Secondly, I have stumbled across something of a horrific nature. Horrific in the sense that it is created by some of the guys from The Horrors. Spider and The Flies is something for synth & sequencer heads. PS. If you think that Dizzie’s latest track is pushing new boundaries in synth, you really don’t get it.

Thanks to Moosleybay.com for the image, heroes.

Having watched a couple of documentaries on the Horrors recently (recommendation – Counting in Fives doc), it’s apparent that this music lark isn’t just a flash in the pan to some of these guys, not just a way of earning some coin and getting some ladies. So yeah, obviously check out the new Horrors album and check out Spider and the Flies whilst you’re there. You can catch the Horrors at Offset Festival and Field Day this year whilst the gig on the 17th June at the Troxy in Whitechapel will be mad.

Finally and probably most appropriately in view of the title, the guys who brought us the best video shop of our lives (Today is Boring – which unfortunately shut down but has been reincarnated (in a way) further up Kingsland Road in Dalston) are pulling together a flesh eating flash mob as they did in 2007 to maraud the streets of London this very Sunday. So what else are you going to do – if you’re hungover from Saturday night’s antics you’re half way to being dead anyway!? Check out their site for details and some shots of their last deadbeat debacle.

East London, not wanting to be outdone by it’s well-heeled neighbours, has come up with an alternative.

Thanks to the excellent Made In England blog for putting us on to the Oxford & Cambridge Goat Race and for the image above. The event which is in aid of the worthy cause of Spitalfields City Farm, needs no dressing up, it is a race between two goats, one named Oxford and one named Cambridge. My money is on Cambridge as my friend’s sister’s hairdresser is casually dating Oxford (he doesn’t believe in commitment) and apparently he’s partying like it’s 1945 this Saturday at The Blitz Party in the railway arches near Shoreditch High Street.

Image courtesy of Paul Stott’s blog (which we have now linked to on the sidebar).

The Hackney Post was set up recently by some post-grad Journalism students from City University and I quite like it. It has a slick design and ultimately bringing Hackney news and issues into the internet age.

I am currently in self-enforced exile from East London, as a consequence, I am going through a new wave of appreciation of all things East.

So congrats to all involved, we’ve hooked up a permanent link if you should ever feel inclined to get the latest in Hackney goings on.

Demonstrations start at 11am under the following guises;
* Moorgate
Red horse against War;
* Liverpool St
Green horse against Climate chaos
* London Bridge
Silver horse against Financial crimes
* Cannon Street
Black horse against land enclosures and borders in honour of the 360th full circle anniversary of the Diggers

My initial reaction was that due to the syncronisation of the ‘parades’ people looking to be involved will have to chose between anti-war, anti-climate, anti-finance or whatever the fuck the last one is supposed to be. Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if, say it was just Black Horseman was left on his Jack because everyone else threw their weight behind the other causes?

For those of a less civilly disobedient bent, there’s a timely exhibition at 187-211 St John Street, called “Affluenza” - which should go someway to highlight some of the causality of our current predicament through the medium of art.

Whilst those of a singleton bent will go one of two ways. Some will throw themselves with gusto into a night out with other partnerly-challenged friends, bemoaning the opposite sex for the first couple of drinks, pining for lost loves for the next couple and hooking up with a chubby, criminally dressed girl in the later part of the evening. The others will cook themselves a romantic dinner for one and put on a mildly amusing movie to mask their overpowering existential dread whilst also making a militant list of steps they are going to take to ensure they aren’t sitting eating Moussaka alone again this time next year.

I hear that there are couples and singletons alike who actually enjoy Valentine’s Day, although I’m yet to see quantitative or qualitative evidence to support this.

Don’t worry though, we’re here to help. Firstly by pointing you in the direction of where to spend your Anti-Valentine’s Day. My Ex Boyfriend’s Records are hosting a night at the scenester clusterfuck known as the Old Blue Last on Saturday, which should provide tunes good enough to make you forget about John from Accounts, the lying shit.

Secondly, if like me, in the words of Final Fantasy, you could fill up a lake with all the things you didn’t say, wait no longer. I found the following video on Youtube, which in a DIY, cutesy way I think is pretty cool. Also, the English chick’s voice over adds to the allure (I wonder what she’s doing on Saturday?).  Just hook up the link, send it to the hoards of people you have been e-stalking for the last year and watch the offers of torrid, unspeakably filthy love affairs roll in…

Finally, picture the scene…you have, in some ‘black swan’-esque fluke of probability, convinced your date to come back to your place on Saturday…you’ve stolen the dregs of your housemate’s Cava that’s been in the fridge since your NYE houseparty…conversation is still flowing and you move to your hastily tidied room…but what’s this…no suitable music…you didn’t quite get round to the ‘it’s business time’ playlist…well help it as hand…

So we’ve been offline for about a month and during that time, the World has pretty much fallen apart. Companies have gone bust, Countries are in crisis and pirates have begun their rightful assent back to the top of the food chain. Our behind-the-scenes scientists believe there to be a correlation between the giddy goings on and the internet bereft of our writing. Not only have we been offline, we have also left Shoreditch. Scritti Politti t-shirts, Punks Jump up after-party flyers and oversized, lensless glasses formed a teary debris along Shoreditch High Street. Like a modern day Hansel & Gretal, bagel crumbs rather than gingerbread were left to find our way back.

Our riverside retreat is definitely filling the void that has been left by ‘Ditch. Things that I don’t miss in particular; wankers with moustaches on bikes, Japanese fashion victims, ugly girls who think bright tights and horizontal haircuts fool everyone, 2 out of 3 people owning desert scarves and 90% of people having no obvious job or stream of income that could sustain their lifestyles.

Anyway, now Christmas is over and frankly I’m hoping this year’s more sombre and subdued affair might be the beginning of a reversal of commercialisation of the festive period. Against the backdrop of impending redundancies, repossessions and the like, suddenly ’stuff’ can be viewed with the disdain is deserves. Who needs a pocket pencil sharpener that doubles as a bow-tie when you’re losing your job? Who needs an executive ball scratcher when you’re getting chucked out your house? Who needs the Star Wars super deluxe box set when a bailiff has just come and taken your TV away? Now what can fill the void left by our crack-consumerism? How about Christmas just being a time for families to get together? Those dispersed far and wide making the present of presence the one thing that they give to the people they care about at Christmas.

Naive, yes. Having watched the news in horror on Boxing Day as thousands of people battery henned themselves into Selfridges, consumerism isn’t dead by a long chalk yet.

To finish as we begun with the insightful views of Snoop…

These unrelenting LULZ are generally brought about by hipsters/scenesters’ unmitigated self-important ranting and ability to see merit in things that are as redundant as the Leveraged Finance team at Lehman Brothers.

If you’re bored, I beg you to check out Hipster Runoff which covers everything from people wearing eye patches as a fashion statement to one hipster’s whining about the state of the World (warning epic lulz) and also sharing this “fun fact” (which is clearly plucked from the author’s arse): “Did u know that architecture students do not believe in ‘beauty’?”. Any architects that’d like to comment on this statement, please feel free.

Also on this nostalgic meander down memory lane perhaps memories of certain bastions of good teaching pop into our thoughts. Personally, I had an economics teacher who not only seemed to be the unquestionable heir to Adam Smith’s liberal economic throne but also had a tash that was reminiscent of a Colombian drug dealer in mid-80s Florida. Whilst walking this path of yesteryear, along side the bastions of good teaching you no doubt come across the bastards. The teachers that if put in front of a psychologist would clearly offer enough morsels of madness for the good doctor to feast upon for many a year.

The reason for my peek into PGCE land is that I was shocked to hear the Conservatives’ plans to give up to 200 ex-servicemen and women (who hold university degrees already) free university places to train to become teachers. Now the more you look into this policy, the more you realise it’s a very precise measure i.e. targeting a specific population of individuals who have already left the army and offering them this opportunity. The first question that came to my mind is; I wonder if anyone has actually asked these 200 people if they actually want to be teachers!?

It does conjure up images of ASBO teens vs ex. SAS. It’ll be like a modern day Alien Vs Predator with the ASBO teens wielding knives, toking on bongs whilst the ex. SAS stride confidently into battle with pristine boots and a fuck-off big rifle. Eat your heart out Michelle Pffeifer.

I can imagine the scenes now, picture it, Year 7 Geography…

Teacher: “Adams, where is Iraq?”

Adams: “Stop sweatin’ me blud, innit”

Teacher: “YOU DON’T KNOW!? Drop and give me 100. (Cue vomit-inducing pro-war babble followed by storming out of the room in some form of flashback/shell shocked vibe).

Adams: “Merk, Merk”.

Michael Gove (the shadow schools secretary who is also incidentally, a weasel) suggests that classroom behaviour may improve as a result of the measure (I didn’t know the Tories had got in a distant relative of Sherlockfucking Holmes!?). Perhaps this is an insight into Gove’s thinking…

For LULZ check out the reaction to it in the Daily Express comments section.

“This town, is coming like a ghost town
All the clubs have been closed down
This place, is coming like a ghost town
Bands won’t play no more
too much fighting on the dance floor”

Lyrics there from Ghost Town by the Specials, which, if you replace ghost with eco, may prove an ominous prophecy for the future of Eco Towns. Listen to the track here:

[See post to listen to audio]

For a blast from the past, click here to listen to Harry J and the Allstars, Liquidator).

What would Captain Planet make of the proposed ‘Eco Towns’ in the UK? Well, I think he’d wouldn’t be too bothered because if he were real, he would now be getting epically BD with the growing hoards of eco-conscious ladies in the UK. Captain Planet would be getting laid on the scale of George Best in the 70s, as the environment has justifiably nudged to the forefront of the minds of those well-off enough to have a choice as to what car they drive, where they source their vegetables and an ability to buy bags that are anything but free plastic bags.

I have digressed from the outset, what I actually want to consider is the following statement from Hegel in the context of the ‘New Towns’ of the UK and the proposed Eco Towns;

“What experience and history teach is this-that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it”

Under very different circumstances (i.e the conclusion of the second World War) the government made moves to reconstruct the UK against a backdrop of a country with a changing economic composition (certain industries growing, some dying) and a people displaced through the attrition of the War. This led to a program of developing New Towns (predominantly in the South East) with stellar line-up including Bracknell, Basildon, Stevenage and Harlow. There was then a second and third wave of ‘New Towns’ (between the 60s and 70s) including places such as Milton Keynes, Skelmersdale and Northampton.

The fortunes of these New Towns have been as varied as the response you might get from the government  when questioned on their stance on Eco Towns. At the one end of the scale you have towns such as Skelmersdale, Welwyn Garden City and Basildon that either feature or were nominated for inclusion in The Idler’s infamous “Crap Towns” book. From personal experience, Skelmersdale is really quite a grim place, with roundabout after roundabout which has developed a grim and dark undertone which you might expect considering it lives in the shadow of Liverpool, which despite it’s undoubted importance to the UK, has struggled somewhat over the last 30 years to cope with the sector shifts in the UK economy. On the topic of Basildon, apparently the locals have taken to calling a certain part of town (which I assume is akin to some sort of Essex Sin City) as ‘Bas Vegas’ . This reminds me of my home town Torbay, which the locals have taken to calling Torbaydos (the similarities are negligable although Torbay does have some of the highest incidents of bankrupcy, teenage pregnancy and lowest wages in the UK).

On the other end of the scale you have Milton Keynes (much maligned by the masses but admired by many ‘in the know’ such as town planners, architects and business leaders) and Bracknell which have massively exceeded the population targets set for them and will no doubt go from strength to strength over the next 20 years.

The point of showing the diverse fortunes of the ‘New Towns’ in the context of Eco Towns and Hegels quote is that the government should heed these examples (and one of the main maxims of property); it is location, location, location which is important here. In the context of Eco Towns, it is actually “location, location, location” squared. Firstly, the government needs to be forward-looking in deciding where these eco-towns are going to be; what is the UK demographic going to look like in 20 years and how do Eco Towns fit in? Secondly, the government needs to be forward-looking in terms of industry; where Bracknell & Milton Keynes have succeeded is the fact that they are replaced to act as a alternative or secondary location for the London-centric service industry. What industries are a ‘good-fit’ with Eco Towns and where should they be located to benefit from this?

By their very nature, Eco Towns will be a major step in environmentally conscious living and if done properly, should allow the UK to demonstrate to the rest of World what is achievable. However, the challenge is really to make them economically sustainable i.e. to be desirable for people to live in and to be desirable to industries (of a suitable nature) to want to locate near.

Note, it’s actually Rollercoaster Tycoon on the Atari. But seriously, Theme Park was epic