Marc Nash's Blog, page 29
June 1, 2015
My Top TV Tunes
Thought I'd share with you my favourite TV theme tunes. Some are for programmes that weren't all that good, not even in a camp or ironic way, yet the theme tune still salvages some value in them. Sadly themes such as "Hawaii 5-0" and "Thunderbirds" have become ruined for me by drunken chorus renditions of them searing into my brain at many an end of season football team drink-up, or just some witheringly bad adolescent disco, no fault of the songs themselves really. Nor have I included movie themes (otherwise "Shaft" would be at number one and "The Pink Panther" at two, but look at the bright side, it rules out "Bewitched" and "The Brady Bunch") and I'm afraid there are whole rafts of programme types I don't watch and therefore am blissfully unaware of their blindingly good theme music for shows about properties and holidays.
10) Roobarb and Custard - The distortion and the slightly off harmonica make this really very 'muso' as well serving perfectly for a consciously garishly ill-drawn cartoon that shaded outside the drawn boundaries of its characters.
9) The Odd Couple - Just oozes swing and class, this was hipster chic before it was invented down Hoxton way. Series was pretty good too.
8) The Avengers - Sure it's cheesy and over the top, but then that was the aesthetic of the programme. Emma Peel and Purdey right? This almost has a Lee Hazelwood vibe to it (he of Nancy Sinatra collaborative partner fame).
7) Joe 90 - Not the best tune in the world, but this is Mod and Carnaby Street and every 1960s documentary about swinging London you'll ever watch. Even though it's actually scifi about some dreadfully unfashionable geek.
6) Voyage To The Bottom of The Sea - These puppet/animatron shows from the 60s & 70s all sort of blur into one in my dim and distant memory. Stingray, Captain Scarlet, Space 1999, Fireball XL5. But one thing about them all, they had pretty fine theme tunes. This show wasn't one by puppet-master Gerry Anderson. Good tune still.
5) Jackass - Never watched the programme in my life, but it's theme tune is from one of my fave bands The Minutemen. It's called "Corona" which is kind of the opposite to the void heart of Steve-O and his cronies. Still, someone in their production company had impeccable music taste. I know it's a film, but my blog, my rules okay? Interestingly someone rigorously keeps slapping a copyright claim on the theme tune, so that gives me the excuse to give you the original as well.
4) Twilight Zone - Eat your heart out X-Files. The original and the best in eerie, unexplained creepiness.
3) The Persuaders - Written by John Barry so you know it's going to be good right? The hint of an Iron Curtain musical theme sets it up just right
2) Test Match Cricket - For such a slow, languid sport this is really rather breakneck in pace. Brings back so many lazy summer days as a youth waiting in anticipation for the clock to tick round to 11am and a full day slumped in front of the telly while the sun was beating down outside. Or, when it was chucking it down and the BBC were restricted to showing reruns of old matches, the jaunty Caribbean upswing of this made the rain outside seem very far away.
1) The Sweeney - Great show, great theme tune. The way the police car siren segues into the theme tune is genius (unfortunately not on this YouTube version) and the theme itself manages to conjure up the suggestion of violence, seediness and corruption that the show portrayed. The closing track was a slower, more reflective version of the theme. The Sweeney was unusual for its time because the cops didn't always get their man. Now I watch it and am flabbergasted at just how much my city of London has changed in the 40 years since this aired. It looks like another world.
10) Roobarb and Custard - The distortion and the slightly off harmonica make this really very 'muso' as well serving perfectly for a consciously garishly ill-drawn cartoon that shaded outside the drawn boundaries of its characters.
9) The Odd Couple - Just oozes swing and class, this was hipster chic before it was invented down Hoxton way. Series was pretty good too.
8) The Avengers - Sure it's cheesy and over the top, but then that was the aesthetic of the programme. Emma Peel and Purdey right? This almost has a Lee Hazelwood vibe to it (he of Nancy Sinatra collaborative partner fame).
7) Joe 90 - Not the best tune in the world, but this is Mod and Carnaby Street and every 1960s documentary about swinging London you'll ever watch. Even though it's actually scifi about some dreadfully unfashionable geek.
6) Voyage To The Bottom of The Sea - These puppet/animatron shows from the 60s & 70s all sort of blur into one in my dim and distant memory. Stingray, Captain Scarlet, Space 1999, Fireball XL5. But one thing about them all, they had pretty fine theme tunes. This show wasn't one by puppet-master Gerry Anderson. Good tune still.
5) Jackass - Never watched the programme in my life, but it's theme tune is from one of my fave bands The Minutemen. It's called "Corona" which is kind of the opposite to the void heart of Steve-O and his cronies. Still, someone in their production company had impeccable music taste. I know it's a film, but my blog, my rules okay? Interestingly someone rigorously keeps slapping a copyright claim on the theme tune, so that gives me the excuse to give you the original as well.
4) Twilight Zone - Eat your heart out X-Files. The original and the best in eerie, unexplained creepiness.
3) The Persuaders - Written by John Barry so you know it's going to be good right? The hint of an Iron Curtain musical theme sets it up just right
2) Test Match Cricket - For such a slow, languid sport this is really rather breakneck in pace. Brings back so many lazy summer days as a youth waiting in anticipation for the clock to tick round to 11am and a full day slumped in front of the telly while the sun was beating down outside. Or, when it was chucking it down and the BBC were restricted to showing reruns of old matches, the jaunty Caribbean upswing of this made the rain outside seem very far away.
1) The Sweeney - Great show, great theme tune. The way the police car siren segues into the theme tune is genius (unfortunately not on this YouTube version) and the theme itself manages to conjure up the suggestion of violence, seediness and corruption that the show portrayed. The closing track was a slower, more reflective version of the theme. The Sweeney was unusual for its time because the cops didn't always get their man. Now I watch it and am flabbergasted at just how much my city of London has changed in the 40 years since this aired. It looks like another world.
May 25, 2015
Human Flea Circus - Flash Fiction
“Jumper. Ambulator. Ambulator. Ambulator. Jumper…”
Each human was duly categorised and pronounced, then hoisted with a leviathan pair of tweezers and put into one of two hutches; the one labelled ‘Jumpers’ had a gauze over the top to prevent its internees vaulting back out to freedom.
The pens were taken and each individual captive was removed and had a gold wire looped over his head and twisted to a clinch. The skill for the giants was not to pincer too hard and crush the neck of the parasite. The clumsy pudgy digits of the threaders wrought a large cull on the humans, those corpses piled into tumulus in full sight of their less fortunate living survivors.
The humans had their wire collars attached to a variety of dinky (to the scale of the giants) apparatuses. Several were yoked to chariots a hundred times their own weight and made to race one another amidst deafening brobdingnagian cheers, for the winner’s privilege of continued life while his beaten peers were slain.
Another benighted human was lain on his back and his harness hammered into the ground to keep in him place, in order that he could use his powerful legs to juggle a giant sphere painted to resemble the continents and the seas of the Earth in perpetual motion. When his harness was tightened a notch, he kicked the sphere a mighty distance into a backboard painted with other stars and set off a conflagration by igniting the fireworks there. The giants in the audience cheered his act of destruction to the rafters.
A human was harnessed to one of the curved armatures of a carousel, so that when he walked in a circle, he turned and spun the whole carousel with him to the oohs and aaahs of the appreciative giants. His mate powered the rotations of a ferris wheel until it tipped and fell on her.
A further reluctant human clung to the pole from which his collar was tethered, at one end of a tightrope spanning a waterfall three times the size of Niagra. The Ringmaster signalled for the stage crew to throw the switch to heat up the wire. The human started his jerky saltation across the wire as he lifted each foot from the heat. Inevitably he tumbled, but his golden noose saved him from a plunge into watery death. Which might have been a blessing, as instead the metal transmitted the heat from the wire above and slowly roasted him to death as he dangled and writhed. The giants applauded wildly even as they began to salivate as the aromas of the burned human flesh caught their nostrils.
The human flea circuses died out as their star performers became extinct. Crushed by their own smallness of scale.
Each human was duly categorised and pronounced, then hoisted with a leviathan pair of tweezers and put into one of two hutches; the one labelled ‘Jumpers’ had a gauze over the top to prevent its internees vaulting back out to freedom.
The pens were taken and each individual captive was removed and had a gold wire looped over his head and twisted to a clinch. The skill for the giants was not to pincer too hard and crush the neck of the parasite. The clumsy pudgy digits of the threaders wrought a large cull on the humans, those corpses piled into tumulus in full sight of their less fortunate living survivors.
The humans had their wire collars attached to a variety of dinky (to the scale of the giants) apparatuses. Several were yoked to chariots a hundred times their own weight and made to race one another amidst deafening brobdingnagian cheers, for the winner’s privilege of continued life while his beaten peers were slain.
Another benighted human was lain on his back and his harness hammered into the ground to keep in him place, in order that he could use his powerful legs to juggle a giant sphere painted to resemble the continents and the seas of the Earth in perpetual motion. When his harness was tightened a notch, he kicked the sphere a mighty distance into a backboard painted with other stars and set off a conflagration by igniting the fireworks there. The giants in the audience cheered his act of destruction to the rafters.
A human was harnessed to one of the curved armatures of a carousel, so that when he walked in a circle, he turned and spun the whole carousel with him to the oohs and aaahs of the appreciative giants. His mate powered the rotations of a ferris wheel until it tipped and fell on her.
A further reluctant human clung to the pole from which his collar was tethered, at one end of a tightrope spanning a waterfall three times the size of Niagra. The Ringmaster signalled for the stage crew to throw the switch to heat up the wire. The human started his jerky saltation across the wire as he lifted each foot from the heat. Inevitably he tumbled, but his golden noose saved him from a plunge into watery death. Which might have been a blessing, as instead the metal transmitted the heat from the wire above and slowly roasted him to death as he dangled and writhed. The giants applauded wildly even as they began to salivate as the aromas of the burned human flesh caught their nostrils.
The human flea circuses died out as their star performers became extinct. Crushed by their own smallness of scale.
May 20, 2015
Confirmament - Flash Fiction
The King listened impassively as the Royal Astrologer demonstrated how the star charts foretold the kingdom’s imminent doom.
“And who is this host that shall overcomemy all conquering army and where do they come from?”
“The charts do not reveal that Sire”.
“Do they have elephants like I do? How can anyone best an elephant? These charts with their child’s doodles are not worth the vellum they’re inked on. How is that supposed to look like a crab?”
“Sire, see the Scales here how unbalanced they have become?”
“Scales? It looks nothing other than like the end of my royal shaft!”
The King ordered for his astrologer to be taken away and executed. For good measure he had the astronomers so immured and Star-Chambered that they never saw the sky again, else put on the rack and stretched until their limbs and torsos resembled some of the angular constellations they had illuminated on their maps. He took these charts and erased their shapes and images and began drawing his own to link the stars.
“We need an elephant constellation to recognise the strength of our kingdom under Heaven”. So he drew an elephant with long trunk and huge ears across the firmament. “Then we need something to glory unto me. Orion’s Belt, the ‘Three Kings’ ha! A woman’s girdle for a man and nothing less. We need an orb and sceptre in the night sky to reflect my divine right”. Unfortunately the King though divinely chosen was not imbued with numinous draughtsmanship and the orb and sceptre were scrawled too proximate to one another so that they resembled a male member with just one sac.
And so the King continued on in this vein, rejigging the astral vault. He was so ensconced in his task, that he forbade any of his stewards and chamberlains to disturb him. Which was a pity as the invasion of his realm had begun. His elephants had proved no match for the army of mice that had been in the vanguard, causing them to turn tail and trample over their own frontline of defences. Into the breach came a mighty hunter shooting his arrows, flanked by a Centaur doing the very same. Next came a giant Bear, a hulking Bull and a humungous Lion tearing and raking and gouging at any massed phalanxes of the King’s troop. Finally scuttled an outsized Scorpion to clear up the survivors with each venomous sweep of his stabbing tail.
And when the kingdom had been levelled featureless and returned to the earth, the victorious conquerors ascended to their own celestial abode and took their places up against the stars so that again mortals could look up and sketch their outlines. Only the divines insisted on a new constellation being added, that of the humble mouse, pointed out by two astral ears and a stellar snout. The Smintheus constellation.
May 14, 2015
Lux - Flash Fiction
I have been exposed to the light just the once. The occasion of the expulsion of my birth. Tumbling from the primordial interstitial paradise, into a searing light that sundered the milky membranous veil from my eyes. Reflexively I averted my head and pressed it into the cold breast of my mother who had expired from the moil of evacuating me. Burying my face into her clabbered flesh blotted out the punishing light and stopped up my incipient breath. These twin inundations red-illuminated the arteries behind my own eyes and caused shooting spangles of stars. Another tunnel of light opened up before me, its adit beckoning me into its maw. Light beyond and light within. Fortunately I blacked out until the siege of me was somehow lifted by the midwives.Since then I have only ever shunned the light. Reverse heliotrope. Abetted by the pollution in the air that strains the sunlight and turns it caliginous. Some say such fetid air reeked of brimstone, but such a notion struck me as fanciful though it enfettered me in my daily wake. Abroad at night, the reflected and depleted light of the moon pierced me no threat. While the spill of the gaseous orange glow of the street lamps served to smear and blanch the twinkling of the stars. I just had to ensure I kept my head down so as not to stare into the coronas generated by the bulbs. I had my catapult in my pocket were any street lamp to shine too brightly, but even that I knew was a harbinger of its imminent death as the filament teetered on the point of burning itself out. Light does that, it consumes itself bloodily.So I inhabit the shadows and the gloom. I bask in the Cimmerian. It puts me proximate with other tenebrous brokers and stewards of the night. These creatures with reptilian eyes. Yet when they look into mine unshrouded by any lids, they misconstrue my gaze as unflinching and steadfastly abysmal. A trick of the, well light. Or lack of it. But the opacity of my gaze is sufficiently indurate for them to pledge me adamantine fealty.
Nevertheless I am not one of their cohort. I promise them nothing, reward them less. Still they seek my sanction for their wicked acts. They propitiate what they imagine must be my appetite for blood. They see me vampire, when in fact I am more humble angel.
Nor can I abide the fires they light to warm themselves, for there coruscates an accelerated energy giving rise to sharp stabs of light. Fulgurant embers rise into the air as an unsympathetic echo of the spangles which stamped my newborn vision. So when I am accused of presiding over a realm of persecutory flames, I shrug my wings in refutation. They dub me "Lucifer", the son of dawn, bringer of light. Have they failed to notice that I am usually long-gone before Helios has mounted his chariot?
May 10, 2015
Whither The Labour Party?
The Labour Party have just been defeated in the UK election this week. The post-mortems will begin through the medium of a leadership election as the unsuccessful candidate Ed Miliband has resigned in defeat. As usual such a post-mortem will not address the real underlying issues and yield a leader who will in all likelihood be just as unsuccessful as Miliband.
1) Although they won the election, the Conservatives don't have a large majority so they potentially become vulnerable in Parliamentary votes on contentious issues if their own contumacious back-bench MPs decide to flex their own muscles and defy party discipline. Exactly the same as at the start of the last Parliament when the UK had it's first coalition government in 36 years. However, then Labour was so consumed by its own leadership election process that took a year or so, they were unable to apply any pressure on the fledgeling coalition government in its first year and it remained relatively unscathed. Labour has to avoid that this time round and maintain a rigorous opposition.
2) Proper post-mortems do not get conducted through the process of a leadership election. First of all the debate is internal, through MPs, Trade Unions and party members. The aspect of a proper post-mortem that is omitted, is actually consulting with the public. Asking those floating voters why in the end they didn't vote Labour. These are the crucial opinions and they are overlooked. The internal debate is only conducted with an eye to which wing of the party as represented by which leadership candidate will triumph in the final selection voting process.
3) The failure of a vaguely Left-Wing Labour election campaign has been pounced on by Labour centrists as proof that only their way can deliver Labour any future victory. This of course completely overlooks that a Centrist Labour Party has no real reason to exist. Tony Blair as a Centrist was only successful because he came to power in a period of economic boom. This boom was predicted by all economists as the corollary of coming out of the bust of the 1990s, when people were feeling bruised and fed up with the longevity of the Conservatives in power and weary of various scandals that had afflicted that party. They were ready for a change and it coincided with economic growth. But when the country is an a period of economic sluggishness, when savings are needed which implies a level of austerity, people will trust the Conservatives over Labour to deliver these cuts, because Labour are morally torn about cutting welfare and public services. Now you can argue with the narrative of austerity, but a Centrist Labour party's craving to appeal to the middle classes means they will not rock the economic boat of austerity. Yet they cannot outtrump the Conservatives in that sphere. It makes no sense to try and out-Tory the Tories. Austerity with a smiley-face.
4) So the alternative is to be a Left-Wing party, which Ed Miliband was accused of by his opponents with both Labour and Tory circles. He wasn't in many ways, because he accepted the austerity narrative as above. He just wanted to try and ameliorate some of its victims, such as those on zero-hours contracts, those accessing foodbanks and the like. But none of this plays to those in middle England, in the market towns that they desperately need to convince to have any chance of winning a parliamentary majority. England is a conservative (small 'C') nation, of Napoleon's famous shopkeepers and entrepreneurs. Any sniff of a Left-wing government is going to have those people fleeing for the mountains and doing everything they can to 'stop the socialists' gaining power. It's hard without an economic crisis seeing Labour ever regaining government.
5) At present, a left-wing Labour party has no real principles or ideology on which to base itself. The moment Tony Blair succeeded in expunging the 1918 Clause IV as a founding principle (so much so it was printed on every membership card) was not only the moment 'New Labour' replaced (old) labour, but the moment all its history was erased at a stroke. The history of its origins, its principles and what it stood for. Now whether you subscribe to the principle of Clause IV "To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service" is not really the point. The point is it has ceased to stand for anything principled or distinctive, so that even when ed Miliband tries to take the party more leftwards, it's completely without context or focus because it's not based on any bedrock of belief.
6) Looking at the demographics of the Labour Party MPs returned in the election, it has utterly become a party of the cities. All the major conurbations of England are solidly Labour. It has virtually no representation in the smaller urban areas and now nothing in a former heartland Scotland. London is a Labour City, yet London is a very rich (and expensive) city which goes against the grain that Labour can't appeal to the middle classes, although it is also hard to see what inhabitants of Labour constituencies like Hampstead or Islington have in common with inhabitants of Northern constituencies like Stockton and Bury. That makes it slightly schizoid in make-up. Scotland rejected Labour because it wasn't left-wing enough, London votes Labour because they like this cosy left-centrist Labour. London is of course the most ethnically diverse of all cities in the UK and draws much support from these communities, while there is also an element of having the wealth and privilege to desire to share some of that wealth with the less fortunate in a way that Tory voters in say Peterborough or Swindon don't seem to feel. If London becomes more exclusive due to its property prices and hogging of the job market, if more oligarchs from around the globe buy expensive holiday homes, then that natural Labour tendency may evaporate and Labour will lose its second major core of parliamentary seats as it has just done in Scotland. How does it knit together a strategy to represent Northern cities, Scotland, the wealth of Londoners who are already its supporters and then somehow to entice those of small town and middle England to come across from the Tories?
I say it's an impossible job and Labour has no real sense of any identity here in the early 21st Century. Nor will its leadership contest likely to furnish it with one. I don't know about a 1000 year reich of Conservative government, but it's hard to see it being limited to just the next 5, 15 or 25...
1) Although they won the election, the Conservatives don't have a large majority so they potentially become vulnerable in Parliamentary votes on contentious issues if their own contumacious back-bench MPs decide to flex their own muscles and defy party discipline. Exactly the same as at the start of the last Parliament when the UK had it's first coalition government in 36 years. However, then Labour was so consumed by its own leadership election process that took a year or so, they were unable to apply any pressure on the fledgeling coalition government in its first year and it remained relatively unscathed. Labour has to avoid that this time round and maintain a rigorous opposition.
2) Proper post-mortems do not get conducted through the process of a leadership election. First of all the debate is internal, through MPs, Trade Unions and party members. The aspect of a proper post-mortem that is omitted, is actually consulting with the public. Asking those floating voters why in the end they didn't vote Labour. These are the crucial opinions and they are overlooked. The internal debate is only conducted with an eye to which wing of the party as represented by which leadership candidate will triumph in the final selection voting process.
3) The failure of a vaguely Left-Wing Labour election campaign has been pounced on by Labour centrists as proof that only their way can deliver Labour any future victory. This of course completely overlooks that a Centrist Labour Party has no real reason to exist. Tony Blair as a Centrist was only successful because he came to power in a period of economic boom. This boom was predicted by all economists as the corollary of coming out of the bust of the 1990s, when people were feeling bruised and fed up with the longevity of the Conservatives in power and weary of various scandals that had afflicted that party. They were ready for a change and it coincided with economic growth. But when the country is an a period of economic sluggishness, when savings are needed which implies a level of austerity, people will trust the Conservatives over Labour to deliver these cuts, because Labour are morally torn about cutting welfare and public services. Now you can argue with the narrative of austerity, but a Centrist Labour party's craving to appeal to the middle classes means they will not rock the economic boat of austerity. Yet they cannot outtrump the Conservatives in that sphere. It makes no sense to try and out-Tory the Tories. Austerity with a smiley-face.
4) So the alternative is to be a Left-Wing party, which Ed Miliband was accused of by his opponents with both Labour and Tory circles. He wasn't in many ways, because he accepted the austerity narrative as above. He just wanted to try and ameliorate some of its victims, such as those on zero-hours contracts, those accessing foodbanks and the like. But none of this plays to those in middle England, in the market towns that they desperately need to convince to have any chance of winning a parliamentary majority. England is a conservative (small 'C') nation, of Napoleon's famous shopkeepers and entrepreneurs. Any sniff of a Left-wing government is going to have those people fleeing for the mountains and doing everything they can to 'stop the socialists' gaining power. It's hard without an economic crisis seeing Labour ever regaining government.
5) At present, a left-wing Labour party has no real principles or ideology on which to base itself. The moment Tony Blair succeeded in expunging the 1918 Clause IV as a founding principle (so much so it was printed on every membership card) was not only the moment 'New Labour' replaced (old) labour, but the moment all its history was erased at a stroke. The history of its origins, its principles and what it stood for. Now whether you subscribe to the principle of Clause IV "To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service" is not really the point. The point is it has ceased to stand for anything principled or distinctive, so that even when ed Miliband tries to take the party more leftwards, it's completely without context or focus because it's not based on any bedrock of belief.
6) Looking at the demographics of the Labour Party MPs returned in the election, it has utterly become a party of the cities. All the major conurbations of England are solidly Labour. It has virtually no representation in the smaller urban areas and now nothing in a former heartland Scotland. London is a Labour City, yet London is a very rich (and expensive) city which goes against the grain that Labour can't appeal to the middle classes, although it is also hard to see what inhabitants of Labour constituencies like Hampstead or Islington have in common with inhabitants of Northern constituencies like Stockton and Bury. That makes it slightly schizoid in make-up. Scotland rejected Labour because it wasn't left-wing enough, London votes Labour because they like this cosy left-centrist Labour. London is of course the most ethnically diverse of all cities in the UK and draws much support from these communities, while there is also an element of having the wealth and privilege to desire to share some of that wealth with the less fortunate in a way that Tory voters in say Peterborough or Swindon don't seem to feel. If London becomes more exclusive due to its property prices and hogging of the job market, if more oligarchs from around the globe buy expensive holiday homes, then that natural Labour tendency may evaporate and Labour will lose its second major core of parliamentary seats as it has just done in Scotland. How does it knit together a strategy to represent Northern cities, Scotland, the wealth of Londoners who are already its supporters and then somehow to entice those of small town and middle England to come across from the Tories?
I say it's an impossible job and Labour has no real sense of any identity here in the early 21st Century. Nor will its leadership contest likely to furnish it with one. I don't know about a 1000 year reich of Conservative government, but it's hard to see it being limited to just the next 5, 15 or 25...
May 4, 2015
Zombie - Flash Fiction
She had the bagginess removed from her eyes, but as she also had a facelift to banish her wrinkles, the tightened scalp only served to bulge out her peeper from the thinned skin.
All the rhinoplasty procedures on her nose had denuded the cartilage until the nasal vestibules started rising back up until the whole structure fell off the central axis to one side of her face, just like her favourite pop star who she modelled herself on.
The second Botox had never worn off, freezing the whole lower half of her face in an incessant rictus.
The silicon implants in her breasts had started to leak and necrotised the flesh of her chest.
Augmented by her tummy tucks being unable to withstand the constant stuffing of nourishment causing her abdomen to burst and her viscera to hang out of the cavity. She was no longer able to stand fully upright.
Apart from the patches of burned skin around her buttocks, the liposuction had removed so much cellulite that her muscles were tightly smothered by their subcutaneous layering, starving them of oxygen entailing that her movement was sluggish and laboured.
The only flesh being consumed was her own.
if you enjoyed this alternative take on the zombie myth, you may also like the take on the werewolf myth "Lupus"
All the rhinoplasty procedures on her nose had denuded the cartilage until the nasal vestibules started rising back up until the whole structure fell off the central axis to one side of her face, just like her favourite pop star who she modelled herself on.
The second Botox had never worn off, freezing the whole lower half of her face in an incessant rictus.
The silicon implants in her breasts had started to leak and necrotised the flesh of her chest.
Augmented by her tummy tucks being unable to withstand the constant stuffing of nourishment causing her abdomen to burst and her viscera to hang out of the cavity. She was no longer able to stand fully upright.
Apart from the patches of burned skin around her buttocks, the liposuction had removed so much cellulite that her muscles were tightly smothered by their subcutaneous layering, starving them of oxygen entailing that her movement was sluggish and laboured.
The only flesh being consumed was her own.
if you enjoyed this alternative take on the zombie myth, you may also like the take on the werewolf myth "Lupus"
April 30, 2015
Weaponised Songs - 16 songs about weapons
Even Wham had a song called "Young Guns" although that was used of people rather than weapons of death. from shotgun weddings to protest songs at war and nuclear arms, music has been full of references to weapons. Here's a sprinkling for your listening pleasure.
1) "Mack The Knife" - Lotte Lenya & Louis Armstrong
Brecht, Weill, Lenya & Armstrong, does it get any better than this? You really can see that Weill was influenced by Armstrong in this.
2) "Poison Arrow" - ABC
Don't think ABC have ever turned up in any chart of mine. The 1980s really was the death of music. While you lot were liberally applying blusher and hairspray, a few of us were turning our battered eardrums to New York City and the grimy industrial brutalism of bands like Swans and Sonic Youth. Time has not mellowed me as to which was the more worthwhile... Everything about this song grates me, the 'Eastenders' drum sound, the cheesey organ sound, the feeble slap bass...
3) "Burning Spear" - Sonic Youth
See a man playing his guitar with drumsticks, now that's what I'm talking about! Currently I'm trying to decide whether to buy Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon's biography "Girl In The Band" or not. She was a tad more than just the guitarist's girlfriend, she was his wife! But they recently got divorced and I think the book's going to be pretty ugly on that score...
4) "Swords Of A Thousand Men" - Tenpole Tudor
I never quite got Eddie Tenpole's schtick. I think I'm right in saying he was in the sex Pistol's movie "The Great Rock And Roll Swindle" and then seems to have had a chip on his shoulder that he never made it to the big time. Except for a brief stint with this knockabout campery.
5) "Eton Rifles" - The Jam
The Jam were really quite subversive. They had so many Top ten chart singles, including this, appeared on mainstream pop shows constantly and all the while not pulling any political punches in many of those chart hits.
6) "Bazooka Joe" - Big Black
So there were these three bands who resolutely refused to have a drummer, but worked with a drum machine and all the performers were out at the front of the stage. One was Carter The Unstoppable sex Machine with their cheeky South London puns. The next was Three Johns with their Yorkshire political fist pumping. And then there was Steve Albini's Big Black who just out-powered them and went for the noise and the dark side of US life. I liked all three in point of fact, but now in my dotage Big Black have way outlasted the other two in my affections, even though they were the only one of the three I never saw live.
7) "Armalite Rifle" - Gang of Four
A throw-away B-Side really, but there's something about its stripped down almost football chant simplicity that sets off the significance of what they're singing about.
8) "6" Gold Blade" - Birthday Party
Well Nick Cave is forever singing about knives and killing isn't he? Always seems to be women on the receiving end of his knives as well...
9) "Love Missile X-111" - Sigue Sigue Sputnik
The debut single of the first manufactured rock band and they disappeared as quickly as they arrived. Named after a real US military weapon, I however am grateful since I initially used it for a title of a stage play of mine. When I rewrote it as a novel I changed the title for another song, Cindy Lauper's "Time After Time". See, I have mellowed... But not in my opinion of this song which is cack.
10) "Careful With That Axe Eugene" - Pink Floyd
It's not like Roger Waters hadn't served you all good notice with this long before "The "Wall" and "Dark Side Of The Moon'. Madness is an ever-present theme in his work. Is that mad grin just a by-=product of his vocal or is it for real? You decide.
10) "Mi Uzi Weighs A Ton" - Public Enemy
Wait, we've got to number ten before mentioning a Rap band with their loves for all things semi-automatic and drive-bys and tings? This was the song that really introduced UK audiences to PE I think. Even though they quickly moved away from this kind of gangster posturing and left that to the West Coast rappers like Ice-T. the beat on this really does seem to weigh a ton.
11) "Tommy gun" - The Clash
We say that about Rap, but every other song by the Clash seemed to contain a weapon or two; "Guns Of Brixton", "Washington Bullets", "Drug Stabbing Time", "sten Guns In Knightsbride". But then they were fighting the revolution I suppose...
12) "Yankee Bayonet" - The Decembrists
The Decembrists have pretty much passed me by. Sound like second rate REM to my ears
13) "Ten percent Pistol" - Black keys
Earnest musos or smash up your guitars as you cavort around the stage lost in the trance of your own thrash trance. Know which I'd rather have...
For which I give you -
14) "Little Man With A Gun In his Hand" - Minutemen
If you think these guys were just a thrash punk band making a noise as in this terrible recording ion a boat, then check out the acoustic version's musical complexity in the video after
15) "My 9mm Goes Bang" - Boogie Down Productions
And we're back with rap's fetishisation of the gun
16) "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" - Breeders
And bringing some calm to proceedings, we all prefer this to the Beatles original right? What do you mean no!!!
1) "Mack The Knife" - Lotte Lenya & Louis Armstrong
Brecht, Weill, Lenya & Armstrong, does it get any better than this? You really can see that Weill was influenced by Armstrong in this.
2) "Poison Arrow" - ABC
Don't think ABC have ever turned up in any chart of mine. The 1980s really was the death of music. While you lot were liberally applying blusher and hairspray, a few of us were turning our battered eardrums to New York City and the grimy industrial brutalism of bands like Swans and Sonic Youth. Time has not mellowed me as to which was the more worthwhile... Everything about this song grates me, the 'Eastenders' drum sound, the cheesey organ sound, the feeble slap bass...
3) "Burning Spear" - Sonic Youth
See a man playing his guitar with drumsticks, now that's what I'm talking about! Currently I'm trying to decide whether to buy Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon's biography "Girl In The Band" or not. She was a tad more than just the guitarist's girlfriend, she was his wife! But they recently got divorced and I think the book's going to be pretty ugly on that score...
4) "Swords Of A Thousand Men" - Tenpole Tudor
I never quite got Eddie Tenpole's schtick. I think I'm right in saying he was in the sex Pistol's movie "The Great Rock And Roll Swindle" and then seems to have had a chip on his shoulder that he never made it to the big time. Except for a brief stint with this knockabout campery.
5) "Eton Rifles" - The Jam
The Jam were really quite subversive. They had so many Top ten chart singles, including this, appeared on mainstream pop shows constantly and all the while not pulling any political punches in many of those chart hits.
6) "Bazooka Joe" - Big Black
So there were these three bands who resolutely refused to have a drummer, but worked with a drum machine and all the performers were out at the front of the stage. One was Carter The Unstoppable sex Machine with their cheeky South London puns. The next was Three Johns with their Yorkshire political fist pumping. And then there was Steve Albini's Big Black who just out-powered them and went for the noise and the dark side of US life. I liked all three in point of fact, but now in my dotage Big Black have way outlasted the other two in my affections, even though they were the only one of the three I never saw live.
7) "Armalite Rifle" - Gang of Four
A throw-away B-Side really, but there's something about its stripped down almost football chant simplicity that sets off the significance of what they're singing about.
8) "6" Gold Blade" - Birthday Party
Well Nick Cave is forever singing about knives and killing isn't he? Always seems to be women on the receiving end of his knives as well...
9) "Love Missile X-111" - Sigue Sigue Sputnik
The debut single of the first manufactured rock band and they disappeared as quickly as they arrived. Named after a real US military weapon, I however am grateful since I initially used it for a title of a stage play of mine. When I rewrote it as a novel I changed the title for another song, Cindy Lauper's "Time After Time". See, I have mellowed... But not in my opinion of this song which is cack.
10) "Careful With That Axe Eugene" - Pink Floyd
It's not like Roger Waters hadn't served you all good notice with this long before "The "Wall" and "Dark Side Of The Moon'. Madness is an ever-present theme in his work. Is that mad grin just a by-=product of his vocal or is it for real? You decide.
10) "Mi Uzi Weighs A Ton" - Public Enemy
Wait, we've got to number ten before mentioning a Rap band with their loves for all things semi-automatic and drive-bys and tings? This was the song that really introduced UK audiences to PE I think. Even though they quickly moved away from this kind of gangster posturing and left that to the West Coast rappers like Ice-T. the beat on this really does seem to weigh a ton.
11) "Tommy gun" - The Clash
We say that about Rap, but every other song by the Clash seemed to contain a weapon or two; "Guns Of Brixton", "Washington Bullets", "Drug Stabbing Time", "sten Guns In Knightsbride". But then they were fighting the revolution I suppose...
12) "Yankee Bayonet" - The Decembrists
The Decembrists have pretty much passed me by. Sound like second rate REM to my ears
13) "Ten percent Pistol" - Black keys
Earnest musos or smash up your guitars as you cavort around the stage lost in the trance of your own thrash trance. Know which I'd rather have...
For which I give you -
14) "Little Man With A Gun In his Hand" - Minutemen
If you think these guys were just a thrash punk band making a noise as in this terrible recording ion a boat, then check out the acoustic version's musical complexity in the video after
15) "My 9mm Goes Bang" - Boogie Down Productions
And we're back with rap's fetishisation of the gun
16) "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" - Breeders
And bringing some calm to proceedings, we all prefer this to the Beatles original right? What do you mean no!!!
April 27, 2015
Occupational Hazard - Flash Fiction
Christian Surname called out to Glover up on the roof of the house as to whether he’d seen Trollop anywhere. Glover shook his head as he forcefully yanked out a wad of thatch and opened up his fist so that the straw tumbled down towards the ground as a bouquet over Surname.
Surname inquired the same of Joiner as he was mounting a newly made saddle upon a horse. Joiner cupped the pommel with one hand and inclined his head to inhale the leather seat with a resonant sniff which Surname took for his answer whatever it may have meant.
Surname spotted Fletcher with a cart on its side and queried if he had any idea of her whereabouts. Fletcher gave a hard pull on the nearest wheel and set it spinning round in continuous motion by way of his response.
Surname spotted that the door of the blacksmiths was open and entered his forge. He interrogated Cooper there as to Trollop’s perambulations, but the smith removed a glowing iron bar from the forge, held it horizontally up to his eyes pointing at Surname as the metal glowed and faded with the heat pulsing through it.
As the smith’s neighbour, Mason was fletching arrows in his yard, so Surname cheerily sought some illumination from him. Mason delicately stroked the feathers of the quill before blowing and ruffling them.
Surname scurried on into the bakery. Skinner there was dusting flour off with a percussive clap of his hands so that he initially missed Surname’s request. When he repeated it, Skinner threw his dough against the table sending up a cloud of more flour, before he started kneading and pummelling it as his disclosure.
Surname shook his head before proceeding apace to the workshop of Thatcher. Entreating him as to whether he’d espied Trollop, the joiner picked up a tenon and repeatedly slotted it and out of the mortise, while studying it with so rapt an attention, his tongue was poking out of the corner of his mouth.
Surname had been beginning to feel somewhat perturbed at the sullen silence of his fellow villagers, when he adjudged that they were just all so occupied with their craft to be bothered with his trifling quest. Also that they were so involved in their tasks that they were unlikely to have noticed her in passing anyway. Nevertheless, there was Baker sat on a chair outside his establishment, his hands buttressing the back of his head in relaxation, so he ventured to pick his brains. The glover immediately removed his hands which were bedecked in silk and studiously raised each finger of the fabric away from the flesh inside, before deliberately peeling the entire glove from each hand.
Carter answered him with what seemed a lascivious smile as he honed his chisel on the whetstone, before scraping it with an agonised squeal against the stone.
Smith’s rejoinder was a percussive slap of the hide hung out on his line with his tanning paddle.
Sadler’s comment took the form of tamping down the lid of a barrel with his hammer.
Surname had reached the end of the village marked by the Church. He pushed the heavy door open and came upon Sexton who advised him that Priestly was in all likelihood in the vestry. “Forgive me for asking Fath-“ His voice died on his lips as he saw Priestly with his raiment down around his ankles as he was administering to one of his flock. Surname skirted round the walls of the room to confirm his worst fear. That parishioner receiving the host was indeed Trollop. Living up to her name even as Priestly was not. But then neither were any of the other villagers pursuing trades not of their fathers, although unbeknownst to him, they actually were; of their birth fathers.
Surname inquired the same of Joiner as he was mounting a newly made saddle upon a horse. Joiner cupped the pommel with one hand and inclined his head to inhale the leather seat with a resonant sniff which Surname took for his answer whatever it may have meant.
Surname spotted Fletcher with a cart on its side and queried if he had any idea of her whereabouts. Fletcher gave a hard pull on the nearest wheel and set it spinning round in continuous motion by way of his response.
Surname spotted that the door of the blacksmiths was open and entered his forge. He interrogated Cooper there as to Trollop’s perambulations, but the smith removed a glowing iron bar from the forge, held it horizontally up to his eyes pointing at Surname as the metal glowed and faded with the heat pulsing through it.
As the smith’s neighbour, Mason was fletching arrows in his yard, so Surname cheerily sought some illumination from him. Mason delicately stroked the feathers of the quill before blowing and ruffling them.
Surname scurried on into the bakery. Skinner there was dusting flour off with a percussive clap of his hands so that he initially missed Surname’s request. When he repeated it, Skinner threw his dough against the table sending up a cloud of more flour, before he started kneading and pummelling it as his disclosure.
Surname shook his head before proceeding apace to the workshop of Thatcher. Entreating him as to whether he’d espied Trollop, the joiner picked up a tenon and repeatedly slotted it and out of the mortise, while studying it with so rapt an attention, his tongue was poking out of the corner of his mouth.
Surname had been beginning to feel somewhat perturbed at the sullen silence of his fellow villagers, when he adjudged that they were just all so occupied with their craft to be bothered with his trifling quest. Also that they were so involved in their tasks that they were unlikely to have noticed her in passing anyway. Nevertheless, there was Baker sat on a chair outside his establishment, his hands buttressing the back of his head in relaxation, so he ventured to pick his brains. The glover immediately removed his hands which were bedecked in silk and studiously raised each finger of the fabric away from the flesh inside, before deliberately peeling the entire glove from each hand.
Carter answered him with what seemed a lascivious smile as he honed his chisel on the whetstone, before scraping it with an agonised squeal against the stone.
Smith’s rejoinder was a percussive slap of the hide hung out on his line with his tanning paddle.
Sadler’s comment took the form of tamping down the lid of a barrel with his hammer.
Surname had reached the end of the village marked by the Church. He pushed the heavy door open and came upon Sexton who advised him that Priestly was in all likelihood in the vestry. “Forgive me for asking Fath-“ His voice died on his lips as he saw Priestly with his raiment down around his ankles as he was administering to one of his flock. Surname skirted round the walls of the room to confirm his worst fear. That parishioner receiving the host was indeed Trollop. Living up to her name even as Priestly was not. But then neither were any of the other villagers pursuing trades not of their fathers, although unbeknownst to him, they actually were; of their birth fathers.
April 25, 2015
Road Songs
I don't drive. But where would modern music be without bands taking to the road in their early careers to play gigs, before they can swap the cramped sweaty confines of a van for a jet or a mammoth tour-bus? Here's 10 songs honouring the humble asphalt.
1) Nat King Cole - "Route 66"
The quintessential 'road' song, probably also one of the most covered tracks in music history. But do you know who originally penned it? I didn't, had to look it up - Bobby Troup. No, me neither...
2) Bob Dylan - "Highway 61 Revisited"
Dylan being Dylan right?
3) Tom Robinson Band - "2,4,6,8 Motorway"
From the band who sang of feminism and gay rights came this great road anthem. And we don't really have a trucking culture in the UK!
4) Kraftwerk - "Autobahn"
Perfectly captures the featureless, concrete tedium of motorway driving. Always one step ahead were Kraftwerk.
5) Eddy Grant - "Electric Avenue"
A street in brixton South London. it was the first street mraket to be lit by electricity. And that's about all I can say about it, other than I seem to remember this song was a massive hit.
6) Laurie Anderson - "New Jersey Turnpike"
Many people would struggle to name another Laurie Anderson song other than "Oh Superman". To judge by the views on YouTube, this gives further evidence to that. See if you can tip it over tyhe 100 views!
7) Cat Stevens - "Portobello Road"
Yeah, it ain't like that now, even though the market is still there... I worked there for 15 years or so. A very um lively part of London.
8) Gun Club - "Ghost on The Highway"
Roads through swamplands, yep the sound of Gun Club. With a driving rhythm too.
9) Meat Puppets - "Lost on the Freeway"
A thrash punk band that turned into a folksy band conjuring up the rhythms and landscapes of the US South-West, of deserts and pueblos. Luscious stuff.
10) Sonic Youth - "Expressway To yr Skull"
Not strictly about a real road, or maybe it is? the road of the mind... ooooh, spooky
Bonus Track:
Billy Bragg - "A13"
The British retort to "Route 66". Most unglamorous! Funnily enough, a lot of swing seats in the upcoming general election are name checked here.
1) Nat King Cole - "Route 66"
The quintessential 'road' song, probably also one of the most covered tracks in music history. But do you know who originally penned it? I didn't, had to look it up - Bobby Troup. No, me neither...
2) Bob Dylan - "Highway 61 Revisited"
Dylan being Dylan right?
3) Tom Robinson Band - "2,4,6,8 Motorway"
From the band who sang of feminism and gay rights came this great road anthem. And we don't really have a trucking culture in the UK!
4) Kraftwerk - "Autobahn"
Perfectly captures the featureless, concrete tedium of motorway driving. Always one step ahead were Kraftwerk.
5) Eddy Grant - "Electric Avenue"
A street in brixton South London. it was the first street mraket to be lit by electricity. And that's about all I can say about it, other than I seem to remember this song was a massive hit.
6) Laurie Anderson - "New Jersey Turnpike"
Many people would struggle to name another Laurie Anderson song other than "Oh Superman". To judge by the views on YouTube, this gives further evidence to that. See if you can tip it over tyhe 100 views!
7) Cat Stevens - "Portobello Road"
Yeah, it ain't like that now, even though the market is still there... I worked there for 15 years or so. A very um lively part of London.
8) Gun Club - "Ghost on The Highway"
Roads through swamplands, yep the sound of Gun Club. With a driving rhythm too.
9) Meat Puppets - "Lost on the Freeway"
A thrash punk band that turned into a folksy band conjuring up the rhythms and landscapes of the US South-West, of deserts and pueblos. Luscious stuff.
10) Sonic Youth - "Expressway To yr Skull"
Not strictly about a real road, or maybe it is? the road of the mind... ooooh, spooky
Bonus Track:
Billy Bragg - "A13"
The British retort to "Route 66". Most unglamorous! Funnily enough, a lot of swing seats in the upcoming general election are name checked here.
April 24, 2015
What Election Campaigns Fail To Communicate
A Party Manifesto is a curious beast. It offers policies on almost every issue that effects a nation, or if not policies, a stated ideal. But no Party ever wins an election and then delivers every item. Also do supporters agree with every single policy outlined in a manifesto, especially given how broad a spectrum of political values and views the major parties represent within their membership.
This election more than others I can recall, has also seen that rather than the detail of a manifesto, the thrust of the campaigning is to associate your party with just one or two key values, or to associate the other lot with one or two key values; 'Tax and Spend' the Tories accuse Labour of. 'The Nasty Party of welfare cuts' Labour try and dub the Tories. It was curious how we had a phoney war beginning of the campaign, when we were drip-fed one policy a day by each party, because the manifestos weren't out. We had a 7-leader televised debate again before any had launched their manifestos. Manifestos seem to have become less and less significant. I wonder what the percentage of the voting population is that have read at least one manifesto? Tiny I would imagine.
In the past I have spoiled my ballot paper by writing 'None Of The Above' on my ballot paper. Mainly because there was no protest party I could vote for, since only the three main parties stood in my constituency and I simply couldn't support any of them with my vote. However recently other parties have started standing here (representing how these parties are standing right across the country). I voted Green in the last couple of ballots. I was intending to do so again this time round, when I noticed a twitter debate about one of their policies. They were proposing to limit artists' copyright to just 14 years after publication/performance. That is after just 14 years, the author ceases to own and control their work, but is free to view/perform for anybody. Currently copyright only ceases 70 years after the death of the artist. As a writer theoretically I'm affected by this. But since I only earn pin money from my work, losing control over my back catalogue wouldn't really affect me financially. But for artists whose income rests on their creations it would seriously affect their livelihoods. Plus copyright for 70 years after death allows the provision of a financial legacy as well as the artistic one for a couple of generations.
However, this policy as outlined here is completely ripped from its context. Whether you agree with them or not, the Greens are offering a genuinely radical vision of society. Labour may mouth platitudes about equality, but the Greens lay out a theory of change to enshrine this. They seek to remunerate all citizens equally, (a citizen salary if you will), which means getting away from the aspirational culture of job status, materialism, consumerism, all underpinned with conserving the rapidly depleting resources of the planet. If this has echoes of Communism to your ears, you're not far wrong; one of the things that ultimately brought down Soviet Russia was absenteeism and poor productivity in the workplace, because the workers were completely unmotivated. If a Doctor has to train for seven years to qualify, what is his incentive if he earns little more than a waiter?
The policy limiting copyright falls under this template for society. Private ownership is not community minded. Art should be accessible and available to all, for the enrichment of society as a whole. And this to my mind embodies the whole problem of the Green manifesto. They have to get across the whole vision and the rationale for it, so that releasing sound bite policies such as copyright just makes no sense. And it is so radical a vision, it is a huge undertaking to convey it to the populace at large. I have seen no evidence of this being undertaken. Possibly this is because the main conduits of press and media are not giving them much exposure as a minority party. But the message isn't getting out there, so they come across as looking like killjoys armed with a quiverful of policies attacking random social groups.
I mentioned that to some their vision for society may smack of Communism, but it also shares certain ideas from Anarchist theory. In my youth I read a lot of Anarchist texts and developed my own ideal for society. And in many ways it shared much of the Green vision, only I imagined it could only operate in a society in which work was minimised through automation, so that we dwelled in a leisure economy; free to spend our time socialising, making art, playing sport or just thinking and enacting ideas. In such a model, private production and ownership of art would make less sense if we were all at it. Therefore copyright might have had no real place. But the Green model still quite rightly assumes a working life for citizens (technology seems to have created longer working hours for us all through the drive of the market and fear of losing our jobs, rather than shorter ones), therefore the context for art does not change significantly from what it is now in a free market economy. The Greens pledge in the manifesto to invest heavily in the Arts, perhaps as a fillip to us artists cheesed off by losing ownership of our work in under a decade and a half. Therefore in a way they are not pursuing all that radical a version since they are still operating a capitalist system, just one with many limits and constraints.
So the bald statement of a limit on copyright turned off those in the artistic community who thought of voting Green this time round. The counter to that of it being a piece in a large jigsaw to radically transform society completely got lost because that larger vision has not been rolled out to the population in any significant way. But even when one takes the time to consider the whole picture proposed by the greens, I'm afraid they fall short and the copyright issue perfectly illustrates as to why. To my mind, their whole approach smacks of the influence of the Occupy movement. It's all very well holding discussion groups under canvas and batting around ideas, but unless on leaving those encampments you go and spread the word, they will not magically percolate into the mainstream. There is an exclusion and elitism about such an approach, that somehow if you don't join you don't get access to the key ideas to the magic kingdom. And while the Greens have knitted together many ideas into a coherent (if challengable) theory, not many of these ideas are actually new. that's what Occupy failed to see, as they imagined they were the first people to have such ideas and to be working on them in a uniquely creative way. I did my own work on this in my teens, since these ideas have been around for many decades. And still few in that camp have gone out to spread the word and preach the vision.
Sorry Greens, you've lost my vote even though temperamentally your vision is closest to my own. It took a bit of reading around the policy on copyright for me to reach this conclusion, rather than the threat to copyright itself. I've seen it argued that parties with no chance of getting into government don't really need a manifesto representing a raft of ideas they won't ever be called on to enact into law. This is debatable as through the exigencies of coalition government that we are likely to be faced with, smaller parties will actually have a shot at forming a government. But one thing is for sure, the Greens so want to transform society, the odd policy from their manifesto adopted here and there is not really what they are about. They of all parties DID need to produce a manifesto to lay out their wholesale vision. And it is the complete manifesto that ultimately sinks them in a way it doesn't for other parties who will blithely ignore or rescind great tranches of what they promise in their pages.
This election more than others I can recall, has also seen that rather than the detail of a manifesto, the thrust of the campaigning is to associate your party with just one or two key values, or to associate the other lot with one or two key values; 'Tax and Spend' the Tories accuse Labour of. 'The Nasty Party of welfare cuts' Labour try and dub the Tories. It was curious how we had a phoney war beginning of the campaign, when we were drip-fed one policy a day by each party, because the manifestos weren't out. We had a 7-leader televised debate again before any had launched their manifestos. Manifestos seem to have become less and less significant. I wonder what the percentage of the voting population is that have read at least one manifesto? Tiny I would imagine.
In the past I have spoiled my ballot paper by writing 'None Of The Above' on my ballot paper. Mainly because there was no protest party I could vote for, since only the three main parties stood in my constituency and I simply couldn't support any of them with my vote. However recently other parties have started standing here (representing how these parties are standing right across the country). I voted Green in the last couple of ballots. I was intending to do so again this time round, when I noticed a twitter debate about one of their policies. They were proposing to limit artists' copyright to just 14 years after publication/performance. That is after just 14 years, the author ceases to own and control their work, but is free to view/perform for anybody. Currently copyright only ceases 70 years after the death of the artist. As a writer theoretically I'm affected by this. But since I only earn pin money from my work, losing control over my back catalogue wouldn't really affect me financially. But for artists whose income rests on their creations it would seriously affect their livelihoods. Plus copyright for 70 years after death allows the provision of a financial legacy as well as the artistic one for a couple of generations.
However, this policy as outlined here is completely ripped from its context. Whether you agree with them or not, the Greens are offering a genuinely radical vision of society. Labour may mouth platitudes about equality, but the Greens lay out a theory of change to enshrine this. They seek to remunerate all citizens equally, (a citizen salary if you will), which means getting away from the aspirational culture of job status, materialism, consumerism, all underpinned with conserving the rapidly depleting resources of the planet. If this has echoes of Communism to your ears, you're not far wrong; one of the things that ultimately brought down Soviet Russia was absenteeism and poor productivity in the workplace, because the workers were completely unmotivated. If a Doctor has to train for seven years to qualify, what is his incentive if he earns little more than a waiter?
The policy limiting copyright falls under this template for society. Private ownership is not community minded. Art should be accessible and available to all, for the enrichment of society as a whole. And this to my mind embodies the whole problem of the Green manifesto. They have to get across the whole vision and the rationale for it, so that releasing sound bite policies such as copyright just makes no sense. And it is so radical a vision, it is a huge undertaking to convey it to the populace at large. I have seen no evidence of this being undertaken. Possibly this is because the main conduits of press and media are not giving them much exposure as a minority party. But the message isn't getting out there, so they come across as looking like killjoys armed with a quiverful of policies attacking random social groups.
I mentioned that to some their vision for society may smack of Communism, but it also shares certain ideas from Anarchist theory. In my youth I read a lot of Anarchist texts and developed my own ideal for society. And in many ways it shared much of the Green vision, only I imagined it could only operate in a society in which work was minimised through automation, so that we dwelled in a leisure economy; free to spend our time socialising, making art, playing sport or just thinking and enacting ideas. In such a model, private production and ownership of art would make less sense if we were all at it. Therefore copyright might have had no real place. But the Green model still quite rightly assumes a working life for citizens (technology seems to have created longer working hours for us all through the drive of the market and fear of losing our jobs, rather than shorter ones), therefore the context for art does not change significantly from what it is now in a free market economy. The Greens pledge in the manifesto to invest heavily in the Arts, perhaps as a fillip to us artists cheesed off by losing ownership of our work in under a decade and a half. Therefore in a way they are not pursuing all that radical a version since they are still operating a capitalist system, just one with many limits and constraints.
So the bald statement of a limit on copyright turned off those in the artistic community who thought of voting Green this time round. The counter to that of it being a piece in a large jigsaw to radically transform society completely got lost because that larger vision has not been rolled out to the population in any significant way. But even when one takes the time to consider the whole picture proposed by the greens, I'm afraid they fall short and the copyright issue perfectly illustrates as to why. To my mind, their whole approach smacks of the influence of the Occupy movement. It's all very well holding discussion groups under canvas and batting around ideas, but unless on leaving those encampments you go and spread the word, they will not magically percolate into the mainstream. There is an exclusion and elitism about such an approach, that somehow if you don't join you don't get access to the key ideas to the magic kingdom. And while the Greens have knitted together many ideas into a coherent (if challengable) theory, not many of these ideas are actually new. that's what Occupy failed to see, as they imagined they were the first people to have such ideas and to be working on them in a uniquely creative way. I did my own work on this in my teens, since these ideas have been around for many decades. And still few in that camp have gone out to spread the word and preach the vision.
Sorry Greens, you've lost my vote even though temperamentally your vision is closest to my own. It took a bit of reading around the policy on copyright for me to reach this conclusion, rather than the threat to copyright itself. I've seen it argued that parties with no chance of getting into government don't really need a manifesto representing a raft of ideas they won't ever be called on to enact into law. This is debatable as through the exigencies of coalition government that we are likely to be faced with, smaller parties will actually have a shot at forming a government. But one thing is for sure, the Greens so want to transform society, the odd policy from their manifesto adopted here and there is not really what they are about. They of all parties DID need to produce a manifesto to lay out their wholesale vision. And it is the complete manifesto that ultimately sinks them in a way it doesn't for other parties who will blithely ignore or rescind great tranches of what they promise in their pages.
