Wife-Swapping….Undercover Police…..Racist Swine

There comes a time in your life when you meet undercover Police for the first time. Either when they admit it to you in some Hotel bar hiccuping over way too much Oban whiskey or when you are caught in a South London brothel being arrested for sex trafficking. My first encounter came while I was stumbling through a hallway in Swansea’s, Mozart’s Hotel Club. A club where mellow drug users, average income gamblers and retired kick boxers in cream suits and ponytail’s came to ‘hang out‘.

It had its own bloody time zone, two bars, a strange collection of dropout art students as bar staff, 70′s decor and a back room that resembled, not through style or choice, a World War 1 trench. You basically got smashed as you sat on arm chairs talking to gentlemen and ladies around you who were all wife swappers, ex-religious freaks and people who were determined to find their mid-life crisis at 70 years old. As for the undercover Police, they didn’t look that inconspicuous when you saw them up close.

Filed under: Big Brother, mozarts, oban, photography, photojornalism, police, shaun of the dead, Stephen Sidlo, Swansea, swine flu, undercover

The Optional Depressive

It’s the third time I’ve rang. Still no answer….maybe I should start pestering the White House instead …maybe I should start leafing through the directory ringing Politicians, finding second homes to see if they are in. It was a really good move. The squatters. They have descended on Mr & Mrs Keen’s second home and set up a really good comedy club…’The Benefit Gig’. This has really made them go back into the tortoise shell of shame.

Maybe I should go down there, take a crate of Carling and a bag of tuna and volunteer for the cause. It could be more fun that the sorry debacle of Big Brother XIV. The couple apparently claimed £140,000 in Parliamentary allowances for this designated “second home”, a luxury apartment just nine miles away in Westminster. What a sight the neighbours must see as the new tenants urinate on the front lawn at 6.30am…glorious…and I wish I was there.

In a letter to those same neighbours on the other hand the “Expenses Couple” complained that they feel “violated” by the ten squatters taking over their home in protest at their expenses. Her feelings of being violated by ten men shouldn’t be running through her mind, but rather the blatant disregard to UK taxes and allowances which in my view is a violation. If only I could get there, riding in on a motorbike..taking pictures and documenting “my own home“. Yet I can’t, I must keep ringing the local homeless shelter to get work, ironically. I’ll have another drink and try the phone again.

The piece I am about to start work on directly stems from a charity called Photovoice, a charity that gives less fortunate beneficiaries the means to record their lives. Maybe I should ring Politicians and donate cameras. As I walked around in the sun stretched town of Lancaster, looking for a new tent. One without corridors, compartments and special zips to keep the deadly house fly away, it occurred to me that they weren’t there. Where were all the war veterans? The post traumatized ‘war homeless’ now in the 4-figured numbers swelling Britain’s roads. Day time in the heat wasn’t the place, not when Sally and daughter Jessica are buying new socks.

Gordon Brown maintains his stance that things are being done to alleviate the homeless problem. In his direct letter to Ms Edwards at Homeless.org he ‘welcomes your positive comments about the governments commitment to tackle homelessness‘ and so forth until you lose your temper halfway down, grab a camera and record each individual homeless persons life and post them through the doors of ‘second homes‘ to show the nation a real problem.

I’ll keep trying the phone…

stephensidlo.com

Filed under: BBC, Benefit Gig, Benefits, Big Brother, britain, British, Carling, expenses, government, homeless, journalism, Keen, london, Politicians, second homes, Stephen Sidlo, Westminster, White House