City Hall: The old mayor will battle the new mayor. Again.

It’s the second most powerful job in British politics with an international platform and a huge personal mandate. Successful applicants can expect a plush office with riverside views and invites to all the best parties in the finest city in the world.

And yet, barring some miracle or catastrophe, City Hall will only ever have had two occupants, by the time it enters the second half of its second decade.
I pondered this as I watched Ken Livingstone clinch Labour’s nomination for Mayor. Now I say clinch but in reality the result was never in much doubt.

Off Fleet Street: everything in media isn't a downer

For the most part, the media consists of slick sales-pitches. It wants us to buy something, believe someone, serve somebody. Occasionally, however, a piece comes along that offers more than platitudes and does more than prescribe. These magical little moments occur when, and where, they are least expected. Recently, I picked up the October issue of Red for a swift goggle at Vanessa Paradis and came across ‘Why Giving Up Is Good To Do’. A brief, but imminently sensible article critiquing the notion that whatever it is you’re doing, you have to keep doing it till the bitter end. Author Anna Pursglove’s remark that: “The sky… does not fall in when you admit that you never should have done it in the first place or that it worked for you once, but doesn’t any more,” was exactly what I needed to read at that moment.

Jellied Eels: News from around the boroughs

ONE easyCouncil Barnet hasn’t had the most self promoting month. Whilst a cabinet reshuffle wouldn’t be a surprise following Cllr Mark Shooter’s failed crack at usurping Lynne Hillan as Leader, a business plan evidently is. According to the Guardian, independent auditors have revealed that the council has no proper blueprint. They have ordered that the £870 Million a year body produce one pronto.
Shooter can, however, rest easy knowing he isn’t the only outlaw. The Telegraph reports that officials have black listed Mother-in-law jokes, ‘deeming them sexist and disrespectful to family elders’. This comes as they sought public consultation on cutback areas, faced petitions over possible library closures and criticisms over money spent on garden beds.

TWO Sutton’s new menagerie has also been hit with disapproval. Wooden fish sculptures were incorporated into a major rejuvenation project and cost the council over £10,000. Conservative opposition leader, Cllr Paul Scully, blogged that ‘mocking laughter was the first reaction of those walking by’ the taxpayer-funded playseats.

THREE Rejuvenation in Southwark is touchy, with concerns over framework planning around Bankside, Borough and London Bridge Station. Following the establishment of the Bermondsey Village Action Group, consultation on areas identified for high-rise buildings will continue this month. This comes as bulldozers moved in to Aylesbury, one of Britain’s best known council estates and backdrop for Tony Blair’s ‘forgotten people’ maiden speech. The Press Association states that by the end of construction, which was met with excitement, 50% of the 4,000 new homes will be social housing.

FOUR Camden and Islington have continued their boroughmance, with plans unveiled to share a Chief Executive. The plan, described as ‘groundbreaking’ by the Islington Tribune, builds on previously shared contracts and will put a Superchief in charge of patching up budget holes of over £100 million. It is understood that Camden boss Moira Gibb will take this on. By their powers combined, they will have raging purchasing clout and save tens of thousands of pounds in management costs.

FIVE Less leadership clarity exists in Tower Hamlets, after mayoral candidates played team swap. Labour removed candidate Lutfur Rafman amid conduct complaints, with current Council Leader Helal Abbas Uddin stepping into the tenure. Despite the Londonist’s suggestion that George Galloway would run under Respect, Rafman will now be backed by the left-wing party.

Campaigners hope to save one of London’s finest cinemas. With Alfred Hitchcock's help

Campaigners hope to save one of London’s finest cinemas. And Alfred Hitchcock will help

Facebook Places, Foursquare: let me sin in peace

Photo by Andrew E. Larsen

It’s like scene from Bourne, or an updated Le Carre. You slip silently out of your house, a bag of nerves, tiptoeing down the stairs lest your housemates hear. You scuttle quickly down the road, heart pulsating as you pass your friendly neighbour’s door, dodging the attentions of their amicable dog.

A furtive glance over your shoulder, then a dive down a warren of back alleys, keeping well clear of the exposed main roads. Finally you arrive at your second favourite coffee place (because they know your favourite, they’d be able to find you there. They’ll never find you here). You sit down, in a corner far from the window. You take out your book. You’ve made it; achieved the impossible. You’ve found a moment for yourself in this time-devouring city. It’s nothing less than a modern urban miracle.

At last you can breathe out, and relax. But that’s a mistake. Because before you reach the end of the first page of your book, a chilling voice cuts across the muzak, sending shivers of dread down your spine. Someone wants to talk to you. And it’s worse than a stranger, it’s a friend.

Welcome to the world of Facebook places, of geolocation, of Foursquare. Every where you go, every step you take, detectors in your phone post updates to the world. Anyone can find you. You’re never alone. We’re our own Big Brothers, we’re bugging ourselves. Even Orwell at his most prescient never thought it would come to this.

And that’s before we get to the practical objections. Pleaserobme.com does a nice job of pointing out the idiocy of advertising to burglars when your house is empty while you’re busy checking in at McDonalds. Although you might be forgiven for thinking that anyone who uses Foursquare – essentially a tool for corporations to get idiots to become walking advertisements in exchange for a made up title (you want to be Mayor of your nearest Starbucks? Really?!) – deserves to be robbed of everything they have.

And what of stalking? I like to think that I’m not too weird. I have a job; both my eyes point in the same direction; I don’t collect dead moths. And yet I confess that I always get on the same tube carriage on my morning commute, partly because said carriage is occasionally occupied by a very pretty girl from somewhere out East. Of course, commutes being what they are, it rarely happens that we both end up on the same carriage of the same train. But it brightens my mornings when we do. I would submit that this behaviour, while not entirely savoury, is nevertheless at the socially acceptable end of the stalking spectrum. But suppose I found out this girl’s name, or her online presence? Suppose I discovered one day that she’d checked in to a local pub. Would I resist the urge to drop by? If I did, I would be sliding dangerously towards the “weird” region of the stalker spectrum. Some of us, it turns out, are clinging to normality by a very fine thread. We don’t need technology giving any help to our darker desires.

And the reason all this – the check-ins, the location mapping, the relentless status updates – is a bad idea is that human society functions on deceit. White lies, faked excuses, deliberately missed calls – without these things we’d have no option but to tell each the truth. All the time. About everything. No relationship, friendship or family could survive such an intolerable strain.

Social media evangelists believe that not just online, but as humans in the real world we should be set to share as a default. There’s a naïve nobility to the thought. But they’re disastrously wrong. We need boundaries. We need privacy. We need lies. Otherwise we find ourselves living not in freedom, but in a tyranny of everybody else. So reader, resist! Don’t share. Don’t tell the truth. Be secretive and furtive and coy. That way, together, we can truly build a better world.

Random Interview: Senior Pastor at St Peter’s Barge, Canary Wharf

Photo by Fiona Garden

A man with a beer can is singing “Maybe I’m because I’m a Londoner.” (sic) Canary Wharf’s distinctive skyline stands like a cold and intimidating monument to Capitalism and is perhaps the last place you might expect to find London’s only floating church. However, in the waters of West India Quays a haphazard illuminated cross shines across the water like a lonely and defiant beacon. It’s an undeniably brazen statement in such a sterile and corporate setting. I half expected to meet an ex-mariner or some sort of modern day half crazed pirate convert. In reality, Marcus Nodder, Senior Pastor at St Peter’s Barge, was a smartly dressed family man, completely focused on his beliefs and as uncompromising as the world around him. As the Sunday drizzle hit the windows of the front cabin, I spoke with him as he fed his young son Nelson his evening meal.

Xiu Xiu

Songs to thump your fist against the table to

Active Child: Pat Grossi is walking in the air

Active Child, aka pale skinned, strawberry-blonde LA resident Pat Grossi, seemed to come out of nowhere this year, but tracking back on music blog aggregator Hype Machine reveals that a handful of his songs have been creeping across the blogosphere since August 2009.

The influential Transparent blog first posted “She Was a Vision”, leading to coverage on everything from monolithic US tastemaker site Pitchfork to über-blogs Stereogum and RCRD-LBL to homegrown champions of all things indie The Line Of Best Fit, and culminating in an impressive internet-led word-of-mouth following.

DIARY: Daughters Of The Kaos Zena

Burak Cingi photo

Day One
With only a few weeks to go until the launch night of The Club Motherfucker Show at Corsica studios, things have been per-ritty per-ritty hectic. What better way to relax then a day/night out at our very first stag do. Our friends Neil and Jonny are tying the knot in a few weeks’ time so organised a pub crawl on the river culminating in karaoke at super fun queer party Unskinny Bop (still not sure that it was totally morally right to have a combined stag do though!). Do we remember getting home? Er, of course not.

Day Two
Regular meetings are a must at the moment and with a two room venue to fill, this shit needs to run like a tight ship. So tonight The Red Lion in Soho is our meeting venue of choice, and Samuel Smith’s finest lager our tipple of choice. Of course our intended one pint sipped whilst jotting down notes in our school exercise books turned into four pints and then dinner at Soho’s finest Lebanese eatery Yalla Yalla. Lush.

Day Three
For a bit of arty kultcha, we went to the opening of Fiona Tan’s new exhibition at Frith Street Gallery. Fiona spent several weeks on a Japanese Island which used to inhabit 5000 but now only 40, with an average age of 70. Her gorgeous photos capture the cute houses left behind by the deceased which the elderly neighbours still take care of. Can they come to our houses please?

Day Four
We hate it when we need photos for press stuff (we mostly manage to get away with sending a club shot but this very publication wanted one of us, for example). Our best blud Mr Burak Cingi (band photographer extraordinaire) kindly took on the impossible task of snapping Beck and I (I think in the eight years of doing Club Mofo, we have had one other picture done). We didn’t want a posey picture and we didn’t want seriousness. Easy criteria right. Luckily, he succeeded and took this shot of us on my fire escape. Okay, so it took a few bottles of Becks and 98 other tries. BUT WE GOT THERE!

The Pope’s Wedding: don’t mention the war

The Pope’s Wedding, Cock Tavern Theatre, 125 Kilburn High Rd, NW6 6JH, Until Oct 2

Bill is the top man on the bottom rung of a rural community. Girls throw themselves at him, the cricket pitch is his to command, the lads always give him the last word.

The boss wants him to work during a match, however, and on the day it’s backward Scopey who proves a hero on the field. From that day everything changes for Scopes. He gets Bill’s girl, Pat. The boys follow his lead. But being alpha dog is not really in Scopey’s make-up. It’s not until he barges into the junk shop of the pensioner Pat looks after, the dementia fuddled Allen, that he makes a connection with anything more resonant than a googly.

In the programme notes for The Pope’s Wedding are Five Little Essays by Edward Bond that show the great curmudgeon of British theatre has lost none of his curmudge. In “Come Prancing” he writes: “The National Theatre has a play about the First World War. The war was bad. It killed horses… The horses are represented by puppets. They are very beautiful… Nick Clegg – the half-man – saw a performance. It seems an image of the times: the corrupt mingling with the puppets.”

Man, I laughed.

There is a streak of bitter humour running through The Pope’s Wedding, subtle and grim though it may be. Set in post war Essex (the war the horses weren’t in) the quiet violence of boredom in the rural communities as work dried up is presented in a long and amazing patches of inertia. I say amazing, because nowadays to have six men stand around slack-jawed on stage for ten minutes at a time seems astonishing. The confidence Bond showed in his first play, almost fifty years ago, to allow the tempers simmering in the anxious, workless young workers for so long- it’s hard to imagine a modern production willing to risk that.

The cast are uniformly excellent, especially Tim O’Hara as the increasingly distant Scopey and Rebecca Tanwen as Pat, the girl everybody in town is after, who’s just after a stable life with a guy who’s present. A lot of actors in a small space, increases the claustrophobia of living in dying community, yet the cricket match is cleverly presented in broken angles and off-stage action and stretches the action and mood. Hell, the staging almost made sense of cricket for me. I always thought it was about cucumber sandwiches.

The dissolution of Scopey, as he perhaps realises his moment in the sun was not only stolen, but never within his grasp to steal, is a beautifully observed tragedy. Life is a subtle and grim joke.

Right around the corner from where I live, Theatre Delicatessen have created a warren of spaces and a pinko bar in the former Uzbekistan Airlines building, dedicated to creating intimate theatre. Theatre Souk plays with the notion of commerce and attaching value to art by having twelve small companies stage performances and then vie with each other for the audience wandering the spiraling hallways and random corridors.

I have been angling to get in and see this multi-layered venue for ages. And while the guy at the door let me, he informed me I’d have to pay for each playlet.
“Maybe I can haggle with the companies,” I said, waggling my eyebrows charmingly. “My review is the price for letting me see their show.”

“No, you’ll need to pay, like, two pounds each.”

Well, snipe pays its writers in beer and dreams. Especially dreams about beer. Every month the publisher takes the staff outside and points up at the sky.

“What would you like?”

Requests for money, flashy cars, substantial relationships with attractive celebrities will result in him directing your attention to clouds shaped like bags of money, Volkswagons, and Cheryl Cole. This is considered remuneration in the alternative newspaper publishing world.

So, I didn’t have any cash to spend on these, no doubt excellent, snippets of theatre, lurking in the darkened corners of the Uzbekistani jetsetter’s ex-ambassador to the heavens. Maybe they tried to pay their bills in clouds as well.

Go to www.theatredelicatessen.co.uk and have a look. The three shows I would’ve especially liked to see were Flabbergast Theatre’s surly Puppet Poker Pit, Lab Theatre Collective’s Matador/Bullpen, and Keiko Sumida’s quiet and unobtrusive Counter Number 8.