On trying to give up The Independent

Maybe it’s because they never publish my letters. Perhaps it’s the obsession with the Liberal Democrats. It could be the red sans-serif masthead, or the front page shock therapy, or the compulsive editorial rejigs. It could be The i, or the nauseating ‘Trending’ (whatever that is). Most likely it’s the never-ending debates around the Blairite/Thatcherite dynasties, and or that thick inky coating of pro-market goo. But whatever it is - I’m hacked off with The Independent (pun intended).

We’re not talking about The Daily Mail (like spending twenty minutes in a mental institution). This isn’t that royalist Telegraph rag I begged my grandfather to ditch after 60 years. My god, it’s not even The Guardian. Dear Indy has been the centre-left mouthpiece of good old-fashioned journalism since 1986. This is the newspaper that publishes opposing views ON THE SAME PAGE. The daily that opposed the invasion of Iraq, has called for the legalisation of soft drugs (whatever those are), went ‘compact’ first! The newspaper that continuously reports on stories even after they’ve gone out of fashion: social inequality, AIDS, Iraq, post-revolutionary fallout, that thing about all the ice melting. An honest voice in the mainstream wilderness which until recently carried on its front page the banner, “free from party political bias, free from proprietorial influence”.

Yet things have changed on Fleet Street, sorry, I mean in Canary Wharf. Read all about it: Economic Survival at Stake; Internet Gobbling up Sales; Trust in Press at All-Time Low. With all this happening everywhere to everyone all of the time, The Indy is feeling spooked, threatened, defensive, schizophrenic. The word ‘independent’ used to mean something – or was at least a badge of respectability on the train. On Saturday March 9^th 2013, it means whatever you want it to mean so long as you’re not planning on thinking too much.

‘Proprietorial Influence and political bias’, let’s meditate on these expressions. Or, let’s mediate on the purchase of the newspaper by Russian billionaire, Alexander Lebedev, in 2010 (Oligarch Buys Newspaper Scandal!). Or, we could just flick through today’s edition and pick out some juicy tidbits. On page five here’s an article shaming The Sun, really. On page nine we’re told the world’s best restaurant has been poisoning cliental, scary. Moving on, here’s the J.K. Rowling page, the i-pad advert, and the announcement that tomorrow’s edition will feature an interview with ‘What-she-did-next-X-factor-judge-in-spiritual-journey’. Luckily, no Britons died yesterday, but a brutal human rights violating dictator did die of cancer during the week. Thank Amnesty he’s not free to brainwash his people or violate the sacred codes of unlimited consumption anymore. Hugo Chavez’s funeral was attended by, and I quote, ‘a strange cast’ (page 18). Maybe it’s the clichés that really drive me wild.

But this is news. Hot off the press, Kanian style, giving us what we want, how we want it: fear, aspiration, titillation, assurance.  Visit Switzerland, Sri Lanka, The Serpentine. Those pesky Argentines should leave our islanders alone. When will the Kenyans learn how to vote properly? The PM’s had his knuckles rapped! Osborne’s got a headache! China’s shitting itself because its troublesome neighbor wants to blow the world to kingdom come! Oh no hang on, everything’s OK. Charlotte Church and Will Smith matter. There is no invisible hand at work here. No one’s being influenced one iota, especially not the independent minds writing and reading this self-declared ‘proudly liberal newspaper’.

How can a publication be free from political bias if it is of one political persuasion? Is ‘neo’ liberalism (you draw the line) not a political position? Has the sky fallen out of the sky? Doesn’t this newspaper have an editorial proudly publishing proudly liberal views, everyday? The freedom The Independent proclaims and revels in is the freedom to portray itself as above and outside the very system it supports. The freedom it professes is that of a business producing, distributing and selling itself as commodity. The independence of The Independent is that of any self-validating media to say what it wants within the bounds of law and political economy. Within the bounds.   

You may find these boundaries roughly in-between Gorgeous George Galloway’s sermon on our bankrupted political class and the two-page spread profile on Home Secretary Theresa May, ‘The Iron Lady in Waiting’. Witness a symmetrical narrative; the remains of half-crazed socialism as the natural counterweight to staunch conservatism. The Independent nestles safely in the middle, on the wasteland, a crow on the shoulder, where the taxes are tweaked and the backs are scratched. In expending much space on Politics, Arts, Science and The World (wherever that is), cloaked in objective veneer, The Indy but reinforces the norms which justify our condition; a self-referential discourse that has no intention of breaking with dogma.

On close inspection dear old Indy is locked into the prevailing plotlines of our times. Perhaps it always has been but we just weren’t paying attention. That nasty residue is the taste of conformity. Maybe I’ll stop writing letters. Maybe I’ll stop buying it. If only I could resist the red sans-serif.  

 

 

Wilton Way

Where they come to wake,
where they come to drift yet.

Where they come to dream,
where they come to forget.

Where they come to be seen,
where they come to hire.

Where they come to escape,
where they come to inspire.

Where they come to create,
to gaze and to idle.

Where they come to refuel,

indulge and smile.

Where they come to reflect,
where they come to preach.

Where they hide in their skins
from the stones in the street.

 

Beyond the grind of the woods
and the barrels and screens
with paper and card

and coffee beans,
on crates of themselves
in a sea of rabbis

they come here to reckon

and forge their alibis.

East London Mornings

http://roastedgallery.com/en/product/46

Again

Again you all appear a tapping at door;

go cry your tears on the stars where I left you.

You cannot be alive,

yet the lock is rattling 

on the box where you’re kept,

out the box where your fierce names

hound me through labyrinths 

of what is called sleep.

Oh, in those early hours of white heat

and light and shapeless patterns,

I lose you again

and again 

and again.

I’ve lost you so many times

we never separate.

How the White Peaks Loomed

Where to begin?

Where does one begin at times like these?

Watch the lines and marks scratch themselves across the page
tracing time for a thousand moons.

The blues stir dull aches and alarms
in the lower spine of an anxious heart.

The wind leaves in the bushes and a hooded shadow
guards a cracked window.
The sands of memory whirl outside
scattered amongst the dust.
Amongst thoughts between hairlines
and streaks on the membrane,
I wait within my skin for the bell to ring.

I feel as tired to die and alive to sing
on any given day.
Clouds form,
rain falls
and the water is washed away with the sea.

Absolutely fantastic:
a page done, completed, certified, true,
a drop released now for the next,
hold tight, squeeze me,
squeeze myself and watch as the salt drains from my soul.

Get rid of the salt.

It‘s raining again, 

it’s night-time,

a truck pulls up in the window
emblazoned with one word,
'TESCO'
I wonder what's inside;
men with guns?
Big black guns
nestling behind dark panes
thick enough to see,
wide enough to ride,
to suck on

hard,
when suddenly:
LOOK OUT! What’s that?
THUMP! And another!
CRACK! And another and another -
Check-shirted bodies

thrown out the back of the truck onto the wet road 

as the rain slides down.

Imagine the images they must've seen.

I have seen things I cannot remember
let alone explain.
I once saw a graveyard in a foothill desert
speckled with wooden crosses
fretted with bones and flowers.
Oh! How the white peaks loomed,
how the white peaks loomed,
how the white peaks loomed.

Tiger

When I woke before dawn the tiger was still there.

I could hear the bathroom dripping
but the tiger was still there.

Inches from the wall and the tiger is still there.

My iris weighs the tiger whites
reflecting tiger hair.

The universe tears away, sirens pull it near.
Somewhere else a star explodes
but the tiger’s over here.

A moment’s not enough within the jungle’s lair.
When she raises tiger body
and leaps from over there.

In turn I gaze and fix my eyes on something in the street.
Lovers running here and there
with nothing on their feet.

For What Remains

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