Buy something, or you're nicked

Every time I open the newspaper, I see something prefigured in the science fiction of Jeff Noon, William Gibson or Ken MacLeod. We're not going to be travelling to other galaxies or going back in time, but we are gradually building a kind of corporate dystopia, a la Gattaca, Bladerunner, Robocop most explicitly and similar texts.



The future won't feel like Robocop. You personally might not be manhandled by brutal corpocops. But you're probably not mentally unwell, young or black. The streets will be clean and there won't be any raised voices. But the near future is becoming dystopian in a far more insidious way. It might seem innocuous, but the deployment of 100 militaristic security officers on the streets of Manchester is a further step away from the perfectly reasonable expectation that as citizens, we have the freedom to walk the streets and the expectation that should we commit crimes, we are arrested by public servants and tried by our peers.

These ex-police officers patrolling the shopping areas of Manchester will look like officers - they'll be wearing stab vests, and carrying radios and cameras. The company which employs them is even negotiation to get them the authority to levy fines on people for minor offences.

Think about that for a second. Despite the numerous examples of police brutality and corruption available, the police service is employed by us and is accountable to us through the courts, local authorities and parliament. We pay them extremely well and expect them to protect us. These cut-price cops won't have any requirement to prevent crimes against us, or against the public sphere. Low-paid and responsible only to corporations, they'll stand by and watch while your granny gets mugged. Why not? There's nothing in it for them, and they're probably not insured to get involved. At the same time, we're giving away to these corporate security guards the right to punish us - without trial - when we do something that offends their employers. Clearly there's only one kind of crime that matters to the Conservatives - crimes against business.

This is such a bad idea that even the cops - formerly the armed wing of the Conservative Party, though the Tories are doing their very best to alienate them - think it's a step too far.  This will happen in your town too. My own awful MP and his cronies in WVOne explicitly see this city's centre as a retail space only: nothing else will be permitted.

Public space is being handed over by councils entranced by shiny presentations and promises of zero-tolerance on litter - but what will also go is the catholic anarchy of urban space: the poor, the rich, the young, the old, the amblers and strollers and buskers and natters and campaigners and loafers will all be swept away with them. How will you appeal against being made to move on by these retail bouncers? You won't.

Thankfully, resistance is possible… as Mallrats makes clear.

No more charity sand in your oysters (or; FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO SHOP!)

That fearless defender of truth and justice, Paul Uppal MP, is riding into battle again. In the midst of the worst recession in generations, the dismantling of the national health service, the removal of Sure Start centres, the privatisation of education and the destruction of green spaces, Paul's identified the real enemies of society:

After consulting with constituents and businesses in Wolverhampton City Centre

Oh yeah? I'd love to see his methodology. 

Paul Uppal, Member of Parliament for Wolverhampton South West has called for action on the volume of Street Preachers and Fundraisers

Now these people make me angry. Religion makes me profoundly depressed, and being approached by various charities is uncomfortable and probably ineffective. 


BUT: what Mr. Uppal proposes is a fundamental attack on one of the quiet glories of British society. That is: the street is not solely a commercial space. 

We need a situation where consumers are allowed to shop peacefully without the apprehension of being stopped

To a multimillionaire property developer like him, all space is commercial space. Left to their own devices, our public spaces would look like Times Square: billboards blaring and space rented to the highest bidder. For the Tories, value is solely monetary.


What Paul explicitly believes is that we are only of value as humans when we are consumers - the term he uses to describe us. To him, the idea that someone asks you to think of the poor, sick or hungry, or to consider alternative ways of thinking about life while you're wandering down the street is horrific. It distracts you from the only real purpose in life: to consume and to enrich corporations. 


What makes shoppers a protected species whose perambulations alone should not be disturbed? The street is not a mall. It belongs to you. You don't have to buy anything. Be scruffy. Be loud. Be purposeless. You can go there for whatever reason you like. That's why I admire the disaffected Goths who hang about: they've decided to colonise a public space and use it for their own purposes. 


I think this is dangerous. I'm all for asking these people to be polite and calm - but only when we ask the advertisers and hawkers (and politicians) to tone down their hysterical demands on my time and attention. 


(Further reading: Ground Control: about the awful commercialisation of our public spaces.


He also wants to 

discuss moving the city in a forward direction

Anyone who knows what on earth this means wins a prize. I assume he's just picking a metaphor because he's trapped in management speak, and not actually planning to 'move' the city 'forward' or anywhere else.