This is pitiful – young NUJ photojournalist Jules Mattsson takes pictures of an army cadet parade and gets aggro from the police for doing so – maybe they should bone up on the law and the recent cases they’ve lost re: photography in public places. Nice that the NUJ and BJP are behind this photographer – and amazing that apparently to even question the law is to create a breach of the peace – ones created by the police. Nice logic there.

Of course you’ll get the people saying ‘why didn’t he comply?’ – well as a working NUJ photojournalist and in a public place, he has a right to take pictures. Also if we off-limit ANY pictures of children, even at official display events or parades where photography will obviously happen then that not only begets a future where children are going to be edited out or avoided from any future event shots, but also makes children feel uneasy and think that every photographer is a paedophile or terrorist, which is absolute bolocks.

And also when it affects photojournalists, like the Guardian journalist that was attacked and detained in Toronto this weekend at G20 – then you’re getting into censorship issues – it starts to be a special pleading excuse to stop any coverage at all to hide what’s really going on (doubt that would happen at an Army Cadet parade, but if this was extended to other events it would).

As an aside re: the G20 – 1) Black Bloc Tactic is a tactic not an official group afaik – and 2) like with the ‘anarchists’ at London’s G20 although not prone to conspiracy theories I’m really suspect that these people are really who they appear to be, especially as they (in London, as seem to in Toronto) were given free reign and the police stayed back while press stayed on hand to conveniently document – like in London with the conveniently empty-at-the-last-minute bank? It wouldn’t be the first time the police have used agent provocateurs. Might be tinfoil hat territory, but police and security services do infiltrate all groups, even have been shown to break the law and even allow murder…so who knows. if they are anarchists, they are fools because although it’s kind of heartening to see burning police cars, it falls exactly into what those G20 leaders want.

Back to photography and this guy – really this kind of thing is partly why I think I stopped taking pictures, I just don’t feel comfortable doing so anymore – it’s a worry in the back of my mind that some Stasi oik will take offence at some innocuous shot in public (I never take pictures of anyone without permission, rarely even crowd scenes) but when the likes of fish and chip shops, Xmas decorations and CCTV cameras are all off-limits apparently, who knows what is a ‘terrorist’ thing to do as the police are making it up on the spot.

Well those in the UK are – and should be concerned because Orwell’s predictions (and even Alan Moore’s in V for Vendetta) are seemingly comng true. With The Fear this time being terrorism – despite a terrorist attack happening last nearly 4 years ago – they are clamping down on a variety of things. They might seem small, even trivial – but the right to photograph protests, or anything you like in a street – have already been eroded, and if they think you might be a terrorist however spurious they can lock you up for a long time – stop me if you can see the way this can be politically used to oppress people?

And if they take any DNA off you, they can store it in their beloved police database against EU law:

And now with the new Coroners and Justice Bill the State want the right to use that information, or any other information they collect however spuriously for anything they like and use it for something else – as Boing Boing put it:

Clause 152 allows any Minister to take any information gathered for any purpose and use it for any other purpose

So now councils can spy on you to see if you’re emptying the bins correctly (ooh you terrorist) you can guarantee this clause WILL be misused, whatever they say – they said that about the anti-terrorism laws and there is a mounting pile of abuses that go FAR against the intention of that law and with all this CCTV, DNA databases and soon to be ID cards, we have become the most snooped country in Europe, if not the whole world.

What can you do? Well those in the UK can write to your MP – no don’t yawn and switch off it’s REALLY PISS EASY, I mean a muppet like me could do it, so can you – I did it and got results and a shiny letter from Glenda Jackson AND a big warm feeling that I had actually DONE SOMETHING – so can you. You can do it by email via WriteToThem and takes a few minutes. And you can join this Facebook group. – publicise, Twitter about this, bother friends, talk, phone – get the word out.

That’s not hard is it? Or are you going to be the kind of stupid person that Pastor Niemoeller wrote about? These are YOUR laws, if you just sit there eating your grub and shrugging then don’t moan at me when they come through your door.

Also word to my pirate radio bruvs (and gals out there – they’ve just raided about 30 of them in the UK and shut them down, heard via John. Keep going, keep the faith, don’t let em win. And that bullshit about emergency frequencies – they still using that as an excuse? As a former frequency scanner and radio geek, I can tell you the ambulance and other systems moved to higher frequencies from publically accessible radio waves (ie. on your dial) back in the 80′s – they use special frequencies with digital encoded systems for the ambulances, and obviously the police realised being listenable on a normal radio wasn’t really a good idea, so they did too. So I don’t see how the pirates could affect this unless some faulty transmitter is sidebanding. I call bullshit on that until I hear otherwise.

You see what I mean? It’s easy to shout fire in a crowded theatre, but since before Gordon Brown and that Weapon of Mass Distraction called a war where they ignored us, politically things have been shifted to make a whole bunch of people seem they are a potential threat, rather than the necessary watchguard (and yes the watchers?) to try and keep an increasingly distant and corrupt set of politicians accountable…ignorance and apathy just gives them the power to eventually really fuck up your day (or life).

This current state of affairs is really bugging me, there is a real danger we are going down the path of 1984 – you may scoff but do some research about what laws have been passed recently – and it will chill your blood.

After over 2 years (OMG has it been that long?) I’ve stopped the weekly DJ sets at the Parkade in Second Life.

No bad reason, no drama, just need to spend time on other stuff (like: finding work, career, photography). I’ll probably pop back time to time to DJ for the odd special set

I recorded the last set, at some point it’ll be here. Sad to leave ‘Cruise Control’ behind, but after 2 years it’s time to focus on career and paying gigs. I’m clamping down on creating free stuff, it’s great and all, but it doesn’t pay the bills – and the bills are the real problem at the moment.

To see some of the great times we had there, you can view the silliness here.

Starting a photo blog for my street/urban related photography – Streetise

At the moment I’m popping in stuff you might have seen – although a few recent photos you probably haven’t, but I’m planning to do more street photography (esp of shop fronts and surreal objects that get thrown out around here) and post it there.

Ok one of the things that is really starting to bug me is the endless comparison of podcasting with radio – ‘podcasting will replace radio!’ – ‘it’s like TIVO for Radio’ and even Steve Jobs at the WWDC saying “We see it as the hottest thing going in radio” . Talk about being totally wrong – Steve Jobs is talking absolute bollocks

Firstly podcasting is NOT radio – when it started the media looked for an angle, took the easy route and started doing ‘podcasting will kill the radio star’ type articles. All fun and funky, but it’s kind of stuck – with radio corporates moving into podcasting (Rush Limbaugh ‘hottest thing in podcasting’?!? Get back to bed, honey!) the trend seems to be heading that radio shows can be just ripped, MP3′d and it’s just another delivery channel. WRONG.

Secondly don’t judge existing podcasts by radio standards – they’re not done for an average drive-time audience, or on thousands of pounds worth of kit, and that’s not the point. They have no advertising revenue and most don’t want to have advertising in their casts. So why is the ‘charts’ of PodcastAlley/Podcast pickle et al all so important? And why do people bitch about casts that have great content but don’t have that ‘radio’ sound?

Podcasting is a revolution exactly because it ISN’T radio – the low-or-no production values add charm but also validity – you’re getting this from a PERSON not a coporation.

The voice is distinct, human, clear and warm and more importantly unique – this is where the corporates will struggle to get that one-on-one feel, I doubt they will be able to. That human connection is what it’s about – remember podcasting used to be called audio blogging (I’m sure I’m preaching to the converted here, but I have to say this).

The low entry value means it’s accessible – and will get more so. Trying to build in more production values is dangerous as it raises that bar and stops the very people you need casting from doing so. This is the problem with existing media – ‘I can’t make a film! I can’t produce an album!’ – it encourages apathy through high production values. it inhibits – but that gloss doesn’t actually add any more information or content.

Content is king – if you have something to say and we can hear you, then that’s great, that’s what it’s about – I was listening to Lucky Bitch Radio and Wanda’s recent breakup and past struggles with addiction and thought this is what it’s about – you’re hearing someone’s view on the world at a crisis point pretty much unedited. You rarely get that connection even in so-called ‘reality shows’ which are highly staged. It’s not self-indulgent – that’s exactly the attitude that stops people from starting things like podcasts.

Radio is produced for a mass audience and is increasingly commoditised into smaller and smaller chunks and market niches – or what the marketeers think are there. Podcasting is not the new radio – like all new technologies it’s going through the infancy stages of copying an existing medium to seek validity – photography did this when it started, aping the impressionists and fine art to prove it’s worth. Eventually it decided to go it’s own way and created it’s own self-confidence.

This is what will happen with podcasting – the radio production nerds and wannabes will go off to XM or Sirius or KYOU and the rest of us will build a future for podcasting with our own language, and our values. It will happen sooner than you think…the danger of looking to radio for validity is that it is a medium in artistic and monetary crisis – why replicate them like a kid trying to look hard and older for his big brother? We’re in out infancy but shouldn’t try too hard to grow up just yet and be like the big boys – like Podshow and Odeo are. I’d rather go out and play wouldn’t you?

Anyway I thought Dawn and Drew taught us all this?

Or did we forget?