Under Byker Bridge, there lives a dirty woman... Filthy in fact, atrociously so.

   I'm sat in Maccy Dee's in Byker, in the East End of Newcastle, contrary to popular belief, Byker does actually exist and is not a parallel universe for Ant, Dec and that bloke who went on to work on Doctor Who as the token Geordie to attend a youth club.

   I've an hour to kill at time of blogging before a meeting which I probably shouldn't go into too much detail about but I thought I'd take advantage of capitalism's free WiFi to give everybody a quick update on what's occurring. 

   Egypt anyone? I've seen a few people complain online about how they feel ignorant to the who thing, which is fair enough, as Charlie Brooker mentioned earlier on the Tunisian situation "I don't know what to think, these Arabs are angry but where is my flag being burned?". Usually we only see folks in the Middle East shouting about beheading members of the press or, more recently, stoning women over adultory but this time, they aren't angry at the west. Well, not first and foremost anyway.

   The Egyptian people have had the same president for thirty years. Mubarak is/was held up by the US and their allies over issues like Israel and oil, in short, and in recent weeks, with the help of Tunisian action, the Egyptian working class have announced they ain't having it no more which is canny. The army have also announced their reluctance to shoot their own people which is always a nice thing - Churchill had "Our Boys" fire at Welsh miners way back when.

The only fairly related photo I could find, the conversation
may or may not have been revolutionary.

   The danger with the Egyptian situation is that as a reaction to American foreign policy, any new government may look to Iran for a model on which to base themselves. When American foreign policy was anti-communist, communism spread like wild fire, now that the US is firmly anti-Islamic or anti-Arab the best place to turn may well appear to be into a Mosque and non-secularism is never progressive. Many are claiming that this is not an Islamic revolution, and they're there so who am I to say?

   I've been taking far too many photos, you can see them on my Tumblr page, I'm planning to blog on why Lomography is fucking awesome, I'll get round to it.

   Anyway, that's about all I've actually got time for, just a few words of warning, when you mention online that you're in Byker and somebody posts you a link for the Byker Grove title sequence, make sure you have the volume down, the locals don't take to kindly to it.

   Oh, and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Emily for this paragraph, she asked me to mention her but not to mention her getting stuck in a children's play area on the phone to me, but I don't do requests.

-Nous.