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People shot from the back this week. Not like murdered obvs, just photographed. Why? Because we can’t go back. And nor do we want to. The path behind us, the one we were on, the path of continuous growth in a finite space with no reduction in consumption or emissions, the path that has been brought to an abrupt stop by the pandemic, was always a dead end for our species…not today but in the ‘almost, not quite here yet but so close you can feel it and it’s definitely coming if we do fuck all to alter our course’ future.

The ‘other’ path which we can now see because we are now actually on it is a path where mass aviation travel is a thing of the past, where our dependence on oil has been massively reduced, where fast fashion and relentless consumerism has lost its grip, where air pollution has dropped enough so that it is no longer harmful…this is the path we must stay on which means not going back to life as it was before Corona.

We must be strong. We must pressurise our governments to be strong. To take us forwards in the 21st century which means abandoning all the drives of the 20th century simply because they are a threat to our continued existence. We must appeal to our MPs not to agree to bail out the aviation industry and to stop funding the fossil fuels. Let them fail if they can’t survive and let us instead invest in renewables because they will save both the economy and the environment. Oil is no longer even a good investment so there is now fuck all reason for govs & financial companies to put their money in it. #defundclimatechange is a current online movement to convince shareholders in the likes of blackrock & jp morgan to divest their money away from the fossil fuel companies that are continuing to destroy any hope of a liveable future.

Recently I was been given a list of every single email for every MP in parliament around 600 or so) so if you would like me to send to you this doc please get in touch via the ‘CONTACT’ button on my website and I will send to you. I have just written a letter along the lines of this blog post. If we all demand they abandon this one way ticket to hell for the kids of today and if we all do it they will have to listen. This is our last chance to change their minds and implore them to do the right thing. Everything hangs in the balance.

Maybe you think life in the lockdown sucks but whatever has been taken away from us there is still life. So if we can just accept that everything has changed and all the shit we used to do we now can’t do in the way that we did it…we can forwards. We need to embrace it not fight against it and if we do, we can usher in a new era for humanity as oppose to consigning us to the evolutionary scrap heap. Corona will pass, environmental breakdown won’t.

I have watched dumbfounded and fairly appalled at the negligence of the youth to maintain social distance out on the street…this is based on what I have seen with my own eyes so could be specific to my area but here it really feels like they are making zero effort to abide by the rules and don’t seem to give a flying fuck…and then it dawned on me..why should they when our society has clearly proven it doesn’t give a fuck about them?

We have not reigned in our climate fucking ways in any significant capacity despite knowing we are consigning the next generation to a pretty fucked future. So why should they care about protecting the older generations when we have shown through our unwillingness to alter our behaviour that we do not care about them. Our government’s way too late aim to reduce emissions to zero by 2050 is a shunt like no other and is effectively declaring generational warfare so can we be surprised they are ‘fighting back’?

The fate we will give them will be infinitely worse than what Covid has done to the people of this planet and if we allow our society to continue to be driven by fossil fuels, relentless consumption and meat production on the current scale this current global catastrophe will seem like a jaunty jaunt in a very jaunty place.

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We have had a lockdown “of sorts” in this country. Unlike other countries in Europe, like Italy, France and Spain it was far less strict. We’re actually allowed out of our house and we don’t need a certificate to prove reason when we do. We could simply be out on our daily allocated walk. In the above shot, taken in Holland Park, coppers were telling this guy who was having a picnic with his daughter that he shouldn’t be there and rather than move on he gave them a bit of lip back and they actually took it and left. The entire police response to the lockdown that I have seen has mostly been limp, ineffectual and almost pointless.

In Hyde Park, where a lot of the shots from this week and today were taken (and all since the lockdown) you would never even know there was a lockdown on. Actually you can tell, because it’s busier than normal. And people aren’t just exercising, they are hanging out in groups, sunbathing, doing whatever they wish and the police just cycle past and do nothing. I can only come to the conclusion that they have either been told not to interfere or they don’t believe they should. Either way it is not being properly enforced and the general slackness in adherence of the rules from people out and about and the casualness of the U.K approach here does not reflect us being the worst hit country in Europe with the highest death toll.

They said that what happened in Italy couldn’t happen here but it did, and worse. And still our actions do not seem to correlate to the severity of our situation, other than our half-heartedness to dealing with Covid 19 is undoubtedly the reason why we have such a high percentage of fatalities.

It feels like, in the U.K, we cannot marry what we are seeing on the news with what our daily lives consist of. Cognitive dissonance in full effect. It’s like we are in a daze, sleeping walking through this disaster. Either that or we just don’t give a fuck about anyone but ourselves which am starting to think is the case. Our sense of community in this country is so utterly eroded by Brexit and the divisions that it created it also appears to have destroyed our ability to empathise.

I have spoken to friends and family over in Ireland (north and south) and they all say how courteous and respectful everyone is over there to each other. They make sure that they all give each other plenty of space when walking past each other and in London it is the opposite. No-one budges an inch for anyone. It is as if to alter their trajectory one iota would be an insult to them and if you give them a wide berth they seem to take that as an offence. Londoners also have this notion that they are like sharks, if they stop moving they will die.

And am also sick of couples who will not break into single file to walk past you. Surely your relationship is strong enough to be able to handle a moment of separation? And its even worse in the shops, everyone brushing past you to grab something, you turn around and someone is literally on you. And when you flash em the evil eye or ask them to back up (which have done several times) they look at you either oblivious or with indignation, like you are the one with the problem.

I just think if we have been given this luxury to be able to go out on a daily basis the least we can do is try to maintain distance from each other. It’s ironic but I used to go to the parks to get away from people and now there are more people there than on the streets. We all need to get out of the house to not go 100% stir crazy, but we have been given the responsibility to make this lockdown effective in reducing the spread of the virus so we should at minimum do that.

No-one likes to be told what to do but we need to not act like teenagers and accept this is necessary and if it isn’t done properly there was no point in doing it in the first place and our inability to adhere to the rules will just make this go on and on. I guess I should be grateful at least that we don’t have protestors here armed with assault rifles demanding an end to the lockdown. Although there have been occasion when I could have done with an AK-47…just to fire off a few warning shots naturally ;) I obvs don’t want to kill anyone and that’s kinda the point of all this isn’t it? Isn’t that why we’re doing all this?

P. s Some of you might have noticed I have reverted back to colour. I went into black and white at the beginning of the year because everything seemed so despondent and hopeless and that was before Covid (!) I’m not saying things have improved but now I need to steer away from the doom and gloom as a matter of self-preservation. For me colour is optimism. Colour is hope. Colour is the beauty of nature. Colour is a better future. And the skies are just so fucking blue because there is no pollution in the city right now it would be almost masochistic not to show that….

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It is baffling to me that, even when we are in lockdown indoors and can’t go out for the most part and everything we do revolves around being online whilst staring at a device, people would still feel the need to be glued to their phones when they are outdoors, the one and only time in the day when you could actually interact with the real world. Has it so lost its grip in our lives we no longer even care to interact with it all?

And also, for the record, it is impossible to effectively social distance when you are not looking where the fuck you are going. You have to pay full attention as you walk around to ensure that you can create space around us to maintain a 2m gap…utterly unachievable who can’t see beyond the phone they are clutching in their hand. And its just makes it a fuck sight harder for everyone else. Smartphone zombies (or smombies) were fucking annoying before Corona but now they are beyond frustrating and potentially an actual hazard to your health.

So look the fuck up people…your life or someone else’s might literally depend on it…and you will soon be back indoors where there is fuck all else to do but endless screen based activity….and don’t worry, your dopamine hit will still be waiting for you…

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This Town…28 days later.

It is exactly 28 days later since they imposed the London Lockdown and when you walk the desolate deserted streets of the West End it is exactly like waking up in that movie. There is not a soul around and it is extremely eerie. It has truly become a ghost town. And the further into the middle you get the quieter it becomes. There is no traffic noise, no drilling, no voices. Only the sound of silence.

There is a stark contrast to the calm stillness of the city centre with its abandoned streets and the tension within residential areas, driven by the need for human avoidance where ever you go. The irony is that the busiest part of London has now become the quietest. In all my life I have never seen the city like this. It is beautiful but also chilling at the same time.

These shots were all taken on daily allocated walks over the Easter Weekend and all people photographed whilst maintaining social distance.

Music is written, performed and produced by Charlie B. Lyrics taken from Ghost Town by the Specials .

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10 things that are fucking weird that now seem normal which is fucking weird.

  1. you can go around wearing a mask, shades and a hoody and not get arrested.
  2. physical contact is over
  3. you have to stand 2m apart to have a conversation
  4. Our entire existence is now online
  5. the streets are deserted
  6. there is no pollution, neither fumes nor noise.
  7. you can hear birds sing
  8. people look at you like you are going to kill them
  9. everyone is now a conspiracy theorist
  10. we have all become OCD germaphobes

It’s life Jim, but not as we knew it.