Where's all this stuff going on, man?

I wouldn't recommend watching BBC News 24 for longer than say…twenty hours in one day. It's depressing. War. Death. Terrorism. Recession. Depression…War. Death. Terrorism. Recession. Depression. Over and over again. 

After all this fear and tedium, I look out of my window. 

There’s only birds chirping. 

Where’s all this stuff going on, man? *

Rewind to January 2003. George Bush and Tony Blair are trying to manufacture a public consensus for war in Iraq. I look out of the window of my Hackney flat and catch sight of a protestor spraying an anti-war slogan on the wall of the public lavatory in the park (click on above photo to enlarge). I grab my camera and, thanks to this piece of intrepid photo-journalism, the dauber’s message duly hits a worldwide audience via page 7 of the Hackney Gazette (16 January, 2003).


Fast forward to January 2010. Iraq remains wracked by bloody violence. I look out of my window again, camera in hand. There’s no sign of Blair being chauffeured on his way to give evidence to Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq War inquiry but, thankfully, the birds are still chirping.

* With thanks and apologies to the comedian, Bill Hicks, the wise American.

Paul Coleman, London, January 2010