Jan-Maat’s Reviews > Millennium People > Status Update

'it's bad enough when working people torch their council estates, but if the middle classes take to the streets it spells real trouble.'
'you're right, Henry. The effect on property values...'
'unthinkable'.

'what went wrong?'
'everything. Now I know why professionals always leave revolution to the amateurs.'

i took my ticket from the dispenser, and drove past the administration office towards the B section of thecar oark. Despite the rapacious charges, almost every space was filled, a vast congregation of cars pointing towards their Mecca, the Heathrow control tower.

The inspector shook his head in despair, but he had reckoned without the long-engrained ruthlessness of the middle class towards its own children. As I knew full well, any social group that would exile its offspring to the deforming rigours of boarding school life would think nothing of exposing them bto the haxards of an exploding bonfire.

No middle-class revolutionary can defend the barricades eithout a shower and a large cappuccino. You might as well fight them in yesterday's underwear.

If I were to walk out of her life she would miss me intensely, for ten minutes. Then the next lodger would arrive and join the game of snakes and ladders that led to her bedroom.

'Decent & level-headed people are hungry for violence...the ideal act of violence isn't directed at anything.'
'pure nihilism?'
'the exact opposite...it isn't a search for nothingness. It's a search for meaning. Blow up the Stock Exchange & you're rejecting global capitalism. Bomb the Ministry of Defence & you're protesting against war...but a truely pointless act of violence...grips our attention for months.

Art exhibitions at the Tate Modern:

"This was the art show as Führer spectacle, an early sign, perhaps, that the educated middle classes were turning towards fascism."

The Thames shouldered its way past Blackfriars Bridge, impatient with the ancient piers, no longer the passive stream that slid past Chelsea Marina, but a rush of ugly water that had scented the open sea and was ready to make a run for it. Below Westminster the Thames became a bruiser of a river, like the people of the estuary, unimpressed by the money terracesof the City of London.

Like so many waiters I had known, he was friendly but slightly aggressive