All You Fascists Bound To Lose

Today the voting population of the United States of America have a big decision to make and frankly it's pretty terrifying that there seems to be a even chance that Donald Trump will be re- elected as president. The polls seem to suggest that something like 47% of Americans will be casting their vote for him with Kamala Harris on 48%. That's too close to call. 

That Trump is even allowed anywhere near the ballot paper is bewildering: he is a man who encouraged a coup by a violent mob of supporters when he lost the previous election; a convicted felon facing a possible prison sentence for paying hush money to an actor he had sex with; accused of sexual assault by over twenty women; has a string of charges against him for electoral offences from 2020; hid classified documents in the bathroom at his golf club; has made various threats during the election campaign that show he's unfit to run (to close down media outlets, to be a dictator 'on day one', to use the arms of the state to attack opponents and those who have wronged him, to use the military against citizens he describes as 'the enemy within', to hold 12, 000 'illegals' in camps while they await deportation, made racist remarks about Kamala Harris and falsely accused refugees of eating people's pet animals); threatened to execute Liz Cheney; the removal of abortion rights; the list goes on and on and on. In any sane world, Trump would have been cast out by the people, his party and the media, and his name would be nowhere near a ballot paper. 

Like all demagogues he uses people's grievances to further his own ends. He takes people's struggles in an economically difficult time and turns them into Us v Them. He paints his supporters and himself as victims. He thinks presidents should have unlimited power. The only other leaders he openly admires are dictators/ authoritarians. He publicly supports racists and racist groups. His own former staff describe him as fascist. 

People sometimes shrink from using the word fascist. It's too extreme, it's student politics, it's an exaggeration. Perhaps the culture around the fascist dictators of the 20th century is partly the reason-  Hitler was a fascist and this blinds us to modern equivalents. No one can be as bad as Hitler can they? Therefore, no one else can be a fascist. But Trump's actions and words are fascist- the demonisation of minorities, the talk of genetics and purity, the desire to have unlimited and unchallengeable power, the cult of the leader, the assaults on democracy, the rampant nationalism, the cosy relationship between big business and power- all these things are fascist. I think we should call it what it is. 

Only time will tell what happens and what the US and the world will look like in four years time if he wins. You could say that it doesn't matter but what happens in the US affects us all. I hope enough Americans take the opportunity and make the choice to reject him today but even if they do the sheer number who will have voted for him is concerning enough. What's more he will inevitably poison politics and democracy further by claiming the election was rigged and stolen- the undermining of democratic mores and institutions, more fascism. His ego is so fragile he cannot take being seen as a loser. He cannot lose an election, he must have been cheated. 

In 1944 Woody Guthrie wrote All You Fascists Bound To Lose, a song about Hitler and Mussolini and their impending defeat in the Second World War. In 2017 The Missin' Cousins, an American bluegrass/ country and western trio covered it, updating it for their own homegrown version and opening with the line, 'There's a fascist in The White House'. I hope America gets it right today and this song becomes consigned to the years 2017- 2021 and not the next four.

All You Fascists Bound To Lose 

Today's The Day

Today’s the day.

Fourth Of July

Fourteen years of the worst government and worst leaders/ politicians this country has known since the extension of the franchise will come to an end today. For a party that prides itself as the natural party of government, the nature of the five Conservative Prime Ministers and their policies and actions since 2010 has been staggering, an unending run of incompetence, lies, cuts, cruelty, corruption and criminality and a ceaseless (until today) shower of men and women who represent the most overpromoted cabinet minsters we’ve ever suffered. For anyone who suffers from imposter syndrome at their work, something we all do from time to time I’m sure, just a glance at some of the people who’ve held high ranking cabinet posts in this country since 2010 should cure you of that- Liz Truss, Jacob Rees- Mogg, Dominic Rabb, Matt Hancock, Oliver Dowden, Therese Coffey, Andrea Leadsom, James Cleverly, Kwasi Kwarteng, Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braveman, Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, on and on it goes. Many of these people would think twice about being able to run a medium sized outlet at a retail park. The Tory Party put them in charge of the country.

Let’s run through their legacy briefly.

David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak; between them they have made the country and its people poorer in every way, from austerity to Brexit and beyond. They have diminished us all, made the nation smaller, meaner, grimmer and inward looking. There is little hope or optimism, no sense as there was in 1997 that things can get better. We have become a small, narrow minded, poverty stricken, regressive nation on the north west edge of Europe cut adrift by the Tories. 

Between them, the five Tory PMs have cut funding to councils by up to 50% with the inevitable cutting of vital local services. Axed genuinely beneficial services for young people like Sure Start and Connexions. Introduced the two child cap on child benefit plunging families into poverty. Capped local housing allowance that has pushed people out of renting and into homelessness. Cut the educational maintenance allowance for 16- 19 year olds from poorer backgrounds. Tripled university tuition fees. Axed grants for low income students. Cut the budgets of all government budgets leading to underfunded schools and hospitals, threadbare public services, and violently overcrowded prisons. Overseen a vast recruitment and retention crisis in teaching. Scrapped the Green Deal. BREXIT. Labelled the judiciary as ‘enemies of the will of the people’. Windrush. Prison ships to hold refugees and migrants. The illegal proroguing of parliament. Restrictions to the right to protest. The Rwanda scheme. A housing crisis. The crashing of the entire UK economy in 49 days in 2022. Stagnated wages. Falling living standards. An increase in poverty. Approximately 3.6 million children are defined as living in poverty. Widespread use of food banks. A 74% increase in rough sleeping. Hospital waiting lists longer than ever. Ambulance waiting times longer than ever. A crisis in GP services and dentistry. The state of childrens' teeth is worse than at any point since the introduction of the NHS in 1948. The awarding of PPE contracts to friends during Covid. The breaking of the laws they made to protect all of us and the refusal to acknowledge that there was anything wrong with this. A sense nationally that in living memory things have never been worse, are still getting worse and that they can’t see a way they’ll get better.

Whatever happens today, these people must be defeated. Not just defeated- electorally obliterated, ground into the dust, humiliated, chased out of constituency after constituency, rejected so comprehensively that the Tory Party is for a generation (at least) associated with the stink of their failure, their policies and their defeat. They must tear themselves apart in response to this, shrink even further into right wing factions and strange regressive, nostalgic cults who get teary eyed over the sound of Spitfires and the words free trade. 

I think for that reason that voting tactically is the correct thing to do- we must vote to defeat the Tories. It’s that simple. If that means Labour, vote Labour. If that means Liberal Democrat, vote Liberal Democrat. If that means SNP, vote SNP. If that means Reform, vote... actually, don’t bother, go back home.

Reform have been canvassing in south Manchester, a handful of local volunteers setting up in suburban town centres under their racist gazebos and talking to passersby, trying to convince them to entertain Reform’s outsider narrative. It’s no surprise that the last few weeks have seen various Reform candidates come to light as cranks, conspiracy theorists and racists. They may not all be racist, conspiracy theorists but there will be plenty of them- far right grievance politics attracts them. I think there’s an argument that the concerns of the 12% or so of the population who’ve been polled and say they're voting Reform during the last few weeks need addressing, their disaffection needs to be engaged with. But Farage himself is a chancer and a grifter, a posh, privately educated former merchant banker who has portrayed himself as a man of the people. ‘He speaks the truth, he says what the others don’t say, he tells it like it is’ is a common fallback, fuelling the view that all of Westminster is ‘the same’, everyone tarred with the same brush as the list of Tories who have lied and shlepped their way through parliament since 2010. I see this at school where Farage’s message is cutting through with some of the youth, 14- 15 year old boys who aren’t old enough to vote yet- but will be next time. Farage is the pub bore writ large. Disruption for laughs. Stirs up division, then goes home. I hope the people of Clacton send him packing.

Clampdown

'They put up a poster saying we earn more than you
When we're working for the clampdown

We will teach our twisted speech
To the young believers
We will train our blue-eyed men
To be young believers

The judge said five to ten but I say double that again
I'm not working for the clampdown
No man born with a living soul
Can be working for the clampdown'

Farage’s politics are the politics of division, the othering those who are ‘not like us’. In May this year he said British Muslims 'do not subscribe to British values', a comment that labels all British Muslims as them. He peddles the far right politics of resentment and grievance. None of the main parties have tried properly to counter his narrative- that migration has a net benefit for the UK, that our economy and services won’t work without it, that illegal migration actually accounts for less than 5% of all migration annually, that other countries have taken many more refugees than the UK has. This has been the main success of Farage and the right wing press that amplify him – to make immigration undiscussable in rational terms and to shift all the main parties into anti- migration territory. The far right playbook is a massive concern- look at France and the US – and Farage pulls pages from it all the time, being careful not to ay anything explicitly racist while fanning the flames of racism. The prospect of Farage and a handful of Reform MPs in parliament is grim but it says something about where we are as a nation that it’s a possibility. Far right parties gaining the respectability that comes from being elected representatives has a long tail, and history warns us that it doesn’t end well. Labour and any/ all progressive politicians have to make the case against them and keep at it. The voxpop narrative, fuelled by Farage for his own benefit, that ‘they’re all the same, none of them can fix it’, is a cosy excuse for voting for Reform. What's more, I don’t think it’s true-  there are many people who go into politics because they want to improve things, they want to make people’s lives better. I don’t think many if any of the Tories who have been in power since 2010 have had this as a motivation. I think, at the very least, Starmer probably does.

What about Labour? I have struggled to find much to be that excited about. Kier Starmer is not exciting, he doesn’t set the pulse racing or inspire. That could be a good thing- maybe a period of dull but competent government is exactly what we need. He will have an enormous mess to deal with from tomorrow (assuming he becomes PM) and the manifesto has made some vague commitments to progressive policies (house building for instance) without really challenging the economic and political orthodoxies that have been in place for decades and are partly the reason why we are where we are- services that are underfunded and don’t work, industries sold into private hands and run for shareholders rather than the public, people who want the paradox of a low tax and low wage economy with a well funded NHS. Starmer’s stance over some things has been downright difficult to defend but I guess the bottom line is that five years ago no one would have believed Labour could overturn a Johnson majority of 80 seats and here we are, on what looks like the verge of victory. At the least, and it’s a low bar admittedly, a Starmer led Labour government will at least not have the outright performative cruelty of the post- 2010 Tory ones- the sheer cruelty and barbarism of the Rwanda policy for example. I hope he and they find something to give us some cheer, that there are some fixes for the mess we're in and that they can give us some hope. 

 Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards (Live in 2019)

In the constituency in South Manchester where I live, we can play our part in kicking the Tories out today. Since becoming aware of politics in the early 80s there’s only been one occasion where I’ve been able to celebrate a Tory electoral defeat- 1997. I’m hoping, praying and expecting that today is number two, that we can watch the results come into tonight with a growing Labour majority, Tory after Tory ejected and rejected, their legacy the long bitter taste of defeat, laughing our way through the night as they get their comeuppance. And that tomorrow we wake up to something better.

Today's the day. Fuck the Tories. 

CCFO

Yesterday brought with it some good news- finally- with the departure of Boris Johnson from Number 10 Downing Street. On Wednesday night he seemed to have gone into full on bunker mentality, hiding in a hole in the ground, last days of Der Fuhrer madness, claiming to have a mandate of fourteen million (that's not how British politics works) and determined to plough away and 'get on with the job'. Then, on Thursday morning, he was announcing his resignation. In the words of Ernest Hemmingway and a quote I've seen in a few places recently, from The Sun Also Rises, a character named Mike is asked how he went bankrupt. 'Two ways. Gradually', he says, 'then suddenly'.

I didn't feel the jubilation I thought I'd feel at seeing him go, not last because his departure speech was spectacularly charmless- it's all everybody else's fault. That's been his default position throughout life. He was never fit for office in the first place and there's no surprise that a man who's been sacked for lying previously should eventually be got rid of for lying. What happened in between- illegally proroguing parliament, repeated misconduct in office, £850 a roll wallpaper and undeclared donations, the deaths from Covid of all who died due to him locking down too late in March 2020, spreading infections through the Eat Out To Help Out campaign and 'saving Christmas' later that year, Partygate, presiding over an administration that received over 120 fines for breaking lockdown rules, intentions to break international law over his own Brexit deal and the Northern Irish border etc etc- was all par for the course for someone who believed that the rules that others abide by didn't apply to him. But in the end, the lying got him. Lying connected to sexual misconduct and cronyism, aptly. He wants to hang on as caretaker according to reports yesterday because him and Carrie have planned to have their wedding reception at the PM's official residence Chequers which seems completely fitting for the pair of them. I look forward to the public inquiry into the his handling of Covid. His supporters keep saying he 'got the big calls right' but I can't think of any- in fact, he got them wrong. And any Prime Minister would have done the same with the vaccination campaign. 

Meanwhile, those members of the Cabinet and the wider Conservative party who like Hemingway's Mike, gradually and then suddenly, found their integrity/ backbone can go fuck themselves too. They put him there in 2019, knowing what he was like and what they and we would be saddled with. Over the last few days it's been noticeable how many of them urged him to resign to do the right thing for 'the party and the country'. In that order, always. The survival of the Conservative Party and keeping it in power is the main thing that the Conservative Party cares about. The rest of us are collateral damage in the ongoing Tory Party psychodrama and especially it's relationship with Europe (which is why we're here isn't it? David Cameron called the referendum to shore up Tory party unity. Johnson is a result of that decision). 

The expectation that things will improve now seems pretty naive. They, the MPs and party membership, will elect someone who is a combination of rabid right wing/ incompetent/ over- promoted. Given that the Conservative Party has given us in succession the three worst Prime Minsters in living memory, I don't have much faith in them doing any better this time around. Johnson and Cummings purged all the relatively sensible ones back in December 2019. What's left is detritus floating around after the ship has sunk below the surface. 

Julian Cope recently announced a new song/ single, available from his Head Heritage website as a download (the CD single sold out quickly). It's called Cunts Can Fuck Off and it's more fitting for Boris Johnson today than any other person I can think of. There's no video/ audio of the single version available. Instead, here's Julian at the Dreamland Ballroom in Margate in January 2020, performing Cunts Can Fuck Off live. 

For your download pleasure instead here's the Archdrude back in 2005 on his Citizen Cain'd album and a song that sounds like The Stooges on Gimme Danger. 

I'm Living In The Room They Found Saddam In

Ring Ring Seven A.M.

Sandinista! was released forty years ago yesterday. This video of The Magnificent 7 appeared online, previously unseen footage of  Joe, Mick, Paul and Topper in New York in 1980, the fans and police in the streets around Bonds Casino, the band playing on US television and at a press conference all smoking like it's going out of fashion, some brilliant fan level scenes from the floor of the venue, security man Ray Jordan in among the crowd, and superb footage of the stage invasion at the end, Mick's hand and guitar disappearing into the throng- all put together by Don Letts. The video is here in case you're reading this on a phone and the embedded video isn't working. 

Sandinista! is a an album that grows and grows as the years go by. On it's release in 1980 it mystified fans and press alike, thirty six songs over six sides of vinyl. Only three years on from their debut, recorded in the white heat of 1977, Sandinista! is the band's sprawling soup of influences and experimental spirit writ large, from the pioneering rap/ funk rock of The Magnificent 7 to the dub soundscapes that make up side six. In between they play rockabilly, blues, a waltz, reggae, fiddle led- folk, plenty of dub, gospel, Mickey Gallagher's kids singing Guns Of Brixton, majestic late 70s rock (Somebody Got Murdered, Up In Heaven and Police On My Back), a backwards track, a Motown song celebrating the UK independent scene, one of the hidden gems of their career in the shape of the calypso- rock- reggae groove of The Street Parade, a disco tribute to Studio 54 and the Cold War sung by the drummer and two songs that are so far from White Riot that they could be the work of a different group- Broadway and Something About England. Sandinista! is the mixtape, the playlist, the shuffle function, the rarities/ outtakes box set, decades before these things happened. Sandinista! is a work of madness and a work of genius, a beautiful mess, an album that still has the capacity to surprise, songs that suddenly reveal themselves in a new way. It demonstrates the breadth of their vision and ambition, a Clash radio station playing song after song after song. One song sounds especially relevant to life in the UK at the fag end of 2020, more and more prescient as this country has lurched from 1980 to 2020 in the blink of an eye...

The rise of the far right in the 1970s is well documented, marches by the NF in areas of London largely inhabited by immigrant communities, as much a reason for the formation of Rock Against Racism as Eric Clapton's racist claptrap on stage where he celebrated the words of Enoch Powell. Since the Brexit vote in 2016 English exceptionalism has taken centre stage, the idea that there is something that sets England apart from every other country is the driving force behind the current bunch of chancers and idiots in the cabinet and seem to be Johnson's main negotiating tactic in the last minute Brexit trade deal talks taking place right now. They genuinely believe that once England is free from Europe and has 'freedom' and 'sovereignty' the nation will rise unshackled, back to the glory years of Churchill, the war and Spitfires flying over the white cliffs of Dover. The Brexit vote was partly fuelled by anti- immigrant rhetoric, the same feelings that fired up the far right in the 1970s. The factors involved- EU freedom of movement, Tory austerity policies after the banking crash of 2008, the view that immigrants from Eastern Europe have stolen jobs from British workers, Gordon Brown and his encounter with 'that bigoted woman' in Rochdale in 2010- aren't very far away from National Front campaign leaflets in the 70s. 

Something About England nails all this in its title and then depicts this racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric and English 20th century history in a three minute forty- four seconds long song. As the music hall brass band parps into earshot, Mick opens the song with these lines-

'They say immigrants steal the hubcaps
Of the respected gentlemen
They say it would be wine and roses
If England were for Englishmen again'

The song then lurches into a different area, an out of tune guitar chord and some crashing rimshots and Mick continues with his tale...

'Well I saw a dirty overcoat
At the foot of the pillar of the road
Propped inside was an old man
Whom time would not erode'

Mick carries on describing the homeless man, blue lights and sirens going off as it's kicking out time at the dancehall, and he hopes the old man will be able to 'explain the gloom'. At one minute Joe interjects, the voice of the old man. It goes back to Mick for a line and then at one minute fourteen there's a crashing run down the piano keyboard and Joe takes over, singing verses that describe the old man's life in the first half of the 20th century- 'the fourteen- eighteen war... the sorrow afterward', the poverty in northern England (as described by George Orwell, an author Joe must surely have read), the Jarrow hunger marchers, the rich with their garden parties and mouths full of cake, the Second World War (portrayed here not as the great patriotic pinnacle of English exceptionalism but as 'five long years of bullets and shells/ we left ten million dead'). The survivors return not to cheering crowds and flags or the sunlit uplands of post- war Britain but instead...

'The few returned to old Piccadilly
We limped around Leicester Square
The world was busy rebuilding itself
The architects could not care'

The music is vaudeville music, a sort of punk/ Edwardian music hall hybrid and a choir of ghostly backing voices make an appearance, the dead of the wars and those dispossessed by government social policies as Mick plays a vicious guitar line. Joe's last verse dissects the English class system, something never far away for a man who hated boarding school with a passion and what it did/ does to generations of British youth.

'There was masters and servants and servants and dogs
They taught you how to touch your cap
But through strikes and famine and war and peace
England never closed this gap'

All that strife, war, death, destruction and unrest and the English class system remained cast in stone. The forelock tugging, cap doffing deference Joe describes is as true now as it was in 1980, the generations of English voters who go to the polling station and place their X next to the name of anyone with a posh accent and Eton education, saddling us with Johnson and his ilk. Joe's role as the old man, spitting his lines out at Mick in the song and the listener through the speakers, comes to a conclusion as the music stutters to a halt, the old man worn out by his memories- 

'So leave me now the moon is up
But remember all the tales I tell
The memories that you have dredged up
Are on letters forwarded from hell'

The reprise sees the band come back in softer and more mournful, Mick's voice returning, the streets deserted and the lights going out, before the kiss off final line...

'Old England was alone'

And that's where we are right now, shunned by Europe and estranged from our neighbours, a country with little self- awareness that has become a laughing stock, looking at itself in a mirror and seeing what it wants to see, not what the reflection really shows us.

Something About England

STFU

In many ways the Trump presidency should have stopped before it even began, it should have been halted dead in its tracks when he mimicked and mocked a disabled reporter, Serge Kovaleski, back in November 2015. Any sane world would have demanded his withdrawal from the process right there, a man clearly unfit to run for public office, and it's to the eternal shame of his backers, his family, the Republican Party and anyone who voted for him that he sailed past this point. 

Since then he has dragged the office of the President of the USA to ever lower lows. His lies are ever present, over 22, 000 falsehoods and lies uttered as President identified by fact checkers. His racist dog- whistles and outright refusal to condemn white supremacist groups. His public praise for violent right wing militias and encouragement of them overthrow Democratic state governors. His appointment of family members to top jobs, the shameless nepotism of a mob boss. His determination to rip up democratic norms and conventions, the checks and balances upon which the entire system rests. His long running campaign to discredit people like Anthony Fauci, actual experts within their field. The laying the groundwork throughout this year for challenging a defeat at the ballot box by telling his supporters that postal voting is fraudulent, that Democrats will rig the election and that he may refuse to handover the reins of power even if he is soundly defeated. His approach to Coronavirus which has led directly to the deaths of over 200, 000 Americans to date. His posturing outside the Church of the Presidents holding an upside down bible, during the worst civil unrest for decades. His refusal to take questions from female reporters. His racist approach to Central American politics. It goes on and on and on...

 And it matters to us in the UK because like it or not the US is the central player in global politics and how things work. What happens in the USA affects us over here- and the general, widespread debasement of public life affects us all too. I read an article recently that described discussions among commentators and historians about whether Trump is a fascist. He shares many of the characteristics of fascist dictators (the fact that he hasn't invaded anywhere or committed acts of genocide don't necessarily rule him out). One of the descriptions of him was a 'post- fascist populist'. The funny thing about all populist leaders, and Trump especially, is that they actually despise the people they claim to speak for. Trump would rather admit the true size of the small crowds at his inauguration in January 2017 than spend any time with the poor saps in MAGA caps at his rallies. He left thousands of them standing in the freezing cold after a rally recently. He encourages them to refuse to wear face masks, a policy that has led to tens of thousands of infections among his supporters, people who are collateral damage in the Trump re- election campaign, a man with so fragile an ego that killing his own people is preferable to losing.

I've no idea what will happen today and tonight. There have been all sorts of forecasts, a narrow Biden win, a big Biden win, a Trump resurgence. It looks like a Trump tactic may be to declare victory at some point during the night, regardless of the count and see if the media go with it, an actual anti- democratic power grab. Are we still squeamish about using the word fascist? He has said that he will contest any result in the courts, and has rushed through an appointment to the Supreme Court to enable this. It looks like any kind of Biden win will lead to Trump having to be prised out of the White House, the US political system and Constitution creaking at the sides as legal crowbars are applied to jemmy the bastard out. 

He has to go. He has to be defeated. For fuck's sake America, please, get it done. 

Back in June Public Enemy returned with a new single, the righteous fury of non- Trump America diffused into one three minute song, a song that opens with Chuck D declaring 'whatever it takes, rid this dictator...' and builds to the chorus, 'State of the Union/ Shut the fuck up/ Sorry ass motherfucker/ Stay away from me'

Public Enemy also updated their 1989 single Fight The Power for 2020, bringing Nas, Rhapsody, Black Thought, Jahi, YG and QuestLove on board, a song is still as relevant as the day it was written. 

Tiers

Tonight at one minute past midnight Greater Manchester goes into Tier 3, the highest rank of the government's new Coronavirus restriction system- if this government can really be said to anything as planned or thought out as a system. The government have had months to prepare for an autumn wave. Literally everyone said it was coming. They've had months to set up a functioning testing service, to create a Track and Trace system, to come up with a coherent plan for dealing with the rapidly rising numbers of new cases and the influx of hospital admissions. Instead, they paid people to go to the pub for food in August while turning the blame for non- compliance with the rules onto the people. 

What they have signally failed to acknowledge is that this government lost all it's moral authority to govern, every last ounce of it, when they failed to sack Dominic Cummings in May. At that exact moment and that charade in the garden of 10 Downing Street where their senior advisor- an unelected member of the government remember- refused to admit any wrong doing, Johnson's government could no longer tell anyone what to do. They had broken the rules themselves and didn't care. They were laughing at us. They were contemptuous of us. 

Since then some people have kept to whatever rules are in force wherever they live, some people have largely followed the rules using their own judgement and common sense about where they can bend them and some people have taken the view that if the government don't play by the rules then why should they? Some of us have barely crept out of lockdown at all- we are still effectively shielding an extremely vulnerable person. Watching other people flout the rules hasn't been easy. The feeling that existed back in April, that we were all in this together, which existed genuinely for a while, has been blown apart. As numbers have crept up again since September Johnson has dithered and delayed. They locked down too late in March, they opened up too early in the summer. They introduced local restrictions that were difficult to understand and changed seemingly on a whim. They left Leicester in a local lockdown that never seemed to end. They announced that one place would go into further restrictions almost instantly while another would be able to wait until after the weekend. Now, with Merseyside, Lancashire and Greater Manchester all in Tier 3, gyms in Merseyside must close while in Lancashire they can stay open. Pubs serving 'substantial meals' can stay open but pubs that don't must close- does Covid 19 not infect people while using a knife and fork? They bullied the civic leaders of Liverpool into accepting Tier 3 and then found that the elected mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, the leaders of the council and a cross party group of MPs wouldn't roll over. Funnily enough the pair of Conservative MPs refusing to accept new restrictions without a fight (including the Chair of the 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady) weren't attacked with the same venom Burnham has been. The politicians fighting the government's attempts to impose Tier 3 on Greater Manchester weren't even necessarily arguing that the restrictions weren't called for, they just wanted the evidence that the ones being proposed would be effective (which wasn't forthcoming because this government is shit at details and just relies on the selective use of data to try to prove points). What Andy Burnham and the rest also wanted was financial support for the thousands of locals who would be affected by the loss of their jobs and the withdrawal of income. Johnson's middle man, Robert Jenrick (himself guilty of breaking lockdown restrictions in April), found himself up against a Zoom wall of anger and disgust, from Tories as well as Labour, and when it came to finding another £5 million, told his boss Johnson that the deal was off. Andy Burnham stood in front of GMex- the site of the Peterloo Massacre in 1819- and quite rightly told the cameras that this government promised to level up the north and here they were further levelling down. 

It seems pointless to close some businesses while leaving many others open. It seems pointless to close some pubs while leaving many still serving. Schools, colleges and universities are one of the main breeding grounds of the infection currently but since various opponents have called for a short 'circuit break', Johnson's government refuse to consider this- not for scientific reasons but because it's politically unacceptable for them to do what the opposition have asked for. A circuit break policy is now taking effect in Wales and it wouldn't be a surprise to see Scotland follow suit, but once again Johnson dithers until it's too late. Their own scientific advisors recommended it several weeks ago. Johnson rejected it but still claims to be 'following the science'. Tiers, as someone pointed out recently, are not enough. 

Here are The Lilac Time, mid 60s psychedelic style, in 1990...

It'll End In Tears 

Here's Paul Weller remixed by Leo Zero, Blackpool Northern Soul style, in 2010... 

Tears Are Not Enough (Leo Zero Remix)

A couple of days ago on social media I said this about Andy Burnham...

It's fair to say that this man becoming a genuine hero in Manchester and the north west wasn't predictable. His reasons for becoming mayor didn't always seem clear, his run for the Labour leadership in 2015 was a disaster and I don't think everyone here has always trusted him, but he's shown true leadership and grit the last few days, standing up to the useless bunch of chancers and incompetents in the government and standing up for us. More power to him.

And I stand by all of that, cometh the hour, cometh the man etc. It has been a truly absurd year, a nightmare in many ways, full of personal and public disasters and political horrors. It's genuinely encouraging to see the odd green shoot while also keeping that anger burning.

Monday's Long Song

I've posted quite a few of Richard Norris' Music For Healing series since lockdown began. Part 9 came out last week and it is my favourite so far, a stunning twenty minute long piece of ambient music, led by piano with gentle drones and noise as a backdrop. It works beautifully as background ambience and equally as deep listening, an idea Richard has been exploring in the last two years.

As the government appear increasingly incompetent and the news doesn't really offer any respite- we have the highest number of Covid 19 infections and the highest death toll in Europe. The government clearly acted too late and mistakes were made in February and March, some of them for political reasons, that have contributed to thousands of people dying. There doesn't seem to be a well planned way out of this at the moment and the right wing press are massing behind the government, attacking anyone who steps out of line as unpatriotic, lacking bravery or asking questions at a time when 'we' should be rallying around the government. The relaxing of lockdown has been clumsy and unclear and many people seem to be behaving as if it's all over- meanwhile the daily death toll is still well into three figures. The plan for re-opening schools was proposed against the advice of everyone involved, except the government. Given that the government have made such a mess of the whole thing so far, is it really surprising that so few people trust them to get re-opening schools right?

Then there's the whole Cummings situation, where the people who govern us- this particular person being unelected- clearly think that the laws they make in an emergency don't apply to themselves and that they therefore are better than you. That this is then followed by the Prime Minister's defence of this as 'legal, responsible and [done] with integrity' is beyond belief, beyond where any modern British government have gone in defending the indefensible. Johnson is a liar. We've known that for years but he is now it is obvious increasingly also a puppet. He is so weak, such a piss poor excuse for a leader, that he can't fire a senior aide. Look at the front bench, a parade of elitist chancers and charlatans, all stacked up behind the biggest chancer and charlatan of them all. What a sham our democracy is.  It doesn't matter that I am angry. I'd never vote Tory. I voted Remain. I'd never vote for Johnson. But it does matter that Tory MPs from the Shires are being bombarded with letters and emails from constituents, people who followed the lockdown instructions to the letter and didn't go to comfort family members when they were in hospital, didn't attend their parent's funeral, or their child's. I just hope all those people remember this and that it fuels them when they have the chance to do something about it. I hope that the government's inability to care about how this looks and the way they clearly despise us, coupled with the rage that people are feeling about this, sticks and wears away at them, burning them slowly, from the inside.

If all of that doesn't require the need of long- form, calming music to still the dread, the anger and anxiety, I don't know what does.

We Have Brandy And Half Corona

I wrote this, went back to it, re-wrote it, nearly deleted it and then went back to it again and decided to go with it.

Today is a bank holiday in the UK. The traditional May Day bank holiday that should have been on Monday moved to today- not that it matters very much at the moment, almost everyday's the same anyway. Today's bank holiday celebrates the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe, the defeat of the Nazis and the end of the Second World War in Europe. This day will be celebrated by some with bunting and socially distant street parties and cosy 1940s vibes, speeches by Churchill and a general sense of national satisfaction. It is a Daily Mail, Tory Party, Brexit, picture postcard version of 1945- cheerful British crowds, Spitfires, the King and Queen waving from the balcony, cucumber sandwiches. I'm uncomfortable with it because it is based on a number of lies and distortions.

The Blitz brought untold suffering to the people of Britain. Two million houses destroyed, 32, 000 people killed and 87, 000 seriously injured by bombs. Cities were flattened. When it began there was no real plan at central or local government level for how to deal with bombing or its aftermath. When the first air raids wiped out whole streets, the local authorities had to invent a response. Clearing bomb sites, digging out survivors and bodies, providing medical care and shelter. Blackout, evacuation, fire wardens and so on were all put in place. Whole families and entire streets were lost. There's a memorial in Stretford cemetery, just up the road from here, to the residents of Lime Road where multiple houses were flattened by a bomber returning from delivering it's load to Trafford Park. The wall records the names of fifty people and 'seventeen unidentified persons' who were killed in their beds at Christmas 1940, in some cases every member of a family. The trauma that these raids brought is generally overshadowed by the so- called Spirit of the Blitz. Counselling didn't exist. Dealing with PTSD wasn't a priority. People buried didn't talk about it. Even at the time the Spirit of the Blitz was a myth, a propaganda campaign conducted by Lord Beaverbrook, the Daily Express newspaper owner brought into the National Government, to keep spirits up and help win the war. Crime increased during the Blitz. The black market flourished. The King and Queen were booed and jeered  by ordinary Londoners when they visited the East End. Evacuees were often resented by communities and many were treated badly. Public air raid shelters were not widely used, they were often cheaply built, water logged and had a reputation for collapsing. Many people, the poor in the cities, had little or no access to shelters anyway. All in it together?

Newspapers that supported left wing parties were banned under wartime legislation. Churchill wanted to extended the ban to include the Daily Mirror when it published a cartoon critical of his policies in 1942 (above). Under Beaverbrook the newspapers staged photographs of milkmen delivering the daily pint over the wreckage of a bombing raid to keep spirits up. They'd already had to spin the defeat at Dunkirk into a victory. The war was almost lost before it began, 350, 000 troops retreating from the oncoming German army and trapped between them and the sea. This is not to deny the bravery of the men involved but the Dunkirk myth is one of the biggest propaganda spins the British media has ever created. This isn't to say that keeping spirits up and raising morale aren't an important job during wartime but the lie has become the truth, officially repeated and that's the version of the war that is being celebrated today.

During the war some members of the government began to plan for afterwards and there was a growing view that things had to change. The poverty of the 1930s, unemployment, children going hungry, slum housing, no security, were all seen as the old way. There was talk of a new world, of doing away with the old guard and getting it right. Win the war and then win the peace. People started to talk of a welfare state and Sir William Beveridge was asked to write a report. He said that Britain could afford a welfare state and had to afford it, for the national good. Churchill was against it and he began to be seen as the man for the war but not the man for the peace. The British people agreed, removing him from office at the first post- war general election. Ernest Bevin, the trade union leader who was brought into the Wartime Cabinet and in charge of the Ministry of Labour, argued strongly for a welfare state and for post- war security for all, the idea that poverty should be eradicated and that government and the people had a duty to build a fairer society. After all, what was the suffering for, if not this? This has been successively undermined from the 1970s onwards by the right wing press and right wing politicians, with repeated stories of benefit cheats, dependency culture and dole dossers, a concerted campaign to forget that the welfare state was a reaction to the absolute poverty of the 1920s and 1930s and a commonly held desire to provide security for people who had none, who could not afford to visit a doctor, who died because they could not afford medicines, who went hungry when they had no work. The Daily Mail and the Tories who want us to celebrate V.E. Day are the same who want to undermine and override the Second World War's most long lasting social impact in this country. The causes of the welfare state- war, poverty, inequality, injustice- are ignored in favour of sentimental flag waving and a notion of togetherness. The real togetherness, if it existed, was the sense among politicians and people in 1945 that when Hitler was defeated there had to be fundamental changes in the way the UK and society were organised and the way it treated people. In this new world there was no place for Winston Churchill who was against it anyway. Our current PM's hero is Winston Churchill. The talk is that he wants to loosen the lockdown, get the economy going again, and that he will announce this on Sunday- backed up by the flag waving Tory press. Many feel that this is too soon. If Johnson sees this as his Churchill moment he may find that a resulting second wave of Covid infections becomes the equivalent of the V2 flying rockets that destroyed neighbourhoods in London 1944 and 1945.

The V.E. Day celebrations also add to the idea of British exceptionalism, that 'we' won the war. Yes, the Battle of Britain was a significant moment, Hitler's plan to invade Britain postponed, but it was his decision to invade the Soviet Union that the war hinges on militarily. The Russian people fought street by street, house by house, cellar by cellar. Russian women served at the fontline. They lost 20 million people as a result. The Red Army, the defence of Stalingrad, the horrors of the Eastern Front and the advance towards Berlin turned the tide of the war. In the west the D- Day landings started to squeeze the Nazis out of France. U.S. soldiers make up two thirds of the 10, 000 casualties from the landings. None of this is adequately represented by the Spitfires, sandwiches and bunting portrayal of V.E. Day.

The newspapers and politicians who want us to celebrate this parochial, one eyed view of the past are the same ones who want to take us out of Europe, who want us to prioritise business over human lives by lifting the lockdown and who want to turn back the clock to a land that never existed. Jon Savage tweeted a comment earlier this week and it's something that I've felt for some time. Jon's Tweet reads-

'Have suddenly focussed on the fact that the usual May Day holiday on Monday has been moved by this shower of shit government to next Friday for VE Day: this country has been totally infantilised. GET OVER THE FUCKING SECOND WORLD WAR'

And who can disagree?
Actually loads of people would disagree I'm sure.

Anyway, that's my take. I'll inevitably end up feeling like the V.E. Day Grinch when the genuine sense of community down our road that has been fostered during lockdown becomes a socially distanced street party later on today, people drinking and waving flags in their front gardens and there's some communal Vera Lynn and Churchill broadcasts.

Here are some London Irish trad- folk punks singing a song in 1988 about the serious business of public holidays in Almeria.

Fiesta

Is This The Road That You Take To The End?

Brexit is happening suddenly but quietly. It's largely disappeared as a news story, forced off the front pages/ top of the hour reports by Johnson's victory in December which has taken all the debate and opposition out of it and a flurry of other stories- the royal family and paedophilia, the royal family and racism, the royal family and the entirely sensible decision by two of its members to get out of it, the Coronavirus, Trump's impeachment and Iran to name but a few. Johnson promised to get it done. What he's done is get everyone to stop talking about it. In two days time Britain will leave the E.U. Admittedly we won't see any real changes until the end of the year. Freedom of movement will remain while the UK is in the transition period, we will still be bound by E.U. laws, and the European Court of Justice, worker's rights and trade will remain the same but without any representation in the European Parliament. As the press looks elsewhere the government will supposedly get on with the job of negotiating the terms of the real departure and the UK's future relationship with Europe, trade deals and all the rest. They've already passed legislation banning themselves from extending the transition period beyond the end of 2020 which means that we could conceivably slip out of the EU on December 31st without any deal. Something that a good number of these bastards have wanted all along.

Symbolically the moment when we leave is midnight on January 31st (Brussels time, nicely). That's the moment that this country takes the step to make itself poorer, worse off in all sorts of ways, to cut itself off from the largest single market in the world, the moment this country chooses to be an inward looking, mean spirited, small minded Little Englander nation. There will be some arseholes draped in Union flags having parties where they've 'banned' French wine, Dutch cheese and German  sausage, Little Englanders to a man. They will be misty eyed dickheads standing staring at Big Ben, willing it to bong, and sharing pictures of the White Cliffs of Dover. These people will be gone one day, forgotten, swallowed up by the mess they created, the country they chose to reduce, the country they willingly have turned into a laughing stock around the world. I hope each one of them at some point has a moment where they see what they've done and silently admit to themselves that they made a massive fucking error.

Two late period Big Audio Dynamite songs, both showing in different ways that there was life in Mick Jones' band after they were seen to have passed their sell- by date. In 1991 Mick put together a new version following the departure of the original line up after Megatop Phoenix. Recruiting three younger players (Nick Hawkins, Gary Stonadge and Chris Kavanagh) and renaming the band Big Audio Dynamite II they released Kool Aid in 1990 and then The Globe in 1991. The Globe was in part a re-working of Kool Aid, kicking off with Rush and the cracking title track plus fan favourite Innocent Child and one or two others that still cut the mustard. The Globe was remixed by ambient house heroes The Orb, nine minutes of bliss starting out with the song, then going all dubby bubbly and ambient before bringing in Mick's most famous guitar riff to see us throgh the last few minutes.

The Globe (By The Orb)

By the mid 90s B.A.D. II had become Big Audio and then back to B.A.D. They were dropped by their major label and signed to Radioactive. In 1995 they released F- Punk, eleven songs created with the same line up Mick put together in 1990 but now with Andre Shapps on board on keyboards and co- production. Andre is the cousin of Grant Shapps, former chairman of the Conservative party and currently transport minister in Johnson's cabinet. We can't really hold this against Andre but it's a bizarre link. F- Punk contained one end period B.A.D. classic...

I Turned Out A Punk (U.S. Mix)

Counted in by Mick shouting '1- 2- 3- 4', a tinny two chord riff crashes in, backed by wheezy organ and then Mick's familiar reedy voice...

'Mummy was a hostess, daddy was a drunk
Cos the didn't love me then, I turned out a punk...

... Slowly started slipping round, til my ship was sunk
Going nowhere in my life, I turned out a punk...

... took my disabilities, packed them in a trunk
rock 'n' roll's alright with me, I turned out a punk'


Tremendous stuff, Mick still kicking against the pricks and writing from the heart. Fuck Brexit.

Some Folks Are Born To Wave The Flag

There's a lot of war in the ether at the moment, both real and imagined. Obviously the Iran- USA situation but also Brexit looming and the lunatic fringe making their usual absurd comparisons. Leave.EU recently tweeted that 1st February should see all the church bells ring across the country to celebrate 'our independence'. The original tweet read-

'BELLS FOR VICTORY
Just as we did to mark the Allies' victory in Europe in 1945 we're calling all patriots to ring the bell at their local church... to celebrate Britain's new found independence! If the powers that be don't like it? We'll do it anyway!'

I'm sure we don't really need to unpack this swivel eyed insanity any further but this shows what we're dealing with and where the leave ultras heads are at- leaving the EU is for them on a par with defeating Nazi Germany. Mark Francois, comedy little right wing Tory bellend, repeated this call in the House of Commons, demanding Big Ben ring out to mark the occasion.

The right wing who have pursued this national idiocy have made these World War II comparisons all the way through. Brought up on Second World War films and comics like Commando and Victor, there is an enormous emasculating shadow that falls over them, the knowledge that their fathers and grandfathers served in the two big wars of the Twentieth Century and that they never would. They're obsessed with the Germans, Dunkirk, Churchill, Spitfires and D- Day, never missing an opportunity to hark back. This idealised Britain of their imagination, all white cliffs, Sten guns and Anderson shelters, is of course a Britain before immigration and before the liberalisation of the 1960s. In their version of World War II the Soviets are always inconsequential, despite losses of 20 million, and the USA always arrives late, 'after all the serious fighting's done'. Francois, Farage et al, a lifetime spent wishing the Second World War was on their CV, their little Dunkirk hard ons leading their politics.

Meanwhile in the USA the last two Republican Presidents both had the opportunity to serve in the jungles of South East Asia and both passed it up. Trump had five deferments from Vietnam. George W Bush had his Dad pull strings and served with the National Guard at home. Trump (especially) loves the hard man imagery of assassinating men in foreign countries by drone strike.

These things came together last week. And then I heard Creedence Clearwater Revival's 1969 song Fortunate Son while looking for some footage of Vietnam for a lesson with my Year 11s.

Fortunate Son

For A Life That's Fit For Living

It never fails to amaze me how servile this country is- a thousand years of monarchy coupled with a political upper class who have managed to hoodwink enough of the voters that they know best, that they are born to govern, have done us in. That has led us to where we are today. There was a new item on the BBC last week focusing on a food bank in Grimsby. A couple who had been priced out of Margate had moved north and survived using the food bank.

The fact that we are accepting the use of food banks in 2019 tells its own story and shows how far people have accepted the fate the Conservatives have delivered to them. In the last five years the use of food banks has increased by 73%. By March 2019 over one and a half million people in the UK relied on them. A third of these people use food banks because their income doesn't cover the basics. A third of the rest are because of issues to do with Universal Credit, either changes to benefits or delayed payments. There are now more food banks in the UK than branches of McDonalds- how's late period capitalism working for you?

Back to Grimsby. This couple were interviewed by the reporter and asked who they were thinking of voting for. Forced out of their home, surviving on charity food handouts, at the back end of a decade of government by the Conservative Party, the man said 'I like what Boris is saying'.

Somewhere there's a complete disconnect between the impact of the three worst Prime Ministers this country has seen since 1945 and the effects of those Prime Ministers on people's lives. Each of the three has been engaged in a frantic race, in half the time of the previous one, to reach new lows. From Cameron's ideological cuts to public spending propped up by the Lib Dems and offer of a referendum through fear of the nutjobs and racists at UKIP to May's loss of an election that forced her to be propped up by the DUP to Boris Johnson- the only British Prime Minister to have been found guilty of illegally shutting down parliament to prevent it from discussing his key policy, we have been governed by the most incompetent and foul trio of leaders imaginable. And still people say 'I like what Boris is saying' and 'I know he's a liar but I trust him'.

This election campaign has been the most depressing few weeks, the faked news reports in the last few days about the little boy suffering from pneumonia on a hospital floor, the lies told by Matt Hancock to distract from this, the fabricated story about a Labour activist punching a Tory aide at Leeds hospital, the mass use of spambots to pump out lies about the original photograph, the failure of two of the top political journalists to do even basic fact checking- it is shameful and should make anyone who think the UK is modern, fully functioning democracy think again.

If you vote Tory you are voting for Boris Johnson, a leader who has illegally prorogued parliament, compared Muslim women to bankrobbers and letterboxes, called  homosexuals 'tank topped bum boys', called black people 'piccaninnies', suggested EU nationals should go home to their own countries, tried to politicise the murder of two people two weekends ago for his own benefit, has lied and cheated his way through life and politics, who has been kept away from both the public and TV interviewers the longer the campaign has gone on and who this week pocketed a journalists phone when confronted with the photo of the child on the hospital floor. You're voting for his cronies too: Priti Patel who suggested recently while being interviewed in Barrow that poverty wasn't the fault or responsibility of government; for Dominic Raab, the Brexit minister who didn't realise how much trade comes through Dover and hadn't read the Good Friday agreement; for Jacob Rees Mogg, a Tory so embarrassing and politically unsafe that they've hidden him away from the voters; Nicky Morgan insisting in the face of all rational evidence and basic that 50, 000 new nurses containing 50, 000 current nurses being retained is not 50, 000 new nurses; a party that doctored news footage of Keir Starmer and spread it via social media; a party whose manifesto has little in the way of actual detail other than that they will get Brexit done, as if the whole thing is finished once the UK leaves the EU when in reality that's when the business of Brexit actually begins. He, Johnson, and they, the Tories, are laughing at us- the hate us and they laugh at us because they know they can do what they like and people will still vote for them. It's almost as if with Boris Johnson they have decided to see what they can actually get away with in plain sight. 'Look, here, an actual total fucking bumbling poshboy idiot- vote for him'. The deference the Tories get stems from this bizarre British belief that they ar the natural party of government, that they are the safe pair of hands. Nothing they have done since 2010 or that Johnson has done since becoming Prime Minister in the summer justifies that deference, that servility, that doffing the forelock as the Eton boys go by.

It's looking like the best we can hope for is a hung parliament. We have to do the best we can to stop these people. Vote Labour, vote SNP, vote Lib Dem, vote Plaid Cymru, vote for the independents thrown out of the Tory party but vote anti- Tory. If they get a majority Johnson and the Tories will be laughing in our faces while they piss on our shoes for the next five years.

I'm not sure any of this helps but I feel a little better for typing it. It's difficult to feel positive or optimistic about things at the moment. Watching the TV or reading the paper makes me depressed, hopeless or angry. I guess anger is more useful than the other two and that's mainly what's fuelled this post.

This song by Aztec Camera and Mick Jones from 1990 has been picking away at the back of mind for the last few months. In the lyrics Roddy Frame takes the four countries that make up the UK in turn- Scotland ignored by the Conservative government despite never voting for it, Northern Ireland with it's Catholic population at the end of a gun and the butt of Paddy jokes, Wales suffering from population decrease a a result of incoming holiday home owners and England under the cosh of police brutality and illiberal attitudes.  Roddy and Mick's rat- a- tat delivery, trading song lines and guitar lines, and the sheer bounce of the tune carry it all along, totally upbeat and Roddy tries to end with some positivity-

'Love is international
And if you stand or if you fall
Just let them know you gave your all
Worry about it later

The past is steeped in shame
And tomorrow's fair game
For a life that's fit for living
Good morning Britain'

Good Morning Britain

Let's Revel

I've stayed away from blogposts about politics for the last fortnight fearing I was getting a bit repetitive, just pissing into the webwind about the insanity of Brexit and the wide ranging stupidity of Johnson, Rees- Mogg, Farage and all the other fuckers, and the way that the UK was sleepwalking into an actual overthrow of its democracy. But then yesterday happened, the Supreme Court ruling that Johnson and the government acted unlawfully in proroguing parliament, that they suspended parliament, the sovereign body in our political system, to prevent it from doing its job. It's unprecedented and I cannot believe that (at the time of writing) Johnson has not resigned. Any other UK Prime Minister in modern times, found guilty in such a way (and dragging the monarch into it for good measure) would have gone, by their hand.

I've been getting into Snapped Ankles recently, a London based band. Let's face it, any band content to be photographed like they are above have got to be worth checking out. The have a real DIY, post punk energy about them, the songs on their 2017 debut powered by frenetic drumming and propulsive rhythms, angular guitars and homemade synths twisting noise into shapes. They've got a new one out called Stunning Luxury which I haven't played yet but the Come Play the Trees is a short sharp burst of inspiration. This song, Let's Revel, is wired and frantic after a slow paced start with an FXed vocal casting a cynical, angry eye over the struggles of modern life 'let's revel in dense misery, let's revel in new chemistry, let's revel in former glory'.

Let's Revel

I See A Change Coming

There's a lot going to happen this week. It looks like this week will present the only chance for our elected representatives to assert the fundamental principal of British democracy- that parliament is sovereign in the UK, not the government or the Prime Minister. If Johnson and Cummings plan to drive a No Deal Brexit through by proroguing parliament is going to be stopped in the Houses of Commons and Lords then this is it. I hope they are up to it. 

The large numbers of people out over the weekend marching show that there is public outrage and fears about this Tory right wing power grab but the pressure has to be maintained. Although Albert Square was fairly full on Saturday afternoon there were significantly more people shopping in the Arndale Centre or going to watch City play Brighton. There is an apathy about the English, a feeling that it couldn't happen here coupled with the view that Johnson is a man of action and he's getting things done. Marches and demonstrations are easily ignored by governments. A million people marched against going to war in Iraq. If parliament fails this week, the numbers on the streets and the intensity of the marches have to be increased. I sometimes think that witty placards and polite marching isn't necessarily going to do very much and that the only way the strength of feeling will be noticed is if things start getting smashed up. I'm not one to advocate violence but it worked with the Poll Tax. 

It turns out that the people who talked so loudly in 2016 about taking back control and returning sovereignty to the mother of parliaments don't really give a fuck about that- they are ignoring the very thing they said they wanted to restore. What the last week has shown is that this country seriously needs a revolution, a wholesale change in its systems and practices. At the very least the UK needs a codified and written constitution, formally setting out the powers of the different branches of government with clearly delineated checks and balances. This necessitates a Head of State with actual political power who would have the constitutional right to resist the request from three members of the Privy Council to prorogue parliament last week. The Queen had no way to do this. I have no idea if she wanted to resist or didn't but that doesn't matter. Politically constitutional monarchy is dead in the water and has to go. Outdated, hamstrung and archaic, it serves no practical or political purpose. The House of Lords has got to got too, obviously, replaced by an elected second chamber (private education needs abolishing as well if we're going to break down the completely unrepresentative run of Prime Ministers who went to Eton). We need significant change, asap. 

In 1989 Spacemen 3 called for a revolution. The one that Sonic Boom had in mind may have more due to the harassment he got due to his chosen lifestyle and the supply of hard drugs in the Rugby area than any real political concern but he does get to the point with 'well I'm through with people who can't get up off their ass to help themselves change this government and better society' before concluding 'hold on a second... I smell burning... and I see a change coming round the bend'. 

Revolution

These Are Dark Days That We're Living In

I suppose at the least one thing was made very clear yesterday, 28th August 2019, and that is that there can be no doubts now about where we all stand. The hard right wing of the Tory Party that have taken over government of the UK, an unelected government and Prime Minister, have no fear of getting rid of democracy to impose their will on us. The decision to prorogue parliament, no matter what they say about the Queen's speech, normal process and preparing legislation for domestic policies, has been taken to enforce a No Deal Brexit. The trio who visited the Queen yesterday to tell her to sign the paperwork to approve suspending parliament, to prevent it from challenging the government and it's No Deal fanaticism, have shown what Johnson and his government are. This is an undemocratic, right wing coup. If this was happening in another country, another Western liberal democracy, the media would be reporting it as such, and portraying it as a step on the road to dictatorship. Yet still we see vox pop interviews on the TV news with ordinary people saying that Brexit must be delivered whatever the cost. The cost is democracy.

The government and its advisers care for nothing else except delivering Brexit at the end of October. The constitution, democracy, the United Kingdom (Scotland will surely depart in the next five years), peace in Northern Ireland, everything else, is collateral damage. This also illustrates the weakness of the British political system and fragility of an unwritten constitution. Tradition and convention have been bent out of shape and there is no actual system of checks and balances to protect us from a power grab by the executive. We have a constitutional monarch who cannot interfere with politics. At least in a republic the head of state has legal powers to prevent executives from running out of control. From the palace's point of view, I guess it has at least distracted everyone from that nasty business with Prince Andrew, the underage girls and the dead paedophile.

This is and always has been about the Tory party. In the 90s pro and anti- EU Tories split the Major government. They've been arguing about it ever since. One Tory Prime minister offered a referendum because the Tory party were frightened of the far right UKIP. Another attempted to appeal to both wings to get the UK out of the EU after the referendum. A third is now going to suspend parliament to drive No Deal through (partly in response to the battering the Tory party got from Farage at the elections in May). A few hundred thousand Tries chose the latest Prime Minister despite his history of lies and incompetence. We are all now paying the price of the Tory party and it's problem with Europe.

The opposition are hopelessly split. Individual MPs speak sense but cannot collectively agree on a strategy. There is no precedent for a legal challenge and the media have been undermining the courts since the 2016 vote (Enemies Of The People anyone?). The Labour Party has spent three years fudging the issue. A vote of no confidence looks unlikely to succeed- the maths doesn't add up; a government that doesn't care about parliament would probably attempt to ride it out anyway; a date for a general election would be determined by the Prime Minister and my guess is he'd go for some time after 31st October.

Following the moment in May 1970 that the US army acted against it's own people, shooting four students dead at an anti- Vietnam demonstration in Ohio, Neil Young sang 'tin soldiers and Nixon's coming/We're finally on our own'. I think that is where we're at, finally on our own. We have to take to the streets. Last night's protests can only be the beginning.

At the start of this 1993 Sly and Lovechild remix the voice of the Reverend Jasper Williams speaks out over some piano- 'these are dark days that we're living in, bad situations, a world of tensions and frustrations, joys and sorrows, violences and upheavals, you don't know hardly which way to turn... but you've got to have a determination that I'm going on anyhow'.

The World According To... Weatherall (Soul Of Europe Mix)

Green Milkshake

I thought it was interesting that the message the two major political parties took from the local elections three weeks ago was that 'the British public want Brexit got on with- get us out of the EU'. That I suppose was one interpretation, despite both of the them losing seats nationwide (Tory losses admittedly outstripping Labour losses by some distance). Another take on the results was that the parties that gained the most at the local elections were those explicitly taking a stance against Brexit, who have opposing Brexit as policy. Today we have European elections, three years after voting to leave which is a small victory in itself, and it seems that this is an ideal opportunity for those of us still against leaving the EU, those of us who have seen and heard nothing to convince us that leaving is in the national interest, to send a loud and clear message. The only way to do this is to vote for parties who have remaining in the EU as their policy.

The Tories want to leave, it's their baby, they started digging the hole and have kept on shovelling. Labour, despite Keir Starmer's efforts, are a leave party- it is party policy and they have spent the last three years fudging it. The ongoing attempt to appeal to both leavers and remainers, for fear of 'losing the north', is misguided and unprincipled (which is odd in itself for a party led by people for whom principles are supposedly the key to their politics). Labour's stance on Brexit is political, has nothing to do with principles, and is failing. Nigel Farage's Brexit Party will undoubtedly mop up lots of votes, from disillusioned Tories and ex-UKIPers, from people who voted Leave in the referendum but rarely otherwise vote and from Labour too. I've been told repeatedly in the media recently that having voted Labour at the 2017 general election (as I have throughout my adult life) that I am one of the 81% of British people who voted for a party who want Brexit. I've seen Farage staring down the camera telling me this even though I voted Labour despite their Brexit policy not because of it. That won't be happening again. These are European elections that matter (for once), where our votes may count more than usual and where the whole election is about the future of Europe and our relationship with it.

The advice I've read is that if you want to vote for remain/oppose Brexit you should do the following depending on where you live- vote SNP if you live in Scotland, Plaid Cymru in Wales and either Lib Dem or Green if you live in England. I can understand why some people on the left will have a problem with voting Lib Dem, memories of the coalition lingering, but going off the local elections there are increasing numbers of people able to vote for them. There are plenty of good arguments for voting Green and their stance on Brexit is one of them- I voted Green at the local elections three weeks. Putting my X in a different box really wasn't that difficult under the circumstances.

This is Brian Eno's lovely piano remixed beautifully by Mojo Filter.

Another Green World (The Blue Realm)

While we're in the political arena the rise of the milkshake as the weapon of choice against fascists and rabble rousers has been a real highlight of 2019. I know some people have said it adds little to public discourse, that reasoned debate and discussion should always be the way to win arguments, and that the throwing of milkshakes is the thin end of the wedge but these people - Farage and Tommy 'Robinson'- have been spreading the seeds of hatred, xenophobia and racism in the public realm for years now and it's no surprise that when faced with that some people will use more direct action. For two men who like to pose as outsider tough guys, they also go scuttling off quickly crying 'foul' when small quantities of dairy products are used against them. Violent language will always breed similar responses and you reap what you sow. Plus, it is very funny and maybe humiliating these people is the best way to deal with them. This article by Aditya Chakrabortty is a much better articulated piece about the milkshake spring. All of this can only be soundtracked by Kelis.

Milkshake