This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.
cutting and pasting from the british national party's own website:
IMMIGRATION - time to say ENOUGH!
On current demographic trends, we, the native British people, will be an ethnic minority in our own country within sixty years.
To ensure that this does not happen, and that the British people retain their homeland and identity, we call for an immediate halt to all further immigration, the immediate deportation of criminal and illegal immigrants, and the introduction of a system of voluntary resettlement whereby those immigrants who are legally here will be afforded the opportunity to return to their lands of ethnic origin assisted by a generous financial incentives both for individuals and for the countries in question.
We will abolish the ‘positive discrimination’ schemes that have made white Britons second-class citizens. We will also clamp down on the flood of ‘asylum seekers’, all of whom are either bogus or can find refuge much nearer their home countries.
FOREIGN AID - time to spend our money on our own people!
We reject the idea that Britain must forever be obliged to subsidise the incompetence and corruption of Third World states by supplying them with financial aid.
We will link foreign aid with our voluntary resettlement policy, whereby those nations taking significant numbers of people back to their homelands will need cash to help absorb those returning.
The billions of pounds saved every year by this policy will also be reallocated to vital services in Britain.
DEFENCE - no more cuts!
Successive cuts in defence spending have left Britain’s armed forces perilously weak. We will boost Britain’s armed forces to ensure that they are able to deal with any emergency, and defend our homeland and our independence.
We will bring our troops back from Germany and withdraw from NATO, since recent political developments make both commitments obsolete.
We will close all foreign military bases on British soil, and refuse to risk British lives in meddling ‘peace-keeping’ missions in parts of the world where no British interests are at stake - a position of armed neutrality.
We will also restore national service for our young with the option of civil or military service.
===== so folks, make sure you VOTE and get yourself involved and aware. don't let far-right fascists like these into power. on thursday 943,598 individuals gave enough votes to the bnp so that they now have TWO SEATS in the european parliament. CARE about social progress. it's a cliche, but remember hitler was voted into power too.
the tube is a funny place. such a vast network of dark, murky tunnels and deserted stations. small round trains like caterpillars with glowing eyes blindly ascend and descend this subterranean roller coaster, occasionally surfacing once you get past the crush of central london, suddenly appearing as harmless as a declawed cat.
i often thought about writing a paper about the tube in literature. it existed in reality long before [i think] it began to exist in fiction, and i wonder about all its different forms and how its character changes through the decades. the oldest underground system in the world, it's been around for over a hundred years. think of all the abandoned stations and empty platforms that still lurk underneath the ground, think of all the souls that threw themselves under trains. the packed crowds during rushhour make me think of the wasteland: ‘Unreal City, / Under the brown fog of a winter dawn / A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, / I had not thought death had undone so many. / Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, / And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.' eliot was another american in london. janet frame also came to london and took a bus through the City (london proper, 'the square mile,' etc) and (i think it was in 'the edge of the alphabet') she describes the city workers as black suits stabbing their umbrellas before them as if on their way to a funeral.
anyway, so i got on the tube this morning to come to work, and i had a choice: sit next to a man who seemed to be humming slightly but not inoffensively, or take the seat opposite which was next to a man playing a handheld game. i thought if he's listening to the accompanying music/sound effects it might be loud and i wanted to read, so i sat next to Humming Man.
he looked like a typical businessman - 40s or 50s, black suit, nice umbrella with a curved handle. i opened up my book and started reading, then noticed immediately that his humming was more distracting than i thought it would be. then i started hearing 'krishna, krishna' over and over again. every once in a while he blurted out an extra loud 'krishna' so that half the carriage looked over. i still didn't think much of it, just thought an enthusiastic guy who enjoys singing about his deity. fine.
then he looks down and peers over at what i'm reading: 'the idiot' by dostoyevsky. he giggles and says 'the idiot! who's the idiot?!' i started explaining he's the main character of this novel when the man cuts me off and says 'it's the japanese dolls, isn't it? those japanese dolls are idiots!' and starts giggling maniacally again. i can't decide whether or not to be offended, but decide not to and also not to pursue a conversation so i went back to my book.
the train rumbles along, and then i notice him looking at me again. i look up to face him and he says to me, 'you know when you die, you must have krishna on your lips.' i wasn't expecting that, but i just said 'no, i believe in jesus' and stayed quiet. then he started giggling again and got off the train at tottenham court road. i went back to my book.
