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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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limbs without faces, legs without heads..with only appendages to look at what does the brain do? it fills in the gaps. It imagines. It creates. It projects. Faces reveal everything but in their absence we are forced to look closer or we are forced to invent. When we do not have the full story we fill it in. Our brains can’t help it. They want the whole thing and don’t seem to care if the bit that is missing is completed internally.

For me, the weird thing is that the brain wants to do it in the first place. Don’t have a full memory of an event? Don’t worry, your brain will fill it in and then tell you it happened. Don’t know why someone is doing something? Fear not, the brain will assume motive and tell you that’s the truth. Can’t see anything but a pair of legs? Without you even realising it, the brain will sketch in the rest. This is why I think C.G.I has it wrong. The brain wants to be involved. It wants to fill in the gaps. It doesn’t want the full picture. And this is why I give you photos of legs. So your brain can do its thing. Off you go…

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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and so the tory status quo remains which means…

another four years of squeezing everyone but those who have it

another four years of watching the gap between the ‘have loads’ and the ‘have fuck all’ get even wider

another four years of destroying affordable homes & livelihoods to build luxury flats for foreign investment

another four years of blue blood bullshit as they push us towards the inevitable boom & bust so we can again pick up the tab.

whoopee fucking doo

 

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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And so its election day in the u.k. It’s been really difficult to pay attention to what any of the parties or candidates have actually been saying because its pretty evident they’re just spouting whatever bullshit they think they need to say to get elected. And everyone knows it. Why believe any election statement when they have systematically showed time and time again they will re-neg on everything they promise?

The famous saying that “you can tell a when politician is lying because his lips move” is never truer than during the lead up to a general election.Not that its really about policies anymore anyway…the popularity contest which it now so clearly is feels more like the X factor than the all-important task to decide who governs out country…a place where its apparently more important how you eat a friggin bacon sandwich than what your political party stands for.

So many of us have officially lost faith in the system and our representatives. And with good reason. You only have to watch the “The Thich of It” to know that self-serving careerists run our country under the guise of serving the population. (Yes, I know its only a tv comedy but its so obviously is like that ). If anything positive happens for the electorate it is most likely to be an accident. They just implement whatever nonsense they see fit as they scrabble around trying to cling on to what power they have whilst servicing the rich donors that put them there. I would go as far to say all politicians are on an ‘anal retainer’ and will receive rewards based on how much they are prepared to take it up the arse from their ‘real’ bosses.

The most positive thing I have heard recently is from a good friend who works in government who assures me on very good authority it is in fact the civil service who run the country, not the politicians. They quietly get on with things as the hoopla happens above them. The drivers might change but the cogs of the machine stay the same so it doesn’t really matter who you vote for.

Although, having said that, it is fairly evident there is a “lesser of evil” choice and in these days of necessary tactical voting we must ensure that the interests of the 99% are even vaguely taken into account.

Cynical? Disillusioned? Defeatist? Yup, yup and yups. Guilty as charged. Maybe Russell Brand will come to our rescue…although I have seen his version of “Arthur” so his decision making process must be questioned…

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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“Ed Milliband is like a plastic bag stuck up a tree, no-one knows how he got up there and no-one can be bothered to get him down” (bill bailey)

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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This week’s theme is entitled “Thru the looking glass”. London is full of weird and wonderful in-your-face window displays with shops and galleries getting excessively creative & occastionally confrontational to get you to look in their establishment.

In the case of the above monstrosity, I would normally say that art is most definitely in the eye of the beholder and any rating of quality is always subjective. I can also, in most cases, see the merit or effort in most things…but this is just friggin hideous!

This is some tosh bit of corporate art in the foyer of some swanky offices that they probably paid a fortune for. But what the hell is it?? Apart from revolting that is. Its like a genetic experiment gone wrong. It was probably intended as a worthy statement on species decline but in fact its just utter pants. I mean, what’s that lump on the floor? Freaky zebra shit? The mind boggles…

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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The T-shirt shop has spoken.

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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 Another week of tube tales – transient undeground encounters with strangers makes my brain turned detective…what are scary clowns doing lurking in tunnels? Why has a decorated solider traded in his rifle for a zoom lens? Why is a grown man vomitting into a bin? Is a daughter sat next to the father she never knew, both oblivious to each other’s proximity?

The above shots however show a very real horror story that requires no interpretation. This is just one hideous London moment at Oxford Street tube station as commuters wait in masse to get crammed onto tube trains. They could walk five minutes to Bond St and avoid this hellzone but in the great British tradition, if you see people waiting in a queue, join them.

The reason it is so congested is that they have closed Tottenham Court Road station to build the cross rail overground network. This will ultimately ease the crowds descending into the Underground which as you can see is at busting point.

The real tragedy is that in the process of facilitating journeys for workers to get into the centre of town they have destroyed half of what made Soho and the West End great. All the places that gave it its character such as The Astoria and Tin Pan Alley are being systematically removed to make way for New London.

But to be able to live in central New London is no longer financially viable for most normal earners. They have already been pushed out to the outskirts and beyond. If councils had protected their residents and installed legislation to keep rent and property affordable instead of allowing the global rich to turn them into glorified safe deposit boxes they wouldnt need to build a rail system to herd them in from the suburbs as they would be living in the centre and going to all the places that have been knocked down in the process..progress, don’t you just love it!

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

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Me and my camera back in my home town, my capital city, my london

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Me and my camera in someone else’s town, my return trip, my Bergamo

Berga Moes & Joes-1

To see the full gallery “BergaMoes&Joes” please click here

Bergamo is situated in northern italy near Milan and is a town of opposites. There seem to be a lot of young people and a lot of old people there but not much in-between. There is also a high town and a low town. The high town is the old ancient town built in the 16th century and sits on top of a big hill and the low town is the modern town built at the foot of the hill. They are connected by a cable car.

In the high town they are always low and in the low town they are always high…

…they’re not really. I just wanted to say that…although some of the residents, especially the older community are very serious looking. Almost comically so. They seem intent on letting everyone know they are unhappy but don’t seem to want to enlighten anyone as to the reason. As The Joker would say…why sooo seriousss?

What is interesting is that the high town has lost tens of thousands of residents in recent years as everyone moves to the low town – the reason? Apparently its because they have terrible phone reception up there. Seriously. This obviously made my talk on people’s dependance of smartphones in the modern era strangely pertinent in this small Italian community.

Bergamo is also a town with more bells going off than anywhere I’ve ever been…they just never seem to stop…it is a terrible place to wake up with a hangover.