Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london
To see the full gallery “Blocked Party” – please click here (no pics apart from one above featured in this weeks post)
The only news story you will ever read about the Notting Hill Carnival after the event is how many arrests there were. It is the only angle the mainstream media ever project. This year there were around 400 or so arrests. Massively up on last year. The reason? They gave police permission to do random stop and searches so that’s how they got their quota up and now there’s been an increase in violations the carnival is now up for review. What a surprise. It seems they would do anything they could to end it, I just think they don’t know how to.
If you have been you will know it can be one of the most joyful events on the planet. Mass daytime street dancing – its about as positive as the human race gets. It is us at our best. Yes people get wasted. Yes they make a mess but its only for 2 days out of 365 and we all need to let off a bit of steam now and again or else we’ll explode. They describe the behaviour as ‘anti-social’ but its the most social experience you could be a part of. Every walk of life, every age group, nationality and ethnicity all dancing to the same beat…sorry, what was the problem with this again? Which bit of that don’t we like?
There will always be a tiny element, that attend that are looking for and cause trouble. If you take the amount of attendees (roughly a million) compared with the amount of arrests it equates to 0.04%. Why should the focus be on them when the rest are celebrating life? We could look at the positives, we could see the overall good as oppose to the minuscule bit of bad. We choose what we think about. That is what shapes ourselves and the world we live in. You always have a choice and as Renton so succinctly put in Trainspotting: Choose Life. Choose Carnival (well he didn’t actually say the last bit, I did, obvs)
One of the my favourite moments of Carnival is on the thursday before as they do a steel drum rehearsal on All Saints Rd. It used to be on at the Tabernacle on Talbot Rd but they had to move it because of complaints from the neighbours. Just to put that in perspective – its on at 8pm for 2 hours once a year and is one of the most uplifting sounds on Earth – how twisted and bitter and joyless to you have to be to want to put a stop to that? I never understood why the Quiet always get the last word? They should be quiet! (That’s irony by the way folks). Just because they might have given up on living doesn’t mean we have to…