I’m 22 in three weeks time.

I’ve just got a pension.

I have a job title that doesn’t have the word “Assistant” in it.

I’m listening to talk radio - LBC, BBC London and BBC Southern Counties. And liking it. And laughing at the crap jokes. And agreeing with Debbie from Guildford about the bins. And tutting.

People my age are popping sproggs and calling it “starting a family”.

It seems acceptable to date someone who is four years my senior.

It seems acceptable to date someone who is four years my junior, plus it doesn’t break any laws.

Dates at the cinema, bowling, McDonalds or the park make me feel cheap and childish.

Slippers have a new attraction.

Hawaiian shirts are a valid clothing option, and not because I’m a heavy set fella.

People ring me at 11pm and ask, “Did I wake you?”

I regret it when I leave the house not wearing a belt.

What the hell is happening to me?

In the former German Democratic Republic, or so I’m told, there was - in theory at least - a choice of what you ate. There were, apparently, branded goods. The rather excellent film, Goodbye Lenin, talked about Mocha Fix Gold, Globo Beans, and Spreewald pickles. Apparently, they also used to have ‘adverts’ on GDR television. Well, they really wern’t adverts, just a list of surplus goods and what prices they were.

If nothing else, the appearance - even if it was somewhat limited - of rival goods at least projected an image of choice in East German life, even if it meant diddly squat to ordinary Ossies. Even though everyone in East Germany knew that all foodstuffs came from the same factories, and the only difference was on the packaging, it allowed the East German bureaucracy to say; “Look, we have choice!”

Today, I got my ballot paper for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party. And I get a proper vote, too, as a paid up member. But since Brown will get his coronation, the real race is for the deputy leadership.

The floor on the inside of my front door has been flooded with promotional gumph from the contenders. Blears told me about how life was tough growing up in Salford (no, Hazel, no it wasn’t), Hain telling me about how he helped set up the Anti Nazi League (hang on, wasn’t that Paul Horobrow and the SWP?), Cruddas sent me a postcard (”In electoral oblivion for being too left wing. Wish you were here. Love, Cruddy.”) and I think there was some other stuff, but I read my post on the loo, and usually, I have other pressing matters to be thinking of.

The point is this; there is very little choice between the lot of them. The real contest that I wanted to see - McDonnell vs Brown - has been taken away from me. And, in terms of policy, there is very little to seperate the deputy leadership candidates - well, maybe a Rizla, but that’s it.

Cruddas voted for the war (though he thinks this was a mistake). He’s also seemingly in favour of cutting the union block vote at Labour conference - one of the very few methods of obtaining a workers’ voice in politics these days, sadly. He’s crap, basically. Well, he would be, if he were actually left wing, but because the left/right balance is so skewed these days - none so more in the Labour Party itself - he’s seen as left wing.

I fear that if I don’t vote, then the Labour right will see it as vindication. I think, on this occation, vote Cruddas - but I’ll be publically choaking and spewing about it, and helping organise the biggest, fuck-off fightback ever.

The Left seriously needs to get it’s act together.

Now, I know full well that I have a lot of… well, it’s nice to be nice, so I’ll say life-experienced, readers.

But… I wanna be a DJ. I love electronic dance music; drum & bass, house, techno… heck, I’ve even been known to have a sly bash along to a bit of decent garage in my time. I love it. The stuff is life affirming, and I don’t care what others may think. You can see me explain, in my own way, why I love house music on a special guest post on Dave’s Part - if I could find it.

Now that I’m in relatively better paid, and more secure employment, I can think about stuff I want to buy beyond noodles and Tesco Value beer. I have a fairly big music collection, filling up my iPod, but that’s all digital. Plus, a vinyl collection might be worth something one day, and buying vinyl records is quite cheap at about £4 a pop at most, if you know where to look. Second hand vinyl, whilst not being of the same quality as newly-pressed, is cheaper still, and is still perfectly playable, even if it has been scratched up on turntables.

So, I’m gonna be a DJ, master of the wheels of steel over a mad-fer-it crowd (well, the collection of childhood teddy bears at any rate). My birthday is coming up soon, so I’m sure that I can work out an arrangement with the folks so that they chip in to help me buy some decks. (You’ll see why in a second.) So, naturally, I have been shopping around, looking on the net - It’s all Stroppybird’s fault, really, with her posts on guitars, and buying a guitar (get the girly one!) and soliticing recommendations.

The beauties at the top of this post are ION iDJ02. They’re a package, which makes it more expensive, but easier to set up because everything is included to get you started (apart from records). According to Decks.co.uk, they are £125, which doesn’t seem to bad for two turntables, a mixer/cross-fader, all the wires, headphones, cartridges, and a microphone. With speakers, the price is £145 - just £20 more for speakers. (This is why I want the folks to chip in a bit, you see.) However, they are belt-driven turntables, which, especially with mixing and scratching, means that they wear out rather easily (essentially, the belts slacken and don’t drive the turntables around at the correct speed, for all you younger readers). But I’m just starting out, right?

I’ve never heard of ION before. Not that this means I think they’re going to be crap or anything, but when making an investment such as this, you may want to pay a bit more to secure quality. Gemini are a much better known brand of DJ equipment manufacturers, and their beginners’ kit is called Mix Master 5. Corny the name might be, but they are a well-respected manufacturer, so we’ll let it slide. At £150 for the mixer, turntables and headphones (no mention of cartrigdes or cables, but most packages do ‘ave em), £180 including speakers, it’s already £30 more expensive than the ION setup, but you’re paying for quality. Apparently, they are endorsed by Junior Vasquez. Oo, er, etc.

The mack daddy of turntables are Numark. Their basic set, pictured left, is called DJ In A Box. No, unfortunatly, Fatboy Slim doesn’t come with them, more’s the pity, but you do get the bog standard kit for £150 on sale, £180 with speakers. Apparently, it’s a good bit of kit for the begginer, and it includes slipmats, cartridges, the works. If they are still on sale by the time my birthday comes, I might get these.

So, readers, what do you think? Which one should I go for? Or, if you’re Dave, why should I (a tone-deaf, music illiterate) buy a guitar instead?

The comments box is just waiting for your love. ‘Aaaaaaaaave it!

I’m back.

Since I now work in Local Government, I have become a Unison member. And I’ve got a political fight on my hands.

An SWP controlled branch in Manchester has submitted a motion to Unison’s conference calling for a boycott of Israel. Joy.

A few Unison members who are supporters of the Committee for Two States have put out this statement in reply. I have signed it.

As democrats, socialists, critics of the policies and actions of the Israeli government, advocates of Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, and supporters of the right of both the Palestinian and the Israeli Jewish peoples to an independent state, we, the undersigned members of Unison, reject Resolution 54 to the union’s National Delegate Conference, which calls for a “a union-based campaign of boycott and sanctions against Israeli institutions”.

At first glance the idea of a boycott answers the need we all feel to “do something” in response to the seemingly endless carnage. But in fact a boycott would do more harm than good.

A boycott of Israel would at best exert only the most marginal pressure on the Israeli state. The movement to boycott South Africa continued for more than three decades, with only the most marginal effects on South Africa. Apartheid did not begin to crumble until the new black-majority workers’ movement and the population of the townships rose up.

Moreover, boycotts of whole nations and their institutions are the crudest political weapons. They hit opponents of the government being boycotted, those who share the viewpoint of the boycotters as well as supporters of what the boycotters object to.

This objection had far less weight for South Africa because everyone saw it as pressure towards majority rule rather than aimed at crushing the whole country.

Apartheid was the exploitation by a small white oligarchy of a black majority deprived of rights. The Israeli-Jewish state in its pre-1967 borders did not depend on the exploitation of Arabs, and does not now depend for its existence on exploitation of the Occupied Territories.

A boycott would contribute to strengthening the sense of being under siege in a world of enemies which is a strong element in the power of the Israeli right, and weaken those in Israel who want a just settlement with the Palestinians.

The boycott brands all Israeli Jews (or all who do not pass some prescribed political test) as beyond talking to.

In Britain, a boycott-Israel movement would, inexorably, become an anti-Jewish movement, directed against those closely linked to Israelis, i.e. Jews.

Resolution 54 calls for a “boycott against Israeli institutions”. Does that include such “Israeli institutions” as the Israeli trade union federation, the Histadrut? Or Israeli anti-occupation groups?

We understand and strongly sympathise with the desperation which has driven the Palestinian trade unions and some other civil society organisations to call for a boycott, but we do not believe it will help.

Much better, a positive labour movement campaign of solidarity with the Palestinians, with the Israeli peace movement, and with workers on both sides.

Signed by the following Unison members:

Alison Brown
Anita Downs
Chris Allen
Chris Leary
Dion D’Silva
Ed Whitby
Jacky Offord
Jean Lane
Lesley Smallwood
Lynne Moffat
Mark Catterall
Mike Fenwick
Mike Perkins
Nick Brereton
Rob Hope
Stephen Lintott
Stuart Jordan

I urge you to sign this statement too. Send an email to links.not.boycott@gmail.com and put your name down.

Again I’ve had to take a bit of a break from the old blogging, yet again because I’ve got a new job. This time it’s in local government, and it’s a permanent contract, so when things get settled, I can start rattling away again.

My good friend Jayne Henderson is running the Edinburgh MoonWalk to raise money for breast cancer. God knows why she’s running it, but she’s a good mate and you should empty your pockets and sponsor her.

OK, so the results have been in for a while, and it’s a run-off between Sego and Sarko. Nice.

The LCR’s Olivier Besancenot got 4.08%. While this is down from the 4.25% he scored in 2002, it’s worth pointing out that this time, his vote increased by 200k and the decrease in the share of the vote can be pinned down to the increased turn out – around 85%.

Many socialists, who supported Besancenot, Laguiller, Bove or even Schivardi, will now probably instinctively support Royal. If I were in France, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t even hold my nose. I’d abstain.

In Britain, I share the AWL’s position in the upcoming devolved bodies and council elections. That is, vote socialist where you can, vote Labour everywhere else – and then fight. So, in Scotland, this means a vote to the SSP. (Though it doesn’t mean a vote for Respect.)

This is for two reasons. Firstly, in England, the resistance to Blairism is at its most principled and lucid inside the Labour Party. There is, literally, nowhere else for serious socialists to go.

In France they don’t have this problem. They have a large, left wing, revolutionary organization – the Revolutionary Communist League. The French Communist Party still exists, and for all of it’s rotten politics, still took a huge part in the defeat of the European Constitution and the progressive, left ‘No’ movement around that.

Royal, as I have said before, is no alternative to Sarkozy. I don’t believe in the lesser evil.

As an aside, I will be taking part in a programme about Alan Johnston, the kidnapped BBC reporter in Gaza, and the solidarity campaign run by bloggers. You will be able to download my ‘speech’ (for want of a better phase) after the programme has been broadcast. Tune into “Have Your Say” on the BBC World Service, tomorrow (Friday) at 1830 BST. You can get the World Service in Britain via DAB, Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media, and online at www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice.

Boris Yeltsin is dead.

Huzzah.

Now, I may be straying into the ultra-ortho-Trot territory of SouthpawPunch here, but I won’t be mourning this man.

Yeltsin didn’t bring democracy to Russia after the collapse of the dying Soviet Union. The rise to power of Putin is proof of that. Russia today is a neo-liberal hellhole, with the economic policies of the United States - privatising anything that moves. The Kremlin is at perfect liberty to intimidate journalists, to set up Potemkin village political parties, to terrorise an entire people in the name of the “war on terror” and to violently crush any possible dissent, even if it comes from some unsavory corners.

Yeltsin’s rise to power was not so much based on a popular movement. The collapse of the Soviet Union was very much a power game between different blocs based, not on politics, but on ’strong men’. And since then, life expectancy in Russia has plummeted. Curable diseases, once thought to be extinct, jumped up. Anything of value was given away to oligarchs who form the new base of any real power in Russia.

In short, things have gotten worse for the ordinary Russian under oligarchical capitalism. That’s not to say that life in the Stalinist USSR was a peach, either - it wasn’t. But capitalism has practically ransacked Russia and left her people far worse off.

This is reflected in the huge rise of the Far Right in Russia, especially Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party. Don’t be fooled by the lefty sounding name. These people want to create a fascist Russian empire under the thumb of Limonov. It’s no surprise that the NBP has been attracting young people to their banner. They are those who have been given the least strongest hand in a poker game which is rigged.

All of these problems can be traced back to Yeltsin. And now he’s dead. Huzzah. May his bones rot in hell.

News reaches me, via the comrades at the Militant blog, of the case of Ainur Kurmanov.

Kurmano, a CWI comrade based in Alma-ata, Kazakhstan is facing prosecution from the state prosecutor in the Alma-ata city area. While details on the CWI’s website about Kurmano are sketchy at best (for some reason the CWI comrades are not divulging much, why that is I don’t know - they will have their reasons, and I don’t think it’s for any untoward reasons but it would be nice to know) it seems to stem from Kurmano’s activism in defending poorer Alma-ata residents from having their houses bulldozed by the Kazakh government. It is obvious that Kurmano is being punished for being, in the CWI’s words, a “recognised leader of social protests.”

When the state attacks socialists of any tradition or none, it is the duty of the socialist movement to close ranks, defend that comrade, and provide active solidarity. You can help with this by the simple power of email.

All you have to do is to contact the Kazakh Embassy in London and complain. You can email them through london@kazahstan-embassy.org.uk. Or you can call them on 020 7581 4646. You should also rush messages of solidarity to bolshevik1917@list.ru, and CC it to pabgem@online.ru.

Good luck, comrades.