Ballardian

“Believe me, the next revolution is going to be about parking.” (J.G. Ballard. Millennium People.)

It’s becoming harder to keep up with the swelling tsunami of Ballardian world events. First we had to come to terms with the hidden meaning behind the Lisa Nowak story and Australia’s recent flag-waving menace. Then we had to wait for the latent malevolence underlying Australia’s water vigilantes to show its full face. And now we must digest the recent spate of letter bombs in the UK aimed at traffic-regulation targets (speed-camera providers; the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority, and so on).

As a reader, Gordon, emailed last week, “I’m sure I can’t be the first to mention it, but the more I hear on the news about the bombing of DVLA offices, the more I think this could be the start of the sort of middle-class uprising that Ballard writes about in so many of his novels. If they take over an airport next then I know exactly who to blame!”

Class is of course a key to the secret history — in Ballardian terms — of this particular story, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out as the investigation unfolds.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that:

An angry motorist could well be responsible for the latest attacks, according to “Captain Gatso”, the campaigner responsible for attacks on speed cameras and who operates under a pseudonym. “What we are looking at now is a war on the motorist,” said the man who represents Motorists Against Detection (Mad). “And the motorist is fighting back,” he said. “It’s payback time.” Captain Gatso’s group claim to have carried out 1,000 attacks on speed cameras, causing more than £29m damage.”

Bizarrely, the “Gatso” effect has spread to Australia, according to the Age newspaper:

Police believe a disgruntled motorist is responsible for shooting two red-light cameras and will examine recent offenders at the Melbourne intersection where four lenses were damaged. A witness has told police he saw two men with a pistol shooting at the fixed cameras… Police searched for the men overnight using dogs and helicopters, but failed to find them…

Acting Sgt Martin said, “It’s extremely disturbing for this sort of thing to be happening out in the suburbs.” … Police said the witness heard two explosions, like gunshots, then saw two men loitering on the side of the road. “He then stayed and watched … and one of the males approached the camera, put his right hand up and pointed at the camera and another two, what he said were like shots, rang out.”

I love Acting Sgt Martin’s incredulous tone: “How could this happen in the suburbs?”, he effectively says.

Clearly he hasn’t read Kingdom Come, where it’s in huge letters on the back cover: THE SUBURBS DREAM OF VIOLENCE.