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

The Greater Good

Currently reading ‘Tell me Lies”. What do I say? Talented and amazing professors looking into our involvement worldwide with issues, that is broadcast through our tv screens and Internet. The amount of fact and evidence tottaly knocking the news like CNN and BBC for six. They did a poll of a few hundred people up and down the US and Britain asking what the ‘Occupied Territories” were. It was shocking the results, answers like Palastine and Isreal are arguing over a border, or Palastinian/Isreali people are occupying each others land and both neighbours are telling each other to fuck off.

The truth is (other than the fact that the US give $4 Billion to Isreal in arms each year) that the news is told what to do, what to say..the choices of words. The fact that Isreal has a military stranglehold over Palastine and encamping thousands of them in their own country, cutting off medical aid and letting women die in pools of blood at checkpoints in childbirth, doesnt come into the equation.

Americas war on Terror, or The War against Terror, or T.W.A.T as I like to call it. Have an open mind for a minute. Isreal attacks Palastine and commits genocide and incamps tens of thousands of arabs..correct..good. Now when the BBC ask for a middle-east correspondant from Isreal they pull out the man with the suit sat in Washington DC…they pull out a Palastinian talker and he’s in army scruffs and with a bandana saying they want Isreal off their land….it reminds me of WW2. The French had a resistance…you’ve all seen Allo’ Allo’..so I will say this only once. Iraq or Palastine or even Swansea, Manchester or London. If we were invaded or illigally carpet bombed by the thousands..(Like a small town in Iraq that got carpet bombed, the U.S said it was a friendly fire mistake, so the BBC and CNN took it at face value…real reports and eye witnesses said that they came back for 3 days to carpet bomb the village..a woman lost 9 children in a house that the Americans said housed ‘bad guys’…the US apologised and gave each grieving person 5 grand…that means her children were worth 556 quid.)..then there would be a resistance for fuck sake.

Rebel fighter ‘Che’ is now considered a great man, will any of the resistance rebel fighters across the world over be given that? No because its against our troops. ‘We Must Support Our Troops’ I hear you say!! Then fucking bring them home!

Filed under: america, BBC, blog, britain, camera, che, CNN, dissertation, Iraq, isreali, lies, london, manchester, palastinian, photography, propaganda, student, troops