onionbagblog

Elephant in the Room

“Elefest takes all those stereotypes of Elephant and Castle being depressing and run down and waves two fingers at them.”

Bloody awful name, but there’s a lot of half-decent ideas contained within Elefest. A screening of The Harder They Come is always to be welcomed. As is anything that Don Letts does. Not sure about the South London connection with The Wicker Man though.

Celebrate The Elephant whilst you still can, Comrades.

The E & C is all set to change at a pace that will put even Brixton Vill-aaage to shame. The barriers are going up around The Heygate, foundations are springing up for the new Fusion swimming pool site, and soon the second of the ghastly roundabouts will be removed.

But you can’t but help ponder that The Elephant will lose something of a unique Transpontine, feel once the transition from a modern medieval ramshackle of a market to the Nu International Cool of South London starts to emerge.

For many folk The Elephant *is* the spiritual home of a South London identity. The grubby underpasses, the transient communities, a hellish transport infrastructure.

Glorious, glorious Transpontine living.

No worries - all of these still exist around the corner down the Walworth Road.

via @Londonist.

Localgov Online Access

“Nearly 70% of IT professionals believe most interactions will be via the council’s website. Three quarters of those surveyed also said online transactions are the best way to improve service delivery.”

First things first - never trust a survey that cites ‘IT professionals’ - we’re all part of the online conversation / building process now, aren’t we?

It’s not exactly computer science to consider that localgov of the future NOW is going to be powered online. Which kinda makes the survey looking a little silly. It wasn’t commissioned purely for PR purposes now, was it?

The trick is not to simply put your localgov services online, but to encourage residents to understand the benefits in using them. Clear, clean functional design would be a half-decent start.

OH HAI @WiganCouncil.

Woh! That's more like it. @WiganCouncil ace example of #localgov usability http://t.co/JIeQ25mqNM cc @Skinner_M @FutureGov @gryastn

— Jason_Cobb (@Jason_Cobb) September 6, 2013

“Nearly 90% said a lack of integration is a barrier to delivering services via an online channel. However, a third of councils integrate less than 10% of Customer Relationship Management.”

Build or burn it, Comrades, as we say back in the Anarcho Situationist squat.

Pay me enough dosh and I can do either of these for you.

Ha. bloody ha.

Nu Model Activism

“For an activist things can never be too local… A generic problem is that the cost of hyperlocal accountability using formal, recognised traditional structures is just too high and replication of formal meeting structures is too unwieldy.

Activists like me might piously say ‘you can’t put a price on accountability’ but that ignores the fact that, accountability done traditionally costs to engage staff time and there isn’t always money to pay for it. Traditional ways of doing it are horribly unwieldy.

As a local activist I am often frustrated by the lack of true localness in accountability structures. This is despite living in some of the smallest wards known to Western democracy.”

@willperrin on the increasing value of the New Model Activists.

ANY excuse to embed the ACE video from Richard Taylor shot at Huntingdonshire District Council.

Respect for, but not deference to civil authority…

Tell It Like It Is, Comrades.

Rise and shine for an EARLY Sunday morning rollout with the inaugural Colchester CTC 100 Sportive. You don’t normally associate a Cycling Touring Club with a semi-serious / semi-pro pedal-at-a-pace. You also don’t normally associate the lovely, lovely Colchester CTC ride with attracting sixty plus riders signing on at The Bricklayers Arms just before 8am.

Chapeau!

What was ACE about the Sportive was that it was a coming together of the different cycling tribes in the town. For all the huff and guff that Colchester is a Cycling Town, even the cynics can see that cycling is incredibly popular in Britain’s Oldest Recorded.

It’s not very often that the cycling clans come together, but on Sunday there was representation from Colchester Rovers, Velo Club Revolution and Chapeau Velo. Plus many other cycling folk attracted from out of town to take up the challenge of completing the 100km circuit in under the Sportive six-hour time limit.

Should be a doddle, right?

Um…

The glorious Sunny Colch sun may have been shining as the flag was dropped, but Sunday was still a morning for cycling tights.

In fact ANY morning is a morning for cycling tights.

You could sense the anticipation of what lay ahead as the pelaton made the neutral roll out around the hell that is North Station, ahead of some heavy pedaling once the wilds of Nayland Road were reached.

I’m not entirely sure of the exact route. I never am. There’s an app for that. But Braintree was more or less the turn around rendezvous. Probably best not to linger there for too long, Comrades.

You need to approach these Sportives with a strategy. A pre-defined tactic is required to see you around the route in the required time. My hangover heavy thoughts were to put on my best Race Face with the other lycra kids, bluff it out to Braintree and then rely upon a strong head wind and a strong double shot of whiskey at a local boozer to bring me back home.

Chin chin.

Failing that then there was always the ever-reliable CTC folk to guide me around the distance. The country lanes of North Essex are part of the DNA of their wrinkles and wind swept cycling faces.

It’s quite a look.

A clever race competition was built into the main race. Question cards were handed out, with en route answers needed to be entered come the close. No place for a lycra clad kid to cut out the main drag and look for the short cuts.

I was slightly disappointed that the long-established CTC routine of seeking out EVERY gardening centre in Essex to stop for a midday coffee was overlooked. The shout went out for a gel break. I pruned my helmet hair with a bit of Vidal Sassoon, before realising that the semi-pro riders were necking bars of gels that look like they should be sold with a warning in Soho sex shop.

For a brazen moment I was actually leading the pelaton and in serious danger of bluffing it all the way around the ride with my booze heavy bravado. This raw ambition was soon beaten out of me when I took a detour with some London riders, optimistically seeking for a cycling shop on the badlands of a Braintree industrial estate.

We’re not from London!

listen to ‘CTC Halfway’ on Audioboo

A rear end buckling incident almost brought the Sportive to a close for my Domestique. A bit of a ‘tea shop incident’ then followed, before I agreed on the plan of cutting the brakes and coasting it back down to Sunny Colch in the headwind that was behind us.

Except it was now in front of us.

Whoops.

The 8am fighting talk was now faltering. Heavy legs led to half-dazed conversations.

“Have you got a garden?”

I then held a conversation for almost a mile, enlightening my new found cycling buddy about the beautiful delights of my rodadendrums and veracious borders.

He meant a Garmin of course.

Whoops.

A late-September game of village cricket as we approached the surrounds of Sunny Colch was a delight to watch as the early morning sun was now struggling to go the distance. There was a metaphor in there for any CTC 100 rider wondering if the numerical figure represented miles or km.

But the end was in sight, and so was the Bricklayers. The time limit was achieved, buckled wheel, sore backside and a belly full of gel bars.

Chapeau!

listen to ‘Completing the Colchester CTC 100 Sportive’ on Audioboo

The medium is the message - which for the 90th anniversary of the Radio Times has often meant that the iconic front covers have held more appeal than some of the TV crap in which they have helped to promote.

Cover Story, an exhibition documenting the history of the Radio Times at the Museum of London, captures the rise fall of the front cover. In turn captures something of the social history of British broadcasting.

The Radio Times is / was (deep breath) a national institution. Like TOTP, FA Cup Finals and newsreaders, every generation grows up defining its own time period based around a belief of how things were better in their day.

The Museum of London has curated beautifully this historic timeline. It makes sense from start to finish, and allows you to isolate your own personal pointers as to where you enter the Radio Time story, and also where you left the conversation.

When the magazine first launched in 1923, the Radio Times only had to worry about one medium and one channel; it told you the times for the radio.

Nowadays there’s an app for that.

Fleet Street refused to publish the listings of the British Broadcasting Corporation for free. The DIY ethos of the Radio Times emerged. National newspapers now seem to only exist to print crap about TV celebs that most folk have long since lost interest in.

Cover Story captures the first Ally Pally broadcast in 1923, the BBC under wartime conditions, the start of regional broadcasting, the emergence of ITV and the introduction of Rabbit TV.

Possibly.

A classic quote on the now faded glory of TV is provided by Geoffrey Cannon, the Radio Times Editor between 1969 - 1979:

“Rock is the most potent means of communication that exists. Number one - rock. Number two - TV. Number three - telephone. Number four - newspapers. Number five - radio.”

All of these platforms are now accessed via your iPhone.

The medium is the message, etc.

Which brings us back to the modern interweb and digital car crash that is the Radio Times online. Perhaps the modern interweb is the problem?

The one channel, one listing format has now led to an impossible amount of content creators for a single listings magazine.

The modern interweb killed the radio star?

The iconography of the Daleks, Morcombe and Wise or The Snowman leaves Rabbit TV looking a little redundant.

Cover story concludes with the 2011 sale of the Radio Times by the BBC to the Immediate Media Company. The connection between the State and public broadcasting via the medium of a magazine ended.

Closedown.

Hunters and Gatherers

“If the news is that important it will find me.”

@kevglobal on how content is accessed.

Little Gov

“I fell out of love with big technology and wanted to focus on beautiful technology. If councils don’t embrace technology then they may collapse.”

@dominiccambell on how #localgov can still be SEXY when it is given a little online love.

Bicycle Blues

Want to see a grumply old Coalition Cabinet Minister looking a little shifty over the piss poor cycling infrastructure in this country?

Good news.

The Graun gives Norman Baker a good grilling.

“I don’t believe in a Cycling Champion.”

Which kinda makes Andrew Gilligan look redundant.

Facts are sacred, comment is free, etc Comrades.

LV CC Division One, Kia Oval, Close, day three: Yorkshire 434, Surrey 572-4

To The Oval! …late on Thursday afternoon for the fag end of the cricket season in South London. The Pauper’s Pleasure of the post-tea session once again served me well. I wheeled in the Brompton, took up a freebie seat in the Peter May and splashed out my savings on five pints of Carling.

Chin chin.

Only joking.

It may have been thirsty work out in the middle for the Yorkshire attack, but this was no time to get tired and emotional on a rare BATTING DAY for the ‘rrey.

The scoreboard read 450-3 for the home team upon my arrival. You don’t need a GCSE qualification in cricketing statistical skills to work out that a SHED LOAD of runs had been made by not many batsmen.

The man / boy of the moment was young Dom Sibley, who at 18 years and 21 days old / young, was about to have a rather good day at the office.

It was an improved performance from the last time that I saw the young man at The Oval. An unfortunate GASH incident led the fine fella limping off before his Pro 40 innings against Essex really got going at the start of last month.

From GASH to GOSH.

Yer man / boy Dom had already become the youngest Surrey player to reach a first class county century, whilst I was still counting down to my retirement days back in the SE17 day job.

But why stop at a single century? With his 173 to his name as I took up my freebie seat of no shame, Sibley was set to keep on breaking the records as the Surrey season finally found a little momentum.

The Summer Game is all about timing - line and length, etc; so what if the ‘rrey have finally found the future during the last game of the season with a big red RELEGATED mark already rubber stamped against their name?

Sibley was joined at the crease by Vikram Solanki, no slacker himself when it comes to running between the wickets. Only 56 more runs were needed from Solanki at the start of his knock to become the first (and only) Surrey player to reach 1,000 first class runs for the season.

Solanki danced the wicket as the South London Indian Summer came into view for a glorious fifteen minutes or so late afternoon. Slogs / strokes were dispatched to the boundary, depending on how bitter you feel about the style of play of Surrey this season.

The ‘rrey should get relegated more often…

Ryan Sidebottom was an ungainly sight of hair and hard toil for the visitors. Ball after ball was boundary bound from Solanki. He finally fell short of the 56 personal target, having made an impressive half-century off only 45 balls, taking Surrey past the 500 mark.

But Solanki was the WHAM BAM for Sibley’s more resourceful, um, stroke play. The Surrey season may be over, but as the fading Transpontine rays started to descend behind St George’s Tower, the Member’s didn’t bugger off and hibernate for another six months.

The Oval was gripped with the ever-knowledgeable crowd knowing that cricketing history was about to be made. The 18-year-old schoolboy was about to become the youngest player ever to score a double century in the history of the County Championship.

Here’s hoping that his GASH would hold up.

When the unthinkable moment finally came, young Dom Sibley was rewarded with an Oval standing ovation and handshakes from the Yorkshire players. I decided that now would be a good moment to celebrate with the remaining four pints for the final five overs in the day.

And so at 18 years and 21 days old / young, Dom Sibley had batted out for five consecutive sessions, making what should have been a gallows humour late September afternoon at The Oval into something rather special.

Now go and finish your homework, fella.

“This is it for me, and I say that with an exclamation mark!”

So said Mick Jones in introducing Black Market Clash, the Soho pop-up shop [URGH] for the Last Gang that has just completed a two-week run at 75 Berwick Street.

Ahh, but that’s what Paulie, George and the Other One said about Anthology, before the beauty of The Beatles became a Las Vegas circus sideshow.

COMPLETE CONTROL, etc Comrades.

It’s always hard to define the London footprint of The Clash. The Westway and W12 have a rightful hereditary claim. Down in South London and the Academy and the surrounds have a strong sense of history for Mick Jones. Soho was always the hunting ground for the Sex Pistols. So it’s a little strange that The Clash pop-up has sprung up at 75 Berwick Street.

Operating under the title of Black Market Clash, it’s a clever marketing trick that has been pulled off by the three surviving members. Cut the Crap, etc - this is an overt sales pitch for Hits Back and the Sound System box set. It is no coincidence that the artefacts of The Clash are being displayed as shrines, just as the new releases are made available.

There’s not a left of the legacy in which to pick away on before spewing it out once again. Sound System is an ACE anthology [URGH] for Clash completitsts, albeit with the omission of Cut the Crap (which isn’t as… crap as the Year Zero revisionists would have you believe.)

You suspect that the entire target audience for Sound System has passed through Berwick Street over the past fortnight.

Job well done, then.

Fender is even in on the act, offering demo sessions, not to mention a helpful sales pitch if you want to learn a chord, and another, and then form a band…

There’s some similarity here with the Mick Jones Rock and Roll Library that was exhibited at Chelsea Space back in 2009. No product to flog for yer man Mick three years ago, but the same sense of eulogising over the relics of the punk DNA.

Plus there’s more than hat tip to David Bowie Is - although the queues thankfully can’t compete with the V & A silliness; the content isn’t halfway up its own arse, either.

Anyone expecting a minimalist post-modern museum experience of white walls and calling cards offering up an explanation of the art will be disappointed.

And thank the chuffers for that.

Black Market Clash is basically a pop-up record shop upstairs, and then a warehouse where you are left to wander downstairs. Chronology is kept to a minimum. It’s like Mick Jones’ dear old Ma has asked the naughty teenager to tidy his punk rock bedroom. The dirty clothes, album covers and Clash doodlings have been lobbed inside the back of the public display wardrobe.

But WOH!

What a wardrobe for misty eyed men of a certain age that like a little bit of political posturing with their three cords and the truth.

I was pretty much blown away.

Late middle-aged blokes showed their teenage grandchildren the corpse of a long lost youth. Is this what they meant by the 5th Generation of Rock and Roll?

A lone bondage boy shuffled awkwardly between the social histories on display. It wasn’t quite downstairs at The Roxy. Punk’s not dead, but it has certainly grown old gracefully.

The cash from chaos upstairs was keeping the Black Mark Clash tills ticking over. Vinyl, CD’s (oooh - nostalgia…) and posters. You too can construct your own Clash shrine back in your bedroom.

It feels incredibly out of place in Soho during the back end of 2013. The global economy is something that The Clash sang about, yet they had to leave London in order to experience and ridicule it. Oh the irony of a pop-up shop to sell Black Market Clash, a band that always tried to lose any sense of hipster coolness.

A stroll back along the badlands of Oxford Street and the shitty tourist trap shops are still selling Clash T-shirts to all the Top Shop kids that see that lifestyle-changing band as a brand.

As Comrade Wolfgang observed:

I saw someone in a skull & crossbones FC St. Pauli shirt in Peckham recently. I turned to him and piped, “Alright mate, come see Dulwich Hamlet!”

He tried to walk past. Hang about.

“We got links with [Hamburg non-league side that a lot of St. Pauli fans adopt as a second, more leftist, team] Altona 93…”

He looked at me baffled.

“Dulwich Hamlet Football Club, about twelve minutes walk that way…”

Confusion etched on this poor sod’s face.

“Football! Do you like football?!”

His eyes begged me to leave him alone. I chased him chanting “Football motherfucker! Football!” past no doubt several postcolonially-Jay-Rayner-reviewed bistros.

Like punk never happened.

Place and Paint

“How can the publishers of local websites and artists work more collaboratively together? This idea of culture, artistic activity and where it intersects with notion of place is something that Emma from The CultureVulture and I intend to explore more in the coming weeks and we’re looking forward to talking with interested people about it during Saturday’s Talk About Local Unconference too.”

@foodiesarah on the crossover between hyperlocal and creativity.

Local Labour

“Labour must embrace Localism to fix our broken economy.”

Ahh - but does Localism want to embrace the Labour Party, Comrades?

Probably not.

Especially so when One Nation Politics [URGH] is now the new current buzz phrase for the right wing twonks still trying to put some distance between themselves and the Big Society.

The Galacticos of SE11

“They [Surrey] went for the galácticos. Graeme Smith, Ricky Ponting and Hashim Amla, superb batsmen and excellent role models, have all played for them this season. But it seems that the county’s ambition has not been matched by good fortune or sound planning.”

Vic Marks states the bloody obvious.

Grace Road and the ‘rrey galactiocos, here’s we come.

Ghost Blog

“I realised if I had a lot of money, I would buy a Lamborghini and a house, and six months later I would just be bored. Bloggers are only interested in one thing – their content broadcast on the internet – the rest is noise”

The Gruan on the open source Ghost blogging platform.