Year: 2005

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Racist's hall of shame

Just got an interesting email through from Unite Against Fascism, listing the BNP’s ‘Dirty Dozen’ – pretty much shows up what they’re about for the coming elections:

  • Tony Lecomber: top BNP official. Three years jail for nailbomb
    plot and three years for stabbing a Jewish teacher.
    12 convictions in all.

  • Kevin Scott: north east BNP organiser. Convictions for
    assault and threatening behaviour.

  • Paul Harris: Barnsley BNP council candidate. Convicted of
    using threatening behaviour towards a pensioner.

  • Jason Douglas: leading Greater London BNP candidate.
    Convicted football hooligan.

  • Warren Bennett: BNP chief steward.
    Convicted football hooligan.

  • Stephen Belshaw: Amber Valley BNP
    candidate. Convicted of attacking a
    Jewish solicitor.

  • Colin Smith: south east London BNP
    organiser. 17 convictions including burglary,
    car theft, possession of drugs and
    assaulting a police officer.

  • Darren Dobson: Oldham BNP council candidate.Convicted
    of racially aggravated assault.

  • Frank Forte: Waltham Forest BNP member. Convicted of
    actual bodily harm.

  • Paul Thompson: former Durham and Darlington BNP
    organiser.Convicted of criminal damage and for violence.

  • Neil Keilty: BNP member. Convictions for possessing an
    offensive weapon and threatening behaviour.

  • Gary Mitchell: former Sunderland BNP secretary.Convicted
    of racist attacks and possession of offensive weaponry.

So, that’s just about all that needs to be said. Mark Thomas last year posted a list of some of the remarkable acheivements of the BNP local councillors up north – most had never even attended any council meetings.

I can’t imagine that any of the erudite creative delicious people who read this Blog would be voting BNP, but the thing to remember is that they benefit greatly from low voter turn out, so make sure that you and everyone you know goes out to vote in the forthcoming elections!

Soundtrack – Dave Matthews/Tim Reynolds, ‘Live At Luther College’; Tom Waits, ‘Blue Valentines’; Terry Callier, ‘Speak Your Peace’; Cocteau Twins, ‘VictoriaLand’.

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Jonatha gig #4

Last night was gig number four this month – back at the 12 Bar, this time a headline set of just over an hour. She’s almost too good – a really great set-list, including, I’m glad to say, a song I’d never heard (there’s not much Jonatha-related material I haven’t heard) – a song called ‘I’ll Try’ from some Disney movie… Beautiful, tried to find it on iTunes today, but it’s not there (lots of her other stuff is though – go and get it!)

Her last gig in the UK for now is at The Bedford in Balham on Monday – JUST GO!! If you haven’t seen her on this tour, you need to, she’s a genius.

In other news, still no news on my wallet, so I’m guessing it’s gone permanently. Bollocks.

Random link of the day – www.wordcount.org – the 86,000 most commonly used words in the English language in order. A fantastic site.

Soundtrack – Paul Simon, ‘You’re The One’; Incognito, ‘Positivity’; Jonatha Brooke, ‘Live’; Stevie Wonder; ‘Hotter Than July’.

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coming soon to a mag/poster/website near you…

Last week I had a new photoshoot done. I’ve been using the same handful of promo shots for years, and needed a load more. The photographer is – a hugely talented photographer. We did a whole load of studio, white background shots at a studio in central london then went down to Picadilly Circus for some outdoor shots. Much fun was had, and it’s true that all you need to do if you want people to think you’re a celeb in London is have a couple of people with cameras and flash guns follow you around in the middle of the city!

So yesterday I went round to Steve’s to see the edited doctored photos, which are, as expected, marvellous. Steve’s done an amazing job (given the subject matter – hah!), and they’ll be appearing in a couple of mags in the near future – I’ve done a handful of interviews lately, so hopefully they’ll be printing some pics!

Anyway, here’s a sneak preview of one of them –

Oh, and still no word on my wallet. (If any of you have been planning to buy CDs from the online shop here, now would really be a good time.)

Soundtrack – Tom Waits, ‘Nighthawks At The Diner’; Stevie Wonder, ‘Hotter Than July’.

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Lost Wallet

Shit. A rubbish end to a rather nice day in Central London was losing my wallet, somewhere between County Hall and The British Museum. Been to everywhere we stopped, no joy. Rung the police stations in the area, no joy, cancelled my cards. Need to order a new driver’s licence, get the people who had written me cheques that were in there waiting to be paid in to reissue them. Need to work out how to pay my tax bill when the cash that was in it was set aside for that. Shit.

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iPod generation?

I keep hearing all over the place about now being the iPod generation – where our music listening is governed by homemade playlists, shuffle functions and genre-specific online radio… Does anyone else still listen to whole albums?

While I do occasionally listen to odd tracks (or even buy odd tracks on iTunes – the latest one was Carly Simon’s ‘Coming Around Again’ – just had an urge to listen to it, for some reason!) I’m still a big fan of the art of constructing an album, programming the tracks in the right order, developing a musical or lyrical theme and packaging it in a way that makes sense. Music just doesn’t seem to have the same significance in a disembodied ‘shuffle mode’ MP3 context.

On the flip side of this, I’ve always been a big fan of Greatest Hits albums, more because I’m looking forward to the day when I’ve got 10 or so albums under my belt and can cherry-pick the best tracks to go on a best-of. That feeling of looking back over your career and seeing how many great tracks you’ve made must be a very satisfying one.

so, my top 5 fave Greatest Hits albums –

  • The Cure (Greatest Hits)
  • Paul Simon (Negotiations and Love Songs)
  • Michael McDonald (Sweet Freedom – the best of)
  • Tom Waits (Asylum Years)
  • Prefab Sprout (Life Of Surprises)

The other great packages of a lifetime’s material are live albums and re-recordings – my faves of those would be

  • James Taylor (Live – mid 90s)
  • Joni Mitchell (Travelogue)
  • Kings X (Live)
  • Bruce Cockbun (Live – late 80s)
  • Dave Matthews/Tim Reynolds (Live at Luther College)

So here’s to the magic of the album, long may it continue as an artform…

Soundtrack – Stevie Wonder, ‘Hotter Than July’; Tom Waits, ‘Nighthawks At The Diner’.

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Photos of Toronto

After last year’s trip to the US, I started blogging all about it and posting pictures, but must have bored even myself as I quit half way through, which meant I never posted any pics of Toronto, which was one of the coolest cities on our trip. Lots of cool things happened in Toronto, mainly meeting up with , going to a Sisters Euclid gig and eating a very fine curry!

Anyway, here’s a few pics –

There you go! Toronto in a nutshell :o)

Soundtrack – Tom Waits, ‘Nighthawks At The Diner’; Stevie Wonder, ‘Songs In The Key Of Life’; Public Enemy’, ‘It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back’; Prince, ‘Purple Rain’.

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The downside to being a music teacher…

…is working most saturdays. This Saturday in particular is a pain because it’s the big Stop The War – Bring The Troops Home rally in central London.

The galling thing is I would’ve gone, I’d have put all the teaching on different days if I’d known, but alas, I only found out about it today! What kind of a crap activist am I? Not even knowing about this stuff.

Anyway, it is really the only downside to teaching – having to work evenings and weekends. If I want to go to a gig, I have to make sure I’ve got no teaching in, and same for Saturdays. I do have the advantage of being entirely self-employed so I can take as much time off as I like, but missing a Saturday’s teaching is a fair chunk of my weekly wages, unless I’ve got a few gigs in that week. So when everyone else is off work and has free time, I have to cancel paid work to get involved with anything.

As a result I’ve always kept Sundays free (I’ve probably taught a total of about 20 hours on Sundays in the last 12 years) – partly out of residual evangelical guilt about working on a Sunday, but also out of the need for a day off, and a day when I can be sure to be free to do fun things with fun people.

Anyway, if I can’t go to the march on Saturday, I can at least encourage you lot to go, if you’re in London. As I commented earlier, the case for the war has totally collapsed, the behaviour of the troups is appalling, the Iraqi people have voted for a total withdrawal of foreign troups, and most of the troups don’t even want to be there. So, go, march, take a lifesized of me with you and wave it whenever there’s someone around who looks to be doing a head-count.

Soundtrack – Prince, ‘Purple Rain’; Miles Davis, ‘ESP’.

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The Crepe'd Crusader

certainly brings out mixed emotions in most people. Firstly he’s the loveable cheeky cockney chap, naked chef, bringing new life to TV cooking. Then he became the overexposed Sainsbury’s poster boy, in all the ads, doing voice overs and generally overstaying his welcome. So he reinvents himself as the crowned king of worthwhile reality TV.

What did he get right? He picks things he cares about. Unlike, say, Gordon Ramsay, who just came across as a miserable bag of turd, belittling B-list celebs live on TV (all the ones with any backbone walked out – respect to the late great Tommy Vance for that!), Jamie picked subjects that would change the lives of ordinary people for the better. In , he took a bunch of relative no-hopers from rough backgrounds and gave them the chance to train to be top chefs. They’ve still got jobs. Their lives are on a different path. Magic.

His next project was in a whole different league. Jamie took on Britain’s school dinners in . It took months to film, and started in one school, with Jamie trying to get the kids to eat properly. What they were eating was truly shocking. The worst kind of junk food, the same crap every day, zero nutritional content. Just rubbish, rubbish that will eventually kill them. And Jamie cared. Really, not for a moment did even the most cynical of hacks question his motives. Watching the programme, it’s inconceiveable how parents have let it get to this stage. The kids couldn’t recognise vegetables!

So he goes on a crusade, getting 55 schools in Greenwich to move over to his new menu. He works within the insane food budget that he’s set, he convinces dinner ladies to work unpaid overtime, he wrecks his homelife in order to make this happen.

Suddenly pain-in-the-arse Jamie is transformed into we-need-more-people-like-you-on-TV Jamie. A hero, fighting the beaurocrats who will sell the kids of the nation’s health for 15p a day.

It’s riveting viewing, and I really really hope things change. Things already are changing. The teachers report back a total turn-around in the kids’ concentration levels, attentiveness and behaviour patterns, just through the change of diet.

Come on, Ruth Kelly, get it together!! As Education Secretary, she’s responsible for the decisions, the one with the purse strings. Jamie’s done the work, written the handbook, drawn up the recipes. All you need to do is ban the junk, and pay for the training.

It’ll reap HUGE rewards in the future when these kids aren’t all rotting in hospital from preventable diseases.

So, let’s get behind Jamie, sign petitions, campaign, make a fuss. The future of the kids’ health depends on it. Go to the campaign homepage, and start kicking up a fuss.

Soundtrack – David Sylvian, ‘Secrets Of The Beehive’ (Evil Harv is generally a malicious and sinister presence in the world, but all is forgiven for introducing me to this album a couple of years ago).

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Heatwave!!

Well, OK, not quite, but it is the first proper day of sun this year in London. It’s warm out! Like, proper spring weather. I actually went out into the garden, without having to empty the kitchen compost bin into the huge compost bin outside! Amazing.

Two other residents of this house are enjoying the sun – The Fairly Aged Felines have been allowed out into the garden for over a week now, ever since I expertly fitted a cat-flap to our back-door (well, OK, I fitted it, expertly or not.)

Much fun to be had exploring our garden, and the neighbouring gardens, to be sure!

Soundtrack – still Pat Metheny/Charlie Haden, ‘Beyond The Missouri Sky’ – this is such an outstandingly gorgeous record, once it goes in the player it’s bound to be there for a day or so… I think I’m on my fifth or sixth listen in a row.

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the revelations from Iraq just keep on coming…

So the death toll of Iraqis who’ve died in US custody in Iraq now stands at 108 according to this BBC report – 25% are being investigated as possible abuse cases.

Here’s the breakdown –

“The AP found that of the 108 deaths in US custody:

  • At least 26 have been investigated as criminal homicide involving the abuse of prisoners
  • At least 29 are attributed to suspected natural causes or accidents
  • Twenty-two are blamed on an insurgent mortar attack on Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in April 2004
  • At least 20 are attributed to “justifiable homicide”, where investigations found US troops used deadly force appropriately – primarily against rioting, escaping or threatening prisoners.

Those are pretty horrific statistics. 29/108 dying of ‘natural causes or accidents’ – what kind of set up are they running??? Accidents doing what? Natural causes? are they imprisoning sever asthmatics without access to medication? that’s a huge percentage to attribute to those two factors.

And the ‘justifiable homicide’ – justifiable in the way that the shooting of an Italian intellegence agent was ‘justifiable’??

It just goes on and on, the list of crimes being committed, the collapse of the rationale in the first place, the further information about the illegality of the British government’s case for war.

The biggest tragedy is that the next election won’t be a proper referendum on the war – Blair has taken us into this mess, but the alternative if we vote him out is so grim.

I just hope that between now and the election the Lib Dems come up with enough good stuff and media profile to dent both parties. They were the only ones that were anti-war all along, and do seem to have the most coherent policy set for this election. I just fear they don’t have the internal infrastructure for government.

Soundtrack – Pat Metheny/Charlie Haden, ‘Beyond The Missouri Sky’ (one of the most beautiful albums ever made); Alison Moyet, ‘Greatest Hits’.

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