We are Humans have been in contact and offered right of reply, we look forward to their response – ed.
“It’s the wrong trousers!”
Some friends in Boscombe started a prison letter-writing group and booked a back room at Chaplin’s. Behind the empty restaurant area they were well away from the other punters. After an hour or so, one of the group went to the bar for a brew. A big sour-looking fellow on our side of the bar announced “we can’t serve you in those trousers”, “pardon?” “No sport trousers after 9p.m.”
Enquiring after the definition of “sport trousers” we were told it was at the management’s discretion.
So they asked to speak to a manager and he replied: “I’m a manager and so’s he” – pointing to the barman. “You have to leave!” This was clearly a joke, imagine a punk venue styling itself after an anarchist who made his living portraying a tramp, telling its clients what to wear!
“I was wearing a pair of very plain, black, long trousers with no distinguishing marks. I favour an elasticated waist owing to a medical condition, but he wouldn’t have known that as I had a jumper on. I was pretty sure it was a gag but the dude puffed himself up, scowling, so I suggested we settle the matter in the car park*”
* Note to middle class readers: this is quite standard practice – ed.
As we gathered up our stuff to leave their doorman appeared “we can’t have you offering the management outside” but showed no enthusism for chucking us out. “He was in no danger, I thought he might fancy it being twice my size and half my age”. Someone suggested calling the landlord, whose name is Harry, but we were advised there was no point as he was on the pop and we wouldn’t get any sense out of him.
So far so weird; he clearly had a hair up his arse, or maybe he was showing off to his friend behind the bar – no one else was there. If he really is a manager, it’s probably a mistake leaving him in charge while the landlord hangs one on.
Our prison letter-writing group is now hosted by Poole Hill Brewery, who are much more friendly. Send us a message if you’d like to join in.
Chaplin’s has always been a crap music venue, a bit like a corridor with a stage at one end, but Hobson’s choice for Boscombe since the Riviera closed – rumour has it their licence was revoked after the proprietor punched a burglar. We hear the Riviera is under new management so we should soon have an alternative with a much bigger dance floor.
Chaplin’s weirdness is not limited to opportunistic trouserism. A festival of weirdness is being held in Wimbore, fronted by the bitterly anti-Working Class professional contrarian Katie Hopkins on a vague ‘free speech’ platform, featuring purveyors of crank science, quack remedies and hackneyed reactionary views. Another of the promoters is Wendy Jane Morrow, whose band Outlandish have a residency at Chaplin’s, alongside Matt Hoy and both feature in the weirdoes musical lineup. One of the speakers is Dolores Cahill, who was forced out of the far-right Irish freedom party for the weirdness of her free speech, now a quack ‘healing’ practitioner.
Here we see them teamed up with a food bank called WE ARE HUMANS CHARITY NO. 1201814, it states: “The prevention or relief of poverty For the general public/mankind Other charitable activities.” A nice thought but how do they expect to prevent poverty in a market economy that depends on poverty for its survival?
The “Other charitable activities” are intriguing; we know nothing about this organisation but ‘homeless outreach’ has often been a tactic of the far right to camouflage local activism and curry favour with the disenfranchised. The BNP did it in the 90s after they got kicked off the streets, various solinters off the EDL likewise, especially focussing on homeless veterans. As party politics drifts ever rightward, in the absence of a credible left opposition you want to be careful who you hang around with. We anarchists are content to let it all play out, we’ll fight the winner.
The charity’s facebook page is peppered with posts from conspiracy groups all claiming to know ‘the truth’ about something. The old magna carta freaks are still going, pinning their hopes on an agreement made between feudal warlords to keep them in power. At the time, only a few hundred people would have been aware of its existence, fewer would have been able to read it and only those with standing armies stood a chance of enforcing its provisions. And a plug for Jeremy Corbyn – confused at best.
The Sounds Beautiful festival is sponsored by “The Light”, a white-supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy paper. Contributors to this rag span the lunatic fringe of internet trolls. The folk who never believe anything they see or hear – unless it comes from an American neo-Nazi in a suit. Hopkins has been warned off appearing but is still selling tickets for it.
Why anyone at a music festival wants to hear these boring old farts gobbing off is baffling. This seems to be a new phenomenon; the festivals are promoted on a pastiche of hippy counterculture with vague platitudes like “truth” and “freedom” but their backers are authoritarians. Anti-vaccine propaganda is ubiquitous, along with familiar anti-immigrant, islamophobic, antisemitic guff; oil-industry stooges rub shoulders with the primitivist end of the green movement. Also swirling in the bowl are homophobes, transphobes and misogynists. Even the flat earthers are invited, David Weiss ‘flat earth dave’, who “has revolutionized the way individuals explore and learn about flat earth through his innovative teaching app, the Flat Earth Sun, Moon, and Zodiac Clock App.” What a load of crap!
So if you’re afraid of falling off the edge or flouride making you gay, think vaccination is a conspiracy to stupefy us, and eating acorns cures cancer this may be for you. Buy a healing crystal, hug a Nazi, open your mind and listen to the sound of one hand clapping – but don’t forget to exercise your right to shout “fire!” in a crowded marquee.
Any credible intel on rightwing activity locally will be treated in the strictest confidence and passed to the relevant anti-authorities – ed.
Wessex Solidarity