Neighbours, what are they good for?

There are quite a few things that I could do without in life, such as mosquitoes, hay-fever, hip-pop music or… neighbours.

Not many people are lucky enough not to have them and actually if you want to determine if someone is rich or not, you should count the number of neighbours he or she may have. Trust me on this: proper rich people do not have neighbours. Take Bill Gates, for example, he is trying to save Africa from malaria but the first thing he did when he got some money in his pocket was to buy out all his neighbours. I wonder what would happen if all these chaps he is saving in Africa one day leave their countries and go living next to him… He will not be too pleased I guess.

I am not a proper rich, or even a wannabe one, in fact I do have my fair share of neighbours. Although I cannot complain, my neighbours are such gentlemen. One of them, last Sunday morning, threw a chicken leg out of his window down onto my kitchen roof. This is the same gentleman who the week before threw not one but six tea bags again on the top of my kitchen roof, plus uncountable cigarettes butts. He is either does not have a rubbish bin or he thinks that, by having a garden I am a capitalist bourgeois exploiting unlucky people like him without one. In fact the opposite is true, he is exploiting me considering that he is living on benefits, and benefits are paid by taxes collected from taxpayers like me. He should be grateful he is living in such a caring society that caters for unemployable people like him.

The throwing by such gentleman is nevertheless not as annoying as the loud music he plays occasionally. The music is sometimes so loud that I can tell you which song he is playing and the music is so full of beats that it seems like the Germans are running the Blitz again.

But in rescue of me there is always the Southwark council. Oh yes, the brave council workers whose skills and knowledge are always at the citizen’s service!

Every time in fact I report a loud noise they take their time to come around and when they arrive, they always come up with a different excuse not to deal with the situation. One time that I called them they said, "oh well the noise is not directly above you, sorry mate". Thank God it was not above me or otherwise I would have to shout to talk to the council rep, and if my next door neighbour is too deaf too hear (or too Englishman to make a complaint), it is not my fault.

Another time I called the council at 9:00 on a Saturday morning, but because the noise was not affecting much the living room downstairs the council rep could not help. He said you are allowed to make noise from 7:30 on a Saturday morning unless the noise is affecting the living room! This means that, if I want to lie in bed on a Saturday morning, I cannot, and this also means I am going to move the bloody living room upstairs, so the next time council people come around they will have to come up with another bloody excuse.

Last time I called the council it was in the evening and the music was loud again. This time instead of coming and reporting the accident, the council rep went straight talking to this gentleman and asked him politely to turn the music down. That was good, for once, but then a few days later the council sent me a letter saying that they could not assess the noise level because by the time they arrived to my flat the noise had ceased… of course the bloody noise had ceased, they went and told the guy to put the noise down, didn’t they? If they had come to me first, they would have heard the noise!

I swear to God that if one day I ever become rich, I will follow the example of Bill Gates.
Save Africa? No, buy out the neighbours.

G20, villains, media and all that

The G20 is over.

Shame in a way, I had been enjoying going to the office in jeans and T-shirt and then, in the evening, watching the news showing ninja-lookalike economists creating havoc in the City of London.

The protesters were of course, as always, full of ideas. Destroy here! Destroy there! Death to capitalism! Hang the bankers! Global warming is frying us! America is evil... well, no, surprise surprise, this time around the anti-americanism was, unlike in the previous G# meetings, not as much a part of the agenda. This year with the credit crunch sweeping across the world, it could have been the protesters’ finest hour but, damn it, Dubya is not in the White House anymore... so they were a bit dull, I must say: without the villain, there are no heroes.

But the media need a villain too, and gone Dubya, there is still Berlusconi… In fact, the Metro this morning (3rd April) on page three had a pathetic mockery of the Italian PM G20 days, where it is claimed he has fallen out of favour with Obama. The article was a kind of a diary, supposed to be read with an Italian accent. It was supposed to be funny, but I found it misleading, stupid and offensive.

Then tonight I got a copy of the London Lite and there was the news of the Queen angry at Berlusconi. I then went home and checked the website for more clues. From the video you can hear Berlusconi calling Mr Obama! Mr Obama! in a loud voice, but Italians are loud, believe me, nothing new here. The Queen was probably caught by surprise but she is 80-something and her husband is Prince Philip. Have I said enough?

I can't anyway see the point of making such a big fuss about this meeting of the G20 (why they keep growing anyway, they were 7, then 8, what next? 37?). The heads of the states at the meeting were all clueless about how to make the economy running again, nobody more than Gordon Brown, who came up with this ridiculous meeting (costing UK taxpayers £50 million pounds) in order to beat the French at something, and then pretend to still have a reason to be in power.

Brown is acting like a wannabe leader of the world (he has claimed to have saved it already, do you remember?) when in fact he has not won a single general election in his life and, if the opinion polls are right, when finally the British citizens will be asked to cast their vote at the next election, Gordon Brown will be history.

That’s a nice thought for the next G20 or G8 or G whatever-many-countries-there-are-going-to-be.