two pages (the multiplications of poverty)

'again barely two pages' - kafka on this day in 1914.

horsemouth typing this in the evening of the previous day

horsemouth found a bag of out of date tins of plum tomatoes. he has tried cooking with the first one of these (seemingly with no ill effects). olives, plum tomatoes, onions, peppers, chillies, pasta, red kidney beans. ok so if he's still alive tomorrow he'll be posting this. (he's poisoned himself before with out of date avocado it gave him gut pain and the squits). now tomatoes can be a bit acidic and affect the tin, so horsemouth examined the tin for breaks and bumps, gave it a good sniff, a little taste and then fried it to within an inch of its life. (hopefully that will work). 

he had a beer while he was waiting for it to cook. he'd been creating space in the spare room. he's hoiked loads of  his old furniture out into the far corner of the back garden (not that the garden seems big). he's done some sorting out. he's going to move the keyboards etc. into the spare room. he did some wiping down of the kitchen cabinets as well.

horsemouth takes the view that the house would be liveable if people just took the time to be tidy and considerate (but he knows that is not going to happen). 

horsemouth typing this in the morning of the actual day

hail the artwash. hail the housing crisis.

horsemouth's friends moved out of london 13 years ago. driven out by rising rental prices (and by not earning enough to buy) to an admittedly beautiful town in the south east of england. and here they are under threat of being squeezed out again (13 years later) by rising rental prices and by not earning enough to buy.

and when they get up in the morning what should their feeds be full of but the council opening a new arts and education centre in converted old council offices. how beautiful! how very improving! there are reassuring noises about footfall and estimates of  income captured for the town etc. but surely the council should be devoting its energies (and indeed people's money) to fighting the town's housing crisis?

and it is horsemouth's friends who are saying this, people who are art lovers not filthy philistines like horsemouth. 

meanwhile in hackney (well, just) up at manor house on the site of the former woodberry down estate the demolition of council housing continues and its replacement by luxury tower blocks with stunning views. these look stunning and the architects pat each other on their backs. there will be some drivel about a certain proportion being affordable (at 80% of market rent or purchase price) as if that changed anything. 

in general the local councils are quite keen to get rid of the poor and replace them with solvent consumers. 

as the hackney squatters used to chant where do we go?

this evening he goes to a meeting of the communal endeavour. 

there have been a number of harsh large bills and they will knock down the surplus on the year considerably. in a normal year the regulator would be looking for (a surplus of about 5% on normal operating activities). 

now most years the communal endeavour does much better than this (but probably not this year). 

but, to be frank, this is the members' money, and further this is each individual member's money, the money they need to get food, to heat their houses etc. horsemouth is fascinated by the multiplication of poverties that now goes on - food poverty, energy poverty, housing poverty etc. but not actual poverty you understand. by these measures many of the members are in particular poverties and many more than one. 

horsemouth understands what is being done here - by making the poverty a specific problem relating to a specific issue it is seen as being sortable as opposed to generalised poverty which is seen as unfixable. heaven forfend that we might start to think about the poor and what society would need to look like for them not to be poor.