So, the hamster is back to his 5 year old owner. I was away the weekend for a course, about Community Radio, my friend was baby-sitting and luckily for him, he got sponsored a ticket for a pirate theatre comedy play, which he thoroughly enjoyed, too. The good thing about baby-sitting is, that all the fun things are possible to do again without getting too embarrassed.
(and also a good opportunity to escape political pure-ism: wanting to go into the zoo? having an urge to go to McDonalds to piss off environmentalists? Wanting to drink coke?
like to see the new Walt Disney film? enjoying Harry potter? Just blame it on the pestering kids!)
The hamster owner also came round for the pirate play, and the 7 year old started off to get interested in capitalism by selling her artwork for 2 pence each, though every kid-friendly method was tried to persuade her of a more anticapitalist way of getting rid of her masterworks… but the claws of society were stronger!
Anyway, babysitting and course made it impossible to participate at the street party, which was put together in a haste 2 weeks ago or so, and we had loads of discussions about it, as it has moved on now to a different organisation and theme to organise it, and as the last 2 street parties took about a year each of at least weekly meetings to organise, it was exciting to get to know if it would be a success or not. For strange enough reasons, this time, the mainstream media seemed even to be slightly positive reporting about it, at the last 2 their stories were more trying to scare people away and horrify them.
Apparentlythere was a jazz festival and 2 football games on which kept the police quite busy, and I was so happy coming back and seeing the report on Indymedia, and also an exact report, and apparently it went quite well ( but for the lack of music, banners, flags, leaflets, costumes…).
Anyway for the Community Media workshop it was to say that the BBC got apparently an 100 000 pounds fund for community radio. Which is pissing off everybody, because they already have enough money, but every other community initiative hasn’t. The training was okay, but the people from the community radio stations here are such nice people, but many without any personality nor profile, it seemed to me. There were only few people I was really interested in, because I could feel in them the same urge and passion for setting up communal media projects, which drive me, too, and for many it seems mainly the urge for becoming famous; while as my urge lies mostly in giving people enough information to empower them to doubt the aims and goals of the capitalist system and to lay the basis for wanting to free themselves of the forced common network of thoughts to see news angles and ideas and philosophies.
The Glasgow Autonomy Project GAP has problems with their lease, a commercial shop owner complained.