A collective sigh of relief

For once, I tuned into Radio 1’s Chart Show earlier this evening to hear – or, rather, see: I was ‘watching the radio’ on the BBC's live stream, which shows how things have moved on since I last tuned in to that particular radio station - who would be crowned Christmas Number 1. To my delight, I witnessed The Justice Collective’s version of The Hollies’ classic 'He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother' take the honour over X Factor winner James Arthur.

The Justice Collective is a group of musicians and celebrities who came together to raise money to pay legal costs for the families of the victims of the Hillsborough tragedy, in which 96 Liverpool fans lost their lives. The group includes Paul Heaton of The Housemartins, Gerry Marsden (Gerry and The Pacemakers), Mick Jones (The Clash), Glenn Tilbrook (Squeeze), Eliza Doolittle, Paul McCartney, Paloma Faith, Shane Macgowan, Robbie Williams, and even John Bishop, Alan Hansen, Kenny Dalglish (Liverpool manager at the time of the horror), Peter Reid (an Everton player at the time) and Liverpool MP Steve Rotheram, who came up with the idea.

It’s the third time in four years that The X Factor have been beaten to the Christmas Number 1 spot, something Simon Cowell took for granted not so long ago. Depressing that a country with the rich music history of the UK ever gave the impression of capitulating to the reality TV show and essentially letting Simon Cowell determine who gets pop music’s most coveted crown, but great to see the tide turning.

Even Paul McCartney couldn't ruin this one

But even more encouraging, I found, was that people with no interest in football and no particular interest in Hillsborough (not to say that they don’t care; just that they hadn't previously been campaigners) united, as did Everton and Liverpool, to make the single in the name of justice. To try and right one of history's biggest ever wrongs. To help the victims' families get the verdict that they deserve. And also that the tens of thousands of people who don't normally buy a record but - if you can get them on board - are crucial to determining the Xmas Number 1 went and bought it. Lots of people tweeting under the #jft96 (justice for the 96) hashtag even admitted to not particularly liking the song but, recognising what a good cause it was for, bought it.

Police officers, journalists and MPs were involved in a disgraceful cover-up, laying the blame with Liverpool fans. On an infamous front page, The Sun claimed that Liverpool supporters not only caused the deaths but picked victims' pockets and attacked and urinated on police officers.

All these claims have since been comprehensively proven wrong, with the original verdicts that the behaviour of Liverpool fans and alcohol consumed prior to the game (since shown to be a modest amount for a leisure event) were 'aggravating factors' recently quashed and a fresh inquest now on the way.

There’s still a long way to go before those families will get the justice that they deserve. Indeed, The Sun (despite being, to this day, boycotted in Liverpool) probably sell as many copies in a day as The Justice Collective have records. It’s a start, though, and a heartwarming story two days before Christmas that gives me hope not only for the future of the British music industry but, more importantly, for the way that Brits will look back at one of the biggest injustices in recent history. It is now almost universally accepted that the original report was not worth the paper it was written on.

Welfare myths

‘The welfare debate’. The very phrase, I have a problem with. It suggests there’s some kind of debate in the media, which there rarely is – it’s usually an exchange of horror stories about households who’ve ‘never worked in their lives’, have 'an infinite number of children' and are 'living beyond their means'. ‘Welfare’ itself has become a loaded term, being automatically

accompanied by a picture of someone slouched on their sofa, probably the same actor who appeared in the disgraceful latest Tory advert (see pictures). Never used to refer to pensioners, where the majority of welfare spending goes, but almost exclusively people alleged to be feckless and work-shy, sitting at home all day while 'hardworking families' next door work long hours.

A friend interviewing me for her dissertation recently asked me why I enjoy writing for Epigram, our student paper. As well as making students aware about things that it is in their interest to know – such as, that one of the university’s biggest societies had a policy in place to forbid inviting women speakers which we reported and, after The Guardian, Times, Mirror and others picked up, they reversed – I said, after thinking about it, that I like to make sure readers are more accurately-informed and not only see both sides of a news story but see it in a bigger context.

So, for example, if I was writing an article about welfare, readers wouldn’t just see the line, repeated endlessly on the BBC and elsewhere ‘that welfare accounts for more spending than health, education and defence combined’ and therefore assume that it has ‘rocketed’ or become ‘out of control’ as the Daily Mail shrieks. I might make them aware of how welfare spending compares with other departments but also how it is lower than it was under Thatcher in the 80s and Major in the 90s, to put it into perspective, and that it might go on what you'd think it does from the media coverage: the majority goes to pensioners and only 2.5% actually goes to the unemployed. Crucially, that they know that the Department for Work and Pensions’ own statistics show that less than 1 per cent (0.8% to be precise) of benefit spending is taken with fraud.

Why is this figure little-known? Why didn’t the DWP publicise it? Because this Tory-led government thinks it'll gain from telling those in work poverty that their neighbour is probably fiddling the system and that only they will tackle them. It's classic Tory divide-and-rule. They hope to appeal to just enough working-class voters to complement their core vote and win an election, turning in-work poor (whose very poverty is largely because of low wages consistently supported by Conservatives, who even opposed the minimum wage) against the unemployed; so called ‘strivers’ against ‘skivers’. 60% of households hit by the real terms cut on benefits (which Osborne claims to be introducing for ‘the shift-worker, leaving home in the dark hours of the early morning, who looks up at the closed blinds of their next door neighbour sleeping off a life on benefits’) are in work. That’s right: they work, but wages are so low – the minimum wage is worth less in real terms than in 2004 – and rents so high that they may be in receipt of housing benefit. Or perhaps they have children and are among those who haven’t yet had their child benefit taken away. They are not the man in the advert, a tiny minority, refusing to work, and to claim that welfare cuts are only aimed at ‘scroungers’ like him is not only morally repugnant but factually incorrect.

Tory attacks on benefit claimants are also often aimed at a supposed ‘culture of worklessness’. Recent Employment Minister Chris Grayling claimed ‘there are four generations of families where no-one has ever had a job’. Yet a report published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which saw dogged searching in localities with high rates of worklessness across decades shows this as completely unsupportable, with researchers even unable to find any families with three generations of worklessness, let alone four, and just 0.3% with two generations.

At a talk at university the other day, Times editor and Tory adviser Danny Finkelstein admitted that he thought the focus on a tiny number of cases is disproportionate; conceding that the media collectively represents these isolated cases as if they were widespread and as if they meant more money being lost than the tax dodging of the likes of Starbucks, Amazon and Google. Corporate tax avoidance, by the way, costs us £60-70 billion a year. Right-wing journalists know this. They also know about the DWP’s statistics but don’t report them because, as Tories, they want to continue to ill-inform the public into thinking that the reason their neighbour has their blinds drawn is not because they’re out on their bikes, doing what Tebbit ordered, looking for a job but struggling to find one, even with their degree, but because they’re too lazy to. And so they should vote Tory because only they will tackle the scrounger next door, while Labour ‘is the party of shirkers, not workers’…

This media-entrenched Tory narrative has historically worked. It worked so well that Labour gave up fighting it after four election defeats and began chasing after the right-wing press; Blair even flying over to Australia to meet Murdoch. And it began parroting this line, making the task for left-wingers like myself infinitely more difficult when our own party had been complicit in deepening these Tory-drawn divisions, somehow thinking that this would win over so-called ‘Middle England’.

Labour’s failure to, until recently, challenge the Tory/media narrative on all this, as well as being morally indefensible, was political suicide. Unless – which even the wildest Blair supporter would hardly have dreamt of – New Labour planned to move permanently to the right of the Tories, the minority that, no matter how many figures you show them, will always be convinced that the Daily Mail is right and benefit claimants are all ‘scroungers’ will never trust Labour to crack down hard enough, while the millions who know this Tory strategy to be a myth will stay at home rather than vote Labour and keep the Tories out. The tabloids relish nothing more than hunting down extreme examples of benefit fraud and passing them off not as isolated examples but representative of an endemic problem. As Owen Jones writes in his new preface to Chavs, which I can never recommend enough, ‘The “scrounger” has become the public face of the unemployed in Britain’. If Labour fails to take on these myths, such as the fallacy that he is somehow representative, as the likes of Jones and Mehdi Hasan are too lonely in doing, then the reality of poverty and homelessness existing in the quantities that they do will go unnoticed, and we’ll have yet more myths about ‘a spiralling welfare bill' and households 'work-shy for generations' prevailing in print and broadcast media alike.

No Distance Left To Run

Tonight, Blur will take to the stage in Hyde Park to headline the Closing Ceremony concert, and a week after seeing them at a gig well worth going to Wolverhampton for, I thought I’d write about them (they are the inspiration for my blog title, after all). I recently re-watched the film-documentary the band made in 2010 after their reunion, which I’ll also review in this. While I can’t really argue with the three-star verdict of Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian and the assertion that “it often looks like a very high-grade piece of officially approved merchandise”, there were some highlights.

I loved hearing about how guitarist Graham Coxon met lead singer Damon Albarn after seeing him doing West Side Story in assembly at Stanway Comprehensive in Colchester and how he hid from Albarn at London Zoo in 2003 after failing to show up to record Think Tank, their final album, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit underwhelmed and slightly disappointed at how little they talked about the early records. Briefly explaining why Albarn considers their debut album Leisure (which I’ve given rave reviews) “awful”, it then races through Modern Life Is Rubbish, barely talking about the album I consider their strongest. I would have much rather heard more about the inspiration for Colin Zeal, who had the idea of having Ken Livingstone do a song for them, the whereabouts of Villa Rosie or why Tracy Jacks got on the first train to Walton and so on than about the lifestyle of Alex James (which - like his politics - is not representative of Blur).

Then again, I did find Graham’s often fractious relationship with the other three interesting. Also the way that ‘going from being the coolest band in the country to the uncoolest in one single’ and every shop Damon walked into putting on Oasis spurred them into changing direction and – while I don’t like them as much as the first three – making records as good as the self-titled and 13, especially bold considering it marked a shift from biographical songs about London characters to autobiographical, focusing on Damon's break-up with Elastica lead singer Justine Frischmann. An achievement considering the fix they found themselves in at the end of the Battle of Britpop era with the front 10 rows at Blur gigs in 1996 being barely 14 or 15 years old, friction within the band as strong as it had been and accusations that they'd "started off as a reasonable indie band but become a huge teenie pop band, the reverse to what The Beatles did" resonating.

They're an interesting bunch when you think about it. An arrogant bassist with strange fascinations to put it nicely. A shy, awkward genius who suffered from depression and has come through various problems, a drummer I’ve heard described as “eccentric” by Labour people who knew him when he took the unprecedented step of trying to become an MP, and a singer with almost as many projects under his belt as he has moods and tones of voice.

It's the number of styles that they tried successfully in my view - from the shoegaze of Leisure to the capturing of the zeitgeist of 90s London life on Jubilee, Advert, Sunday Sunday and various tracks on Parklife and Modern Life Is Rubbish to the lo-fi of the self-titled to the experimental nature of 13 with the particularly memorable collaborative effort of Albarn/Coxon on Tender - that make me consistently rank Blur among my 5 favourite bands. They did a bit of everything, well.

Things don't always pan out the way you want them to, as they found when Coxon didn’t turn up to record Think Tank, and Blur songs in the Parklife and Modern Life is Rubbish era will tell you so, but that they found a happy ending in the end warms my heart almost as much as the words to Blue Jeans. If the Closing Ceremony gig does prove to be their last, they’re certainly entitled to bask in the British track and field success at the Olympics as much as the Closing Ceremony deserves a bill headlined by them and supported by The Specials and New Order.

Olympics Review: It's not black and white

I’m sure lots of you will have been following with some excitement the progress of Team GB in the 2012 Olympics and often found yourself gripped. There have been some memorable moments from the second Bradley Wiggins (good choice) rang the bell to get the Opening Ceremony underway. I tuned in with a degree of scepticism considering how shambolically almost everything else – from ticketing to security – had hitherto been organised and was blown away. From celebrating radical parts of the UK’s history – from CND to the Jarrow Marchers to the suffragettes – to radically celebrating a national treasure like the NHS which is not radical in nature but radically different to the privatised or semi-privatised healthcare systems more common, it was such a welcome contrast to the impressive spectacle but intimidating order and synchronicity of the Beijing Opening Ceremony in 2008.

Uniting everyone – including Olymposceptics like myself – apart from a few Daily Mail readers and loony Tories (like this charming fellow) it celebrated things such as our technological advances and diversity, a contributor to the UK being third in the medal table, even featuring a depiction of the Windrush, the legendary ship transporting the first large group of West Indian immigrants to the UK. Warm and wonderfully witty at times, it struck a perfect balance of humour virtually the whole world understood – the Rowan Atkinson scene was genius, as was James Bond/The Queen – with relative in-jokes, with Michael Fish's hurricane etc. (you almost expected Phil Daniels to burst on stage singing Parklife or David Brent to make an appearance…). All alongside an outstanding soundtrack – from The Kinks to The Clash to Bowie to Blur to The Jam to Eurythmics to The Specials to New Order – not even spoilt by the inclusion of Muse and Coldplay towards the end.

It was a masterpiece that temporarily made us forget about everything bad, even the dismantling of the NHS overseen by the coalition government. The first few days of sport have at times been equally gripping, with highlights including Jessica Ennis’s magnificent gold medal in the heptathlon and Mo Farah’s thrilling win in the 10000 metres. For many of us, both were made even sweeter by the backgrounds of Farah and Ennis, which reflect Britain’s diversity the opening ceremony paid tribute to and exposing the Daily Mail and chums as not only the racist xenophobes we know they are but plain wrong, as you can see in the picture below.

It’s good to see so much support for Team GB over Twitter, but I’m uncomfortable about the way you’re almost not allowed to voice concerns or disappointment about anything Olympics-related without being portrayed as anti-Olympics or anti-British. I apologise if my last blogpost gave the impression that I was against the Olympics coming here. I’ve always been in favour of it coming to East London but remain disappointed at how much more it could have done in the long-term with regards to legacy, sport and housing, a frustration only heightened by the higher-than-expected number of athletes now heroes and role models who could have had an even bigger impact in promoting sport among young people if more had been invested in facilities and keeping more stadia.

Clearly there shouldn’t be a choice between watching/enjoying the Olympics or boycotting it. But that’s how these people like to frame it to avoid answering awkward questions about Dow Chemical or how giving centre stage to McDonalds and Coca Cola can possibly be promoting healthy lifestyles for young people. Say anything bad about LOCOG or the IOC and they depict you as enemy of the Olympics, Team GB and the country.

You’re not even allowed to enjoy or celebrate anything if you’ve said anything bad about the Olympics at some point. When the whole Twittersphere (bar the Mail and other enemies of multiculturalism) celebrated the outstanding achievements of Team GB’s track athletes on Saturday, some felt the need to write things like ‘Tonight goes to show anyone criticizing the Olympics organisers is ridiculous’. So we’re not allowed to bask in the glory of track success because we raised legitimate concerns about a lack of provision for youngsters wanting to become the next Mo Farah or Jessica Ennis? We’re not allowed to celebrate the brilliance of Jason Kenny and co. because we expressed concerns about the way cyclists are treated in the capital and the lack of cycle lanes both during the games and after, shown to be extremely valid by the tragic death of cyclist Daniel Harris on a dangerous junction which London Cycling Campaign's concerns about were ignored by LOCOG and local authorities. It’s like saying anyone who didn’t vote for a certain government isn’t allowed to enjoy or celebrate anything good they do.

And then the empty seats. The only thing more sickening for the many to miss out on tickets than the sight of thousands of empty seats not just at morning events in less popular sports but in finals at peak times – there were more empty seats than spectators at Wimbledon for Murray and Robson’s thrilling Mixed Doubles semi-final win – is the self-righteousness of MPs and journalists who patronisingly make the point that there are bigger global problems than empty seats. Of course there are. Is anyone saying we should stop doing anything about global warming? No, but it’s understandable to be angry having spent hours in online ticketing queues without success while some people have got their tickets for free but not even made the effort to turn up.

Maybe if LOCOG hadn’t been led by Lord Coe but someone like Danny Boyle who made sure people in every part of the UK felt represented in his inspirational opening ceremony and I’m sure would have truly made it a people’s games, there wouldn’t be anyone complaining because there would be nothing to complain about. As it is, it’s been an excellent spectacle with some brilliant moments that I’m sure will inspire some young people (even if the impact on healthy lifestyles is balanced out slightly by the excessive promotion of McDonalds and Coca Cola) if spoilt somewhat by the fact that outstanding facilities like the basketball stadium will be demolished and that there will be far less affordable housing in Hackney and Newham than there was pre-Olympics. Not to mention the way it’s been used to speed up gentrification of the area, pricing thousands on housing benefit out of the capital. That’s something I haven’t heard anyone deny, hence why they resort to 'Why are you anti-British/anti-Olympics? – just enjoy the spectacle!” etc.

It’s not as clear-cut as some would have you believe ie. you’re not either pro-Olympics or anti, and the divergent backgrounds of British athletes should not be the cause for concern Mail journalists see it as in the 21st century but instead celebrated. Anyway, I’ll stop and let you get back to the weightlifting or gymnastics I’m sure you’ve been enjoying. Let’s hope this week is as exciting as the first and as fruitful for Team GB (and for Italy, a respectable 6th overall so far). If the Closing Ceremony is half as good as the Opening Ceremony was, we’re in for another treat.

Not jumping onto the Olympic bandwagon

Back in July 2005, I was thrilled to hear that the 2012 Olympic Games would take place in East London. The biggest sporting event coming to the part of the capital where I’ve lived since I was 6 months old... Great! And huge benefits, surely, to ordinary Londoners promised with redevelopment. If only. I can't tell you how disappointed I've been with the way the games have been organised, who is and isn't set to benefit, and the utter lack of scrutiny and critique from politicians on both sides.

Unless you have a small business in the area*, the benefits are extremely unlikely to trickle down. Yet it remains this sacred cow that we’re accused of being grumpy or unpatriotic for criticising. It’s like the Diamond Jubilee or Royal Wedding. You're just told to “cheer up and enjoy it” if you raise concerns. Even Rihanna and Jay-Z are told to refrain from saying anything negative (see photo). I can only conclude that this is because organisers know very well that more Londoners will be at best inconvenienced and at worst kicked out of their own city than the number that will benefit.

The other day I saw in the paper that there'll be cable cars running across the Thames. 'Brilliant!', I thought. 'Finally something to thank the Olympics for'. I then read further down the page and saw 'Mayor Boris Johnson has refused to confirm whether the project will be open to the public during the Olympics'. That sums it all up, frankly. Some amazing new facilities using state-of-the-art technology, but only to be used by VIPs and the kind of person who probably doesn’t even come from East London that the organisers hope to not only attract for the games but stay past 2012 in a part of London in which homes are finally being built but affordable housing is becoming more and more scarce. Was it naïve to hope that the benefits would trickle down as promised? Maybe it was. Just like the government has used the deficit as an excuse for cutting the size of the state, 'redevelopment' has been used to get less well-off families that the tabloids scapegoat and claim to be 'scrounging off the state' out and replaced by people who’d be more at home with the price of most things in Westfield.

Hari Kunzru, author of one of my favourite books, wrote an excellent article recently about coming back to visit the parts of East London in which he grew up (he lived on my old road, in fact), which I strongly recommend if you’ve got a few minutes. Here’s an extract from what he writes about the Westfield Shopping Centre and the transformation of the area which can be architecturally spectacular but full of harmful effects:
“The typical East London streetscape of pound shops and groceries may be unaesthetic, but it represents interwoven circuits of production and consumption that are local and targeted at the people who are already here, instead of those developers would like to see coming, people with more disposable income and fewer social problems”.

He goes on to talk about the government's capping of Local Housing Allowances, meaning that many claimants will no longer be able to afford to live in London. Newham Council has already announced it is looking to move some of the 32000 people in the borough in urgent need of housing to other parts of Britain. Even Boris Johnson has spoken out against what he labelled “social cleansing”.
Kunzru continues:
“Though the Olympics will undoubtedly regenerate the physical fabric of the area, it is obvious that not all of its current residents will be around to reap the benefits. The poorest will be shunted out.”

'Redevelopment' has often been not improving a part of London in need of housing and improved infrastructure but eroding its identity so that it could be anywhere: so that it can catch up with other parts of the country not in terms of the gap between rich and poor but in terms of how many shops there are for the wealthiest. Westfield isn't a public space; the people of Stratford have no right to be there if they're not shopping, and can be kicked out at the whim of the management. It could exist anywhere in Britain, or with a few tweaks, anywhere in the world. French anthropologist Marc Augé calls such environments "nonplaces" - sites which are both utopian, pointing towards a planned, functional feature, and dystopian - thin and transient, with nothing local about them, nothing to inspire the formation of a community. If this was part of a plan to build or manufacture a new community centred on a different social class, as wrong it would be, I could just about understand the logic even I vehemently disagreed with it. But it's not. There are no attempts at community-building even for a bourgeoisie that is starting to dominate much of Hackney.

It typifies the short-sightedness of the organisers and begs the question: what is the point? Aside from the sporting spectacle that will take place, is it worth months of travel chaos and the higher taxes Londoners have been paying for years to fund it without most of us getting any direct benefit? Like my family and 90% of the people we know in Hackney, you probably won't have got tickets to see anything anyway. David Cameron promised to “make sure the Olympic legacy lifts East London from being one of the poorest parts of the country to one that shares fully in the capital's growth and prosperity". I have little doubt that he's right in that some of the richest people around will and already have been tempted into moving over here. I very much doubt, however, how much the Olympics will do to address inequalities here and the fact that Hackney, Newham and Tower Hamlets routinely top statistical tables for child poverty and other indices of social deprivation. If this starts to change, it'll probably be because the poorest have been moved to other parts of the country, as Newham Council is already ensuring.

People complain about the EU being undemocratic, but what you don't hear about in the right-wing press (or indeed anywhere) is the democratic deficit brought about by the Olympics and the massive amount of power in the hands of big business and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Power not only over us and to influence our behaviour – I’m not just talking about the fact that you had to get a Visa debit card to apply for tickets, which you probably anyway won't have got thanks to the appalling system used – but power over democratically elected politicians; the scary bit. With MPs finally starting to move on from the period of subservience to bankers and the media with the Leveson inquiry and an equivalent one on the conduct of Barclays et al hopefully on the way, the elephant in the room is the complete unwillingness or inability of our elected politicians to stand up to the IOC and rich sponsors.

I remember even Ken Livingstone, usually a maverick unafraid to challenge anyone from big business, admit at a Labour event in my constituency that even as Mayor of London he would be virtually powerless over the ludicrous so-called “Games Lanes” closed off to the general public. These fast lanes are not just for athletes who need to get to events on time, which I could just about stomach (though it does remind me of Eric Pickles on Question Time justifying a second home by saying “I need to be there on time – the House of Commons runs like clockwork”. “So does the rest of the world”, Caroline Lucas rightly pointed out), but for VIPs, guests of the IOC and sponsors, who have priority over the Londoners who’ve paid higher taxes for years to host them.

Did I mention that traffic lights are being fixed so that they’ll turn green when chauffeur-driven VIP or sponsor vehicles approach? I’m not making this up. Astonishing is not only the lack of power wielded by UK politicians in their own country but the utter lack of public scrutiny from MPs of a games that public and government money is funding. The amount of exposure sponsors and multinational corporations have already got from the games - you couldn't miss them during the torch relay - and the almost infinite amount of power in their hands, you’d think that they’re funding most of it or at least a decent proportion. But no: 2% of the money comes from private businesses and 98% from government and taxpayers. Doctors recently raised concerns that Olympic VIPs could receive fast-track emergency care during the games. We’ve already essentially been told not to use public transport during August, with the “greenest games ever” telling us to use bikes and walk while simultaneously reducing cycle lanes and crossings to make room for the “Games Lanes” and allow traffic lights to turn green whenever VIP cars approach.

I hate to shout ‘conspiracy’ from the missile-occupied rooftops of East London but it really is puzzling why there is not only this silence from politicians across the spectrum but from the media, with even the likes of The Guardian keeping unusually quiet. Could it be because the world’s media also get to use the “Games Lanes”, something that you don’t hear about in these papers? Just a thought.

"Welcome to Newham, a place where people choose to live, work and stay," a large sign upon entry to the borough reads. Unless something is done, many of its residents may not have any of those choices by the time the olympic cars pack up and leave the borough more polarised and shorter of affordable housing than before London was given the games. I've now learnt the lesson that you should always be careful what you wish for.

Update (04/07): It seems I was too kind about the few benefits I perceived the Olympics as bringing East London. I originally suggested that small businesses in the area would automatically benefit. Thanks to Twitterers who pointed out that Victoria Park Books and many in the area have actually had their business negatively impacted by Olympic parking restrictions which have come into effect months early and put people off parking in the area and using shops in Lauriston Village

Update (12/07): Like London buses (not that you'll be able to catch one during the games!) not one but three good articles about the Olympics finally appeared in The Guardian in the days after my blogpost, the pick of which is Seumas Milne's, echoing many of the points raised in here and making the point that it doesn't have to be like this. It is possible to have a people's games, like the opening ceremony claims to reflect, but not while power rests exclusively with the IOC and sponsors like McDonalds and Coca-Cola who have no interest in promoting healthy eating in a nation where obesity is on the rise or giving up the hundreds of thousands of tickets made available to them but not the general public who are paying for the games. As you'll see in the photo, McDonalds (who will have four restaurants in the Olympic village) have even banned any other food outlets from selling chips unless they're sold with fish, which will set you back even more than a pint (£7.20).

Why I'm not convinced by imposing a minimum price on a unit of alcohol

The other day my mum, proud of learning the term straight from Radio 4, said she was not ‘pre-loading’ before a family friend’s birthday party. I found it funny that while young people use a different variation, John Humphrys, Theresa May and all these people on the radio/TV the wrong side of 50 were using it in inverted commas as if that’s the term people in my generation actually use. But anyway, there’s a serious point here and that’s what I’m writing about. I’m not convinced by government plans to impose a minimum price of 40p per unit on alcohol.

The problem of binge drinking, which lots of us can be guilty of, is such a wide one that just imposing a minimum price is simplifying it and not providing a solution. I have reservations about pretty much anything that will disproportionately affect those at the bottom of the income ladder. I know some will argue setting a minimum price is ‘for their own good’, but is imposing a regressive flat tax really dealing with the wider issue of binge drinking? It’s a short-term fix at best that doesn’t go near addressing binge drinking culture.

I’m not claiming to have the answer, but what I think any government should look at is alcohol advertising and consider introducing similar packaging regulations that apply to cigarettes in some countries. The Australian case where cigarettes must now be sold in plain olive green packets has shown that plain packaging on cigarettes has and will continue to make a significant impact on the number of people treated for smoking-related diseases.

I acknowledge that similarly plain packaging on alcohol is a radical idea and concede that it would not be a panacea, but it would have far more of an impact on myself for one. I don’t buy the super-cheap alcohol which will be banned by the minimum price law but am sure that at times my buying habits are influenced by appealing packaging and wanting to have the comfort of the same particular bottle I might often purchase in my hand.

I might even argue that in some cases the policy could have the opposite result from that desired and have an impact similar to the “forbidden fruit” effect of prohibition in 1920s America where demand actually increased and the black market grew. Naturally, most of the time, if you pay more for something, you’re under the impression that what you’re getting is better. Hence why Tesco Finest foods, for example, sell so well – they create a perception that some products are of a higher quality than more plainly packaged ones whether or not they actually are. Outlawing this cheap alcohol could increase some buyers' craving and just mean that some cripple themselves even more financially, leaving them with less disposable income and money to treat any alcohol-related illness acquired.

If you think about it, fixing a minimum price of alcohol does just punish and unfairly declare guilty one socio-economic group. It won’t affect the middle-classes who are far from blameless for the increase in crime resulting from binge drinking. It’s a simplification that places the blame for society’s binge drinking culture on one socio-economic group. Even if the government was to find a statistic showing that young people from poorer backgrounds are more likely to be those on city streets at night 'deterring responsible drinkers from going out', as Theresa May puts it, that might just be because they can't afford a taxi home or don’t have parents who can afford to pick them up. Whether or not it is a good policy (and I don't think it is), there's also an unjustness in who it targets.

Convenient for Cameron’s Broken Britain image it may be, it avoids dealing with the issue of binge drinking as a whole. I recognise that commendable groups like Alcohol Concern – as well as all the mainstream political parties – are on the other side of the debate, but I really think they’d do better to look at advertising, packaging and binge drinking culture. The latter will not be changed by merely imposing a minimum unit price on alcohol.

Homelessness

Yesterday I spent my second night sleeping rough with a group from Bristol Labour Students to raise money for homelessness charity St Mungo’s. We found shelter in front of some shops in Clifton Village – we’re sleeping in different locations each day, Thursday being on the Triangle and Friday in Redland Station – and quickly got into sleeping bags to keep warm.

The sleepout is not about us. As Abi and Joe, the brilliant organisers who have inspired the rest of us by staying out 7 consecutive nights, put it: ‘We aren’t destitute, we have safety in numbers... We all know we have warm beds to go back to at the end of the week and aren’t going to experience any of the feelings of hopelessness associated with rough sleeping.' We’re certainly not trying to claim we now know what it’s like to be homeless, but that doesn’t mean our nights on the street haven’t made us think about how homeless people might feel. Take an example. We would ask in cafés and restaurants to use the toilet when we needed to. Most staff were fine about it or didn’t object. Bags under our eyes or not, we did not look impoverished, and they were happy for us to use their facilities. Think about how difficult something as basic as finding a toilet can be for a homeless person. Often not having washed for weeks, they are regularly turned away, and even when they are allowed to use them, it can be a stressful process. If we felt self-conscious and awkward, think about the daily ordeal they go through for something - to us - as basic as finding a loo.

As well as raising money for St Mungo’s – at time of writing we’ve made over £3000 – we’ve been trying to raise awareness. While many passers-by kindly put money in the buckets and were friendly, the amount of ignorance has been shocking (I should confess that I wasn't aware of the scale of the problem before reading about it last week). Some didn’t realise homelessness was still an issue. Others asked ‘Isn’t it their own fault?’ Vicious cycles are common, with rough sleepers often spending money that they don’t have fuelling drug and alcohol addictions; but to say it's their fault is grossly ill-informed. The biggest single cause of homelessness is relationship breakdown. 35% of women on the streets slept rough after leaving home to escape domestic violence. One of the rough sleepers I spoke to had been a soldier in Afghanistan. He risks his life for the country and what does he get back? He doesn’t even get basic provisions like shelter.

As left-wing students annoyed to be rudely moved by delicatessen owners who claimed we were occupying space reserved for ‘customers’ (which were clearly queuing up in their thousands to sit on the uninviting soaking wet tables they wanted to put out…) you can imagine our grumbles at the right to private property being enforced. But while he by no means provided a panacea, Marx posed a serious question. Why shouldn’t we be at least debating whether or not it would be justified to use a £2 million house in Clifton whose owner hasn’t been there in 3 years as shelter for the 20 or 30 homeless people it could provide a roof for? Rough sleeping increased by 23% between 2010 and 2011. It is a huge problem that government (who somehow see it as a priority to criminalise squatting!) at local and national level and we as a society are not doing enough about. I’m not claiming to have the answer or now be somehow enlightened after two nights in the street, but I do know that homelessness is an issue in desperate need of tackling.

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