Police breach social gathering legislation to pollute lagoon at Harpur Hill, Buxton
Photos: Sky News
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. - Albert Camus
In the febrile air of 1967/68 Paris, the Situationist International group planned a beautifully macabre stunt to protest the Vietnam war and épater les bourgeois by staining the Seine blood-red and depositing in it the corpses of a couple of hundred Asiatics to drift downstream to Notre Dame.
Reportedly, obtaining the cadavers was the easy part, courtesy of an enterprising plan to hijack a refrigerated truck en route to one of the city's medical schools that was said to do a brisk trade in Chinese dead bodies. However, the industrial dye proved a sticking point since the quantities were prohibitive. Thus, the plan sadly foundered, and the river herself remained artistically unperturbed. [1]
Fast forward to the viral madness of 2020 Blighty this week, when it has been depressing beyond belief to read of Derbyshire's Police's serial overreaches of the government's already draconian guidelines in locking down the entire nation - bar the odd permitted sortie to buy a pint of milk, stretch your legs or go to your job if you feel you must (and still have one) in order to, say, stay alive.
Taking as its departure point a spokesman's confidently philistine assertion that 'driving to beauty spots in the Peak District cannot be considered an essential journey', the constabulary has recently been keeping us safe by means of a catalogue of reassuring innovations - culminating in the reassuring use of drone surveillance to trace the car number plates of drivers back to Sheffield and subsequently name and shame on social media tweed-jacketed ramblers and old ladies with dogs. As Plod now extends its Orwellian arm to issue its wisdom concerning the dispensability of beauty for psychic health, God's green earth (beyond your own garden fence) is now - in its Cyclopian gaze - officially off limits. [2]
And so, building upon its blatant contempt for the necessity of beauty for anyone with half a soul or a breath of joy in their Covid 19-squeezed heart - and in a supremely dumb gesture strangely redolent of the French situationists (but without a soupçon of the spirit, wit and intelligence ) - the same force's recent desecration of a Buxton lagoon with a cheery black pigment at public expense has made good on its claim that communing with nature is to be outlawed, since the area (and doubtless any others it so decrees) is intrinsically 'dangerous'.
With this in mind, a surprisingly literate Facebook post on Buxton Police SNT reads, 'we have attended the location this morning and used water dye to make the water look less appealing.'
Difficult as it might seem for the rest of us to make this up, news reports state that the force has form in this domain, since the same tactic has been used in the past to reduce anti-social behaviour - such as children wading in the water or young people (whose risk of death from Corona virus is close to nil) admiring its turquoise tones in short sleeves. [3]
The former Supreme Court Justice Lord Sumption has lambasted the overreach in an extended public statement, the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch has dubbed the force's behaviour 'sinister' and 'counter-productive', and even the former Justice Secretary David Gauke has called matters 'badly misjudged', while local residents have themselves taken to social media, with one commenting: 'If only they were this authoritarian to people carrying zombie knives, stealing your car or grooming kids in Rotherham' - an item of customer feedback one wouldn't be surprised in the current climate to see earn its writer a court summons all by itself.
How best to respond to people who seemingly think aesthetics are a species of foreign head lice?
Clearly, the aforesaid pushback is pointless against those who clearly don't even have enough shame themselves to admit they are wrong (while seeking to shame others for such dangerous behaviour as going for a spin and a scenic stroll). We are ourselves at a loss, but would suggest that any remaining poets, anarchists and libertarians not yet criminalised in the Buxton area should band together under cover of nightfall, create a kindly cordon sanitare around the local cop shop, and throw a bucket of some suitably irremovable industrial dye of their own choosing over a few local officers. (In this venture, we suggest scarlet might be a colour of choice to leave the recipients suitably red-faced.)
As for the Blue Lagoon itself, by some accounts the water is barely more chemically benign than ammonia, contains dead animals, turds and needles, and is so cold it might (literally) drag you under at a stroke. There are a few sensible signs up, we gather, so that people can assess the risks for themselves like adults. Such excremental details, however, only make us love it all the more for its clearly Baudelairean allure to the local populace, and we look forward to looking in when time permits.
Notes
[1] On the Situationist movement and fun and games on the Seine, see Christopher Gray (ed. and trans.), Leaving The 20th Century: The Incomplete Work of the Situationist International (Rebel Press, 1998). Thanks to Stephen Alexander for reminding me of this.
[2] Except it isn't! To see a summary of the correct and updated government/police powers (which allow one to drive and hike in the country with loved ones to one's heart's content), see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-52106843.
[3] This is of course in no way to diminish the deaths of a small number of 'non-vulnerable' young and middle-aged people from Covid-19 in the UK in recent weeks.
Símón Solomon is a poet, translator, and critic. He is a professional member of the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin and currently serves as managing editor with the academic journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. He can be contacted via simonsolomon.ink
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[1] On the Situationist movement and fun and games on the Seine, see Christopher Gray (ed. and trans.), Leaving The 20th Century: The Incomplete Work of the Situationist International (Rebel Press, 1998). Thanks to Stephen Alexander for reminding me of this.
[2] Except it isn't! To see a summary of the correct and updated government/police powers (which allow one to drive and hike in the country with loved ones to one's heart's content), see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-52106843.
[3] This is of course in no way to diminish the deaths of a small number of 'non-vulnerable' young and middle-aged people from Covid-19 in the UK in recent weeks.
Símón Solomon is a poet, translator, and critic. He is a professional member of the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin and currently serves as managing editor with the academic journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. He can be contacted via simonsolomon.ink
Surprise musical bonus: click here.
For a follow-up post to this one, click here.
This action is not only Philistine but it reflects badly on the Derbyshire police at a time when the police should be doing all they can to engender a spirits of co-operation with the public during very difficult times. The action should not be allowed to pass with some verbal admonishments but should lead to the resignation of the Chief Constable of Derbyshire for showing such poor judgement - what would his response be in a serious criminal situation that requires an intelligent and cool head? Furthermore the Home Secretary should be considering whether the action of polluting the lagoon is in itself a criminal act. I feel sure if I had done this I would be hauled up before the courts!
ReplyDeleteArchie T.
What really concerns me is the law of unintended consequences: by foolishly creating a black lagoon, the Derbyshire police have opened the way for the evolution of an amphibious-humanoid creature that might endanger the locals far more than any virus.
Delete"The Copper From The Black Lagoon"
ReplyDeleteGreat rant, Simon, and thank you. We must react - or be pro-active - in the face of multiple threats to our freedom.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, on the first warm days of spring the bluebottles have been hatching out, from bits of rotten legislation, and buzzing about our heads here in Derbyshire, to the massive annoyance of all freeborn women and men. Some infesting the hills - tormenting, like blood-sucking gnats, the Manchester Ramblers, others drawn to stagnant water - spoiling the danger of a dip.
And like great hover-flies, helicopters have haunted Mam Tor each evening.
It's intolerable.
These police-flies wish to put us in our place. . .or even take us to their place. And how long before legislation allows them to lock us down in a purpose-built place?!
A very fine naturalist friend of mine parked in an obscure lay-by yesterday, to monitor nesting Peregrines and Ravens at a Derbyshire quarry - as he regularly does. He returned to his car to find a busy bluebottle had laid an obscene egg on the windscreen, in the form of a police advisory note.
ReplyDeleteWhile the authoritarian bluebottles are busy-bodily buzzing about the bonnets of law-abiding walkers, what has been termed "an animal cruelty rampage" may well be under way. Elsewhere in Derbshire, at Alfreton, a badger cadaver has been found hanging from a tree. This may not be the Seine turned 'blood-red', but the hemorrhaging nose of the murdered creature did stain the ground the same.
ReplyDeleteOur government may have gone mad - but we can stay sane. No better way to do that than by escaping into nature. And our eyes and ears are clearly needed there!
P.S.
ReplyDeleteIn fairness, folks fleeing the centres of population were, reportedly, fairly swarming around Edale. But, hey!, what better way of socially isolating than to go to the Derbyshire moors and dales, and disappear.
Derbyshire police are thin on the ground, and individual officers are pleasant and helpful when you do speak with them. They've been using black dye at Harpur Hill quarry since 2013. The water is turquoise due to seepage from old lime kilns, and has a PH of 11.3, so is highly alkaline and could burn the skin.
That place is a former chemical weapons dump. Unexploded V2's were taken there to be (usually unsuccessfully) defused. Mustard gas too. It must be more a threat to health than the virus!