Thursday, February 17, 2011

Revolution 9

This is going to ramble...unlike all my other piss-poor pithy posts, ho ho!  By the way, you can remove any word starting with 'p' from the last sentence if it does not hit the multi-guess questionnaire I shall be setting.

John and Yoko had clearly had enough by the end of the White Album so they decided to invent sampling on a commercial scale: the only problem was that Paul also liked Stockhausen so eight minutes of hmmmm stayed. Musique concrete a la Scouse was born. But there was only ever one revolutionary, and it wasn't the sentimentalist that became Hopalong's bank-roller.

Anyway, to revolution.  The time has come, as the old man said, to kick off!  I have recently been arraigned and sentenced.  It was a bloody affair, but the British Legal System and its paramilitary wing, otherwise known as 'The Bobby', won the first fight.  Those of you unaccustomed to dealing in Kafka-esque nightmare, or even Dickensian legal labyrinths, should take heed.  Innocent citizens never win: they are bludgeoned into sentence with the force of Crime Prosecution Service lawyers and inadequate defence provision.

By the way, if it happens to you and you decide to defend yourself, a couple of tips: don't call Bobby a liar and don't suggest the Magistrates are idiots.  I did, and I think I may have upset them.  Still, they didn't have the guts to send me to jail.  I could appeal if I had the money of Sir Paul or John.

The upshot being, pending appeal, that I am required to attend Community Payback.  You know this is true because it is printed on the back of the pink Hi-Viz vests that you have to wear once you enter under the wings of the Probation service.  It used to be 'Service' but it is now 'Payback' time!  Have a guess how that encourages the miscreant population?

Being now a convicted criminal, and eligible to all sorts of tattoos and ritual, imagine my delight on Wednesday in losing a day's pay to attend my first 'Payback' time.  A day-long session on Health and Safety, to ensure the poor crims didn't hurt themselves whilst posting flyers through YOUR letterboxes!  What a craic!  Numeracy and literacy tests, via computer, and an end-of-day examination!  Nervous or what?

Luckily, my opposition numbered two claimed dyslexics and one claimed illiterate.  So, three down from sixteen....could I beat the rest in a standing start?  I romped through the tests first, as two others suddenly discovered dyslexic tendencies.  Despite a ban, mobile phone calls and texts were being sent and received at a rate of knots...eventually everyone completed what they could.  Some more hours spent watching videos and being lectured on 'Elf' and we were set the examination.

I knew this stuff but I was beaten!  One lad finished a paper designed to last 40 minutes a clear 5 minutes ahead of me, trailing in on 12 minutes.  Superbly he had multi-guessed 60 questions in 7 minutes by marking them with a pencil stroke.  Unfortunately, our exam held forty questions but the computer-literate answer paper obviously catered for more than one exam! By the time he had erased the erroneous twenty answers I had completed my paper.  Dead heat!  How we laughed...

As you'll gather, not many of these lads take this too seriously.  Most of them had been there before; many were actually on remand and just fitting in extra hours to reduce their sentences.  What genuinely surprised me was their canny urbane knowledge - in Urdu and English, occasionally both - but their inability to communicate effectively.

I offered to suffer my Payback teaching these lads some Literacy or Numeracy but, of course, that ain't good enough.  You've got a sentence, regardless of your education, so get out there and cut some fucking grass.

Appeal will be made, I think.

When you have nothing they cannot take anything from you.  Which is why I now believe Marx was correct: a bloody revolution is due in this country and it starts with sycophantic Bobby and his mates.

Oh, and its 'Revolution 9' because this is disjointed, tape-looped nonsense too!  Rise up and fight!

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