BMX Bandits - Sad? (Single)

I was lucky enough to receive a Raleigh Tuff Burner for my 11th (?) birthday. I could do the usual array of tricks and, despite it's weight, happily rode it for miles. Cycling side by side, more often than not, with my fellow BMX cohorts. About a year or two later, I painted the bike lime green with white spots and the wheels black. (Obviously the yellow padding went). 'Fashion' seems to be the excuse my mind is fumbling for.

BMX Bandits - Sad? (Single) (53rd & 3rd AGARR003 1986)

1. Sad?
2. E102

Calum Had A Super Tuff Burner - pwd: c4ctusm0uth

Somebody Died Today

Somebody died today.

So did 25000 other people.

At least he didn't die of hunger.

He was newsworthy.

They were not. Why? Because a similar number of people will die from hunger again tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that...

When it happens every day, it's hardly newsworthy is it?

Revolutionary Reform News

	Here's what transparent government looks like. How did they explain it? With their usual bluff and waffle... "I didn't tell them to redact that."...."Yes I spent £154 a month on food but doesn't everyone? Not with taxpayers money you say? I see your point" ...."Sweeping changes necessary" ..."We'll be good next time"
	Here's new RBS Chief Exec Stephen Hester taking his draught of the Invisible Chalice of Government Regulation of Bank Bosses Pay. "MMMmm, delicious! Tastes like £15m." he was quoted as saying.
	Finally, alone among the great and good of this land - the MPs, the Bankers and the Royals, here is a Prince who is not afraid to stagger to his feet and proudly say, "I spent £3m of your money on a massive, fucking bong! Got any Mars bars?"

Record Mirror 6th Dec 1986 - The Brilliant Corners

The Brilliant Corners - Big Hip (Single)

Happy Fathers Day!

A worthwhile day of celebration of fatherhood and male parenting and honourable commemoration of our forefathers or meaningless, religion tainted, commercialized, empty just-another-day?

Today was a good day anyway; I took my daughter to her riding lesson and swimming later. (She did all her homework yesterday so was reaping the benefits) I played her at draughts (W:1 L:1) and read her a story at bedtime.

I helped my wife with her work when she needed a bit of strength - carrying, lifting, putting together type stuff. I made her lunch and flask so she wouldn't go hungry/thirsty while working.

And I made tea for all three of us which was thoroughly enjoyed.

Later I spoke to my Dad on the 'phone to wish him a Happy Fathers Day seeing as I had forgotten his card. Sent him an e-mail voucher to make up for it - managed to use the word 'nonetheless' in my message. Strangely, what with it being a special day for us fathers and all, I didn't feel any closer to him, we didn't discuss any parenting tips and we didn't start reminiscing about our fatherly ancestors. He was still just my (religion-tainted) Dad.

Sounds like a typical father's day to me. It being 'Fathers Day' made absolutely no bloody difference whatsoever.


Here's an early release from perennial Highlander favourites, The Brilliant Corners. Far more swampadelic than their later stuff, this is still good shit.

The Brilliant Corners - Big Hip (Single) (SS20 Records SS22 1984)

1. Big Hip
2. Tangled Up In Blue

Big Hip - pwd: c4ctusm0uth

3rd One In As Many Weeks

Does somebody out there really care that I posted a twenty-three year old 12" by, what was at the time, an obscure Scottish Indie band? I mean, it's not even like I posted "I'm Free"! And, as far as I can search, the Hang Ten! EP is not available in any other format at present so unless some record company is planning a major release of The Soup Dragons back catalogue, which appears very unlikely, then who's complaining?

On the other hand, That Petrol Emotion's LP "Chemicrazy" is still available on CD so I can understand that one.

But what's with the scattergun approach to issuing of DMCA takedowns? One Soup Dragons EP is not OK but the other two are? One TPE album isn't OK but, again, the other two are?

I am checking Chilling Effects for the DMCA takedowns I have received so I can check the complainant, the first being from 22nd May, but as yet, nothing.

Air Rage

When the Global Financial Crisis wraps your business plan in shit and throws it at the fan, you can be sure that a working class man or woman will pay the price.

British Airway's recent posting of a record loss of £401m pounds has been helped on it's way by, among other things, the knock-on effect of a reliance on an 'elite' group of customers. As Ann Pettifor blogs, over half of BA's income was generated by just 11% of customers - those paying Business or First Class prices.

When times were good (were they ever?) the plane operators expanded the space available for their premium customers and thus reduced the space available for economy customers (that's the vast majority of us remember). So in order that Nigel and Crispin could stretch out with their glass of champagne, you had to sit with your elbows in your partner's chest and your knees embedded in the back of the seat in front of you. Still, mustn't grumble, eh?

As these high-flying financiers were contributing more than 40% of BA's revenue, when their jobs started to go and their companies started begging the government for cash (that'll be us again remember? tax revenues?) the impact on BA was inevitable. I should imagine that travel expenses were pretty near the top of the bank's cost cutting lists.

So, saddled with a hefty loss, have BA turned to their shareholders and asked for last years 5p dividend back? Talk sense. They've turned to their staff and asked them how they fancy working for nothing. For up to a month. Naturally the Chief Exec, Willie Walsh, is leading the way by giving up his month of July salary of £61k. Yes, that's just one month. No, not three years salary. No, not two years either. No, not the whole year, no. Just the month. Isn't he good? I am sure the baggage handlers and cabin crew will be queuing up to save the company from management ineptitude whilst wondering how they are going to pay their own bills. How could they possibly refuse?

Still look on the bright side, at least they won't have to endure a cramped flight from hell for their two weeks in the sun; they won't be able to afford it.

This Be The Verse

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin

Zig Zag Feb 1984 - SPK, Colour Box & Aemotii Crii

FFS, Just Agree To Differ!

The BNP get two MEP's and the Left appears to be imploding under it's own hand-wringing introspection. As usual we are getting all manner of calls for a broad Left coalition to be formed (here's another one) while they pick over their ideological differences and squabble about who stood in which constituency and why. I thought Phil BC's post at AVPS was a good one but apparently not judging by the reaction it received at...

Socialist Unity - was ever a site more inappropriately named? I like a lot of what I read there a lot of the time but the sheer nit-picking tedium of what faction is 'right' really gets on my tits. That and the games of 'tennis comments' where the same argument gets knocked back and forth, back and forth, back and forth... zzzz

Let's face it: Socialism and the Left have been largely discredited by the antics of the Labour Party. In most people's minds Labour equals Socialist, however wrong that may be, and having had twelve years of apparent 'socialism' with no gains for the working class, large numbers of Labour voters stayed at home. They didn't choose the alternatives on offer - No2Eu et al - because Labour's socialism has done nothing for them. Whats worth noting is that they also didn't choose the BNP.

I agree with Walker and Nuzz. If we live in a democracy (lol) then lets get the BNP, every socialist party on offer and every other fucker on the polling cards and have PR and then see where we end up. Left blogs make a mockery of themselves when they start calling for tactical voting between one faction or another or, heaven forbid, voting Labour in order to keep the BNP down. "Oh we want a Socialist Revolution but we will stick with the status quo if it means we keep the fascists out." or "Well we have lots of different flavours on offer but we'd like you to choose 'bland' as that keeps the Nazis at bay." Very democratic comrades.

My Dad always maintains that Britain wouldn't rise up in revolt as we are, as a nation, too conservative (note the small 'c'). I disagree. We won't do anything if we don't think there is something in it for us. Well there is something in it for us. The opportunity to run our own lives how we want to without recourse to the state, party intrigues, the ruling class or capitalists and no broad Left coalition, as far as I can see, is going to deliver that. Not unless we have a few hundred years to spare while they sort their differences out.

The Marionettes - Rise (LP)

I live across the road from a church. It is on the same side of the road as my house but there is a road between us. The road might as well be an ocean as, in the 6 years I have lived here, I have never set foot inside the church. I have walked around the graveyard quite happily, especially when we first moved here and my daughter was little. We would walk and read the stones and see who had flowers and who did not. A closeness to mortality spent in the company of a small child seems somehow to make it both more and less tangible at the same time. I was aware that I desperately wanted my daughter to outlive me and that she would continue my small contribution to the gene pool. While at the same time I desperately wanted to live forever, to somehow freeze time at that point: my daughter and I walking among the headstones - and yet continue beyond my natural death and see her life lived through.

I do not believe we are anything more than a happy, but random, collection of molecules. That our particular brain functions allow us to even contemplate life, the universe and everything should make us grateful enough - we do not need a Higher Power explanation. Let us be thankful for what we have.

But yearning for what we can not possibly have, and couching it in sentiment, seems entirely human to me. More, it is intrinsically human. What other animal is capable of nostalgia? What other animal walks among it's own dead whose lives have been carved into stone? That the church captures the emotion and utilises our own deep inquisitiveness against us by providing 'answers' is unsurprising. It represents the imposition of a standard explanation, dependent upon your particular flavour of religion of course, upon the human experience. It is stifling.

To walk through a graveyard with your child is to experience creation - a life you created thrust against the death about you. If I didn't know better I would swear I was getting spiritual.


The Marionettes - Rise (LP) (Diversity Recordings BACCYCD005 1995)

1. Rise
2. Monster
3. Sickness
4. Temptation
5. Fall
6. Absolution
7. One At A Time
8. I
9. Death Of A Friend
10. Speed
11. Rise (Remix)

Rise - pwd: c4ctusm0uth

The Blatant Absurdity Of It

Apologies for the absence of postings but I have been doing a lot of painting, that's decorating not artistic, and floor laying... still got a load to do.

But this was just too good to pass up.

The local election results were just as many expected - New Labour took a hammering at the hands of the Tories. Whilst the media might like to portray this as a massive swing to the Right I don't think that is the case. The turnout was 37% for the council elections so the just-over-a-third of the eligible population that cared enough to express a preference marked the box that appeared to be the only alternative that would both hurt Labour and actually be able to deliver something. (Probably also worth mentioning that segment of the population who don't even bother to register to vote)

Truly this is democracy in action for all the "well if you don't vote then you can't moan" brigade. Nearly two thirds of the people expressed the preference that they would rather not vote for any party and yet we live in a "democracy". Rather than see this as a largescale desire for change, it is portrayed as lazy or disengagement and the increasingly farcical nature of our polls go on.

Of those that did vote, the 2, or 3 in some ares, party system registered a protest Tory vote. Way to go democracy! A complete rejection of the encumbent government, which insists "I won't walk away", flavoured with apathy and protest. We live in a system where the dedicated voters will vote for whichever party is least unpopular. Nothing to do with presentation or telling people what they want to hear you understand, oh no - it's all about the policies. Of course it is.

Politician's popularity, believability, trustworthiness, whatever you want to call it has sunk to its lowest level and yet we carry on regardless with "our" democracy. It must be painfully obvious to all but the most staunch upholder of our great British tradition that "our" democracy has never belonged to us and never will while we persist in this state sponsored charade.