it's finally happened #14 : "Buy the memoir based on the Twitter page"

Shit my dad says - a mildly amusing twitter feed of what one cranky old guy says to his live-at-home adult son while they sit and watch Golden Girls re-runs together - has been made into a book. The agent has obviously done a mortifyingly good job in steering what is, let's be honest, about as thin a book proposal as you can possibly imagine into a - and I quote - "brilliantly funny, touching coming-of-age memoir around the best of his quotes." Isn't this is the sort of shit they warned us would happen just before the end of days? I guess the lesson is, get 1,000,000 followers on Twitter and you can write whatever the fuck you like.

Private Eye Covered!

This is ace: get a fair-sized pic of any Private Eye cover you fancy. Some good un's, laboriously collated via an extremely irritating interface by your faithful blogger : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Well I got carried away : 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

They make up a very particular trawl through political history, with a bit of culture thrown in, and a lot of Royal piss-takes. A lot of my picks for some reason are from the Major years, which look more and more like the Seventies used to.

is tumblr drier?

Because this blogging everyday thing has been going quite well, for me at least, not for anybody else so far as I can tell, I thought I'd fuck it up by starting a tumblr blog as well what will take this feed and do something with it I don't know what [edit: apparently fuck all], also other fancy shit, I don't know if it's any good, I had to get criticalbill.tumblr.com before those rap-rockers done me again. At least it's another place I can not have any readers.

Dreams of our leaders

I had a dream about Barack Obama the other night, I can't remember much of it anymore but one distinct thing I remember was that we were having a chat and he said I should come to Yale or something like that and then he went off and I went opened a door and he was having a sneaky line of coke, the little toerag. I wonder if he's having dreams about me - 'and then this scrawny English dude popped up and pissed everyone off' - but I'm sure he's got much more interesting things to dream about. Leaders of the world must have very interesting dreams. Who gets to analyse them? That's a job I could envisage for myself. Apart from anything else it's traditional.

But what state secrets does the dream analyst know? Obama comes in: I had this dream where Joe Biden was fucking Hilary in my stock cupboard and I couldn't get any stationary out to write my handwritten note of the week. And the therapist goes: well what do you think it means? Can't imagine Cameron and Clegg - Clamereggon I think I shall settle on - It's Clamereggon time! I'ma Clamereggon outa here! - anyway, what dreams are they having? Actually I don't want to know, Cameron's probably dreaming about eating the welfare state for dinner, possibly with the Clegg as an hors d'oeuvre, who knows, Clegg is dreaming about at last getting his hands on the bottom of the greasy pole - say! no! mowah! - Putin dreams about judo and chess obviously, jesus what the hell am I talking about, I know fuck all about world leaders, who else is there that we can play guess their dreams hmmmm Kay Burley, she dreams about being vaguely competent in some far away land, Miliband (D) dreams of bananas coming in the night to fuck his shit up, Miliband (E) dreams of bananas coming in the night to fuck his brother's shit up, Simon Cowell has this recurring dream where he has a friend or a shred of respect from a normal person, this one may run and run, as soon as I get my dreaminator on the go, famous people of the world beware, your sleep is my goldmine

Who the fuck is critical bill?

One of the benefits of taking an internet pseudonym from a popular Hollywood film is that you get to share it with all sorts. There aren't actually that many criticalbills out there, but there is this lot of Detroit rock-rappers. They've been teasing me for ages with a t-shirt that says "Who the fuck is criticalbill?" but whenever I've tried to actually see it, I've come back empty-browsered. Maybe I should make it and sell it to them. Anyway in the spirit of name-sharing promotion, here's a rather jaunty ditty by them, accompanied by a tasteful, bauhaus-influenced video, called My Sewer Side. At least that's what I think he's saying. I wonder whether MTV would film me and them doing a life swap.

It was The Sun wot Scummed it

If you missed today's Sun well, lucky you. The newspaper which knows no shame continued its hagiographic approach to news reporting, going with the headline "Dave New World"; as stupid a headline as you are ever likely to see - quite apart from the profound inanity, what the hell does this "Dave New World" consist of? A bloke called Dave, stroking his pregnant wife's belly for the cameras (An absolutely true, unmadeup fact). That's it. That's what Dave New World consists of. What particular policies are a sign of our Dave New World? That we have someone called Dave in No10? Anything else come to mind?

The paper already made itself the laughing stock of all vaguely sentient people with its Cameron as Obama mockup on election day, nicely deconstructed by Nick Cohen:

The Sun was engaging in propaganda as insultingly stupid as anything produced by a dictatorship when it depicted David Cameron as Barack Obama – as if a decision by British voters to elect their 19th old Etonian prime minister would have been as radical and inspiring as the decision by US voters to elect their first African-American president.

But today it went even further, monumentally embarrassing itself with sycophantic soft focus drivel about the Dave New World and his missus what is preggers don't you know, cor get in son, he's got seeds you know, not just any old jaffa gawd luv our new ruler, got his very own semen he has too, a true man of the people. Fucking idiots. Has anyone at The Sun read Brave New World? It's not the literary reference I'd have gone for. The nefarious scumsheet's current derision for the general public is unsurpassed, even in its long and illustrious career of despicabletude. What makes it yet more debilitating is the shameless dressing up of cynical political calculations in robes of idealism and positivity. What accomodation do you think the Cleggeron came to over Murdoch and the BBC? But in a way the fawning is so epically over the top that it can't be simple political calculations. There's no teenager on this planet that wouldn't be mortified to be that head-over-heels with someone, let alone for everyone in the country to find out. Not a good look at all. Which makes you think: shit, surely they can't believe this drivel?

No of course they don't.

But what am I thinking of? Surely this is a Brave New Dave World after all. Having read Mentalie Phillips's latest column, I'm completely with the Cleggeroonians. Anyway who can annoy the mad monk that much has got to have something going for them.

The LibDems are broadly further to the left of Labour. That means what they stand for is not nice at all. It means they have an ideological, illiberal view of the world which undermines the moral basis of this society at every turn, replacing truth, justice and morality by ideology and the demonisation of dissent.

Off her tiny chops is the phrase that springs to mind.

reasons to be cheerful

Hmmm, this should be tricky. As Tory scumbags molest the front door of No10 and frighten all the staff for the first time since the last Ice Age, I feel that it's incumbent on us to look on the positives, to keep our heads up high, and also to look at some negatives because, well that should be a bit easier.

So thinking of good things to come of the marriage of Posh Tory and Soggy Tory we have:

• No ID cards. Let's not forget that the Liberals (and some Tories like David Davis) were on the right side of the civil liberties debate, while Labour were so far on the wrong side they were practically in the next debate along.
• Referendum of the voting system. Apparently there's a lot of doubt that the country will vote for changing the system, but if people won't vote for their own votes to be counted more fairly I give up altogether. Admittedly this wouldn't be the first time I've given up altogether, but it might be the last.
• Let's face it, we had Labour for 13 years but you'd have been hard pressed to call it left-wing, what with inequality rising, bankers feted, Iraq, and so on. Sometimes left-wing governments do very right-wing things, and get away with it because they have their left flank covered. Similarly right-wing governments sometimes do left-wing things: in this case I can't see Camerunt avoiding a rise in income tax rates for the better off, although this may be wishful thinking. In any case I don't reckon that this term of Tory government will be substantially worse than if Labour had won. However, if they win the next election, then shit starts to fuck up.
  
• This was definitely the election to lose for Labour. Even when the Lib-Lab coalition looked likely, I can't say I mustered much enthusiasm. They'll have the luxury of opposition, plus a huge swathe of disaffected Liberal voters - not Liberals, who'd sell their own mothers for a glimpse of power, and just have done, but people who voted Liberal to keep out the Tories. Ha fucking ha is all I can say. I refer you to what I said here.
• The politicking between the Tories and the Libs (or the Tories and the marginally lighter blue Tories perhaps) should get interesting as the next election approachs. Isn't it quite difficult to campaign against the party you've been in government with for the last five years?
  

OK that's enough positives. I'm all exhausted now. Some not so positives

• The Tories may strengthen in power. One of the noticable things has been people not wanting a Tory government because of the so-called 'folk' memories of Thatcher et al. So all Camerunt has to do is not be as bad as Thatcher and some of that fear may evaporate at the next election. He should manage that, despite his Tory Boy instincts, due to both not winning the election outright and having to have the Liberals onboard, and also there not being as much Thatcherite shite left to do anymore.
  
• That over-sized prep school twat in charge of the treasury.
  
• fuck this, you can do the negatives yourselves.

One of the most heartening things, sort of, has been the huge interest in politics again, so much so that I felt morally obliged to write about it today, which must be the first time ever. Never before has my facebook been nothing but people talking about politics. It's an extraordinary thing, as if a million people were all secretly interested in politics but it was out of fashion, so they all pretended they weren't. Now, suddenly it is acceptable to talk about politics in polite circles. Maybe now people will take an interest and get involved in some level, instead of, as I have for the last 20 years, sitting around going: they're all cunts, blah blah blah, fuckem, as if some other alternative is just going to land on our heads. Of course current politics disenfranchises and alienates ordinary people, but it's down to ordinary people to do something about it, not just moan and whinge. I've made up (right this second as I write this) a new and irritating slogan: Democracy is a verb not a noun. Ha! that doesn't even make sense. But democracy - government of the people - can only function properly when people contribute, take an interest and stop moping about, complaining about the media and politicians. You can't have will of the people when the people don't have any will. And yeah, I'm really taking this on board myself today. I've been away for a few years and look what you lot have let happen!

On Time

bastards bastards bastards its going to be a long five years. Thank god though cos a short five years would be a sign that you were really fucking old, like as if you were 80 and then your 85 and it's like, wow that was quick, how the hell did that ever happen, what's on the telly, whaddyamean Kojak's not on anymore! One of the worst things about getting old - and I mean my sort of getting old not getting actually old as in decrepit, I mean the sort of old where you can still do things you used to when you were young just they hurt a lot but they haven't actually been fully taken away from you yet - anyway one of the worst things about getting old - older, I should have said, older - is that you realise that things that you thought had amazing significance when you were young were just flashing past most older people in the blink of an eye. I realised recently that the reason time goes slower when you're younger is that young people have quicker brains. Their brain does more in the time, so it appears to them that time is slower, the same as with flies and other little insects. Luckily they're also stupider, so they appear to take the same amount of time to think things - which is why it is possible for us to converse with them, just about - but actually they think at a very much faster rate. I've also realised that no matter how long you've been alive, or how long you live, it always seems like the same amount of time - a lifetime - so a long life or a short life seems the same. Well, life is short innit, goes so quick, they say. Well, of course it goes quick, everything went quick once it's finished, how quick do they think it was going to go? "Oh I thought life was going to take bloody ages but it only took 75 years, blink of an eye." People do talk an awful lot of total shite when you start thinking about it. Life isn't short or long. It's like saying space is big. Well, space is big, but you can also fit it into a matchbox. The reason we call life short is just that we fill ourselves up with so much past and future that the actual life we lead seems irrelevant. In fact it's as long if not longer than the life we used to lead on the savannah, and that seemed to take ages, unless you were eaten by a lion I suppose and then you'd just be glad to get the fuck out of there, you wouldn't be moaning about how quick it had gone. Anyway, the upshot of all this is that time is slow when you're young, fast when you're old, but remember this: it's always now.

ideas factory: #42 : The time-limited tea bag

Can't someone make a teabag that stops brewing after a few minutes? After the allotted time, the paper in the bag shrivels up and stops the tea brewing any further. Or the bag fills itself with air and floats to the top. Or the tea is specially treated so that it dissolves as it brews, so after a few minutes there's no leaves even left.

Why the hell has no-one done this yet? How can people spend so much time on terrabytes and particle accelerators and whatnot, when there's so much of the basics to sort out?

Stones throw

I went to Brighton the other day. Well not the other day, whenever the hell it was. Brighton, famous for Brighton rock, as much because of the pebbly beach as the crab stick style sweet. Whose idea was the pebbly beach? Some right fucking idiot - it's a beach, but it's got stones on it! Why not go the whole hog and just have a beach made up of broken glass? (Not unheard of, apparently.) Who designed the pebbly beach? To what end do you have a perfectly nice seafront, perfectly respectable piers and arcades, all in the service of a beach that constantly stabs your feet and leaves red marks on your arse?

Is there any other country that even has the pebbly beach? I've never heard of one. If they do, they're obviously keeping very quiet about it. They obviously realise that a pebbly beach is no sort of beach at all. In other countries, pebbly beaches (if they exist at all) have totally different names, like 'harbour' or 'disused land'.

Do you remember the first time you went to the seaside and it was a pebbly beach? How you never trusted your parents about anything again? The miserable sand castles? Throwing sand in someone's face and giving them a black eye? Trying to bury someone and accidentally stoning them to death? Being carted off by the police and taken to a care home where you fell into the all-consuming darkness, before being spat out the other end a severely damaged hopeless drug addict, violent criminal and all-round bad egg? Because of the stones, that's why, because of the stones.

John Cleese on PR

It turns out I didn't need to write a screed on PR. John Cleese has done it for me, in this SDP/Liberal Alliance party political broadcast from 1987. Worth watching for both the overview, which is good, and for the sight of John Cleese jumping the comedy shark. Via

wouldn't let it lie

Lies. Everybody tells them. Everyone expects them. We can't handle the truth - we actually want people to tell us lies. We tell so many lies we even lie to ourselves. What's the biggest lie we tell? When we tell children: "You shouldn't tell lies."

What's the difference between the lies we accept and expect and the lies we despise? Some lies we tell to spare other people's feelings. But a lot of lies we think are sparing other people's feelings we're just telling because we can't be bothered to deal with other people's feelings. Other lies we might tell because we're "playing the game", or because "everyone does it", like lying on your CV or to the dole. But if you have to tell lies to get by, how come we tell kids not to tell lies. Shouldn't we be telling them: "fuck yeah tell lies, you're going to need the practice"?

Perhaps kids just naturally tell so many lies - since the human race is such a naturally duplicitous species - that when we tell them not to we're merely pruning an already abundant fruit bush of its most egregious branches. Perhaps the end result is a happy medium between our innate desire to lie continuously, about every possible aspect of our lives, and society's need for a certain level of honesty in order to function.

Of course what we really mean is: Don't tell me lies. Or at least don't tell me the sort of lies that I don't want to hear. Tell me no end of lies about how good-looking I am, or clever, or how much you liked my blog. And I'll tell you the same. And tell me lies to make it all easier, where to be honest I can't be bothered to hear the truth any more than you can be bothered to tell it. But not the sort of lie where I actually want to know the truth. Where the lie makes me worse off.

How do you tell the difference? This is actually a perfect example of the dilemma: I could say I knew, but I'd be lying. Maybe you want me to lie, to make thia blog post that much more interesting. Or maybe you want the 'truth', because you only want blog posts with well-verified factual information (in which case, what the hell are you doing here?). So now I don't know whether to tell you a lie about whether I know whether you should tell a lie. Are you going to take that lying down?

Then there's politics. Politicians routinely lie - think: I care about your concerns; I only want to serve the public; When I'm elected I will do this, this and this; We're all in it together; Whatever I do will be in the national interest, etc - and we expect nothing less. Consider a politician who tells the truth, if your imagination can stretch that far. It's not a story that gets off the first page. Not only do politicians lie to us, but we lie to them. For example, when we say we want politicians to be honest. Or when we say we want 'real' politicians, not slick media constructs.

We even lie to the pollsters. The polling firms have something called the Shy Tory Factor, where they bump up the Tory percentage because they think a lot of people are too ashamed to admit that they're going to vote Conservative. Now I don't know, but it strikes me that if you won't admit who you're going to vote for, even to a complete stranger who most likely doesn't care, or if you are in a party that people are too ashamed to admit to voting for, maybe you just need to take a good look at yourself. Lying to strangers is a particularly stupid form of lying, unless of course they're asking directions.

And let's not get started on how the land lies.

Keeping it in proportion

It looks like the Tories are going to try to cobble together some sort of minority government, maybe with some Lib Dems on board - although Cameron's 'big, open, comprehensive offer' didn't seem to amount to much - so we may miss out on a Proportional Representation deal between Labour and the Libs. This is a massive shame, and it's a massive shame for Labour as well as the Liberals.

Labour has traditionally supported First Past The Post, because they've believed that it works for them and they can form strong governments in their turn. But the reality is that since 1997 FPTP enabled Labour to betray a lot of their supporters - to take them for granted - in pursuit of the middle ground of middle England. So electoral reform could in theory allow a truly progressive coalition to govern, marginalising the Tories and the right-wing centre of gravity that has held the country in its grasp since the 1980s.

Maybe it's wishful thinking. I don't know where the idea that the UK has a progressive majority actually comes from, but I think it's certainly true that the changes wrought by a new electoral system will be far more far reaching than just empowering the Liberals to hold the balance of power. It is likely that it would dramatically change both the two major parties profoundly. Which is what we supposedly want isn't it?

This is the day after the election that never (sort of) was, and I'm not doing very much. So with my sense of public service geed up from watching all those selfless politicians at work, and because I think someone might possibly find it helpful, I hereby present:

criticalbill's guide to electoral systems

I've tried to keep it as plain as possible. Despite being mostly culled from wikipedia, I'm confident that it's relatively accurate, or at least I will be once someone who knows about these things has had a good look over it. It is of course another missive from the politics-student-who-never-was, but what can you do.

Generalised election

Someone said to me that my line that Tories are for cunts, Libs for wets, etc was a bit broad. Apart from anything else: of course it's a bit fucking broad, it's a fucking generalisation, made for the purposes of simplifying things. What kind of generalisation isn't broad?

Anyway this one happens to be true. To prove it, just ask yourself this: When was the last time you heard someone say "I really care about helping the poor, the needy, the sick, the unwanted, the homeless, the outcasts. So I'm going to join the Tories."

I mean what does it say that Simon fucking Cowell - aka Mr Nasty - is on the front page of the Sun supporting them? Does that fit with "detoxifying the brand"?

As for the Liberals, they like to have it both ways. Talk a good progressive talk, but whenever I've seen them take over a council it's always been the right-wing agenda. Sort of like a girl getting spit-roasted by a pair of footballers. They might suck the left wing's dick, but they're getting fucked by the Tories.

"You can't do anything legally except crime and prostitution."

A short film about Bernard Hare and his book Urban Grimshaw and the Shed Crew. The book (published in 2005) documents his time spent associating with the 'feral' teenagers of the Leeds under-class.

also posted at Metafilter

John Cooper Clarke, Barfly Camden

John Cooper Clarke, variously called the Bard of Salford, the Salford Poet Laureate, the Salford Bob Dylan, well you get the idea, he's a poet from Salford. The rhyming ranter, who seems to have had more comebacks than a gay porno star who won't do facials, hasn't exactly been fastidious in mopping up the residue of his unlikely punk-era success - a long heroin addiction, followed by domestic bliss in Colchester, seems to have kept him absorbed. Chickentown appearing at the end of an episode of the Sopranos hasn't hurt though, and despite not having released an album since 1982, he's kept up performing sporadically, enough to stay honed and keep him writing new poems.

Late on stage ('old punks never die, they just keep you waiting until you wish they had'), looking much the same as ever, with a few extra wrinkles, he soon settled into an act that was as heavy on the raconteur as on the poetry. I tell you what, you couldn't think of a better man to do a best man speech, he spins more yarns than a medieval dressmaker, and crams a heap of jokes in as well. It seems like his greatest feat wasn't getting poetry into punk gigs as much as sneaking a whole working men's club cabaret act in. Working men's clubs was where he was started out, when punk was still a globule of spit in Malcolm McLaren's eye. He mentioned the downbeat introductions he used to get: "Here he is all the way from Salford, he's not my cup of tea but you might like him, John Cooper Clarke." There are an awful lot of gags packed into his show. And an awful lot of them, it should be said, are not strictly speaking his. When I mentioned this afterwards a friend told me I was a joke nerd, which is true. It also didn't help that I'd listened to a fair few of his recordings and read some recent interviews, so I'd heard or read too many of his own jokes for my own good. So maybe it's more my problem than his.

The poems remain the blistering tour de forces/tours de force they ever were. He ran through some of the old favourites at a pelt, as if he was trying to finish them before a train pulled out the station. Seems like he's always done this - compare these two versions of Twat. He also blitzed classics like I Don't Ever Want To Go To Burnley (with possibly the greatest opening line in the history of poetry), Chickentown and Hanging Gardens of Basildon. Maybe he's read them too often, maybe he was trying to make up time; I don't know, personally I could have handled him taking a bit longer. He was more stately when he read the newer ones, including the heartfelt I've Fallen In Love With My Wife and an unfinished one about the b-movie Attack of the 50ft Women. This led him into a digression about Helvetica Light - he turns out to be a typography nerd, another feature we share, along with old jokes and world-class poetry - and how he always reads it as Attack of the Soft Woman. He mentioned his Jewish-Irish background and how common it is in Salford - "Everyone goes to confession but we take a lawyer with us."

When I watched a few youtube videoes the other day it was like he'd set about me - I went for a walk and found that I was thinking entirely in Mancunian-accented rhymes - and it was easy to see how he'd fitted in so well with the punk movement. He reminded me of when I first read The Boy Looked At Johnny, sharp, direct, aggressive brilliance, and made me want to take a razor to my writing, cut out the pretensions, and speak with a clear, unsullied voice. Nowadays I'd say he's a bit more comfortable and relaxed, maybe he lacks a bit of the acrid, angry stringency that electrifies the old recordings, but what the hell, he's a 62-year-old legend, with great comic timing, and great comic rhyming. On the other hand, I'm not called criticalbill for nothing.

As for my ongoing plan to record all spoken word gigs I go to, I took both my flaky voice recorder and my ipod; the voice recorder worked perfectly, for the first time in donkey's years, but I took it out of my pocket to check it 10 mins in, and knocked it onto pause. They can’t find a good word for you, but I can... TWAT. The ipod also worked perfectly, but the 70-minute file it created seems to have driven it into a black hole of technological incorrigability. The upshot being I don't have a recording. The 10 minutes I do have is just enough to make me really wish I'd not fucked it up. Maybe next time I'll learn shorthand.

Bonus youtube feature: Ten Years In An Open-Necked Shirt

PPS: Incidentally, with his intricate, fiery rhymes, there is a case, if it wasn't for the geographical incongruity, for JCC to be considered a major forerunner of rap. Twat, for example, with its succession of cold-ass one liners, is one of the greatest diss records ever recorded. And Beasley Street gives you ghetto rhymes, albeit of Salford slums, but he's keeping it real alright.

fireland

Twitter, that massive great big thing that could be good but yet somehow doesn't seem to be. Or I haven't worked it out yet. A lot of it seems to be one half of a conversation, inconsequential outbursts or links that you'll never click on. It could be good for keeping up with things in real time, but when do you really need to keep up with things in real time? To get the best out of it you seem to need your iPhone glued to your face, which may yet appeal to some people.

Apart from fireland, he actually makes twitter work, one and two liners from a world about which 140 characters is probably as much as you want to know. He's reminiscent of the Far Side, in that he provides the set up and your imagination provides the punch line. Unfortunately, given more room, he doesn't do as well, although his tumblr blog has some moments.

Choice tweet

This old list from gawker has him at number 1, followed by 11 other twitterers who, according to my cursory skim through, just don't cut it. The best of the rest is probably AinsleyofAttack, and she's way, way behind.

Football's mercenaries

It must be Football's Only A Game weekend in the Guardian. Maybe they're trying to soften us up for England's disastrous election results world cup campaign.

First, Tottenham's Benoit Assou-Ekotto, that rare thing, an articulate footballer says: "The president of my former club Lens said I left because I got more money in England, that I didn't care about the shirt. I said: 'Is there one player in the world who signs for a club and says, Oh, I love your shirt?' Your shirt is red. I love it."

Typical Spurs.

And here Danny Mills (or Daniel John 'Danny' Mills, as wikipedia has it) - who Arsenal fans will remember chiefly for being reverse nutmegged by Thierry Henry - says that players don't take football anywhere nearly as seriously as fans, and that the fans should probably calm down a bit.

That's obviously true, but players have other motivations to play, like, I don't know, their weekly cash enemas, whereas fans are the one's paying. If the fans didn't feel so passionate, emotional, absorbed, obsessed and basically feel about football the same way they did when they were six years old, how many of them would bother shelling out their money and time on over-priced tickets, travel, merchandise, pints of pissy lager, sky sports subs, all things that mean that Danny Mills never has work another day in his life.

Workers unite! You have nothing to lose but your day off

(more undergraduate politics for you)

I was in my local shop this morning and the Turkish shopkeeper was watching coverage of the Workers' Day celebrations in Istanbul. It was probably equivalent to the sort of coverage we get on the Queen's Jubilee, huge crowds cheering, flags waving, updates rolling across the bottom of the screen. One million people, he reckoned, were out on the Turkish capital's streets celebrating. The caption at the bottom of the screen said (in Turkish, he translated) that it was 32 years since they'd celebrated workers' day in the Taksim Square; In 1977, he told me, soldiers attacked the crowd trying to mark the occasion, killing 30 people.

So in Istanbul one million (probably less) celebrate; in Athens there are protests about the Greek fiscal crisis; in Germany nazis and leftists clash; and so on around the world; in London ... not so much. Obviously in this country the idea of international workers solidarity is forever cursed with the shadow of Fred Kite and Wolfie Smith, and the lost days of the 1970s; now we're in a new, brave, fresh, completely fucked Great Britain, in which we don't have workers - quite literally sometimes - we have service providers, we certainly don't have unions, those evil bugbears who you have to strain to remember used to represent most of us.

I still don't understand quite why the working classes, especially in the south east, have been so keen to cast off their gowns of workers pride and hug the rather meagre embrace of the middle-class; why they should feel themselves better/separate from the other workers - well, a cod-psychologist like myself would immediately ascribe a deep self-loathing, but why should that be so, when, especially after the 1960s, the sense of working-class pride was very strong. And in any case, the middle-classes are workers too. But it's nevertheless true that many working-class people deride the rest of the working-classes. In his brilliant book Urban Grimshaw and the Shed Crew, Bernard Hare tells of his disgust when he went round London pubs collecting for the miners' strike and men spat in his face. "I could never come to terms with being spat at by my fellow countrymen," he says, and he promptly moved back to Leeds. Even I, who grew up with working-class kids whose dads probably would have done exactly that, even I, however many years later, felt shocked on his behalf.

It makes you wonder if all that talk about broken Britain, feral kids and the like (and they don't get any more feral that the Chapeltown ragamuffins of Hare's book), well perhaps if this underclass saw a sense of pride in being a worker, instead of it being outdated to aspire to just having a decent job and a decent life - and if there still was any work for them anyway - well maybe they wouldn't be running around burning houses down and bricking windows and acting the Daily Heil bogeykids.

John Grey, always interesting, says that the destruction that Thatcher's unleashed market forces wrought was in many ways the opposite effect to what she intended. He writes:

The conservative country of which she dreamed had more in common with Britain in the 1950s, an artefact of Labour collectivism, than it did with the one that emerged from her free-market policies. A highly mobile labour market enforces a regime of continuous change. The type of personality that thrives in these conditions is the opposite of the stolid, dutiful bourgeois Thatcher envisioned ... Thatcher’s economic revolution was meant to go along with something like a social restoration. Instead, it led to Britain as it is today.

But to blame Thatcher, just as the right-wing like to instead blame the permissive Sixties, is in someways to mark the symptom as the cause - the move away from collectivism and towards individualism was far more deep-rooted than a few long-haired pop stars, or sharp-voiced matriachagogues.

(look at me, pretending i know what i'm talking about)

Another reason that workers' day is so denigrated in England is I suppose its association with the communists, who, despite Marx living half his life here, have never been much loved by the nation of shopkeepers. Labour managed to get May Day onto the book of bank holidays - and who complains about an extra day's holiday, ah yes the bosses do - although it says something that workers celebrate being a worker by having a day off. I have a sneaking concern that if Cameron does clamber aboard Number 10 next week he may well spot a neat political manouevre in moving the May Day bank holiday to St George's Day. In one fell swoop he can both reward the 'patriots', ie. The Sun, and antagonise what's left of the left. Perhaps, however, that would be a move too far for the old Etonion. Who knows what nascent workers' solidarity such a move might unearth. They say the devil's greatest trick was to convince the world he didn't exist - well similarly the ruling class's greatest trick was to convince the workers that they didn't exist, that we're all in it together, to coin a topical phrase. Cameron may find his bloodline to the aristocracy - not to mention his £30m fortune - might come to fore then, even as the media tells us that his upbringing, background and friends aren't important, no not at all, what's important is the colour of his tie.

What about a leaders' rebate

Watched the third debate between the three party leaders. It's one of those occasions where it's almost too easy to be cynical, but christ there's a lot to be cynical about. I guess elections are always which one do you dislike the least, which one's going to do the least harm, but this year's has taken that to some new hideous extreme. Perhaps if politicians were a bit more honest (ha! as if that ever helps them) well, it'd be nice if they were like, look, I'm going to be a light touch and try not to fuck it up.

Cameron appears to have won on the night, more's the pity, but it was no surprise. Although he normally greases around like an oil slick that's been poured into a suit, on the three occasions when he's had to slog it out he's shown enough of that Eton steel to get him through. The first time was his speech to the Tory conference in 2005 that effectively won him the leadership. The second was his speech to the Tory conference in 2007 that effectively meant Brown called off the election. And now the third time, as Brown finally got the clunking fist to stop clunking himself and actually give the Tories a bit of stick, Cameron was able to hold off the attacks and give some back.

Who knows how the debates translate into votes, and how floating voters actually react to all of this. Of course by their nature floating voters must be fairly low IQ, I mean, everyone knows the Tories are for the cunts, the Libs for the wets and Labour for people who haven't got anywhere else to go. You don't need a debate to see that, it's been the same for years now. (Also, do people really vote for someone because they got their missus pregnant?) My guess is the debates are just the public's way of deciding which newsreader they want to give them the bad news. I only watched them to see if a fight would break out, but of course they'd all done private polling and found that a fight breaking out would only be popular with 22%, so none of them would go for it.

And who knows why anyone would want to win the most poisoned chalice of governments for many a year. It may well suit Labour to sit out five or ten years of savage cuts and tax rises, before popping up again to say: Hi, remember us! We're the happy people from the happyland! Whatever happens, however, we can safely say that the idea floated when Blair went that the public was tired of slick, focus grouped newsreader-style politicians, that is clearly nonsense, the public wants nothing more than light, frothy politicans to bridge that gap between the daytime shows and the evening soaps.

Daily Mail journalist in self-hate shocker!!!!

LIZ JONES: Now I know why I hate myself

Skipping over the obvious - because you write for the Daily Mail, dear - some choice quotes which explain maybe why she writes for the Daily Mail.

Everything I do is tinged with fear. As a child, my over-protective mum was terrified I would be run over ... I always assumed I was in imminent danger of being murdered. I developed a habit of conjuring images of disaster in my head.

So, what precipitated the current crisis? It was a culmination of things. It would be easy to say I became depressed because I got divorced, or my new neighbours in Somerset took a dislike to me. But that's not it. I'm used to not being liked.

I don't think: 'Ooh, I'm a good writer, I'm successful.' I think, hundreds of times a day: 'I'm rubbish, I'm going to be fired.'

Basically, I hate myself.

Well now that a course of intensive psychoanalysis has uncovered a traumatic episode in Ms Jones's childhood (surprisingly enough not inflicted on her by illegal immigrants, or drug-addled teenagers), do we believe that perhaps she'll stop churning out hate-filled, fear-filled copy for the Daily Heil?

We can hope so, although then of course she probably really would get fired.

Thiago: Mourinho told me to get sent off

Thiago Motta today revealed that it was Jose Mourinho's tactical genius that got him sent off in the 25th minute in last night's semi-final against Barcelona.

"Jose had a little word with me before the game and he said: "Look Thiago, I want you to get sent off as soon as possible, then we can crowd the defence, frustrate the Barcelonians and no-one will complain that I routinely send out dull, defensive football teams. So I did. And it worked."

Red Card

Motta was sent off with a straight red, having already received a yellow card in the 10th minute.

The Brazilian midfielder said: "That Jose, he is a tactical genius. He even told us at half-time not to worry in the 90th minute about them scoring a second, because the ref would call Toure's handball."

Mourinho said all credit was due to his team. "They defended like lions, every one, it was a masterclass in how to frustrate and disappoint and all those things that really make football great."

But as the Inter manager celebrated last night many observers noted that his eyes shone with an usual glow, some even calling them devil's eyes. Pep Guardiola, the defeated manager of Barcelona, said: "He must have evil powers, how else could he topple the righteous forces of Barca?"

Consternation

And there was constenation last night after the tactical genius 'accidentally' revealed that he'd be taking up residence on a secret island somewhere in the Pacific, from where he plans more bold successes for his dark forces.

The cackling villain said: "Yes, certainly, I will soon be considering how I can eliminate beauty in the world - there's too much of it. I don't think it's good for the soul. Send me your Barcelonas, send me your James Bonds, I will crush them."

Lionel Messi, the greatest footballer in the history of the universe and the universe before that but it's a bit early to say about any other universes, was heard exclaiming: "God damn, it'll take an extra righteous army to get up now and crush the evil doer, it needs, it needs SUPERMAN can you hear me??? SUPERMAN help!!!"

Mourinho replied: "Ah, who is this zooperman? Come out son of Jor-El I will destRRRRRROOOYYYYY you!!!"

I got 750 words but a bitch ain't one

Writers are often told, along with many other globules of advice - like, get a proper job you jackass - to start the morning by writing a few pages of whatever the hell comes into their head. Recently these appear to have been named 'morning pages', but the idea is well established, that a morning bathing in the stream of your consciousness allows you to unclog your writing brain and tone it up a bit. It's quite relaxing as well, feeling as if you are achieving something without too much effort. Sometimes it can help you think about what you want to write, sometimes it serves as a vent for your anger at the way the world is such a pile of shitcuntfuck, other times it merely gives you an opportunity to fail to string coherent sentences together, but it doesn't matter what you write, good, bad, beautiful or nonsense, and that's the point.

750 words is a run by a nice man in Seattle and its sole purpose is to help you write your morning pages. It counts and saves your output as you write and gives you a notice when you've hit your 750, which it estimates to be three pages worth. It has nice little icons to show you when you've written for a few days on the trot, for the primary school pupil in all of us, and it tells you how quickly you wrote what you wrote. It gives you an amusingly inaccurate 'analysis' of what you've written, comparing mindset, time orientation, primary sense and so on, so you can get an idea of your writing patterns. In time-honoured internet fashion, you can compete against complete strangers to see who can write every day, although nobody can read what you've written. You can search through your old morning pages as you wish, and that's about it. Privacy seems to be as secure as you're going to get, ie yeah he could just sell everything you write but probably he won't. Of course you could just do it yourself on Word or even - god forbid - paper but it's marginally more involving this way. Anyway, I recommend it.

Lifehacker post
Metafilter thread

Sam The Wheels

Pentecostal minister Clovis Salmon, known in Brixton as "Sam The Wheels" due to his bike wheel-making skills, came to Britain from Jamaica in the 1950s. From the 1960s to the 1980s he used his Super-8 camera to film Brixton daily life and church scenes, including the aftermath of the 1981 riots.

The great balls of China

China: Saviours of Snooker, Radio 4

Martin Kelner is one of only the very few regularly decent columnists in the Guardian, writing an unheralded and generally funny Monday column on what he's watched on TV sport. So finding out that he's made a radio show about the rise of snooker in China had me hoping for some of that good stuff. Kelner didn't actually travel to China, although it's always hard to tell on radio, but he did interview a few snooker players who have been there, along with Barry Hearn, who organised the first snooker exhibition in Shanghai in the 1980s. Snooker is huge in China, and the far East generally, and growing rapidly. One of the players recalled an early trip to Beijing and finding a snooker table being used on the Great Wall. Another remembered playing an exhibition for geriatric government officials, and having to stop every few minutes so they could go to the toilet. Recently 100 million Chinese watched coverage of a match between the two best Chinese players, Deng Junhui and Liang Wenbo, a far cry from when the Maoists made snooker illegal.

Snooker is suffering on its home turf, the days of Davis/Taylor are long gone, the lack of characters has sucked the spark out, and the banning of cigarette advertising has sucked the money out. So the Chinese fascination has pleased everyone, not least the players, who get treated like superstars out there. They were also effusive about the Chinese players, although, despite several opportunities, none of them seemed able to list any beyond Ding. It was left to Martin Kelner to mention Liang Wenbo by name. Marco Fu got a mention, but he was from Hong Kong and grew up in Canada. Ding himself was interviewed alongside his translator - who also got an interview all to herself - and was snooker-level articulate about the pains of moving to England to pursue his career.

Martin Kelner, funny as a muffin in his weekly column, didn't raise much of a smile in this show, just as I suppose I haven't in this review. The most notable moment from him was when he asked Ding if he'd eaten a Yorkshire Pudding, and received a confused burst of Chinese in reply. He was workmanlike, or I suppose professional, without ever making the topic gripping. Hearing the show did cause me to discover his blog, on his fairly impenetrable website. In any case, I wish him luck, since anyone who is able to make a living out of watching Sky Sports is some sort of hero.

Bloggin fi Peach

31 years after Blair Peach was killed on Beechcroft Avenue, Southall, on St George's Day 1979, the police have finally published the report written by Commander John Cass, along with other material they collected in the investigation. The release of the documents is a victory for Celia Stubbs, Peach's partner, especially since, as was always suspected, the report more or less confirms the widely-held view that Blair Peach was killed by a member of the Metropolitan Police Special Patrol Group (the SPG), a quasi-military outfit who had been accused of excesses against minorities throughout the 1970s.

As a boy the famous Wanted For Murder of Blair Peach poster was up in the front hall, and my mum told me that they knew who had done it, and that the SPG had got away with murder. But I had never read the reports of the police riot that day in Southall until now. The shocking events and even more shocking inquest and cover-up make me angry even today. And when you hear David McNee, then Met Commissioner, quoted as telling a black journalist: "If you keep off the streets of London and behave yourselves you won't have the SPG to worry about," it makes you wonder how people could stop from rioting themselves. (Oh, they couldn't.)

Nowadays there's hardly any riots, the police don't wade in quite as much, but of course they still kill people. You'd hope they pay a bit of attention to this report now. It's not the moaning minnies of the left that's accusing them this time, it's one of their own. There won't be a murder prosecution but it would be nice if the police taught their recruits the history. I'm not hopeful - when I met the riot squad guarding the G8 anarchist camp, they told me they'd never heard of the Battle of the Beanfield, and they did agree that it might sometimes be helpful to know a bit about why in particular people already think they're a bunch of cunts.

Around the world in 480 blogs

Blogger has a next blog button, where you click and are instantly transported to a random blog somewhere in the world. You can probably see it up there above me. Since I've been trying to blog more and since I heard that interacting with other blogs is an essential part of blogging, I tried it out. It was not a success. Of course I have the attention span of a very small gnat, but still, not one decently constructed paragraph graced my screen the whole time.

After extensive searching I started to see that blogs break down into a few categories:

Religious nuts
People with young children
People who are sick and dying
People who were sick and dying but now have young children
Blogs in Portuguese
Blogs I don't have permission to read
Blogs with an entry dated months ago which says: "I've been away for a bit but now I'm back!"
Blogs where they say they've moved to wordpress or tumblr
Blogs with extremely dodgy poetry

Obviously mine only really fits into the last category.

I wouldn't say it was an entirely dispiriting experience, in that I don't have much spirit of which to be dispirited, but it was certainly telling how much shoddy can't-string-a-sentence rubbish is out there. No wonder nobody reads blogs, who the hell has the time or inclination to wade through that gushing fountain of old bath water? My vague idea that a blog might be a shop window where I could present my wares to rich media tycoons passing by would only make sense if I pictured a shopping street about two million miles long with every shop window smeared with shite and only two shoppers, both walking briskly in the other direction with their collars up around their ears.

Still, I'm still game if you are. Whoever you are.

Actually I lied when I said nothing readable came up. Have a gander at this, and tell me you aren't glad you aren't in that family.

In search of the underdog

Nick Clegg says that the Tories in Scotland are 'irrelevant'. This may well be true but ha! Talk about forgetting where you've come from, two weeks ago and the Lib Dems were 'irrelevant'. I can't stand politicians - obviously, since I can't stand most people - but it's a little galling watching Nick Clergg, who I once saw completely underwhelm a huge meeting against the Heathrow third runway, make the jump from non-entity to political powerplay superdemon, with an attendant rise in smugness clustering around like flies surrounding a man with shit on his head.

It's apparently a very British thing to love an underdog, just as it's very American to love winners and get drunk on weak lager and shout about it. Why that is I couldn't say, not that that's going to stop me from trying. It might be because the British are so used to winning things, like wars and football well you know naval battles and whatnot, that we automatically side with the underdog out of sympathy - which would suggest that Americans are basically massive losers making up for their massive loserness by supporting winners. On the other hand, it's possible that we are such losers that we automatically identify with underdogs because that's what we are.

Perhaps we prefer underdogs because this country is so class-ridden that most of us are underdogs from the moment we're born (the radical's perspective) or perhaps it's that we're just bitterly jealous of anyone who sullies themselves enough to make it in the world (I don't know what perspective that would be). I don't have any clear idea of what it is we see in underdogs; perhaps we admire their pluck, their courage to keep going when they're clearly going to lose - Eddie the Eagle springs to mind - their courage to be known for being a total loser their entire life. Having said that, Eddie might say that in some way he won, because he won the hearts of a million British people who were like 'fair play to him having a go at something like that, I'd shit myself', and also to be fair he was the best ski jumper in Britain by a fair distance, so not a loser at all in fact, when you come to think about it.

I don't think we admire pluck, I think we like underdogs because they don't make us feel bad or at least any worse about our miserable lives, which is why, as soon as they stop being underdogs and start being overdogs, or whatever they become, hot dogs maybe, we drop them like a hot potato and cast around for someone else more underdoggy.

Dropped like a hot potato's a funny term isn't it, I mean when was the last time you picked up a hot potato? Not, of course, that it's not possible to pick up a hot potato, I'm sure that it is, I'm sure in olden days sailors used to pick up hot potatoes on the docks all the time, or something, and possibly caught hot potatoes in the process.

So where does the term underdog come from? It could be from greyhounds, but they rarely seem to be under, more to the side or just behind. Could it be that Britain's favourite animal metaphor is to do with the receptive dog in coitus? Perhaps the British only like people who are getting fucked by the top dog, but then how does that fit in with the traditional idea of the underdog being someone who comes from behind? What else could it be, underdog, a dog that used to go underground that everyone liked? Maybe it's related to dogging, that favourite British past-time, maybe Britain loves underdogging, no, I don't think I'm going to pursue that line of thinking.

Of course underdog could come from dog fighting, as in the dog that submits (under) the top dog, but in that case the underdog would be the loser, whereas underdog tends to mean the least fancied before the event, the David going up against the Goliath, and in fact there's an implied meaning of underdog that they often go on to win, otherwise they're just losers.

So I don't have a clue. A bit of research did turn up this attempt at etymology, but apart from being extremely tenuous, it's totally unreferenced and seems to be, more to the point, nonsense.

Memories of marathons

Marathon day in London. The TV coverage, with its relentless focus on the 'fun' and the 'heart-warming', makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that most marathon runners are data processors from Swindon, or website designers from Slough, the kind of people who would have had 'you don't have to be mad to work here but it helps' signs up in the 1980s and nowadays probably fill out Frankie Boyle gigs, because they're so fucking edgy. (A wild, rather stupid stereotype, but that is the kind I go for.) Obviously lots of different types of people run marathons, although perhaps they do they all have certain deficiency of intelligence in common. Still it's difficult to imagine cynical people running marathons - the kind of excitable positive mental attitude you need to think it a good idea to trash your joints for 26 miles seems to preclude dour miserables/realists like myself.

On watching the TV coverage, looking out for several idiots people I know who have apparently gone in for it, I couldn't help noticing that a lot of runners weren't really running it so much as, well, trotting. Of course when you're out for a 'fun' run (and how rarely does an oxymoron actually so obviously concern morons) actually running is not an essential item, as much just getting round by any means necessary and thereby raising loads of cash for wonderful causes. Raising the question of why people will only seem to donate to charity if someone is ripping their ligaments in half, but never mind, fun fun fun!

This year's event saw several world records broken. One man got the world record for fastest marathon dressed as a baby. He seems pleased, as does the man who won fastest leprechaun (I am not making this up), but jesus they let anybody in the Guinness Book of Records nowadays.

I have three major memories of the marathon. The first is from 1985 when my mum took me campaigning against the abolition of the GLC. We went around telling mostly unimpressed spectators that if the GLC was abolished the marathon probably wouldn't go ahead the next year. 'Don't be ridiculous,' one lady told me flatly, and the fact that she was proved right may have had some substantial impact on my subsequent political nihilism. Of course it is equally possible that years of trying to fire up an unwilling public for left-wing causes - for what was ostenibly their own good - left me bereft and unwilling myself.

When I worked at The Times staff there hated working marathon day probably more than Christmas Day - the roads around the Wapping plant are snarled up for miles with stupid people cheering on other stupid people, and most of the staff couldn't drive to work. As a cyclist it was not particularly difficult for me, although I did have to dodge the old Bill, leap a few barriers and sprint between runners across the Wapping Highway. The Highway has the rare accolade of the marathon running both up and down it, due to the torturous route it takes around docklands, and of all the vistas in London to have to pass twice, well it's an amusing choice.

When I worked at the tube, marathon day was an amusing tale of seeing fresh faced, excited joggers going out in the morning, and then watching them shuffling back in the afternoon, with carked ankles and twisted knees, helped along by some devoted family member, their happy finish line endorphin grin slowly peeling off as the weeks of agony ahead became apparent.

Other memories of marathon include the Marathon chip shop in Chalk Farm that somehow openly sold beer after hours in the 1980s, long before it was fashionable, where the chips were a strange shade of purple, and where marathon I guess referred to the drinking sessions. Every drunken tale rescued from that deviant establishment was always much more drunk than anywhere else. There was also the chocolate bar Marathon, which with a bag of crisps and can of coke was largely my school lunch for years. And let's not forget the parathons, when really strong acid trips go wrong.

Google Analytics Analysis

Who knows about google analytics? It's a tool website people use to measure traffic on their websites. I of course couldn't possibly measure traffic on my website, since it's so astronomical it is uncountable. But I check it anyway, now and again, to see if my blog has reached more people in a day than I could reach just by yelling out my window. Typically the answer is no I get quite a few hits and then an awful lot of them bounce right back off the page, presumably people who are looking for something else, or don't speak English, or wouldn't recognise good writing if it magically appeared on a computer screen in front of them. So the bounce rate, which doesn't much fall below 50% of visitors, is a sobering corollary to the individual visitors number beside it.

Yesterday wasn't a bad day, St George's Day being a topical theme and popular google search and I picked up a few people who'd searched for "St George's Day+racist". Most of them bounced straight back, as per usual, but what I didn't understand was why, when I myself searched google for St George's Day+racist, to see how high the post was in the results, it was so far down the list I never even found it. So these people had trawled google, painstakingly sifted through the great stinking piles of website nonsense out there, took a fine toothcomb to acres of chaff, finally unearthed my blog's small nugget of golden wheat, and then didn't even read it.

Which seems odd, but not as odd as the people who came to here after searching for criticalbills+blogspot? Five of them yesterday, of whom four bounced straight out again. What the hell else are they looking for apart from this blog? Or did it take one person (you can comment if you like) five goes to realise that they had actually found the right blog. Maybe all the new writing baffled them. Maybe getting rid of the embedded pornotube player confused them. Maybe, and this is what I'm really leaning towards, maybe google analytics sucks big bouncy bollocks. Anyway, if you're here, by whatever means you got here, thanks for dropping by.

Happy St Racist's Day!

St George's Day. It's a funny old thing. No-one seems to know when it is, or how to celebrate it. The Irish get pissed for Paddy's Day, the Welsh cook leeks (or something), the Jocks probably get pissed as well for St Andrew's Day or possibly play golf, but what do the English do for St George's Day? Well, traditional celebrations include a Guardian article mentioning what a hilarious coincidence it is that St George, patron saint of Little England, was - wait for it - a fuckin forrina; others mark it by bemoaning the lack of a proper celebration for St George's Day; others use it as a prop to write a blog post loading a gratuitous and unfair slur of racism upon St George's Day; others seem to like dressing up; no-one appears to have thought of using it as an occasion to maybe slay a few dragons, but it's early days.

On the face of it there shouldn't be anything racist about St George's Day. St George wasn't racist, being from Turkey and all that, and the dragon he supposedly slayed and princess he saved might have been from Libya. [That article features the interesting subplot that the Emperor's wife was so impressed by George's Christian martyrdom that she too became a Christian martyr, which is a funny thing to do when you think about it.] It's only that English people are assumed to be racist, hence Englishness is, but of course that's just bad press, those thugs running around saying outrageous things just to get themselves on telly. English people are no more racist than any other set of people arbitarily grouped together to make thinking less hurty.

Things get more complicated nowadays because the downtrodden English do have a point about their culture being subservient to all the new, better, more cultural cultures that have turned up over the years. But the chalice of English culture is so poisoned by the racists that even to start arguing that point makes people think you might be a closet racist hiding behind a politically correct thesis. And what the hell is English culture anyway? Shakespeare? Blake? It's not capitalism, thought up by a Scot; it's not colonialism, despite all the guilt, cos the whole of Europe was doing that; nor slavery; it's not multiculturalism, because that would be ridiculous; I hope to God it's not morris dancing, but it may be; it's certainly sucking up to America, but that's not much of a thing. Maybe this is why the racists have colonised the day, because they're the only ones who have a clear idea of what it means to be English: small minded, thick, violent, racist, closetly homosexual, that sort of thing.

Campaign promise

'I'll tell you how it started. I thought I knew it all you see, I thought nothing like that could ever happen to me. So when they came up to me at school and they said: "Ere sonny, do you want to join the Conservative party?" I thought nothing would happen. I thought I could handle it. I could take it or leave it. At first it was just now and again, a little meeting once a week. I liked how it made me feel. It made me feel important, as though I was somebody. Then I started going to more meetings and I even started doing a bit of politics on my own. Reading all about it. I fell out with my family over it, always arguing about tax and spend and capital punishment. They wanted me to stop but I told them to stay out of my life. Then I went to university. That was when I got into politics really badly. All day every day. Sitting in the union bar arguing with the Labourites then off to the debating hall twice a week for a massive debating binge. It started affecting my grades, so I switched to studying PPE to cover up. Then I became a councillor and finally an MP. That was when I hit rock bottom. I was lying to everyone: my family, my constituents, my accountant, the media. I couldn't maintain the pretence any more. I'm here to tell you all, don't make the mistakes I made: Politics screws you up!'

Louis Theroux: America's Medicated Children, BBC Two

Good old Louis, gonzo-bumbler, gauchely uncovering great scoops - like for instance that Max Clifford tells lies, or that Jimmy Saville is a fucking weirdo; Charming Louis, from a famous family: son of Paul Theroux, brother of Marcel Theroux (who I've never heard of), and also apparently brother of Jon Ronson (although that one isn't openly admitted); Posh old Louis, fag to Nick Clegg of all people at Westminster, who apparently lives in Harlesden; Yes, Louis is back, bumbling around some more, being nice to people and thereby getting them to let down their defences and tell him, nice Mr Louis, the TRUTH, not like those horrible journalists who crash in and get everyone's backs up.

What this amounts to this time is Louis staying over or just knocking around with three American families who have chosen to medicate their troublesome kids. We have 10-year-old Hugh, ratty, superior and friendless, prone to the occasional threat of suicide; 15-year-old Kaylee, whose brother had also been medicated but had grown out of it; and most shockingly of all, six-year-old Jack, a sweet-looking lad, who's been kicked out of school and spends his time in what we'd call a educational unit trying to make Tangram pictures without flipping the fuck out. Darling heart Louis, no matter how hard he tries to give everyone a fair shot (or at least enough rope to hang themselves) and not to let his prejudices shine through, spends an awful lot of the time saying things like: "Do you not think that perhaps he's just a normal kid, and you're just a shite, lazy parent?"

For what it's worth, that is what most people watching are thinking as well, and although Louis did quite well at not making people defensive, as well as showing he'd done more than cursory research into the kids' extensive diagnoses (OCD, ODD, ADHD, Asperger's, Bi-polar), there were times when you were glad that he did just come out and say: "Six years old is a little young for medication no?" Louis hung out with the kids and they seemed OK, although certainly troubled, but of course when he went back to the parents and pointed this out he was told: "Well you should have seen them without the pills" or in the case of the Jack: "No, that wasn't a freak out, but I can set him off for you if you'd like." Alas ethical reasons prevented that, so we ended up taking the mother's word.

And that was where the programme let the side down: It was fair enough for Louis to be absorbed in not overly challenging the families, but there was nobody else to put the case more concretely that the children maybe shouldn't be medicated, or at least not routinely. The parents certainly were aware of the controversy - in the case of the family who were all medicated, (even the dog, although not the daughter) the mother was highly educated and very articulate about the choices they'd made - but that didn't stop you from thinking that there was much, much more going on under the surface. The parents and also the doctors were well rehearsed in their pro-medication arguments, some more convincingly than others, but people who face the same questions over and over again often have their answers down pat, without it making their answers true.

So it was uneven telly, watchable, certainly, but it failed to really say very much, other than: this is what is happening (we know); there may be medicating going on to help parents control their kids or to avoid parents facing up to their own behaviours (this we know); there may well be medication for kids that is actually necessary (this we know although we may be sceptical to the point of not knowing it); we don't know if this is what is going on in any of these cases (this we um knew, or didnt know, well we're none the wiser). Certainly when you hear that one of the kids is diagnosed with the dystopian-sounding oppositional defiant disorder, you can't help but think: wait, are they medicating for opposition and defiance now? In interviews it seems that Louis was much more convinced by the possibility for medicating kids than it appears in the show, but the complete lack of alternative suggestions (as well as hardly any time given to the risks of medication) and the lack of footage of the unmedicated kids left at best half a story untold.

Your Two-a-day

Someone finds what is maybe the new iPhone 'in a bar', sells it to Gizmodo, they break it open and peek inside, before splashing big on the internet (and driving a fuckload of traffic their way), Apple ask for it back and grass grows and trees blow in the wind.

All this mentioned for no other reason than this comment on Metafilter.

Ash Tuesday

I've had a new idea, which is that I am going to post on here once a day - this is not going to happen, but i am going to try and write something for posting as often as i am able, which is quite often at the moment. This is inspired by hearing that when you run a blog - although I more walk a blog, or possibly shuffle along a blog - it is quantity not quality that's important, a sad indictment on the world in which we live, I guess, and a very typical indictment as well.

Anyway, for my first of no doubt millions of somewhat ropey but definitely existant blog posts I wish to mildly mention the absence of planes from English skies due to the eruption of a volcano in Iceland with a name so mental it sounds like the sort of thing an alien would jibber at you after snorting far too much ketamine. Thanks to this force of nature there has been not a single contrail to mar a beautiful succession of azure skies for the last week; a curious impression that perhaps it's a bit quieter round here lately; a lessening of the global CO2 whatsit for a bit; the warm glow that comes from the likes of Mr Ryanair getting a jetplane up the backside; and the smug satisfaction that comes of being too skint to fly anywhere this easter and not getting stuck in some holiday idyll with no money and having to sleep on the beach.

There are apparently millions of people stuck on easter holidays that they don't want to be on anymore, easter having long past, and the Royal Navy are being called in to go and collect them; Dan Snow, who - I can safely say, having once subbed an interview with him and his dad - is a bit of a twat, has tried and failed to "rescue" people from the dungeons of Calais, sort of like the Scarlet Pimpernel, except not; schools are shorn of their teachers and their pupils; complete peace and quiet for the residents of far West London and similarly unbenighted places; and impending doom for airlines, oh the horror

It is difficult to have sympathy for the people stuck on holiday, although no doubt there are people conversely stuck not on holiday, and also people from nice places stuck on holiday in Britain, although you haven't heard much about them in the news. But the people on holiday, well no doubt it is awful having to stay for three weeks on Tenerife when you were getting tired of it on the fifth day, but they rather remind me of that vision of hell - which the briefest of googling has informed me is likely to be Dante's - where the gluttons have to eat cake all day, even as they puke it up, and the cokeheads have to snort coke even though their noses are bleeding profusely, and the holidaymakers have to stay making holidays even though if they get anymore sunburnt they're going to become radioactive, and anyway they spent all their money on presents on the way to the airport and now they're eking out an existence living on stale bread that the shoddy restaurants on the strip chuck out at the end of the day, and making friends with the tramps that they told the police to remove in those halycon days before the planes were grounded.

In other developments the International Air Traffic Association called for a better response, which everybody ignored (ba-dum!), and plane companies claimed that they could have flown in the ash cloud anyway what the hell was the problem you idiots, and even the officials who grounded all the flights said perhaps they shouldn't have, which makes the whole thing even funnier than it was in the first place, just as a new belch of ash from the Eijeeiufkjnfakjnfliua volcano threatens to smother Europe again.

I'm off out now to enjoy the beautiful clear skies and even possibly take a photo over London, to show my grandchildren I guess, and I hope everyone takes note of the important lesson here, which is that it is possible after all for environmental protest to stop aviation, as long as it's well targeted, media savvy and takes advantage of prevailing circumstances.

late extra: I did actually go out, although without a camera cos it was getting cloudy anyway, and I distinctly saw several planes flying north-west above London, contrails like knife scars across the sky, and this despite the news saying that Southern England airspace is not open until tomorrow. So make of that what you want. I smell conspiracy. And kerosene.

'Is he from the future?'

'No, I think he's from Swindon.'

Police said Mr Cole, who was wearing a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age, would not reveal his country of origin.

What I especially like about this story is at the end it says: "Mr Cole was taken to a secure mental health facility in Geneva but later disappeared from his cell." So obviously not that secure a mental facility.

BAN THIS EVIL RAG NOW

HORRIFIED teachers are having to hand back worthless newspapers to pupils after confiscating them - because printing unsubstantiated hypocritical bullshit is still legal.

Worried school heads last night joined the families of teenage victims John Smith and John Lewis in backing calls to ban The Sun, real name The Scum Sucker.

The demands came as the known UK death toll rose to five.

Meanwhile the Government was blasted as it emerged a ban had been delayed for SIX MONTHS.

HOTLINE TO HELP YOU

If you have a tabloid problem or need advice call the Frank helpline on 0800 77 66 00

John Smith - father of 19-year-old chef John who died on Monday with pal John, 18 - said it was "shameful" that ministers had not yet acted.

Grieving John, 54, said he wholeheartedly backed the call to ban The Sun.

He said: "I'm convinced that because it's legal, my son thought it was safe.

"If they'd banned it maybe these two deaths wouldn't have happened."

Head teachers joined the call for a ban after a conference heard the paper was a "growing menace" among schoolchildren.

Mick Brooks, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: "Our members are raising awareness of The Sun's dangers, but the Government must recognise there is a real issue with this paper spreading utter nonsense."

Mike Stewart, head of Westlands School in Torquay, Devon, said it was "totally unacceptable" that the paper can be bought over the counter.

And he warned that teachers would have to HAND BACK any stashes confiscated from pupils - because the tawdry rag is still legal.

Powerless

Official guidance issued to teachers warns them that holding on to pupils' property could breach their human rights.

Mr Stewart said: "Both teachers and police are powerless to do anything about it.

"Items can be confiscated, but because this paper is still legal it would have to be given back at the end of the day and that's disturbing.

"This tabloid is highly dangerous and must be banned."

Shattered dad John added: "We've heard of children as young as nine reading this crap. Because it's legal, it's readily accessible.

"I could read it on the internet and get it delivered tomorrow.

"A friend's son said he didn't know anyone who HADN'T read it, so it's a huge problem.

"I understand a report that recommends banning it is just sat somewhere.

"It's shameful that young people are still dying. Politicians need to do something. We don't want anyone else to suffer like we are suffering."

John's mum Jane said: "Apparently kids are even reading these papers in the playground.

"John's not the first person to die from this paper, yet nothing is being done. How can that be right?"

John's mum Jacqui backed the Smith family's call, saying: "Let's stop this happening again."

Home Secretary Alan Johnson was blasted as it emerged that a decision on a ban had been delayed SIX MONTHS.

Tabloid trash ... just one molecule makes The Sun - illustrated above - different to DDR (a dirty dish rag). DDR's formula is rag+filth. The Sun's is rag+filth+inflammatory and inaccurate bullshit. Its chemical name is 4-theluvofgodmakeitstop (4-FS).

An official review was launched last October, then postponed when the scientist in charge quit in protest at the sacking of chief media adviser Prof David Nutt.

The committee has still not reported, meaning any ban is still months away.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling accused the Government of "dithering".

He said: "There's no excuse for not acting sooner. We should be able to ban these papers temporarily until there is a proper assessment."

Top cop Tim Hollis, media spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said banning The Sun would send out "a clear message" about its dangers - and give police the power to take action against agents.

The Government says it cannot ban the paper until the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Facts reports on its dangers.

John and welder pal John died hours after reading The Sun on a night clubbing with friends in Scunthorpe, Lincs.

Police investigating their deaths said four people - two men aged 26, one aged 20 and a 17-year-old youth - were still being questioned last night.

LORD Mandelson added insult to injury yesterday by admitting he had never heard of the paper.

The Business Secretary, below, later backtracked, saying: "Now it's been associated very tragically with the deaths of these two young people, we will look at it speedily and take any action needed."

Sunday Market Forces

As I was up early Sunday, I thought I'd roll down to Brick Lane, mooch about in the morning and perhaps collar a replacement bike, since mine fell victim to what appeared a minor fault but turned out to be terminal, as though a loved on had been carried off by a cold. Walking through Old Street I was struck, as often happens, by the fresh sheen of gentrification on the otherwise grimy and unprepossessing office blocks and warehouses. The rich are on the march around here, moving back into the city, recolonising what had been abandoned to the poor, and so pushing what community has endured off its moorings, out into the sub-suburbs. Community takes a long time to build up and a frighteningly short time to extinguish. For vast swathes of the city, both opulent and impecunious, community doesn't take much hold, people endure on for years without developing much attachment to their manor, or their neighbours, and are so used to this unrootedness that they think little of what community they do manage to partake in.

So the rich move in to areas that were once poor, and of course by stereotype we know that the rich engage in community far less, having more to occupy themselves that doesn't require neighbourly interaction. So the areas lose what local character has stayed on, beyond that conferred by the architecture or long-standing establishments.

And so to Brick Lane, the Sunday market along Sclater Street, a historical treasure trove where for hundreds of years immigrants were first sent to test themselves against the cold heart of London, before admission to the greater part of England. And there I find, against all the odds, a thriving stronghold of character, a tiny but strong pocket of undiminished east London, bulging with quite unselfconscious owsyerfather cockney accents, genuine, solid gold. And although they can't be unaware of the closing tide of the trendies - gentrification's outriders, who have more or less claimed Brick Lane for coffee and vintage clothes stalls - and although within a few hours the area will have turned from a flea market to a bohemian enclave, for the time being east London remembers itself as the hard-done-by cousin of the trendy north and west.

I'm in Sclater Street, where the stolen bikes are propped by malevolent looking 20-year-olds; a man with one leg sits on the kerb with his hand outstretched; stalls profer such meagre wares that they could not, even on a market day of fantastic good fortune, possibly provide enough income to pay rent on a nearby warehouse conversion; where all of a sudden a brief snatch of Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues blares out from a CD stall, clear bass booming in the spring sun, the lyrics casting their own take on the ragamuffin environs; up the road is the real flea market, people sat on rugs on the pavement selling whatever they've mustered up, third world scenes still undisplaced by the new concrete bridges carrying the new railway that has suddenly cut through the area, regeneration carried by train, how much longer can this free space endure, so unfashionable and neglected and unprofitable.

Up in Hackney later, in Dalston, I sit at my mate's flat and look out the window on the sunny afternoon, drinking tea and enjoying the hope of spring. We chat and swap stories, a social visit. In the wide, tree-lined street young men jump out of a car, confront other young men on a motorbike, knives are drawn, big knives, the kind that would stab right through you, some of the youth chase others up the road, a motorbike helmet is left on the ground, a pair hurridly attempt to start the bike, others return shouting: 'are you mad? are you mad?', capture the bike, the car drives off, no-one is stabbed, no-one lies in their own blood, and all is quiet again on the sunny spring afternoon. What of gentrification? How many trendy blocks and tube stations can you build, or failing pubs can you convert to middle-class emporiums?

The swiftness of the incident, and the swift vanishing of it entirely, are profoundly unnerving, the street looks as pleasant as you could hope for, and the menace only remains in the mind. The next-door neighbour, well-to-do though down-to-earth, is shocked - 'what the fuck,' she says to me, 'what the fuck was that about?' - she's shocked, but both her and I know that this goes on, there's no surprises, but to know is another thing than to see.

The police arrive, too late for the party, drive up the road which now bears not a trace of its tumult. They have nothing to offer and nothing to do. They ask me questions, but I have nothing to tell them.

When I leave I see the car at the end of the road, I see four boys sitting inside, they have their butcher's knives with them no doubt, at the ready, ready to disturb the pastoral late afternoon once again; as the sun sets in glory over the city, they have them at the ready, at the flick of a switch they can bring them to bear.