Interlude

Sprite Spite

Cannot post, email or even type atm. The keyboard is busted. It lost a fight with a glass of Sprite last night.

The mouse still works, so this communiQue has been painstakingly brought to you via cut and paste . . . ransom note style.

I'll be in touch.

Post-Capitalism: Parecon or a World without Money? Which way to a classless society?

SPGB debate with Z Magazine's Michael Albert at Conway Hall this coming Saturday:

POST-CAPITALISM: PARECON OR A WORLD WITHOUT MONEY?

Which way to a classless society?

Debate with Michael Albert (founder member of ZCommunications and author of "Parecon: Life After Capitalism") and Adam Buick (World Socialist Movement) about the alternative to capitalism.

PARECON

- form of money economy featuring workers' self-management and consumer councils, price-setting, and personal incomes based on effort and sacrifice not property or heredity.

"In the world you desire to attain there is, I presume, production. Likewise, I assume you agree that people will consume. More, beyond production and consumption, is there some regulation of what is produced and in what quantity? The alternative would be that anyone can produce anything, with no concern other than that they wish to. This is nonsense, but if there is regulation of how resources, energies, and labor are allocated to generate outputs, does that regulation reflect the preferences that both producers and consumers have and especially a full valuation of the relative contribution to well being and development of different choices? If it does, then to that extent it includes "money." The valuations are prices, albeit not necessarily as we have known them in market and centrally planned systems".

Michael Albert (ZCom)

SOCIALISM

- the abolition of the property-based money economy including markets, profits, rent and wages, with all land and goods owned and democratically controlled by the whole society.

"In implementing the long-standing socialist principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”, socialist society breaks the link between work done and consumption. Rather than being “allotted” what to consume as under “Parecon”, people would be able to take from the common store of wealth set aside for individual consumption what they judged they needed to live and enjoy life, irrespective of what they had contributed to production. Every able-bodied person would be expected to contribute something, but we don’t share your bleak view that, in this event, not enough would be produced to satisfy people’s needs (that “demand would exceed supply”, as you put it) - and that therefore, not just profits, but the wages system too would have to be retained as a means of both obliging people to work and of limiting their consumption. Just like under capitalism.

Our description of “Parecon” is “post-capitalist capitalism”, i.e. not post-capitalism at all".

Adam Buick (SPGB)

Peter Bodak versus Man City, January 1982

Don't ask me why but I just thought of this goal, and YouTube was good enough to confirm that the goal and the goalscorer weren't just a figment of my imagination.

I had totally forgotten about that red and white Coventry City away kit, though. My memory was still locked on their chocolate delight from the Wallace and Ferguson era.

Sadly, Bodak doesn't have one of the more informative wiki pages but this article which dates from 2005 fills in some of the gaps.

Malvinas Requiem by Rodolfo Fogwill (Serpent's Tail 1983)

Garcia had brought the newspaper photos showing the two sets of officers having tea together. The Brits had given him a bundle of photos of Argie officers who had surrendered taking tea with the naval captains from the British fleet. On the reverse were written the names of the Argentine officers, and of the place where each had surrendered.

'Chuck the lot of them!' said Viterbo. He was insistent. The Brits had asked the dillos to hand them out in the Quartermaster's, to hasten the surrender.

'Let's throw them away! No surrender! Let them kill each other, so they all fuck off and leave us in peace. We'll chuck the photos away and tell them they were distributed.'

So the dillos burnt them in the stove. There were lots of photos, the bundle was as big as a large ammunition box. It burnt slowly, giving off an acrid smoke, which made their eyes smart and their throats sore.

Weekend by William McIlvanney (Sceptre Paperbacks 2006)

She paused the tape and started to spool forward. She was looking for a moment during the question time that followed Harry Beck's lecture. Mickey Deans had asked a question in a tone of such aggression it had stirred the room from somnolence into tension. Eventually she found it.

'You mentioned in class once that you still regard yourself as a socialist. How is that possible when you have such a jaundiced view of humanity?'

She thought she could almost hear Harry Beck's sad smile.

'First thing is, I don't think it's jaundiced. I think any kind of hope begins in honestly trying to confront what you see as the truth. That's all I've been trying to do. It's the darkness of that truth as I see it that makes me a socialist. After all, the dark is where the dawn comes from. I don't believe in Utopia. You won't find it on any map we can ever make. And if it did exist, we couldn't breathe the air there. It would be too pure for us. But I believe in our ability to drift endlessly towards dystopia. We seem to be programmed for it. As if we were saying to ourselves: if we can't beat the dark, let's celebrate it. I'm against that. I'm a dystopian socialist. Socialism is an attempt to share as justly as we can with one another the terms of human experience. Don't do the dark's work for it. If it's only void out there, let's write our own defiant meaning on it. And make it a shared meaning. I think believing in good is the good. Against all the odds. Even if I'm part of the odds against us. I think it's what makes us what we are.'

The Gift by David Flusfeder (4th Estate 2003)

My father approved of football. It was the people's game, working class, played in barrios and ghettos worldwide. With the right ideological apparatus it could be a force for international communism. I set myself diligently to the task of becoming a world-famous footballer and, therefore, revolutionary. I practised heading against the block of flats where we lived until the widow whose bedroom was behind the wall I was using came out with her poodle yapping. I developed my weaker left leg by practising corners with it; I built up my stamina on long training runs invigilated mercilessly by my Marxist father tottering behind me on a woman's bicycle through the streets of south-east London. My rise was prodigious. At ten I was the second-best player in the London under-twelves. Like Stan Bowles I was a stylish, shaggy-haired number ten capable of a blistering shot with either foot, of finding the miraculous pass, and with a gift for dribbling that I used seldom and apologetically, because my father had trained me into believing that the player must subordinate himself to the team and not indulge in displays of bourgeois individualism.

Shame The Devil by George P. Pelecanos (Dell Books 2000)

The reverend's thin lips turned up in a gaseous grin. "So you like Edwardtown."

"Yes. How about you?"

"Well, I'll tell you. I've lived in New York and some other glamorous places, too. But it was always my dream to come to a small town like Edwardtown to build a congregation from the ground up."

And to fleece the local hayseeds for everything they have.

"I moved around a lot," said the reverend, "searching for I didn't know what until I came here."

Failure.

"And because I never had a wife or children of my - "

Faggot.

" - this congregation has become my family. I'd like very much for you to become a part of that family."

Salesman.

To An Early Grave by Wallace Markfield (Dalkey Archive Press 1964)

And then off, off to the boardwalk, to hang around and watch the kids. Honest, you never saw such kids. Brown and round and mother-loved, fed on dove's milk and Good Humors. At night they pair off under the pavilions - Milton and Sharon, Seymour and Sandra, Heshie and Deborah. They sing stupid songs, an original word doesn't leave their lips and, clearly, not one will ever stand up for beauty or truth or goodness. Yet - do me something! I could stay and watch them for hours. I feel such love, I chuckle and I beam, and if it was in my power I'd walk in their midst, pat their heads and bless them, each and every one. So they don't join YPSL and they never heard of Hound and Horn and they'll end up in garden apartments, with wall-to-wall carpeting. What does it matter? Let them be happy, only be happy. And such is my state that I will remit all sins . . .

Socialist Meeting in Norwich on the Zeitgeist Movement

For my one reader in Norfolk:

From Doon With Death by Ruth Rendell (Ballantine Books 1964)

"About your boyfriends, Mrs. Missal?" As soon as the words were out Wexford knew he had been obtuse.

"Oh, no," she said sharply. "You've got it wrong. Not then, not in the garden. It was a wilderness, an old pond, bushes, a seat. We used to talk about . . . well, about our dreams, what we wanted to do, what we were going to make of our lives." She stopped and Wexford could see in a sudden flash of vision a wild green place, the girls with their books, and hear with his mind's ear the laughter, the gasp of dizzy ambition. Then he almost jumped at the change in her voice. She whispered savagely, as if she had forgotten he was there: "I wanted to act! They wouldn't let me, my father and mother. They made me stay at home and it all went. It sort of dissolved into nothing." She shook back her hair and smoothed with the tips of two fingers the creases that had appeared between her eyebrows. "I met Pete," she said, "and we got married." Her nose wrinkled. "The story of my life."

"You can't have everything," Wexford said.

"No," she said, "I wasn't the only one . . . ."

"Wearing badges is not enough . . ."

. . . but I've always had a soft spot for this one:

Now, where can I find a button hole?

Mention of the SPGB badge in the comments to this old post from Alan J's blog.

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid (2008)

It had been a few years since Karen had last taken the single-track road to Newton of Wemyss. But it was obvious that the hamlet had undergone the same transformation as its sister villages on the main road. Commuters had fallen ravenous upon all four of the Wemyss villages, seeing rustic possibilities in what had been grim little miners' rows. One-bedroom hovels had been knocked through to make lavish cottages, back yards transformed by conservatories that poured light into gloomy living-kitchens. Villages that had shrivelled and died following the Michael pit disaster in '67 and the closures that followed the 1984 strike had found a new incarnation as dormitories whose entire idea of community was a pub quiz night. In the village shops you could buy a scented candle but not a pint of milk. The only way you could tell there had ever been a mining community was the scale model of pit winding gear that straddled the point where the private steam railway had once crossed the main road laden with open trucks of coal bound for the railhead at Thornton Junction. Now, the whitewashed miners' rows looked like an architect's deliberate choice of what a vernacular village ought to look like. Their history had been overwhelmed by a designer present.

Little Green Man by Simon Armitage (Penguin Books 2001)

It was the start of the summer. I was sixteen. I got a job in a cardboard-box factory, worked eight till seven every day and Saturday mornings as well. It was a shit job with shit pay, but there was nothing else to do, and anyway I was saving up for America. Stubbs and the others, they'd still got a year to do. It was the holidays but I only saw them at night, a game of soccer in the schoolyard before it went dark or a bottle of cider in the bandstand. Then it was winter - they'd got their homework, I'd got my cardboard boxes. I was wishing my life away, waiting for my friends. Twelve months went by, until the day arrived. At three-thirty I turned up at the school gates with the same lighter. The summer stretched out in front. A summer like the year before last, the five of us going wild all over again. Then America, me and Stubbs and the rest if they wanted to come. Thumbing it from state to state. Occasional jobs. Getting into situations, getting out of scrapes. That was the plan, and today was the first day. I waited, but Stubbs didn't show. He'd sloped off across the playing fields. Like a traitor. And Tony Football went by on the top deck of a school bus, looking the other way. Like a thief. And Winkie was ill. I clenched the little green man in my fist, dug my nails into the jade. Only Pompous turned up, his blazer torn to shreds by the rest of the morons in his remedial set.

'Barney. Throw me the lighter.'

'Where are the others?'

'No idea.'

'Where's Stubbs? I told him I'd meet him here to do the business.'

'I don't know, all right? But he's not going to want his jacket tatching, is he?'

'Why not?'

Not if he's staying on next year. What's he going to come to school in - his vest?'

"Slash it! Slash it!" High Five!

The second eleven:

Owen thinks he's Ron Swanson. We just wish he'd eat like Ron Swanson.

Firefox is doing my nut in. Nine out of ten masochists say it's their web browser of choice.

When I first heard that Ed Milliband was standing for the leadership of the Labour Party I immediately thought of the Guardian's Steve Bell. I'm not so daft after all.

My longstanding loathing of Chelsea is being seriously undermined at the moment by their current away kit. I haven't been enamoured this much by a football kit in a long time. In fact, it was probably the Inter Milan away kit from the late nineties that last caught my eye. And that was a nightmare as well; I had a soft spot for Roma at the time. Thankfully the rapaciousness and greed of modern football means that Chelski will replace all their kits at the end of the season, and that wee niggle can melt away. Only eight more months to hold out.

I wouldn't say no to the Caramac Kit Kat (number 29), but surely the editions from Japan are photoshopped? (hat tip to 'Itziko_Supersta' over at Urban 75.)

'Therese' by The Bodines kicked into iTunes last night. I'd forgotten I didn't realise until now what a good record it was.

My last pair of glasses lasted me five years. And, then, it was only because the dog snapped the frames and I had to get them replaced. The frames of my current glasses have fallen apart after only three months. Apparently it's the fault of the manufacturer but I bet we still get fleeced by the opticians. It rains. It pours. A bastard tsunami is coming down Ocean Parkway.

Finally got round to watching the first series of Gavin and Stacey the other night. Only checked it out because it turned up on Netflix Instant. I know I'm supposed to hate it because of Corden - yep, I did try and watch one of his World Cup shows - but I totally understand why it met with the success that it did. Likeable characters. Easy going humour. And Ruth Jones is a star.

*Beep*Beep*Beep*Beep*

I totally get that quote of Churchill, of "It is all right to rat, but you can’t re-rat . . . ", but I have been listening to Maximo Park again in recent weeks and I'm not embarrassed to admit it. It'll be Hard-Fi next. (Spot my gift of footballing prophecy in that old blog post.)

Sheila Rowbotham is speaking in New York on Friday at Bluestockings. I should try and get along to hear her speak. I last saw her speak at Conway Hall in 1998. At a commemorative meeting for the Communist Manifesto. (150th anniversary and all that.) Standing room only in the main hall and packed balconies with the other speakers including Maggie Steed, Julie Christie and an actress from Eastenders whose name now escapes me.

100 Best Scottish Books

Following on from these two recent fiascos, I've finally found a book poll on the net where my reading count reaches double figures. It's sourced from The List, which is , I guess, Scotland's equivalent of Time Out and the article dates from 2005.

Twenty-one out of a hundred is not a bad reading haul, and there's another twelve or thirteen books on the list that I'd like to read at some point.

I thought it was a nice touch from the list compilers that they did not insist that the authors had to be Scottish by birth; just that the book listed had to have a strong Scottish connection. Hence, for example, the inclusion of Orwell's 1984 in the hundred, which was written on the Isle of Jura. (And, if you've ever read Orwell's collected essays and letters, his strong dislike of Scottish people is very apparent.)

Each listed entry in the linked article has a wee synopsis and well worth further investigation, but I have posted below links to some of the more interesting entries. (Well interesting to me.)

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark (1961)

Tunes of Glory - James Kennaway (1956)

The Thirty-Nine Steps - John Buchan (1915)

Under the Skin - Michel Faber (2000)

Buddha Da - Anne Donovan (2003)

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater - Thomas De Quincey (1822)

King James Bible: Authorised Version - Various (1611)

The Hound of the Baskervilles - Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)

The Divided Self - RD Laing (1960)

The Gowk Storm - Nancy Brysson Morrison (1933)

The Cone-Gatherers - Robin Jenkins (1955)

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

Sunset Song - Lewis Grassic Gibbon (1932)

Born Free - Laura Hird (1999)

The Silver Darlings - Neil M Gunn (1941)

The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell (1791)

Annals of the Parish - John Galt (1821)

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (1902)

The House with the Green Shutters - George Douglas Brown (1901)

Lanark - Alasdair Gray (1981)

Paradise - AL Kennedy (2004)

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner - James Hogg (1824)

Trumpet - Jackie Kay (1998)

Morvern Callar - Alan Warner (1995)

Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell (1949)

Swing Hammer Swing! - Jeff Torrington (1992)

Hotel World - Ali Smith (2001)

Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh (1993)

The Trick is to Keep Breathing - Janice Galloway (1989)

Jericho Sleep Alone - Chaim Bermant (1964)

The Expedition of Humphry Clinker - Tobias Smollett (1771)

Lilith - George MacDonald (1895)

Imagined Corners - Willa Muir (1931)

Living Nowhere - John Burnside (2003)

Jelly Roll - Luke Sutherland (1998)

The White Bird Passes - Jessie Kesson (1958)

Young Adam - Alexander Trocchi (1954)

Rob Roy - Walter Scott (1818)

The Sea Road - Margaret Elphinstone (2000)

The Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith (1776)

The Break-Up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism - Tom Nairn (1977)

Consider the Lilies - Iain Crichton Smith (1968)

No Mean City: A Story of the Glasgow Slums - Alexander McArthur and H. Kingsley Long (1935)

To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf (1927)

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - J.K. Rowling (1997)

Madame Doubtfire - Anne Fine (1987)

Me and Ma Gal - Des Dillon (1995)

The Highland Clearances - John Prebble (1969)

A Concussed History of Scotland - Frank Kuppner (1990)

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - David Hume (1748)

A Voyage to Arcturus - David Lindsay (1920)

The Golden Bough - James Frazer (1890)

Grace Notes - Bernard MacLaverty (1997)

The Cutting Room - Louise Welsh (2002)

The Quarry Wood - Nan Shepherd (1928)

The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks (1984)

Brond - Frederic Lindsay (1984)

A Day at the Office - Robert Alan Jamieson (1991)

Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Kate Atkinson (1995)

The Dear Green Place - Archie Hind (1966)

Miss Marjoribanks - Margaret Oliphant (1866)

The Sound of My Voice - Ron Butlin (1987)

Flemington - Violet Jacob (1911)

Greenvoe - George Mackay Brown (1972)

The New Road - Neil Munro (1914)

Psychoraag - Suhayl Saadi (2004)

The Bull Calves - Naomi Mitchison (1947)

The Coral Island - R. M. Ballantyne (1858)

From Russia, With Love - Ian Fleming (1957)

A Disaffection - James Kelman (1989)

The Shipbuilders - George Blake (1935)

Our Fathers - Andrew O'Hagan (1999)

A Sense of Freedom - Jimmy Boyle (1977)

A Twelvemonth and a Day - Christopher Rush (1985)

The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst (1999)

Adam Blair - John Gibson Lockhart (1822)

But n Ben A-Go-Go - Matthew Fitt (2000)

The Siege of Trencher's Farm - Gordon Williams (1969)

The New Testament in Scots - trans. William Laughton Lorimer (1983)

The Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett (1961)

Open the Door! - Catherine Carswell (1920)

The Lantern Bearers - Ronald Frame (1999)

An Oidhche Mus Do Sheòl Sinn - Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul (2003)

Children of the Dead End - Patrick MacGill (1914)

One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night - Christopher Brookmyre (1999)

The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (1908)

Garnethill - Denise Mina (1998)

Joseph Knight - James Robertson (2003)

The Magic Flute - Alan Spence (1990)

Electric Brae - Andrew Greig (1997)

The Guns of Navarone - Alistair MacLean (1957)

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith (1998)

Mr Alfred, M.A. - George Friel (1972)

Sartor Resartus - Thomas Carlyle (1836)

Black and Blue - Ian Rankin (1997)

Scar Culture - Toni Davidson (1999)

Whisky Galore - Compton Mackenzie (1947)

The Citadel - AJ Cronin (1937)

For the Love of Willie - Agnes Owens (1998)

Docherty - William McIlvanney (1975)

Nip, tuck and more links for your buck

The Socialism Or Your Money Back blog has had a facelift, and it looks the business. You should check it out. (A few glitches here and there but it wouldn't be the SPGB if there weren't a few glitches.)

Recent posts of interest on the blog include:

Pocket Money - Tackling the taxation issue

The Stinking Rich - The Forbes Rich List needs an airing

Union busting - Lost in the supermarket.

12 Reasons Why The Zeitgeist Movement Could Fail - Some SPGBers are getting all giddy about the Zeitgeist Movement. I guess it happens.

The Great Money Trick - A classic passage from Tressell's Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

And a regular feature of the Socialism Or Your Money Blog is the inclusion of articles from the Socialist Standard which have not previously been made available on the web.

Articles of note include:

Report on Clydeside - Posted on the blog in the aftermath of the recent death of Jimmy Reid, an article from the December 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Aneurin Bevan - Fifty years since the death of Bevan, and an article from the August 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard captures the charisma of the man.

Noam Chomsky - Rights & Lefties - And a more recent article from the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard. Not the total smackdown of Chomsky that some seasoned SPGB watchers might have expected. There are a few jabs in the piece but it's not wholly unsympathetic to Chomsky and where he's coming from. I guess the hostility clause was taking a time out that night.

Late news just in

A mannequin dummy finished fourth in the Labour leadership election on Saturday night:

Old NME quote of the day

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.

Booksiwanttoread2011

Nothing like a bit good news for a Friday afternoon.

Via my google alert for Denise Mina comes news of her next book, The End of the Wasp Season. Out next May, Amazon UK carries the following blurb for the book:

When wealthy Sarah Erroll dies a violent death at her home in a posh part of Glasgow, the local community is stunned by what appears to be a truly gratuitous act. Heavily pregnant with desperately wanted twins, DS Alex Morrow is called in to investigate and soon discovers that there is more to Sarah's murder than it first seems. On the other side of town, Thomas Anderson is called into the headmaster's office at his boarding school to be told that his tyrannical father - a banker responsible for the loss of many livelihoods in the recession - has committed suicide by hanging himself from the old oak tree on the lawn of their home. Thomas returns to the family home to find his mother and sister in a state of numb shock. The head of the household is dead, yet their initial reaction is not that of grief, but relief. As Alex Morrow slowly unravels the connections between the two cases, she must also deal with the death of her own father and her brother's continuing criminal activities. Trying her hardest to disentangle herself from her family's disreputable history, she faces the challenge of an uninspired police force who have zero sympathy with Sarah Erroll, a middle-class victim who it appears was acting as an high class escort. Can Morrow solve the mystery of a cold-blooded murder without support? In THE END OF THE WASP SEASON she faces her greatest challenge yet as her work and home lives collide with potentially disastrous consequences.

As Kara asked when I told her this morning, 'Does this mean there won't be any more Paddy Meehan books?'

SPGB London Day School: 'Can You Buy Happiness?'

Day School

– Saturday, 25th September from 12.00 noon

Socialist Party premises,

52 Clapham High St, SW4 7UN

(nearest tube:Clapham North)

Happy Shopper

Ed Blewitt (Clinical Psychologist) will look how our understanding of happiness is closely related to consumerism. Ed’s talk on the ‘Happy shopper’ is taking a look at how the happiness industry developed in the 19th century in the form of the good life through to its modern guise of an ‘individual feeling’. This shift in the social perspective is compatible with the capitalist notion of an atomistic individual separated from society where the search for happiness is the individual’s goal in life.

Manhattan for a handful of beads

Peter Rigg (Analytical Psycho-therapist) He's titled his talk 'Manhattan for a handful of beads’ in a systematic approach which argues and illustrates how we’ve been sold consumerism in the form of cars, mobile phones, holidays, etc., in exchange for true democracy. Peter will be drawing a parallel between infantile functioning and consumer culture and between psychological maturity and democracy, besides touching on the illusion of being a sovereign consumer. In short, Peter will be putting consumerism on the couch!

The consumption of capitalism

Brian Johnson (retired Disability Counsellor) We’ve all heard the phrase, ‘Keeping up with Jones’ but rarely established how such phrases have impacted on the social relationships within the family and wider society. Brian will investigate the social drives that set consumerism in motion with a thorough analysis on how consumerism affects all classes. His talk on ‘The consumption of capitalism’ delves into how consumerism is having an effect on our expectations and aspirations, lifestyles, perceptions of reality and much more.

Refreshments will be available during the talks. There will be a social in the evening with some light musical entertainment by Peter Rigg along with food and drink. All in all this half day school promises to be an event full of insight; engaging and entertaining.

Heartland by Anthony Cartwright (Tindal Street Press 2009)

Rob imagined that somewhere, in some run-down football club next to a rusting corned-beef factory in the back end of Argentina, there was a minor local politician proclaiming loudly the inevitability of an Argentinian goal. Sitting next to him, there'd be his nephew, a failed footballer, fidgeting in his seat, barely able to watch, sitting with his old man on the other side, a disabled Malvinas veteran or prisoner of the generals or an old team-mate of Maradona's or something, biting his nails, wondering just quite why and how some men that you didn't even know running around on a field on a different continent, some foot or hand of God, might somehow re-order the world, or at least re-order the world in you.

Dyer want the rest o that, Rob? Jim motioned at the half-eaten burger and reached for it as Rob shook his head.

Super-Sammy-Hat-Trick-Caley-Are-Atrocious

You know you're duff when Samaras gets a hat trick against you.

Separated At Birth?

Languishing in the Draft Section (part III)

This one dates from 11/01/07 (12:25). All the draft post consisted of was the above title post and the two jpegs. Henshall and the unknown doppleganger. No links, No text. No clues.

I won't get a wink of sleep tonight wondering who it was in that jpeg which is now nothing more than a dead link. Looks like Dougie Henshall? That could be half the population of Paisley. The other half of Paisley looks like Milky from This Is England '86.

One of few celebrity spots in my life was Dougie Henshall. A Thursday night in 2004. Tottenham Court Road tube station. Central Line. I only remember the particulars because it was this miraculous night and Henshall was in a retro Celtic top. He didn't look too happy at the time and I presumed (wrongly) that Celtic had got gubbed that night.

Billiards in Heaven

Languishing in the Draft Section (part II)

And this one dates from 19/10/07 (21:50)

No link. Nothing. Which is a shame 'cos I like that cartoonist's moxy.

Posting penguins

This image has been in the draft section of my blog since 23/07/04 (04:35 to be exact), and I don't know why.

What's the life expectancy of penguins?

Living in SSiN

One for the Leftist Trainspotters amongst you: Socialist Organiser have their own entry in the Urban Dictionary!

It begs the question: Why?

Look Back And Wonder

It's over twenty years since I read John Osbourne's Look Back In Anger, but have I really misremembered it this much?

That trailer is like one of those Comic Strip spoofs from the mid-eighties. I keep expecting Peter Richardson and Ade Edmondson to turn up at any moment and gurn at the camera. What with him chewing up the scenery, I'm surprised Burton isn't playing Jimmy Porter on a bare sound stage.

As the original uploader explains:

"This is the [very] American trailer for the screen adaptation of John Osbourne's groundbreaking play Look Back in Anger.

It misses the whole point of the play and the character of Jimmy Porter, but it is fascinating to watch.

And yet for all its wrongheadedness that American trailer is still infinitely better than Branagh and Thompson's tv version from the late eighties.

It turns out that the misery of the late eighties wasn't all just down to Thatcher, bad pop music and ill-designed Socialist Standard front covers.

Denise Mina's Field of Blood

Spotted via a google alert:

"BBC Scotland is to bring the first of Glasgow crime writer Denise Mina’s Paddy Meehan detective novels to the small screen next year.

The Field of Blood, written and directed by David Kane, will begin filming next month and casting of the two-part production will be announced soon.

The good news is that they're not adapting Denise Mina's Garnethill for the screen. I feel particularly precious about Maureen and Leslie, and I know in advance that I'll wince at whoever they cast for those particular parts in a screen adaptation. (I'm sure that adaptation is coming at some point, though).

That's the good news.

The bad news is that Field of Blood is being adapted for the screen by David Kane. The same bloke who brought the Rebus novels to the screen. That really doesn't bode well. And what with Scotland only having 17 working actors at any one time, we'll no doubt be seeing an overlap of actors from the Rebus adaptation in the tv version of Field of Blood.

I hate to be unduly harsh to Kane - fingers crossed he's not one of those types who look themselves up on the internet - 'cos I love his original work for tv and film. His self-penned This Year's Love; Dream Baby; and a Shadow On The Earth were all wonderful but I had to switch Ken Stott's Rebus off after seven minutes. (It would have been five minutes but I had pins and needles at the time.)

Fingers crossed. Happy to be proved wrong some time next year.

All Or Nothing (2002)

September 2010 Socialist Standard

September 2010 Socialist Standard

Editorial

Make austerity history

Regular Columns

Pathfinders Taiga Taiga burning bright...

Cooking the Books 1 Overproduction or underconsumption?

Cooking the Books 2 Labour and labour-power

Material World Fascists Take Over Russian Communist Party

Greasy Pole Home Sweet (?) Home

50 Years Ago Harry Pollitt

Main Articles

China’s working class drives capitalist development The heroic and inspiring struggles of China’s working class will only lay the ground for new and improved exploitation methods – unless, that is, the struggle turns political – and socialist.

A Socialist visits capitalist China Mainland China seen through the eyes of a socialist tourist.

What future for the Beautiful Island? A look at the other China.

For or Against Parliament? Violent overthrow of governments versus peaceful democratic elections.

Engels on Human Evolution Engels followed the impact of Darwin’s ideas more closely than Marx. He may even have read Darwin ‘The Descent of Man’.(concluding article of a three part series)

Letters, Book Reviews and Meetings

Letters to the Editors: Living Wage; Imperialism; Pete Seeger again

Book Reviews: Agrofuels: Big Profits, Ruined Lives and Ecological Destruction. By François Houtart. (Pluto Press);For All the Tea in China. By Sarah Rose (Arrow Books)

Socialist Party Meetings: Clapham, Chiswick & Manchester:

Voice From The Back

Behind The Fine Words; Progressing Backwards; Half A Million Homeless; "Humanitarian" Slaughter; The Growth Of Inequality; Bargain Basement Exploitation

Laundry List

I haven't posted a Random25 on the blog for a while.

The post title is self-explanatory. The songs below are what the iPod shuffle threw my way whilst I was doing the laundry a couple of days back.

Not a bad selection of tracks. Pretty mainstream which reflects the music on my iPod at the moment. I probably should shake it up a bit. Probably the most obscure band in the list is the post-punkish New Age. I know absolutely nothing about them, short of the fact that there's nothing about them on the internet and they're better than seventy-five per cent of the bands that Simon Reynolds gushes over in Rip It Up.

Oh yeah, click to enlarge . . . and to enrage.

The Hospital (1971)

A Peace Envoy from Polmadie

It's getting repetitive but I can't resist another YouTube clip via the good folk at Urban 75.

Absolutely hilarious and, as the uploader on YouTube points out, beware of the:

". . . dangers of running clips of people with strong Scots accents without checking what they're saying. BBC North West Tonight, 6.30pm, September 14."

Hat tip to 'Strung Out'.

Nothing to Braga about

Before you groan too much at my piss poor pun in the post title, get your laughing gear around this tribute to Arsenal from . . . ahem, The Away Boyz.

You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll swear that it's so awful that all involved must be season ticket holders at White Hart Lane.

And did you spot the 'celebrities' in the video? Peter Hugo Daley (Mick the drummer from Breaking Glass); Lee Whitlock (it's a few years since Shine On Harvey Moon); and was that Charlie Creed-Miles on the drums in the pub? I guess Spike Lee was washing Nick Hornby's hair that day.

Hat tip to 'Fedayn' over at Urban 75 for the blood now pouring from both my eyes and my ears.

Bloomsbury 100 Must-Read Crime Novels

Ok, let's see how I do with this list from Bloomsbury of the top 100 must-read crime novels that I just found via google.

If it's crossed out, it means I've read it:

Asesinato en el Comitè Central by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

Beast in View by Margaret Millar

The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Black and Blue by Ian Rankin

The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy

The Black Echo by Michael Connelly

The Bottoms by Joe R. Lansdale

The Bridge Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich

The Case of the Terrified Typist by Erle Stanley Gardner

The Choirboys by Joseph Wambaugh

Come away, death by Gladys Mitchell

Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters

Dark Passage (Film Ink Series) by David Goodis

Dead Calm by Charles Williams

Dead Cert by Dick Francis

Dead Lagoon by Michael Dibdin

The Dead of Jericho by Colin Dexter

The Deadly Percheron by John Franklin Bardin

Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon

The Deep Blue Good-by by John D. MacDonald

Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley

The Devil's Home on Leave (Factory 2) by Derek Raymond

Dialogues of the Dead by Reginald Hill

Double Indemnity by James M. Cain

Downriver (The Amos Walker Series #9) by Loren D. Estleman

The Fabulous Clipjoint by Fredric Brown

The Face on the Cutting Room Floor (Classic Crime) by Cameron McCabe

Fadeout by Joseph Hansen

Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

Fast One by Paul Cain

A Fatal Inversion by Ruth Rendell

A Firing Offense by George P. Pelecanos

Flinch by Robert Ferrigno

The Fools in Town Are on Our Side by Ross Thomas

Four Corners of Night by Craig Holden

The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey

The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins

The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett

God Save the Child by Robert B. Parker

Gone, No Forwarding by Joe Gores

Hamlet, revenge! by Michael Innes

The Hunter by Richard Stark

The Ice House by Minette Walters

In a Dry Season by Peter Robinson

Indemnity Only by Sara Paretsky

The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton

A Is for Alibi by Sue Grafton

The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson

Kiss Me, Deadly by Mickey Spillane

LaBrava by Elmore Leonard

The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley

Laura by Vera Caspary

The League of Frightened Men by Rex Stout

Maigret Sets a Trap by Georges Simenon

Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles

The Man Who Liked to Look at Himself by K. C. Constantine

The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Miami Blues by Charles Willeford

The Monkey's Raincoat by Robert Crais

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald

The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin

A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Murder on the Yellow Brick Road by Stuart M. Kaminsky

The mystery of a hansom cab by Fergus Hume

The Mystery Of The Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke

The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers

No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase

Off With His Head by Ngaio Marsh

One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters

Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell

A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

Roman Blood by Steven Saylor

Sadie When She Died by Ed McBain

Sidetracked by Henning Mankell

The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Smallbone Deceased by Michael Gilbert

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe

A Taste for Death by P. D. James

Tell No One by Harlan Coben

A Thief of Time by Tony Hillerman

The Three Coffins by John Dickson Carr

A Three-Pipe Problem by Julian Symons

The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham

Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen

Trent's Last Case by E.C. Bentley

Uncivil Seasons by Michael Malone

Under Cover of Daylight by James W. Hall

Under the Bright Lights by Daniel Woodrell

An Unkindness of Ravens by Ruth Rendell

When the Sacred Ginmill Closes by Lawrence Block

When the Wind Blows by Cyril Hare

Who in Hell Is Wanda Fuca? by G. M. Ford

Of the one hundred books listed I've only read eight of them! That is woeful.

I didn't look at the list prior to scrolling down it and scoring through those books that I've read. I thought there would be at least twenty books on the list that I've read. Blogging life was so much simpler with 365Watch.

A wee tap on the shoulder . . .

. . . . and a whisper in the ear of, 'You've not read enough'.

That's the shiver I get when I stumble across book polls like the recent one conducted by NPR.

Seventeen thousand readers/listeners/viewers - what exactly do people do with NPR? - voted on their favourite 'Killer Thrillers' and, of the Top 100 listed, it turns out I've read a grand total of 2 of them.

Every other book I read is crime fiction, and it turns out I've been reading the wrong ones. Granted I've probably seen the film versions of about 20 of the books listed but that won't win me any kudos amongst the Ditmas Park literati.

There's only one solution. No, not actually knuckle down and read some of the works listed . . . find another crime fiction top 100 poll more in tune with my reading tastes. It'll be out there somewhere. Even if I have to create a bogus one myself.

An Englishman in the Dock

I'm sure you'll agree that it's the popular front we can all get behind.

Don't worry about the proposed charge. Once Sting's in custody we can charge him with his real crimes. (Scroll down to the bottom of the linked post where Andy Partridge is in conversation with Todd Bernhardt.)

Strip Jack by Ian Rankin (Minotaur Books 1992)

'Are you an Inspector of Hospitals?' he asked.

'No, sir, I'm a police inspector.'

'Oh.' His face dulled a little. 'I thought maybe you'd come to . . . they don't treat us well here, you know.' He paused. 'There, because I've told you that I'll probably be disciplined, maybe even put into solitary. Everything, any dissension, gets reported back. But I've got to keep telling people, or nothing will be done. I have some influential friends, Inspector.' Rebus thought this was for the nurse's ears more than his own. 'Friends in high places . . .'

Well, Dr Forster knew that now, thanks to Rebus.

' . . . friends I can trust. People need to be told, you see. They censor our mail. They decide what we can read. They won't even let me read Das Kapital. And they give us drugs. The mentally ill, you know, by whom I mean those who have been judged to be mentally ill, we have less rights than the most hardened mass murderer . . . hardened but sane mass murderer. Is that fair? Is that . . . humane?'

Insert Tears For Fears album track title here

Curt Smith from Tears For Fears does a hilarious turn in last week's episode of Psych.

It shouldn't work but it does . . .

Scully and Mooey by Alan Bleasdale (Corgi Books 1984)

'A little blasphemy won't send you packin' t'Hell, Mrs Scully.'

"If it does, there's a lot of people who've done us down I'd like t'meet there. We were brought up in the Depression, me an' his dad, an' then through the blitz an' bloody ration books, an' that joker with his 'y've never had it so good'; aye f'them what's always had it. An' then a few good years just t'trick yer into thinkin' things're goin' t'work out alright, before the world turns around an' hits y'kids in the face. It's never them at the top what suffer though, it's us down here what have t'go through it, as far as I can see. An' whatever the politicians say, it's always goin' t'be the same. It all comes back t'those that can least afford it.'

Boiling A Frog by Christopher Brookmyre (Abacus 2000)

Given her pedigree, she was also a Tory target for accusations of selling out in endorsing Tony Blair's reforms. She had become yet another New Labour robot, they said, and had betrayed everything her father stood for simply to further her own career. Yeah, sure, and the band played "Believe it if You Like'. Labour politicians had always been accused of abandoning their principles in pursuit of power, since long before Tony Blair appeared on the scene. It was part of the Tories' time served pincer-movement strategy: if you took a hard line you were a dangerous lefty out to wreck the economy; if you softened your position, you were an unprincipled chancer who'd do anything for a sniff of power. The Tories knew they'd never face the same charge because they didn't have any principles in the first place. How do you ideologically compromise a stance built on greed, materialism and xenophobia?

Consequently, she didn't mourn Clause Four's passing. Holding on to it was a futile gesture of stubborn and misguided faith, like wearing the medal of some mediaeval saint whose canonisation had been rescinded. It was an anachronism and an impossible dream, but far more damaging, it was also a stick with which their enemies had too often beaten them.

Compromise was always depicted as a political sin by those in the grandstand. Those in the game knew that politics is compromise. If you want a party that believes in all the things you do, and with which you disagree on nothing, you'll have to start it yourself, and the membership is extremely unlikely ever to exceed single figures. In binary.

SPGB Meeting: Hunter, Fisherman, Shepherd and Critic

One for your diary:

And the accompanying blurb:

Hunter, Fisherman, Shepherd, Critic: Karl Marx's Vision of the Free Individual

A lot of nonsense is talked about Karl Marx, most of it from people who have never read him.

Many consider his work to be discredited by the dictatorial regimes that were set up in his name. But what did Karl Marx actually have to say?

Was he in favour of dictatorship? Did he think that the state should impose dull uniformity, rigid regimentation and boring work on its citizens? Did he think that human nature and talents should be suppressed in the name of equality and altruism and for the benefit of a collectivity?

No. In fact, Karl Marx's driving passion his whole life was the free development of the individual. Karl Marx was not opposed to the capitalist ideas of choice, liberty and individual freedom. He supported the ideas, but opposed the society that prevented them becoming a reality.

He wanted to be able "to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic".

In this talk, we will consider whether Karl Marx's vision of the free individual is just an idle dream, or something that could actually be achieved. And if so, how?

Speaker: Stuart Watkins

All welcome.

Free entry. Free discussion. Free refreshments.

I'm sure it will be an excellent talk. The speaker at the meeting is an excellent writer for both the Socialist Standard, and his personal blog, Big Chief Tablets.

A Firing Offense by George P. Pelecanos (Serpent's Tail 1992)

I first met Karen in a bar in Southeast, a new wave club near the Eastern Market run by an Arab named Haddad whom everyone called HaDaddy-O.

This was late in '79 or early in 1980, the watershed years that saw the debut release of the Pretenders, Graham Parker's Squeezing Out Sparks, and Elvis Costello's Get Happy, three of the finest albums ever produced. That I get nostalgic now when I hear "You Can't Be Too Strong" or "New Amsterdam" or when I smell cigarette smoke in a bar or feel sweat drip down my back in a hot club, may seem incredible today - especially to those who get misty-eyed over Sinatra, or even at the first few chords of "Satisfaction" - but I'm talking about my generation.

Near Neighbours by Gordon Legge (Jonathan Cape 1998)

Adam switched off the motor.

'Oh,' said Geordie, 'you're back again.'

'Back to listen to you and your blethers, aye.'

'By God, see if I was a younger man - I'd take my hand off your face before you could say Gazza. I've battered bigger than you, mind. Plenty bigger.'

Aye, I think I mind you telling me - hundreds of times.'

Geordie was the type as would probably be quite happy if Adam were to headbutt. He'd live off it for years. 'Aye,' he'd tell folk, 'just right in front of my face. What a mess it was and all. Blood and brains all over the shop. Never get that cleaned. That's what the polis said. Said to me, "Geordie," they said, "long as you live, and as hard as you try, you'll never get that cleaned."'

Adam replaced the seat. 'Well, want to give it a go, auld yin?'

Geordie made to get up. He adjusted his legs. He adjusted his legs like they were artificial. To all intents and purposes, they were.

(From the short story, 'Past Masters'.)

The Big Blowdown by George P. Pelecanos (St Martin's Press 1996)

"How much do you want us to collect?" said Recevo

"Forty ought to do it for now. We had a little communication problem in the past. Maybe he was kidding me, but I couldn't understand much of what the old guy said. Typical, with these immigrants - they don't even bother to learn the language."

That's because they've been too busy workin', tryin' to feed their families. Workin' like dogs, as if a dog could ever work that hard. Not that any of you snow-white bastards would understand the meaning of the word-

" . . . That's why I thought it might be a good idea for Karras here to go along. That sound good to you, Karras?"

Karras smiled and nodded. He thought he'd mix things up this time.

"Yeah," said Reed. "Karras and this Georgakos bird, they speak the same language. The two of them can sit around together all night and grunt."

Gearhart snorted, issued a gassy grin. Karra heard Reed strike a match to the Fatima behind his back. The smoke from it crawled across the room.

"Forty dollars," said Recevo, trying to cut the chill. "That should be a walk in the park, right, Pete?"

"Not a problem," said Karras.

"Hey, Karras," said Reed. "Be a good little coloured girl and fetch me that ashtray offa Mr. Burke's desk."

"I'll get it," said Recevo, but Karras held him back with his arm.

"I asked Karras to get it for me," said Reed.

Karras pointed his chin in the direction of Gearhart. "Ask Laird Cregar over there to get it for you, Reed. He's a little closer."

Gearhart's grin turned down. He didn't make a move for the ashtray, and neither did Reed.

Recevo drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. He shifted in his seat. "Mr. Burke, what should we do if this Georgakos gives us an argument?"

"He won't give you an argument," said Burke, keeping his eyes locked on Karras. "He wouldn't give an argument to a couple of boys who've seen the action you've seen. Would he?"

Burke himself had seen no "action", as he was on the brown side of thirty. But he had a brother who had fought in the European theatre, and being a veteran meant something to Burke. There were points to be had there, Karras figured, and some degree of slack.

"We'll take care of it", said Recevo, and he and Karras rose from their seats.

"Hey," said Reed. "I've got an idea. Maybe you ought to wear your uniforms over to the Greek's place. Wear your medals, too. Maybe that would help.

"Maybe you'd like to go with them," said Burke, with a touch of acid in his voice.

"Reed might have a little problem there," said Karras. He'd need a uniform, too. And the last time I checked, they weren't handin' out uniforms to Section Eights."

Reed stood from his chair, blood coloring his face.

"Hold it," said Burke. "You two can play if you want, but not in here."

"Guy kills a few Japs," muttered Reed, "thinks his asshole squirts perfume."

Burke raised his voice. "Shut your mouth, Reed, and sit down. You can thank me later."

The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock by John Harris (Harper Perennial 2003)

Noel Gallagher had turned up at his local polling station to find that he was required to produce one more item of identification than he was carrying. 'Do you want me to sing you a fucking song?' he protested, before celebrity eventually got the better of bureaucracy. That night, though the South Bank beckoned, he remained on the sofa. 'I had a ticket for the Labour Party party, but I had that much fun watching Portillo and the others get done over I stayed at home in front of the TV. It was all champagne and cigars round our house. Meg and me got pissed and went out into the garden and played ['The Beatles'] Revolution dead loud with the neighbours banging on the walls.'

Next month's Socialist Standard

Another classic from design peeps over at the Standard. Kudos to Paddy and Neil.

Desert Island digressions

Funny the things you stumble across on the net when you're looking for something else (in my case, the jpeg of a particular Orwell book cover).

I've read nine ten of the listed books, but which nine ten?

It's a given

Harsh but true . . . and Mancini has the Hart to tell him.