Britain and Qatar: Why National Security is Energy Security.

'Take Qatar. There is evidence that, as the US magazine The Atlantic puts it, “Qatar’s military and economic largesse has made its way to Jabhat al-Nusra”, an al-Qaida group operating in Syria. Less than two weeks ago, Germany’s development minister, Gerd Mueller, was slapped down after pointing the finger at Qatar for funding Islamic State (Isis).

While there is no evidence to suggest Qatar’s regime is directly funding Isis, powerful private individuals within the state certainly are, and arms intended for other jihadi groups are likely to have fallen into their hands. According to a secret memo signed by Hillary Clinton, released by Wikileaks, Qatar has the worst record of counter-terrorism cooperation with the US.

And yet, where are the western demands for Qatar to stop funding international terrorism or being complicit in the rise of jihadi groups? Instead, Britain arms Qatar’s dictatorship, selling it millions of pounds worth of weaponry including “crowd-control ammunition” and missile parts. There are other reasons for Britain to keep stumm, too. Qatar owns lucrative chunks of Britain such as the Shard, a big portion of Sainsbury’s and a slice of the London Stock Exchange.To really combat terror, end support for Saudi Arabia, Owen Jones, Guardian, Sunday 31 August 2014

All true, but Jones omits that Britain gets 12% of its gas supply from Qatar in the form of liquefied natural gas. Without that it would have to get it from Russia or else fracking has to happen. If not, then nuclear power has to expanded because renewable sources would not be sufficient for a nation of 60million increasing.

The stock argument as regards the weapons sales would be that if they were not sold, Britain would lose both the money and also the special relationship which would enable it to exert at least some influence over Qatar, though there seems little evidence before 2014 that this had much effect.

The dependence upon Qatar increased following the decline of North Sea gas and the fact Britain became a net importer of gas in 2006. This trend is set to continue because Britain would prefer not to become more dependent upon Russian gas, not least given the Ukrainian crisis developing into a potential 'full war'.

The problem with Owen Jones' analysis is that it pretends the relationship is based on the idea of 'the Establishment' and the corporations putting profits from arms deals before Britain's security given Qatar's backing for Sunni militants in Syria, even those affiliated to Al Qaida.

The reality is more complicated and based upon a projection of energy needs and security. Britain’s dependence on gas imports will rise to 70% by 2020. In November 2013 the then Energy Minister Michael Fallon claimed Britain was already importing 50% of its energy.

Far from being only about corporate profits, energy analyst Graham Freedman made plain it that “until we get the next surge in LNG over the next three years we’ll see higher prices and of course utilities have to pass these on to consumers". Higher bills means less shopping and consumer driven 'growth'.

Energy security is set to become more problematic over time. Michael Fallon stated that by 2030, the UK would need to purchase three-quarters of its natural gas needs. So even if, unlike the US, Britain imports no oil from Saudi Arabia, Qatar is vital as a source of gas.

In November 2013, the Centrica corporation signed a GBP4 billion contract with Qatargas to import 3 million tonnes per year of LNG over a period of 4.5 years ( ending 2018 ), which adds up to equalling roughly some 13% of the UK’s annual residential gas demand.

The contract would not be connected to oil prices and Qatar has been prepared to divert LNG westwards, even though it could fetch a higher price in Asia. Fallon stated that “long-term deals of this kind with reliable suppliers like Qatar are vital for our future energy security.”

One reason Britain enjoys such a close relationship with Qatar is not only that it is a key energy and investment partner, thus recycling the petrocurrency into the London property market and the Stock Exchange, but also that Britain is committing itself to defending it.

Qatar is a major rival of Iran. One reason why Britain backed Qatar and Turkey in their support for the Muslim Brotherhood and the Free Syria Army, and failed to do anything when it was clear the Sunni jihadists were getting more ruthless, was to check Iranian influence in Syria.

Qatar in 2009 proposed a Qatar-Turkey pipeline that would transport gas from the South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf, which is shared with Iran, through Syria and Turkey, making Erdogan's country an east-west energy hub between the EU and the Middle East.

Not only was removing Assad vital to this geostrategy. Indeed, there were fears that Iran could build a rival 'Shi'ite Islamic pipeline' from the Gulf towards the Eastern Mediterranean via Iraq should the Shia Alawi ruler Assad not be removed as planned.

Hence Qatar is considered a vital geopolitical ally in containing Iran far more than with Saudi Arabia, which despises and fears Qatar's support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria, as well as Hamas, could radicalise radical Islamists in the oil rich kingdom just west.

Both Gulf states see in Iran the main threat and that's both why they turned a blind eye to private donors funding Sunni jihadists in Syria and were even in competition with each other to back the most ruthless factions so that they could win the right to control Syria after Assad.

Philip Hammond in April 2014 made plain that Britain is not simply interested only in arms deals in the Middle East but in committing Britain to Qatar's defence and that the strategic aim was quite forthrightly about the security of Britain's energy interests.

“As we draw down from the combat situation in Afghanistan, where we have for many years had an opportunity to provide training to our forces through the deployments they do to Afghanistan, we have to think through how we will train our forces in desert warfare, in hot-conditions’ combat in the future, and certainly one of the options is to establish a more permanent facility, somewhere in the Gulf,

The West is crucially dependent on a stable energy market above all else. Our economic recovery is fragile. Anything that calls for a spike in the oil price would derail it.

The mostly likely scenario to cause that up spike is a surge in tension in this region, particularly in the Strait of Hormuz. It is very much in our interest to have a stable situation in the Gulf. That is why Western countries are prepared to invest so much in this region and supporting the Gulf states to maintain that stability,”

Thoughts on Compulsory Voting.

With elections in Australia coming up, some may be pondering the introduction of the same system of voting in the United Kingdom.

Hoever, rather than introducing compulsory voting in Britain, there should be a 'None of the Above' option on the ballot card, though whether that would improve electoral turnout or not is doubtful. The fact is that people no longer think voting matters. Like much else, it voting itself has become a form of consumer choice.

If compulsory voting were introduced, there would be a need to give people the right to reject all of the candidates. Electoral turnouts have declined since 1992. Even Blair's "landslide" victory of 1997 for "New" Labour saw a lower turnout than the 73% twentieth century average.

The electoral turnouts have been dire ever since. The fact is that there is not much difference between the three main parties and low turnouts are due to apathy or else to anger because the politics is so bland and choreographed, without real confrontational debates in Parliament.

Those who tend to vote as a proportion do tend to be those with some sort of stake in the economic system. Yet even if compulsory voting were introduced, it is unlikely to make much difference as Australia's neoliberal corporatist state is very much similar to that in Britain.

The evidence is large numbers of Australians, some 1 in 5, do not cast a vote that counts. That is 20% of the population

'In 2010, 1.5 million out of 15.5 million eligible Australians were missing from the electoral roll. A further 900,000 were on the roll but did not vote. And 700,000 cast informal votes that could not be counted'.

Compulsory voting makes very little difference in practice. It is, in reality, 'compulsory turnout'. If governments are to consider all those who vote in elections as opposed to only those who vote for them, then compulsory voting means only those that count are those which are formal votes.

Clearly, in both Britain and Australia the 'real votes' are those belonging to those who are given a stake in the system and those who think the system does not reflect interests beyond global corporate businesses, advertising, mass media and consumerism count for nothing.

J G Ballard accurately got to the reality of the situation when he wrote in 2005, after a general election with a mere 61.4 % turnout, that,

'politics has lost its will, and may even have reached its close, absorbed into consumerism and public relations. Perhaps elections and the ballot box are little more than a folkloric ritual, along with parliament itself. Like university lecturers and psychiatrists, politicians may incidentally do some good, but their real loyalty is to themselves and their profession. The chief function of election campaigns is to convince us that politics and politicians are still important.

Real power has gone, migrating to the shopping malls and hypermarkets where we make the important decisions in our lives. Consumerism controls everything, and the ballot box defers to the cash counter. The only escape from all this is probably out-and-out madness, and I expect the number of supermarket shootings and meaningless crimes to increase dramatically in the coming years. If anywhere, the future seems to lie with competing systems of psychopathology'.

With all politicians promoting a repressive security-surveillance state, constant monitoring of 'the community' and meddling in Muslim majority lands, the better to control the resources needed to prop up this frantic consumerism, the stage is set for a conflict between control freaks and chaos mongers.

Shaping Up for Things To Come

‘… could consumerism turn into fascism? The underlying psychologies aren’t all that far removed from one another. If you go into a huge shopping mall and you’re looking down the parade, it’s the same theatrical aspect: these disciplined ranks of merchandise, all glittering like fascist uniforms. When you enter a mall, you are taking part in a ceremony of affirmation, which you endorse just by your presence.’

J G Ballard The Guardian, 14 June 2008.

Though this picture of shop workers limbering up in perfect unison along the aisles of a store in the Beijing Shopping Centre is something that does not happen at the moment, this appalling sight in today's free "newspaper" Metro had me thinking that something like this could come to Britain in the near future.

The novelist J G Ballard mused increasingly on the theme of whether consumerism could lead to a sterile world of perfection not least in his last novel Kingdom Come. This a theme I've become obsessed with not least because Ballard's writing was unknown to me when I first started to ponder this when Blair came to power in 1997.

Since 1997 and Blair's carefully choreographed entry into Downing Street, which was slightly hysterical and had something totalitarian about it and the re-presentation of the British PM Blair as a saviour who could act as a megaphone for "the people's aspirations" through soundbites, real political choice and debate has been continually constricted.

With the lies that lead to the Iraq War, the curtailment of civil liberties in anti-terrorism legislation, the acceleration of social trends that are eroding civil society and reducing politics largely to the aesthetics and images that buttress the power of a new moneyed oligarchy with little time for Britain as anything other than a "market", questions need to be asked.

Consumerism, a society of the mass spectacle, the depth psychology of the advertising industry in tapping inner most insecurities and needs and the elevation of image and brand symbolism over the substance of words could lead to a combination of greater consumer freedom and greater authoritarianism.

There is no reason why China, instead of being a nation that somehow will learn to adapt towards Western liberalism in politics will not instead combine "liberalism" in economics with an ever more effective security state that will crush freedom even better precisely because people prefer consumer security and a fantasy world of perfection than freedom.

In that sense, China could be a new model to decaying Western states such as Britain. Blair had authoritarian tendencies and lauded Singapore in 1997 as a great beacon of modernity. One commentator called this trend "happy face fascism", something that has surreal possibilities that few thinkers have looked at-apart from Ballard.

Westfield and the BBC Security's Ban on My Photography was Not Legal.

The BBC security Guard was not aware in banning my taking photos of the BBC buildings that he was technically now on the wrong side of the law which cited sections 43-44 of the Terrorist Law as a pretext to have the police stop photography of public buildings.

In fact just days before sections 43-44 were overturned by the new Home Secretary in the UK Teresa May was forced to repeal the draconian New Labour measures that have been used to question and stop and search photographers and train spotters,

This from the British Journal of Photographers,

In an oral statement, May says that police officers will not be able to use Section 44 stop-and-search powers on individuals. However, Section 44 will remain available to police officers wishing to search vehicles.

The Home Secretary says: "Since last Wednesday, I have sought urgent legal advice and consulted police forces. In order to comply with the judgment – but avoid pre-empting the review of counter-terrorism legislation – I have decided to introduce interim guidelines for the police. I am therefore changing the test for authorisation for the use of section 44 powers from requiring a search to be ‘expedient’ for the prevention of terrorism, to the stricter test of it being ‘necessary’ for that purpose. And, most importantly, I am introducing a new suspicion
threshold."

She adds: "Officers will no longer be able to search individuals using section 44 powers. Instead, they will have to rely on section 43 powers – which require officers to reasonably suspect the person to be a terrorist. And officers will only be able to use section 44 in relation to the searches of vehicles. I will only confirm these authorisations where they are considered to be necessary, and officers will only be able to use them when they have ‘reasonable suspicion’.

These interim measures will bring section 44 stop and search powers fully into line with the European Court’s judgement. They will provide operational clarity for the police. And they will last until we have completed our review of counter-terrorism laws."

While the change of rules will come as a victory to photographers, police officers will continue to hold stop-and-search powers under Section 43 of the Terrorism Act 2000. That section, as May points out in her statement, allows officers to search anyone that reasonably suspect of being a terrorist. Two days ago, a young photographer, Jules Mattsson, was stopped under these powers.

Already, Labour Shadow Home Secretary Alan Johnson has hit back at the decision, arguing that it signals a diminishing of police powers. He adds that the European Court's ruling was based on how the powers were used back in 2005 and that the Labour government had "reviewed and improved" the act.

Apparently, the European court forced the decision,

'May's decision comes more than a week after the European Court of Human Rights refused a Home Office appeal against an earlier decision that had found Section 44 to be illegal.

The Court wrote to the Government that "the panel of five judges of the Grand Chamber decided on 28 June 2010 not to accept your government's request that the [Gillan and Quinton v. the United Kingdom] case be referred to the Grand Chamber."

The Court added: "The judgement of 12 January 2010 therefore became final on 28 June 2010."

On 12 January, the European Court stated that the use of Section 44 to stop-and-search people is illegal and that the powers lack proper 'safeguards against abuse'.

The court was hearing the case of Kevin Gillan and Pennie Quinton, who were both stopped during a London-based arms trade show on 09 September 2003. The police were 'acting under sections 44-47 of the 2000 Act, while (the two were) on their way to a demonstration close to an arms fair held in the Docklands area of East London'.

The European Court found that the two protesters' rights had been violated under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. "The Court considered that the use of the coercive powers conferred by the anti-terrorism legislation to require an individual to submit to a detailed search of their person, clothing and personal belongings amounted to a clear interference with the right to respect for private life," the European Court found in its judgement.

It continued: "The public nature of the search, with the discomfort of having personal information exposed to public view, might even in certain cases compound the seriousness of the interference because of an element of humiliation and embarrassment."

The court added that it was "struck by the statistical and other evidence showing the extent to which police officers resorted to the powers of stop and search under section 44 of the Act and found that there was a clear risk of arbitrariness in granting such broad discretion to the police officer.

There was, furthermore, a risk that such a widely framed power could be misused against demonstrators and protestors in breach of Article 10 and/or 11 of the Convention."

Conservative defiance

Already, the new coalition government had announced that it would review the controversial terror laws. Today, May says that while her government couldn't have appealed the European Court's judgement, it "would not have done so had we been able."

The government plans to introduce the Freedom Bill to "scale back" the government's place in people's lives. As part of the Freedom Bill, designed to bring back the freedom and civil liberties lost in the past decade, the government intends to reform the unpopular anti-terrorism laws that have constantly been used against photographers.

The Bill intends to strike a balance between protecting the public and ensuring civil liberties are preserved.

Over the past few years, and particularly in the last 18 months, Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 has been used to prevent photographers from working in public places. The government says that the Freedom Bill will introduce "safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation."

The Journal states this was a "A victory for photographers".

May's decision is a clear victory for photographers, who have united behind campaigns such as I'm a photographer, not a terrorist, and with the support of the Amateur Photographer and British Journal of Photography magazines - the only country-wide publication to have highlighted the plight of photographers.

"Liberty welcomes the end of the infamous Section 44 stop and search power that criminalised and alienated more people than it ever protected," says Shami Chakrabarti, director of the Liberty human rights organisation.

"We argued against it for ten years and spent the last seven challenging it all the way to the Court of Human Rights. It is a blanket and secretive power that has been used against school kids, journalists, peace protesters and a disproportionate number of young black men. To our knowledge, it has never helped catch a single terrorist. This is a very important day for personal privacy, protest rights and race equality in Britain."

Human Rights Watch has also hailed the change. "We welcome the decision by the Home Secretary to suspend the use of this abusive power," says Benjamin Ward, Human Rights Watch’s deputy director for Europe and Central Asia.

"The government should now amend the law to allow terrorism searches of vehicles where there is suspicion and then repeal section 44 once and for all."

Read more: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/1721519/section-44-dead-home-office#ixzz0u97yHoV6

So in a few weeks naturally I will return to the BBC and Westfield and other places of "interests" to take more photographs.

Westfield Revisited in the Mind.

Still trying to puzzle out why I was banned from taking photos of Westfields unless a member of the family or friends was in the photo ( as if that would make much different to Westfield being depicted in the background if a terrorist threat is detected. )

Notice that Westfield is not even on the logo outside termed The Westfields Shopping Centre. It's now just Westfield, a district of London like Southfields is in South London near Wimbledon but a new form of community entire of itself with its own "policy".

Westfield is a place where the same boring branded shops are offered but the idea, as Ballard put it in Kingdom Come, is to offer more of something akin to a religious experience, a collective affirimation of identity through compulsive shopping and spending rituals embraced freely.
All of this was as deeply weird. The place is weird. Not least considering I was told my presence was not welcome with the comforting knowledge that I could take photos only if a relative or friend was in it. But it was breaking the code by taking photos of the building itself.

Perhaps it was the wrong kind of emotional reaction to the place, one of ritual affirmation of the new "community" being At One in their shared pursuit of the same driven goal-consuming. A lingerer taking photos by definition is a) not spending and b) not being part of it: that is not consuming.

This shows a kind of intolerance of the outsider, a fear that in buying nothing I was rejecting the shared community values of compulsive obsessive consumerism as a lifestyle choice, without which the mystique of Westfield would break down.

For Westfield is more that a place to shop: it is a place of worship. And one shall not make any graven images of Westfield. I should have been consuming or, at least fully engaged with consumption. To take pictures for free is a kind of heresy.

It might have expressed disapproval instead of affirmation. Perhaps, as Ballard said, consumerism could lead to fascism. Here could be the future of a "happy face fascism" where only positive and selective versions of satisfied consumers was the emotionally correct response.

Such is Westfield's policy the security guard who told me robotically that taking photos was forbidden. As Westfield's policy. This privatisation of public shared space means a person is required voluntarily to do something he ought to feel compelled to do-and to call it a choice.

Taking photos without being part of Westfields means not sharing what Tony Blair, the ex-PM who looks like a daytime TV presenter or other oily permatanned creeps trying to incite the masses to feel good about tribalised identities through consumption or "our values".

These Temples of Consumption are there to eradicate history, the sense of past and future and create an eternal present in which nothing else matters but the entitlement one must expect as a human right: disappointment and satiety breeds the desire for more and more.

Thus it is never enough and breeds resentment. One that could lead to lead to "elective psychopathology" , the hatred of those who do not share "herd values" by the herd and those who know how to manipulate them

That is as a herd of the bewildered who are mesmerised into consumerism. J G Ballard actually based Kingdom Come on The Bentall Centre in Kingston-upon-Thames but his meditations on these places,

"I remember four or five years ago going into the Bentall Centre, a huge shopping mall in Kingston, a town I hate. It was before Christmas, and there were these three gigantic bears on a plinth in the centre of this huge atrium … automatons, moving to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The place was packed; crowds looking up at them. And I thought, God, these people have left their brains somewhere. What’s going on here? And then I noticed that my head was moving, too. I thought, Jesus, get out fast.’

Ballard said in an in interview, 2006

What he also said of these bland generic Palaces of Consumerism applies to Westfield. In an interview for The Independent in September 2006 Ballard reflected,

"Consumerism is so weird. It's a sort of conspiracy we collude in....You'd think shoppers spending their hard-earned cash would be highly critical. You know that the manufacturers are trying to have you on. But they do not".

Literally, then, they buy into being conned. Ballard continued,

"Why do I dislike the Bentall Centre so much?.....because it's so... cretinous." They ( the consumers ) seem to be moving though a kind of commercial dream space and vague signals float through their brains. That's why it's a potentially fertile basis for some major psychological shift."

"Boredom is a fearsome prospect. There's a limit to the number of cars and microwaves you can buy. What do you do then?.... In the past he has predicted a future where boredom will be interrupted by violent, unpredictable acts.

Consumerism does have certain affinities with fascism. It's a way of voting not at the ballet box but at the cash counter... The one civic activity we take part in is shopping, particularly in big malls. These are ceremonies of mass affirmation.".

The only reaction for and against these places Ballard has mused is psychopathology. Those who cannot take it any more will emerge of of the "desert" and let rip with their mail order Kalashnikovs simply in order to force what some contemptuously call "consumerbots" to feel something.

Those who participate in the boredom will need more and more and the latent drift towards a voyeuristic culture based on cruelty will be furthered by those who hunger for violence and outrage to quicken the adrenals: hence the way rough contact sports will play a bigger role as well as ritualist and choreographed street violence and hooliganism.

All four of Ballard's last four novels Super Cannes, Cocaine Nights, Millennium People and Kingdom Come deal with the notion that the world is overcrowded and increasingly homogenised and organised for perfect order and stability in which the architecture of malls, hotels, airports and business parks eradicate historical consciousness and plunge infantile consumers into a fairytale Neverland.

And yet with Ballard these"architectures of control" always lead with their residents and visitors to a lethal psychic entropy in the nervous system in which long periods of banal boredom will give way to "the new pathology of everyday life." and random acts of violence, rape, murder and meaningless terrorism.

In Central Europe I noticed in Bratislava and Krakow that not only rollerblading, smoking and dogs were banned but also photos and, more oddly, guns, as if people would ordinarily carry their guns around with them in Poland and Krakow. What on earth could have been the thinking behind that ?

The idea that consumers would walk through a mall with a gun is curious. Perhaps it is true that if life becomes so boring and deracinatred that people will seek to resort to meaningless acts of violence simply to make themselves and others feel more alive.

In Kingdom Come, the looming dominance of the shopping mall becomes an example of what Ballard termed "the architecture of control"

"The ideas offered by Dr Maxted I endorse, by and large.....In Kingdom Come the psychiatrist Maxted observes that: "Consumerism creates huge unconscious needs that only fascism can satisfy. If anything, fascism is the form that consumerism takes when it opts for elective madness."

The fascination with Nazism in England, the reference to "New Hitlers" or "Little Hitlers" as petty bureaucrats frustrated with their own lives, has now merged with the resentful feeling people have as Britain becomes a shoddy half cock version of the USA, without the remaining charms of continental Europe.

That offers one reason for the way Blair was able to tap into the notion that Britain along with the USA could embark on military regime change in Iraq led by some odder figures on the fringe of "neoconservatism" and invoke all enemies as "new Hitler's" in what could be called the pyschology of projection.

Blair sought to tap into the man of messianic destiny pose in a very English way but the danger to British democracy is not only what Lord Hailsham warned long ago as the danger of an "elective dictatorship" but also in a fascist style type of eschatological politics being promoted by the PM's ministerial executive machine.

As Ballard wrote,

Bush and the neo-cons are driven by emotion, and this appeals to Blair. The emotions are the one language that he understands, and reality is defined by what he feels he ought to believe.

It if often forgotten that Hitler and Mussolini were experts at oratory and of of having political rallies devoted to kitschy choreography and parades and the systematic and perverted use of language to distort reality in the was that Blair did over Iraq with the soundbites and the spin.

Not having been dominated by a Nazi or Communist totalitarian regime and faced with inexorable decline from the status of a world power to satellite state of the USA has created a new hunger for Britain to reassert it's importance as compensation for being an offshore island of a European superstate which is supposedly meant to take Britain seriously as the major player

Yet, as Ballard commented,

Britain's per capita income is one of the lowest in western Europe. Without the largely foreign-owned City of London the whole country would be a suburb of Longbridge, retraining as an offshore call-centre servicing the Chinese super-economy.

In Kingdom Come Ballard wrote in the Guardian in 2008 that in in relation to Consumerism and Fascism, that

The underlying psychologies aren't all that far removed from one another. If you go into a huge shopping mall and you're looking down the parade, it's the same theatrical aspect: these disciplined ranks of merchandise, all glittering like fascist uniforms.

When you enter a mall, you are taking part in a ceremony of affirmation, which you endorse just by your presence."

Consumerism has to a large extent replaced art and culture in this country. The principal entertainment industry nowadays is soccer which, with its marching supporters' groups, is not that far removed from fascism."

Then in the New Stateman Ballard continued A Fascist's Guide to the Premiership in September 2006 that,

The notion of being British has never been so devalued. Sport alone seems able to be the catalyst of significant social change. Could consumerism evolve into fascism?

Is the English working class re-tribalising itself? Out here, to the west of London, in the motorway towns near Heathrow, a few St George's flags still hang in a dispirited way from council house windows and the coat-hanger aerials of white vans. As I drive from Shepperton past the airport, there's a sense of a failed insurrection

During the World Cup, a forest of flags flew proudly from almost every shop, factory and car, a passionate display willing on more than Beckham's boys in Germany.

This wasn't patriotism so much as a waking sense of tribal identity, dormant for decades. The notion of being British has never been so devalued.

Sport alone seems able to be the catalyst of significant social change. Football crowds rocking stadiums and bellowing anthems are taking part in political rallies without realising it, as would-be fascist leaders will have noted.

The English, thank God, have always detested jackboots, searchlight parades and Führers ranting from balconies.

But the Premier League, at the pinnacle of our entertainment culture, is a huge engine of potential change, waiting to be switched on.Could consumerism evolve into fascism? There is nothing to stop some strange consumer trend becoming a new ideology.

Whilst resident in Poland I warned that Poles ought to be beware that England, where some million migrants thought of as a land of milk and honey is an increasingly dystopian version of the future and that veneration for England is entirely misplaced.

Yet the psychopathologies are already coming here with the gated communities of Salvator Tower in Bronowice and elsewhere in parts of Krakow. Be careful what you wish for. As Ballard ends on an almost apocalyptic note,

Real power has gone, migrating to the shopping malls and hypermarkets where we make the important decisions in our lives. Consumerism controls everything, and the ballot box defers to the cash counter.

The only escape from all this is probably out-and-out madness, and I expect the number of supermarket shootings and meaningless crimes to increase dramatically in the coming years.

If anywhere, the future seems to lie with competing systems of psychopathology.

No Photos in Westfields or outside the BBC-Could Consumerism Lead to Fascism ?

This is Westfields Shopping Mall in Shepherds' Bush, one of the largest, if not the largest, in London. I had passed it several times on the overland train down from Willesden Junction down to West Brompton, where I alight to then to get the District Line Tube Train to Putney Bridge where I work. I had it on my mind to see what it was all about.

On this hot summer day in July 2010 I finally got off the train from Clapham Junction after seeing the immense magnitude of the new Westfields shopping Centre in Shepherd's Bush. This horrible temple of mass consumerism might as well have been the inspiration for J G Ballard's Kingdom Come.

One of the greatest chroniclers of our age wrote in the last years of his life about the idea that consumerism could lead to Fascism.

I entered this vacuous shopping Utopia and took at least 30 pictures before a black female security guard rushed up to me. She said "You cannot take photographs here in Westfields".

I replied "Um, er...Why not, it's a free country isn't it ? And this is a kind of public space I suppose where people would surely want to take photographs of their wonderful day out in Westfields"

"Not taking photos in Westfields is Westfields policy"? she said emphatically

Yes, but why ? I'm not harming anybody. I find the architecture and the design most intriguing as it looks like a vision of Heaven to me. I really love it here." I said with an airy indifference, as consumers shot glances at me with hostility.


"Yes. Westfield's policy is quite clear. No photos".

"Does Westfields then have different laws from the rest of England ?

"No, this is Westfield own private policy."

"So I can't bring my wife here to enjoy a lovely day out here. It's just so airy and bright here that I wanted to show here what it really looks like so we could make a trip here".

"I'm not going to repeat myself again sir, Westfield's does not allow photos without people. So yeah, you can take photos of your wife here"

Um, ok but what's the difference as she'd be in a picture with Wesfiel's clealy shown in the photo, I just don't understand".

"It's Westfield's policy sir. I'm just doing my job. Please I'm busy".

"Ok, now just really I understand everything".

" Thanks sir".

At least she did not actually grab the camera off me.

But after leaving Westfields I walked up the road to the BBC Television Centre. There was more bad news. No cameras were allowed there either, which a curious position for a TV channel to maintain-if this indeed BBC Policy these days.

Just further up the road the old 1950s BBC Television Centre were the new wierd "post modern" steel metallic buildings to the north of it . It had flagpoles blowing in the soft breeze. I started snapping when, after five minutes, a security guard aggressively rushed up into my face and snapped at me angrily,

" You can't take photos here Sir!"

"Why not , it's not gated. I like the steel metallic architecture ?. It very futuristic you see".

"No, put your camera away now. No photos of the BBC". He glared at me with anger but, even more disturbingly with agonised hatred mingled with pure incomprehension. This man though it was almost insane to take photos of the BBC.

I just somewhat wearily and sarcastically looked him directly in the eyes and said in my drollest fashion "Now I understand. But I just love the BBC for representing the best of British liberal culture that we promote worldwide. I was just admiring the BBC. Don't you ?".

"Can you just go away please"?

"Don't worry. I've been in Eastern Europe too long and didn't realise the situation had changed so much in the UK. In Moscow I was allowed to take photos of the Kremlin, a really sinister place that was a bastion of totalitarianism in the USSR. That's why Kenny Everett of the BBC in the 1980s wanted to bomb Russia".

"I've just told you to get away from the buildings and go away. Will you just do that immediately I won't ask you again Sir?" as he looked with hostility at the digital camera.

"Yes.....Ok then....Sir".

The heat was blazing down on me. I was giddy and feeling deeply estranged, so I then tried to head West of Westfields along the Westway heading towards Paddington. Drivers in white vans honked at me as I walked along the narrow path without any exits.

Someone in a white van whizzed past and loudly shouted "nutter". Pedestrians are subversive when they walk along Westway somehow. They clearly though that this was a place where I should not be walking. But I was.

I had not done anything wrong but the fact that someone would walk along Westway must have seemed insane for them. But again, I was taking pictures and glaring at the high rise blocks and the hideous Trellick Tower in Notting Hill.