Parking in cycle lanes

There's an unequal relationship between bicycles and cars and trucks. In an accident involving a cyclist and another road user, the cyclist will nearly always come off worse.





Drivers constantly take enormous risks with the lives of cyclists on the road. Any attempt to lessen the danger for instance with cycle lanes or green areas, is regarded by many drivers as an infringement of their rights and should be resisted like any other attack in the 'war against motorists'.


Even during a demonstration by cyclists against a 98% cut in the cycle budget for Belfast was disrupted by mindless van driver parking in a cycle lane.

Retro tech

My mum helped to defeat the Nazis. She was a radar plotter in the WAAF. Radar was high tech then, top secret too. She was 18 and it was only natural that she should take it in her stride. When the war was won she found a job in a pharmacy, preparing medicines. Not a Luddite then. She got married, became a housewife and a mother, she bought into the family car, kitchen gadgets and a radiogram. When I got work in TV, occasionally she could see a programme on the telly with my name somewhere in the credits. The more specialised I got, the less likely it was she could catch my stuff on TV. Over the years she learnt how to use a video recorder, so I would send her a VHS of my latest epic. It worked after a fashion and we both got older. VHS died. I bought her a DVD player but it’s too late. Let me explain, my mum still rents her TV. Do you know anyone who does that? The TV she rents doesn’t really accommodate add-ons. We’re going to buy her an HD-ready, Freeview integrated, LCD TV but the principal of a hard drive based pause/record digibox isn’t going to combat Fascism and she can’t keep up anyway. Shouldn’t really imaginative technological development be so good at retro it could include aging people and not leave them behind. Look at the number of oldies who are about to be left behind in the great digital switch over (DSO), they’re already totally at sea with www. or @ and they’re just getting older all the time. I know old people have always been left behind but can’t this generation be different?

Why I'm not Voting

UK General Election 2010

The only candidate I was prepared to vote for withdrew his name from the ballot paper an hour before nominations closed. I’ve only ever voted for his party. I’ve helped canvas for the Labour party in England because I thought the Labour party in England was a good idea after Thatcher got in. Before that I didn’t vote because of the old anarchist saying, ‘It only encourages them’. Another way of putting it was, ‘it doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government will get in’. You didn’t vote for someone else to do it for you, you did it yourself. So I built adventure playgrounds, I campaigned for ‘Troops out of Ireland’, I joined a union and was an activist, campaigned against racism and fascism, helped set up an arts centre, created a media centre, set up a school and an Irish language cultural centre, made dozens of films about children’s play, community action and the right to live free from sectarian harassment, worked with prisoners, people on probation and people at risk in the criminal justice system, I’ve supported wildlife and ecology organisations and I don’t have a car. So I’ve supported children, culture, ant-racism and anti-fascism, trades unions, people caught up with the law, community action and anti-sectarianism, and I’m helping to save the planet; and yet the Tories have come up with the ‘big society’ as if those fuckers had ever done anything about it. All that will mean is a few more religious based schools and private security for gated communities plus a few coffee mornings for multiple schlerosis.

Mickey B

The Educational Shakespeare Company (ESC) made the first feature film to be conceived and shot with serving prisoners in a high security jail anywhere in the world. Mickey B is a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth set in a prison near Belfast. The film was completed in 2007 but the Northern Ireland Prison Service has not allowed the film to be seen by the public – until now. Michael Bogdanov, an ESC patron, has described the film as ‘stunning Shakespeare forged from the scrapheap of society’. Ken Loach said ‘A strong and imaginatively conceived film ... The actors are remarkable and the Northern Irish voices are very powerful’. Augusto Boal – also a patron of the company – said ‘You have helped prisoners be better citizens transforming themselves and society around them’.
So how did this film ever get made with life sentence prisoners acting all the main roles? The director, Tom Magill, himself an ex-prisoner, has taught drama in prisons in Northern Ireland since the 90s. He says ‘I always thought Macbeth would work behind bars and when I suggested it to the drama/video class at HMP Maghaberry, the men’s enthusiasm knew no bounds’. Sam McClean, doing 20 years for armed robbery, read the play and began work on the adaptation. Davy Conway is a hard man in the jail and was a natural for the part of Mickey B. None of the men had acted before, still less done any Shakespeare, yet as Rob Flannagan (who played Duffer) put it ‘When I phoned home and said I was doing Shakespeare they said “You, doing Shakespeare, no way” and I said ‘Yes, I’m doing Shakespeare and I’m enjoying it and I’m going to stick with it.’ ‘
Casting Lady Macbeth was a knotty problem in a peculiarly male establishment, but Tom suggested creating a ‘bitch’ for Mickey B, a transvestite called Ladyboy. Believe it or not there was competition for the part, and Jason Thompson proved himself well up for the job as well as contributing to the script. The development period for the film took the best part of a year with half a dozen script rewrites and there was a constant battle with the prison authorities to keep the project on track. Simon Wood trained the men in production techniques and got them to film workshops, discussions and interviews for a ‘making of’ documentary. Jennifer Muradaz Marquis was brought on board to produce the film and the £50,000 budget was raised from the Lloyds TSB Foundation, the Gulbenkian Foundation, the Prison Arts Foundation and the Prison Service itself. We tried to get local TV to finance a documentary about the project but we had no luck.
Given that no-one working on the film had any experience with feature films, we decided to bring in Angus Mitchell as cinematographer whose camera department CV includes Saving Private Ryan, Puckoon and Endgame. The sets were constructed in the prison wood workshop. The majority of production took place in a disused textile workshop. Apart from director, producer, cinematographer and assistant, sound recordist and makeup artist, all the technical roles were carried out by prisoners. It took 5 weeks to shoot Mickey B and nearly as long for the men to adapt to the 10 hour days that were necessary. This was a major change to the normal prison regime where inmates get out of their cells for 3 hours in the morning and 2 in the afternoon if they’re lucky. If the adjustment was difficult for the prisoners, it was almost impossible for the staff. John Davies, the senior prison officer with responsibility for accommodating the production, was unimpressed with the men involved. ‘They’ve never shown any commitment in the past and I wouldn’t have picked them’ he said. Many of the men involved in Mickey B were regarded as non-conforming, refusing to work the system. But afterwards John admitted ‘I have to eat my words, they proved me wrong. They’ve made something really worthwhile.’
Macbeth is a violent play and Mickey B doesn’t pull its punches. The ethics of having violent criminals act out a bloodthirsty story were questioned by almost everyone. The men themselves were eloquent on the issue. ‘There is no real violence in the film, it’s just acting’, says Davy. Barry who played Piper said ‘We’re not just doing the people doing the violence, we’re acting the victims as well.’ ‘The story of Mickey B shows that if you use violence to get what you want, then it comes back at you’ argues Sam. Tom believes that ‘Their involvement in fictional violence gives convicted men the opportunity to question their own violence in a way which is usually impossible in the prison environment.’ The relationship between Mickey B and his partner, Ladyboy, is often expressed with a tenderness on film that no-one would dare express in the reality of a high security prison.
Macbeth’s witches become bookies in Mickey B, offering odds on likely outcomes in the power struggle that’s ripping the jail apart. Liam was also the boom swinger, Pat did continuity and Billy helped out with the make-up. Actually Billy is now married to the make-up artist even though he has years to serve, but that’s another story.
Sam was released before the film went into production so he had to be readmitted to the prison on the days he acted Duncan. Jason was due to be released so we brought production forward by 2 months to guarantee his participation. Throughout the production of the film none of the prisoners involved was charged with any disciplinary offence – previously unimaginable as one or other of them was always in the punishment block. The lights got switched on or off to some insane timetable, the dog kennels were right next to the set, noisy fans revved up and faded away in a totally unpredictable sequence, we were accused of allowing the men to mount a takeover of the prison, Jennifer spent endless hours smoothing ruffled feathers.
When it was all over the participants had a new found confidence. Many began studying in the prison education department which they had previously rejected, feeling they had been failed by the system ever since school. They began to plan for an alternative future. Anto Hagans who played Satan now produces volumes of art work which is much in demand. Rob received a learner of the year award last year. Sam has a job, a car and a determination to stay out of prison for the rest of his life. This isn’t necessarily all as a direct consequence from participation in Mickey B, but it helped. It costs the unbelievable figure of £93,000 to keep a prisoner in HMP Maghaberry for one year. If Mickey B has helped only one man turn a corner and head in a direction that doesn’t lead back to prison, then the project has paid for itself and helped make the world a safer place for us all. As John Davies puts it ‘If there’s one less victim because of this film, then it was worth it.’
What matters to the participants is that the film is of professional quality. Dean Hagan’s post production allowed Mickey B to metamorphose into a genuine feature film with a distinctive ‘look’ and a memorable score. DVD copies of the film have been permitted to be screened in the jail and every participant’s family received a copy. The prison authorities took fright when the film was completed in case the tabloids and shock jocks pilloried them for allowing it to have been made. They refused to sign the location agreement until we agreed to delay distribution of the film in the UK and Ireland for three years from the beginning of principal photography.
The 3 years are up, you can buy Mickey B (see http://www.esc-film.com/buy.asp) and we need you to help us get a distribution deal to bring this unique work to a wider audience. View the trailer, pass the link on to your friends, encourage them to do the same (see http://www.esc-film.com/mickeybreleased.asp). If Mickey B gets the recognition it deserves then maybe we can make the follow up - a modern version of The Tempest, this time with ex-prisoners as they’d never let us get away with doing it inside a second time.

Which picture do you find more disturbing Mr Straw?

Bribery

It would be the house of Saud which has called Britain's bluff over corporate bribery and won. Where would the despots of the world be without respectable stock market quoted businesses lining their pockets? The British government has persuaded itself that it's of paramount importance to sell weapons to a medieval monarchy and keep thousands of British workers in employment. The house of Saud follows Wahhabi Islam which is a bit like the church of England being dominated by Ian Paisley's Free Presbyterians. According to the CIA, Saudi Arabia ranks 74th in the world for per capita income, lower than Argentina, Hungary and Puerto Rico. That's the Saudi Arabia with the massive oil reserves, the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and the royal house of Saud with 7,000 princes. You can bet each one of them gets a hefty slice of the cake leaving the other 27million with a few crumbs. There's a lot of poverty in Saudi Arabia but what the hell, the royals have a lot to protect so they spend 10% of GDP on the military, the 4th highest in the world. Back in the 80s they did a deal called, Al Yamamah (The Dove - you'd have to laugh if it wasn't so sick ) , with British arms manufacturers for £50billion of weapons. Thatcher acted as a sort of agent and various Saudi princes got a huge payoff. An investigation by the UK National Audit Office into allegations of bribery associated with the deal resulted in a report - the only such report never to be published. The Saudis came back for more in August 2006 and once more Britain obliged.
By the way there's a problem with the military economy - thankfully most of the time they and their weapons don't produce anything, they just leach on everyone else and add no value to anything by their existence. The rest of the time there's a war on and they destroy whole economies - see Israel in Lebanon. The military do claim to provide security and many people and governments choose to put a huge value on that. Unfortunately this is usually an illusion and the military is used by government to scare its own population and in extreme cases to wage war against the very people it claims to represent.
Back to Brit arms manufacturers (5th biggest arms exporters in the world). They guarantee their deals by bribing members of the governments they sell to. That's the way its always been. Mobutu, Marcos, Abacha even Pinochet - they led the way in robbing their own countries. It leads to a lot of unrest among the masses but then the arms sales provide a means to suppress opposition. Britain likes to proclaim that people all over the world should benefit from democracy - her armies have even invaded other countries to make sure. By ignoring the bribery Britain has sent a message to the poor, oppressed masses the world over, loud and clear: ' Bribing your governments isn't actually illegal in the UK so we're not going to do anything about it. We will continue to supply arms to some of the worst dictatorships in the world because they are our allies and not to do so would threaten British security and jobs.' Britain should not be surprised when organisations purporting to represent those same oppressed masses don't wait for democratic solutions to their problems and instead bring the war to Britain.

Defeat in Iraq

Cheney and Rumsfeld thought they could ‘liberate’ Iraq as if it were France under Hitler. Minimal cost and military commitment, regime change overnight, the mid east learns an important lesson and US companies get to control the 2^nd largest oil reserves in the world. Bingo. Blair went along with it, because he believed that Britain was under threat. What Blair believes, quite sincerely we are told, carries more weight than 2 million people on the streets of London. More than the countless millions who opposed the war across the world. He believed that Saddam Hussein still had access to the weaponry built up with Western support during the American sponsored war against Iran in which hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fought and died. A secular army under a charismatic if autocratic leader had fought against the rise of Shia fundamentalism at the same time as putting down, with extreme violence, any sign of resistance within Iraq itself. There was no evidence for the WMDs except from Iraqi exiles with an axe to grind.

Modern Iraq is, or was, a highly developed country with modern industries and an infrastructure that any citizen of north America or western Europe would recognise. Northern Kurds believe themselves to be a part of a greater Kurdistan also encompassing parts of Iran, Turkey, Syria and Armenia – certainly a more natural country than the Iraq devised by Britain carving up the Ottoman empire after the 1^st World war. Iraq finds itself divided by the ancient schism within Islam between Shia and Sunni. The British had installed the Saud family in power in Arabia who were in league with the extremist Wahabi sect of Sunni Islam and had been looking for a power base since the 18^th century. It made sense that Sunnis should also run Iraq even though the Shia were in the majority. The puppet regime under Faisal I guaranteed British control until formal independence in 1932. By the time the Baathists took over with CIA support in 1963, Sunni ascendancy had become institutionalised. When Shia Iran evicted the pro-Western Shah in 1979, it didn’t take much to goad an Iraqi government nervous of Shia revolt within its own borders to attempt an invasion. That war ground to a halt 8 years later and after the debacle of the invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent defeat by a US lead coalition, Iraq was convulsed by a Shia rebellion in the south centred on Basra. Western support for the uprising never materialised and it was put down with customary brutality. Why did Bush and Blair expect after invasion that Iraqis would depart from historical precedent and welcome an invasion that could only deprive Sunnis of power, prevent Shias from creating an Islamic republic on the Iranian model and provide everyone with an occupation they didn’t want. It’s no fun being occupied by a foreign army – ask anyone in West Belfast, Chechnya or the Occupied territories of Palestine. But no, Tony Blair believes, quite sincerely, that the British soldiers he has put in harms way in southern Iraq are bringing an end to the people’s problems there. How many of those soldiers have to die and how many local people do they have to kill before Blair recognises that their presence is part of the problem and nothing to do with a solution?

The inevitable result will be a western withdrawal from Iraq. This may be achieved under the guise of another ‘Mission Accomplished’ but be assured there will be no admission of defeat from Bush and Blair or their successors. This doesn’t mean that everyone else won’t regard the coalition as the losers. Al Qaeda will claim victory even though they’ve never had much support in Iraq, the victims of US imperialism the world over will feel a kind of justice has been done, but the millions of casualties in Iraq will be left with the bitter aftermath of a senseless reprisal for the horror of 9/11.

The war on terror never made much sense and if by the adventure in Iraq, we claimed to be bringing democracy to the middle east, then we have devalued the very civilisation that war purports to be defending. How can the subjects of the next pre-emptive invasion be expected to believe that democracy will do them any good after the mass murder it has brought to Iraq?

It’s not good enough for Blair to ‘sincerely’ believe that Britain is under imminent threat from another country in order to go to war. There are rules, laws even that govern international behaviour and they should be strengthened and respected.