"So Ed Miliband wants a return to the ideas of an influential mid-Victorian political thinker, based in London in the 1840s, who came from a Jewish family that converted to Christianity? OK, but at least he could pick the right one ..."
"Billionaires are just salt of the earth people...in that they own salt mines, and much of the earth, and some people" -S. Colbert
Hat tip to Brad over at Facebook.
Quote of the Day
"I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one." - Ara Rubyan
Hat tip to Danny L. over on Facebook.
The Byrds . . . a Postcard Records connection . . . pop cynicism . . . the nugget compilations (which I haven't listened to in the longest time) . . . and 1981, which is still my favourite year for pop music . . . this quote has everything for a Monday morning:
“We were all wound up in the Rough Trade Conditioning Syndrome, whereby you’re told that everyone on Rough Trade is ethically sound and morally very, very good; and that the people in the big corporations are evil ogres, bureaucrats and capitalists, bourgeois pigs. But once you meet those people you realize that they’re exactly the same as the people at Rough Trade—it’s just that their Kickers are newer… It’s stupid to stick to the sort of independent ideas that we had about 18 months ago. We can’t do it ourselves. I want to be able to sit back and say, well here’s 40 percent of a hit record – a decent song—and have someone else arrange it, produce it, get it played… That way you end up with ‘Mr Tambourine Man’. Only one Byrd actually played on it, but so what? It still stands up today as a great record. And if The Byrds had played on the single the way it had been written, then it would probably just have ended up as a track on the Nuggets album.” Alan Horne (NME, November 1981)
From Simon Reynolds Rip It Up and Start Again: The Footnotes blog. Hat tip to Brian over at the Like Punk Never Happened blog.
Maybe 'mikeovswinton' was onto something about Billy Connolly's political past if this old quote from today's Observer is anything to go by:
ON HIS SUBSEQUENT FRIENDSHIP WITH PRINCESS ANNE 'I'm not going to throw away the hand of friendship to suit 100 Trotskyites in Glasgow' (1989)
Referring to the Peasants of Leon as Trotskyites rather than as Trotskyists is usually a giveaway that Uncle Joe was once a family friend but radical politics was always a bit different in Glasgow.
I don't have the quote immediately to hand but I do remember reading about the late SPGBer, Alec Shaw, who would apparently rip into the 'Communist Blatherskites and Trotskyite Gobshites' - I'm paraphrasing (slightly) - from the Party platform in Glasgow in the 40s and 50s.
And by all accounts, that debate between Solidarity's Ken Weller and the IS's Paul Foot in '68 did get rather acrimonious. You'd be surprised by how many people can still hold onto the grudges long after they drop the politics.
Anyway, check out Connolly's 'Did I Say That?' column. If nothing else, it's a good timeline for showing how Connolly lost his comedy mojo a long, long time ago.
Via Lew H. over at the SPGB's discussion list:
Wikipedia has launched an appeal for funds. Below is a interesting tribute from a donor:
"Wikipedia stands for the principle that no one owns knowledge, that people cooperating voluntarily and without external incentives (such as greed or fear) can produce a public good useful to all of a caliber as high if not higher than commercially driven and created sources -- not merely in accuracy but in accessibility of use and excellence of design. Wikipedia is living refutation of those who assert that wide-scale, complex, long-term cooperation by a large number people working on a very large enterprise requires hierarchy, subordination, authoritative supervision, or motivation by money or even less savory incentives. In many ways it's not too much of an exaggeration that the Wiki principle exemplifies the animating principle of a different kind of society, and by Wiki's persistence and longevity shows that a cooperative order is not a utopian fantasy, but as real as your computer and as close as the Wiki URL. Thanks, Jimmy! And all of you whose work, unrewarded except by the knowledge that it is constructive, well done, and helpful, make this project possible."
But isn't 'Jimmy' a Rand'ite? I'm confused.
. . . but in fact this is my favourite football quote (quote? OK, maybe more anecdote) of the day:
At a meeting in Manchester in around 1970, I hears the following exchange:Speaker: "The bourgeoisie needs football. Football is part of the way they control the working class. It's virtually the only thing preventing a revolution. If they got rid of football there'd be a revolution in Britain."
Heckler: "Yeah... three o'clock next Saturday!"
Anecdote by 'jgw' in the comments box of Luna 17 blog.
I love this quote from the late Stephen Jay Gould that caught my eye on Facebook yesterday:
“I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
Within minutes of spotting that clip I stumble across this picture - and its accompanying story - on Facebook. LabourStart readers have just voted it their Labour Photo of the Year.
If I had any fingernails, I'd dig them into the palm of my hand to remind myself that it's 2009.
Hat tip to MM for the quote.
One of those throwaway quotes from a 'here today gone 15 minutes from now' Q & A pieces in a newspaper, where you think, 'Mmm, never thought of that but now that you've said it, you're right:
You'll never find a Manchester band slagging off another Manchester band, but within each Manchester band, people will rip each other apart; Mondays, Smiths, New Order, Roses, Oasis. No one will slag each other off, but inside the band, they'll rip each other to death. [Ian Brown interviewed in today's Guardian.]
Apparently, it's not just MsMacGuff who has issues with NYC's finest:
"Sonic Youth - how can you be in a band for about 25 years and make about 20 albums and never have a single song? It's just jazz by people who are shit at their instruments "
Harsh but funny one line career overview from 'isitme' on the enjoyable 'Diss music that everyone likes' thread on Urban 75.
Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
Priest: "Oh, no, not if you did not know."
Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"
Hat tip to John B:
Via the wiki page of Mike Denness:
In Australia, Denness once received an envelope that had been sent with the address "Mike Denness, cricketer". The letter inside read, "Should this reach you, the post office clearly thinks more of your ability than I do."
. . . even if it is from an article from last Tuesday:
" As Charlie Brooker – one of the first people to donate to the Atheist Bus Campaign – says: "Public transport in Britain suggests there isn't a God anyway, but in case anyone hasn't noticed, or feels isolated for thinking such a thing, this campaign should help."
All arising out of the Atheist Bus publicity campaign, which has never previously been mentioned on the blog because I've set my heart on going underground.
. . . for the editor of the Daily Mail.
I'm sorry but it's too late in life for me to warm to Tony Adams, despite his best efforts:
"I don't actually trust anyone who doesn't have self-doubt. But I have resources and I have a lot of faith in myself, my methods and my team. I'm walking tall at the moment. It feels like the right thing to do. Is this too deep for the Daily Mail?"
More gems from Mr Adams's treasure chest via the Guardian's Barney Ronay's Sporting Heroes of 2008.
Quote Passage of the Day:
"It was from this time I conceived a dislike of Lancaster I've never since lost. Having seen madness on that ward, I saw it echoed in face after face in the town. Though it's a pleasant enough place I find the people there less amiable and appealing than elsewhere in Lancashire, with the possible exception of Liverpool. There's an openness and generosity in Blackburn, Preston and Rochdale, maybe because these were virtues fostered in the mills; Lancaster, commercial, agricultural and (like Liverpool) once a port, seems sullen, tight-fisted and at night raw and violent." (from Alan Bennett's 'Untold Stories'.)
Day 3: Paul Weller Month
A late night quote of the day from the sleeve notes of The Style Council's 1985 number one album, Our Favourite Shop:
"Don't be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces." Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793)
From the intro to Ian Bone's recent radio interview with Tony Wood, organiser of the long established - and just passed for this year - London Anarchist Bookfair:
"Good evening anarchists, everywhere . . . On October 18th the most momentous event - some cynics would say the only event - in the annual anarchist calendar takes place, the Anarchist Bookfair. Thousands of anarchists suddenly appear like Brigadoon for the day before promptly vanishing again. Prompting the immortal quote from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, "Who were those guys?"
An mp3 of the interview can be downloaded here.
From the latest issue of the Weekly Worker comes the (unintentionally funny) quote of the day from Mark Fischer:
It is also very much on display in the leadership's attempt tp whip up anger against David Broder and Chris Ford, two comrades who resigned from the AWL (primarily over the organisation's pro-imperialism, but also citing the sect's lack of operative democracy) to form the grandly named International Communist Group, organised around the Commune website . . . . [My emphasis.]
Why is it so unintentionally funny? Only because Mark Fischer is the National Organiser of the equally "grandly named" 30-40 strong Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee).
If I could make this stuff up I'd be writing King of the Hill episodes.
Via a thread on Urban 75 about the dullest football fans:
"true though innit. at our games you get a mixture of people wearing a variety of shirts from through the ages and many wearing nothing but their normal everyday clothes.Look at the Emirates on telly and it's like the village of the fucking damned."
Oh wait up, here's another quote of the day from the same thread:
"whenever I'm in London and Arsenal are at home, all their fans heading home on the Bristol train look exactly like the dreary well heeled middle class nonentities you'd expect to see at Arsenal. All wearing the latest home shirt, all with groaning bags of tat from the megastore and all of them dull as fuck."
And I don't even mind Arsenal. 'JTG', I salute you.
Lush's Miki Berenyi discussing the release of the Britpop and Shoegazing box set The Brit Box:
"Is there a band in existence who would feel it a compliment to be compared to Dodgy?"
Cruel, but funny . . . and I actually bought Dodgy's first two albums.
