Dances with Avatars

Two of the highest grossing films of all time are about something I am experiencing now… So why do I feel so out on a limb? Both James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ and Kevin Costner’s ‘Dances with wolves’ were tales of how someone realised the horrors of colonialism and made the drastic decision to side with the colonised.

It’s the bloody autism innit? I look at something and see the wrongness and out it blurts and there I am, upsetting people again. But… it was the right thing to do! Honest!

Now, as everybody else will happily point out to me, the right thing to do is very rarely the smart thing to do and it is often the polar opposite, and when you slap a chapter in your book about the housing crisis about the damage caused by an influx of very insular (mostly) Londoners, don’t be surprised when the local paper that is riddled with them will not touch you or your book with a bargepole. I could quite easily have whipped that part out and got a bit more local interest but I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself as they are a major cause of the housing crisis where I live.

I was talking to a local friend this morning who was complaining that they had been recommended on social media. What is wrong with that you might ask? Well the problem was that it was on a page dedicated to and run by these interlopers. Not all (I hasten’t to add) but most want something for nothing and are constantly complaining and throwing their weight around and many local people simply won’t deal with them anymore. Those born here watch their children struggle to rent pokey flats in the grimmest of areas while they walk past streets that are empty all week and then they have the cheek to ask for discounts… Tacky!

It comes to something when even the new renter’s union consists of many of these small scale colonists, homeowners and those linked to landlords to-boot; as far as I’m concerned that is all about as sane and wise as creating the Myra Hindley children’s playgroup and creche. How can anyone fix a problem that they are instrumental in creating? It hardly makes them able to clearly evaluate the cause of escalating rents and massive shortages when they have helped caused them. Sadly, no one listens to me though… Ho Hum.

As is painfully obvious to all but the most unhinged of people, life is not like the movies. People like myself who stand up for what is right against overwhelming odds tend to get squashed like bugs rather than rewarded with a freeze frame and a fade to black. Sadly, I’m too daft and or stubborn to act any other way.