

We are taking matters into our own hands

We will not seek permission

We will retaliate

From Appropriate Media

ETA (1):

Just to clarify, I am not Appropriate Media, I just saw a post about it on Bristol IndyMedia – so anyone itching to dole out some death threats, hate mail, notes of congratulations or whatever, please bear this in mind

ETA (2):

Some media coverage:

• BBC picture gallery: Banksy vandalised (12:17pm)
• BBC video report: Banksy art vandalism is ’stupid’ (12:36pm)
• Evening Post: Vandals target Banksy mural in Bristol (12:55pm)
• BBC news story: Paint daubed across Banksy mural (2:24pm)

Bristol blogs on this:

• Bristol Blogger: Banksy Balls
• Bristol Graffiti: Mild Mild West Defaced

Return of the Mekon

Spotted this whilst we were on Kingsdown Parade.

KRS: Ooh look! It’s the Mekon!
LLF: The what?
KRS: The Mekon!
LLF: It looks like an alien.
KRS: He is! He’s from Venus!
LLF: Right…
KRS: The Treens!
LLF: Okay…
KRS: You know, Eagle! Dan Dare!
LLF: Mmmhmm…
KRS: Both the 1950 and the 1982 one!
LLF: Can you tell that I don’t really care?

Lego rave

Only just seen via Facebook. Nice quality mp4 on the Adamish website from whence it originally came.

Greek graff

Lest we forget: Alexandros Grigoropoulos.

Via GiaNt

Shit graffiti rolleyes UK!

As being done on the side of CEED in St. Paul’s tonight.

The full text was eventually:

FUCK WAR

IRAQ BURNS
RAYTHEON EARNS

MAKE
LOVE
NOT WAR

ACID
NOT
BOMBS

Postcode Wars

Gusset has started a Flickr group to document postcode tagging across Bristol.

It’s inspired by a post on BLDNGBLOG which in turn was inspired by a Joseph Rowntree Foundation report [PDF] on young people’s perceptions of ‘microterritoriality’.

Researchers at the University of Glasgow, sponsored by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, have spent the past two years asking young residents of Bradford, Peterborough, London, Glasgow, Sunderland, and Bristol to draw maps of their own individual urban experience in order to explore micro-territoriality as both a cause and a symptom of social exclusion.

…Their research uncovered Bristol’s “postcode wars,” where gangs spray-paint their postcode in rival areas as a form of aggression.

If you spot any examples, add them to the pool!

Incoming! #004: Et Cetera – Publick and Privat Curiosities

Et Cetera is a trawler of a blog, with no dolphin-friendly nets. In its own words:

You will find a post-modern (or, perhaps, a post/post-modern), dialectical, social-constructivist perspective within this blog, as well at the center of my own thinking. In the here-and-now, my own impressions and actions , might well be expressed metaphorically as, “All the world is a stage, the play is just badly cast.”

My attention was caught by the entry on Salvador Dali and his appearance on TV show What’s My Line, though: the screengrab looks remarkably like the one I made and tweaked for this very blog! And yet no credit Bit cheeky, considering Et Cetera has a badge proclaiming “PAGE PROTECTED BY COPYSCAPE – DO NOT COPY”… And even cheekier that the light humoured comment I made there seems to have had reference to my original screengrab and to the badge edited out

Still, love & blogging, et cetera

Framed Documents #010: Thank You For Smoking

Booze lobbyist Polly Bailey (Maria Bello) featured on the cover of an industry magazine in the rather good but not great Thank You For Smoking.

Exclusive!

CAPTAIN MORGAN puts down his sword

Plus:

Get your hands off my moonshine

And:

The Benefits of an enlarged liver

After the great attention to detail on the opening credits (all in the style of tobacco product packaging) I do wish someone had proofread the dummy publications a bit better.

Non-Ladybird endorsed youth sex-ed!

Following the chortleworthy détournement shenanigans of the not-Banksy Ladybird Book People At Work: The Policeman comes Boys And Girls (“A short book about choosing if and when to have sex”), jointly published by NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Ayrshire and Arran (and “not in any way associated, endorsed or connected to or with Ladybird Books Limited“, guv’nor)!

I think it’s rather sweet, especially with the Claire Grogan-ish narration

(Tip o’ the titfer: Sexocentric)

Revisiting San Serriffe

The most excellent Strange Maps blog has just published an article about The Guardian’s fondly remembered 1977 April Fool supplement on the island of San Serriffe.

(Well, I say fondly remembered, though I do not personally remember the, fondly or otherwise, seeing as I was only rising one at the time. Over the years I became aware of it, though, by way of the 1999 reboot of the spoof, and also in much the same osmotic way as I know about the Tomorrow’s World piece on spaghetti trees.)

Talking of fake-stories-as-Grauniad-news, I am reminded of the (and correct me if I am wrong) 1976 piece the paper published in which a reporter related the story of his chance encounter with a member of the SAS on a train.

The journalist – a sceptic of the British military strategy in Northern Ireland – had recently been writing about the deployment of SAS troops to the province, and in none too complimentary terms. IIRC he suggested they were swaggering cowboys who offered little to the peaceful resolution of the Troubles.

And lo, by complete serendipity he happened to meet one such soldier (in civvies) on an InterCity, who, during the course of a spontaneously-struck up conversation, turned out to be articulate, erudite, and anything but macho. His opinions on British policy in Ulster shifted slightly, and he wrote up the story for the paper.

Then many years later it transpired that the whole ‘chance encounter’ had been a psyops fabrication; the journalist had been picked out as a possible target and a well-briefed and affable serviceman been placed on a train he was known to be travelling on in order to casually strike up a conversation with a view to modifying his opinions.

I’ve no idea whether that is a true story, as I can’t remember where I read it. Perhaps I imagined it? But it sounds like it might be a Colin Wallace one. I know the original story exists, as I read it in one of those Guardian Yearbook thingummies which they used to publish.

Can anyone fill in the details? The source of this tale swimming round my rapidly-shrinking brain? The journalist it seems to be about? The year, even?

“If American foreign policy was a gift shop, what would it sell?”

From Phillip Toledano’s America The Gift Shop website.

Tip o’ the titfer: the redoubtable Violet Blue.

CineMaths #003: Doomsday

Anonymous scribbler vs national media combine

“Never pick a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrelful…”

(Judge Phelan in The Wire)

• Bristol Graffiti on the Mail’s Banksy story
• Ian Bone on the same
• And ditto TBB

Keeping it real on Wilder Street

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.

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

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.

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!)

The hidden agenda of estate agents…

Best Photoshop Disaster of the year, methinks:

This is the back of a bus in Bergen, Norway. Bob Megleren is some sort of realtor there. Be very careful if he asks if you have enough living space.

Unnerving translation: “We are ready… with 60 years experience… Bob Megleren – that’s why.”

The world of modern policing

From a recent eBay auction (tip o’ the titfer: Bristol Graffiti)

The BBC – first and fastest with all the big news stories; or perhaps not

The local corporate media’s recent fascination with all things graffiti-related (thanks to B*n*s*) is stretched still further today, with a brief BBC News report on some conspiracy nutter daubings around Britain’s largest village:

Whilst it’s a 46 week improvement on the Evening Post’s own blog gap, the Beeb is still trailing seven days behind Bristol Graffiti, and 24 hours behind Bristol Streetart.

‘This is what we do’ indeed. Just rather slow on the doing it front.

Paint it back

I’ve been rather enjoying the photos up on Bristol Graffiti, so I decided to have a root around my own snaps (and those of my emigré ex-flatmate, young Grigorovich, now of Acacia Avenue, Bangkok), amongst which I found the rather nice picture above, of a rather nice piece of painting on a wall at the junction of Magdalene Place and Sevier Street.

Somewhat annoyingly I didn’t take the picture, Greg did, but still, tasty paint is tasty paint. I think it dates from 1998, and sadly the building it’s attached to – headquarters to a certain radio station for a time – no longer stands. Still, nice memories. Damn, I’m saying ‘nice’ too often.

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Art terrorism raids: police swoop on dissident spraycanistas

Three held in graffiti crackdown
Three people have been arrested as part of a crackdown on graffiti in Bristol.It follows raids on three homes in the city which saw two men, both aged 22, and a 20-year-old woman arrested. All three have since been bailed.

Insp Ian Pidgen from Avon and Somerset Police said officers were “determined” to tackle graffiti problems in Bristol.

He added: “This is the sort of vandalism which damages buildings and affects people’s quality of life on a daily basis.”

BBC News (Bristol)

The value of your exclusive Banksy prints are not thought to have been affected.

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Line of paint

For once, browsing the Guardian website pays off – check out this video of Salvador Dali on What’s My Line?…

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Back to Baxendale

The opening programme of the BBC4 ‘Comics Britannia’ season – which focused on the DC Thompson humour titles – boasted a whole lot of inky fingered comic genius Leo Baxendale, creator of the Bash Street Kids, Minnie The Minx, Little Plum, Willy The Kid, Sweeny Toddler and many other classic strips.

The programme was better than I feared it would be, but alas fell short of what it could have been, especially in the way the final twenty minutes dashed through the late sixties onwards, giving only cursory mention to major players and omitting dozens of significant comics. But I’m sure we expected this.

Nevertheless, we did have Leo fucking Baxendale! Leo Fucking Baxendale!!! And doesn’t he speak so wonderfully? Is not his head screwed on properly? I’m sure this comes as no surprise to anyone who has had the immense pleasure of reading his autobiography, A Very Funny Business – in which his righteous anger, his creative passions, his humanity, are all projected across a history which most of us know only from one side, that of the reader – but sadly this book is not well known.

The documentary also featured Kevin O’Neill, who also gave a good, conscious account of himself. I’m not sure the likes of Jacqueline Wilson, Nick Park or Michael Rosen really added anything to the programme; I would have preferred to hear more from O’Neill and Baxendale. Such is life, though.

Anyway, I’m drifting… The programme spurred me on to dig out an old issue of The Big Issue South West (from July 1999!), which contains an interview with Leo Baxendale, who lives (or lived) in Gloucestershire.

I remember my friend Tony, who was the designer at TBISW back then, and a big fan of Leo’s work, getting very excited at the time, and tagging along with the photographer to Chez Baxendale, just to meet him and ask him some questions of his own. He was chuffed to bits, and said that Leo was a lovely chap, and told him some great stories (including about his hard fought for settlement with the Dundonian overseers ).

I suspect Tony may have threatened to break the editor’s legs or some such (as was his wont, Tony being Tony, and this particular editor being the sort of person who would tend to drive you to wanting to break legs) in order to get the Leo interview bumped up to cover story instead of Tracey bloody Emin, because, well, the Leo interview was duly given the front page. I think you’ll agree, Tony did a great job with the ersatz Beano-style masthead.

In the end Tony was wholly vindicated for his leg-breaking threats, because that issue was for a long time – a very long time – the top selling edition of TBISW. It may well still hold the record, 8 years on, I don’t honestly know. But people responded to that cover, and to the Baxendale feature.

So, as a special treat for you, dear reader, I have uploaded a 4 page PDF of the interview and magazine cover for you to read at your leisure. I’ll also leave it in my Box (which is accessible from the sidebar on the right, near the bottom), too.

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Other Comics Britannia related posts:

• Alan Moore knows the score (7th September)
• Comics Britannia season on BBC4! (6th September)

Epidemic of art attacks on Stokes Croft