Tuesday, May 13, 2003

Legal Extortion

Real Player Clip - BBC Wales I watched this report on Wales Today this evening. It has really pissed me off and angered me, and is symptomatic of the rot at the heart of Wales and the world as a whole. It is a typical story of big rich people taking from the poor people then pissing all over them.

I hadn't heard of this till tonight, and the more I think about it, the more I realise it affects me. It has been affecting me to a certain extent anyway, for years. This is just one more nail in the coffin of what was a remarkable place. I'm likely to ramble a bit here so stick with me.

Cardiff Bay (Tiger Bay) was a few years back open sea and a run down seaside slum. It boasted one of the UK's oldest multi-ethnic communities and some impressive old maritime architecture. It was where I spent a lot of time growing up, and it has provided the inspiration and subject matter for a large portion of my art, photography and writing. Then they decided to yuppify it and regenerate it.

All well and good, but they have managed to do no end of damage to the community and people living there in the process. Many of them have lived there for generations. My grandparents are from that area, and I know a vast amount of the locals are good honest working class folks (as well as a few hardcased nutters).

They now find themselves priced out of the area they live in, swamped by snobby and down right cold rich types and now they are being made to pay to keep their boats on a stretch of river that has always been free, for generations.

My gramp and great gramp kept boats there too, but now it looks like these characterful old boats will be moved on.

What's worse is that the people who have just swanned into the big, new, luxury apartments and flats all around, the marina scum, they get an 80% discount on their boat mooring fees, whilst the poor locals are being forced and threatened to pay the full whack or lose their boats. It is just so not on.

Can you imagine someone walking into your back garden and telling you that you now have to pay to keep your trailer on the back lawn?

The only info I can find on the web is the minutes from some of the [DEAD LINK] Cardiff Harbour Authority meetings. Surprise, surprise, Russell "Greedy Bastard" Goodway is the chair man - I bet he has a bit more involvement than that too.

Russell has been renowned over the years for awarding himself massive pay-hikes and loads of good perks. It sickens me. At the end of the day, it's the honest working folks who end up losing out on something which was theirs anyway.

As for me, the good places are fast disappearing, its getting to be hard to find anything interesting down there to photograph or inspire me. It's all so clean and sterile now. When those old tramp boats go, well, there is little else left there for me.

I wrote this very short story well before the barrage had been built, it kind of was very prophetic in a small way, seeing this tonight has reminded me off it. It's called 'Barraged.' Worth a read for some of my old opinions on the area.

Posted by Dio Bach at 22:42

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