Obviously, for Guardian Media Group, the end justifies the means. Having milked the Manchester Evening News cashcow for decades, they discard it before losses are even posted, and with a brief cursory mention of the sale in the Guardian. So long & thanks for all the fish, indeed.
I actually can't remember the last time I bought an album of new music, as in music recorded in the last twelve months. But today I bought three: Skanky Skanky by Toddla T, Guns Don't Kill... by Major Lazer and... ok actually I haven't bought the third yet; I'm torn between Sa-Ra's Nuclear Evolution, Tune-Yards' Bird Brains and The Very Best's Warm Heart of Africa.
What's weird for me is to discover albums that I want to buy. For years now, I've lost hope in finding a new album where at least 75% of the tracks surprise my ears and make me tingle. The unremitting monotony of overcompressed pop music has filled me with despair. Am I the only one who finds almost all contemporary R&B tedious, like in the dire days of the mid 80s, when producers discovered digital synthesizers and the soporific effects of gated snares? R&B in 2009 sounded as if Timbaland, Missy Elliott and the Neptunes never existed!
Two of the biggest disappointments in the last few years for me has been the smothering brittle cheap synth sounds dominating dancehall riddims and the obsessive misuse of autotune in African R&B and hiphop. So, it felt like God answered my prayers when I heard Major Lazer's electronica bashment beats shuddering my speakers. Then, I heard The Very Best's quirky funky soul, African pop that actually uses one or two African instruments & no fake American accents (and some veeeery cheesy videos!)
5 great albums come along all at once, well, in the same year. Perhaps, dare I hope, there might be other great albums out there? Ooh, the anticipation feels just like Christmas morning when you're five!
Confession: Ok, I didn't actually shell out my own money for the albums. My wife bought me £25 iTunes credit for Xmas, but still it counts, doesn't it?
From the title, I thought that "Waiting for the second coming – of Prince Philip" in today's Independent might be a quirky little news item taking the piss out of the notorious old maid fiddler, but no, it's an article about Black people worshipping White people. God, I thought that stories like this died out with Mother Teresa.
Oh, these childlike savages! So primitive and foolish. But good for a laugh, eh what what? Why bother trying to analyse a clear case of mass psychosis any deeper, when everyone knows how weird and backward these farflung corners of the world are?
Is this article any more than a patronizing and superficial reworking of the jingoistic mythology of Boy's Own Paper? And why does it remind me so much of Clive James' 80s TV show?
Anglicans and Catholics bickering sound like Trekkies arguing over the exact episode when Spock kissed Kirk. Or Socialist Workers coming to blows over whether Marx stirred his coffee clockwise or anti. I just stumbled across a choice Guardian blog on the Anglican/Catholic rift. Reading the comments is like walking through a hall of mirrors.
Just watched the first episode of the new series of ‘Being Human‘, one of my favourite TV dramas from last year and, well, I was very disappointed. Could it be that series 1 set too high a creative threshold? I hope not.
The overall impression was of misery piled on misery, so much so that it reminded me of Eastenders. You know, those emotional battles between couples who just can’t stop pulling each other to pieces slowly, like jackals on Mogadon; or, that feeling of claustrophobia stuck in small terraced rooms with people who are incapable of happiness.
One of the fantastic achievements of the first series (and there were many) was the contrast between the inevitable hopelessness of the supernaturals’ situation and their lively ironic bitterness about it. We know that theirs is a situation without a happy end. What makes that knowledge bearable is the way that they deal with it. Depending on your beliefs, we're all gonna croak or live forever; neither seems that attractive to me, but hey let's deal with it with a bit of a laugh, eh? Despair without humour is just bloody Sartre. And he couldn’t write a comedy to save his life.
Some might say the ghost character, Annie, retains the humour. This is true, but in fact, it compounds the flaws of this episode. In series 1, Annie's character was lovely, but always at risk of becoming a jokey deadend (pardon the pun). In episode 1 of series 2, she is the comic foil for everyone else's "real" stories, a very clumsy device, which reduces her character, rather than expanding it.
Hopefully, the series will improve and regain the bouncy humour of series 1. I hope there’s not much more of this wristslitting stuff to come. I wonder where it sprang from in the first place. Did the writers really sit down and think, “Let’s capture the sheer misery of the emotional wars of attrition in Eastenders?” Somehow, I doubt it. I wonder if it’s not more the mega-success of the dreary Twilight films that has shifted the perspective.
Please, scriptwriters, producer and director, if you happen to be planning series 3 now, don’t let 'Being Human' be infected by the tedious humourless despair of the Twilight saga. If you must be influenced by the USA, let 'True Blood' feed your perversions!
According to a new IoS Investigation, government departments waste money, lots of it. Well, duh! Is that big news to anyone? After the MPs expenses scandal, the accountability bug has gripped Britain, so I guess the IoS editors scent easy blood on the wounded Brownbeast.
All seems rather small beer to me, not just compared to the banking & finance fiasco, but compared to other countries financial scandals, such as France, Switzerland, Italy, where the scandals are about politicians accepting bribes, not just mismanaging public funds. In South Korea, they have even had to execute heads of state for personal embezzling of public funds.
All the allegations in the article could be true, but this theme would be more interesting to me if there was some comparison with the level of wasted expenditure under previous administrations and an evaluation of the measures Labour has actually taken to deal with waste. Could it be that there was more waste 17 years ago, but it went unnoticed, because of less stringent monitoring?
Without this sort of comparative analysis, this "major investigation" smacks of electioneering, which one would hope is not the Independent editors intention. Reminiscent of the Standard's vendetta against Ken.
Ok, I admit that, as a half Nigerian British writer, I have made fun of many Nigerian cliches in my plays and in social life, because, hey, there are plenty of things to laugh about in Nigerian culture, as in any culture. Still, I'm starting to notice a disturbing trend in humour about my father's people. Jokes about Nigerian conmen and crooks are getting rather lazy and predictable, just like "dumb Irish" jokes, which seem to have faded in popularity in recent years. I guess the Irish have Essex girls and blondes to thank for that.
It's got to a point now where simply to say something, anything, in an exaggerated Nigerian accent has British people of any colour and background giggling and guffawing. Last week I did a performed a poem in a Manchester school to Year Nine pupils, where I adopted a Nigerian accent for the voice of my father. I just said three words and the entire hall were collapsing in hysterics. Could it be that I am a brilliant writer with perfect comic timing (ahem)? There were more than a few pupils of Nigerian origin present, so could it be that they had infected the whole year with enthusiasm for Nigerian humour? Or could it be that the Nigerians have become the easy target of lazy UK comedians?
The reaction of people to the Nigerian accent in comedy reminds me of Jim Davidson's Chalky character and the way people (White people!) laughed their guts out at the cod Jamaican accent. This attitude could be down to the mainstream popularity of Little Miss Jocelyn's traffic warden, or still earlier Felix Dexter's terrible attempt at mimicking Nigerian pomposity. I'm not knocking Jocelyn's characterization; it was a perfect encapsulation of the Nigerian obsession with formality and regulations. And no Nigerian can deny that, like the Russians and Italians, some of our countrymen have developed an easy ability to engage in organized illicit activity, that is the envy of criminals the world over.
Still, I'm getting a bit irritated with everyone ganging up on Nigerians. I can't dismiss it as just racist humour from White people, because the worst offenders are other Africans, who wantonly label Nigerians as a nation of liars, philanderers and crooks. Look at the grotesque Nigerian gangsters in South Africa's "District 9"! That is literally how most South Africans view Nigerians.
Truly, Nigerians are the Irish of Africa. And now, if those cliches weren't bad enough, this bloody joker from Abuja goes and gets us labelled as nutty terrorists too!
Snow in Manchester! Cold toes waiting for the bus for 45 minutes! Tried calling Stagecoach Helpline, but hung up after 5 minutes on hold on a premium rate number. Stagecoach suck donkeys!
Before the frostbitten wait, I was at the first public performance of the Rainbow Haven Singers, which was surprisingly moving. Rainbow Haven is a welcome centre in Gorton, Manchester, for refugees, migrants and asylum seekers. Basically, people that have no other recourse for assistance or official status. The people that tabloids and xenophobes like to despise and disparage. People that the government has more or less dumped on the streets.
The choir and audience were composed of people of more nationalities and backgrounds than I have ever seen in one room. There were Africans, Arabs, Asians, Eastern Europeans, some Christian, some Muslim, but all having a ball expressing themselves, singing and dancing together.
Remarkable! I can’t imagine that people from such different communities would ever get the opportunity to meet, let alone to get along together, were it not for the fact that they are mostly disenfranchised from the welfare system and the job market.
So, I guess that the fascist appeasing tactics of NuLab government have had the unexpected benefit of making social cohesion between immigrants who otherwise would probably have hated or, at best, mistrusted each other on principle. Perhaps that was the NuLab cunning plan all along.
Oppression brings the wretched of the earth together. And the ragged untrained voices of those that sang & danced just for the sake of joy in spite of everything brought tears to my eyes.
I've got a friend. Not a very close friend, but someone I've known for fifteen years through my Kung Fu club. A very gentle, gregarious guy with a very sharp scatological wit. He's also a Buddhist and we've been on many visits together to a monastery in Scotland.
So, this guy, who I like and respect a lot, has recently become a member of the English Defence League. Oh, he's also Chinese. Yeah, I can't believe it either. The rumours are true. The EDL are not just a bunch of stupid White BNP thugs. They come in all shades, they are not all stupid & they are not all thugs. Just most of them. That's my prejudice talking; I haven't done a statistical analysis of EDL membership to ascertain IQ or thugship credentials.
I should have seen this coming. Since 7/7, I've noticed my friend developing an alarming tendency to drop casual anti-Islamic comments into conversation. Still, that Islamophobia has become so commonplace in everyday discourse in the UK that I assumed he was just picking it up from the media. According to him, EDL are not racist, but nationalist. He believes that anyone from any race can be English so long as they give sole allegiance to England, renouncing their ethnic ties to other countries. To say he's in self-denial is putting it mildly.
What does my friend's political allegiance mean for our friendship? Commenting on Facebook about Rod Liddle's inane racist blog, I mentioned my friend in the EDL, sparking criticism from FB buddies for calling him a "friend". According to one, I should disown my friend, or I run the risk of "validating" his racism.
20 years ago, I might have agreed, following the Jerry Dammers "racist friend" creed, but since then my views about people & politics have softened. I've met horrible arrogant (and racist) socialist revolutionaries and I've met deeply spiritual Zionists. My cousin was a lovely jovial family man, who also worked in military technology, making more efficient killing tools. People consistently defy categorization according to a single attribute. No one is just a racist or a terrorist, or an arms dealer.
Yet, if a White friend had told me he had joined the EDL, would I still call him a friend? Probably not. Is that racist? I don't think so. A White person in the EDL is simply buttressing their place in the existing power structure against what they see as the encroaching immigrant hoards. However, a non-White person in the EDL is consciously or unconsciously choosing to identify with a power structure that actually oppresses them.
It is a variety of the Stockholm Syndrome suffered by non-White people across the world. You can see it in former African colonies, where women desperate to look White apply skin bleaching creams, despite the burning sensation & the increased risk of skin cancer. I hear it when Black Britons complain that "these raatid Somalian immigrants get all the council houses". Perhaps, this is the extent to which Britain can claim to be a post-racial society: anybody from any race can hate immigrants.
Perhaps, I should disown people with such prejudices, but I can't. We have all grown up imbibing the myth that white = good and black = bad. To reject those seduced by the myth or to label them Uncle Toms would be to reinforce the divisiveness that nationalist and fascist political parties seek to create. Why should I allow them to set the agenda? This, however, still leaves me with a racist, sorry, nationalist friend, who refuses to recognize that if EDL had their way, his parents would never have settled here.
As a friend, do you think I should warn him that the Union Jack that he is incorporating into the new logos he has designed for EDL is actually British, not English?
In response to the Supreme Court's crafty legal legerdemain on bank charges, I present two contrasting opinions.
In the blue corner, the Independent's economics editor Sean O Grady pens an unexpected paean to that haven of free market capitalism, the UK consumer banking system:
Am I the only who suspects that this ruling will only temporarily silence the "end of free banking" rhetoric chanted by the evil bloodsucking fat ugly leeches who commandeered & destroyed our once friendly neighbourhood banks?
Oops, did I say that? I guess I must be more influenced by Mr O Grady's brand of considered comment than that of Ms Flanders.
