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alexsarllDo you ever find yourself, and I don't mean when you're without a book or companion, but do you ever find yourself staring out your reflection in the Tube window opposite, wondering what you make of that insolent piece of work who won't look away first?
A London Assembly press release reaches me, its subject:
"Travel arrangements for sporting events – your views wanted
The London Assembly today launched an investigation aimed at improving travel arrangements to and from the capital's sporting events.
On any autumn weekend, more than 250,000 sports fans can be on the move across London – at times causing chaos on transport services and disrupting the lives of local residents. Yet, no one has responsibility for ensuring that large crowds can travel easily to and from the ground.
Led by Murad Qureshi AM, rapporteur for the Assembly's Transport Committee, the investigation will particularly focus on travel arrangements to London's football, rugby, cricket and tennis stadiums. It will bring together Transport for London, the boroughs, stadium owners and fans by investigating difficulties at individual grounds, and promoting possible solutions.
Murad Qureshi said: "Each of London's major sporting venues attracts thousands of spectators. With increasing efforts aimed at persuading fans to leave the car at home, and with a team's fan base expanding far beyond traditional local catchment areas, public transport is increasingly picking up the strain.
"It's all very well improving the public transport infrastructure for spectators going to the Olympics in 2012, but the plight of the London spectators going about supporting their local teams - week in, week out, season after season – also needs to be improved. I hope this investigation will make sports fans' lives easier."
The Assembly would like to hear about your experiences while travelling to and from matches. What do you think can be done to improve your journey? Who do you think should be responsible for overseeing travel arrangements for sporting events?
If you want to tell us what you think; Please write to Richard Derecki, PP10, London Assembly, City Hall, The Queen's Walk, London SE1 2AA or email: sportstravel@london.gov.uk "
Notice how they talk about the plight of spectators? About making sports fans' lives easier? Notice how they ask for details of experiences travelling to and from matches? This even though they acknowledge that fans are coming from "far beyond traditional local catchment areas", ie, are not London voters or taxpayers. Whereas the local residents, who have to put up with the transport disruption and the yobbery, are by definition Londoners. So shouldn't it be the residents' views they want at least as much as the sportists'? I have mailed them to this effect; I even astounded myself by avoiding use of the words "footballist", "peon" and "scum", and questioning only the fans' claim on the attentions of London government, rather than their membership of the human race. Who says I can't do moderation?
Have I ever talked about Clifford D. Simak on here before? He was a contemporary of the big names of science fiction's golden age, but somewhere off to one side of them, even though he started out in the same pulps. He could do alien planets, parallel worlds, rocketships, all that business, and do it very well - but what Simak did best was a sort of pastoral science fiction. He sprang from rural Wisconsin, lived among the Mississippi bluffs, spent much of his life as a small-town newspaperman; and it shows. Imagine a sort of science fiction where the obvious lead for the films is Jimmy Stewart, and you've got Simak.
I mention Simak because I recently found a short story collection I don't have in one of Haringey's smaller libraries, and so have been getting new doses of his uniquely warm-hearted, worn-out prose. One of the earlier (and to be honest weaker) stories has a character called Kent Clark; it's copyrighted 1939, the year after Clark Kent made his debut. Wonder if that's just coincidence?
As well as gleefully brutal (anti-)superhero stories, gruelling crime and a certain subset of theologically-based horror, Garth Ennis is probably comics' best writer about war. This is in large part because he's not a cheerleader for either side; one feels that almost anyone who hasn't actually been to war could learn a lot from him. I was reading one of his self-descriptive War Stories last night, 'J For Jenny'. With perfectly bleak and evocative art from David V for Vendetta Lloyd, it shows us a fictional but throughly-researched British bomber crew, and their varying reactions to the raids they're carrying out on the Ruhr valley. Without ever preaching or compromising the believability of its characters, it reminds the hawks that war is a horrible, messy business - and the doves that it is a necessary evil, and one which can bring forth moments of nobility. I'd like to send copies to the extremist NeoCons, and some more to the Stop the War mob - but alas, I doubt any of them have the processing power to follow a decent comic.
A London Assembly press release reaches me, its subject:
"Travel arrangements for sporting events – your views wanted
The London Assembly today launched an investigation aimed at improving travel arrangements to and from the capital's sporting events.
On any autumn weekend, more than 250,000 sports fans can be on the move across London – at times causing chaos on transport services and disrupting the lives of local residents. Yet, no one has responsibility for ensuring that large crowds can travel easily to and from the ground.
Led by Murad Qureshi AM, rapporteur for the Assembly's Transport Committee, the investigation will particularly focus on travel arrangements to London's football, rugby, cricket and tennis stadiums. It will bring together Transport for London, the boroughs, stadium owners and fans by investigating difficulties at individual grounds, and promoting possible solutions.
Murad Qureshi said: "Each of London's major sporting venues attracts thousands of spectators. With increasing efforts aimed at persuading fans to leave the car at home, and with a team's fan base expanding far beyond traditional local catchment areas, public transport is increasingly picking up the strain.
"It's all very well improving the public transport infrastructure for spectators going to the Olympics in 2012, but the plight of the London spectators going about supporting their local teams - week in, week out, season after season – also needs to be improved. I hope this investigation will make sports fans' lives easier."
The Assembly would like to hear about your experiences while travelling to and from matches. What do you think can be done to improve your journey? Who do you think should be responsible for overseeing travel arrangements for sporting events?
If you want to tell us what you think; Please write to Richard Derecki, PP10, London Assembly, City Hall, The Queen's Walk, London SE1 2AA or email: sportstravel@london.gov.uk "
Notice how they talk about the plight of spectators? About making sports fans' lives easier? Notice how they ask for details of experiences travelling to and from matches? This even though they acknowledge that fans are coming from "far beyond traditional local catchment areas", ie, are not London voters or taxpayers. Whereas the local residents, who have to put up with the transport disruption and the yobbery, are by definition Londoners. So shouldn't it be the residents' views they want at least as much as the sportists'? I have mailed them to this effect; I even astounded myself by avoiding use of the words "footballist", "peon" and "scum", and questioning only the fans' claim on the attentions of London government, rather than their membership of the human race. Who says I can't do moderation?
Have I ever talked about Clifford D. Simak on here before? He was a contemporary of the big names of science fiction's golden age, but somewhere off to one side of them, even though he started out in the same pulps. He could do alien planets, parallel worlds, rocketships, all that business, and do it very well - but what Simak did best was a sort of pastoral science fiction. He sprang from rural Wisconsin, lived among the Mississippi bluffs, spent much of his life as a small-town newspaperman; and it shows. Imagine a sort of science fiction where the obvious lead for the films is Jimmy Stewart, and you've got Simak.
I mention Simak because I recently found a short story collection I don't have in one of Haringey's smaller libraries, and so have been getting new doses of his uniquely warm-hearted, worn-out prose. One of the earlier (and to be honest weaker) stories has a character called Kent Clark; it's copyrighted 1939, the year after Clark Kent made his debut. Wonder if that's just coincidence?
As well as gleefully brutal (anti-)superhero stories, gruelling crime and a certain subset of theologically-based horror, Garth Ennis is probably comics' best writer about war. This is in large part because he's not a cheerleader for either side; one feels that almost anyone who hasn't actually been to war could learn a lot from him. I was reading one of his self-descriptive War Stories last night, 'J For Jenny'. With perfectly bleak and evocative art from David V for Vendetta Lloyd, it shows us a fictional but throughly-researched British bomber crew, and their varying reactions to the raids they're carrying out on the Ruhr valley. Without ever preaching or compromising the believability of its characters, it reminds the hawks that war is a horrible, messy business - and the doves that it is a necessary evil, and one which can bring forth moments of nobility. I'd like to send copies to the extremist NeoCons, and some more to the Stop the War mob - but alas, I doubt any of them have the processing power to follow a decent comic.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-27 11:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-28 09:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-01 12:05 am (UTC)Also - I've not seen you in ages, have I? This year, even. Pub?
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Date: 2007-03-01 10:10 am (UTC)Definitely pub in the next few weeks (allowing for your hectic social schedule).
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Date: 2007-03-01 11:35 am (UTC)Tempted to come over for the Robert Anton Wilson Memorial-gig , 's got cold cut AND Alan Moore.. But I shall have to speak to my Minister of finance & blackmail first:(
no subject
Date: 2007-03-01 07:59 pm (UTC)