I don’t really want to talk about viruses at the moment. But this song means I have to.
Only three songs send a sinister chill down my spine just by listening to them – Straight to Hell by the Clash, The Cutter by Echo & the Bunnymen and The Harder I Try by Brother Beyond. Yes. Brother Beyond. (I really think there is another that is much higher up the list – but the ones that do this were all released before I left university – I think I became more robust when I started work).
I first heard it on Top of the Pops when I had a ferocious temperature and was really feverish. It was the stuff of fever dreams for some reason. The video really freaked me out and Nathan Moore seemed to be struggling out of the TV screen (this was not the first time I had hallucinated with a fever – four years earlier I had been attacked by own curtains the night my fever broke). Anyway I got better.
Oddly afterwards I had an attachment to the track – as time went on it still sends a chill up my spine, but I also listened to it a lot after I was better and the fact that I wasn’t being attacked by Nathan Moore was reassuring.
Now I think Pete Waterman is a genius (I mean an evil genius like Doctor Doom or Lex Luthor, not like Reed Richards or Richard Feynman) but I think Stock, Aitken and Waterman were, on the whole, an incredibly baleful influence on late 80s music. Very samey music with a rotating roster of singers – it made money, but it was like eating cardboard – no satisfaction. It was only the arrival of Madchester and dance music that finally injected some energy into popular music after an appallingly fallow period.
On a musical level all I can say is that this track is way above the usual SAW rubbish. It almost sounds like Tamla Motown 20 years on. Or at least that is where they stole it from . The Harder I Try by Brother Beyond.
To start with I will confess my bias. I am in my late 50s so getting to the stage where a big state pension sounds like a wonderful idea. I am also ill health retired on a defined benefit pension scheme and unable to work again, so I have a vested interest in keeping my money from that too.
One of the stupidest arguments for Brexit that I saw online was a complaint that after 50 years in Europe Britain had the lowest pensions. Totally ignoring the fact that pensions were nothing to do with Europe and that anyone with any intelligence would realise staying in the EU was more likely to improve them. (Any argument in favour of Brexit has obviously proved utter bollocks and that was pointed out in advance; Cummings or whoever started this one must have realised that appealing to older bigots was a good tactic).
It did play on a valid point though. State pensions in the UK are very low and have been even lower in the past. Pensioner poverty has been a massive issue and it is not solved.
First let us lay a myth that is incredibly prevalent. You have not paid into a state pension scheme in any normal sense of the word. You are not entitled to get your money back after paying in for your working life. A huge number of people think that National Insurance is a hypothecated payment to the state that covers the NHS, benefits and the pension.
It is not. It is just Income Tax by another name (with differing rules just to make it complicated and benefit certain people). There is no pension fund that your money is invested in. Some future government (of the Truss variety, can withdraw the pension entitlement if it wants – the only thing stopping it would be the fact that only the old and/or rich favour the Tories and Labour are not gits).
Those people who say – “I paid in all my life” do not understand the tax system – and government is happy for it to stay that way. Their money is used to pay the pensioners who got the pension then.
The triple lock was brought in by the coalition government. Pensions rise by the higher of:
Earnings growth: The first component of the triple lock ensures that the state pension increases in line with average earnings. If the average earnings of the working population increase, the state pension will also increase by the same percentage.
Inflation (Consumer Price Index – CPI): The state pension can also increase in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures the average change in prices of a basket of goods and services over time. If the CPI is higher than earnings growth, the state pension will increase by the CPI rate.
Minimum of 2.5%: The state pension is guaranteed to increase by a minimum of 2.5% annually, even if both earnings growth and inflation are lower than this threshold. This ensures a minimum level of increase in the state pension to protect pensioners from a potential decrease in purchasing power.
This has reduced pensioner poverty, though it has in no way eliminated it and living on just the state pension is not giving a comfortable life.
There is some logic to CPI rather than RPI for pensioners who are home owners.
This shows the breakdown of government spending. You can see pensions are a big element and will only grow due to the triple lock and an aging population.
One of the biggest issues the UK has is inequality, particularly generational inequality. People of the Boomer and Gen X eras have been able to buy property, have good company pensions and generally benefit from improving GDP. The following generations cannot buy houses (and governments are unwilling to force more construction as it would reduce the value of the properties Boomers and Gen Xers are sitting on – property being seen as a sign of wealth rather than somewhere to live by many people). So why do pensions go up under the triple lock but not benefits? Not just for the unemployed but for people with disabilities or other state payments? Refer to my earlier point if you are thinking that you paid for it. The other argument is that people on benefits are scroungers and should try harder. If we ignore the argument that the same could be said of pensioners – they should have saved more or should work – most people do not want to be on benefits. It suits the right-wing press to demonise claimants and it makes us feel better than they live hand to mouth if they do not deserve anything.
Another problem with the lack of housing is that pensioners who rent rather than own their own homes will be paid housing benefit. This will make future generations who do not own their own homes cost much more in retirement.
One suggested solution is to means test the state pension. It has already been done with child benefit. The problem is that means testing is expensive and requires a massive administrative system. Potentially it may not even save much money, plus it means that we lose the universality of the state pension. Then the well off become opposed to increasing the state pension even more than they are already. The other argument against this is what the effect will be on pension saving. If your company pension is not very generous and you will lose the state pension if you pay into it, then why pay into the company pension? Save in another way or spend the money instead (perverse reasoning abounds in pensions; the government introduced auto-enrolment to make more people use company pensions at the same time as withdrawing National Insurance relief on the pension contributions, so pension contributions became more expensive).
So here is my solution, or at least a partial solution. It could massively help with many fiscal issues if fully implemented.
Merge National Insurance and Income Tax under the Income Tax regime. National Insurance is levied on income from earnings, not other income. It is a tax on labour – people who earn money from investments and property do not pay it. Pensioners do not pay it at all. Why are people who make money from shares, investments and property taxed at a much lower rate? Also charge it on capital gains (which are used to disguise income and get taxed at a lower rate in many cases).
The tax-free pay threshold is now less than the state pension as the government has frozen tax fee allowance. Raise the tax allowance to the state pension amount so no one on only the state pension alone pays tax (incidentally benefiting everyone from the triple lock and removing the need to set the allowance each year). Richer pensioners pay a higher amount of tax – we all still use services in the country, but it also brings in all the income that is not subject to NI.
It will not happen. No government will raise headline tax rates like that while in office and the general population thinks NI is not tax.
Pensions do need to be higher, but the triple lock cannot stay forever as forecasts show it is unsustainable with an aging population. That aging population means current young people will either not be able to retire until their mid to late 70s (if ever). No amount of people complaining that is not possible will change the numbers – it will either be tiny pensions or a much later pension age. Given that it is not a surprise that people under 30 regard a state pension as something they will probably never get and resent how government spending is skewed to the pensioners.
The trouble is any reform will annoy large tranches of the population – so governments are not inclined to deal with this in their short term tenure.
Yesterday the Government said it would update ministers on their internal report into Sue Gray moving to be Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff.
A few problems with that:
Sue Gray has left the Civil Service. Unless there is a safeguarding issue the Civil Service HR department has no right to carry this out and Sue Gray definitely does not have to respond.
It is a matter for ACOBA to deal with moves from government or the Civil Service. As any Private Eye Reader knows it is toothless and politicians ignore it as a matter of course. Boris Johnson started doing private sector work after standing down as Prime Minister without even telling ACOBA. Sadly this is common. And wrong. Others are told not to use their specialist knowledge for two years, though that is never checked.
The supposed grounds for this are a concern about her Partygate report could have been fair as it brought down Johnson. Except it didn’t – the Tories claimed it vindicated him, actually other events brought him down.
Making Sue Gray obey higher standards than almost every minister or Civil Servant over the last (at least) 20 years would be unfair. Made a day’s headlines for the Telegraph trumpeting it on May 2nd – oddly quiet on the front page today, the 3rd May.
I think ACOBA should be much tougher, and that politicians and senior servants should have to comply with it. Just symptomatic of how weak our democratic norms are in the face of this rabble of a government.
“A Lie Is Halfway Round the World Before the Truth Has Got Its Boots On.”
That seems to apply to the ratings headlines about the funeral of Elizabeth Windsor. Papers like the Daily Mail, but other sources that are genuine news outlets, repeated that 5 billion would watch the funeral. Given the population of the world is only 8 billion that seemed really high.
That is 62% of the world’s population which seemed crazy to me – after all to the Dar East it would happen in the small hours of the morning and to the far West late at night. In Europe (and the rest of the world) people would have been at work. There are people in the world who have no access to a TV (or streaming services); countries where it was not shown (China anyone?) and countries where the Royal Family is not admired.
In the UK it was shown on every BBC, ITV and Sky labelled channel (though not on Comedy Central, UK Gold, etc). Despite this the viewing figures were under 29 million. Even allowing for streaming it will not be 30 million. This means that, despite giving an extra bank holiday and blitzing the channels, the viewing figure is lower than the European Championship final last year.
It is about 44% of the UK population. Now I think that it is incredibly unlikely that other countries are actually more interested than the UK in this event. The genuine figure may be somewhere around 2 billion viewers worldwide, that is high but not the record-breaking level being screamed about in advance. Things have definitely gone quiet about figures post funeral.
(Also more people were on the streets in London for Notting Hill Carnival, the Rejoin march and the Pride Paarade than the funeral).
Why does this matter? The figure is used to show how popular the monarchy is and how anyone protesting about the blanket coverage is wrong. It also buys into a myth of British exceptionalism that is so dangerous as this country somehow thinks rules do apply internally or externally.
Which leads me to the coverage in general. I still do not understand why channels have to show it on every station – either on the day of her death or the funeral. Surely BBC1 and ITV1 can show it and have a banner on other channels? It is 2022 not 1901. The TV stations were criticised in 1997 for this blanket coverage of Diana’s funeral and stated that they had misjudged the situation and would not do it again (it was the most complained about in history at that time). There is a lot of vague stuff about Respect – why do we have to show it this way? There was no necessity to cancel sports activities or stop showing comedy on BBC – yet football stopped and no comedies were seen.
We laugh at North Korean coverage of their leaders – a huge number of people do it in the UK without the threats. Sheep are easier to keep under control.
I have written about my total incomprehension at this mourning for someone you have never met https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/04/10/weve-all-gone-crazy/ and I still remain totally bemused. 96 year old woman dies is not news – 96 year old woman lives another year maybe news. Diana’s was more understandable as she was young and her death not anticipated – it was blatantly obvious that this death was on the cards given medical reports (if you do not read Private Eye you may not have known – just goes to show that you should).
The whole mourning period acted as an unquestioning act of support for the monarchy – this is important as the Royal firm is fully aware of the fact that Charles is far less popular than his predecessor. People who protested were arrested with the either “it is the wrong time” or “you should not protest at anyone’s death” as the lines taken (interestingly none of the people who usually scream about cancel culture or freedom of speech had a word to say – only freedom of speech for right wing views it seems, though David Davis MP is an honourable exception to that).
The first of these “reasons” sounds just like the Republican Party in the USA when there is a school shooting – the wrong time, yet it is exactly the time because later the emotional impetus is gone. The second “reason” misses the point that if other people die it is not turned into a public event; once you make it a public event the public have a right to disagree. Idiots who were online saying it was disrespectful to post anything but slavish adoration because it might upset the Royal Family – really? They read my Facebook feed? They read groups like Tegan Delete This FFS? No way.
The Royal Family are not rich in their own right. Everything they have really belongs to the British State – Norman Baker has written about this extensively. The Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster are not theirs and they have used funds from the Civil List to invest when they should have been returned to the nation when not spent. Do not argue about it until you read the books.
Royal wills are sealed. David McLure in https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Royal-Legacy-family-passed-wealth/dp/191019865X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=4E9PZDAQSUCJ&keywords=a+royal+legacy+david&qid=1663834932&sprefix=a+royal+legacy+david%2Caps%2C70&sr=8-1 shows how this has been used to avoid tax. On a prior royal death the estate was valued at £50 million – though no one could see the will. Very soon afterwards a fraction of the jewellery collection was sold for more than this (let alone the other assets) – though this lead a to a capital gains tax it meant that vast amounts of inheritance tax were lost to the state forever. This was not investigated. The sale also showed that items that belonged to the nation were being treated as personal wealth by members of the royal family – many had to be removed from the sale and it still mad that money.
The monarch gets prior approvals of bills that may affect them and their wealth. Why do equality and animal legislation not apply on royal land in royal property? 160 separate pieces of legislation do not apply.
One argument for a monarch is that they are independent in a way that no elected person could be. On the one occasion that she had to stand up the Queen agreed to prorogue Parliament illegally – showing a monarch is no constitutional barrier to a liar and corruption narcissist like Johnson.
Elizabeth paid off the accusers of the Prince who can not sweat. That is £12 million pounds of our money so that he is safe and can still go to Pizza Express in Woking.
Just remember when they talk about how cheap the monarchy they do not include any security costs. We are still providing round the clock coverage for minor royals – it costs phenomenal amount when police forces cannot even respond to crimes like burglary.
So, we get to pay for a huge funeral event while the country is in massive debt and people cannot afford food or heating. Homeless people get no state support but people queuing to file past the coffin get blankets handed out? What a bloody disgrace. And we will get more next year when the coronation happens. When we crown a king who takes bags of cash from dictatorships.
Keep the monarchy as a kind of British Disney spectacle but take away constitutional powers and their embezzled wealth. Make it self-funding, including security costs then I will not care if the sheep want to play the game, just let the smart people not have to pay for this shit.
This is a track by Rainbow, sung by one of my favourite vocalists – Ronnie James Dio.
I have said before that I hate musicals. Except Grease, which I saw twice at the cinema when it came out. My sister, Alison, and I were taken to see it by my stepmother (my brother, Mike, and other sister opted for something else instead). This was not my usual kind of film, but it was a big thing at school and I was determined to understand what was being discussed (peer pressure – the next time I succumbed was to see the Bee Gees Sergeant Pepper movie – truly a terrible film).
Alison and I came home raving about it so much that Mike wanted to see it too but he had already had something bought for him, so it was agreed the three of us could go back the following week (having to sit in the stalls and crane our necks, you could only sit in the balcony with an adult) – remember it was 5 years before it would be on TV in those days – miss the cinema run and that was it..
Channel 4 have just shown Grease, to mark the sad passing of Olivia Newton John earlier this week and I caught the last few minutes.
There is a lot made of the final scene in that Sandy (played by ONJ) changes her complete look to win her man, Danny Zucco (played by John Travolta) and this shows how women are forced to change to please men.
This ignores the fact that Danny turns up without his trademark T Birds leather jacket dressed as straight-laced high school student. The argument is then made that he throws his letterman jacket away and reverts to being a T Bird when he sees rocker Sandy.
This misses the point that Sandy also throws her jacket away as they move into the film’s most popular song – You’re the One That I Want. Presumably it made the dancing easier. Apart from the perm and the off the shoulder top it would be hard to say Sandy has changed that much. (Rocker Sandy was widely considered “hotter”, I never owned up to the fact that I liked good girl Sandy better).
Surely the point to this scene is that they were both open to compromise to make the relationship work. It’s a fun musical, not a political tract.
My favourite ONJ track is from another movie. A film that is breathtakingly bad and should be avoided at all costs. It helps the track is written and performed by the Electric Light Orchestra. Olivia’s dancing in the heels is quite a feat and she looks stunning, sadly the film bombed so badly her film career never recovered.
I am sure that the European haters that exist in the UK are up in arms in about the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) stopping the Rwandan flights. Here is some information that might help understand what has happened and why this is not the European Union’s fault, despite this government trying to refight Brexit.
The EU and ECHR are totally separate. I could end it here.
It is not illegal for refugees or asylum seekers to come to this country despite all the propaganda in the right-wing press. There is a bubbling feeling that there are huge numbers of immigrants in the UK and due to the propaganda from slime like the Daily Mail right wingers drastically overestimating the issue.
This bar chart is striking.
The government claimed that the legislation to deport immigrants to Rwanda was necessary to protect people trying to get into the UK from people traffickers.
The Civil Service told them that this was illegal and rubbish, but you know – Priti Patel is a moron.
Rather than putting this through Parliament as an Act of Parliament the government chose to do it as Memorandum of Understanding, which has far less legal force. An Act would have been far harder to challenge. Of course, that would not have taken effect when the government was trying to distract from a vote of no confidence in their venal leader.
The government drafted the agreement with Rwanda so badly that people sent their illegally had no method to return. This is what the ECHR challenged, it also stated as there was a judicial review in July there was no reason for the government not to wait until its own review on its legality.
Now the government wants to withdraw from ECHR, even though a big majority want to stay in it (and why not – it is one of the things that protects us from a government that is so venal and corrupt).
Even more interesting is that while the government wants to ditch the ECHR it is one of their reasons for illegally attempting to amend the Northern Ireland Protocol – they claim it goes against the ECHR for the Northern Irish. This is the treaty they negotiated and sold as over ready and ideal, now they are saying it is morally indefensible.
Spot the disconnects there?
Any why would the Northern Irish want to overthrow the Protocol? Their economy is doing better than the rest of the UK as they are still part of the Customs Union with the EU. Shows the Brexit bonus doesn’t it (the UK economy is doing the second worst in the G20 – only above Russia….. wonder why?).
I will declare my bias right here at the start. I am a Max Verstappen fan and I predicted that he would be a future world champion the first time that I saw him race in the rain. He stayed on slicks as every other driver either crashed or changed onto wets. It was like Jenson Button had returned (Jenson seemed to be able to completely ignore water on the track and drive normally). For the record I like Lewis Hamilton too – a great champion who has totally deserved his success. It is amazing how many UK fans who have been less than complementary about Hamilton suddenly became patriotic fans full of indignation after this race.
There has a been a lot of controversy about the last race of the 2021 Formula One season, but it has been brewing for a long time and just highlights some problems in Formula 1.
In the final race of the 2021 season Hamilton and Verstappen were level on points; whoever finished in front in this race would be champion (though if both failed to score Max would be champion due to winning more races). Lewis definitely had the advantage on pace and was ahead by some distance when there was a late safety car deployed following a crash. The field closed up and Max pitted for soft tyres but was still in second place. Controversially some cars were allowed to unlap themselves (but not all the cars) and there was one lap of racing. Max’s fresh tyres made Lewis an easy target and Max was world champion (though Hamilton’s attempted slipstream was an amazing piece of driving on old tyres).
Watch this – the ending starts at 3 minutes 30 seconds in. Interesting that Max thinks the authorities are biased against him. Fans had been certain in previous years that Ferrari got special treatment and Mercedes too. Sorry both videos you have to go Youtube.
Mercedes were not happy and appealed the result. Fans were up in arms saying they would not watch Formula 1 again. To be fair I had screamed in the same way after a first lap incident when Hamilton gained an advantage going off the course and was not made to give the place back to Verstappen. Lewis Hamilton was incredibly gracious in defeat, and he (and his father) congratulated Max and his dad.
Toro Wolff and Christian Horner (the two team principals) had been complaining all season. I think Mercedes were the worst whingers, but Mercedes fans think Red Bull were worst, so I am guessing that both were as bad as each other. The sport would be helped by less public displays of anger and petulance from team principals.
Mercedes appealed the race result and one of the problems is that Formula 1 marks its own homework so that was never likely to work. The next step would have been to go the Court of Arbitration in Sport (CAS) , but Mercedes declined in the interests of the sport. Looks good. Until Toto Woolff is interviewed and repeats that they were right and should have won and would have won if they had gone to CAS. He does not specify any reasoning for this or even think about how it would be resolved. A gesture that looked so good was ruined.
However there has been a huge amount of misinformation about the race and the sport. Why could the race not finish behind a safety car (as a procession)? Mercedes fans believe that if it was not a title decider race that this is what would have happened. Except all the teams had met earlier in the season and been absolutely clear that they did not want this to happen – they did not want races to finish under a safety car. Mercedes had been emphatic about how they wanted racing to happen when it suited them. So had Red Bull.
Only some cars unlapped under the safety car which at first looked against the rules. For a sport with a rulebook the weight and size of an encyclopaedia Formula 1 has a bizarre set of rules. It appears that, despite all the rules, the Race Director can ignore the rules and do what he likes. The rules do not even define what an overtake is, as realised in one of the Mercedes challenges at the end of the race – a clearer set of rules would help no end.
The Race Director, Michael Masi, was under pressure in many of the races from Horner and Woolff. I had thought that this was a new thing teams could do, but it was only the transmission to the TV audience that was new. Masi is a relative novice in the role, replacing the longstanding (and incredibly highly respected) Charlie Whiting in the role. I only found out later that Masi has not replaced Whiting per se, just in this part of his role – Whiting’s brief was far wider. Despite that I am sure that Whiting would have been more robust under pressure. In a multibillion-pound business not having a deputy race director to step in after Whiting’s sad (and unexpected) death is a pretty poor piece of business management. It looks like Masi may be fired or have his role change.
The disagreements and complaints this season exacerbated by having different stewards at each race (not that this was a new thing). Offences at one race that caused time penalties at others were dismissed as racing incidents. The teams were livid about the lack of consistency and there is no doubt that having a pool of stewards (five or six) where three are picked for each race would help with a consistent approach.
There are some elements of Formula 1 that seem inherently unfair.
A crash can have a driver penalised, but nothing is given to the victims. So, Hamilton’s teammate, Bottas, crashing into Verstappen’s car, meaning that Max could only get ninth in a damaged machine was a massive advantage for Hamilton and only Bottas is punished = Mercedes would look on that as a massive win.
Hamilton was very lucky in Brazil. Engine penalties put him at the back of the grid, but it was one of the sprint races, where positions depended on qualifying and then a sprint race on the Saturday. Hamilton would have never won the race without using the sprint to get to sixth on the main grid. Sprint races do not work in their current form and another use for them needs to be found next season (maybe a shorter race with a reverse grid, with the main race qualifying positions staying set).
Hamilton has also been the worst offender at a sharp tactic before the start of the race. Where he has been in a grid position where he is behind Verstappen he has driven as slowly as he can getting to his grid position (worst when he started at the back of the grid). Formula 1 cars are not meant to be stationary (they have no cooling – moving round the track cools them) so making the drivers at the front of you wait is an advantage to the cars further back. There is meant to be a time limit on this, but it has never been enforced – time to do something about that too.
The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was a fiasco on a track wholly unsuitable for Formula 1. It was another in the sportswashing shame of Formula 1 but the most egregious given the war crimes in Yemen and the state directed murder of Jamal Khashoggi. This was the first Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and given what happened there should never be another.
The worst thing is safety cars. This is where an accident happens on the track and a car comes out and drives round at 70mph and all the cars follow them. This means that the cars can bunch up, so all the advantages drivers have built up are wiped out. This is done so the cars are close together then the safety marshals can safely clear the damage off the track. This is very unfair as a driver can do a tyre change and lose less time than in the normal race (making it a lottery based on other decisions made in the race) and a driver who has built up a big lead loses it all.
The fairest thing would be to stop the race and restart it with the times for the two (or more) races added. This would not be the required spectacle as the first past the chequered flag may not be the overall winner. A red flag to put all the cars in the pit lane (with no work allowed on them without positional sacrifice) would be fairer – especially if cars were released to maintain the space before the crash, at the moment the restart does not keep the gaps.
In reality safety cars are used to shake up the race order and make it artificially exciting and I am sure that there is no desire from Formula 1 management to change it. That is not so awful, lots of sports do things to inject artificial excitement.
Formula 1 is about the money. Too many races are on tracks where overtaking is too hard. Monaco is a prime example of this, though you could never get rid of that event, but the track that was great in the 50s is wholly unsuitable for the cars now. Street circuits look great but what is needed is courses designed where passing is easier and races are not reduced to procession s unless there is rain or a safety car.
Max deserved to be the champion this year (he led 652 laps out of 1,297 laps, everyone else led 647 between them – it is a tribute to Lewis that he was so close despite only leading 245 laps) and, ultimately, over a season, the rub of the green equals out. Lewis had a lot of luck in many races. The last lap in Abu Dhabi was his balancing misfortune.
Max gets criticism for being a dangerous or impulsive driver. He has curbed that and looked at the risk/ reward ratio, but he is aggressive. It is funny in online discussions that people who criticise him for this are often huge fans of Ayrton Senna – a man who pushed it even further than Max. Lewis has maybe had it a bit too easy in the last few years and seems to have a lost a bit of the edge that makes you the best – ever since Vettel and Ferrari faded from the title picture his only real challenge had been his own teammate, Rosberg. Rosberg won one title and retired, Valteri Bottas never appeared to be on a level to challenge Lewis (which may be why Lewis refers to him as a great teammate).
After the highly controversial season end the biggest shame of Formula 1 is not what happened on the last lap – it is the sport’s continuing acceptance of money from tyrannical regimes who oppress their people. Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Russia, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia and China in the future.
Thanks to my father (who has forgotten more about F1 than I will ever know) and my brother for their thoughts. The opinions are all mine though so do not blame them.
If you want to talk about something then you need to actually study it properly. If you don’t then you should shut up. I am thinking about the government’s report on race issued last week which has been seized on to say that racism isn’t that bad and young people should shut up and be grateful they don’t live in 1970.
The government were incredibly disingenuous releasing an 800-word summary of the report (that runs over 200 pages) the day before the report so that they could spin the direction of the conversation. The media, being the media, covered it and then when the whole report was released the news cycle had moved on.
The recommendations in the report are mostly good, though many are repeats of the over 300recommendations from reports on race that have not been implemented after many years (over 20 in some cases).
The report accepts that institutional racism exists still, despite the summary saying almost the opposite. It contorts itself to try and prove that it is not race but geography or class that is the issue – then ignoring why some ethnicities are overrepresented in those groups. It also does not make clear that levels of poverty (that they blame for levels of disparity) have soared under the last ten years of Conservative government and are forecast to keep rising.
It spends time rubbishing stop and search statistics in Dorset (where there were under 50 in the year that they had data for) and then does not dig into why the Metropolitan Police vastly overuse the power against people who are not white. Then the report, after concluding there are no problems with stop and search, makes recommendations to improve it.
It makes a point that there does not seem to be an issue in sentencing disparities – ignoring the fact that certain crimes (minor drug possession for example) where the Police make the choice of who to stop and who to let off with a warning. I will be writing a separate post about the Police.
It acknowledges that genetic differences between races are a fraction of the genetic differences between people but then skirts round why certain groups have been more affected by COVID.
It quotes many people who say they were never part of the process of writing the report, someone is lying.
In a report of horrible things maybe the worst is the attempt to change slavery into a positive Caribbean experience. Really? Learn about the third passage and what life was like on a sugar plantation.
It does say that things are better than they were. Big deal – if someone told you that your parents had an arm chopped off, but for you it is just a hand would you celebrate?
This is totally at odds with the people who the report is about have as a lived experience.
Ultimately the report is aimed at Conservative voters and white people and is trying to say that you should not feel any guilt about racism anymore. The Conservative party is worried how many young people protest now – not just BLM, but also XR and other issues that affect them. They want to try and gaslight those young people into thinking things are ok.
Oh – I have read the whole report and it is a bloody mess and I would be ashamed if my name was on it as it is so badly thought through and put together. The foreword and conclusions do not agree to the report and the recommendations. It is almost as if the conclusions were written by someone who had an agenda and the report and the evidence were irrelevant.
This song seems appropriate from the late, great Sam Cooke.
loyalists. The former group fall in love with songs for days or weeks and then abandon them for something new. Loyalists find songs they love and love them forever – I am very much a loyalist. This means that my friends and family will not be surprised at the track that tops this list. It has been my favourite song for nearly 41 years and I would estimate that I have heard it over 5,000 times.
They were punks to start with but quickly were identified as part of the mod revival. Like the Clash there is an urban (or maybe suburban for the Jam) feel and a class consciousness to their music. Starting with In the City, then tracks like The Eton Rifles (about the class war), Smithers-Jones (prescient in how it sees employment rights) and Down In the Tube Station At Midnight (about a man killed by right wing thugs on the tube, knowing they will go on to attack his wife). The latter would be a crowning achievement for most groups.
The Jam had 3 songs go straight in at number one when that was very rare (Going Underground, A Town Called Malice and The Beat Surrender) as well as another that only went straight in at number 3 – Start!. From early 1980 to the end of 1982 they had a string of huge hits – official releases always made the top 5 and overseas releases made the top 30 despite not being available in most UK stores.
At the end of 1982 Paul Weller ended the group – making them our generation’s Beatles rather than our Rolling Stones (at the same time Japan and Squeeze disbanded – no counselling lines for us unlike when boy bands split in the 90s). Of course Weller went on to form the Style Council (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/179 ) and then have a successful solo career, in many ways succeeding Paul McCartney as the senior figure of British music. Foxton and Buckler had less success (though Foxton’s solo debut single Freak is a forgotten classic) – these days the other two tour as From the Jam as part of the 80s nostalgia scene. Shame.
The Jam’s second last single was The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had To Swallow) and was released before news of the split came out. The Final single is upbeat and positive in style – The Beat Surrender is the opposite of what you would expect from a goodbye.
It is strange how the world moves on. London Calling , Going Underground and a snatch of the Sex Pistol’s God Save the Queen all feature in the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony. Times definitely change – that would have been unthinkable at the time of release. I could not believe when I heard them at the opening ceremony rehearsal.
Going Underground is an angry song that applies as much now as it did 40 years ago and that is incredibly sad. Listen to the lyrics.
I think Banner’s comment here applies to me too….
It has been nearly a year since I started this blog and we have had three lockdowns. This is the end.
The second appearance of Mick Jones in the top ten (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/2339 ) as part of the most credible, ethical and fuck the establishment band that ever-had mainstream success – The Clash. They were almost legendary figures as they were not on TV. They released singles and refused to have them on albums not to rip off the fans.
They were the longest lived of the big three of the punk bands, though their final album was without Mick Jones and is a disappointment – apart from the single This Is England.
Their first album is the best punk album. Simply titled The Clash it is 35 minutes of invective against the dead end lives they saw ahead. It does already include elements reggae and black culture that were a big part of punk before the extreme right started infecting the genre. The Clash would never lose touch with their multi-cultural urban roots.
(This is how a rock band should look)
The Clash’s career was always slightly chaotic and not planned well. Their second album, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, is already moving into a less punk feel. The best track is Safe European Home – the band went to Jamaica to write music and were so scared by the violence they saw they stayed in their hotel for a fortnight. Hardly the tough image punk rockers like to project.
Punk espoused a simplicity in its music and a move away from the overblown prog rock of the seventies which made the fact that their next album was a double and their fourth was a triple album. London Calling is considered one of the great rock albums of all time, but would be improved by being cut down. It’s triple sequel Sandinista! is a spawling mess (The Sandinistas were the Nicaraguan resistance to the USA puppet government). One side is pretty much dub version of the other tracks (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/1677 ). It really would make a great single album and the Cold War commentary Ivan Meets GI Joe is an overlooked classic.
The final album from the classic line up was in 1982 and was successful. Combat Rock is a fitting end point for them. What was not fitting was that in 1991 Should I Stay or Should I Go was rereleased after being used in a Levi jeans commercial and was their only UK number one. Rock the Casbah was about Iran banning rock music. It was used by American forces in the first Gulf War and even written on a bomb that would “rock a casbah”.
Joe Strummer cried when he heard that. It was the total antithesis of what he, and the Clash, stood for. He sadly died at the age of 50 in 2002. Rest in Paradise – by all accounts he was not just a great musician but a wonderful human being (based on numerous accounts, including Lily Allen).
(The Thames Barrier)
The idea of London drowning was prescient. Without the Thames Barrier the city would be flooded many times a year.
Listening to it in2021 I think it may be the most perfect example of a rock track ever. The classiest group, meaningful lyrics and no bullshit.
In many ways this is the counterpoint to Waterloo Sunset (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/1999 ). This track sounds so ominous. It sums up that mood of the UK as the seventies swung into the eighties. Britain was in seemingly terminal decline, never having come to terms with its post-colonial position. The post war political consensus had broken down and Thatcher was about to detonate monetarism in Britain. The inner cities were seething due to unemployment and a terrible attitude to young people from the police. It had been a crap decade and things were not going to improve much for a long time.
Five Miles Out 