The Tories’ Image Problem

January 12, 2018 //
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MP Ben Bradley wants to ‘fix Tory image problem’ according to a massively disingenuous BBC Newsbeat article. According to the young conservative MP for Mansfield, the Tories’ problem is that they’re perceived by the young as being old, grey, and boring. He wants to appeal to ‘Young people, people from ethnic minorities who just don’t vote for us’. He’s pushing for conservatives from popular culture to get the message out. The article goes on to say that ‘any improvement in image would have to be backed up by policy.’income_inequality

You can see the problem here, right? Tory policies that appeal to young voters are pretty thin on the ground. The article cites ‘The Conservatives cut housing benefits for 18 to 21-year-olds, introduced a lower minimum wage for under-25s and is the only major party against lowering the voting age to 16.’ Well, there’s a start. What else?

How about hard Brexit? Voters under 50 voted overwhelming to remain in the EU. (18-24s did so by a 3-1 margin; 56% of 25-49s voted remain.) All current evidence points to the Tories staying on that very unpopular highway despite all the signs advising them to turn off.

Brexit, like the recent US tax plan, is a boondoggle for the already very wealthy. The reason the government is pushing it so hard, despite the referendum having been clearly an advisory measure (see the first paragraph here, is because there’s so much money to be made getting Britain out from under EU regulatory regimes. It’s not as though the boot is onerous, just that it’s portrayed as such by whiny-ass bitches like Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch’s media empire was massively pro-Brexit. Why? When Anthony Hilton of the Evening Standard asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union, he replied, ‘That’s easy. When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.’

That’s several other articles that have already been written by folks better at this than I am. Laurie Penny, for example.

What does this have to do with what young people want? Young people want a government that acts in the interests of all citizens and does so with transparency. Simple.

What else do young people want? They want for the parties in power to act with resolve against keeping them in poverty. A fully functioning and fully funded NHS and reasonable/zero tuition fees are absolutely at the heart of this.

Reasonable secondary education tuition fees. You know, the ability to leave college not ass-deep in debt. Anywhere in the Tory manifesto? Of course not. If every second 23 year old already owes one of the banks nearly 30,000 pounds, the banks are happy. (Personal history: Tuition fees were introduced in the California public college/university system by Ronald Reagan when he was governor. Once the fee was introduced, it only went up. The CSU system’s tuition increased about 300% in the four years I attended (1985-1989) and is now almost USD 6000 per year. The UC system is over USD 12000 per year.

However, when the banks are happy, Tory campaigns are funded. One can’t expect the current government to rescind that.

And the NHS? Chronically underfunded under the Tories for almost seven years. Setting the NHS up for failure seems to be the Conservative party’s national sport. And they’re winning. They set up metrics like getting some percentage of A&E patients seen in under four hours that they then don’t fund the service to meet. And the papers all bemoan how poorly the NHS is doing. The rest of the world sees in this an obvious ploy. Set the NHS up to fail and then sell it off to the lowest bidder. Worked out beautifully for the Royal Mail as well, but the Royal Mail is only tangentially related to the real world health of its users.

What else? Safe housing estates. Because young people don’t just think only about themselves (all the stupid cracks about Millennials aside), they want for the people amongst us with the least to at least be safe in their own flats. You’d think that’d be a no-brainer, especially after the Grenfell tragedy. Nope, we’re not going to do anything to require property owners to make sure they’re buildings aren’t twenty-story fire traps. Thanks for asking.

Other things? How about a rail system that doesn’t gouge the young commuter (who may no longer be able afford to live near the city they work in) out of a large chunk of their pay packet. Well, nationalization isn’t going to happen, but rail networks that work for commuters and not shareholders? Too much to ask. I suppose the manifesto’s commitment to putting 40 billion pounds into improving Britain’s transport over the next decade is nothing to sneeze at, though it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the rail companies’ revenue. In 2016 alone, one parent of Govia Thameslink (operator of Gatwick Express, amongst other services) saw revenues of 3.4 billion. And because of privatization, Govia Thameslink is only one of about 20 different rail operators in the UK.

So, to recap: The way to appeal to the young is to champion and implement policies that affect them and the people they see around them positively rather than negatively. It’s quite simple, but the Tories know who butters their crumpets, and it’s not the youth of Britain.

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Categories EU, Politics, UK

The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp

January 7, 2018 //
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So this month, I’ll be diving into the studio recordings of King Crimson. I’ve been a fan since the early 80s and have seen them perform four times. (I’ll see them again in July. Woot!) I considered reviewing the albums alphabetically rather than chronologically, but was dissuaded.

While Robert Fripp is the only constant in almost 50 years of KC, both Giles brothers appeared on either or both of the first two KC albums.

There are two ways to consider this album, neither of them very useful. One way is to look for aspects of it that point to what Michael Giles and Robert Fripp would do the following year with In the Court of the Crimson King. The fact is that very little of Cheerful Insanity resembles anything in the first few years of KC. The other way to look at is to consider where it falls in the music being made at the same time. This is more helpful, I suppose, because there are bits of the album that resemble early Moody Blues, early Pink Floyd, generic English folk rock and its proggy offspring (Genesis, Jethro Tull, Yes).

I first heard this album sometime in the mid-90s when I was collecting as best I could anything with Fripp’s name on it. I couldn’t hear anything in it (and still don’t) that resembles the weirdness of that late-70s/early 80s period when he’d been applying that arpeggiating guitar technique to everything he touched (including, for example, the stylings of the first and third Roches LPs. And much as I enjoyed that early prog, Cheerful Insanity just didn’t cut it.

Part of the issue I had was that a very young Fripp only wrote three of the songs. Little Children on side A suggests why Fripp left the lyrics to others after that. This song is notable for vocals provided by The Breakaways who famously backed Petula Clark and Cilla Black on several singles.

GGFSuite No. 1 and Erudite Eyes, which close side B have a more Frippish feel to them than the rest of the album. Suite No. 1, which clocks in at just under six minutes, starts with some Paganini-like runs that are joined by bass and keyboard, but after a minute and a half or so, the baroque gymnastics are replaced with a piano/strings/vocals arrangement that brings to mind the Chi-Lites’ Have You Seen Her. This segment is followed by a harpsichord-guitar duet which is followed by a reprise of the Paganini. A single track broken into three possibly unrelated forms, pulled together by a reprise of the theme? The application of jazz theory to folk motifs is one of the main threads of early progressive rock – it’s just weird to hear it applied so strangely.

Erudite Eyes is really the only song that points to the musical strangeness that was to come. It begins as a waltz, turns into a polka, returns to waltz-time and moves into improvised psychedelic strangeness before the second minute is up.

Lyrically, the whole affair is pretty strange. Newly-Weds suggests the discord of couples keeping up with the Joneses (He worries all day about wolves at his door…but on the other hand, she’s got a ring). One In A Million’s look at a man ‘content with the things at the moment, except the yellow line by the pavement’ echoes Revolver-era Beatles (Eleanor Rigby, Taxman).

The biggest issue I have with the whole album is the interspersed comedic numbers. Most of the songs on side A are bookend with episodes of The Saga of Rodney Toady, a ‘sad young man’ who girls run away from at school dances and whose parents are ‘fat and ugly’ and tell him that will ‘meet a fat and ugly girl just like Rodney’s mother and they would get married.’ These interludes don’t speak back to the music and actually detract from enjoying the album.

Side B’s songs are interspersed with repetitions of the sentence ‘I know a man and his name is George’ spoken in the correct order once and then in permutations (Know I George his name and a man, for example) and in increasingly annoying voices. One could argue that the rearrangements of the words reflect the possibilities inherent in the structured and random mutations of music that lie at the heart of King Crimson’s most intriguing work (for me, this includes tracks like Fracture, Level 5, and Starless).

After this album was released, Peter Giles left, and Ian MacDonald and Judy Dyble (late of Fairport Convention) joined and they made a collection of high quality home recordings released in 2001 as The Brondesbury Tapes. This collection is mainly notable for Dyble’s vocal on an early version of I Talk to the Wind. Soon after, Greg Lake joined and the Crimson King was born.

 

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Categories Folk, Music, Rock, rock and roll

Books 2017

January 3, 2018 //
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Without too much comment, this is what I read last year. Mostly sci-fi/fantasy. I tend to read for amusement when I go to sleep and sometimes on the train in the mornings on the way to work. And in the middle of the night. My preference for midnight reading is for very light as I'm prone to nightmares. Hence there's not much that's too heavy…
Books 2017
1. The Locksley Exploit by Philip Purser-Hallard
The second book in the Devices Trilogy, a modern setting of the Arthurian conflicts with a heavy helping of Robin Hood. Quite good stuff.
2. Written in Dead Wax by Andrew Cartmel
Humourous mystery with interesting notes of vinyl addiction for those who collect records. Apparently it's the first in a series, but I didn't feel the need to buy the next ones.
3. The Red Thumb Mark (A Dr Thorndyke Mystery) by R. Austin Freeman
Thorndyke was an early Sherlock Holmes knockoff narrated by a Dr. Watson knockoff. The collected works might have set me back 99p.
4. Katherine by Anya Seton
One of my sister's and #1 niece's favourites. Well-researched historical romance about the mistress of John of Gaunt who was the ancestress of several centuries of English monarchs.
5. Year Zero by Rob Reid
Another cheap sci-fiesque read that might have been a Humble Bundle purchase. Amusing tale of Intergalactic music copyright infringement.
6. False Covenant by Ari Marmell
The second Widdershins novel – good, but I was bummed that he killed off a character I really liked. So bummed, that I decided not to move on to the next.
7. Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
8. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Really good speculative fiction about the origins of space travel with a good dollop of dystopianism that looks like the early Trump years. Scary as heck.
9. Aftermath – Life Debt by Chuck Wendig
The second of his novels that bridge episodes six and seven of the Star Wars saga. Good stuff.
10. Moonglow by Michael Chabon
Latest offering from the author of Kavalier and Clay. Narrator tells of his grandfather's adventures in WW2 and the early atomic/space age. Four stars.
Read the rest of this entry »

Categories Uncategorized

It’s always time to consider this

January 2, 2018 //
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Last week, my partner and I went to the movies in Telford. Having booked tickets for about £34 on nearly a whim and driven 40 minutes on a wet night to get to the theatre, I can suggest that we're not hurting. The same cannot be said for a woman we passed between the parking lot and the entrance to the multiplex. She was underdressed for the weather, was missing a front tooth, and sat under an umbrella with a cup. She told us she was trying to raise £18 to get a bed for the night. We could have covered that amount without thinking twice. Partner gave her two or three pounds as she had change which I did not. I bought her a sandwich and a cup of coffee from the Starbucks inside, because I could feel good about buying her some sustenance.
There's a subconscious mental juggling act in which I think I'm supposing she should work harder to get a roof over her head for one December night rather than just having it.
I've equivocated that sentence because I'm afraid of articulating just what goes on in my head when I give a homeless person less than what they need to get to the next step. The personal calculus is that as an individual, I don't have the ability to adopt every person on the street. And I extend that to 'or even one person on the street'. And in the family that consists of my partner and me, the calculus is that we don't want children of our own or even to adopt or foster. There's a selfishness to it, to be certain. And an unwillingness to examine just what it would take to abandon our plans to pay off our house and have the retirement plan that we want. We both know how very lucky/blessed we are to live the way we do, but not to the extent that we extend that luck too far from ourselves.
I vote and I donate to campaigns of politicians who seem to think the way I do about how the future should look, but in the end, they're politicians and they vote in favour of much larger sums of money than I represent. And in the US and the UK the ones who profess support for the underclasses are in the minority. Again. (Note: When the left holds the majority, they're only slightly less mendacious. I'm not blind in this regard.)
My job is still fish. (And your job as well, I trust.) The problem is still how to get fish to people. I give irregularly to charities that seem to be doing this work and every year I say to myself that I'll make this more regular. Every December a local food bank does a drive at my local supermarket for one day – my guess is that they go for one day to each of the big supermarkets – and on that day I buy 30 or 40 euros worth of stuff off of the bank's want list. While that's definitely regular, it's not enough. (Note: I'm in England at the moment and spending pounds, I grew up in the US, and I live in the Netherlands.)
In between, I send some money to this charity or that charity as the whim hits me and pledge each January to make it a more regular. So I write down some random thoughts on the matte and make a note to make a note to do something about it. As soon as I finish writing this, I'll create a calendar entry that will repeat on the first of each month to give some group or other some money or fulfil something on that group's amazon wish list. (One group I support sometimes is London's Breakfast In A Bag who have an ongoing list of things they provide to those sleeping rough.) As noted, this kind of thing is really easy. There's much harder work to do and I don't have the slightest where to begin.
I visited Oakland, California where my sister and her family live (and where I lived about twenty years ago) and the homelessness has gone off the charts. People who have spent decades in public service probably have some ideas about the solutions needed, but as noted above, there is no political will to help people who don't vote with deep pocketbooks. These are the folks with no pocketbooks at all left.
Our jobs are not judgement. The jobs are fish. Some of us have fewer fish than others, but I have a feeling that everyone reading this has more fish than they need. Give more fish.

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Categories Economics, Family, Politics

Sunn O))), Magma, Unsane

October 31, 2017 //
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So Sunday night’s adventure (as you might have noticed) was the last three acts on the Southern Lord Records Fest at Melkweg, Magma, Unsane, and of course Sunn O))) (being the folks who started and run Southern Lord).

Magma are curious blend of jazz and hard progressive rock. Under various lineups that have only the constant of drummer Stephan Vander, they’ve been doing the work since 1970. Interesting and compelling stuff.

sunn_melkwegUnsane are one of these crews I wish I’d gotten into a long time ago. They’ve been on the circuit for almost 30 years. Hard and sludgy, Unsane have musical elements in common with early Nirvana and Big Black and to a lesser extend The Melvins. When you get folks who’ve been doing the work together for almost 25 years (the current line-up solidified in ’94), there’s a joy in hearing and watching them lock together. (Note to San Francisco / Bay Area friends: Unsane will be at Bottom of the Hill on 1st December. You should go.)

Sunn O))) are a different thing altogether. They perform more as ritual than as rock and roll. The fog, the volume, and the robes the band members wear contribute to this vibe. Vocalist Attila Csihar took center stage and, for want of a better word, intoned for about ten minutes to increasing volume and fog before the other band members (guitarists Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson, and two people working keyboards.) For all the flowing of the sound between the instruments and the vocalists, it seems to be a pretty tightly constructed set these days. (Alas, while I recognised various pieces, I couldn’t tell you what they’re titled.) I’ve seen them once before, at Paradiso on the Monoliths and Dimensions tour and the most interesting aspect of the gig was noticing a brass instrument on the stage and being afraid of what they might do with it. (The volume at a Sunn O))) is such that you both hear it and feel it in your bones.) I don’t recall that anyone did anything more than brandish it. There was a trombone stood next to one of the keyboardists, stage left, and it added a lovely counterpoint to one of the pieces. However, as with last night’s gig, I had to leave early not to be on the very slow train back to Leiden. One of these days I will witness one of their gigs to its conclusion. All in all, a great set.

Sadly, I rushed out in order to make my train and didn’t stop at Unsane’s merch counter at all. And I didn’t have my wits about me at Sunn O)))’s. I bought a t-shirt and a vinyl copy of Kannon (their very beautiful 2015 release). I should also have bought a vinyl copy of the 2008 live album Domkirke.

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Categories Rock
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