Anal Probe
London’s a cesspit. Wherever you stick your probe, it comes out stinking of corruption.
Last Tuesday, 21 February, over two weeks after a possession order was granted on the land (but not the property) at 18 Grosvenor Gardens, the Autonomous Nation of Anarchist Libertarians moved to new premises, their third in Belgravia in recent weeks.
Their new address is 19 Buckingham Gate, SW1E 6LB, a property that sits opposite Wellington Barracks, home of the Foot Guards battalions on service at Buckingham Palace. It’s a commercial property that has served as an office for the Communications Group, a PR consultancy. Their lease expires this June, but it seems they’ve got out early.
In June 2015 Westminster Council granted planning permission for the demolition of the properties at both 18 and 19 Buckingham Gate and their redevelopment as 14 residential flats, all with car-parking access in a proposed newly-dug basements car park. The redevelopment is being funded by GSP Real Estate, which their website describes as specialising in ‘entrepreneurial property investments with high growth potential’.
In considering the planning application, Westminster Council decided that 18 Buckingham Gate, a 1960s office building, makes a negative contribution to the conservation of the area, while no. 19, which was rebuilt in 1953 following war damage, is neutral at best because it was re-modelled in the 1980s.
Westminster Council also came to the convenient decision that affordable housing would not be appropriate on site, so accepted payment in lieu of £600,000, an increase on the original offer of £430,000, which GSP originally claimed was all they could afford. The Tory council acknowledged this sum was lower than would normally be required by policy, but bowed to the greater knowledge of the assessor, PNP Paribas, one of the largest banks in the world, and what they call its ‘rigorous independent viability assessment’.
To put this in context, the average price of a flat on Buckingham Gate is currently £1,787,012, meaning the Section 106 agreement, which requires 25 per cent of residential floor space to be provided as affordable housing, has generated the equivalent of about one third of a flat.
Despite this, Westminster Council concluded that since 5 of the 14 proposed new luxury apartments were for 3-bedroom units and 1 for a 4-bedroom unit, the plans met with Policy H5 of the Unitary Development Plan to provide more homes for families in the borough.
State Visit
Last Friday, 24 February, despite a petition signed by (at last count) 1,861,457 people protesting that it would be an insult to Her Majesty the Queen, Architects for Social Housing paid a state visit to the Autonomous Nation of Anarchist Libertarians at their new Embassy on Buckingham Gate. We’re pleased to relate that ASH’s work is known to ANAL, and we were greeted by diplomats of many nations, including the Kingdom of Bohemia, the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the future Republic of Scotland.
As part of our itinerary ASH was shown footage of the discovery by ANAL, in the offices of their new premises, documents signed by Mikhail Gorbachev, the former General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, relating to the ‘The Global Millenium Project’. Although apparently too sensitive to be published by the press outlets to which this information has been leaked, ASH (in a world exclusive) can reveal that among the companies enlisted for this project were Exxon Mobil.
As a memento of our visit ASH was presented with the court papers relating to the ANAL eviction hearing that had taken place that day in the High Court of Justice. As part of our commitment to the London Mayor’s call for greater clarity and transparency in the capital’s housing market, ASH can reveal that the ‘self-titled squatting collective known as ANAL’ were identified as constituting a ‘substantial risk of public disturbance’. The reason given was that ANAL’s occupation of 19 Buckingham Gate gave them access to the roof of no. 18, and from there to no. 17, from which, apparently, they could overlook the Queens private gardens in Buckingham Palace.
Indeed, in his witness statement Archibald Riby-Williams, the director of 18-19 Buckingham Gate Ltd – the company that purchased no. 19 in December 2015 for £13,796,000 – argued that this access to the Queen’s more private moments was, in fact, ‘the defendants’ objective’ in occupying the premises. As proof of this, Mr. Riby-Williams – who in his statement estimated there were ‘at least 120 squatters in possession’ – cited the announcement on ANAL’s website that they wanted to relocate ‘AS CLOSE TO THE QUEEN’S BEDROOM AS POSSIBLE’.
Because of this, throughout their occupation of 19 Buckingham Gate, snipers were stationed on the roof of Wellington Barracks opposite and armed police were positioned in the basement of no. 17 Buckingham Gate. As a result, we are unable to confirm the rumour that a secret passage led from no. 17 directly to the Queen’s privy chamber. But we trust Her Majesty’s security forces and judiciary apply the same level of risk of public disturbance to the future residents of 18-19 Buckingham Gate, who will presumably have the same view of the Queen as she strolls through her private gardens, performing who knows what acts incompatible with her position as Head of State, Church and Commonwealth, and unsuitable to be seen by our commoners’ eyes.
However, it was not only for the privacy of Her Majesty the Queen that witnesses in the High Court were concerned. Marc Peter Mooney, Head of Enforcement at County Enforcement Group in Kent, who had been called in by Mr. Riby-Williams to assess the situation, testified that the squatters – one of whom he accused of having assaulted him in April 2015 ‘with a large piece of wood’ – were, in his expert opinion, ‘a direct risk to public safety and to the safety of the squatters themselves’.
Following the presentation of these witness statement to the High Court that morning, we are happy to report that, from this day forth till the end of time, the name of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor (née Saxe-Coburg and Gotha) shall forever be linked with that of ANAL.
We regret to report, however, that at 4.30 the following morning the Autonomous Nation of Anarchist Libertarians was evicted from its Embassy by High Court bailiffs working on behalf of the leaseholder of 18-19 Buckingham Gate, Mr. Abdul Rahman Mohammed Al Jami, Managing Director of Global Banking Corporation and Chairman of the Board of Global Real Estate Development Company.
Despite this unprovoked act of aggression by Her Majesty’s security forces on behalf of a foreign national of the Kingdom of Bahrain against representatives of nations still welcome in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, we hope that our state visit will foster further cordial relations between ASH and ANAL.
In token of which, we are proud to publish their manifesto – commissioned and then rejected by the Guardian newspaper – here.
Anal Manifesto
Tongue in cheek, crow bar in hand, we wave our magic wand and teleport ourselves into the next new plush gaff.
Currently at 4 Grosvenor Gardens, tomorrow at 4 Grosvenor Gardens, probably until next week as the overlords will evict us again. Thereafter, to the Palace! Perhaps. But why?
According to the elite, buildings are for drafts and cobwebs, whereas freezing cold pavements, laced with spikes, are for people. Small, damp, lightless boxes are for babies, children, mothers, fathers, grandmothers and their lesbian lovers, and five-hundred-room castles are for a single old-age pensioner, that is cleaned by slaves, and paid for by slaves.
However, the Autonomous Nation of Anarchist Libertarians (ANAL), see things a little differently.
ANAL was founded by Foxy Mr Fox’s pitbull, Zeus, and Thomas Palmer, A.K.A Jenny Rimjob. Tom, our brother, has been described as a sex-god visionary, an anarcho-gonzo journalist, a rock star, a counter-surveillance activist and, modestly, as a genius poet-philosopher.
Riding on dog-back, Tom reckoned that the wretched of the earth (capitalist cunts) should be evicted and die; they are, as Orwell thought, parasitic. Zeus agreed.
Conversely, those who have been left to rot in the gutter should be compensated for all their toil and turmoil, with big, warm buildings, preferably with free booze inside. As devout anarchists, we bow to their superior wisdom. And who wouldn’t, given the injustice?
The rising homeless and starving population is a direct, deliberate result of the ever-expanding wealth and waistline of the elite.
We say fuck that!
There is no justification for the stark concentrated accumulation of wealth in the manicured hands of the few.
It is not that the overlords have worked hard for their fat pockets and fatter bellies – the beasts – it’s that they, with the help of the security industry, have bent the waves of space and time to such a degree that the assets have rolled into their banks. Those without such powers are left, deformed, diagnosed and drugged up.
People, do you not yet realise? It doesn’t matter how hard you work!
Stop!
Those white men are not rich because they worked hard. And you are not dying in destitution and isolation because you didn’t or because your soul committed some felony in a past life.
It’s a con.
You have been tricked.
Strike! Squat!
We have enough homes: we just need to shuffle people around a bit.
We have enough goods: we just need to share.
We need food: grow it by all means.
But all this other business – fashion, make-up, job-center, doctors, blah-blah. It’s not worth a life in servitude.
We need to take it back. We don’t have time to try to traverse through the stressful paperwork to try get a council shack. Nor do we want one.
It’s not worth speaking to the civil servants who sound like they have had their souls sucked out of their eyeballs in some sick, sick illuminati ritual.
We want our souls, and our benefits.
We can no longer destroy ourselves trying to enter into some plea bargain where we work our way ‘up’ and try and change the system from within. There are no jobs for angels in hell. Look around you. You’re all dying, inside and outside, literally. Come back to life. They have already killed so many . . . They killed Tom Palmer. Rise up. Join hands that are moderately dirty. Get out your crowbars and teleport yourselves into palaces. Open the doors and let yourselves in. For it is cold outside. No man or woman deserves to live more then you. Do not be compliant in the destruction of humanity. Eat the rich and feed the poor, God damn it! What is wrong with you all?
ASH regrets to report that at 8am this morning, Tuesday 28 February, the squatters and members of ANAL still in occupation at 4 Grosvenor Gardens were evicted and, under the Anti-Social Behaviour Crime and Policing Act 2014, issued with a dispersal order banning them from returning to Belgravia for 48 hours, the breach of which is a criminal offence.
Architects for Social Housing
A Communist in Hong Kong 