“Believe it or not – Joe Strummer actually ran the London marathon in 1983. “I didn’t fuckin’ train. Not once. Just turned up and did it,” Strummer said. His keep-fit regime for success– “Drink 10 pints of beer the night before the race. Ya got that? And don’t run a single step at least 4 weeks before the race.” Got it, Joe…”
Well Selvedge – Believe it or not I ran the London Marathon with him – only I needed a beer so ran on ahead getting to the finishing line and over to Earl’s Court an hour earlier – finishing at 3hrs and 3 minutes.
I didn’t train either … tho’ I did for another one six months earlier
… I heard the Clash were running out of steam and wanted to give some moral support …
… Well partly not true. I didn’t know we were in the same stream of humanity on that given day – tho’ always liked them & their music … London Calling and all that … but then who gives a fuck about me and that time … Though one day I might run the London Marathon again …Just so I can say Lou (Lew) Alba (Collins) died right here on this spot on the road which Joe Strummer ran over as well … R.I.P. Joe
Robert Bilott’s ‘self-documenting’ book, Exposure, on Du Pont’s chemical pollution in Parkersburg, West Virginia, is a sobering study of the immorality of corporate America in recent times.
This searing book shows how greed drives so much economic activity in America. Robert Bilott’s story was first revealed to me when I recently saw the film Dark Waters – a Todd Hayes (directed) and Mark Ruffalo (produced and acted) film, well worthy of several nominations in this year Hollywood awards round. It received none. I think we get the picture why.
Bilott tells us the whole story. It begins his ‘unusual’ jumping the fence from his law firm’s usual corporate defence work to take on a plaintiff’s case, for a West Virginia farmer, Earl Tennant, who showed up at his office with a mountain of supporting evidence.
Rob Bilott discovers how Du Pont had been for years dumping poisonous waste from its Washington Works plant at Parkersburg, West Virginia, into landfills which leached into rivers, streams, ponds, killing cattle and compromising the health of inhabitants in a wide area.
This story of corporate harm shows the casual, arrogant and ugly ease with which a powerful corporation can engage in immoral practices, in the name of business as usual. Initially rebuffed by Du Pont, Bilott convinced the courts to order the company to agree to settle, following an independent scientific investigation into the harm done by a chemical PFOA, used for many products, famously in Teflon, gathering huge worldwide profit source and spinner for Du Pont.
It takes years for results from an exhaustive scientific study of the blood samples of nearly 70,000 people in the immediate and surrounding areas, to come back with findings of clear probable cause links to several major life threatening and life-altering diseases and conditions. Du Pont ruined natural water and piped-water supplies meaning that many were already suffering, some dying, from directly associated diseases and conditions.
A jury finally finds for a class civil action against the company – who put up a fierce and at times devious public relations & legal defence – the plaintiffs awarded a 670 million dollar settlement against a corporate giant. Du Pont appealed and appealed then in the face of the unshifting evidence folded and accepted the decision.
This ‘environmental crime’ was aided and abetted by the EPA who worked in tandem with Du Pont to obfuscate key facts of a chemical dumping program from the public, Du Pont carrying on its harmful activities for years in plain sight, abusing the basic trust its economic stranglehold had over the small trusting community. Being the town’s main employer Du Pont had the town cold, knowing all along PFOA was an extremely dangerous substance for all life forms.
In summary, this is a fine book and a necessary read for people who want clean land, air and water, people who a reasonable chance of living their live without corporations callously poisoning them, providing them with cancer. This book is for anyone who believes that accountability over corporate activities is sorely needed, so are lawyers who hold to decent norms, working in a soundly and honourably (democratically) governed society in the 21st century.
Without Earl Tennant bringing this to Robert Bilott’s attention and Bilott deciding to take the career risk of bringing a civil action on behalf of Earl and many others, facing with the victims so many stress-filled years, we may never have even heard about Du Pont’s malfeasance.
Note: In a run up to the class-actiontrial, Du Pont spun off its Washington Works plant into a new company, Chemours, a spin-off technique many companies use to limit financial damage, placing the offending product range under another firm, a firm that can easily be tipped in bankruptcy thus preventing a payout. After years of seeing how Du Pont operated Robert Bilott was ready for the tactic.
I recently saw Stanley Tucci’s 1964 Paris set Final Portrait, with Geoffrey Rush playing the lead, artist, painter Alberto Giacometti.
Not much happens in terms of the old story plot nexus but a lot goes on.
Verdict: Wonderful film, brilliantly observed. Great cast and script. Funny ironic tender sad cruel. Bring on more Stanley. 9/10
I’d give it ten out of ten but no films hit that high for me. Music, painting, literature, yes. Films, no. Too many departments, too many hands on deck for something not to go wrong somewhere.
A three-bird Cockatoo convention visited me soon after I arrived home yesterday, tapping on my window, asking for a conversation. I gave them some nuts, guessing they were down from the fire-affected forests, and they headed off.
With Brexit still breathing down Britain’s neck, I wanted to revisit a blog I did some time ago, to celebrate the very best of British production, in my view – the Landrover – and how this journey back (together with the journey down) opened up Europe for me, travelling across France and in to Italy.
So many journeys so many memories, to and from London and our place in Tuscany, Italy. Nostalgia? Absolutely, completely. I feel the need to revisit these memories before the Brexit maniacs get their way and destroy what is beautiful and sustainable in Freedom of Movement. The camping grounds I stopped at in France were extraordinarily well-managed, great facilities, and so reasonable in price. It made driving the long hours an absolute joy.
The first trip back to London took me up through Italy from Tuscany up through Piemonte to Valle d’Aosta, which led me (countless times) to les Alpes, driving up over the Great St Bernard Pass (il Passo del Gran San Bernardo) that first time down into Switzerland in brilliant sunshine, at four on a September afternoon. Around Lake Geneva to Lausanne I went, arriving at Pontarlier in the dark. I found a parking spot just outside the entrance to a Péage, heading to God knows where. I was absolutely exhausted. After a night of waking up, dozing in the front seat of the old beast, I shook myself conscious and crawled on toward Troyes (seeing the periphery), going on, then around in circles late afternoon south-east of Paris struggling to discover a municipal campsite. Finally I did, coming upon Méry-sur-Seine, a tiny hamlet south-east of Paris.
I parked on the grass and walked in to the village, got something to eat – do I remember what I ordered? No, but whatever it was it was very, very good. I know that. I walked back and set up my mattress in the back of the beast, extending out over a table top I had made especially with a trestle to support it. With a tarpaulin attached to the roof rack and reaching down and pegged in to to the ground all around, fresh country air flowed in all around me. I slept the sleep of angels. To this day I can’t recall a sleep so sound (maybe one other). It rained all night and I never felt a drop.
Waking up at six I packed up like a single person army on the march. I was gone in minutes, driving around to find the right route north, until I stopped at a café for breakfast, café au lait, a croissant and advice how to drive en direction de Meaux skirting north-east Paris, on through the northern cities. I reached Calais at four in the afternoon. Crossing the channel by ferry to Dover, I arrived home in east London at around ten at night. My old landrover only did fifty miles an hour.
That voyage in 2006 I will never forget. I have done the same trip many times in the years since then, in two separate Landrovers (old and new). My last defender model (2013), took me via different routes, but the first trip from Tuscany in the battered old Series Three has never ever been bettered.
It’s tough being a writer in this organised politically-controlled oligarchic world of ours. Publishing is a strategic asset in a stable of assets essential to a well-tuned oligarchic universe. The message, whatever it is, must be edited. That seems to be the last law of the universe, the one Scientists haven’t yet owned up to.
Try thwarting it and you will be edited out of existence says a footnote on the first page of the Oligarch’s Manual. Try beating the system and your Sun will shine no more.
So, I guess even the great Stephen King obeys this largely hidden law of our Oligarchic Universe. (I say great because book sales obviously equate with greatness, right?) It has nothing to do with well-oiled sales machines. Sales = Greatness and vice versa. So, I went, I must say with hope, to read 11.22.63 by the undoubtedly great Stephen King. And what did I find? Well, my mother always said: if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all. But when did I ever listen to my mother?
What on earth was King thinking about?
Not the truth clearly. His novel is fiction, okay I get it. Only he put an awful lot of real people in it as well. Like poor old Lee Harvey. Poor old very dead and much maligned Lee Harvey Oswald. A feckless man and near hopeless rifleman who some people keep saying was guiltier than his own much imagined sin. Lee Harvey Osward with his Carcano Model 91/38 rifle with which he probably couldn’t have hit a barn-door from 100 metres. No, not probably, maybe definitely. The man who somehow reverse-actioned Newtonian physics—with that minor impediment of a tree blocking-out his vision—hitting a moving target from the wrong direction.
From how far was it?
The man who ended in history as being responsible for killing a President. Go figure. Many have tried. I don’t need to debate this anymore. To my mind at least, if Lee were on the sixth floor of the Book Depository that fate-filled day and fated time and was pointing a rifle at the back of the President’s head, he would have had more chance of hitting Parkland Hospital, than as is claimed, he murdered JFK, in the still so far un-investigated—at State Law level—crime of homicide.
The make-believe myth come mystery in Dallas, 22 November 1963.
All now co-signed by bestselling-author Stephen King.
Back in London after swimming the rental through the new rain road lakes of La Maremma, back in flood again, unusual for central Italy, and for the second time in a few weeks. Forced by flooded roads and countryside to take a giro di pepe via Latera through Valentano, then Canino to get back to the Aurelia I then turned the wrong way heading back to Grosetto before u-turning back to Rome.
After spending 6 am to 8.30 am in the pouring rain moving things back in to the place from where I was staying during the renovation I left the camera somewhere in all the moved stuff so only have a couple of photos to show of the progression.
Happening during the “raccolta delle olive” outside in the big world..
..I slipped away to slide into the Saturnia hot springs..
Swimanög 