July 2005 Archives

Shopping has long been a fascinating subject for us cranks here at Globaleyes. The shiny plastic utopia of consumption, the cathedrals of commerce that are our shopping centres and the transient contentment from that latest purchase: all of these things now fill a vacumn in our lives that the dying Christian church once occupied.

But retail therapy would appear to be a dangerous hobby. Credit card debt seems to be out of control. Personal debt, we are told, is rocketing. And we're spending more and more than ever before. Our economies depend upon it: if we stop spending, 'consumer confidence' indices drop, the economy crashes and a new post-apocalptic reign of genocide and anarchy will engulf us. Or so we're led to believe.

Shopping is something that most of us do at the weekend. Whether it be for clothes, books or movies, shopping has become a leisure pursuit more prevalent than sports or movies.

But most of us 'interface' (to use that puke-inducing marekting term) at our local supermarket. You may buy your nappies, cereals and Darth Vader shower-gel according to what you think you need, but there's a lot more going on than that. More than likely, you are being completely manipulated into spending more money than you wanted to and purchasing things that you simply don't need.

Enter the folks at OPIRG at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada who want you to take a 'supermarket tour'.

What strikes you as you enter the brightly lit environment of the supermarket? As the clean aisles,the colourful arrays of fruits and vegetables, the full shelves and the cool frozen foods stand mutely before you? What messages do these potential breakfasts, lunches and dinners impart?

They have provided a detailed analysis of how supermarkets lay out their produce, what they sell, how they sell it to you and how you can de-code the nonsense to find what you want.

You can download the free tour here

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How they change your mind

Nervousness abounded this afternoon as loads of police huckled a couple of hundred people all over town!

The "Carnival for Full Enjoyment" (don't you wish Anarchists would get a marketing bod to shimmy up snappier event names?!) began around midday today and i strolled along rubbernecking with a load of tourists and journalists. Who seemed to have formed a crowd as substantial as the autonomous groups who organised this little reclaim the streets kinda shindig. Nothing untoward seemed to be happening short of seeing a carload of people getting their bags & car searched in the city and the fact that the place was SWARMING with police. This news report pretty much sums up what I saw in the early part of the day.

"And then they'll EAT YOUR BRAINS!!"

Wage slave that I am, I had to cut this short and go off to work. Over the afternoon i heard a slew of hair-raising rumours which subsequently transpired to be guff. One told of staff cars being set on fire in a large financial institution! Another of garages being attacked and petrol pumps chained up!

Much ado about huffing

Nothing of the sort has actually happened. People were a bit freaked out, Princes Street was buzzing with security and shop staff all craning their necks out the front doors of the shops to see what was going to happen. They were all eventually told to close.

Ultimately, what did happen was that a small group of bampots threw a few bottles around in a Scottish city centre when everyone else was trying to go about their business. In short, just like Glasgow after a particularly fiery Rangers v. Celtic game.

Doing ma pan in

Mark Ballard from the Greens was on the radio complaining he'd got a wheech in the heid from the polis during the kerfuffle.
"Police seemed to be inflaming the situation by letting innocent bystanders wander into the areas of trouble, then not let them exit."

In another interview he said they should be more "chilled out"(!) like the police from the Faslane blockade across the country.

Yay! Hippies!

Earlier today saw much more heartening scenes at the Faslane naval base on the west coast. A big crowd went up and blockaded the submarine base where the UK's nuclear deterrant lives. No trouble, no fractiousness, just an anti-nukes demo with a couple of arrests. The Man with the Tan (Tommy Sheridan, former Scottish Socialist Party leader, new dad, himself arrested FIVE times at Faslane!) got on the telly to tout his cheerful, beatific socialist message against the arms industry and everyone went home happy.

Apart from Mr Ballard. Who went home to a whack on the napper!

Find out more:

Live 8
Make Povery History
Mr. and Mrs. Smith

The march in Edinburgh was an enormous success. Over 220,000 people on the march through the day. Had excellent fun waiting around in the Meadows for HOURS waiting to get on the march route. Organisers seemed a bit overwhelmed and many people spent three or four hours standing around before they got moving. The atmosphere was great and the much-vaunted "chaos" on the streets never really materialised.

A small scuffle on Beuccleuch Street between police and some of the black bandana brigade after the latter decided to leave the march start point and go for a wander en masse was as fraught as it got, resulting in no arrests.

Have some photos although having some problems getting them onto the computer for upload.

The crowd was quite young with a great cross-section of views across the political spectrum. From the dour, red-t-shirted international socialists to glaikit wee laddies with their "Sunday Mail- Make Poverty History" banners people of all persuasions turned up to make a positive political point. One which is suggesting something rather than expressing opposition for something.

Also went to a fundraiser for the NO2ID campaign at the Bongo Club later where some of my pals were playing. Grooved around, but not too strenuously, it was michty hot and stuffy.

Missed all the Live 8 concerts as a result.

Find out more:

Live 8
Make Povery History

A special broadcast from wayward Globaleyes punter, Shakabu.

So. Here we are. It's the 21st century and the city of Edinburgh is back in full-on witch-hunt mode. The G8's around the corner, Geldof's been sticking his oar in and the papers are chock full of stories from the "Oooh! Monsters!!!" school of journalism. The Edinburgh Evening News in particular has been whipping the good citizens of Edina into a grand old frenzy about our "mad God's dream" being besieged by molotov-wielding Mickey-D hunters.

Disaster plans and morgues

My favourite rumour circulating was told to me by a taxi driver the other day who said that the Cooncil were going to block off Chambers Street to make a temporary morgue! The best bit is that this has some foundation in truth as Edinburgh, like any responsible British city in the sights of swarthy no-good terrsts, has a Disaster Plan which requires Chambers Street to be used for just that purpose. And some bright spark has decided that if the authorities are planning for it, it must be going to happen.

The anarchists are coming

This type of silly, conspiracy-driven negative thinking, along with sandwich boards like "ANARCHISTS PLAN REVENGE FOR GENOA" (Evening News) and "BLOOD CRISIS FOR G8" (Scotland on Sunday) has whipped up storms of clucking and oching at the prospect of the city reverting to the fiery bloody times of yore. It has also provided us with the unintentionally hilarious spectacle of politicians asking where we're going to find enough portaloos at such short notice.

Camping out

There is also the very live issue of where all these protestors/demonstrators/raggle-taggle-gypsies-oh are going to stay. Being as they're not the usual hundreds and thousands of free-spending young professionals we're perfectly happy to welcome to Edinburgh to get rat-arsed over Hogmanay or the braying London fucks who come and clog our streets in the August festival (Both are times when I, and many of my fellow 'burghers despair as the streets literally run with rivers of piss at all hours of the day owing to the aforementioned portaloo shortage, which appears to be acceptable so long as the al fresco tinklers keep buying booze and stuffing their faces) they're unlikely to be staying at the Balmoral, or any of the other more salubrious hostelries in Edinburgh.

Early doors

And, with the residents of the new town being unlikely to open their doors (or even offer up the keys to their locked gardens) to such types the Cooncil in their wisdom have decided to site the campsite for demonstrators in Niddrie. The Meadows, Princes Street Gardens and Holyrood Park are all larger sites, more central and closer to the march routes. But they're in the middle of town. Fuck that.

It's better to sling the 15,000 that will be camping there out to a deprived scheme out of town, then march them ringed by thousands of police around their march site and march them straight on back again. Hopefully the local delinquent element will have all the digital equipment chored by the time the whomping squad are inevitably called in to suppress "troublemakers".

Somebody burn something

See!? All this eye-rolling conspiracy nonsense is contagious. Maybe the streets will run with blood! Maybe there will be "flashpoints". Maybe anarchists will roam the streets turning over cars and setting them on fire! But one thing's for sure. In the search for sensational revelations about events in Edinburgh already the messages from all sides are becoming incoherent. Are we marching against poverty? For Africa? Against war? For peace? Against unfettered captialism? For fair trade? No one seems particularly interested.

Watch the Edinburgh Evening News/The Scotsman keich its pants about what "might" happen.