By Katie L-S, August 28th, 2006
On England’s south coast, an hour from London and facing France, Brighton’s an incongruous city. Who do you expect to inhabit a tourist town? I’m not sure, but this place’s juxtaposition of hippies and indie kids with the gaudy seafront tourist attractions does seem peculiar. I hear that Fatboy Slim lives here, and that the dance clubs are pretty good, just to add another random factor into the mix.
By Katie L-S, August 22nd, 2006
“I urge the public to remain vigilant” John Reid tells us as the UK’s “Terror Threat Level” is downgraded from Critical to Severe. “Evildoers”, “mass murder on an unimaginable scale”, “enduring threat”, he burbles, each sound bite further destroying the sex-appeal of the Scottish accent in my mind. We are reminded that there may still be terrorists lurking out there, that the country is still on a high level of alert. Be afraid, be very afraid, is the subtext. So how exactly are we supposed to be vigilant?
By Katie L-S, August 16th, 2006
The apparent interception of a planned terrorist attack on US bound airliners has dominated British media in the last few days. On Thursday Sky News adhered to the story all day, only moving off it for the briefest mention of the announcement of a new captain for the English soccer team.
And rightly so. If the planned attacks were going to be as huge as the police allege then this is a massive coup. Of course, I am trying to maintain my usual scepticism.
By Katie L-S, August 6th, 2006
There were quite a few of us on a little diplomatic walking tour through central London today. 20,000 at a minimum I reckon, but that’s just a number I’ve pulled out of the air. I never saw the beginning or the end of the march, even when we doubled back on ourselves, wrapped around three sides of the park in front of the US Embassy. Doubtless The Sun will report that 10 crazy hippies were the entirety of it; The Socialist Worker will reckon there was a couple of million.
By Katie L-S, August 5th, 2006
London’s a strange place. I always pictured England as being the home of P’s & Q’s, always thought that English people would all be very polite and well-mannered. But it’s not so. I must look like a dickhead to everyone else because I can’t not say Hello and Thank You to the driver when I get on and off a bus. No-one else does though, and often the drivers themselves won’t even say hi back. Shop assistants too generally lack any courtesy or, indeed, basic service skills. It’d be an interesting experiment to see how long you could stand at a shop counter, ready to hand over your money, while the attendants chat to themselves and ignore you. (I always say Excuse Me and make them come and serve me – rude, I know, to pull them out of their o-so-important discussions about Big Brother). And in this vein, I thought this sign, which appears to be put up at some point within living memory, to be quite humourous.
By Katie L-S, August 3rd, 2006
Tony Blair’s speech to the World Affairs Council yesterday was planned before the war started in Lebanon/Israel, but that is no excuse for him to try to wrap this conflict into the “War on Terror” paradigm. (Or, indeed, for his poor use of English. “Hearts and minds”? Please. “Arc of extremism”? Was this an attempt at paraphrasing “Axis of Evil” without sounding entirely like a doormat?)
By Katie L-S, August 2nd, 2006
I was touched by this story about a boat load of immigrants who washed up on a beach in Spain’s Canary Island’s today – tourists sunbathing on the beach came to their aid.