Herald & Post Columns The Herald & Post, and anyone related to them take no responsibility for anything I write on here. This is all my own work, and consequently, my own fault.
Another week, another byelection, another humiliating Labour defeat. For those not paying close enough attention, Labour came fifth in the Henely by-election (y’know, the one to replace Boris). Sure, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that the Tories would retain the seat, but coming 5th, and being beaten by the Greens and THE BNP, is a pretty good indication that Labour are up shit-creek. If this result is anything to go by, the Prime Minister’s best bet is surely to become a racist?
Worse still, it isn’t over yet for the Labour government - they’ve got yet another by-election to endure up in Haltemprice and Howden, wherever that is, where DaveDave is fighting to retain the seat he lost after, er, resigning. The official Labour “line” is that they’re not even putting up a candidate because the election is a publicity stunt - whilst this has some merit, and brilliantly means that DaveDave is fighting against some amazing joke candidates (Miss Great Britain, David Fucking Icke), it also makes them, and specifically Gordon Brown look weak and scared. You’d think arguing about civil liberties with a man who supports the death penalty would be pretty easy, but alas, Labour won’t even take on an academically easy target.
Though if the Labour Party had put up a candidate, they’d have to do pretty well, otherwise it would be even more humiliating for them. But I think they can overcome this - all they need is someone who is tough, someone who has a track record of winning elections in the face of such strong oppositions. They need Robert Mugabe.
Mugabe is a master electoral strategist - despite the polls in his native Zimbabwe showing that he’s horrendously unpopular, all indications are that he’s going to have an easy victory in the forthcoming Presidential run-off election. Haltemprice and Howden would be slightly trickier, as he’d actually have opponents, but Mugabe is known for his skills in turning elections around.
Hell, even if as the official Labour candidate, Mugabe were to enter into the argument about civil liberties that DaveDave craves so much, Mugabe could put his case strongly forward: he’s got a consistent history of locking people up without charge for well over 42 days, and he even hates all of the other civil liberties too, so is well inline with official government policy (tough on civil liberties, tough on the causes of civil liberties).
If the Labour constituency party were to pick Mugabe as their candidate, they wouldn’t just be getting Mugabe, they’d be getting his great political machine too - just as Labour borrowed Bill Clinton’s “third way” to win in ‘97, they could import the similarly revolutionary “Vote Mugabe or Die”, which has proved incredibly effective in Zimbabwe.
I mean, think about it - if you lived in the constituency, you’d vote for Mugabe, wouldn’t you? I mean, you’d have to.
Remember a few weeks ago when I told you about how a friend of mine had joined the Conservative Party? Thankfully it turned out that it was his girlfriend messing about with his Facebook groups (or so he tells me). Whilst I was delighted by this news though, there is still the horrible reality that a Conservative Future organisation does exist and is active in my area.
In a brilliant coincidence though, I found myself in the pub last night though, arguing with who I believe was the chairperson of the local Conservative Future branch, who rather inexplicably, is the latest girlfriend of another of my friends. (Unfortunately, “connections” like this merely mean that I live in a small, incestuous town, rather than am sort sort of town bigwig who knows the other bigwigs.)
Of course, when I found this out, a quiet evening at the pub became a bit like a junior version of Question Time, where Star Columnists (ahem) and Key Political Figures are bought together to argue about the issues of the day. And the best bit? To my delight, the future Tories - the party that are back in their constituencies preparing for Government - are completely clueless.
I started by challenging the Tory chairwoman and her “Tory” friend with an easy question: “Eh? What the fuck? You’re under the age of 60 and support the Tories? What Tory policies do you like?”
The question appeared easy, but then I did slip in the phrase “Tory policies”, which must have floored them a bit. After the friend muttered something weak about the Tories being “for families”, and agreeing that the other party’s Maoist “People’s Communes” policies are ridiculous, they eventually they said something about the Tories “abolishing university tuition fees”.
“Huh?”, I thought, having not heard anything like this - challenging them, they then went on to admit that they’d “just made it up”. Which I suppose is one way to win an argument. (Googling after the event revealed this, but I’m about 95% sure this isn’t current policy.)
“Do you really like David Cameron?”, I asked next, expecting them to say they did, so I could rant on about his plastic face and his mollusc-like slime trail, to my surprise, the chairwoman said she didn’t actually like him for these very reasons. “PARTY DISUNITY!”, I somewhat childishly cried as I pointed at them, to the bemused glances of the pub’s other patrons. “Who would you prefer to have in charge? IDS? David Davis? Norman Tebbit?”, was met with a blank look and protestations of “You don’t talk about politics at the pub!”, which became their most powerful line of “argument”. I was bewildered by this, as politics chat is all I go to the pub for. I mean, other than objectifying women and grunting whilst football is on the TV, obviously.
After this, unfortunately every time I mentioned politics they were all “I don’t want to argue!” - so I responded to this complaining that argument is what politics about, and how if that’s what the Tory campaign is like, I can’t wait for the next general election. Unfortunately, rather than, er, argue with me, they just ran off to smoke - and presumably phone the constituency chairperson to let them know to keep an eye on that James O’Malley and his ultra-leftist column in the local paper. Or at least, that’s what I hoped had happened.
So, er, at risk of ending on a Partridge-ism, needless to say, I had the last laugh!
So at the moment, I’m sort of looking for a job, or at least activities that have similar properties to a job: specifically the acquisition of money and filling up the time when I’m awake and not rocking out at all the gigs that I go to.
Trawling the jobs websites is a bit disappointing if you’re looking for a really specific job - no one seems to want a “new star columnist to replace Charlie Brooker” and instead, all of the writing jobs seem to all be asking for people who can write “SEO” copy - or “search engine optimisation” as its known to people outside of the Marketing Wankers Guild.
What this basically means is that writers have to be able to write stuff in such a way that it gets a high-rank on Google, so people will click it, and then get bombarded with adverts that will earn money for the company. Tactics for getting a high rank include referencing brand names, such as SONY PLAYSTATION 3 or APPLE IPHONE, as much as possible, and putting keywords in bold, or headings. I can’t bring myself to write for something like that - not least because I’m incapable of writing in any style other than the one you’re reading now (even my academic essays are like this). I don’t think a prospective employers would be too impressed if I were to try and promote their products by making sneery digs at Tories and creationists.
A few minutes ago I spotted a job advertisement that as I read through it I thought would be perfect for me, but there was a small problem:
After looking up the meaning of “eschatology”, just to double check that it didn’t actually mean “taking the piss out of creationists”, I discovered that eschatology is actually:
The study of ‘last things’: the ‘four last things’ are usually death, judgement, heaven, and hell.
So someone out there is looking for an end-timer version of myself. If I have a southern Baptist doppelgänger, he’s totally just scored himself a job.
Annoyingly for me though, the hunt goes on. Anyone fancy paying me to write stuff? Or better still, want to pay me to republish anything on here? That way I don’t have to write anything new but still get some money.
One of the key ideas in our society is that “everyone is born equal” and that everyone has equal value- if this is true, then it begs the question: what is the value of a human being? According to eBay, it is 2.2 Million Australian dollars, or just over a million pounds sterling.
We know this because a man called Ian Usher, originally from Yorkshire, now living in Sydney, sold his life on eBay - his house, his car, even his job and his friends - for AUS$2.2m. If the ever reliable Wikipedia is anything to go by, with a world population of 6,704,845,726 people, it means as a species we’re worth over ÂŁ7150 TRILLION.
Considering that the world’s total GDP, the sum of every country’s economic worth is a paltry $65.95 trillion (2006 est)- or about ÂŁ33.5 trillion, this makes one thing clear to me: the economic case for re-legalising slavery is unarguable.
Think about it - we can beat the credit crunch, pay off all of that third world debt that the news agendas have forgotten about, and still have enough money left for everyone to have a swimming pool in the back gardens of their mansions - simply by remortgaging the human race. Here we are worrying about how we’re going to pay for things, and yet all this time we’ve been literally sitting on a veritable goldmine of cash.
The cash windfall would be like a lottery win for humanity. With money like this, America could easily afford to stay in Iraq for the next 53,000 years (at a cost of $720m â or ÂŁ365m - a day) â the only danger would be running out of soldiers to send there.
And donât get me wrong, this wouldn’t be like the rubbish old version of slavery, this would be a whole new, better kind, as we’d all be in charge. You wouldn’t even have to sell off your entire life - what’s to stop us all becoming like the asset strippers, like James Goldsmith, who bought up loads of companies in the 80s, and sold off the inefficient and redundant parts?
Don’t need that womb as you don’t want any kids, ladies? Sell it off! Don’t need to know all that stuff about Shakespeare and photosynthesis that you accrued from school, hairdressers? Sell it off! Need to teach your enemies a lesson, but youâre a bit of a wimp? Literally hire some muscle!
I don’t even think this idea is that terribly revolutionary - after all, we already sell our labour every time we go to work, and in most cases, there is a direct link between amount of work done and the amount of remuneration. There have even already been cases of companies paying people to get a tattoo with their logo on and stuff - monetizing our entire lives is merely a logical extension of this.
I guess the only problem with this is the, er, horrifyingly, fact that I seem to be happily advocating a form of slavery. Would anyone like to buy my sense of shame? Itâs going cheap, and I havenât used it much, so its in near mint condition.
On Saturday, whilst in London, we briefly stopped by at the official Nokia store on Regents Street that opened fairly recently, which is incidentally, just across the road from the Apple Store.
After realising that the shop sold nothing but mobile phones, we headed for the exit, when a woman started talking to me. I thought she was trying to chat me up at first when she asked “do you come here often?”, but unfortunately, it turned out she was just doing some market research for Nokia.
She offered me five pounds if I’d participate in a “seven minute” survey, “Sold!”, I said.
It turns out that lying to someone taking a survey in real life is as easy as when you fill one out online. The questions were all about my perception of the brand, and whether I use my mobile phone as a “fashion accessory” - my reply to this question was essentially shooting back a scrunched up facial expression, as if to say “…really? C’mon… Really?”
I think one of the questions was like “what do you associate Nokia with?”, to which I responded “mobile phones” and “Finland”. I assume they were expecting answers like “high-disposable income, urban hipsters” or something.
“Which part of the shop did you go to today?” was a particularly obtuse question, considering it was quite a small shop. “I walked to the back of the shop… then back here to the front”. Like my other answers this was met with a neutral nod and some button pressing on the Nokia phone that was being used to record these answers.
What bugged me was that It wasn’t a very well designed survey - as time wore on (into minute five or six by now), I wanted to point out that qualitative research would be much better at this sort of thing than quantitative methods. “Of the list on the card, what features did you notice on first entering the store today?” “Er…” “The glass panels? The walls that change colour? The music being played?”.
Clearly I am one of those trendy young, aspirational professionals that Nokia are so keen to target.
Survey over, I was handed a brand new fiver. Excellent. When I move to London, I’m going to go the shop every day. Not only could I get a fiver a time, but I could potentially skew the survey results enough for Nokia to sponsor The World at War repeats on the History Channel or get them to bring out a phone with IRC and SSH-specific soft-keys.
Yesterday, I went to London with my friend Bouff. Why? Because London is excellent. And it certainly proved that yesterday.
After faffing about around Oxford Street and Speaker’s Corner, we decided to head to the Science and Natural History Museums - which as every good Londoner knows, are next door to each other on Exhibition Road. Unfortunately, when changing tubes at Notting Hill Gate, we discovered that the Circles and District line were both closed - so we were faced with the choice of either trekking across Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to get there, or going to David Cameron’s Notting Hill home to see if he wants to come out to play and ride bikes with us. We chose the former, obviously, because even if Cameron did commit himself to a policy of coming out to play (unlikely), the car following us on our bikes would cramp our style a bit. Also, Cameron’s a dick.
As we approached the Royal Albert Hall, we heard what sounded like some jazz fusion. Intrigued, we stumbled upon a great big stage with a band on, where the jazz fusion was being emitted from. Ace.
I did stop to wonder who was bankrolling this? Was it one of Ken’s ideas that Boris didn’t have time to cancel in his new role as fun-spoiler? As it turns out, excellently, it was being partially funded by the EU (yet another reason not to hate them). The thing that gave this away was not the EU flags, but the incredibly clunkily name that had clearly been thought up by some top-class Eurocrats: “European Year of Intercultural Dialogue” - which presumably follows on from last year’s successful European Year of Macro-Economic Indicators or something equally dry.
We walked on down on to Exhibition Road itself, which had been closed off, and encountered a couple of men who took the “there’s always a weird old guy at a gig who’s too old for it” tradition to giddy new heights. Witness the following video of them rocking out to a devastatingly average band:
After having a look around the Science Museum for a bit, and wondering why the credit crunch hasn’t done the noble thing and prevented American tourists from entering Britain (I mean, really, who goes to a museum and films everything if they’re not making a stupid satirical video? Are they really going to watch it back?), we headed back outside to perhaps the greatest thing ever.
We stumbled on some ska.
An apparently unsigned band called Brothers Bab were getting a decent reaction from the crowds outside (and the two old guys were down at the front skanking their old, weary hearts out). Surely this only makes the summer of ska all the more imminent?
Museums… ska gigs… being able to namedrop streetnames without having to specify the city… this is why I want to live in London.
One of my favourite easy targets to complain about is the Eurosceptics. You know the type â you might even be one yourself â the sort of person who on the mention of the words âBrusselsâ or âEuropeâ transform into an approximation of a droopy faced angry bulldog with rabies, and lament about âEurocratsâ and âstraight bananasâ. Iâm a big fan of the European Union, so I struggle to understand where Eurosceptics are coming from.
I mean, sure, the EU isnât perfect â it manages to get away with all sorts of crazy stuff but thatâs only because it does it in a phenomenally boring way, so no-one usually pays any attention. For example, did you know that there are two European Parliaments â one in Strasbourg and one in Brussels, because they canât actually agree on a place to meet? Theyâve even recently built a high-speed railway line between the two, which has no-doubt already been dubbed the âgravy trainâ.
But I find it hard to complain about stuff like this, when we live in a country where every year, a man in tights with a sword knocks on the door of the House of Commons, only to be ignored anyway.
Maybe Iâm just really forgiving because the organisation has some pretty noble goals after all: it was founded to keep the peace in Europe and now works in the interests of keeping us all happy and prosperous. Sure, it does it in a ludicrously complicated way, but it is a union of 400 million or so people.
Whatâs bewildering about the Eurosceptics though, is that when the EU tries to do stuff to make itself better, the Eurosceptics will try and stop it â presumably because if, for example, the Lisbon treaty was adopted and made pan-European governance easier and more effective, theyâd have less to moan about.
Last week, in a referendum, Ireland rejected the Lisbon Treaty on the grounds that âItâs a bit complicated so Iâm going to let Eurosceptic scare stories make up my mind for me.â
Unlike the other 26 EU states, they had to have a referendum because itâs in the Irish constitution that they have to hold one to ratify treaties. This must have sounded like a great idea back in 1937 when they wrote their constitution: I guess the thinking was that if someone is capable of voting on who they want to win Big Brother, then theyâre more than qualified to decide on whether a complex legal document for institutional reform is a good idea or not.
Iâve never really understood the Eurosceptic pro-referendum campaign here either for similar reasons â us ordinary peons havenât got a chance in hell of understanding the Lisbon treaty because the law is a complex thing⌠itâs why we have lawyers. If only there were similar people we could use to help decide whether the Lisbon Treaty is any good⌠like, if only there were a chosen group of âpolitics expertsâ, whose job it is to decide on a daily basis whether laws and stuff are a good or bad idea for us?
The last week has been pretty spectacular - I’ve been to three gigs, and not just any old gig, but three big name gigs.
Last ever Capdown gig at the Pitz, Milton Keynes
Depressingly, one of my favourite bands, Capdown have split up - though they did one last show in Milton Keynes, their home town. And like the other four times I’ve seen them live, it was amazing. What made things even better - aside from getting free merch from the stall as it was the last gig - was that I somehow managed to position myself right at the front, on the barrier, dead centre, meaning I had the best possible view of the show, and got to experience the full intensity of the set, without worrying about being knocked over in a violent pit. Because I’m a big wimp.
From what I can tell, I think their split is fairly amicable - their official excuse is something about needing stability or something totally unpunk like that. Because of this, I’m pretty sure it was the lead singer who caused the split - whereas the rest of the band still looked suitably punk, he was wearing a shirt with a collar. And, er, apparently he has a kid too.
Amazing gig though. I can’t wait until the reunion tour.
The Sex Pistols at Birmingham Academy
I went with my dad, uncle and cousin to see the Sex Pistols again. Billed as an “intimate warm-up show” for their tour of festivals… it was only as intimate as one can reasonably be with something like four thousand people (mostly, bald old men) in the audience.
To be honest, I didn’t think they were as good this time as they were the first time I saw them in Brixton - I’m not sure if they were technically any worse - and it was definitely a smaller venue, which should have been better, but it became uncomfortably nationalistic and right-leaning at a few points. Like in Brixton, the Pistols came on stage to an old-timey song singing “They’ll always be an England”, and between songs the set was littered with patriotic nonsense, with John Lydon saying at one point “there’s only one thing better than the English abroad… and that’s the English at home”, and at another point seemed to stick it to the Muslims by getting the audience to sing a chorus of “Allah”, like the Muslim call for prayer.
Don’t get me wrong - I love sticking it to the religions, but when this was contextualised as coming from a man who doesn’t strike you as the sort to have intellectually examined religion and politics, and lumped in with the pro-”English” stuff, it just came across as a bit racist. It didn’t help that most of the audience were skinheads… although I guess a lot of them just lost their hair due to age.
Maybe I got the wrong end of the shtick?
Less Than Jake at Camden Barfly
I bloody love Less Than Jake. To the extent that a couple of years ago I got my family to take a short trip to Bournemouth specifically so I could go to their one-off gig there. I nearly went to see them a few months later, but made the mistake of smashing my car up, so I couldn’t get there. So I’d been waiting nearly two years to see them again when they announced that they were playing Reading this year, which I hopefully have tickets for. Horrifyingly though, it looks like they’re going to clash with Rage Against the Machine, so I’m going to miss it. So I was slightly gutted until they announced they were going to play an “intimate show” in Camden as a warm up for their tour.
It turns out that getting up early and pressing F5 a lot to get tickets for last night’s show was totally worth. It really was something you could term an “intimate” gig. The venue was tiny. Maybe about 200 capacity. And I was there to see a band who can play Opera Houses, ice rinks and the main stage at Reading. And once again, I somehow managed to end up standing right at the front, against the barrier, dead in the centre.
I’d bought my friend Katy along as she had heard one LTJ album (Borders & Boundaries) something like five years ago, so I slightly worried she’d moan that I’d taken her to a rubbish gig, but in producing this worry, I forgot to factor in that the gig would be amazing. Which it was.
Here’s some songs I can remember that were on the setlist:
Does the Lion City still roar?
Plastic Cup Politics
Johnny Quest Thinks We’re Sell Outs
Look What Happened
Ghosts of Me and You
Great American Sharpshooter
History of a Boring Town
Science of Selling Yourself Short
Rest of my life
Al’s War
Krazy Glue
Last one out of Liberty City
Gainsville Rock City
All my best friends are Metalheads
The only dodgy bit was when one girl behind us (who reminded me of an anthropomorphic Miss Piggy) who had been complaining and fighting throughout the whole gig, was invited up on stage by Chris, the singer and guitarist, where when asked what was wrong, she moaned about the people in the pit. This was, predictably, met with a chorus of booing - the band simply said “Welcome to punk rock”. That told her.
But that bizarre moment aside, it was an incredible gig.
I felt a bit ill yesterday watching Prime Ministers Questions, as I found myself agreeing with David Cameron on something - specifically, 42 days. I was worried that this is how they’re doing it - get you on one sensible issue the government are fucking up on, and before you know it you’re attending weekend Tory indoctrination retreats in the countryside(including fox hunting on the Sunday morning).
So it was quite a relief to learn today that David Davis has resigned and the Tories will hopefully be back to destroying themselves again soon. I wonder at what point this afternoon during the media frenzy that DaveDave finally realised that his shit was hitting the fan and making a horrible mess? Consider:
None of the other parties are standing - the LibDems, UKIP and even the BNP aren’t standing… so he’s going to be fighting the by-election with the rubbish joke parties. I can’t wait to see the debate between DaveDave and Miss Great Britain (who presumably can’t actually count to 42 days).
Even when he does get back in… he’s lost his job. Within minutes of him resigning, another anonymous grey man, Dominic Grieve (whoever he is) had been declared Shadow Home Secretary. Grieve looked a bit chuffed with his promotion too.
Clearly DaveDave and singular Dave aren’t the best of friends. Maybe this’ll split up the party? Its shitting all over the Tory ascendancy whatever its doing.
“I can’t see Gordon Brown or all of the mistakes he’s making, because DaveDave’s ego-tripping media circus is blocking my view!”
Maybe Labour should stand a candidate and scaremonger about terrorists a bit? They might even stand a chance of winning this “42 days referendum”, which would be a nice turnaround for them. Better still, they could get that wanker who called himself a “comedy terrorist”, Aaron Barschak, to be the official Labour candidate. According to Wikipedia, he’s actually stood in a by-election before.
So come on, Tories, do the decent thing and tear yourselves apart! Look at DaveDave being soft on terror! And remember Europe? Yeah, Europe, asylum seekers foreigners! Think about them!
And Bloggers, lets try and introduce “DaveDave” as a nickname for David Davis - we can only do this if we work together!
They, whoever ‘they’ may be â in this case probably mobsters trying to corrupt a politician in a film- say that âeveryone has their priceâ. I quite agree. If this newspaper held a competition where it were to offer a million pounds to any readers who would tongue-kiss an ugly horse, chances are, that for a million quid, you’d definitely at least consider it (though for clarity, this newspaper is NOT offering you money to kiss a horse - you can kiss as many horses as you’d like, but you won’t get a penny for it.)
I point this out because the government do something similar. They don’t pay people to tongue-kiss horses, attractive ones or otherwise (though that would explain why there was apparently a billion pound budget deficit at the Department of Farming and Rural Affairs), but they use the other side of this principle to achieve goals slightly less puerile than the competition ideas in my head.
They use taxes to try and manipulate our behaviour; on the basis that we won’t do whatever it is they donât want us to do, if it gets too expensive for us to do it.
For example, âgreen taxesâ are being used to encourage us to treat the environment better than we have been doing - like the plans to introduce a congestion charge to Manchester and the extra tax on cars that have high emissions are there to make people think about using public transport instead of using their cars.
Similarly, the government removed the lower ten percent rate of tax to try and manipulate the behaviour of the lowest earners. Theyâre trying to encourage the poorest people in society to become richer, so they don’t get hurt as much by taxes
In a way, this is quite a terrifying prospect: how can we claim to have any sorts of freedoms, or even free will if the government can control what we do simply by hitting us where it hurts: in the wallet? Sure, so far theyâve only used these taxes for benign reasons, to make people smoke less and help the environment and so on⌠but then how many steps can it be until things get a little more bizarre?
What if we end up with a noise emissions tax, to tackle noise pollution? Will we all have to talk in whispers and will heavy metal bands have to switch to play acoustic instruments? This could lead to a sort of ânoise emissions tradingâ scheme (similar to what has been suggested for carbon) where you can buy and sell noise credits- though I guess this wouldnât be such a terrible idea for people who live near airports and want to shut the planes up, and it surely couldnât be too long before people band together to buy up all of Jeremy Clarksonâs credits and silence him.
In fact, thinking about it, if the government were in clever about it, they’d manipulate us by putting a tax on voting for anyone but the Labour Party. Or at least force anyone who votes for the other parties to kiss a horse.
