Earlier this month I blogged about Northampton County Council; today’s post is going to put another log on the fire of disdain that I am burning for my local authority.
Whilst the council has wasted its money on essential stuff like a football stadium scam and new offices, it has failed to fund less important things like the local roads.
I spend a bit of most days on the A428, the Roman Road and others in the vicinity. The name of the second road has prompted this post because some of the damn potholes are big enough to be archaeological digs. If a car park in Leicester was good enough for Richard III, maybe some Roman nobility is being searched for en route to Duston.
When traffic is on both sides of the road at the same time, some of the potholes can’t even be avoided unless you stop and wait (and risk the cars behind driving into you – 60mph limits). At least I am driving a car, if I was on a motorbike, I’d be fearing for my life.
I had a chat with my colleagues in the office and it turns out that others from Northamptonshire experience the same frustrations on their local roads. One mentioned that she had seen a great bumper sticker reading “I am not drunk, just avoiding the potholes”. I need one of those for my rear end.
Next up dustbins, because the local government institutions can’t afford to fund those properly anymore either.
To save money, Daventry District Council, has now reduced the volume of rubbish collections and requires residents to pay for the collection of garden waste when that used to be free. For me, the main rubbish collections have been reduced from fortnightly to every three weeks, I am now paying £35 extra to keep the brown bin and the recycling will be collected every fortnight instead of every week. Oh, and my collection days have changed just to add to the confusion. The reduced, and much less satisfactory, service has not of course impacted on my council tax bill, which has gone up.
Trash brings me to porn.
These week on Channel 5 a series of documentary programmes called “The Sex Business” ran over three days and studied the UK’s sex industry from film making, through escort services to street-based prostitution.
The final programme aired on Wednesday night and involved interviews with hookers working in some of the UK’s major cities. It made for thought provoking and frankly depressing viewing.
The characters being interviewed were in a shocking state – ugly, ruined, emaciated bodies; heroin addictions; homeless statuses; completely, irretrievably estranged from their families and whoring to survive. Listening to these prostitutes talk about turning tricks for twenty quid to fund their next drug fix, was horrible. I felt an odd mixture of sympathy and revulsion; these people had no lower depths that they could sink to. It was hard not to feel sorry for them, even when much of the harm was self-inflicted.
Whilst thinking uncharitably though, I found myself wondering who in their right mind would pay to have sex with these “hags”. If these women were relying on selling their bodies to make money, their potential earnings must be as pitiful as the states of their emotional and physical health.
But then again, years ago in my life BK&M (before kids and marriage, before you think there’s any connection to S&M … though thinking about the masochistic element …) when I lived on Century Street in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, I used to see similarly haggard hookers working their patches and being picked up regularly. In my uni-years, I lived in this tired old terrace street that was in the local red-light area. The house number was 69 and the amusement/irony of that, in light of the street’s after dark purpose, didn’t escape me.
It was bizarre, I’d be coming back from college, or the local supermarket with my shopping, and the ladies would be out. I’d see them so often that it got to a point where we’d say “hello” on my way back to my digs. There was one old crone that was fifty something, ugly, overweight and balding - she looked terrible and terrifying if you asked me … but she was busy all the time.
So, what the hell do I know?
That thought occurred to me elsewhere in the mini-series, the film makers followed a dominatrix that looked like Cruella De Vil who was paid good money by her submissive male clients to repeatedly kick them in the bollocks and even piss on them.
Then there was a gay bloke that was seriously into giving and receiving anal fisting …
There was nothing glamorous or even remotely titillating in the entire mini-series. It was an education though, and this is what I learned: -
Channel 5 has made me rather more grateful for my monogamous, almost entirely vanilla sex life. Sometimes I wonder what I am missing out on, but now I know for certain that there are some things for which I’d rather embrace celibacy than experience.
And that links me to my final subject for today – an experience I’d actually like to have.
Every so often something leftfield pops up on the BBC news website and makes me think “that’s really cool”. In the past it has been Banksy, in January this year, it was James Gibson’s road dirt artistry, this time it was Ian Berry and his amazing denim artworks.
Here’s a link to the BBC post, why not have a read yourself, I challenge you not to be impressed – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-44198953
I’ll be honest, before the article, I had never heard of Ian Berry – I guess that will also be the case for the majority of my readers. I have since looked up his website (links above and below) and can report that his on-line gallery is amazing.
Ian uses denim in various shades to create three dimensional scenes that you’d have to be quite close to … to realise aren’t paintings. In the article there are photos of his work including portraits of Debbie Harry and Ayrton Senna that are seriously good.
Berry exhibits his work in art galleries all over the world but, interestingly, wants to engage more with his fellow, but rather less glamorous, Huddersfielders. His desire is to organise an exhibition in West Yorkshire that attracts folk that would not normally attend an art gallery – people like me then!
Well good luck to him with that, I hope that he gets something set up. I have relatives in Huddersfield and would happily make a trip up and see them and take in Berry’s denim show at the same time.
I even have an idea for a new Berry creation, I am going to dig out some of my old photos of Century Street, maybe there’s scope for a street scene including the hookers.
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Whilst the council has wasted its money on essential stuff like a football stadium scam and new offices, it has failed to fund less important things like the local roads.
I spend a bit of most days on the A428, the Roman Road and others in the vicinity. The name of the second road has prompted this post because some of the damn potholes are big enough to be archaeological digs. If a car park in Leicester was good enough for Richard III, maybe some Roman nobility is being searched for en route to Duston.
When traffic is on both sides of the road at the same time, some of the potholes can’t even be avoided unless you stop and wait (and risk the cars behind driving into you – 60mph limits). At least I am driving a car, if I was on a motorbike, I’d be fearing for my life.
I had a chat with my colleagues in the office and it turns out that others from Northamptonshire experience the same frustrations on their local roads. One mentioned that she had seen a great bumper sticker reading “I am not drunk, just avoiding the potholes”. I need one of those for my rear end.
Next up dustbins, because the local government institutions can’t afford to fund those properly anymore either.
To save money, Daventry District Council, has now reduced the volume of rubbish collections and requires residents to pay for the collection of garden waste when that used to be free. For me, the main rubbish collections have been reduced from fortnightly to every three weeks, I am now paying £35 extra to keep the brown bin and the recycling will be collected every fortnight instead of every week. Oh, and my collection days have changed just to add to the confusion. The reduced, and much less satisfactory, service has not of course impacted on my council tax bill, which has gone up.
Trash brings me to porn.
These week on Channel 5 a series of documentary programmes called “The Sex Business” ran over three days and studied the UK’s sex industry from film making, through escort services to street-based prostitution.
The final programme aired on Wednesday night and involved interviews with hookers working in some of the UK’s major cities. It made for thought provoking and frankly depressing viewing.
The characters being interviewed were in a shocking state – ugly, ruined, emaciated bodies; heroin addictions; homeless statuses; completely, irretrievably estranged from their families and whoring to survive. Listening to these prostitutes talk about turning tricks for twenty quid to fund their next drug fix, was horrible. I felt an odd mixture of sympathy and revulsion; these people had no lower depths that they could sink to. It was hard not to feel sorry for them, even when much of the harm was self-inflicted.
Whilst thinking uncharitably though, I found myself wondering who in their right mind would pay to have sex with these “hags”. If these women were relying on selling their bodies to make money, their potential earnings must be as pitiful as the states of their emotional and physical health.
But then again, years ago in my life BK&M (before kids and marriage, before you think there’s any connection to S&M … though thinking about the masochistic element …) when I lived on Century Street in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, I used to see similarly haggard hookers working their patches and being picked up regularly. In my uni-years, I lived in this tired old terrace street that was in the local red-light area. The house number was 69 and the amusement/irony of that, in light of the street’s after dark purpose, didn’t escape me.
It was bizarre, I’d be coming back from college, or the local supermarket with my shopping, and the ladies would be out. I’d see them so often that it got to a point where we’d say “hello” on my way back to my digs. There was one old crone that was fifty something, ugly, overweight and balding - she looked terrible and terrifying if you asked me … but she was busy all the time.
So, what the hell do I know?
That thought occurred to me elsewhere in the mini-series, the film makers followed a dominatrix that looked like Cruella De Vil who was paid good money by her submissive male clients to repeatedly kick them in the bollocks and even piss on them.
Then there was a gay bloke that was seriously into giving and receiving anal fisting …
There was nothing glamorous or even remotely titillating in the entire mini-series. It was an education though, and this is what I learned: -
Channel 5 has made me rather more grateful for my monogamous, almost entirely vanilla sex life. Sometimes I wonder what I am missing out on, but now I know for certain that there are some things for which I’d rather embrace celibacy than experience.
And that links me to my final subject for today – an experience I’d actually like to have.
Every so often something leftfield pops up on the BBC news website and makes me think “that’s really cool”. In the past it has been Banksy, in January this year, it was James Gibson’s road dirt artistry, this time it was Ian Berry and his amazing denim artworks.
Here’s a link to the BBC post, why not have a read yourself, I challenge you not to be impressed – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-44198953
I’ll be honest, before the article, I had never heard of Ian Berry – I guess that will also be the case for the majority of my readers. I have since looked up his website (links above and below) and can report that his on-line gallery is amazing.
Ian uses denim in various shades to create three dimensional scenes that you’d have to be quite close to … to realise aren’t paintings. In the article there are photos of his work including portraits of Debbie Harry and Ayrton Senna that are seriously good.
Berry exhibits his work in art galleries all over the world but, interestingly, wants to engage more with his fellow, but rather less glamorous, Huddersfielders. His desire is to organise an exhibition in West Yorkshire that attracts folk that would not normally attend an art gallery – people like me then!
Well good luck to him with that, I hope that he gets something set up. I have relatives in Huddersfield and would happily make a trip up and see them and take in Berry’s denim show at the same time.
I even have an idea for a new Berry creation, I am going to dig out some of my old photos of Century Street, maybe there’s scope for a street scene including the hookers.
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